Inspiration
The FortyTwo team are all Cosmos native users. After speaking with dozens of Cosmos and Ethereum users, it has become evident that many users don't know how to interact or where to start in Cosmos. We understand the appchain thesis, and want to see full adoption of it, but in order for that to happen, we need to simplify the UX. FortyTwo is on a mission to make interacting with the Cosmos significantly easier. We are working closely with Cosmos native DeFi users to enhance this experience. In the short-term term we will begin focusing on bringing Ethereum users and TVL into Cosmos through FortyTwo.
What it does
Gives users a clear insight into the most promising protocols of the Cosmos ecosystem. We are building a frontend that integrates across Cosmos. Users will be able to easily understand their full Cosmos portfolios, including, assets/tokens across chains, eligible airdrops, governance votes and taxes, as well as interact with DeFi on the underlying chains through one simplified UI. Users are able to find and stake with the highest yields, find the best swap rates across the interchain, purchase ETF products or purchase NFTs across a number of different marketplaces.
We have been working on FortyTwo for a few months now - however, during the hackathon we have made significant progress on a number of different fronts. We focused primarily on:
- The DEX Aggregator product
- Integrating the auto-compounder with Neutron / Astroport
- Redesigning the UX / UI to make it cleaner and simpler
How we built it
Yield Aggregator/Autocompounder We built the liquidity pool auto-compounder using AbstractSDK. This allows us to isolate the compounding strategy from the DEX implementation, which makes it easier for FortyTwo to deploy auto-compounding smart contracts for different DEXs throughout Cosmos, and safer for FortyTwo to review.
However, during the hackathon, the FortyTwo team built the Chain/DEX implementation for Abstract and Neutron/Astroport, and then also deployed the FortyTwo auto-compounding smart contract. The team was extremely satisfied with our quick turnaround time for implementing the Neutron implementation, and shows our ability to scale our tech across chains (even without the need for the Abstract team's assistance). We are currently in the process of integrating with Kujira which will be our fifth chain implementation.
The validator staking auto-compounder is built using Authz. This is able to scale to validators on any IBC-enabled chain, and provides users with another source of yield.
DEX Aggregator The DEX aggregator is made up of two parts: an off-chain part and an on-chain part. The off-chain part extracts pool information from different DEXs and identifies the best price for a given source and destination token. The on-chain part handles token transfers between DEXs. We have currently built the DEX aggregator for single-hop swaps. This means that if the swap happens over multiple DEXs, utilizing the IBC, the user will need to confirm each step of the process. We are currently in a partnership to enable multi-hop swaps with new technology. We have incorporated three chains/DEXs currently (Osmosis, Wyndex, Astroport), but this DEX aggregator is also scalable to all chains.
UX / UI Currently all smart contracts are deployed on our old frontend. New frontend designs have been created on Figma. We are in the process of deploying the new app and connecting the smart contracts to the new designs.
Challenges we ran into
Yield Aggregator/Autocompounder AbstractSDK has been in an early development phase most of the time, therefore there were some integration challenges we had to navigate. We are both startup teams, so we had to learn to work together closely so that both teams can succeed.
DEX Aggregator
- Integrating with various DEXs that use different protocols and APIs
- Ensuring that the automated market maker algorithm functions correctly and that trades are executed at fair market prices.
- Estimate different fees (ibc, slippage and etc)
- Implementing multi-hop swaps
UX / UI Like the expression, "Sorry for such a long letter, I didn't have time to write a short one". It's not so easy to make things easy. We spent significant time trying to simplify the process, and there are still more improvements to make.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Yield Aggregator/Autocompounder The autocompounder is quite extraordinary in that it is almost completely independent of the underlying DEX. We can scale this throughout Cosmos extremely quickly, as shown by the quick Neutron / Astroport integration.
DEX Aggregator Providing users with access to multiple DEXs and liquidity sources, increasing liquidity for various tokens, and enabling seamless cross-chain trading. We believe the aggregator could contribute to the development of the Cosmos ecosystem and promote the use of decentralized finance (DeFi) application. We were happy to develop a new mutually-beneficial partnership to help us to deploy multi-hop swap with brand new tech.
UX / UI Working hard to clean up our frontend. We are extremely pleased with our progress, and our vision for the future of it. We are excited to put it in the hands of users for more feedback.
What we learned
Yield Aggregator/Autocompounder We have learned how to efficiently build on AbstractOS tech, and we expect to see advantages of this as we continue building with their tech. Using new software can be challenging, but if it is novel and efficiently architected, through communication/collaboration it is worth.
DEX Aggregator How to use different IBC middlewares like packet forward middleware, how ibc releayer works. Different aspect of AMM in different DEXs.
UX / UI We thought in quite a lot of depth about how to deploy the most simple, functional, and clean frontend so users are pleased to use our technology. We want to make the DeFi experience not only seamless, but also fun.
What's next for FortyTwo
Next steps:
- Deploy the new frontend and get user feedback
- Begin marketing to Cosmos DeFi users
- Work on deploying multi-hop swap DEX aggregator
- Launch more auto-compounding strategies
- Launch interchain strategies and liquid staking strategies Be the frontend of Cosmos!
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.