[CLOSED] VST Cross-Chain Minting (XMint)

Authors: The Vesta Core Team + Review from Frens

Summary

This RFC suggests the implementation of cross-chain VST minting and requests comment from the community on the functionality, design, and timeline. Cross-chain minting (XMint) of VST enabled through cross-chain messaging services will allow VST to be minted across multiple ecosystems, expanding its usability as a store and method of transfer for value. VST on the selected chains will also allow us to partner with lending markets, other stablecoins, perpetual and options protocols, yield aggregators, and more. We want to take a first mover advantage and become one of the dominant cross chain stablecoins.

While VSTA is currently bridgeable through Synapse and we plan on making VST bridgeable soon as well, cross-chain minting would open a new venue. The time needed to wait for confirmations and the negative liquidity slippage from normal bridging can prevent people from bridging over. Vesta’s adoption on other chains at the moment is quite limited. We believe that XMint will expand the supply of VST significantly.

Simply deploying Vesta on other chains runs into the issue of varying collateralization ratios for types of collateral impacting our interest rate module down the line as well as stability pool incentives. We also want users to be able to close their debt in one central location instead of bridging over.

Expanding beyond our comfy home on Arbitrum is not without additional risks, though. Some foreseeable pain points include maintaining fungibility of VST between different and possibly competing deployments, protecting against new vectors of attack in new and unfamiliar ecosystems, maintaining efficiency in liquidations cross-chain, as well as technological challenges inherent in new messaging systems such as LayerZero.

Despite these risks, we still believe in the viability of this proposal and the value it can deliver to current and future users of Vesta. Cross-chain activities will quickly become essential in maintaining a coherent and winning portfolio in the near future, and Vesta should be at the forefront due to our deep pool of experience on the bleeding edge.

Motivation

We aim to be the first L2 lending protocol that fully supports cross-chain stablecoin (VST) minting.

Vesta wants to become the one-stop-shop for loaning against entire portfolios. Currently, no service allows users to effectively and efficiently gain a single revolving line of credit without liquidity fragmentation or bridging friction. Vesta aims to allow this by deploying credit nodes throughout a wide variety of L2s and L1s, enabling a consolidated debt position that’s easier to manage and harder to get liquidated on. This is what the XMint effort is intended to do.

Implementation/Execution

Cross-chain messaging

Vesta’s implementation of XMint will use LayerZero’s communication protocol for cross-chain messaging, starting with EVM compatible chains, with expansion to other smart contract-based blockchains on the horizon. Layer0’s innovative technology allows for faster and more secure implementation of Vesta’s own cross-chain efforts. Click here for a more detailed explanation of how this works. XMint will be based on a hub and spoke architecture, with Vesta’s main deployment currently on Arbitrum maintaining the health of the entire protocol across all chains and ecosystems. While VST will trade independently across all chains, risk parameters, liquidation thresholds, and most loan-specific variables will be maintained on Vesta’s hub. This architecture is designed to both ensure the validity of issued loans and the security of withdrawals, as all loaning mechanisms are maintained by Vesta’s provably secure implementation on Arbitrum.

As cross chain communication continues to mature in both efficiency and speed, we expect many improvements in XMint even beyond deployment. We expect efforts by zkLink and Chainlink to have significant contributions in this effort.

Timeline

Currently, we are aiming for XMint to be available within Quarter 3 2022. It is important to note that this will take significant engineering effort and will thus force other items on the roadmap to take lower priority.

Upon approval, further structure on more exact dates and a more specific timeline will be given.

Ecosystems to launch on (in no particular order):

  • Avalanche
  • Optimism
  • Polygon
  • Fantom
  • Moonbeam
  • Ethereum mainnet
  • Open to further EVM compatible chains to start
  • Agree
  • Disagree

0 voters

Update on May 5, 2022: this post has progressed from the RFC (Request for Comment) stage to the Community Poll stage

6 Likes

This sounds great. Granted, not an easy feat but I think getting ahead of this will be great for the protocol overall and puts us in a favorable position. UX improvement will be immense.

3 Likes

This would be indeed a good way to increase VST supply and open new use cases. I would also suggest Metis.

2 Likes

I am all for this. Optimism should be the first new chain IMO.

4 Likes

START WIH ETH AND AVAX WILL BE GREAT IDEA AS IT HAS HIGHEST NUMBER OF ACTIVE WALLETS… and ofcourse more liquidity will flow… new ux will be good too

sounds good, lfg fam

avalanche and fantom have nice TVL so would make sense to go there first… after eth mainnet i guess

I agree in principle as I expect us to see a lot of flow there with the OP token release, question is with the timeline being Q3 this year, if it matters all that much? Might be smarter to look at the chains with the highest number of active users if we’re going to miss the majority of the Optimism hype anyway… :slight_smile:

a thing with being able to easily mint/transfer VST to other networks is that you will need usecases/liquidity on those networks

this results in fractured liquidity, how can we ensure we have strong liquidity on all active networks?

I like the central portfolio line of credit. Maybe just connecting all the L2s should be the start? Since there’s literally nothing else on L2, Vesta could be first mover/first available when things pick up on L2s?

I know we need growth too so expanding to L1s after L2s should be considered.

We should get a grant from LayerZero for using their tech.

1 Like

Great proposal! Just to reword this for my understanding, users on other networks will be able to manage their loans on Arbitrum with a messaging system that communicates with the contracts on Arbiturm. This would be a first for sure, and I’m hella hyped sers. It’s a giant leap forward in crypto UX.

As for which chains to venture off to next, we have to prioritize L2’s and mainnet first. Alt L1’s can wait.

4 Likes

Sounds like a great proposal, Chainlink CCIP will also be on the market relatively soon this year and should also be considered to use for cross chain messaging as their infrastructure in general is more battle tested compared to LayerZero.

1 Like