This month's report includes some awesome updates from existing grantees, with a few completed projects and others that are very close to completion!
There have also been some changes to our operating expenses as both Reverie and the OGP multi-sig have voluntarily decided to reduce their monthly salaries.
Grantee Updates
Completed
The following grants projects have been completed over the past month:
A Study of Threshold-Decrypted Mempools, MEV and Their Benefit to Users
Antoine has completed his research paper on the market and incentive implications of implementing threshold encrypted mempools as MEV mitigation techniques. In the paper, Antoine presents various solutions for mempool encryption with a focus on threshold encryption, digs into the potential drawbacks to these solutions, and looks at Osmosis as a case study.
Mesh Security Phase 1: Web Application Front-end Development
Josef has completed the initial MVP of the Mesh Security web application frontend after having worked closely with both Cosmology (frontend tooling) and DesignDAO (frontend design). The functional UI was presented for the first time during the Mesh Security panel at Osmoscon – check out the recording!
In Progress
Below we share some updates from active grants projects.
Cosmos Integration with Metamask
The Mystic Labs team has completed the code for the Metamask Snap, which is now currently being audited by Ottersec. The first stage of the audit has been completed, so Mystic Labs is working on implementing the fixes and suggestions that came out of the audit process. They've also finished designing the UI of the Snaps dashboard, and expect to have everything ready by late September.
Alles Labs has added Osmosis pool functionality to Celatone. This means that you can now easily search pools by Pool ID, token symbol, or token denom, filter by pool type, as well as filter by pool transaction type (e.g. swaps, LP, bonding, Superfluid, etc.). For successful transactions with a single message, you can also expand the table entry to view additional info without having to go into the transaction view page.
With the passing of prop #557, both DAO DAO multi-sig contracts and Polytone have been uploaded on Osmosis. Check out DAO DAO on Osmosis! The team is now working on updating the contracts for NFT and Token Factory DAOs, which will be audited by Oak Security soon.
The Genie team has completed their first rewards contract which supports fixed and linear rewards. They're now working on another contract which supports chance-based outcomes to allow for things like loot boxes and raffles. They expect to have this contract completed in the next few weeks.
Pecunia.Finance is about half way through the completion of Milestone 1, which involves the development of the core connector that will allow users to deploy algorithmic trading bots on the Osmosis DEX. They've downloaded and reviewed all the relevant repositories, the process diagram and plan for connector and gateway element are finished, the scaffolding code is in place, and the bulk of the code creation is underway. They are also planning the strategy testing and documentation for Milestone 2.
IBC Observability, Security, and Research
After having released their security monitoring dashboard to the public, the Range team has made some great progress on their IBC rate limits research report. They're targeting to have a draft of the report by the end of the month, which will include two PoCs on the rate limit smart contracts as a bonus.
Incentives Optimization - Research + Infrastructure
Hathor Node and Chaos Labs have successfully passed a proposal onchain to signal approval for migrating the incentives program to the optimization algorithm that was developed by them as part of their grant projects. The proposal also signals approval for an Incentives Working Group to maintain and update the optimization algorithm. Hathor and Chaos will now be working on the implementation of the new incentives system.
Margined's core contracts have been completed and are currently undergoing an audit with Oak Security. Once the audit is completed, the team will work closely with Oak on implementing suggestions and fixes, before approaching Osmosis governance to deploy their contracts on Osmosis mainnet.
Mesh Security Phase 1: Back-end Development
Confio has completed the architecture document which provides a detailed overview of the various components of Mesh Security (Milestone 1). They've also made lots of progress on the Mesh Security codebase as they only have a couple of major open issues left to resolve before they can move forward with devnet testing.
The first Osmosis quarterly report has been published by Messari, which highlights Osmosis protocol usage in Q2 2023. While reduced emissions and a subdued market continue to weigh on volumes and users, IBC inflows are on the rise, having yielded nearly half a billion dollars in inflows to Osmosis.
In July, Serotonin worked with the Osmosis team to announce the introduction of Supercharged Liquidity in conjunction with the OSMO 2.0 tokenomics revamp. They secured media coverage from the likes of Blockworks, The Block, and Cointelegraph in support of this announcement. Sunny’s interview on the 0xResearch Podcast with the Blockworks Research team also went live.
Anmol has almost completed Starship's integration with Mesh Security. All the components are ready and working, but he still needs to polish and productionize them, so it will take another few weeks to have it properly be structured and working. Starship also played an important role in getting everything set up for the Mesh Security demo at Osmocon.
Oak has paused their audit of Zodiac's contracts from the time being. This is because of the removal of the tokenfactory beforesend hooks as part of the v16 upgrade, as the code needs to be edited and revised. Oak will resume the audit once hooks are back (which will be after the v17 upgrade). The Zodiac team has also started re-designing their frontend in preparation for launch.
Discontinued
The following project was discontinued in July:
Tom hasn't been able to dedicate much time to build out the AuthZ delegation tool as he's gone back to his full-time job. While this is a feature he'd definitely like to incorporate into REStake eventually, he's decided to discontinue the project for the time being as he's unlikely to have time to spend on it in the near future.
RFPs
We recently announced our RFP on Cosmos SDK governance improvements, which is our highest priority RFP at the moment. While we are open to suggestions, our initial focus will be on finding teams that can add optimistic, batched, and multiple choice proposals to the Cosmos SDK governance module. Read the full blog post for more details.
Other outstanding RFPs include:
If you're interested in working on any of these RFPs, apply for a grant!
Communication and Transparency
In July, we had Anmol and Pecunia Finance join us on Updated from the OGP to chat about Starship and the Hummingbot integration. Listen to the recording to learn more about both projects and how they add value to Osmosis!
On top of our monthly Twitter spaces with grantees, we continue to communicate and be transparent with the community through various channels, such as regular Discord Office hours and monthly transparency reports.
If you have any questions about the grants program, please don't hesitate to reach out on Twitter or Discord!
Current State of the OGP
We share a breakdown of our current assets, liabilities, and expenses below.
Multi-sig
- Total OSMO: 2,515,286
- Total USDC: 2,987,571
Funding
- Total funding approved: $3,904,290
- Total funding paid out: $$2,347,442 or 60% of total funding approved
- Funding due on grant completion: $$1,556,848 or 40% of total funding approved
Operational Expenses
We voluntarily decided to lower our monthly salaries given recent market conditions. The following changes have been in effect since July and will remain unchanged until the program's expiry in December 2023:
- Reverie will receive a reduced salary of 50,000 USDC (down from 55,000 USDC) and 20,000 OSMO (down from 25,000 OSMO) per month.
- The OGP multi-sig has agreed to reduce their collective monthly salary from a total of 10,000 USDC per month to 5,000 USDC per month.
These changes are reflected in the table below, which details our July operating expenses:
