PowerPool DAO has been developing multi-token DeFi asset management and automation solutions ever since July 2020. By Q1 2021, several multi-token baskets ($PIPT, $YETI, $ASSY, $YLA and $BSCDEFI) had been launched on Ethereum/BNB Chain with partners like Balancer and Yearn. Early prototype versions of PowerAgent were used to solve innovative DeFi automation challenges, such as $YLA vault allocation optimization, and $ASSY flexible weights.
PowerAgent v1 successfully operated on the Ethereum Mainnet from October 2020 until March 2023. However, our early experience highlighted that a better and more generalised approach to automation was needed, and that PowerPool DAO was best positioned to develop it. In March 2022, PowerPool decided to deprecate all its existing fee-earning products built on top of legacy PowerAgent v1 to concentrate all the attention on delivering PowerAgent v2. In our previous 2-year Roadmap Checkpoint published in mid-2022, the Team explained that going forward the project would focus primarily on generalised automation as a service as our principal future ‘building block’, based on a totally new version of PowerAgent.
Developing a generalised, decentralised automation services network that would be autonomous, and above all, trustworthy for others to use has required a lot of original research and innovation. Accordingly, the project has been in ‘stealth’ mode with very little communication from the Team until the beginning of this year. Most of 2023 has been devoted to testing PowerAgent v2 and recruiting initial cohorts of Keepers on Sepolia, followed by a soft-launch on the much more economical Gnosis Chain, and finally, at the end of 2023, PowerAgent v2 is now live on Ethereum mainnet. This is obviously a major milestone and a major achievement, creating entirely new design and remuneration options for protocols, individual developers, and Keepers. Our developers and researchers are to be congratulated!
PowerAgent v2 is an entirely new, decentralised automation (and eventually also offchain compute) service network enabling automatic execution of smart-contracts supporting generalised on-chain strategies, accessible to anyone who wants to use it. Robust and fail-safe autonomous protocols require trustworthy and reliable automation mechanisms with a high degree of redundancy and decentralisation. Going live with our new, leading-edge, decentralised automation services network now gives us a firm foundation to build our Community going forward. In 2024, remaining problems like compute-intensive tasks requiring zero-knowledge proof resolvers, and potential risks associated with MEV will be addressed.
We plan to eventually roll out the PowerAgent Automation Network across most major EVM chains, attracting ever more Keepers earning their own native chain fee income on modest hardware/bandwidth. Most EVM L1s and L2s realise that having a native automation service network working with their validators and token is a competitive advantage. PowerAgent should be part of any EVM Chain’s BD and marketing agendas. Going multi-chain will attract ever more partner protocol Job Owner task executions, and also provide opportunities for more individual developers to offer ever-higher degrees of automation using one or more chain-native PowerAgent Templates. Every execution on every chain will pay native tokens to the selected Keeper(s), potentially also pay royalties to Template developers who register their Templates as Job Owners, and ALSO, via the Treasury Charge, will generate an increasing native token fee stream for our Treasury.
Everyone who would like to support PowerPool and/or use the PowerAgent network, should familiarise themselves with the PowerAgent v2 Value Proposition, and be prepared to explain it to others. History is littered with great tech that no one ever heard about, or understood how to use. If you are a Keeper…reach out to other potential Keepers. If you are a Developer, help other Template developers on the Forums. If you are attending a Conference, visit us at hackathons and help out. Everyone who is interested in PowerPool can contribute to spreading the word (and combating ignorance and FUD) on social media. Don’t ask where the PowerPool marketing is…it is YOU!
To build automation usage and multi-chain capacity, the DAO has already approved an Ecosystem Grants program allowing us to offer grants paid in our $CVP tokens to onboard new Keepers with $CVP stakes, and also to incentivise protocols and individual developers to build Templates, reusable modules of code that deliver automated services via PowerAgent tasks. The PowerAgent Automation Network has many use cases and by enabling projects working in these areas to build on PowerAgent, we can grow the PowerPool ecosystem even further. We already have a joint limit-order automation grant on offer together with Balancer. You can see all the DAO-approved Ecosystem Grants here.
Operating a broadly-decentralised, multi-chain PowerAgent v2 requires recruiting a growing and committed Keeper Community, able to spread across an increasing number of EVM chains, all enjoying a high ROI earning their own native token fees on their $CVP stakes. Becoming a PowerAgent Keeper can be a very attractive opportunity, because the hardware and bandwidth requirements for running a PowerAgent Keeper are really very modest. We have one platform distribution partnership with DAppNode, who include the PowerAgent Keeper node in their base distribution, and are hosting a shared Discord channel with us to help onboard new Keepers. We expect that our active Keepers will become a major voice in our DAO, because although the initial $CVP Keeper stake required is modest, as the value of tasks entrusted by Job Owners grows, so the minimum $CVP stake required for a Keeper to be included in the eligible signer set will increase. If you can afford it, now is the best time to build your $CVP bags for future staking.
In 2023, we appointed @theoriginaldegen as Community Manager, and he has developed several new communities within CoinMarketCap and DeBank, among others. We instituted a regular series of X-Spaces, and have held 4 major PowerPool AMAs, as well as many other shared sessions in conjunction with partners. Full transcripts of these sessions are available on the Project Wiki. In 2024, we will be looking to appoint several Chain Ambassadors, at least one for each supported chain/ecosystem. They will be responsible for marketing to Developers and Keepers on their respective chains to drive broader Template development and usage and greater Keeper decentralisation on each supported chain. Qualified PowerAgent Chain Ambassadors will be remunerated.
For 2024 going forward, PowerPool plans to make PowerAgent automation network services even more accessible to individuals via a PowerPool-managed library of Templates, reusable code modules that other protocols and individual developers can contribute, in return for Ecosystem grants, or auto-collected royalty fees, or both. Any EVM developer will be able to create/fork Templates to earn ongoing native token royalties, automatically collected by PowerAgent along with Keeper fees and the Treasury Charge. Common goods and charitable contribution Templates can also be incorporated into commercial services Templates. For more detail on auto-collection of developer royalties and common goods donations from Templates registered as Job Owners with PowerPool, please see here.
Developers receiving future grants from PowerPool DAO will often be building out functionality which PowerPool itself can use for future PowerBaskets, like the proposed $LSTETH. This diversified ETH LST PowerBasket could eventually be launched not only on Ethereum, but also on other supported chains with large amounts of unstaked ETH, like BNB Chain and perhaps various L2s. As PowerAgent network spreads to ever more EVM POS chains, a growing family of very similar $LSTxxx PowerBaskets can be developed, to provide a reliable base load of transactions for new Keeper cohorts spinning up on each chain/layer, and to serve as DAO-managed investment vehicles for our Keepers and Template Developers pooling their native token earnings to automatically farm them for both intrinsic LST and extrinsic yields on the underlying LSTs (with flexible weights enabling peg arbitrage). The DAO Treasury will earn management fees based on all PowerBasket TVL, which should grow as passive native token/LST investors outside the DAO choose to invest in our highly-automated, high-yielding LST PowerBaskets. Diversified,yield-bearing LST ETH ETFs are expected to be launched by TradFi investment managers, and LST PowerBaskets will be a purely on-chain equivalent available to any investor globally.
Diversified, flexibly-weighted PowerBaskets of LSTs (and/or LRTs) will probably be the only asset management activity of PowerPool DAO going forward. Building out PowerAgent v2 makes PowerPool the most logical operator of these PowerBaskets. Developing and launching these PowerBaskets will support PowerAgent marketing by demonstrating live working examples of highly-automated multi-token, multi-chain asset management. PowerBaskets will not only enable PowerPool DAO to invest the earnings of its own Community, but launching one or more LST/LRT PowerBaskets on all supported chains also permits the DAO to ensure significant, growing fee income on each chain for targeted groups of Keepers as managed by the DAO. In addition, some protocols hoping to use PowerAgent capabilities will, rather than implement their own PowerBasket, choose to use high-yielding auto-farmed PowerBaskets as the basis for their protocol. Unfortunately, at this point in time, we do not know if we will be able to recruit and grant-incentivise sufficient PowerBasket development capacity in 2024. But we hope we can.
PowerPool’s partnership with deBridge will facilitate cross-chain expansion of $CVP staking across multiple EVM chains. In terms of tokenomics, xCVP has already been deprecated in favour of the proposed composable liquid staking $lsCVP, which all Keepers, and eventually passive Investors delegating to Keepers, will receive in return for staking $CVP. Liquid staking $lsCVP will be redeemable for appreciating amounts of $CVP representing a share of the accumulated $CVP Treasury+Safety Fund (where slashed Keeper penalties are accumulated). The introduction of $lsCVP should enable all Keepers to benefit from delegated allocations of passive Investor $lsCVP, boosting the average size of Keeper stakes, thereby putting more Keepers in higher-value signer sets. In future, all DAO governance voting will be quadratically-weighted based on $lsCVP. This too will benefit Keepers with more modest $lsCVP stakes relative to passive investors delegating $lsCVP.
Increased capital efficiency from the introduction of $lsCVP should not only improve Keeper ROI, especially for Keepers starting from more modest $lsCVP stakes that benefit from averaging the delegated stakes across all Keepers evenly, but also help generate the yields required to attract the volume of passive investor delegations that will be needed to grow the aggregate value of PowerAgent Keeper staking to competitive levels as transactions values continue to grow.
In contrast to the recent history of purely-speculative valuation of $CVP following a long stealth development period of no fundamentals, going forward we expect the value of the $CVP/$lsCVP token pair to begin reflecting increasing Keeper staking buy pressure and continuous Treasury buy pressure to convert the Treasury Charge from native tokens. We expect a future ‘fly-wheel’ of value accretion for the $CVP/$lsCVP token pair sustained by the following series of self-reinforcing dynamics:
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Launch configurable automation → more developers/Templates earning royalties→
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More Templates → more execution fees → increased Treasury Charge fees;
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More execution fees → better Keeper returns → more Keepers per chain;
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More Keepers per chain → increasing $lsCVP stakes for higher signer sets;
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More chains → more Templates → more royalties, automation fees;
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More, higher value transactions → more Keeper & Treasury buy pressure;
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More Treasury Charge fees + slashings → higher returns on $lsCVP → more passive investment delegated to all active Keepers equally;
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More Investors → more delegation→ larger av. Keeper stakes → higher value executions → more fees
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More Keeper/Developer fees/royalties → more TVL invested in PowerBaskets;
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More TVL in PowerBaskets → more asset management fees to Treasury; and
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More, higher-value PowerBasket transaction fees → better (small/new*) Keeper ROI → more Keepers and increasing staking buy pressure as $LSTxxx PowerBaskets’ TVL grows by also attracting external passive LST investors globally.
*Note that one of the objectives of the highly-automated $LSTxxx PowerBaskets is to allow PowerPool DAO to channel all the PowerBaskets execution fees towards the newer/smaller Keepers to improve their ROI and nurture them to expand. As the Job Owner/Manager of the PowerBaskets, the DAO can decide the combination of PowerBasket execution fee levels and the Keeper signing set criteria to optimise the long term development of the PowerAgent network.
All of the above dynamics should mutually interact to reinforce each other on a continuing basis, resulting in a ‘flywheel’ of value accrual that should combine to increase the value of our $CVP/$lsCVP token pair sustainably and substantially, given that there is no future $CVP inflation.
More detail on upcoming proposals to implement liquid staking $lsCVP, with associated changes to $CVP tokenomics, Treasury/liquidity management, and DAO governance are available on the Project Wiki. Questions? Consult our FAQs, or ask on Discord, where you can also leave feedback and your own ideas.
The PowerPool Team believe that 2024 will be the most exciting in the history of the DAO, and with help from all of you, PowerPool/PowerAgent will soon emerge on the world stage and become known as one of the most important auxiliary service networks (ASNs) helping EVM L1 Ledgers and L2 Scaling Layers to become truly useful to ever more crypto users.