RFP-36: Radiant Expansion & Deployment to Base

Abstract

Based on a chain expansion survey conducted within the Radiant community in May 2024, Base emerged as the top choice with 48% of the votes, followed by Linea, Avalanche, Optimism, and other options (Mode, Solana) at around 10% each.

Note: Certain components of the Radiant tech stack, namely The Graph Protocol, Snapshot.org and Stargate Bridge, still do not support a few chains for at least another few months. This includes Mantle (The Graph), Blast (Snapshot), and Solana (Stargate, The Graph, and Snapshot).

RFP-36 seeks to secure approval from Radiant DAO stakeholders to deploy the Radiant protocol on Base.

Motivation

The Radiant community has chosen Base as the next expansion step to further drive the overall network effect on Radiant’s user base and increase the financial value and influence of the network. With the addition of numerous altcoin collaterals to the v3 Radiant Innovation Zone (RIZ) isolated markets and supported chains in the coming months, the network effect is expected to reach an explosive phase in Radiant’s short 2-year history. These altcoins, aligned with current market trends (such as dePIN, RWA, LRT, AI, NFTs and Memecoins), will enhance curb appeal and attract more users and dormant altcoin capital, seeking additional yield opportunities.

Specifically, enabling Base on Radiant creates unique fee-generating and user-acquisition opportunities for Radiant, capturing the growth and interest of users on the Coinbase platform. Base allows Radiant to instantly leverage Coinbase’s products and distribution: seamless Coinbase integrations, fiat onramps, and access to 73M+ users and $80B in assets within the Coinbase ecosystem.

In the first week of Base, 18k developers deployed 55k smart contracts on testnet. This sustained activity since the network's announcement has the potential to introduce new, valuable users to DeFi and Radiant.

Since Base's testnet launch on 02/23/2023, metrics illustrate strong activity:

• 73,000,000 unique addresses as of May 18, 2024.

• Average of 2,500,000 transactions per day for the first half of May 2024.

• 1,000,000+ addresses holding a Base Builder NFT for participating in Quests.

• In addition, Base has shown impressive retention for a blockchain, with ~70,000 unique wallets returning to Base for subsequent transactions within one day. The users–likely early developers–paint a promising outlook for the activity that may be seen on mainnet.

Key Terms

• dLP: Dynamic Liquidity Providers within the Radiant protocol.

• Interest rate curve: A model by which Radiant determines how interest rates change in response to different utilizations.

Specifications

If RFP-36 passes, the Radiant DAO will begin development and operational efforts to prepare for the Base launch.

It is important to note that the RDNT token supply adjustment specified in RFP-33 was minted on BASE due to a technical limitation preventing additional minting on currently supported chains. This minting was performed on BASE and then bridged to Arbitrum. However, this mint is unrelated to the operational deployment of Radiant on the BASE chain, which RFP-36 aims to address.

Steps to Implement

• Deploy the RDNT token on Base

• Initialize Radiant smart contracts on Base

• Update app.radiant.capital front end to reflect the addition of Base Chain

• Update vote power within the governance system to reflect the addition a fourth chain

Overall Cost/Impact

Auditing Costs: To ensure the security of the protocol, comprehensive audits are required. There may be some additional ad-hoc auditing costs, in addition to the over $1,000,000 already spent on audits.

Development Resources: Given the existing work already completed and under review from OpenZeppelin, this has been scoped as a “medium” effort project. Deployment on Base would include allocating resources for front and back developers, system architects, project managers, and testing, as well as any modifications required for compatibility with Base and implementation of notes from auditors.

Timeline

Q2 2024 launch

Voting

In favor: Support the implementation of RFP-36, agreeing with the decision for the DAO to deploy the Radiant protocol on Base.

Against: Oppose the implementation of RFP-36, preventing the DAO from deploying the Radiant protocol on Base.

Abstain: Undecided, but contributing to quorum.