With the recent launch of our Guarded Mainnet, we’ve seen an increase in interest in our token and in its purpose, as well as curiosity about our upcoming governance structure.
Today, we’re announcing the Swivel Governance Token – SWIV, together with an overview of its purpose in the Swivel ecosystem and its utility in our governance and safety modules.1
NOTE: No distributions have been made, and our token is not yet live. For more information on our token’s distribution/release please stay tuned for a follow up article!
Swivel began nearly two years ago as a hackathon project started during the infamous “Black Thursday” crash. Since then, we’ve survived through the bear market, found an incredible community, launched multiple testnets, and this past week captured our first ~$1,000,000 in volume during our Guarded Mainnet Launch (with only ~100 whitelisted users)!
That said, DeFi’s greatest strength, its permissionless nature, allows grassroot communities to iterate openly and build increasingly interesting financial primitives. Swivel’s long-term goal has always been to push this advantage and create a platform where the most “technical” traders and risk-adverse lenders can both utilize these primitives to create a positive sum.
With this goal in mind, we believe that it is best to decentralize the protocol’s governance as soon as possible to ensure that the community has a proper say in the protocol’s initial growth, and future stewardship.
The Swivel DAO & SWIV
With our guarded launch opening to more users every day, and the cap to be fully lifted in the near future, we are taking the first steps in decentralizing our protocol – establishing an initial DAO structure, and with it, the Swivel Governance Token.
The Swivel DAO, and SWIV Token’s primary use cases are to:
- Steward the protocol and gather community consensus regarding future technical development
- Ensure stakeholder consensus regarding key protocol function:
- The initiation of new markets
- The modulation of fees (with the goal of preventing wash-trading and other abusive practices)
- Align incentives among all Swivel stakeholders through programs including liquidity incentives and development grants
- Provide an additional layer of safety to the lenders utilizing our protocol
We will be releasing more detailed information about the genesis SWIV token distribution in the next couple weeks!
The Swivel Safety Module
No matter how many times a protocol may have been audited or how much capital a smart contract might secure, some risk of insolvency or “shortfall” event will always be present.
We plan to mitigate these risks with a combination of various bounties and external insurance programs. However, the primary mechanism for securing deposits on Swivel will be an incentivized smart contract for Swivel Governance Token holders to backstop any smart contract / shortfall event risks.
As a reward for taking on this risk, Swivel Safety Module stakers become the primary beneficiary of fee accrual and other protocol revenues.This model allows us to reward the stakeholders that believe in our protocol most, while also ensuring that the users of our protocol are exposed to minimal risk.
Stay tuned for more information on the Swivel Safety Module (SSM) in the coming weeks!
What Else Is Up?
A lot is happening in the Swivel community & ecosystem!
We’ve got our first AMA tomorrow 1/7 at 9:00 PM UTC! Drop your questions in our Discord’s #AMA-Questions channel!
Tomorrow is also the last day of our #Techsplanation Contest! Get your informational or interesting Swivel / lending content in now!
And most importantly, our Guarded Mainnet Launch is live! Drop your address in #Key-Requests, participate in the events mentioned above, and be an awesome community member to increase your chances of getting a Key!
About Swivel Finance
Swivel is the decentralized protocol for fixed-rate lending and tokenized cash-flows.
Currently live on Rinkeby and on Mainnet, Swivel Finance provides lenders the most efficient way to lock in a fixed rate as well as trade rates, and liquidity providers the most familiar and effective way to manage their inventory.
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