Author: Trantor (Ramses Exchange)
TLDR: This proposal addresses the IMC and RPIP 20 requirements.
The innovative team from Ramses exchange on Arbitrum are preparing to expand the Kingdom to Mantle and Linea. The launch of 2 sister forks presents Rocket Pool DAO the opportunity to seed liquidity on these networks through the development of a partnership with the RAMSES kingdom to promote trade volumes and superior LP rewards for depositors. This proposal would see Rocket Pool deploying Liquidity pools on both CLEOPATRA (Mantle) and the NILE on Linea (Linea) for rETH/ETH and RPL/ETH and incentivising them with rewards. In return, Rocket Pool would receive a partner veNFT, bribe matching and joint marketing opportunities. The goal is to drive deep liquidity, desirable APR for depositors and the most effective trades and trade volumes on those respective chains.
Background
RAMSES Exchange on Arbitrum has truly been the dark horse of DEXs on Arbitrum. With few large partners, many established players and a highly competetive ecosystem, RAMSES was the underdog from the beginning. Yet, despite stiff competition RAMSES has managed to climb to the 4th highest DEX by volume with one of the highest volume/ TVL ratios on Arbitrum. This volume/ TVL ratio has consistently surpassed Uniswap and all other competitors in the top 5. This has been made possible by the competitive farming model that is inherent in the way RAMSES exchange has implemented the Concentrated Liquidity and incentives architecture. These custom implementations have produced outstanding results and RAMSES is seeking to emulate and surpass that success on Mantle and Linea in the coming weeks.
The opportunity here is based on the likely future of these 2 chains and their planned integrations and incentives to drive further growth. Notably, Mantle has a significant treasury with which to promote the growth of their chain, especially their mETH offering. Linea, for their part, are partnered with Consensys and the opportunities there are also extremely interesting in 2024. I will not go further into how these chains plan to promote growth as that is up to the ecosystems themselves, but the Kingdom is seeking to deploy to these chains to ensure that we capture the growth that we believe is bound to come.
Most notably, both CLEOPATRA and the NILE have a series of partners lined up to help promote initial growth and ensure that each DEX is the dominant place for trades on those chains from as early as end of January 2024.
Proposal
Rocket Pool DAO commit to depositing liquidity into the following pools:
CLEOPATRA on Mantle: rETH/ETH LP and RPL/MNT LP
The NILE on Linea: rETH/ETH LP and RPL/ ETH LP
Rocket Pool DAO commit to providing vote incentives on those pools for a period of 10 epochs at a rate of $2,000 (or 1 ETH) per epoch for a total of $40,000 in RPL tokens (2 networks x $2000 x 10 epochs).
In return, Rocket Pool will receive a partner veNFT on each chain as well as bribe matching in xCLEO and xNILE on both chains for the duration of the 10 epochs. Please note that the total bribe matched amount would be capped at these figures, although Rocket Pool will be free to provide vote incentives in any size they choose.
A note on xTOKENS. These tokens will be bribe matched for Rocket Pool DAO pools and can be converted at 1:0.8 for the veTOKEN on each chain or at 1:05 for the liquid version of the token. Ideally rocket Pool DAO would seek to lock these tokens into their partner veNFT and thus increase their vote weight to their respective pools at the discretion of the DAO.
Trial period.
If at the end of the 10 epochs Rocket Pool DAO is not satisfied with the returns received on those pools, then all that we ask is that the veNFT are returned to the DAO for other ecosystem partners to use at a later date. For clarity, the size of the partner veNFT can be discussed as can the bribe size, duration etc to meet the desired goals for liquidity and LP APR on these chains for Rocket Pool DAO.
Pools and the NAV rate:
We care about providing efficient liquidity, supporting the underlying NAV rate
CLEOPATRA (Mantle) and the NILE (Linea) will both 2 x types of pools. So called standard AMM pools which operate as traditional AMM, akin to a Blancer weighted pool or a version of a linear pool. And Concentrated Liquidity Pools.
Despite the Concentrated Liquidity name, the POL is likely best placed in a CL pool on “full range” where it operates much like a standard AMM pool. Due to the RAMSES competitive farming structure, farmers then compete for the best Liquidity allocation to earn the highest yields and garner the highest trade fees. Because of the way the system works, if Rocket pool owned a sizable voting position in veCLEO and veNILE then those trade fees would be captured using votes.
On Emission amplifiers.
Without a doubt, every protocol seeks to gather liquidity by providing initially very high incentives. RAMSES seeks to balance this through the emission of rewards split between the liquid version of the token and Xtoken (ie $CLEO AND xCLEO). The launches on CLEOPATRA and the Nile on Linea will be the same. This enables both of these deployments to retain fairly high emissions without significant concerns over token dumping. In other words, concerns over incentive matching are less than with some other protocols and can be further explored after a trial period.
Co-incentives (clarity around duration)
This proposal would cover the following, the allocation of a protocol veNFT for voting n your desired pools coupled with a 10 epoch (week) incentive matching program in xCLEO and xNILE respectively. Incentives would be matched up to 1ETH value per epoch. Should Rocket Pool find the liquidity and trade volume unappealing after the 10 week trial, then you would simply return the veNFT and no hard feelings on anyone’s side.
Points on the NAV rate and market competitive Liquidity
As discussed above, this concern can be mitigated by providing full range liquidity with the majority of the tokens allocated as POL. The market will then decide what the optimal ticks are to support best trade volumes as competitive farmers optimise the trading range. I would note that the current trade volumes for rETH on UNISWAP significantly outweighs trades on Balancer and other platforms, despite significant liquidity differences. (ie 8.5M on UNI doing 9M in trade Volume vs 77M on Balancer doing 2M in trade volume over 24hours). I bring this up not to cast aspersions on Balancer and their excellent suite of products, just to say that UNI gets most of the trade volume and Rocket Pool captures almost none of those trade fees. In models like the ones I am proposing, your VENFT would vote on those pools and capture the trade volume using the same UNI v3 CL model.
Request for Feedback
I humbly request feedback from the DAO on these proposals to meet your desired goals and our plans for further expansion of the RAMSES kingdom.
A variety of options can be accommodated for this partnership to work but please note that the Liquidity Generation Events for both exchanges are inbound and so desires to purchase more tokens during these events etc would need to be discussed more rapidly.
Auditing:
Ramses has been audited by: yAUDIT (06-2023-RAMSES | yAudit Reports) The deployment on Linea and Mantle is a direct fork from the same team.
Socials and details:
The Mantle deployment will be CLEOPATRA Exchange (https://twitter.com/CleopatraDEX), and
The Linea Deployment will be the NILE on Linea (launch date TBD- soon).