GC Update — 2021 Reflections
Genius Contracts is welcoming in a new year!
Hello Geniuses! As we reach the end of 2021, we’d like to take the time to reflect on the past year and provide a preview on what’s coming up for Genius Contracts and SalsaDAO in 2022.
This year saw the formation of Genius Contracts and the creation of multiple dApps like Tezos Taco Shop and SpicySwap. Here at GC, we are very pleased with the number of projects and features delivered this year.
It’s incredible to think that we haven’t even hit 1 year of GC yet, combined with the fact that GC was a side project until only 2 months ago. We are proud of our organic community growth, as Genius Contracts is one of the only organizations not backed by grants or VC funds. Overall we believe that the future is bright for GC and SalsaDAO, we are excited to increase our development velocity in 2022.
As a blockchain development organization, the work that Genius Contracts does spans across multiple sectors: DeFi, Gaming, NFTs, and Governance. In this article we will go over the 2021 outcomes and 2022 roadmap for each component.
DeFi
Genius Contracts has been at the forefront of Tezos DeFi innovations since our formation. Back in April of 2021, GC was responsible for the first yield farm and multi-token economy on Tezos. Our yield farming project sparked the creation of SalsaDAO, and led to an explosion of new governance and utility tokens in the wider Tezos ecosystem.
After the success of the yield farms, we set our sights higher and started the journey to create the most advanced DEX on Tezos, SpicySwap. SpicySwap is our largest project to date on Tezos, and continuous improvements have turned Spicy into a solid DEX contender on Tezos.
The innovation did not stop with SpicySwap. GC has also taken the first step to next-gen DeFi on Tezos by releasing Matter DeFi. Matter DeFi is a farming platform integrated with the SpicySwap DEX at the contract level, creating the first instance of DeFi “legos” on Tezos. In the past month, Matter DeFi held a successful IFO, and its core token burning feature has been proven to be viable in production with 19,000 MTTR burnt.
At GC, we are proud of what we’ve offered to Tezos DeFi, and we are excited to keep pushing the boundaries and create more innovative features. GC has more DeFi projects in store for release in early 2022.
SpicyPro Automation
In the background, we’ve been work-shopping different designs on how to offer more trading options to users. Also, we’ve been designing ways to open up more of SpicySwap’s advanced features to developers. To accomplish this goal, we will be creating a suite of new tools on the SpicySwap interface, branded SpicyPro features. SpicyPro features will include products like arbitrage services, flash loans, and auto-swaps.
The first SpicyPro features slated for release is our general Automation platform. SpicyPro Automation will be a generic platform where users can build and execute automated DEX actions like limit orders and stop-loss orders. End-users will be able to craft trades via the SpicySwap interface using pre-built templates. Developers will be able to create custom triggers and actions, leading to new templates being added to the Automation platform. Users may also choose to be an executor, claiming the execution bounty from paying gas fees for others’ actions.
SpicyPro Automation will give users more flexibility to trade how they want to on SpicySwap. We are also moving closer to our goal of DeFi legos on Tezos by developing Automation as a customizable platform.
Farm-as-a-Service
We’re excited to announce that Farm-as-a-Service will be released on Matter DeFi! The two products on Matter DeFi will be Matter Core and Matter Live. Core will contain the current MTTR farms and auto-buyback system, which will undergo its first config change in January 2022. Matter Live will be the home of Farm-as-a-Service. Users will be able to create and host their own farms on the Matter interface. We will be releasing an all-in-one user guide on how to get a project started using SpicySwap and Matter DeFi.
Hosting a farm will cost a little bit of MTTR (which is burnt), and there will be a small platform fee on stake/unstake that is sent to the SalsaDAO treasury. Matter Live will be developed to be fully governed by SalsaDAO upon release. Our plan is to include special features that can be optionally added to a Matter Live farm. We can’t wait to release this product!
Gaming
We’ve been happy to see the community response to our initial SalsaDAO Casino and the current SalsaDAO Gaming Hall. With thousands of games played, we believe our journey into decentralized gaming has been an initial success.
Admittedly, the development of SpicySwap forced us to push back our plans to improve our games, and we’d like to change that. Development for SpicySwap is reaching a steady state which means heavy casino upgrades are slated for 2022.
Gaming Hall
Currently, in the Gaming Hall users can bet with any FA2 token, but we think this is too limiting. The plan is to release a v1.1 of the Gaming Hall contract and add FA1.2 functionality and native XTZ functionality via WTZ. We’re also planning to add more games to the SalsaDAO Gaming Hall early next year, including the release of slots.
In addition to more games and bankroll possibilities, we’re preparing to propose a new Matter farm that uses Gaming Hall bankroll tokens as staking currency. This plan would increase bankroll betting sizes in the casino, while offering stacked yield with multiple layers for stakers. Stakers would earn rewards from the house edge, MTTR rewards, and XTZ baking rewards through WTZ.
Live Gaming and Blackjack
Our key innovation for 2022 in the Gaming space is to incorporate state channels into the gaming experience. Currently, the commit-reveal nature of the Gaming Hall can lead to a slow experience due to the nature of the blockchain. Our goal is to remedy this by offering a faster gaming experience, powered by state channels. State channel gaming helps scale blockchain-based games by moving a portion of the game logic off-chain, then settling accounts on-chain.
We think that Blackjack will be the perfect initial test for Live gaming. Our plan is to develop an experience where the user feels like they are sitting at a table playing with others in real-time. Casino skins will follow the release of Blackjack, which will offer users a way to personalize their profile as it’s shown at tables or on the leaderboard.
More Live games will be put on the road-map based on the performance of Blackjack.
NFTs
GC has not made much of an impact in the NFT space on Tezos, which is something we plan on changing in 2022. This whole journey was started with a humble NFT project called the Tezos Taco Shop, and we’d like to get back to our roots in 2022. Our upcoming NFT marketplace, The Millions, will be GC’s main NFT offering.
The Millions
The Millions is going to be an innovative NFT marketplace on Tezos, with an emphasis on “1 of 1's”, personal curation, and community. A big note, we are in the early design phase for The Millions, these details may change but we’d like to share some of our plans.
The Millions will be an NFT mintery and marketplace focused on something we call inclusive ownership rather than exclusive ownership. This starts at the mint: each NFT (or collection) minted is automatically fractionalized into 1,000,000 shares. Our logic: we think an artist may want their art consumed by one million shareholders rather than just one owner. Inclusive ownership values the art itself over the question of who owns it.
For users that value exclusive ownership: there will be ways to trigger a buyout of the underlying NFT(s) to personally own it.
Auto-fractionalization also allows The Millions to offer a host of innovative sale features and custom royalties. For example, bonding curves can be configured to sell shares of a new collection via AMM. Users can then buy shares to invest in the collection, or trigger buyout auctions to own an NFT in the set. Contract integrations are also on the road-map of features for The Millions.
The Millions will heavily use the concept of reputation to create incentive for good faith activity on the platform. Actions like minting, voting on collections, categorizing NFTs will grant the executor more reputation on The Millions. Reputation will be a core part of The Millions, and users will require reputation to unlock advanced features.
The Millions will release fully governed by SalsaDAO, and parameters like reputation levels and fees will be subject to this governance.
Governance
Our first milestone for 2022 is releasing proposal-based governance on SalsaDAO. Disregarding the sVote experiment, governance on SalsaDAO is currently made up of Curve Voting. Curve Voting is useful for polls like the SpicySwap token list, but proposal-based governance is needed for on-chain governance decisions and the formation of the SalsaDAO treasury.
The plan is to fork the governance setup that Kolibri DAO is currently using, and make some minor changes to make sDAO compatible. Once the contracts and discussion forum are set up, we will start deliberating our first governance decision: changes to Matter DeFi’s configuration. At GC, we’re excited to see what the community decides.
Going further, new projects will be developed with SalsaDAO governance in mind, and we will research ways to implement governance into our older projects.
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That’s all we have for info on our 2022 road-map. These projects will likely take us into summer where our plan is to undertake development of another large DeFi protocol. We’re on Tezos for the long-haul, and can’t wait to see what 2022 has in store. On the organizational side, we will be scaling up our operations by hiring developers to help move our projects forward.
As always, thanks for supporting the Genius Contracts journey. We will release more information as it becomes available. Thank you, and Happy New Year!
GC
