A Burning Anniversary: From $1M TVL to ultra-sound UX
Dear UX community,
Today marks the second anniversary of our main net launch and we wanted to take a stroll down memory lane, reminiscing the major milestones and the growth we have achieved in 2023. Throughout this journey, we can proudly say that we stayed true to our values: user security above everything else.
Amidst the TradFi collapse of March 2023, our protocol surpassed the $1M TVL mark for the first time and things…we’re just getting started. While others were getting flushed out by over leveraged positions, we took our time and established a security bedrock that would prevent asset manipulation and cascading events (contagion):
- Update v4.0: Incubated Ojo’s Historacle (the first time and volume weighted oracle that helps prevent Mango Markets-like exploits).
- 20+ Parameters that can be customized for each asset.
- Update v4.2: IBC-rate limiting (further counters Euler Finance style attacks) and minimal gas fee to prevent dusting & scam attacks.
- Incremental liquidations to limit liquidations and allow borrowers enough time to supply more collateral to their positions.
Moreover, our engineering team’s hard work has been vetted by industry leading auditors, such as Halborn Security, PeckShield, Trail of Bits and others.
These safety guarantees created the perfect environment for liquidity to flourish. As a matter of fact, it was these robust safety measures that allowed us to list the largest amount of Cosmos assets, bringing capital efficiency across the IBC, as well as to ‘unexplored’ territories (patience, young Padawan). For that purpose, we decided to change our EVM bridge solution from Gravity to Axelar’s GMP-powered bridge.
From stable coins (e.g. IST, USK, AXL-USDC, AXL-USDT, etc.) to liquid staking tokens (issued by Stride, Persistence One, Quicksilver, etc.), new listings have been added on a weekly basis. As a result, UX users got to experiment with a plethora of DeFi strategies in order to maximize their capital efficiency. For this reason, we have also launched, in collaboration with Stride, stUMEE, our very own liquid staking derivative.
To further boost our ability to utilize new assets safely, we have introduced the Special Asset Pair function, which enables higher collateral weights for particular asset pairs (e.g. LST-native token pairs).
Our goal was always to empower the UX community to take action in governing the protocol. Furthermore, we have instated no-code flash liquidations that allow regular users to execute liquidations on positions at risk.
This focus on user experience was also reflected by our rebranding from Umee to UX, which was also accompanied by a tokenomics revamp.
Q4 of 2023 brought two more exciting additions:
- meUSD tokens introduced by update v6.2 creating an index for stable coins that would protect users from isolated deepens.
- Osmosis merger proposal which would unlock further DeFi use cases for both UX, as well as Osmosis users.
By the end of 2023, what started as a $1M in TVL protocol, UX had grown to over $26M in supplied assets. UX protocol has generated more than $100M in loans over the course of last year.
With such a rich history, we couldn’t be more excited for the future!
But wait…there’s more.
To mark this special anniversary, we just announced the Burn-Auction Module which is currently up for debate on CommonWealth. If approved, it would accumulate protocol revenue and users would be able to bid in order to claim it. The winners’ pledged $UX tokens would also be burnt in the process. Considering the inflow of TVL that the ecosystem expects from the recent market dynamics, it is expected that the Burn Auction Ceremonies will result in far more burn than originally anticipated. Coupled with the reduction of PoS emissions, we cannot rule out a future where $UX becomes deflationary.
Onwards and upwards, UX community!
To a fruitful year ahead!