DeFi Project Targeting Cronje’s New ve(3,3) Tech Records $2.69B TVL 48hrs After Launch

A new decentralized finance (DeFi) project built on the Fantom blockchain (FTM) has gone from $0 to $2.69 billion in total value locked (TVL) hardly 48 hours after its launch.

veDAO ghosted onto the scene on Jan 18, and promptly declared its singular purpose — to get in on Andre Cronje’s latest DeFi project by capturing “enough TVL to qualify as a top 20 project on Fantom, meeting the snapshot requirements to receive one of ve(3,3) NFTs.”

The prolific South African coder, famed for creating Yearn Finance and Keep3rV1, is building a new project on Fantom dubbed ve(3,3). The project utilizes emerging economic models in DeFi voting/vested escrow tokens (veTKNs).

Put simply, ve(3,3) rewards investors for locking their tokens in a protocol over a set period of time. This also gives them more power to make decisions on the protocol. However, the tokens, liquid only as a non-fungible token (NFT), will be distributed to the top 20 projects on Fantom by TVL.

Only 20 NFTs will ever be issued to control the protocol. Cronje says each project will get one NFT but does not appear too bothered that a latecomer such as veDAO is gatecrashing a process originally designed to reward existing Fantom ecosystem participants.

A snapshot of the qualifying projects is expected to be taken off the multi-chain TVL data dashboard Defillama, on or around Jan 21.

Quickfire TVL accumulation

Predictably, new and old DeFi projects have been racing to claim a stake in ve(3,3) ahead of its imminent launch.

But no other project has made such a quickfire accumulation in total value locked compared to veDAO. TVL soared from zero to $1.03 billion in the 24 hours since its launch. That figure more than doubled to $2.69 billion at the time of press, according to data compiled by Defillama.

veDAO is now the second-largest project on FTM by assets under management, with over 4,000 wallets interacting with WeVe, the project token, during the first 24 hours. Overall, the total value locked on the Fantom ecosystem rose 29% to $9.9 billion after veDAO’s launch.

“veDAO is a clever way to try to accrue as much TVL as fast as possible,” research analyst, Juan Pellicer, told BeInCrypto via a chat. “This total value locked is dependant on emissions of the main WeVE token,” he said, adding:

Right now the yield is very high, but there are risks if the price of WeVE would crumble. Then the yield would highly decrease and the total value locked could migrate elsewhere. WeVE price so far is mantaining, so the project seems to be able to hold the top 10 TVL ranking until the snapshot happens.

The price of WeVe ranged between a low of $0.06 and a high of $0.40 in the few days it has traded since launch on Tuesday, as per CoinGecko data. At the time of press, the token was changing hands at about $0.10, down more than 60% over the previous 24 hours. Volume was thin at just under $10,000.

veDAO says it will use WeVe to govern the use of the ve(3,3) non-fungible token as well as its earnings. Users can farm by staking assets such as FTM or ethereum in veDAO farms or by providing liquidity on the WeVE-MIM pair.

“WeVE is not designed or intended to carry any monetary value,” said veDAO in a whitepaper posted on Medium on Jan.18, as it launched. “[It] represents only governance rights over a Cronje ve3 NFT. If veDAO fails to reach the top 20 in TVL, participants can simply withdraw their staked assets from the pools and move on.”

What of the project’s clandestine birth? veDAO averred:

We kept our project quiet until launch to prevent nefarious actors from creating fake WeVE contracts. This is a fair launch. No seed/private sales/pre-farming. veDAO reserves 10% of WeVE for the team, but 85% is distributed to stakers and liquidity providers and five percent is held for the ecosystem. We’re forking standard masterchef contracts and have been audited.

Andre Cronje: ve(3,3) and the DeFi protocol of protocols

Cronje touted veDAO as one of the protocols building on top of Solidly (ve3), but was quick to put out a disclaimer that “this was not an endorsement.”

The software architect did not respond to a request for comment from BeInCrypto. However, he published three articles earlier this month explaining, rather obliquely, his concepts around vested escrow tokens and the building of a so-called ‘protocol of protocols.’

The basic import of ve(3,3) is that Cronje aims to create a token ecosystem that is much more efficient, pays 100% of fees to people locking their assets, and is more sustainable over time. A project not controlled by liquidity providers, as is currently the case in DeFi, but by protocols.

ve(3,3) combines the mechanisms of Olympus DAO (rebased tokens) and vote escrow tokenomics from protocols such as Convex and Curve. With rebased tokens, investors are free to unstake their tokens, list and sell them on the open market – something that tends to increase supply, causing prices to fall.

Cronje is saying this should not be incentivized. Instead, incentives must be paid to users that have locked their tokens. What better way to do so than for the vested tokens to become NFTs, which can be sold on secondary markets.

These tokens give voting power, and the more governance tokens a protocol has, the more power it has over a specific protocol.

Juan Pellicer, an IntoTheBlock research analyst said about the project: “In my opinion, he (Cronje) is referring to building a protocol that attracts a service that fits other protocols which are seeking liquidity and returns. The proposal governance mechanics could attract protocols that build over them by accumulating tokens for governance power.”