Equilibre Labs is the name for both the team and their Web3 products. Their main product integrates features from UniswapV2, UniswapV3, and Curve into a single Automated Market Maker (AMM). This product is designed for advanced performance and is supported by a multi-chain interface, allowing for rapid scalability across new ecosystems. ^[1]

Overview

Equilibre Labs was established to manage various products under a unified entity. Despite their differences in engineering and finance, these products share the foundation of a cohesive and capable team and a technical stack that allows integration into a single system. This approach creates user synergies, ensuring that security and maintenance standards are consistent across all products. It also strengthens the company's position when forming agreements with other entities, facilitating product integration within an in-house network, and distributing revenue. Equilibre Labs operates similarly to a traditional company with limited shares, enabling profit sharing through staking and governance of the products via tokens or shares. ^[2]

Automated Market Makers (AMMs)

Keller Finance

Keller Finance is a ve(3,3) DEX launched on Scroll, aiming to become the leading DEX on the chain by attracting liquidity and users to support ecosystem growth. It is essentially a direct fork of Equilibre, offering all the features available on Equilibre. A notable distinction is the use of Proxies in Keller's contracts, which allows for future additions like Concentrated Liquidity without requiring users to migrate their liquidity, addressing the issues associated with immutable contracts. ^[3]

KELL

$KELL has a total supply of 1,000,000 tokens and has the following distribution: ^[4]

• Treasury: 20%
• Team: 15%
• Investors: 15%
• Community Fund: 10%
• Partners: 5%
• Liquidity: 2.5%
• Airdrops: 2.5%

Sprinkler

Sprinkler, Keller Finance's Concentrated Liquidity Solution, introduces efficient trading and liquidity provision, giving users greater control and flexibility. It allows users to allocate assets along the price curve, combining features of UniswapV2, UniswapV3, Curve, and Convex into one platform. With significant daily trading volumes, Sprinkler offers opportunities for liquidity providers by redistributing trading fees weekly and incentivizing active participation in on-chain governance. Its primary goal is to enhance capital efficiency for stable and less volatile assets by encouraging liquidity providers to stake and receive emissions on the native token. ^[5]

Seed Round Investors

On March 26th, 2024, Equilibre Labs announced the results of a small, private investment round held for the KELL token. MCLB DAO, Drake On Digital, and Homeless Ventures were the three investors, and Equilibre Labs raised $42,000. ^[6]

Equilibre Finance

Équilibre is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that optimizes liquidity provision and exchange processes through its automatic market maker (AMM) and the ve(3,3) model. This approach enhances liquidity and reduces swapping fees for users. The platform's improvements include a revised internal bribes contract to prevent double claiming of trading fees within the same epoch and addressing decimal discrepancies in token rewards. Équilibre also features a streamlined user interface and optimized API to minimize errors and simplify interactions, enhancing the overall user experience from liquidity provision to veNFT management. Équilibre aims to create a secure, efficient, and user-friendly platform for liquidity provision and token swapping, addressing common DeFi challenges and promoting a more inclusive and democratic financial ecosystem. ^[7]

Équilibre operates with two primary tokens: the $VARA utility token and the $veVARA governance token, an ERC-721 NFT. Users can stake in liquidity pools to earn $VARA emissions, lock $VARA to obtain $veVARA for governance, and participate in governance to influence $VARA emissions distribution. The platform incentivizes active participation through emissions based on LP votes, rebases to maintain voting power, bribes for voter attraction, and trading fees from voted LP transactions. ^[7]

VARA

$VARA has a total supply of 200,000,000 tokens and has the following distribution: ^[8]

• Grants: 40%
• Partners: 33.75%
• Developers: 15%
• Community: 10%
• Testnet Rewards: 1%
• Liquidity: 0.25%

AMM Features

AMM Model

Equilibre Labs' AMMs use three types of tokens for utility and governance: Native Token, an ERC-20 utility token for rewarding liquidity providers; bTOKEN, an ERC-20 non-transferable escrowed governance token earned as bribes; and veNFT, an ERC-721 governance token in the form of an NFT. Native Token holders can vote-escrow their tokens to receive a veNFT, which can have additional tokens added at any time. The ve(3,3) mechanism combines the vote-escrow model introduced by Curve to incentivize long-term holding and the staking/rebasing/bonding game theory designed by Olympus DAO. This setup allows liquidity providers to earn Native Token emissions while veNFT holders receive protocol fees, bribes, rebases, and governance power. ^[9]

bTOKEN

bTOKEN is a non-transferable ERC-20 escrowed governance token with advanced DeFi capabilities linked to the liquid native token. It can be earned from bribed veVARA positions and represents one unit of VARA, securely stored within the bTOKEN smart contract. Users can convert bTOKEN to the native token and veNFT, each with specific penalties and vesting periods. bTOKEN addresses sustainability challenges from natural fluctuations in flywheel operations, avoiding selling pressure, increasing bribes and lock rates, and emphasizing price stability. It supplements the existing system without replacing native token emissions, rebases, or other sources. The Treasury will use a share of protocol earnings for buybacks and bribes of the native token, ensuring no new LP emissions are utilized. ^[10]

Lock & GovEarn

Lock & GovEarn is a cycle for DeFi participants to create and grow additional income streams using any AMM developed by Equilibre Labs. The process involves staking in any liquidity pool (LP) to earn emissions, locking the native token to obtain a veNFT, and using the veNFT to vote for gauges and govern emissions distribution. Participants can claim rewards in various forms, such as native tokens, stablecoins, blue-chip tokens, or partner tokens, depending on their votes. The earned native tokens can increase the veNFT balance, enhancing voting power and rewards in subsequent epochs. The additional income stream is generated by stablecoins, blue-chip tokens, and partner tokens earned through weekly governance participation. ^[11]

The FlyWheel Effect

The FlyWheel Effect is designed to highlight the importance of bribes to partners, fostering effective collaboration by leveraging system advantages. This effect can be achieved through emission locking and weekly bribes. Emission locking increases voting power and contributes to price stability and flexibility in revenue processes, requiring protocol-owned liquidity. Weekly bribes boost votes, emissions, and pool APR, resulting in more holders, swaps, volume, fees, and potentially higher prices. Combining weekly bribes with emission relocking allows protocols to adapt revenue to their needs, generating fees and rewards and making pools more attractive to voters. These strategies ensure a reasonable ROI for protocols. ^[12]

bVARA

bVARA is a locked governance token with liquid VARA in a secure 1:1 ratio within its smart contract. Initially accessible through bribes, future options are under internal consideration. These pathways feature specific penalty structures and vesting durations, detailed in the bVARA conversion graphic in the Movement section, addressing sustainability challenges amid operational fluctuations. ^[13]

Strategically designed, bVARA enhances incentive mechanisms and reinforces lock-in rates, bolstering price stability by increasing purchasing pressure. As an "add-on" feature, users continue to earn VARA emissions and rebases, with bVARA not generating additional LP emissions. This approach utilizes project treasury reserves and protocol earnings from Grants, Surge, KAVA Rise, or Vote income for VARA repurchasing and incentivization. ^[13]

Partnerships

Kava Labs

On March 23rd, 2023, Kava Labs and Équilibre became official partners. Équilibre received a $162,500 KAVA Grant from Kava Labs. In exchange, Kava Labs received a four-year locked veNFT position of 2,025,000 veVARA from Équilibre. This position was set to grow epoch by epoch and became the second-largest veNFT position on the platform, second only to Équilibre’s Treasury. ^[14]

Cheetahlabs

On July 10th, 2023, Équilibre announced its partnership with Cheetahlab, a team known for its software development, cryptography, and business development expertise. This collaboration introduced various innovative products and services to the KAVA chain, enriching its ecosystem. With aligned values of transparency and professionalism, Équilibre and Cheetahlab aimed to deliver a streamlined user experience. Their joint commitment focused on fostering community growth through continuous product development and innovation initiatives. ^[15]

Frax Finance

On July 3rd, 2024, Equilibre Labs announced their partnership with Frax Finance, a stablecoin DeFi protocol. ^[16]