Barger DAO (BADGER)is a decentralized autonomous organization built with the purpose of building the infrastructure and products required to fast-track Bitcoin as collateral across other blockchains^[1][2].

Badger DAO Brings DeFi to Bitcoin - DAO Rush Week Presentation + Q&AIn February 2021, Badger DAO and yEarn announced a partnership designed to bring yEarn’s vault expertise to Badger.

Overview

Badger is intended to be an ecosystem where projects and people from across DeFi can come together to collaborate and build the products that the crypto space needs. Shared ownership in the DAO allows developers to have aligned incentives while decentralized governance can ensure those incentives remain fair to all parties. The idea is less competing and more collaborating^[3][4].

Badger DAO is a community-led initiative and all decisions are made through a governed vote including what, how, and when Badger DAO products are created. Equally important is ensuring there is a fair distribution of BADGER, the Badger DAO native coin, to give all participants the opportunity to get involved and benefit.

Badger community members can propose new product ideas to the DAO, pitch the proposal to the greater community over video and finally take the proposal if it passes these stages to an official vote for approval. Once approvedб the Badger DAO ops team will collaborate with them to build it, fund itб and market it.

Tokenomics

BADGER is the Badger DAO's native token that governs the DAO. Like yEarn’s YFI token, BADGER will be launched with fair liquidity mining. That means no centralized control of the protocol upon launch, no raising VC funds, and no anonymous team that could incite fears of a potential rug pull^[5][7].

The community will decide how to distribute portions of the token supply after 35% of the tokens go to the Badger DAO for maintenance. Funds could be released for things like operations, partnership incentives, additional liquidity mining, and more, but only after the community votes.

According to the team, they will allocate 10% of the total supply (2,100,000 BADGER) to founder rewards and distribute them incrementally to public wallets. The remaining 90% will go to the community. To prevent any rug pulls, founder rewards will have a 1-year time lock on the wallet to release tokens evenly every week across 12 months.

Products

SETT

Real badgers build their homes out of leaves and grass. These homes, or Setts, are so fortified that they can last for centuries, providing a home for generations of badgers. Badger DAO wants to do the same for its crypto holders using SETT as its automated DeFi (Decentralized Finance) aggregator. Since Badger DAO exists to create Bitcoin (BTC) focused products, SETT models yEarn vaults but focused strictly on tokenized BTC assets. SETT will also be the only way for members to earn BADGER tokens.

Users will deposit assets to earn yield, while smart contracts will execute various strategies to put the assets to work across multiple DeFi protocols. Thus, users can optimize yield without all the hard work and mental effort required for executing the typical yield farming strategy. For a limited time, users who deposit funds to SETTS will receive yield plus BADGER. The protocol will apply a multiplier effect to rewards for users who stake for more extended periods.

There is a 0.5% withdrawal fee, but users can withdraw their assets at any time. There will be an additional 4.5% fee on any profits. These fees will cover gas and transaction costs.

SETT is still in its early stages. However, five SETTS ready for launch will be four Compounding Strategies: Curve – SBTC, Curve – RENBTC, Curve TBTC, and Badger – WBTC. With one SETT put aside for those wishing to stake BADGER to earn more BADGER.

BADGER Distribution

• Liquidity Mining: 4,830,000 BADGER.
• Developer mining: 3,150,000 BADGER - Developers that build products and Sett vault strategies will earn BADGER.
• DAO treasury: 7,350,000 BADGER.
• Gitcoin: 420,000 BADGER - Badger rewards anyone that donated to Gitcoin since inception.
• Airdrop: 3,150,000 BADGER.
• Team: 2,100,000 BADGER - The founding team will be rewarded BADGER at every block that it’s mined through the liquidity mining event. All the tokens will be in a time-locked contract and will be linearly released every month for 1 year.

DIGG

Along with the BADGER token, the team also launched its community-owned product called DIGG. This product adds to the list of existing Bitcoin (BTC) synthetics, but it is non-custodial.

DIGG is an elastic supply cryptocurrency that’s pegged to Bitcoin’s price. The supply of DIGG automatically adjusts each day across all wallets. And these adjustments are based on DIGG’s USD value vs. BTC. So, if DIGG’s price rises higher than BTC, the wallet balance increases. Likewise, if DIGG’s price drops, wallet balances decrease. At the same time, each day, the system summons a price oracle to determine whether to increase or decrease the supply of DIGG to drive the buy or sell pressure accordingly. The goal of the team and their product is to remove centralized control and custody over synthetic BTC and instead deploy elastic parameters to maintain the peg.

DIGG went live on January 22, 2021.

DIGG Distribution

• 40% Badger DAO Treasury
• 40% Liquidity Mining (over 22 weeks)
• 5% Founding Team (vested over 1 year)
• 15% Airdrop (600 immediately available)

Partnerships

Ren

In October 2020, Badger collaborated with Ren to explore different products and infrastructure Ren can participate in building ob Badger alongside the other community builders. At the forefront of Ren’s product suite is renBTC (RENBTC), a tokenized form of Bitcoin (BTC) on the Ethereum blockchain managed by a decentralized network of dark nodes^[14].

Harvest Finance

In October 2020, Badger collaborated with Harvest Finance to build collaborative yield-optimizing products for both communities. In partnership with Harvest, Badger DAO launched their interpretation of vault strategies, called Setts.

MEME

In October 2020, Badger partnered with Meme to launch their special Non-Fungible Token (NFT) collaboration called the Honey Badger Pot. The Honey Badger Pot is a challenge focused on yield farming. In November, Meme and Badger launched a limited edition collection of NFTs. Each one had a clue that helped the community locate the Honey Badger Pot, a DeFi (Decentralized Finance) treasure with a lot of BADGER rewards. All NFTs needed to be collected to claim the pot rewards.

Pickle Finance

In October 2020, Badger partnered with Pickle Finance to create better yields for tokenized BTC primarily through the Sett product, Badger’s yield aggregator. Prior to the collaboration, the Pickle team entered the tokenized Bitcoin yield space with pars, allowing users to deposit tokens from liquidity pools such as Uniswap or Curve Finance, and then execute strategies that maximize the returns of the depositor^[13].

Enoki

In October 2020, Badger announced the partnership with Enoki DeFi Club to collaborate on Non-Fungible Token (NFT) initiatives and integrating them with yield-reward systems in the near future. This includes using tokenized Bitcoin (BTC) as part of Enoki’s missions and their unique NFT’s as a part of the Honey Badger Pot.

Keep Network

In November 2020, Keep Network, a project building infrastructure for autonomous private data on public blockchains, decentralized applications (DApps), and DAOs, joined the Badger builders group. The partnership will involve collaborating to accelerate tBTC in Badger's existing products and future apps^[12].

Kyber Network

In November 2020, Badger DAO announced the induction of KyberSwap as their newest Badger builder. KyberSwap is a DEX platform that offers secure, non-custodial swaps of Ethereum-based tokens. It also offers non-custodial limit orders and reserve-based trade execution. Kyber Swap will be working alongside Badger to drive the trading velocity of tokenized Bitcoin (BTC) on their decentralized exchange (DEX).

At launch, KyberSwap is going to be a key partner in giving access to those wanting to trade BADGER and offering additional incentives for those that trade Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) or renBTC (RENBTC).

yEarn

On February 10, 2021, Badger DAO and yEarn announced a partnership designed to bring yEarn’s vault expertise to Badger. Badger will migrate their current synthetic Bitcoin (BTC) vault balance to yEarn’s, and the yEarn vault will display in Badger’s app. Additionally, the two protocols will work together to build a new Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) vault. The fees from the vaults will be shared between the Badger and yEarn protocols.

In their announcement post, Badger DAO noted that partnering with yEarn will enable them to construct high-yield vaults even without the distribution of governance tokens. In return, yEarn vault strategists will receive an additional reward on top of their normal vault performance fee from Badger’s “developer mining program,” a $258 million dollar fund dedicated to incentivizing developers to build with Badger.

Fireblocks

In April 2021, Badger DAO announced a forthcoming integration with Fireblocks, a digital asset storage, management, and DeFi on-ramp for institutional investors^[18].

BadgerDAO founder Chris Spadafora said that the integration will help make Badger’s vaults and products more accessible to institutional investors, and not just the retail DeFi crowd:

“Our intention is to further help onboard institutional Bitcoin holders to defi. With Badger smart contracts being easily integrated by anyone/company without our permission, we anticipate many more centralized businesses servicing the institutional market to be powered by Badger.”