GoblinGold Partnership

[binyebarwe]

GoblinGold - Forum Proposal

Executive Summary:

GoblinGold aims to solve the “What can I do with my mSOL?” dilemma that 99% of Marinade users face. We aim to build a series of sustainable mSOL strategies, integrate them into Marinade’s UI and attract existing Marinade users to stake with them.

GoblinGold is looking for a close partnership with the mDAO, offering 5% of tokens and 50% of revenue generated from mSOL assets in exchange for Marinade’s marketing and smart contract/UI assistance in bringing this idea to reality.

Additionally, GoblinGold intends to bring TVL to Marinade by integrating the mSOL token into SOL strategies, further enhancing Marinade’s TVL & reach.

Project Owner and Team:

Binye#7517: More than 4 years of experience in the blockchain space. From distributed systems to smart contracts to simple web3 apps. He brings the vision and the knowledge of the crypto & DeFi ecosystem.

skrrb#3757: Academic background with a PhD in Nuclear Energy building high-performance codes for nuclear applications in GPGPU clusters. Experienced in Rust and distributed systems, is the appropriate guy to build the Solana programs.

Soju#9309: is an experienced community builder, who played a significant role in nurturing the communities of top Solana projects such as Raydium, Solanium and Tulip. Currently a full-time member of the Solend team, and building the GoblinGold community alongside the 2 experienced developers. A wealth of experience in community education and support, while interlinking communities together across the ecosystem.

We are a team of anons but happy to doxx to the Marinade team as we want to make a strong and honest partnership between both parties.

Description: What is the project?

GoblinGold DAO is a crypto growth engine that leverages customized risk strategies to generate DeFi yield. The protocol is designed to invest in several products while tokenizing your positions, allowing composability with other features

Our first strategy, “BestAPY” switches between lending protocols to maximize yields and is currently live on mainnet (https://app.goblin.gold/#/) with 180k TVL, integrated with Solend, Port, Mango, Tulip and Francium.

We are also currently developing complex strategies that rely on various return drivers such as AMMs & Lending Protocols to generate better risk-adjusted yields.

GoblinGold is a Community-First protocol, intending to take 0 VC funding. You can come watch us build in the open in our Discord channel!

We intend to transition to a DAO structure rapidly, drawing inspiration from Yearn on their ability to let any DeFi power user create strategies or contribute lines of code or docs/articles to empower us forward. While the early strategies are designed and coded by us, we want the community to take lead on this alongside our team.

Why should Marinade support this project?

Our primary goal is to increase TVL of mSOL by improving customer experience and DeFi utility.

GoblinGold could bring a few advantages to Marinade:

• Optimize yield for mSOL holders through new and diversified strategies.
• Integrate strategies for SOL where they are converted to mSOL to gain more yield, making more users move towards mSOL.
• With the GoblinGold SDK created specially for mSOL, users will seamlessly get more yield by staking SOL through Marinade and with a single click depositing it into a GoblinGold vault.

We can increase the DeFi utility of the mSOL token by creating DeFi strategies that utilise the mSOL token, that bridges across multiple different platforms such as Solend and Saber.

For example, we can offer a 1-click leveraged staking vault of mSOL, where users deposit mSOL, borrow SOL against it, stake it for mSOL to re-deposit. Rinse & repeat until users are long mSOL and short SOL, thus benefitting from the staking yields that mSOL offers.

With the implementation of our SDK, we can integrate our vaults into Marinade’s (or any other) UI as well, letting Marinade’s users enjoy these heightened APYs without any additional UX friction.

Why Marinade, and how does the mDAO benefit?

Marinade is one of the biggest projects in Solana by TVL. Also, Marinade was a fair launch without investors, so as our visions are very aligned, we believe Marinade is the perfect partnership for us.

In order to incentivize liquidity in our platform, we will be giving 50% of the fees being generated after depositing from the SDK to the Marinade treasury.

Our intention is to collaborate with other DAOs so we will be giving tokens from our Ecosystem/Partnerships to other DAOs that bring TVL to our protocol. We estimate to give 2,5% per $100 millions of TVL provided. Therefore we will provide up to 5% of our token total supply to Marinade that will come from the Ecosystem/Partnerships allocation. These tokens would be locked for 2 years.

We will also uniquely offer mSOL support and no other liquid staking solutions for the first months. Other liquid staking solutions might end up on GoblinGold in the end, but we are committed to put Marinade first and reflect this partnership.

How would Marinade help?

We lack a strong marketing partner, with an existing user base to help kickstart our platform. We aim to provide a valuable service (yield optimization) to the Marinade DAO, in exchange for Marinators to use our platform to generate yields on mSOL.

We also aim to land other partnerships with protocols like Mango to help optimize yields for their HODLers, lending our name more credibility and further growing our userbase.

What we would be looking out of this collaboration would be:

• Marinade brings us expertise on backend and smart contracts by reviewing our code.
• Marinade helps us in designing a better UI for our current and upcoming strategies.
• Marinade helps us bring in TVL from their user base

We envision at least 100mil TVL to come from Marinade’s user base in the long around and feel that 5% tokens for the above is attractive to align Marinade with us.

Budget

We are no VC DAO and we are taking a credit (~200k) to pay some salaries and operational costs until our IDO in ~3/4 months.

Subsequently, Marinade would not need to bring additional financial support to this project.

Outcome: How can we measure the success of the project?

Grow Total Value Locked

By leading SOL holders to mSOL through automated strategies, or by allowing a better yield for mSOL holders, GoblinGold will be able to grow Marinade’s TVL and make it more sticky.

Improve mSOL Users’ UX and Yields

Create additional yield strategies for mSOL, and integrate natively into the Marinade UI, allowing users to generating enhanced mSOL yields without leaving the site.

Alternative Revenue for mDAO

We will provide 50% of our fees from our SDK integration back to the MarinadeDAO, opening a new revenue stream where mSOL users enjoy higher yields while also allowing mDAO to generate additional revenue.

Objectives & Key Results

Objectives:

• Create the standard protocol for people who want secure yield in the Solana ecosystem.
• Integrate with as many DAOs/protocols of the ecosystem as possible.
• Make the protocol self-sustainable and run by the DAO contributors. They will create the strategies in the future.

Key results:

For 2022:

• 400m total TVL - Where operational revenue > forecasted operational costs.
• 600m total TVL - Optimising other assets and becoming a dominant player for yield aggregation in Solana.
• 200m mSOL TVL - Delivering the best yield market-wide for mSOL
• Attract funds from at least 4 different DAO’s treasury

When does it ship and what are the milestones and deliverables?

1. Q1 of 2022:
   • Rearchitecture of our vaults to be more general for different strategies, i.e. V2
   • SDK for Marinade
   • Strategy depositing into Saber
2. Q2 of 2022
   • Token launch
   • Several strategies for obtaining liquidity mining rewards
   • Bring DAO treasuries to our vaults
   • Support more assets
3. Q3 of 2022
   • Partnerships & New strategies to bring more yield.
   • Make lp tokens (ggXXX) useful in some platforms

[jesse-n]

I like a lot of what goblin gold is building, however to agree to give them placement on our website (essentially exclusive access) but the details for what the commitment looks like should be given some expansion.

50% of fees generated doesn’t really mean much without some statistics. Perhaps we can negotiate a starting period where we can evaluate what is fair once we can see TVL, volume, and engagement?

A final concern is that the things goblingold wants help with do actually take time to create and build. We need to make sure that the 50% covers all the costs, and still brings value to the ecosystem.

I do think there’s a lot of value to adding these features, and it aligns with creating an easier investment path.

[PlayerOfBits]

Thanks for the updated proposal, folks.

Given that you expect GoblinGold to be integrated directly into Marinade’s website:

• Would that be specifically for depositing SOL into your default strategy?
• As you add more strategies, do you expect Marinade to update the UI to accommodate them?

[Doubletoilandtrouble]

I don’t find this a particularly useful partnership at this stage for the following reasons:

1. No track record of whether these strategies benefit the user
2. The risk of users getting REKT if they are invested in strategies that are not understood and them blaming Marinade (e.g. Options Vaults)

I would consider supporting this proposal if:

1. More information was provided about the yield strategies along with data supporting that they are successful. The website only has a graph to show performance. I would want to see data in a spreadsheet so it can be properly analyzed.
2. Marinade is allowed to collaborate on what kind of yield strategies are made available to Marinade App users
3. I had an understanding of what the fees are and the revenue potential

[binyebarwe]

I understand your concerns @jesse-n and @PlayerOfBits

1. What is needed from Marinade in terms of their UI isn’t that much. We will build an SDK and will provide all info (even send the JS needed to deposit into our vault). We will be adding strategies, although it makes sense to have a default one that has been reviewed and tested. If we change strategies or combine one with a single vault, the code won’t change much so that won’t be an issue I believe.
2. The default would be to deposit mSol after staking with Marinade. The transactions can be combined so users will only click “Deposit” once.
3. 50% of the fees is a lot in our opinion. We are a protocol that lives out of fees being charged when generating yield, so 50% is quite a lot. The yield atm depends on the lending protocol that gives the best yield.
4. I don’t think a lot of resources are needed from Marinade. Marketing (which includes promoting the partnership) is that would benefit us a lot. In terms of coding, reviewing our code would be more time-consuming.

[binyebarwe]

We are a little bit tired of people questioning the yield we provide. I have nothing against other protocols but you can check how many only have positive APY while actually after depositing you can end up in loss. And I don’t see many people questioning in. In any case, we should talk about us here.

In our case, we want to be very honest with our APY and that’s why we provide a chart, I don’t know why you actually mention “only has a graph”. Many other protocols don’t provide data, just a simple number. It would be very easy for us to put a big number for the APY, but we even give APY after applying fees.

ggNFT | Goblin Gold

To clarify, maybe we weren’t very clear, we aren’t planning to work with strategies where users can end up losing money (structured products, impermanent loss, etc).

ggNFT | Goblin Gold

[binyebarwe]

You can have more data about our yields here:
https://data.goblin.gold:7766/rewards/historic/USDC
You would see differences in the data given by the lending protocols in their UI and our data. I encourage you to do your own calculation by simple depositing into the lending protocols and compare the data

[gekonn]

Imagine that all the mSOL staked in the mSOL single-sided vault, earning MNDE, also earns an additional 2% from lending. For me, this sort of tight integration (1), and having a stake in a product (2) and the access to the code to ensure security (3) makes a lot of sense.

I also resonate with the strategies becoming more transparent and maybe even user sourced in the the future. But even with simple looping SOL->mSOL on Mango to start with might be interesting enough for now.

Lastly, I think Marinade needs to learn how to work with external projects approaching it for support; and having a team that does not start from zero, has a plan and understands what support it needs feels good.

I imagine the sentiments could be more hyped if we were talking over this in the raging bull market - but from a different perspective - in bear you build and Goblins and proposing just that. LFG, GG!

//50% fees is nice but less relevant now, since it’s not clear what is 100% of the fees and how it scales with TVL. I would not hang on this detail atm.

[c2yptic]

I love the name. Reminds me of the harry potter goblin bank

This is a proposal with great ideas and it looks to me like would benefit mSOL and mDAO, as well as the ecosystem in general. Would love to see mDAO explore this opportunity further.

[socrates]

If the dev team have the time to help them, I think we should accept the proposal. It looks like a legit partnership and a permanent source of income to Marinade

[Soju]

gm, Soju here.

Other than being active in mDAO, I am also assisting Binye on his adventure of building GoblinGold.

We’re major friends of the DAO system and intend to secure a strong working relationship with mDAO via this proposal, and help to achieve mDAO’s goals as well as build a new protocol with this idea. Additionally, we’re friends with Mango and intend to work with them as well on a treasury management solution - you can see our presence on their Notion proposal here. Under our old name, PonziLabs.

Hope we are a good fit! happy to address any questions, and im sure Binye is around as well.

[btuck]

I’m intrigued by this but also cautious. On the comms team we have been ideating how we can incorporate mSOL “recipes” onto the site while also not being biased to platforms, writing out-of-date examples (which happens virtually instantly due to fluctuating APYs) or leading new mSOL/DeFi users into areas they aren’t ready for yet like leverage or bridging.

This proposal presents an alternative that could be very valuable to users searching Reddit and Substacks for strategies far and wide and solve our present dilemma. But the devil is in the details. I’m wary of this if it isn’t accompanied with educational resources and it must be presented in a very responsible way that is consistent to the welcoming nature of the new Marinade brand. I don’t want a new Crypto holder fresh off a CEX to stumble into the DeFi jungle unprepared. If this lives on the Marinade site we bear the responsibility of doing what we can to educate them before letting them jump into a complex strategy.

So consider me a “proceed with extreme caution” vote. Thanks for coming to us with this opportunity.

[repe]

TVL (SOL staked) has been Marinade’s north star metric since the very beginning.

Each day and with each project, Marinade contributors need to ask themselves: “Is this the best use of my time to get ultimately more SOL staked in Marinade?”

The TVL growth is driven mainly by a) new SOL staked and b) mSOL retention. I believe GoblinGold integration might help with both attracting new people to stake SOL, and also retaining the mSOL by providing an ongoing relatively risk-averse strategy to utilize mSOL in DeFi.

The main concerns here are:

• security, to maintain the highest possible security standard, Marinade would need to do a thorough code review and control, together with other reputable parties, the contract upgrade authority and treasury authority
• resources, Marinade needs to stay focused on executing the upcoming MNDE Governance launch and then get ready on speeding up treasury diversification efforts first, before committing to allocate more time and dev resources into the Marinade ecosystem grant.

I feel as long as GoblinGold are driving the development efforts, Marinade and other Solana ecosystem projects provide a security overview through a joint code review, and ongoing control over the contract through multisig in GoblinGold’s early stages, this partnership could be beneficial to multiple parties in the Solana ecosystem.

This partnership, should it go through, will be building on mSOL composability, and setting a reference for other ecosystem projects to come and build together with Marinade.

[Cerba]

Hello everyone,

It seems that a number of questions have been raised and answered to, and the discussion is now a bit quiet.

In order for everyone to be able to ask their last remaining questions or go deeper into any point of this proposal, let’s initiate a 7 day period to start and close the last discussions before proceeding to a vote.

Given that on-chain voting is not yet available, the vote about this proposal will happen on Marinade’s Discord, through a vote.

I will start myself by asking GoblinGold’s team: as of today, could you introduce to Marinators a possible strategy that you would be using with mSOL, its risks and its planned APY? Could you walk us through the strategies you have in mind or are testing?

[PlayerOfBits]

Hey folks,

I’m with @repe here. Marinade’s goal is to help decentralize stake, which it hopes to achieve by increasing staking through Marinade, and thus mSOL use.

My key question then, for both GoblinGold and the community, would be: do we think having this integrated directly on Marinade’s site will significantly increase mSOL use?

If we don’t… is there a reason why this strategy should get a more prominent integration into Marinade than any other partnership has so far?

[luciotato]

How do we communicate to our users is paramount here.
I think they want to integrate with Marinade front-end directly because, if I understand correctly, they’re trying a B2B business model, with us and with Mango.

The problem of doing this from our own UI is that we are forced to:

1. perform a full deep code-review ourselves
2. make sure the code is audited by Kudelski (maybe help them get a grant for that?)

In any case we need for the code to be stable for the audit/code-review.

Option B is just put it in a prominent place, educate our users on risks, and just redirect to their website

[Soju]

Thanks for this. Let me explain how the bestAPY strategy, the one that is live already works.

Our BestAPY strategy allocates mSOL, to Tulip, Francium, Solend, Jet and Mango, based on the APY these places offer on mSOL.

This can involve splitting our funds across a basket of protocols to ensure that the yield is maximised, and not diluted by our own deposit. The APY is dependent on the underlyin APY of the lending protocols, what we offer is convenience.

The risks associated with this is the additional smart contract risk applicable on our smart contracts, in addition to mSOL’s smart contract risk + the underlying lending protocol’s smart contract risk.

We are thus looking at getting help from the Marinade DAO in this regard to reduce SC risk.

[Soju]

We believe that the average mSOL staker is not a defi power user, and a simple bestAPY strategy to automate yield maximisation across multiple protocols is ideal for them.

In addition, the leveraged staking strategy (for more educated users) will have a twofold effect of offering, what possibly could be the highest yielding single-stake SOL vault with no directional risk, and also literally borrowing SOL to convert into mSOL, thus increasing mSOL tvl rapidly.

[dobby]

Hello! I agree that this partnership is worth pursuing and could lead to greater utilization of mSOL tokens, especially if the integration is done well and displayed prominently on Marinade’s own UI to make it easy for users.

I would, however, echo @repe in saying that security should be the number one priority. GoblinGold seems like an impressive group and the partnership could help bolster the mDAO treasury, but if an exploit were to happen and users were to lose funds, Marinade’s reputation would definitely suffer.

I understand that, per yesterday’s Kitchen Stories, that the Executive Team has decided to move forward, but I wanted to pose a question. Is there any downside to waiting until mDAO’s on-chain governance is live and putting this to a proper vote? I think it could be an awesome way to test the new system! Worth considering?

[binyebarwe]

gm Mariande community.

When we raised this proposal, our main purpose was to rely on Marinade for its existing userbase, while using our smart contracts and DeFi to bring better yields and higher TVL to the Marinade community.

To achieve these goals for our partnership, we are really looking for:

• An exclusive partnership deal where Marinade hosts a “Deposit” button on their UI for our vaults separated from the other DeFi opportunities for 6 months.

• Assistance with a peer review and an audit, to boost security to safeguard Marinade users who deposit.

In return, we would offer:

• Exclusive reliance on Marinade’s mSOL for 6 months

• Our Golden Liquidity Program, where Marinade DAO gets a large % of our tokens in exchange for the TVL it’s users contribute. We’re giving 2,5% of GoblinGold total supply for every 100 millions deposited in our platform. The funds should be deposited for at least 3 months (otherwise will be prorated). The GoblinGold tokens will be locked for 2 years.