Akropolis is a DeFi (decentralized finance) protocol. Akropolis products allow users to start and scale for-profit decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), access under-collateralized loans, grain yield, and farm tokens from integrated protocols/pools. The platform's AKRO cryptocurrency token is built on top of the Ethereum platform^[1][2].

In November 2020, Akropolis suffered a $2 million loss following a re-entrancy attack utilizing a flash loan from derivatives platform dYdX. In November, Akropolis and yEarn teams announced their merge.

Overview

Akropolis aims to give people the tools to save, grow, and provision for the future safely and without dependence on geography, central counterparty, or traditional financial practices. In order to do it, Akropolis has built AkropolisOS, a framework for creating for-profit DAOs, with customizable user incentives, automated liquidity provision enabled by the bonding curve mechanism, and programmatic liquidity and treasury management^[4][5][10].

Products

AkropolisOS

AkropolisOS is a framework for creating and managing distributed digital financial organizations. Anybody can use AkropolisOS to set up and collectively manage distributed capital pools with customizable user incentives, automated liquidity provision enabled by the bonding curve mechanism, and programmatic liquidity and treasury management. Designed as an upgradeable modular framework based on OpenZeppelin, AkropolisOS provides lego-like scalability without the loss of coherence and security.

Sparta

Sparta is an undercollateralized credit pool based on AkropolisOS, where members of which can earn high interest rates by providing undercollateralized loans to other members and by pooling and investing capital through various liquid DeFi (Decentralized Finance) instruments.

Delphi

Delphi is a pool built on AkropolisOS. It is a yield farming aggregator with dollar-cost averaging tooling. Delphi allows users to gain yield on synthetic savings, farm tokens from integrated protocols/pools, and invest in volatile assets using an active “all in” approach or a passive dollar-cost averaging strategy.

Tokenomics

Akropolis native token (AKRO) is used for bonding (staking) and is required for user participation in the AkroChain consensus which works as Dpos (Delegated-Proof-Of-Stake). Other functions of AKRO token are participation in the network governance and use as collateral in case of attracting a loan^[13].

AKRO is used for participation in the AkroChain consensus as a validator. Each validator needs to bond (stake) tokens. The minimal stake is defined automatically so that only a predefined number of nodes validates the network, others stand as nominators. The initial number of validators is established by the Akropolis team and can be changed by token holders’ votes. All AKRO holders can participate in block production. The reward for block producers is a sum of the transaction commissions on the ledger layer and commissions, charged on the market layer. In the case of dishonest behavior of the validator, tokens are slashed.

In August 2019, CertiK published the audit results for the smart contracts of AKRO token. This audit consisted of two methods: formal verification, and a more traditional “manual” audit. CertiK team reported:

Overall, CertiK found the Akropolis Protocol smart contracts to follow good practices. With the final update of source code and delivery of the audit report, we conclude that the contract is structurally sound and not vulnerable to any classically known anti-patterns or security issues.

There are two more tokens involved in the tokenomics of Akropolis. ASPT is the ERC-20 token of the Sparta Pool, and ADEL is the ERC-token of the Delphi product.  ASPT is classified as a network token that combines utility and governance functionality. On the governance side, it gives the right to vote for changes in the Sparta Pool parameters such as interest rates, bonding curve parameters, loan collateralization ratio, and more. As a utility token, ASPT gives the holder the right to get an undercollateralized loan. This works through the ‘Community Grant’ approach, where a user pledges no less than 50% of the loan amount in ASPT, and pool members who consider the user to be a good borrower vouch for them and lock their ASPT tokens as the additional collateral. If the sum of the collateralized ASPT equals the requested loan size, the borrower receives the loan in stablecoins (DAI, Tether, TrueUSD, USD Coin) and the community lenders receive a percentage of the interest. This interest-sharing model ensures pool members have an incentive to actively participate in the system and profit from providing collateral for other users. ASPT’s value is tied to the assets held in the DAO, as ASPT is minted or burned every time stablecoins are deposited or withdrawn.

ADEL is a governance token distributed through liquidity mining on Delphi. It grants governance rights over the platform and looks to launch with an equitable distribution inspired by YFI.

Re-entrancy Attack

In November 2020, Akropolis suffered a $2 million loss following a re-entrancy attack utilizing a flash loan from derivatives platform dYdX, according to Akropolis founder and CEO Ana Andrianova. The attacker pulled out tranches of $50,000 in DAI from the project’s yCurve and sUSD pools, according to The Block researcher Steven Zheng and Andrianova. The attacker collected $2 million worth of the stablecoin before exhausting the pools.

Akropolis later issued a statement on its website stating that “the majority of funds” are safe and it would be pausing all stablecoin pools. The firm added that it was “exploring ways” to reimburse affected users.

In an open letter published on Medium, the platform proposed a $200,000 "reward" for the hacker's cooperation. Describing the bug bounty payment "as compensation for your exploit," Akropolis said it "hope[s] that the hacker will take our offer into consideration and cooperate with the team to resolve the issue." "We would like to propose that you return the funds of our community members within 48 hours and in return, we will offer a $200,000 bug bounty," Akropolis said. "We will take measures to protect your identity as required. If you decide not to cooperate we will pursue criminal action and contact law enforcement." As of November 17, 2020, the Medium post with the letter was deleted.

Since the cyberattack, Akropolis internally investigated the exploit and is currently fixing "contract-level" issues. The company also launched an external analysis of the incident together with partners and investors. In a project update on November 16, Akropolis said the threat actor was able to exploit the "flawed handling of the deposit logic in the SavingsModule smart contract." "The exploitation leads to a large number of pool tokens minted without being backed by valuable assets," the company added.

yEarn Merge

In November 2020, Akropolis and yEarn teams announced their merge. According to a press release, both projects would merge to leverage each other's strengths, thus enabling each other to “do what they do best”^[15][16].

Akropolis will integrate yEarn vault technology and publish its yield farming strategies on its Vault V2 platform. Akropolis will also introduce an IOU token (iouAKRO) to track losses from its November 2020 hack. Platform profits will be redirected into this token’s fund to eventually repay all those who lost money from the hack. The team said it will streamline integration with insurance protocols to let more users benefit from coverage in the future.   Akropolis also gets access to yEarn, Pickle Finance, and Cream Finance products.

As for yEarn, the protocol will benefit from Akropolis's institutional contacts and business development acumen. Akropolis also committed to deprecate Sparta and AkropolisOS, two of its products that aren't related to yield farming. Both products will be moved to an open-source development model, focusing on a front end that will allow professional traders to access the new ecosystem from both companies.

Team

• Anastasia Andrianova (CEO & Founder)
• Kate Kurbanova (Co-Founder, Operations & People)
• Alex Maz (Technology Lead)
• Pavel Rubin (Solidity Developer)
• Dima Serd (Frontend Lead)
• Yana Mar (Community & Marketing)

Advisors

• Bokky Poobah (Blockchain Security Auditor)
• Peter Robertson (Pension & Insurance Advisor)
• Prabhakar Reddy
• Maria Paula Fernández (External Communications and PR)
• Laura Toma (Marketing Advisor)

Partners

• MakerDAO
• Polkadot
• Web3 Foundation
• ChainX
• ChainLink
• Wyre
• POA
• Cindicator
• Bancor
• Kenetic
• Zerion
• CertiK
• Aurum Law
• MixBytes EOS BP
• Messari Crypto