New Liquidation User Experience - Alternative Client for Ajna
Request
Receiving Address: 0xEd860e2a761D8B0c83b1c0A1C4b7D5fc1af97d5c
AJNA Amount: $AJNA token equivalent to US $30k equivalent at the date of approval
Applicant and Team Information
Applicant
Applicant Name: Nicolas Embleton
Email: nicolas.embleton@gmail.com
The team
Nicolas Embleton (X)
Built 0xTitans platform with @MatchboxDAO to run on-chain games. Built AI models to play 0xMonaco. Built Scratchpay.com tech from 0 to $150M valuation.
Anomie Mouse (X)
Formerly researching tokenomics at Binance/BNB Chain, handling $200M on DeFi with Gnosis Safe at a crypto startup, ex-BitMEX, a co-translator of “Mastering Ethereum”.
Nguyen Huy Hoang
Senior Front-end developer with a passion for great UX.
Clément
Junior Product Owner, UI/UX for Ophiuchus Protocol. Early StarkNet contributor, founded Starknet France.
Project Information
What is it?
We are working on a new UX to offer an alternative frontend client to Ajna users. This is likely to increase market confidence in the protocol thanks to having multiple UX options, which should in turn increase the TVL within the protocol. In particular, our main focus is good UX and ease of use, which should support many users to participate in the ecosystem.
Our motivations:
- We are a fresh team and want to build a new front-end client to help drive Ajna adoption and increase the TVL
- The current Ajna landscape works, and in particular the ability to manage positions is well served by both existing front-ends, but we found it hard to use and saw the product potential of building a custom experience focused on simplicity, so we set out to work, starting with the Liquidation user experience
2. What problem is being solved, how?
We are therefore requesting a grant to support us in building a great, smooth and easy to use Liquidation Experience, which is the first segment that we are developing.
In providing a better Liquidation / Auction experience, including the ability to receive notifications and webhooks signals, we are offering the Ajna ecosystem a healthy way to ensure that liquidations happen as early as possible, providing the best prices for liquidations.
This, in turn, will increase user confidence, and should help drive TVL. In particular, we are interested in providing additional support to slightly more exotic chains where the liquidity, especially for long-tail but valuable assets is not providing a good enough exit point for healthy liquidations to provide as much confidence as it could on these chains.
3. How will this project be a source of growth or success for Ajna? Please include a step-by-step summary of how you imagine the completed project will affect Ajna.
We believe there are three essential elements for Ajna’s growth. Exposure to the right users, an intuitive and easy-to-use UI/UX, and user education.
UI/UX: We are currently developing a front-end for Ajna, which is intended to be roughly as intuitive as Uniswap’s, though with many more features. In addition to this, we have a member in our team who used to manage $200M with Safe as an institutional investor, so we have a good understanding of how they operate funds and what kind of front-end they need.
Education: Ajna needs an easy-to-understand user experience that provides a way for users to intuitively know the impact and consequences of their interactions, and promptly react to events happening, particularly in the event of a liquidation.
A Better Toolkit: One of our goals is to develop better tools to create a healthier ground for liquidations so they happen as early as possible. Thanks to the notifications and triggers we are building, the liquidations should increase arbitrage competition and therefore be executed at a more advantageous price to liquidated users.
4. What is/are the objective(s)?
Our objective is to discover new use cases and new users for Ajna. Ajna can run on any chain as it is oracle-less and can support any token. This is where Ajna has an advantage over other lending protocols, just as DEX has an advantage over CeFi in terms of listing speed by theoretically being able to list at the same time as the TGE.
By developing better tools to create a healthier ground for liquidations so they happen as early as possible, the liquidations should increase arbitrage competition and therefore be executed at a more advantageous price to liquidated users.
5. What is/are the deliverable(s)?
The deliverables are organized as following:
- First milestone: End-to-end auction UX
- The entire flow for enabling a healthy liquidation market
- Providing product and ecosystem value by filling the gaps and providing a compelling UX
- Second milestone: Notifications and Signals for arbitrage
- This is a bit of a stretch goal within the scope of this grant proposal, and we will do our best to provide at least a usable MVP for feed and notifications
- These will be subsequently developed further into their own sets of features
6. What is the timeline for completing the deliverables?
Our timeline is 3 to 4 months. We intend to have a first release by mid July, and then release iterations fairly frequently afterwards. We are also highly agile, and love to receive and incorporate feedback whenever it makes sense.
→ August: Auction UX
- Feed for loan eligibles for liquidation, with metrics
- Kick loan function
- Live Auction flow that supports
- take/depositTake/arbTake and Settle function
- graph that display the price auction timeline
- feed for auction events
- Auction result
- claim bond function
→ September / October: Notifications and webhook based signals
7. What level of support do you anticipate needing through the duration of the project?
Our need for support is mostly around:
- Technical details, to make sure we have the right understanding of the protocol and that we provide the right information and features to the users
- Ecosystem support, to maximize the impact of the products within the market by providing feedback and support wherever applicable
8. How often will progress reports be published to the forum?
Every two weeks. We will have live previews available as early as the end of June / beginning of July.
9. What are the estimated costs associated with the full completion of this project?
The cost is almost entirely human cost, and is associated mostly with product development. It roughly splits as follow:
- Frontend Development
- Backend + Infrastructure Development
10. If applicable, How will the project be maintained after completion of the grant?
We will be maintaining the project afterwards and are looking into ecosystem-friendly avenues to make the project sustainable so it doesn’t require follow-up grants once the revenues have reached our operating costs.
Additional Information
- How will you handle a delay in your project timeline?
We will communicate where the delay is and why, and provide estimates for a new release.
- How will you handle a scenario where the original scope can’t be completed due to insufficient funding or other factors (Deficit of funds, or other)?
We engage to provide a smaller version of the original scope.
- How will you handle a scenario where the project is completed, but significantly under budget (surplus of funds left over)?
We will use these funds to increase the scope or transfer to another project scope; improve the scope with received feedback.