Frax Finance

Authors

Alvin Hsia and Blake West

Summary

Create a Goldfinch AMO to provide liquidity to the Goldfinch Senior Pool, which will earn Frax non-crypto correlated yield and provide Goldfinch with capital to deploy in new Borrower Pools.

Background

As Frax grows, it becomes increasingly important that its collateral mix diversifies into safe yield assets with interest rate revenues coming from non-crypto correlated economic activity.

Goldfinch is a decentralized credit protocol that has been designed from the ground up to do exactly this – bringing off-chain yields on-chain at scale. Read more about Goldfinch below.

About Goldfinch

Goldfinch is a decentralized credit protocol with a mission to expand access to capital and foster financial inclusion. We believe all of private credit markets will move on chain in the coming decade, and Goldfinch will be the marketplace for all of that activity. The protocol provides structured products that enables borrowers around the world to access dollar-denominated stablecoins to put to use in the real world.

The returns for lenders on Goldfinch are uncorrelated with the rest of crypto as borrowed capital is put to use in real-world use cases (not traders or MM’s).

As a lender, there are two options. You can choose to actively assess loans and earn higher yields by supplying first-loss capital as junior tranche Backers, or passively invest in an index of low-risk senior tranche loans as Liquidity Providers. Frax would do the latter.

Goldfinch Metrics

Live on-chain stats can be found here 3, with some key metrics:

$115M TVL $100M+ in active loans 0% in loan defaults. $100k/mo in recurring USDC treasury revenue About the Goldfinch Senior Pool / FIDU

The Goldfinch Senior Pool represents a diversified senior position on all outstanding loans on Goldfinch. When Liquidity Providers (LPs) supply to the Senior Pool, they receive an equivalent amount of FIDU, which is an ERC-20 token. At any time, Liquidity Providers can withdraw by redeeming their FIDU for USDC at an exchange rate based on the net asset value of the Senior Pool, minus a 0.5% withdrawal fee. This exchange rate for FIDU increases over time as interest payments are made back to the Senior Pool (similar to how Compound cTokens work).

Returns

Variable returns Historically between ~4.5-9% Currently ~8% More data can be found on our Dune dashboard Liquidity

Like Compound, liquidity is highly likely, but not guaranteed. There is a 0.5% withdrawal fee to prevent certain flash loan attacks, and to incentivize longer term capital (break even time would be about 3 weeks at current rates)

Risks / Structure / Protections

As the name implies, each investment from the Senior Pool is senior to the Backers who supply “junior” capital. Some important considerations

There is typically 20-25% of junior “buffer” in each deal. This means that 20-25% of the principal would need to be lost before the Senior Pool loses any money. Each loan itself is fully or over collateralized with off-chain assets or income. This varies from loan to loan, but they will either be senior secured to other lenders, or be backed with assets (such as the underlying loans) worth over 100% of the loan value. This effectively means that borrowers often provide 10-15% of equity capital that is junior even to the Backers. All the Backers (usually dozens in a given deal) sign legal contracts with the borrower. They have recourse to go after a borrower in case of default. Legal contracts stipulate that borrowers must pay into the smart contracts, and the smart contracts enforce that the Senior Pool is paid first. So the Senior Pool is naturally protected with legal recourse by the Backers own interests. Incentives

There is currently a liquidity mining program incentivizing FIDU purchase. Staking your FIDU will earn you the Goldfinch governance token (GFI).

GFI incentive adds ~14% APY at current prices (~$2.50/token) Note that rate assumes you hold for 12 months. Holding for less time will decrease the rate linearly (eg. 6 months is half the rate) There is a proposal to remove the vesting period currently live on Goldfinch governance

Underlying Borrowers

The Borrowers on Goldfinch are generally fintech lending companies, primarily (~80%) in emerging markets. These borrowers all use technology in some way to have an edge in their lending.

One example is PayJoy, who does smart phone financing, and has special software installed on the phones so that if someone doesn’t pay, their phone shuts off. Another is Tugende who finances rent-to-own motorcycles for gig economy drivers in Kenya.

In America, borrowers include Braavo, a data-driven accounts receivable company.

Importantly, a distribution channel for these deals is credit funds. Those funds originate and underwrite deals, then syndicating them out to the Goldfinch community of backers.

Goldfinch borrowers exist in over 18 different countries, giving the loans geographic, regulatory, and monetary policy diversity. All past deals are viewable on the Goldfinch dapp.

Goldfinch AMO

We propose creating a Goldfinch AMO that invests into the Goldfinch Senior Pool. This would generate yield for Frax that is uncorrelated with the rest of crypto, while providing liquidity for Goldfinch to allocate towards loans. We propose the authorization of up to $100m worth of liquidity for use in the AMO.

How Does This Benefit Frax?

Grow the treasury with safe, attractive yield that is truly uncorrelated with the rest of the crypto markets. No market makers or crypto traders or wild leverage here. Just real economic growth from nearly two dozen countries. Low governance overhead. - The Senior Pool is a perpetual and scalable. New deals are constantly being added and paid back. The size of the pool will keep growing, and the assessment is not with one particular fund manager, but more the broader community who will continue to bring on many amazing borrowers. Diversified and scalable by default - The Senior Pool is not one fund manager. There is no cap on the fund size. It is composed of many companies and many funds, automatically scaling with the Goldfinch protocol, and continually diversified across all of them, without any new actions required.

Proposal

Yes: Create an AMO for Goldfinch.

No: Do nothing.