Hamsters can’t eat Gelato (Network)
1/ Project Overview
Gelato Network enables automated smart contract executions on Ethereum and EVM-based chains. It offers developers a decentralized network of bots that let anyone instruct to monitor the state of protocols.
The protocol was founded in 2019. The version 1 mainnet was launched in July 2020 and deployed to EVM-based blockchains. Version 2 launched in April 2021.
The protocol currently supports Ethereum, Polygon, Fantom and is looking to support Arbitrum, Optimism, BSC and Avalanche.
Gelato’s value proposition includes the following:
- Open platform — all parties can enter into automation service agreements without permission
- Decentralized — service agreements are facilitated and upheld in a non-custodial and trustless fashion
- Efficiency — provides coordination and incentive mechanisms to prevent users from engaging in economically inefficient behavior (staking/slashing)
The main components of the protocol include:
- Executor Module (coordinate infrastructure services)
- Task registry (keep track of all use cases)
- Specific contracts (comprise certain automated transactions)
- Software clients (run by infrastructure operators for execution on-chain)
2/ Key Integrations
DeFi AM Platform (Instadapp)
Instadapp has a TVL of ~$12B. With Gelato integration, it allows users to -
- Refinance undercollateralized debt positions to other protocols before they are liquidated.
- Migrate debt positions from Ethereum to Polygon
- Provide G-UNI pool to automate fee re-compounding for Uniswap v3. It fractionalizes Uniswap V3 LP tokens to fungible tokens and allows users to add liquidity to mint G-UNI. Users withdraw from the pool to burn G-UNI tokens and earn fees (TVL of G-UNI pools: $250M)
AMMs (Uniswap, Quickswap etc.)
Gelato enables limit order function on multiple AMMs, including Uniswap, Quickswap, Sorbet Finance, Furucombo, SpookySwap and SpiritSwap
Lending (Aave, Compound etc.)
Gelato automates repayment to avoid costly collateral liquidations.
Vault (ETHA Lend etc.)
Gelato enables users to automate harvesting and reinvest automatically every couple of hours.
NFT and Gaming (Seascape etc.)
Gelato is used to update leaderboards and distribute rewards.
3/ Tokenomics
The native token of the platform is $GEL. IDO happened on 13 Sep 2021 and raised $5M in total at $0.297139.
Token utilities include:
[1] Governance (vote on proposals)
[2] Staking (a. Executors need to stake before offering certain services; b. Dapps and users to stake and assign higher priority to execution of certain transactions)
- Total Supply: $420.69M (2 years after ICO can mint additional tokens)
- Circulating Market Cap: $22M
- Fully Diluted Market Cap: $960M
- Token Distribution
- Token Vesting Schedule
- Listed exchanges: Uniswap v3, Gate.io, MEXC Global, BKEX, AEX, LBank
4/ Team
The team has ~12 people, including 6 developers. They plan to double the current team to ~30 people after the series A fundraising.
Founders are Hilmar Orth and Luis Schliesske, who co-founded a blockchain startup in 2017. Their undergraduates were Finance (at Cass) and Political Economy (at Kings Colledge).
5/ Investors
Seed Round
- Date: 15 Sep 2021
- Amount: $1.2M
- Valuation: ~$8M
- Investors: Galaxy Digital, IOSG Ventures, MetaCartel Ventures, The LAO
Series A
- Date: 30 Sep 2021
- Amount: $11M
- Valuation: ~$125M
- Investors: Dragonfly Capital, ParaFi Capital, Stani Kulechov (founder and CEO of Aave)
6/ Key Metrics
Social Media Data
- Twitter: 30.6K followers
- Telegram: 14.7K membres
- Discord: 11K members
- Youtube: 743 subscribers
- Reddit: 187 members
- Instagram: 149 followers
7/ Summary
Gelato is backed by top VCs and DeFi founders (Yearn, Kyber, Aave etc.) and is expected to be a key player in web3. The current circulating market cap is only $22M which is relatively low. It already made several successful integrations with top DeFi projects, and future success will rely on integration and use cases. The risks include [1] limited token utility of $GEL [2] challenge from Keep3r and Chainlink Keepers.
