REN DIGEST #1 — May 2022
A newsletter from the Ren community about all things Ren-
Below you will find a community organized newsletter, aiming to provide a periodic roundup of all things Ren. We hope our bite-size format helps guide your research into Ren’s development, ecosystem expansion and RenDAO activity.
A few points before we dive right in:
1) All the content in this newsletter is only for educational and entertainment purposes.
2) No financial or legal advice is provided in any part of this newsletter.
3) You are strongly encouraged to do your own research and consult qualified professionals as part of your due diligence process.
4) If you want to contribute with time and effort to help prepare Ren Digest #2, please hop on Ren’s discord and join the community of volunteers. We welcome your feedback, ideas and contributions!
Part I: Ren Development
Ren’s exploration in becoming an L1
Core developers have proposed to RenDAO considering a “subnet model as the future of Ren as a L1 platform” through an RFC that is live and open for questions and comments by the community.
Looking to “expand RenVM into an L1”, a detailed RFC was posted on May 10, 2022 with context for a productive conversation with the Ren community on this topic.
If you are interested in reading up and sharing your thoughts on this RFC, you can do so here.
Gas optimization withdrawal fix
Always looking to optimize the user experience, Ren developers announced a successful upgrade at the RenJS level, which enables cheaper gas costs for any particular chain interacting with Ren.
More information on the specifics of this update can be found here.
Part II: Ren Ecosystem
Varen X continues driving volume through their application
Varen Finance, a protocol powered by Ren, continues demonstrating a successful and steady use of cross-chain swaps through their interface.
They held a great AMA on 4/30/22, with some exciting updates, such as deploying on Fantom (it would be their 6th chain supported), launching Varen-As-A-Service (VAAS) in the next few quarters, and focusing efforts to ensure RenBTC “as the key routing system across chains as it has the best liquidity”.
VarenX is actively engaging the teams at AVAX, Arbitrum and Fantom to help bring RenBTC liquidity there too.
Lots of great information in their discord community that you can check out, and make sure you follow their twitter to stay up to date.
CitadelDAO announces early access to REN (Knights of Ren)
Citadel is a Treasury DAO that is aiming to have the largest BTC owned DAO position. Its token CTDL governs the treasury and protocol. Citadel also aims to build governance-influenced (CVX/BADGER/CRV/ETC) assets to improve BTC yield across DeFi platforms. Check your availability here. Join their discord here.
In addition to early access to the Citadel, There was an RIP to use a % of the CEF funds to participate in the Initial Knighting round, details here. If you participated in voting, 2 points to you! It was voted that 15–20% of the treasury should be used. The final % amount tbd by the Yield Ops Group.
Catalog announces airdrop for DNOs and RenBridge users
Another exciting project, powered by Ren, has announced an airdrop for users of the Ren bridge as well as darknode operators.
Once live, Catalog aims to provide a “decentralized exchange with a Binance-like experience”, and by delivering a breakthrough model of single-sided liquidity, “users providing liquidity do not have to risk impermanent loss”, thus setting Catalog apart from other AMM/DEX solutions in the space.
You can join the waitlist to try out their product once the private beta launches, and make sure you join their discord community and also read all their answers to the lively community AMA.
Kava and Moonbeam platform partnership goes live
Ren announced successful integrations for Kava (on Cosmos) and Moonbeam (on Polkadot), both EVM chains. This is a welcomed development for Ren, as it continues developing bridges for a thriving multi-chain world. Learn more about the Pioneer program here.
Part III: RenDAO and Community Initiatives
Treasury Group formalized and CEF funds deployed successfully
With the emergence of Ren DAO alongside Ren Labs we are witnessing Ren’s body of decentralization slowly branching into a network of various compartments. One of these sections, “Treasury Working Group” has now evolved into “Yield Ops Group” with the following structure.
@Renfield and @Thomm have volunteered to fulfill Chairman and Secretary roles. The work of these roles encompass, but not limited to:
- The Chairman role involves setting meeting agendas, facilitating meetings, and representing the Yield Ops Group on community calls or via the Announcements channel.
- The Secretary role involves maintaining the ledger of CEF transactions/movements and documenting meeting discussions, decisions made, and action/follow-up items.
The Yield Ops team’s posts containing meeting notes have been added by @Thomm on the Ren Forum under DAO Working Group / Yield Ops.
Additionally, Yield Ops Group took its first official action in March by reimbursing Ren Bridge fees for users that bridged assets to Fantom during the window of the Solidly snapshot push. The Yield Ops Group is excited to have executed the DAO’s decision to fulfill its commitment to the Ren Bridge users that helped us secure the Solidly voting NFT.
Next up in the agenda was to put the CEF to work rather than letting the funds sit idle, to summarize that event, allow us to quote the concise update from @Renfield:
Marketing initiatives
The Ren community completed a successful marketing initiative where members submitted and voted for videos and emojis that best capture the value proposition and spirit of Ren! The winner earned a 1000 Ren award.
The winners of the video explainer was AlternateCrypto and Shillliam Shakespeare, who delivered awesome tweets. Check out their superb work!
The winner of the emoji context was once again well known and dear community member @ShiliamShakespeare ! He engaged the community with several sets of thoughtful and exciting emojis up for votes to receive an infusion of Ren branding for each of the emojis. With the help of a RenLabs team member (Konstantin), the winning set voted by the community as most popular, was infused with Ren’s logo and colors. You can join Ren’s discord to start using the cool, award-winning emojis!
You can check out ShilliamShakespeare’s twitter here and follow him, so you don’t miss creative memes from Ren’s Unofficial Meme Artist!
If you are a marketing maven, and would like to contribute to RenDAO’s strategies on that end, do join Ren’s community.
Whitelist Catalog for Community Ecosystem Fund (CEF)
The Yield Ops Group was granted full flexibility in RIP-014 to work with the CEF within the parameters defined in the RIP. A number of projects were whitelisted to be utilized in order to build up the treasury, accelerating the growth of the funds in a secure and efficient manner.
The RIP did however not take into consideration the highly anticipated launch of Catalog which will offer yield in form of CAT token when providing liquidity. Our beloved community member @Arviee prepared a new RIP to include Catalog in the whitelist which was unequivocally voted in favor by DarkNode Operators.
More details around the RIP and voting results here.
Ren DAO updates
We would like to encourage everyone in the community to participate in Ren DAO in whatever capacity each member feels they can add value. To fulfill the purpose of decentralization and turn RenDAO into an autonomous entity everyone’s effort counts.
At present time there are three different groups being shaped; 1) The Comms Working Group with first mission to establish a monthly community update (this being the first edition), 2) The Yield Ops Working Group where current responsibility lies within the framework of managing the Community Ecosystem Fund (CEF) and 3) The Marketing Working Group which recently completed its first mission, Ren Emoji Project.
These branches with their root at RenDAO will with time define the decentralized body of Ren which will in turn take over full control over Ren in the journey of progressive decentralization. This will only be possible with the help of… YOU! We are very excited to see how things have shaped up until now and would love to hear from more community members.
Thank you for reading Ren Digest #1, fRen!
Feel free to join Ren’s discord to share your feedback on this newsletter, or contribute your time to cover specific topics for the next edition!
