Moonwell IntoTheBlock Risk Management Tools

Moonwell-ITB Risk Management Tools

Authors: IntoTheBlock Research

Updated February 21, 2023

Summary

IntoTheBlock (ITB) is applying for a grant to build a suite of risk management solutions for Moonwell and its community.

  1. Dashboards to monitor general and asset-specific risk indicators
  2. API access and CSV download for all metrics
  3. Documentation of Moonwell’s risk indicators and general dynamics

The dashboard will be hosted in a new risk management area within IntoTheBlock’s platform. Data for each indicator is published and updated daily for Moonwell Artemis’s users to track the protocol’s economic risk landscape. The ITB team will add support for more assets and update indicators plus its status reports every quarter.

Overview

Over the past two years IntoTheBlock has been heavily involved in DeFi. This started with the launch of DeFi Insights analytics and has grown significantly through our Institutional Quantitative Strategies (ITB Quant) service. ITB’s DeFi Quant platform acts as a gateway used by 20+ of the largest crypto institutions to access its DeFi yields via sophisticated quantitative strategies with appropriate risk management models. Moonwell’s strategy is one of the latest additions to the ITB DeFi Quant platform, with ITB clients depositing several millions into the protocol.

To streamline institutional adoption of DeFi, IntoTheBlock decided to make risk metrics and models accessible via APIs and analytics dashboards. The purpose of this proposal is to make these risk models available to Moonwell’s institutional and individual investors.

Motivation

Monitoring and managing risk is paramount to any financial service. Recent events in the DeFi market prove that risk management is essential to accelerating the growth of the space. At ITB we believe that risk management in DeFi should be done out in the open, following crypto’s ethos, and not be a luxury expense.

Following ITB’s experience safeguarding hundreds of millions into DeFi through advanced risk management models, we believe that expanding these tools and offering them to Moonwell would help make DeFi safer over the mid-to long-term. Enabling Moonwell’s community to monitor real-time economic risks should be a key factor in boosting institutional and retail investor confidence.

Implementation

IntoTheBlock proposes to split the grant in two phases. Phase I will include the following:

  • Dashboard with 50% of ITB’s proposed risk indicators (highlighted in green in this spreadsheet)
  • API access and csv downloads for these metrics
  • Corresponding documentation

Phase II will consist of shipping the remaining 50% of indicators, along with their API access, csv downloads and documentation.

The following demo link for ITB’s Benqi dashboard showcases what the product experience will look like.

These indicators are open to modification after receiving feedback from the Moonwell community and other Moonwell contributors" IntoTheBlock is dedicated to maintain and expand the capabilities of the Moonwell risk monitoring solution that address changes to the protocol or market conditions. Along this line, ITB plans to add analytics for wormhole-bridged assets.

Grant Milestones & Payments

For Phase I, IntoTheBlock is requesting a total of $30k upon start of the following:

  1. Moonwell risk dashboard with 50% of indicators
  2. Documentation on indicators
  3. API access
  4. CSV data download functionality

We are targeting a launch 60 days after the proposal passes for Phase I.

The exchange rate of WELL/USD will be the 30-day time-weighted average price (TWAP) prior to the date the proposal is approved. The price source will be the close price of WELL published by CoinMarketCap.

The release of these milestones will also be accompanied with a marketing push from the IntoTheBlock team to increase the visibility of these tools. The ITB team will then review Moonwell’s community feedback and take it into consideration prior to submitting a separate proposal for Phase II for an additional $30k, bringing the total amount to $60k.

Conclusion

IntoTheBlock’s proposal looks to enable real time economic risk monitoring for the Moonwell protocol. The risk indicators included in this proposal are based on IntoTheBlock’s experience managing and monitoring risks for institutional clients depositing into Moonwell and similar protocols. This release is part of a broader effort to democratize access to risk management tools for all DeFi users, including those of the Moonwell protocol.

This sounds like a good value-add for the Moonwell community. A couple of questions:

Would the dashboard you build provide indicators for both Apollo and Artemis?

I hear Moonwell is also launching on BASE. Will the dashboard support that as well?

Will there be any vesting schedule applied to the tokens you receive for this project?

What is your plan for the liquidation of WELL tokens?

It makes sense that you need to pay your staff and bills, but should holders of $WELL expect that upon receiving payment you will need to liquidate them immediately to pay for your costs?

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Thank you for creating this grant proposal. I’m looking forward to hearing more feedback from the community. Curly has some good questions, and I hope more members of the community will provide feedback and ask questions as well.

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The Snapshot signal vote for ITB’s “Moonwell Risk Management Tools” grant proposal has concluded. 255 addresses took part in the vote, with quorum being reached and the YES votes outweighing the NO votes.

ITB is now able to answer community questions, incorporate feedback, and submit the final grant proposal to the Governance Portal for on-chain voting.

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Hi Curly, glad you see this as a value-add and thanks for contributing to the discussion .

Regarding your questions:

  1. Both Apollo and Artemis releases will be supported in the first release of the DeFi Risk Radar.
  2. Support for Moonwell on Base will be covered in a separate release. Most likely as a small extension of this grant.
  3. The proposal has been structured in two phases of $30,000 each. Given the mechanics of the upcoming on-chain vote, each $30k in WELL would be released directly from Moonwell’s on-chain treasury after approval of each phase
  4. It is not our intention to liquidate the WELL tokens immediately. ITB works very closely with DeFi protocols as we act as a DeFi gateway for large institutions. In the case of Moonwell, our clients have deployed double digit millions into the ecosystem. We have a long-term commitment to supporting the protocols we work with. In that regard, if we sell the WELL tokens received as part of this project, it will be done in a way that doesn’t affect the protocol.
  5. As explained in the previous question, that’s not our initial intention as our goal is to support the Moonwell ecosystem.

On-chain voting is now live for Phase 1 of ITB’s grant proposal:

If it is not your intention to liquidate the tokens immediately, then would it be possible to place a vesting schedule on the tokens received from this proposal?

I understand that you say you won’t liquidate them, but you are asking us to take you at your word. In general, I think “can’t” is better than “won’t”.

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Excited to announce that Phase I of the IntoTheBlock Moonwell risk dashboard is live!

You can check it out here: IntoTheBlock Risk Radar - Real-time Economic Risk Analysis for DeFi - Stay One Step Ahead

Any feedback is appreciated :slight_smile:

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