Risk Labs Funding Proposal for Growth, Expansion and Across v3

Author: Kevin Chan Status: Proposal

---

Summary:

The Risk Labs foundation is requesting 100,000,000 $ACX to fund the continuing growth and expansion of Across protocol and to build Across v3. Risk Labs has delivered to the Across community the fastest, cheapest and most secure cross chain bridge. There are still many opportunities that Across can capture to further establish its dominance and necessity in the interoperability space. Risk Labs would use these ACX tokens to establish potential strategic partnerships and to incentivize developers and contractors. Regardless of the agreement, these tokens will not be sold for at least 2 years.

Motivation:

Across protocol has established itself as a dominant competitor in the cross chain bridge space. Over the last two years, the Risk Labs foundation has worked tirelessly to design, build, operate, and market the bridge that Ethereum deserves. Across shines on many metrics and the following are some of the accomplishments the Risk Labs team has helped achieve:

*Across has completed over $2.6B of bridge transfers since inception and currently averages around $11.5MM of volume per day

*Across consistently has the lowest bridge transfer fees relative to its competitors which is the result of Risk Labs' developers designing and delivering the most gas-efficient and capital-efficient bridge.

*Across has steadily gained market share and is well ahead of its competitors (with the exception of Stargate which is benefitting from Layerzero airdrop farming). You can track this on DeFiLlama.

There remains many areas of opportunity for Across to grow and maintain its leadership in cross chain bridging. Across can continue improving its efficiency to ensure it remains the fastest and cheapest bridging option. Across can further grow its volumes by expanding to more destinations which includes more L2s and other L1s.

To further excel Across protocol and secure its position in the interoperability domain, Risk Labs is planning to build Across v3. Across v3 will establish Across protocol as the optimal intents based bridge. Across v3 will continue to improve protocol efficiency and enhance user experience. The improvement in design would allow other dApps in the ecosystem to integrate with Across and provide account abstraction which allows users to seamlessly move between chains.

Capturing these opportunities will increase volumes and total bridge fees, driving value to the Across ecosystem. However, funding the research and development to achieve these goals requires significant resources. Therefore, Risk Labs is requesting 100,000,000 $ACX tokens to help fund this endeavor. Risk Labs would use these $ACX tokens to establish potential strategic partnerships and to incentivize developers and contractors. Regardless of the agreement, these tokens will be locked and not sold for at least 2 years.

Specification & Implementation:

To fulfill this funding request, the Across DAO will need to vote for and execute this proposal using oSnap. $ACX token holders will vote through Snapshot and the proposal will include the exact transfer transaction that will send 100,000,000 $ACX to the Risk Labs multisig address on mainnet (0x8180D59b7175d4064bDFA8138A58e9baBFFdA44a). If the vote passes, anybody can propose to execute this transaction and a 5 day dispute window will be open to UMA’s optimistic oracle to verify the validity of the transaction.

Risk Labs intends to use these tokens to secure potential strategic partnerships and incentivize developers and contractors. Risk Labs will ensure that in any agreement where there is a transfer of ownership of tokens, whether onchain or offchain, these tokens will clearly have restrictions that prevent the sale of the tokens for at least 2 years.

Voting:

A "yes" vote sends 100,000,000 $ACX from the Across DAO treasury to Risk Lab's multisig address on mainnet (0x8180D59b7175d4064bDFA8138A58e9baBFFdA44a). Risk Labs will use this to fund the continuing growth and expansion of Across protocol and to build Across v3. These tokens will not be sold for at least 2 years.