Proposal: Aradia Refuel System

Astar
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Context & Vision

At Aradia, our commitment to the Astar ecosystem is absolute. For months, we have explored various avenues to attract liquidity aggregators and facilitate external capital inflow. However, we have faced significant technological hurdles: many of the industry’s most prominent protocols and cross-chain tools lack native support for the Astar Network. This ecosystem fragmentation, combined with gaps in specialized infrastructure, has historically limited the deployment of seamless liquidity solutions.

Far from being deterred, these limitations drove us to innovate. We have developed a proprietary infrastructure that removes entry barriers for users on other networks, enabling a frictionless “onboarding” experience into Astar.

Aradia Refuel

Aradia is requesting support from the Astar Foundation for the launch of AstarVault, a native liquidity solution designed to power our new Refuel system. This infrastructure allows users to deposit ETH from multiple networks (Ethereum, Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum) and receive direct liquidity on Astar through a fast, decentralized, and seamless process.

The Aradia Refuel system directly addresses the problem of fragmented liquidity.

How it works:

  • Cross-chain Deposit: Users deposit ETH from networks like Ethereum, Base, Optimism, or Arbitrum. (more comming soon).
  • Conversion & Volume: All ETH received is converted into ASTR, generating organic trading volume and buy pressure for the native token.
  • AstarVault: The vault acts as an immediate on-chain reserve on the Astar Network, ensuring users receive their funds without delays or the need for Centralized Exchanges (CEX).

Ecosystem Impact:

  • Liquidity Inflow: Attracts capital from L2 networks with high user density.
  • Volume Growth: Every Refuel transaction positively impacts ASTR trading metrics.
  • User Retention: Reduces friction, making it easier for new users to start operating within Astar immediately.

Current Progress

The system is currently deployed and fully functional on Testnet. We have optimized the flow to ensure it is one of the fastest and most user-friendly tools in the ecosystem.

Visual Demonstration:

In this video, we demonstrate how a user can complete a Refuel in under a minute, eliminating the need for complex bridges, multiple swaps, or centralized intermediaries.

Txs:

Funding Request Breakdown

A. AstarVault Liquidity (250k - 500k ASTR)

These funds will be used exclusively to provide liquidity to the Vault’s smart contract. This is not an expense, but working capital that remains within Astar to facilitate user swaps.

B. Operational Maintenance ($2,000 USD in ASTR)

To guarantee 99.9% uptime and technical support over the next 4 months, we require coverage for:

  • High-Speed RPCs: Essential for real-time indexing of multiple external networks.
  • Servers & Database: Robust infrastructure for the Go-based backend managing signatures and security.
  • Oracle & Data APIs: Integration with Pyth and CoinGecko for precision price feeds.

The Aradia team works daily to position Astar as a leading liquidity hub. Our activity is transparent and can be verified through our GitHub repositories, where we maintain a consistent development pace.

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Given the current market situation and the scarcity of decentralized options for attracting external liquidity, we believe it is our responsibility as developers to build the high-tier tools this ecosystem deserves.

Sincerely,

The Aradia Team Building the future of Astar.

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Thank you for the proposal. It’s great to see that the testnet implementation is almost complete — very impressive work.

Providing ASTR as liquidity and accumulating ETH in Astar’s treasury also seems like a reasonable approach. The ASTR acquired here would primarily be used for gas fees within the Astar ecosystem. While gas fees do contribute to burns and collator revenue, the resulting sell pressure on ASTR would likely be minimal, and overall the benefits appear to outweigh the drawbacks.

Therefore, the key points to consider are cost and competition:

  • Competition: Gas.zip
  • Cost: $500 per month

The question is how these factors compare against the benefits. I’m not in a position to judge whether the operational cost is appropriate, so I would like to hear input from engineers. However, Gas.zip is already well known as a similar solution, so this would be a direct competitor. If it can be integrated into the Portal, that could significantly increase its value proposition.

As a smaller additional point, it will also be important to determine how the collected ETH will be managed. Since the Astar treasury uses a native account, it is not designed to operate directly within the EVM environment. The simplest approach would likely be to periodically transfer the ETH to an EVM account managed by the AFC.

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Thank you for your valuable feedback! We appreciate the insights regarding our positioning and the management of funds. Here is our perspective on the points raised:

  • Competition & Value Proposition: While competitors like Gas.zip exist, there is currently no solution natively focused on the Astar ecosystem. Aradia addresses a critical friction point: functionality is secondary if users cannot easily interact with the network. We are already proving our utility by providing SBY tokens for developers and users on the testnet—a service that currently has no official alternative.
  • Operational Costs & Sustainability: The requested operational costs are only for the initial 4-month period. Beyond this, we are confident in our ability to become self-sufficient. This period is a launchpad; we have several upcoming initiatives designed to attract new developers and users to Astar (more details on the first of these will be shared very soon).
  • ETH Management & Ecosystem Growth: Regarding the collected ETH, our strategy is to convert it daily into ASTR. These tokens will be deposited back into the vault to consistently increase TVL and create a self-sustaining liquidity loop. We do not intend to hold ETH; our goal is to feed all value back into ASTR to strengthen the ecosystem’s liquidity.

We hope this clarifies our vision and approach. We remain open to further feedback to ensure this solution provides maximum value to Astar.

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Great work! I have a couple of questions:

  1. Once the dApp is deployed (if your proposal is approved), what is your strategy for attracting users to use it?

  2. Regarding the vault system, could the funds being exchanged (ETH-ASTR) be moved automatically through the smart contract to a specific address provided by the Astar treasury, for example? Or would this have to be done manually? As you mentioned, we do not have EVM support for some wallets, such as the treasury.

On the other hand, it is exciting to see the development you are implementing. Right now, being able to attract and concentrate liquidity is everything in the ecosystem due to the predominantly adverse conditions of the market in general. Keep building.

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Thank you Vangardem for the encouragement! We share your vision: in this market, concentrating liquidity and building active engagement is everything. Here are the specifics regarding your questions:

  • User Acquisition & Community Strategy: We are not just launching a tool; we are building a bridge. We are partnering with members of the ** Polkadot Mexican Collective** to host interactive, 1-on-1 live sessions. Our goal is to move away from “monologue-style” presentations. We will be working directly with users and developers to help them build, explore, and troubleshoot in real-time. We are deeply committed to revitalizing the Hispanic community, which remains one of the largest and most passionate segments in the global ecosystem.
  • Vault Management & Transparency: For this phase, the ETH-to-ASTR exchange will be handled manually to ensure precision. All ETH will be converted and redeposited into the vault. To maintain absolute trust, we will provide a public dashboard where every exchange and all collected funds can be tracked. Since every transaction is 100% on-chain, the data will be immutable and transparent for the entire treasury and community to audit.
  • Mainnet Readiness: The Aradia team is fully prepared. Our code is ready for deployment; we are simply awaiting fund approval to activate the Mainnet vault and begin operations immediately.
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Thank you for your reply. Regarding the flow, it seems my initial understanding was different.

I see. When you say you will be self-sufficient after 4 months, is the plan to charge a small fee on each bridge transaction and use that to cover operational costs?

Understood. So my interpretation is that the initial ASTR provided as liquidity will continue to be replenished by converting the ETH used for bridging back into ASTR. Is that correct?

Initially, I had assumed that the ETH used here would be returned to the Astar Treasury — in other words, that the initial ASTR liquidity was effectively a loan and would be repaid in ETH. Of course, I don’t see any issue if the ETH is instead used to continuously convert back into ASTR and replenish the liquidity.

Also, I believe that withdrawals from these vaults should be managed via multisig. Members of the Council, ACC, AFC, or similar governance bodies would be appropriate signers.

Another point is that since this replenishment operation is planned to be done manually on a daily basis, I am a bit concerned about the operational burden. While there is some volatility risk, performing this once per week might be sufficient (though of course this depends on the actual volume).

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Hello again! It’s great to keep this conversation going and ensure we are perfectly aligned on the mechanics of the project.

Yes, that is exactly the plan. As shown in our demonstration video, a 0.3% fee is applied to each exchange transaction. These fees are specifically designed to cover our future operational costs

Your interpretation is correct. The initial ASTR liquidity acts as the engine for the ecosystem. By converting the collected ETH back into ASTR, we ensure the liquidity pool is constantly replenished, maintaining the “Refuel” capability without needing further treasury injections.

Regarding the manual workload, we are confident this is manageable. The process takes less than 5 minutes per day. While we initially considered daily swaps, we agree that a weekly schedule (or adjusting based on actual demand) is a very reasonable approach to reduce the operational burden, especially considering the current volume.

To put the scale in perspective, even in the best-case scenario where the maximum requested amount of 500,000 ASTR is approved, we would only be managing approximately $3,700 USD at current market prices. We believe this represents a very low risk to the ecosystem relative to the high value of providing a native liquidity entry point.

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Thank you for your reply — I’m glad my understanding was correct.

Regarding the ASTR for initial liquidity, I think it makes sense to start with a smaller amount and increase it as needed based on volume. Since the purpose of this system is to allow users to obtain enough ASTR for gas fees, a large amount of liquidity may not be necessary.

For that reason, and also considering security risks, I believe it would be best to begin with a smaller amount in the initial phase.

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Perfect, thank you for your insightful response. Polkadot Mexico is a vibrant community, and I am pleased that you are part of it, especially as you are developing a project related to DeFi. I look forward to seeing more progress and observing how the project scales. In particular, I found the idea and the UI/UX to be very clean and intuitive, as can be seen in the short video you uploaded. Keep up the good work, guys. Well done.

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Hello again! We completely agree with your cautious and strategic approach.

That is precisely why we did not request a fixed, rigid amount for the vault.

We are more than happy to start with a smaller amount of ASTR to mitigate security risks while still fulfilling the core purpose: ensuring users have enough for gas fees.

We are open to accepting whatever amount the treasury deems appropriate for this initial phase, with the possibility of scaling as we observe real-world volume and demand.

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Hello community!
it’s been a week… We’d like to know if there are any further questions regarding the plan or any progress on this proposal :sparkles:

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