Steer Protocol - dApp Staking Proposal

[Sam_steer_protocol]

Hello, Astar community!

I’m Sam, Head of Growth at Steer Protocol. We’re excited to apply for the Astar dApp Staking program and further deepen our engagement within the Astar community! We have integrated Steer with both Astar and Astar zkEVM networks. We look forward to contributing to the growth of the Astar ecosystem and collaborating with more protocols on the network to foster innovation.

Project Overview

Steer is an off-chain compute protocol that bridges off- and on-chain data allowing for robust on-chain automations. Steers flagship product, Smart Pools, powers automated liquidity management for 980+ concentrated liquidity pools across 25+ blockchains and 20+ AMMs.

Steer Smart Pool is the first Automated Liquidity Manager on Astar EVM and Astar zkEVM, providing critical infrastructure for AMMs like Arthswap, and Quickswap for their concentrated liquidity pools. With over 40+ managed pools including farm pools, Steer optimizes liquidity placement across platforms using data-driven multi-position strategies, enhancing capital efficiency and minimizing slippage for traders. Additionally, any creator of a liquidity management strategy can receive 33% of performance fees collected as revenue share.

Due to its flexibility, Steer has been able to show standout performance on stables/like-kind pairs, blue chips, and long-tail asset pairs. The flexibility and nuance have made Steer Protocol one of the fastest-growing ALMs in the space.

Mission

There are infrastructure bottlenecks that are preventing data-rich on-chain applications. Steer Protocol’s holistic infrastructure of the compute layer combined with the data and app layer - unlocks the potential for unique and innovative DeFi applications to be built on-chain faster and with better security, Steer Smart Pools is one such use-case.

The Steer Protocol team is committed to the Astar ecosystem and its long-term success. We believe that Astar has the potential to become a leading liquidity hub, and we are dedicated to contributing to its growth and development with the current ALM solution. Ultimately, we envision Steer Protocol as a cornerstone of the Astar ecosystem. By expanding the breadth and accessibility of our developer tools and off-chain compute infrastructure, we aim to empower the creation of more data-driven and structured products on Astar.

Team

Leadership Team:

Derek Barrera, Founder & CEO: A blockchain engineer with 17 years of experience, Derek previously served as Core Dev at Volmex, CTO at Proof, Principal Blockchain Engineer at Voyager, and Founding Engineer at Ethos. His deep technical expertise and leadership skills are instrumental in driving Steer Protocol’s vision and development.

Deepak Gupta, COO: Brings 14 years of startup scaling expertise and a robust tech entrepreneurship background. With successful exits and key roles at firms like Proof, Voyager, Ethos, and more, Deepak has consistently built and scaled revenue growth products. His adeptness is crucial in executing Steer Protocol’s functioning and growth strategy.

Sam Feintech, Head of Growth: An experienced product, growth, and operations professional with 5+ years in Web3, Sam previously held roles at Coinbase, Proof, Voyager, and Ethos. He co-authored a finance and tokenization paper with the UN FAO, demonstrating his deep understanding of financial markets and blockchain technology. Sam leads Steer Protocol’s user acquisition and growth initiatives.

Core Team:
Dharmil: Smart Contracts: Dharmil is a skilled smart contract developer responsible for designing and implementing the core contracts that power Steer Protocol’s functionalities.

Brandon: Developer Tools & Full-Stack: Brandon leads the development of Steer Protocol’s developer tools and contributes to full-stack development efforts, ensuring the protocol is accessible and user-friendly for developers.

Rakesh: Dapp, Node Engine & Node Interface: Rakesh is a talented engineer responsible for building and maintaining Steer Protocol’s dapp, node engine, and node interface, ensuring the protocol’s smooth operation and performance.

Security

From thoughtful consideration around feature implementation to ensure the protection of users, to obtaining multiple audits and building risk mitigation plans, Steer has taken a proactive and security-conscious approach to building the protocol and products we bring to market.

Three audits were performed on different dates by two different auditing firms.

The first and third audits were performed by Omniscia, while the second one was conducted by Zellic.

Audits can be found here Contract Audit Reports | Steer Protocol

Past Performance
In the last 2 months, we have integrated with 11 new blockchains, 10 new AMMs, and deployed hundreds of new Smart Pools. In Q1 2024, Steer Smart Pools have generated over $1m in LP fees, and our unique user count has doubled to over 12,000. Steer currently manages over 980 vaults across our 20+ AMM partners.

Roadmap
Over this year Steer will be implementing major upgrades at the protocol level as well as continuing to build out a robust modular liquidity stack. Here is a look into new products and upgrades Steer is shipping in 2024. The idea is to bring these products to the Astar chain as we make progress on them.

Protocol Owned Liquidity Bonds

• Launched February 2024
  • This bond model enables the accumulation of assets and control over liquidity in the process of acquiring liquidity, aka liquidity mining, as opposed to giving tokens away to rent temporary liquidity. This approach significantly boosts the projects’ Return on Emissions (ROE) compared to traditional liquidity mining. Our objective is to foster the adoption of this newly introduced Bond product, aiming to assist protocols in securing protocol owned liquidity (POL), enhancing liquidity, and encouraging more sustainable practices within the industry.

RWA Yield Anchor

• Launching Q2 2024
  • Steer Protocol is pioneering a strategy to enhance liquidity providers’ and protocols’ yield by incorporating Real World Assets (RWAs) into the DeFi ecosystem. This innovative approach allows protocols to tap into a new yield source generated from treasury-backed RWAs, offering an alternative to traditional liquidity mining incentives. Partnering with RWA providers, we aim to diversify DeFi revenues and solidify the bridge between traditional finance and DeFi for sustained ecosystem growth.

Smart Trader - Automated Algorithmic Trading

• Launching Q2 2024 (In Audit)
  • Steer will enable automated algorithmic trading – allowing users to create and/or follow trading strategies. Users that create strategies that garner following, will receive revenue share from Steer based on the performance and traction of their strategies. With AMM partnerships, we plan to initiate trading contests to grow a library of potent strategies.

Zero-Knowledge Upgrade

• Launching Q2-Q3 2024
  • Steer Protocol plans to deploy zkWASM execution nodes by the end of Q2 2024. This upgrade will provide secure verifiable off-chain execution with both on-chain and off-chain data. Developers will be able to execute any off-chain algorithm/compute via Steer Protocol. Applications built on the Steer Protocol can drive both yield-bearing strategies or generalized compute, such as an Account Abstraction Wallet plugin (ref: ERC-6900).

dApp Staking Reward Usage Breakdown

dApp Staking Rewards will be used to offset the operational, infrastructure, and maintenance costs of Steer operating on Astar zkEVM. Steer currently incurs ~ USD $4,350 in monthly expenses running on Astar Zkevm for 26 pools as of now on both Arthswap and Quickswap.

Breakdown

• 92% - USD 4000/month - 26 vault rebalance on-chain gas cost
• 8% - USD 350/month - infrastructure and maintenance costs (servers)

100% of the rewards would go towards this to allow the continued servicing of AMMs on the network.

Note: When upgrades to Polygon zkEVM, and in turn Astar zkEVM, address these scaling challenges, Steer’s operational costs will be more manageable. If this happens after receiving funding, any remaining grant funds will be sent back to the treasury or with approval used to incentivize and reward users for providing liquidity through liquidity mining incentives.

Appendix

• Steer App
• Twitter
• Discord
• Github

[you425]

Hello and thank you for the proposal.

We are very pleased to see an automation protocol like yours coming to Astar, as it is difficult to automate transactions only on-chain.

This type of protocol creates a network of off-chain workers (nodes) and I believe you guys do too. So I have a few questions.

1. How is the node currently operated?
2. What is the consensus of the nodes?
3. What are your plans for decentralization?

[VasaKing]

Welcome to Astar
I’m already a happy user of Steer and I’m glad to see the application on the forum
I have a couple of questions:

• With the launch of more and more dApps (VeryLongSwap, C14 or L2x) do you intend to develop other DeFi strategies to encourage the use of Steer via these DEXs?
• I am pleased to note that in the roadmap you have the implementation of zkWASM, this makes me curious if you will also add support for the Substrate side of Astar, thus opening up many opportunities for other DEXs of other Parachains.
• I believe that a good marketing plan is also necessary to attract more and more interest in the unexplored field of DeFi, do you intend to change the division of rewards to use it for paid advertising?

Thank you for your contribution to the growth of Astar

[Juminstock]

Very good suggestion! Really interesting to see your application in operation, mainly because this point is not my forte, so it would be great to see at some point educational content on how your app works.

Mainly, I see quite low values in liquidity there by Astar zkEVM

Is the integration of our network in your app new, what plan do you have to increase these values?

[Deepak]

1. How is the node currently operated?
   Node has a complex execution process but let me simplify it. Steer Nodes perform mainly two functions -

   1. Strategy Execution and Broadcasting: They execute strategies encapsulated within WASM bundles in a deterministic pipeline. Upon execution, results are promptly disseminated across the keeper network.
   2. On-chain Voting and Execution: These results undergo on-chain consensus via voting. Once consensus is met, a randomly selected keeper executes the on-chain action.
      This streamlined process ensures efficient strategy execution and seamless on-chain operations, enhancing the overall reliability and effectiveness of our system.

2. What is the consensus of the nodes?
   51% is the current consensus

3. What are your plans for decentralization?
   We are deeply committed to decentralization, which is evident from our initial focus on developing a node SDK that empowers anyone to run it on their system. As of now, individuals can readily adopt our node infrastructure, fostering a decentralized ecosystem. However, we recognize the myriad of challenges accompanying this vision, spanning throughput, slashing, rewards, and other critical mechanisms. Our team is diligently addressing these concerns, with a particular emphasis on a zk-based system upgrade poised to enhance the throughput of our existing infrastructure. This upgrade marks a foundational step towards achieving true decentralization. We anticipate significant progress by the year’s end, bringing us closer to our goal of genuine decentralization.

[Deepak]

That’s fantastic to hear! We’re thrilled to have you as a user of Steer. If you have any questions or feedback about the application, feel free to share with us. We’re always looking to improve and enhance the user experience for our valued community members like yourself. Thanks for being a part of the Steer family!

• With the launch of more and more dApps (VeryLongSwap, C14 or L2x) do you intend to develop other DeFi strategies to encourage the use of Steer via these DEXs?

100%, We have a lot in store over the coming year, including new product releases that will become available to the DEXs we are integrated with, with the goal of further enhancing the experience for protocols/DAOs, liquidity providers, and traders alike.

• I am pleased to note that in the roadmap you have the implementation of zkWASM, this makes me curious if you will also add support for the Substrate side of Astar, thus opening up many opportunities for other DEXs of other Parachains.

First of all, this is a great idea and something we can explore in the future once we have stable zk system upgrade. It’s worth noting that Steer not only offers products but also provides infrastructure to protocols to build and deploy. Collaborating with a few key partners in this endeavor could be highly beneficial.

• I believe that a good marketing plan is also necessary to attract more and more interest in the unexplored field of DeFi, do you intend to change the division of rewards to use it for paid advertising?

Our primary focus at the moment is to maximize support for numerous pools on Astar zkEVM, aiming to incentivize more liquidity participation from our existing 8,000 monthly active users (MAU) while also engaging new Automated Market Maker (AMM) partners. We plan to achieve this through collaborative marketing efforts such as co-marketing initiatives, hosting AMAs, and implementing various strategies to expose our partners’ user bases to Astar zkEVM pools.

Currently, maintaining approximately 24 pools on Astar zkEVM demands significant operational expenses for our keeper operation network. Therefore, we’re allocating rewards to cover these costs until the on-chain gas expenses decrease with Astar zkEVM chain upgrades. It’s important to note that we have strategic plans to expand our marketing budget in the upcoming quarters with the objective of attracting and onboarding new users.

In summary, our immediate objective is to enhance support for multiple pools on Astar zkEVM, leveraging rewards to facilitate liquidity influx and operational expenses. Simultaneously, we’re gearing up to amplify our marketing efforts over the next few quarters to drive user growth and adoption.

[Deepak]

Is the integration of our network in your app new, what plan do you have to increase these values?

We’ve launched our integration with Astar zkEVM and seamlessly integrated with Arthswap in less than 20 days. So the integration is New.

The plan to increase the value by -

1. Continue integrating new DEX partners on Astar zkEVM
2. Strategic alignment with the business development team of DEX’s to onboard new clients with liquidity management needs faster with our Infra.
3. Do a lot of co-marketing like galaxy campaign, AMA and other programs with all DEX’s partners to pull their users to Astar ecosystem.
4. Help DEX’s run reward program to attract new liquidity with our stake pools.

Some point educational content on how your app works.
2. We will be ramping up the educational content we put out and welcome your feedback on particular areas you’d like to know more about!

[Juminstock]

Thanks for your timely response! I like that you are very clear about your plan to attract new users, and although they are conventional techniques, I know they will pay off. At some point I would like to see your metrics.

I see you well prepared, congratulations!

[you425]

Thanks for answering my question!

I look forward to your update on the decentralization of the system.

[Gaius_sama]

List Steer Protocol in Astar dApp Staking

• Yes
• No
• Abstain

[BoomBLB]

This looks very interesting! I would like to ask a few more questions, if you don’t mind.

1. What are the project’s expectations for this collaboration? In terms of the number of users, what are the goals?

2. Where will the project’s revenue and expenses come from

[Vangardem]

Hi, I like the project!

I have some questions:

1. Do you have some tutorials for those traders who want to create strategies?

2. Concentrating liquidity is a very good thing, can traders create their own pools?

3. It would be nice if you could explain a little bit how is the pool management or what exactly is the role of your platform and how it differs from other projects of this type in other networks.

[cmalize]

It would be nice to have Steer Protocol listed. So, i voted AYE for this proposal. Thank you

[pitcoin777]

Voted yes. I am super excited to check what Steer team will bring to Astar eco. Let’s go

[VasaKing]

First of all, thanks for the in-depth response
I consider Steer a very valid platform for multiple uses which can bring many users into the Astar ecosystem. Voted YES

[AlexPromoTeam]

adding to dApp staking need to be permissionless, linking the real contract on Astar and links to Decentralized Application, and let community decide to whom nominate their ASTR

[bao]

Welcome to Astar!!
I voted Yes. Steer will enhance Astar’s DeFi.

[Audiarmis]

Hello, welcome to Astar . I hope the experience is enjoyable. In your explanation, there is a lot of mastery of the subject. I agree with some of the comments regarding the presentation of educational tutorials about the project.

[Matt]

Voted AYE, welcome to Astar!

[Deepak]

Great questions again. Thanks for asking

1. What are the project’s expectations for this collaboration? In terms of the number of users, what are the goals?
   For the ALM (Automated Liquidity Management) use case, our primary focus involves facilitating interactions between two key parties: 1. Steer and 2. AMM/DEX. Our overarching goal is to optimize liquidity management for AMM end users, particularly Liquidity Providers (LPs), leveraging automated strategies across both Astar EVM and Astar zkEVM chains. By concentrating liquidity through our automated solutions, LPs can potentially yield higher returns while reducing slippage for traders seeking to swap assets.

Steer aims to serve as a comprehensive liquidity management solution provider initially, with aspirations to expand into an automation provider for various other DeFi platforms as outlined in our proposal.

2. Where will the project’s revenue and expenses come from?
   In the ALM solution Steer, we operate on a performance-based fee structure, ensuring that we only profit when our strategies generate returns. This fee is set at 15%, which is distributed equally among three key parties:

3. Strategist: 5%

4. Nodes: 5%

5. Steer Protocols: 5%

Currently, we are absorbing a monthly operational cost of approximately $4000 to sustain the execution of our strategies. This expense is fully covered by Steer, demonstrating our commitment to supporting the infrastructure necessary for optimal strategy performance for Astar EVM and Astar zkEVM.