PGP-35 l Cooper Labs Service Providing Phase IV

Summary: This proposal aims to renew the Cooper Labs service providing for a fourth period of 12 months.

Rationale: A little less than 16 months after being engaged by the Parallel DAO to contribute to its development, and with the third service providing contract coming to its end, we are confident that we have fulfilled our commitment to the DAO. We are therefore proposing to DAO that we renew our service providing contract for a fourth period, starting on November 1st 2025. Having demonstrated our ability to perform for the DAO and in order to increase the financial stability of Cooper Labs, we propose to renew the contract for a period of 12 months instead of 6 months.

Over the past 6 months we notably have:

• Launched Parallel V3
• Launched USDp on 16 chains
• Initiated Marketing Strategy
• Started Parallel V3 BD, including dozens of already announced partnerships + tons of unannounced ones

Current & Future Work: (non-exhaustive)

1. Products Development (as presented in the Roadmap)

• Improve Parallel V3
• Improve the App (available at app.parallel.best)
• Develop Tools supporting Parallel V3

2. Ecosystem Development

• Increase synergies with other DeFi platforms (e.g Balancer, Beets, Curve, Spectra, Aura, Odos, Trevee, Frax, Euler, Dia, RedStone, OpenOcean, KyberSwap, Gluex, etc.)
• Promote the use of Parallel stablecoins across the DeFi space & beyond
• Support the expansion of the Parallel protocol on new chains
• Implement go-to-market strategy (more details later in the proposal)

3. Marketing

• Develop brand awareness
• Increase onchain and offchain marketing campaigns (ads, social media, etc.)

4. Governance

• Active participation in Parallel governance discussions & votes
• Engaging with DAO members on forum discussions
• Collaborating with other contributors & stakeholders
• Develop a sustainable long-term treasury strategy for the protocol

5. Team Operations

• Cover operational expenses, including tools, subscriptions, and infrastructure

Go-to-Market Strategy: We spent the summer thinking about the best strategy for the protocol:

• Should we focus on v3.1?
• Should we build v3.1 while expanding the protocol?
• Or should we focus on the growth of the protocol?

After a lot of discussions, we decided to choose the third option and focus on the growth of the protocol. Parallel V3 now allows us to scale and deploy quickly on new chains (e.g., Avalanche in less than 15 days), moreover demand for stablecoins and yield is growing exponentially. Parallel is perfectly positioned to capture market share.

So what is the strategy?

1. The Parallel V3 architecture allows USDp to be minted/burned & staked/unstaked at any time for its collateral. This means that DEX aggregators can integrate us as a DEX, allowing them to get the best price for USDp and achieve higher volume.
2. Assets authorized in the backing obtain instant liquidity, with the protocol acting as a DEX. We sell this instant liquidity on their assets to partners (e.g., Trevee, Frax) while being integrated everywhere via the integration of our mint/burn in DEX aggregators in exchange for co-incentives on common liquidity pools (e.g., USDp/scUSD).
3. The goal of steps 1 and 2 is to increase liquidity on DEXs for one reason only: to meet the criteria necessary to get price feeds for USDp and sUSDp (e.g., 3x$1M for RedStone). Once the price feeds have been secured, the objective of step 3 is to deploy sUSDp as collateral and USDp for lending on as many lending protocols as possible (e.g., HypurrFi, Silo). Why is this important? Let’s say that sUSDp with a yield of 12% APR is allowed as collateral on a lending protocol against USDC to be borrowed at 6% APR. Someone deposits 1 sUSDp as collateral, borrows 0.95 USDC, swaps the USDC for sUSDp, redeposits it as collateral, borrows USDC again, and so on, obtaining a net yield well above the base sUSDp rate (e.g., 25% net APR). For an initial 1 USDp, between 4 and 8 USDp could be minted via lending loops.
4. We now have sUSDp available as collateral on lending protocols ready for lending leverage. The question is: who will come and do this strategy? This is where liquid funds enter the game. Over the past 12 months, demand for yield on stablecoins has grown exponentially. Our target is to sell Parallel leverage strategies to these funds.

Note: We are already working on each stage of the strategy. We are confident in our ability to reach stage 4 before the end of 2025.

Commitment to Transparency: We are committed to building in public and having a policy of transparency towards Parallel Protocol. In addition, all work conducted by Cooper Labs on behalf of Parallel will continue to be entirely open-source and licensed by the protocol, which will decide on the type of license to be granted for each product developed. The post summarizing our past, current and future work is available here.

Requested Budget: We request an amount of 396,000 USD (+0.00% compared to Phase III) & 1,500,000 PRL (+67% compared to Phase III) for a 12-month period. While we propose to keep the current cash amount per month, with no requested increase, we are requesting an increase of PRL payments as we are strongly confident in it. Payment will be made in 12 installments, with one payment at the end of each month, i.e. 33,000 USD & 125,000 PRL per month.

Note: Cooper Labs agrees not to sell any PRL received for a period of 12 months after receipt. However, we are requesting the possibility of using tokens to provide liquidity, participate in the governance of the protocol and perform arbitrage operations.

Means:

• Human Resources: Multisigners will need to sign and execute transactions to execute the proposal.
• Treasury Resources: $33,000 worth of USDp and/or USDC & 125,000 PRL per month, for a 12 months period.

Technical implementation:

• On chains where the DAO Treasury is deployed:
  • The DAO Multisig will transfer $33,000 worth of USDp and/or USDC & 125,000 PRL at the end of each month for a 12 months period, the 12-month period beginning November 1st 2025.

Voting options:

• For the Service Providing Phase IV
• Against / Rework the Proposal
• Abstain

Author(s): Cooper Labs