June & July Indigo Labs Newsletter
Introduction
Hello, Indigo community! We’re here to bring you the Indigo Labs newsletter for June and July, a period marked by intense growth, exciting updates, and strengthened integrations for the Indigo Protocol.
These regular updates aim to keep you informed of Lab’s advancements, highlight Protocol and DAO accomplishments, and outline the direction the Indigo ecosystem is headed in. We’d like to invite you to join the Indigo Labs team and members of the Protocol and Technical Working Groups for the Indigo Insights Community Call Twitter Space on Saturday, August 5th, 5 PM UTC. Your unwavering support is what fuels progress, so without further ado, let’s dive in!
Indigo Protocol Growth
At the beginning of June, less than 8 months after its launch, Indigo Protocol reached a significant milestone — crossing 100M ADA in Total Value Locked (TVL). Only 6 weeks later, in mid-July Indigo Protocol soared past 125M ADA TVL! The rapid and continued growth of the Protocol has been nothing short of amazing. The Cardano DeFi ecosystem keeps growing; we’ve seen more projects coming to life, and more users here to use them. The Indigo Protocol has served as a substantial source of the blockchain’s user and TVL growth in DeFi. With the continued support of the Indigo DAO and Foundation, we hope that Indigo Labs will continue developing a protocol that sparks interest in both new and seasoned Cardano users as the greater ecosystem grows into 2024.
Web App v2 — Coming August 1st to a Desktop Near You
We are thrilled to announce that the launch of Indigo Protocol web app v2 is set for August 1st! This is one of the Labs team’s key deliverables under our April services agreement with the Foundation.
In response to your valuable feedback, Indigo Labs has made significant upgrades to create a more intuitive, efficient, and user-centric experience. This new version is equipped with enhanced functionalities and a more streamlined interface, designed to make your interaction with Indigo Protocol smoother and more seamless. Take a look at just a few of the pages that have added features and a new facelift in both light and dark modes:
Impactful Event: June 10th Market Turbulence
During a rare 25% decline in ADA’s value — something that has only happened six times in ADA’s history — the Indigo Protocol endured the storm, highlighting both its robustness and areas for future enhancements.
The rapid market changes led to an influx of transactions, testing the resilience of the Protocol’s Stability Pools. Despite the surge in activity, the liquidation mechanism handled the load effectively, queuing and processing undercollateralized CDPs and achieving a total liquidation of over 9.5 million ADA. Amid the turbulence, Stability Pools stayed strong and the system remained solvent, reinforcing the Protocol’s design. These events have guided our focus toward performance improvements and strategies to better manage such situations, including the implementation efforts of transaction chaining which is covered in the Progress Report section below.
June/July Progress Report
1. Transaction Chaining
Transaction chaining is an important next step for the Indigo Protocol, aimed to significantly enhance user experience and lessen blockchain contention. With this feature, each transaction relies on the output of the previous one, allowing for swift and orderly processing of multiple transactions. While the implementation of this feature presents its own challenges, such as maintaining separate states from the blockchain, it has the potential to improve transaction handling during high-stress events, thereby improving user experience and contributing to the protocol’s overall evolution. The Indigo Labs team has been working to implement Transaction Chaining quickly, but not without taking all of the necessary steps to ensure it is operating as intended. Transaction Chaining is currently undergoing stress tests on the preview network, where it is being put up against similar market turbulence and black swan-type events as seen on June 10th. The Indigo Labs team plans to roll out this feature within the next month.
2. Orcfax Oracle Integration
The integration tests with Orcfax on the pre-prod network were successful. Indigo Protocol will soon be able to utilize Orcfax’s decentralized oracles to expand the suite of Indigo iAssets. Coordinating a solution for decentralized oracles has been a long process and we’re proud to be able to bring the community a notable progress update. View transaction here
3. Open-Sourcing the Multi-DEX SDK: Dexter
Marking yet another milestone in our journey, we’ve open-sourced our Multi-DEX SDK, which goes by the codename “Dexter.” This marks the completion of our third Catalyst proposal. Dexter is currently under the MIT License and can be found here: https://github.com/IndigoProtocol/dexter.
With Dexter, builders can:
a. Pull Liquidity Pools from DEX APIs or On-chain using Blockfrost / Kupo
b. Submit and cancel swap orders
c. Build their own data, wallet, or asset metadata providers to plug into Dexter
d. Build swap datums given specific parameters using Dexters Definition Builder
e. Load wallets using a seed phrase or CIP-30 interface using Lucid
4. Transitioning of LP Token Staking to DEXs
In our ongoing commitment to decentralization and community-led decision-making, the Indigo DAO has moved LP Token Staking off of the Indigo Protocol to two prominent decentralized exchanges — Minswap and WingRiders. This move, authorized by the recent DAO proposal and the collective voice of our community, makes for a more traditional and user-friendly LP reward system.
5. LP Token Reward Restructure
This vote aims to change how INDY rewards awarded to dex liquidity pools are determined. Distribution schedules won’t change, but now the community will be able to decide via a vote which LPs get incentivized, instead of the old way of incentivizing an iAsset as a whole and DEXes sharing on those rewards equally, which doesn’t always make sense. For example iETH at the moment has two liquidity pools, one of them is small, roughly 2% of the size of the main pool, making it practically unusable for swaps. Yet it gets equal rewards per locked iETH as the main pool. If this vote passes, the community will decide LP incentives in a planned manner, avoiding some of these inefficiencies. Read more about the vote here
6. Interview with Vanessa Harris
We were delighted to have Vanessa Harris, one of Cardano’s key opinion leaders, host Eric Coley, Indigo Labs CEO, on her show to share his insights and vision for Indigo Labs in an in-depth interview. Vanessa asked great questions that delve into the underlying philosophy that drives Indigo’s development, the technology that empowers us, and the future we envision for the world of decentralized finance. You can watch the full interview here: Cardano DeFi Done Right with Indigo Protocol
7. Open-Sourcing of the Indigo Rewards Tool
On June 20th, Indigo Labs open-sourced the Indigo Protocol rewards tool. This new development allows you, the Indigo community, to independently verify and validate the distribution of rewards. We believe in a future where trust is built on code, and this is one more step in that direction. https://github.com/IndigoProtocol/indy-rewards
8. Creation of the Technical Working Group (TWG)
We’re excited about the establishment of the Technical Working Group (TWG), a dedicated team of technical experts focused on addressing the challenges we encounter and exploiting new opportunities. The TWG was formed by a vote of the DAO to advise the community and work with Labs on technical issues. The TWG’s super-talented members will support the Protocol’s mission to continuously innovate and deliver cutting-edge solutions. Read more about the formation of the TWG on our Twitter:
9. Preparing for Indigo Protocol v2
As we celebrate the Indigo community’s achievements, the Labs team is equally excited about what lies ahead. As directed by the DAO and the Foundation, we’ve kickstarted the planning process for Protocol v2, an upgraded version that promises even more features, functionality and recovery mechanisms. Indigo Labs is in the process of finalizing the initial suggested list of features for Protocol v2 and the related development roadmap, and will share that with the Indigo DAO for review and feedback shortly. We look forward to sharing more updates on the Indigo Protocol v2 roadmap soon.
10. Indigo Labs is looking to bring on an additional full-stack developer.
We’ve always believed in working with passionate and like-minded resources from within the community, so come join the Indigo journey! Read the position description and consider applying
That’s it for this edition of the Indigo Labs newsletter! We’re looking forward to an eventful couple of months ahead. As always, we’re grateful for your support, trust, and enthusiasm that inspires the Labs team to strive build the best Protocol for the DAO and the Foundation. Here’s to building a brighter, decentralized future together! Onwards and upwards!
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