Hi guys, I want to discuss the recent product launch that JUP has integrated with Meteora the ‘alpha vault’ and how it can potentially further be improved for JUP users and guarantee that the smallest fish can not be gamed by whales.
The alpha vault is a great product that allows long term supporters of a project the ability to purchase tokens at a reduced price whilst having to lock their tokens up for a designated period of time.
The main problem I see with the alpha vault is the potential for it being gamed by whales. Within the vault there is the ability for large whales with excess capital to manipulate the distribution in their favour. For example, Sanctum has reached capacity
With a current ration of 0.63 (7.5/11.9=0.63) meaning for every $1 you deposit, 0.63c will be used to buy $CLOUD and the remaining amount will be given back to you.
Risks
Now, a whale could come at this point and decide I still want an allocation of $500,000 all this whale would need to do is add enough liquidity to ensure their purchasing power totalled $500,000 after the vault closes if the ratio was 0.5 they would deposit $1,000,000.
I hope I have explained this well enough, please comment if I haven’t and I’ll write a more comprehensive answer.
With more liquidity being added, the purchasing power of each dollar gets lower and the smallest fish are subsequently the ones affected the most.
Fixes?
Mitigating against this is difficult, and I am really hoping for discussions on how to make sure this attack vector can be protected against.
White list addresses - these could be picked by the team or could be JUP stakers who voted on that specific proposal & voted for that project?
Allow for a % of the vault to be designated towards these lower purchase orders. Say it was $CLOUD 10% 750k/7.5m would be designated to 5,000 wallet who would each get $150 allocation of 100% purchasing power
FCFS basis?
separate vault for this?
If you think I’m wrong or see any issues presented in my post, please let me know. I’m not even sure if this an actual risk but I spent some time thinking about the potential of how this new mechanism for launches could be attacked by a whale similar to how Alameda attacked the Stargate launch and bought the entire public allocation in one block.
Thanks for reading!
EDIT:
It really feels like this happening in real time, the vault closes in around an hour & this is the current deposit amount. YIKES.
Multiple vaults unknown to the public, differentiated by ratio perhaps. Normally you wouldnt have this data before hand, definitely not in this case, being an experiment to keep airdrops a sustainable win/win pro crypto mechanism. That said, just knowing the basics(marshmallow) their are previous farming vaults with data to use comparitively /kamino and meteora for sure, after my 0.42$ solend payout of months, done with them. Theres also, what may be harder to actually check nowadays, but the top 2%, which 20 yrs ago was income of $200,000+ a yr(2nd thought, mut point, defi) You do bring up a very good point tho, My broke ass is left with $500 total at present. Been using jup since november maybe, after finding Jup and SOL carrying the market on its shoulders SINGLE handedly. Id have 5-8k in vaults/ borrow, bought phone, and got jacked for 20k at least. Point is im a anchovy over here with minnows, “pimp” swimming on by. That and not %100 why, but, tho i do get air drops, ive only got 1 that was expected, only got BLZE 2 times in 6 months with 33+ in de-fi, that is bullshit. sorry, u make good poiun, but unfortunately its the equivalent of asking to have the same footprint of a Titan/Giant/Whale. %tiers is all ive got that may be relevant, air drops and the distribution and ginding of points for need and overhaul for sure, glad to hear/see dev’s putting out new plans. Even gladder to see comm. offering their own suggestions, cause quite honestly people arent paying close enough attention. There needs to be at least a 3rd co**m and jup is the only one i know of that could make that happen. moving forward is about people in control of whats theirs jup acts for and with idjuts that cant spell Jo.
Appretiate the response, I think multiple pools will only confuse people. I think white list addresses with a specific allocation due to earnestness with the project could be a good compromise.
Stick around long enough and you’ll become a whale! Happy fishing!
I think with necessary criteria it would not worth the r/r for the a whale to game. Plus, they can still game the pool by adding more liquidity it just allows for a certain portion of depositors protection so it doesn’t actually make whales suffer all that much, they just have to add even more extra liquidity.
Potentially, but a few considerations could be made. Whitelisted addresses from protocols that could use sanctums profiles to determine that the users are actual humans
