Summary:
Propose that Olympus trial to deploy 100,000 excess FRAX from the treasury to the FRAX pool in Convex Finance in order to accumulate trading fees, CRV tokens and CVX tokens.
Background:
The purpose of this proposal is to improve treasury capital efficiency, where our stablecoin assets are earning trading fees, CVX tokens and CRV tokens. Convex is a protocol that is allows for automated management of CRV pool assets. Convex does not charge deposit or withdrawal fees - it takes 16% of the CRV rewards which are distributed to Convex stakeholders. Convex currently has $3.8 in TVL. I consider Curve deposit directly is not appropriate because in order for smart contract wallets to receive CRV rewards directly from Curve those wallets have to be whitelisted by a Curve governance vote. Such votes have not been well received by Curve governance where solutions like Convex exist. (For a background of why we would not deposit directly to Curve and pursue our own gauges please see this thread which presented an immovable roadblock to the FRAX protocol from pursuing just that strategy).
Background discussion on this proposal has occurred on the #governance channel on the Olympus discord. The original number of 500,000 FRAX was reduced to 100,000 FRAX following risk concerns raised in those conversations.
Abstract:
Olympus has about 3.6 million FRAX sitting idle in the treasury when it could be earning interest. Currently the Convex FRAX pool is paying 0.47% apr in trading fees, 8.71% apr in CRV tokens and 6.62% apr in CVX tokens - this is a substantial amount of value not currently being captured by Olympus. This proposal seeks to trial a deposit of 100,000 excess treasury FRAX into the Convex FRAX pool in order to capture some of this value for Olympus. The sum of 100,000 represents about 2.1% of our current FRAX holdings. In terms of risk, given FRAX itself has deposited 72 million FRAX into Convex through an AMO, we are to some extent already holding the protocol risk for the stack of Frax, Convex and Curve. I propose that the treasury retain the CRV and CVX token rewards. In that circumstance it is reasonable and appropriate for us to pursue a low risk trial strategy to collect interest available to us through our FRAX holdings. The amount can be raised above 100,000 by a further OIP when and if the community is comfortable in taking on more risk in the future.
Motivation:
This would allow us collect CRV tokens, CVX tokens and trading fees on a portion of our FRAX holdings.
For:
Deploy 100,000 FRAX to the Convex FRAX pool.
Against:
Do not deploy FRAX to the Convex FRAX pool at this time.