Ionic Protocol on Metal L2 - Proposal for $MTL Incentives for Supply Liquidity Bootstrapping

[https://ionic.money]

Summary:

GM Metal DAO, I am a core contributor to Ionic Protocol, the largest native money market for yield bearing assets on Mode Network, and we recently started expanding to additional networks on the Superchain. We recently deployed to Base chain, and our next deployment is planned on Optimism. 

We currently have +100k users across two chains, ,with +300M in TVL across a number of assets, predominantly LST and LRTs.

We would be thrilled to deploy a Metal Market on Metal L2, once mainnet is live, and help grow the ecosystem by providing lending pools for productive assets, in order to contribute to the ecosystem’s capital efficiency.

In this proposal we will ask the DAO for $MTL incentives to bootstrap deep liquidity lending pools on the Metal L2 chain. Deep liquidity is essential for ecosystem development, and Ionic has a proven track record of managing deep pools with lending leverage and looping mechanisms for amplified yield efficiency.

Introduction to Ionic:

Ionic launched in January 2024, on Mode Network, as the defacto ecosystem lending protocol on the new DeFi centric L2 on Optimism. Since then, the TVL in the protocol has skyrocketed to more than $300M, positioning Ionic as the #1 application on Mode according to DefiLlama ( https://defillama.com/chain/Mode), with a majority of TVL coming from Liquid Restaking Tokens. Our key partners include Renzo, Etherfi, KelpDAO and Merlin. 

Our Superchain expansion aims at unifying lending liquidity across the multiple rollups to improve capital efficiency across the Superchain, with features like supply on chain x, borrow on chain y. Effectively any new rollup will be able to simply ‘call’ supply liquidity for collateral within a few clicks, hypercharging growth on any additional rollup.

Ionic has been the recipient of grants from Pyth Oracles and Mode Network, and benefits from strategic investors including Quantstamp, Connext, Redstone, Superfluid and more.

We are excited to help the Superchain grow to the next level and provide tooling and liquidity to the ecosystem.

Ionic has a loyal and educated DeFi community, with over 100k active users, and a mutlichain governance token model to be announced shortly, with incentives going live very shortly after.

Next, we will announce our L3 vision and strategy for becoming the lending liquidity layer for the interoperable, scalable future on Ethereum. After Base and Optimism, we seek to expand to Metal L2 to become the Metal L2 defacto lending market with strong ecosystem support both in marketing and token incentives for users. As we seek to diversify the treasury we do not exclude a token swap with the DAO to align mutual interests over a longer time horizon. 

Finally we will announce upcoming launches on BOB and Lisk, and will continue to onboard more Superchains as they become available and need supply liquidity and secure money market infrastructure.

Ionic Isolated Infra design is a powerful tool for bootstrapping liquidity at both the protocol level and chain layer - by allowing for advanced capital efficiency through a secure model. By combining tiered pool design with algorithmic supply vaults Ionic seeks to provide a seamless, interactive experience for protocols, asset managers and governance participants.

Proposal

In partnership with the Metallicus team, we are asking for 275,000 MTL to provide voting incentives on Ionic's Metal L2 deployment. The Metal L2 team will strategize with Ionic to provide $MTL to critical ecosystem markets and bootstrap deep liquidity for the chain. This program will last for 12 months:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zTngbMBQ4D-EnPQTIOYY7ClcJ6VG2_j2cri20zLjy3g/edit#gid=0

Furthermore, Ionic would like to request first access to Metal Pay Connect. With MPC, Ionic seeks to attract a broader fiat-native user base with a custom UI under the Ionic brand and a rev share agreement with core MPC.

Ionic Core Team

• Henri: Background in Marketing & BD, Founder of R&D consulting firm 0xpragma.xyz, serial investor in DeFi, ex LiFi, ex PlanetIX, consultant to multiple startups in web3 and web2.

• Rahul: Background in Engineering; ex CTO and Founder of Connext.network, previously Tesla, Nasa, serial DeFi investor and power user.