The crypto sphere has recently shifted gear from yield farming driven DeFi 1.0 into the era of DeFi 2.0 where individual DAO’s protocol-owned liquidity model is becoming mainstream. This innovative approach was first adopted by OlympusDAO with the aim of becoming a decentralised reserve currency. Olympus’ success and the elegant mechanism of staking and bonding in which the Olympus treasury function has led to a whole avalanche of forks on many different blockchains.
With so many options available, it can be daunting and confusing for potential investors to decide which to invest in (with the key driver of such a decision often being based solely on the insanely huge APY numbers some forks are showcasing). In this post, we would like to highlight to you why KeplerDAO is not just an Ohm fork with a focus on APY but a truly innovative project which brings to the DeFi space some truly novel approach.
At its core, Kepler is an active investment platform that believes in the consensus strength of the community investor to create a truly participatory and inclusive system of capital management and allocation.
Kepler has a grand vision to set up a wealth creation platform that continuously and steadily increases the liquidity in its treasury, allocates these reserves into investment opportunities across the DeFi world, accrues profits from the investment, and distributes the profit to stakeholders, with the process repeating in a continuous positive loop. Basically, Kepler wants to create an SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle, which IRL is commonly a subsidiary company that serves to isolate financial risk) which is owned by the Kepler community, putting the ownership and authority back to each investor of Kepler. This is very different from the numerous Ohm forks created that closely imitate Olympus’ goal to create a reserve currency without leaving behind a lasting impact on the DeFi ecosystem.
Olympus and its many forks rely on the backing of various stable coin assets reserves for their tokens. These underlying stable coin assets are how the total intrinsic value of their treasury is defined. Kepler’s native currency, KEEPER, is backed by not only reserves of stable coin assets but also by other assets that the protocol through the FMT (Fund management Team) decides to invest in.
It is important to highlight that the core functionality of the treasury, inspired by Olympus, still requires KEEPER to be backed by a minimally valued treasury consisting of stable coins and LP tokens from KEEPER-stable coin pairs. This equilibrium ensures a stable value for the KEEPER token with market operations acting to balance the value and supplies of the token.
Allocation of the treasury funds through the FMT allows for investment into various projects with varying risk profiles that could potentially return astronomical returns to the treasury, thus growing the value of the holdings of each keeper! This special Protocol Investment Pool (PIP) funds enable Kepler to become a community-driven VC that opens up opportunities that are not available to the general public (Imagine if you are able to invest in UBER when it is still a young start-up company because you are part of a big VC group with strong financial might; if you are a normal investor, you would never have such opportunity presented to you).
Through the power of DAO, the FMT would be driven by the best brain and talent but guided by the collective wisdom of every member of the community. In fact, due to the huge potential upside from the FMT investment (which is part of the treasury asset), the primary returns in the future would accrue not from KEEPER staking rewards but from ownership of the treasury assets (Imagine being a shareholder of UBER!).
Eventually, the diminishing APY which is so often the downfall of many DeFi projects becomes a negligible factor for Kepler as the value of the treasury explodes exponentially.
A special treasury-funded fund called EIR Innovation Fund (EIF) is also a unique feature of Kepler which serves to make entrepreneurs within our community win. This special fund would be managed by the innovation fund management team (IFMT). Not only does this team get to provide mentorship and grow projects from within the community, but they also get to reap the biggest returns from the earliest investment that these community evangelised projects would return.
Kepler’s treasury, therefore, is not just a collection of stable coins and LP tokens that rely on revenue from owning its own liquidity but also consists of tokens from other projects that Kepler has invested in or bought. Smart investment early on into tokens with high potential equates to a huge gain in value when such tokens rise in value. So, appreciation in the value of Kepler’s treasury is a huge function of how these tokens behave and move in value. Such high upside would negate the inflationary nature of Ohm-like tokens and create a stable and sustainable long-term future for Kepler with the community being rewarded handsomely in profit.
Besides major differences in terms of the vision and operation of the treasury, and value to holders of KEEPER, Kepler places a high priority on safety, security, and community trust. This is best illustrated with the insistence to perform a full audit of the Kepler codes before the start of public sales. To secure confidence in all smart contracts and codes, a trusted tier 1 auditor, 0xguard, has been selected to complete the audit on Kepler. The audit was successfully completed before Christmas 2021 and all raised concerns from the audits have been addressed sufficiently. A KYC of the developer team is also currently underway and is expected to be completed before the Copper launch in early January. These multi-facted effort it the team’s commitment to ensure total trust from current community members and future potential investors.
For further descriptions of how the protocol works, please visit our website or read the documents here. We have high aspirations for KeplerDAO and are truly excited to grow together with the community to turn our vision into reality through the support of the community. By opening the gates of traditional VC to anyone who wants to join the KeplerDAO community, we are building a model of VC investing for the Web 3.0 world.
HODL and prosper!
KEEPer for life.
