Co-founder @rocksolidHQ. Vault guy. Product guy. Rocketpooler. Ex @Cloudflare, Ex @Mina. Unpacking honest takes on cross cutting and load-bearing seams.
The ether
Joined August 2009
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Today we’re announcing RockSolid’s $2.8M pre-seed fundraise and launching our platform to the world!
RockSolid vaults let anyone access the best of DeFi rewards with a single click. For protocols, asset issuers and DATs, it’s a platform to integrate that single-click experience for your token holders directly into your existing flows, giving them greater access to DeFi and more reasons to hold your token.
We’re backed by the best in crypto! @CastleIslandVC led the round with @theBBFund, @Kindredventures, @IDEOVC, @GSR_io, @FinoaConsensus, @PierTwo_com and a host of angels and we’re ecstatic to have them on board.
And we’re not launching alone! I care deeply about Ethereum and as such, have been a big supporter of @Rocket_Pool for a number of years. Ethereum is strong because it’s credibly neutral and credible neutrality comes from stake distribution. No one does more on that front than Rocket Pool. BUT, stakers want utility for their tokens and today rETH holders get it with the RockSolid rETH Vault.
With a single click, rETH holders can access the best of DeFi rewards via the RockSolid rETH Vault. Better rewards for token holders, more reasons to stake and hold rETH! A stronger rETH DeFi ecosystem means a stronger ethereum.
And we’re just getting started. Crypto is reshaping finance and vaults are at the forefront of that. They need to be simple; they need to offer great returns; and they need to be RockSolid. Wherever there’s a crypto balance, expect to see a RockSolid vault.
1/ Excited to share that RockSolid has raised $2.8M in pre-seed funding led by @CastleIslandVC w/ backing from @Rocket_Pool, @GSR_io, @kindredventures, @theBBFund, @ideoVC, @StanfordSBA, and others.
Today, we're also launching the first official rETH vault with @Rocket_Pool.
Some thoughts on the Google MPC launch:
- Google moving into custody technology solutions for financial customers is significant and may directly compete with Fireblocks, Fordefi etc, but less so with Anchorage/BitGo/CB custody who also act as the custodian itself.
- The policy engine is quite limited. It understands transfers and EIP-712 message signature, e.g. can restrict recipients, amounts, but it doesn't understand smart contract ABIs, required to specify fine-grained controls.
- So while it could form the base for custody technology, it's not a "DeFi" solution or "Blockchain Operations" solution yet. For example "Allow ETH/USDC swaps with only this approved recipient" or "Allow supply of USDG to Morpho, but not withdrawal" would currently not be possible.
At RockSolid, we layer our own strataOS risk engine on top of Fordefi to specify fine-grained DeFi policies. If you'd like to know more, get in touch.
For small transactions, I cryptographically sign the transaction details.
For large transactions, I scribble an easily forgeable signature and take a photo.
Q: What ate all the fable credits in the last session?
A: The implementer ran the test suite in the background but then called true 121 times over 16 minutes just to pass time, re-reading its full context each call
Watch those subagents!
Steven Pack | RockSolid retweeted
>be John Ternus
>2001
>26 years old
>nobody at Apple
>flown to a factory in Asia to check screws
>spec says 25 grooves
>supplier made 35
>no human being will ever see this
>lose your mind at them anyway
>win
>spend 25 years doing exactly that
>403 patents
>rip Intel out of every Mac
>build a phone 5.6mm thick
>watch the finance guys take over design
>watch every great designer quit
>watch Apple ship the same watch nine years straight
>watch $3499 ski goggles flop
>watch OpenAI walk off with 400 of your engineers
>September 1 2026
>they hand you the whole company
>kill Vision Pro 2 by lunch
>sue OpenAI by dinner
>mfw you inherit a $4 trillion machine and spend day one deleting your predecessor's legacy
Steven Pack | RockSolid retweeted
Un super-héros d'un nouveau genre vient en aide à une femme voilée en détresse
Steven Pack | RockSolid retweeted
I am very proud to announce that we have launched the @ammalgam protocol.
I have spent the last 4 years building a simple idea, a dex coupled with a lending protocol to create capital efficiency for dex liquidity providers, and the utility to borrow anything.
There is a lot to say from a technical perspective about the construction of various elements of the protocol. It is complex, this was the cost of building something that can theoretically support borrowing on any token. Decoupling off-chain crypto trading data from lending markets is a critical step to unlock decentralized finance.
Some critical features:
- Dex trading assets are automatically lent out in the integrated lending protocol to earn swap fees and lending fees
- Dex trading assets can be used as collateral to borrow against, unlocking neutral, long, and short market making, and leveraged liquidity.
- Leveraged market making is similar to concentrated liquidity in its effect, but uses borrowed assets rather than a protocol mechanism
- Users can borrow dex liquidity shares to allow for turning impermanent loss into impermanent gain.
- liquidity is fungible allowing for both simpler math for borrowing calculations and easier matching of users needs, similar to the advantages of perps over options.
- Swap fees scale with price change impact rather than swap size to allowing for algorithmically pricing informed vs uninformed order flow to the dex. Additionally making it expensive to manipulate the price
- A series of protections are in place to protect the concept of price from manipulation, using a price range from multiple twap lengths and spot price, pricing assets with the worst price in that range for ltv calculations, and limiting recorded prices in the twap to move 10 ticks per block to ignore outliers.
- Each new loan is checked for its impact to liquidation risk by bucketing the price curve into 25 tick tranches and capping how much potential liquidation risk can be supported in each tranche by pool swap reserves in case of cascading liquidations.
- Debt spanning multiple tranches can be liquidated in chunks, one tranche at a time using a dutch auction that increases the premium as the ltv of that chunk increases. This ensures that massive loans are not at risk of destroying the price by being liquidated all at once (👋 @newmichwill).
Perhaps some will say that the design and concept we put forward is similar to something else. This is likely true in many facets of what we built, we surveyed everything that has been built and took ideas from everywhere, this wouldn't be possible without the free sharing spirit of open source code. As such all contracts are open source and available to view on etherscan.
We spent a tremendous amount of time and effort working to fix all the issues we could find. Perhaps it was enough effort, perhaps it was not. Today marks the start of the final audit and the start of our ability to find product market fit. Today ends one chapter and start the next.
I am looking to get in touch with:
- Creators of tokens
- Vault operators
- Providers of on chain market making liquidity
- Anyone who has used a lending protocol before on chain
- Swap aggregators
- Searchers
- And anyone else who is curious about how to leverage what we built
Ammalgam is LIVE on Ethereum mainnet.
Trade impermanent loss for permanent gain: ammalgam.xyz
The AI tells change as the models evolve. "Sharpen" and "Load-bearing" are the two most obvious right now.
It's true. There continues to be experimentation at the L1 layer and Monad deserves a shout out of maintaining a reasonable TVL and activity post-launch, but there are many, many examples of well funded launches that have faded and the liquidity drifts back to Ethereum.
Thinking about $ETH and the current state of crypto... there's two interesting facts that keep popping into my head...
1) Defi on Bitcoin never took off
This really surprises me honestly because I always thought it would (I assumed via EVM or SVM L2's), but it hasn't, not even a little bit.
2) No other L1 has really staged a significant challenge to it either
Like seriously... its pretty much just Ethereum now... is it not?
Solana has had tremendous success obviously (and I like $SOL and own some), but its all sort of Solana-specific, if that makes sense...
And beyond that, no other chain has even come close to matching Ethereum...
At one point in 2021 there were other chains that got really popular for a time- first BSC, then Fantom, then Avalanche, etc- but really none of those were able to sustain the momentum.
And today, if you want to do anything serious in crypto, you are going to build it on Ethereum (or on something else that is itself built on top of Ethereum).
Steve Pack aka @paladin_eth- from @rocksolidHQ- talks about this in the below clip.
Its an older video but I was re-watching it and the segment struck me, as it really sums up what I think is the biggest bull case in Ethereum's favor...
Which is that for all intents and purposes, Ethereum IS crypto at this point.
Bitcoin has fully moved into its "store of value" era, which is awesome and which I support, but the fact is that there is nothing built on top of Bitcoin. And indeed only a tiny minority of $BTC holders actually hold it on chain.
And I'm not even saying this is bad- it just is what it is. I actually disagree with those who lament the Bitcoin ETF's and the Saylor accumulation and institutional adoption and etc - I think these developments are a net positive and were always bound to happen. But Bitcoin is definitely not "crypto" at this point (the BTC maxi's were right about that in the end, interestingly).
And then yeah, in terms of on-chain stuff, Solana has had a lot of success with memecoins and the sort of degen trencher world (and for a time I thought they were going to see breakout success via livestreaming on PumpFun, but then it pretty much died out)...
But for any serious "crypto" stuff its going to be Ethereum.
So yeah... if, like me, you are still bullish $ETH for the above reasons (or just a masochist, depending on how you want to look at it), and if you want to earn yield on it and support its decentralization, then I highly recommend @rocksolidHQ.
I've been an advisor to them for awhile now- hence will use this partnership tag thing, although these are just my thoughts and me trying to support them in general, not a specific advertisement or something- and I really view them as the best of the best as far as Ethereum and its roll in crypto goes.
They are hardcore idealists in every sense, and have tried to do everything right in building the project, abiding by the original OG Etherean ethos and the spirit of decentralization and permissionlessness and etc at every turn (they've also built their vaults without token incentives or points programs or hints of an airdrop or anything else, interestingly)...
In this regard, right now there are three RockSolid vaults...
a) the Rocksolid $rETH Vault
b) the RockSolid AutoPlus Looped $ETH Vault, and
c) the new RockSolid MegaETH USDm Vault (will link to this one below!)
Highly recommend checking them out!
And also highly recommend following the @rocksolidHQ account, as well as co-founders @wardy_ben and @paladin_eth 💪
And yeah... I really do believe that crypto will get its time in the sun... and that eventually all these assets will get the valuations they deserve...
And at that point there's honestly nothing in crypto that I think should be valued as high as $ETH 🫡
Steven Pack | RockSolid retweeted
Boosted APR of up to 15% for a limited time!
Access MegaETH DeFi with a single-click via the RockSolid MegaETH USDm vault.
One-click USDC deposits from mainnet. USDm exposure via Aave generating ~5%. Plus an APR boost from bonus USDC per day.
The USDC will be added to the vault each day. Depositors in the vault will automatically receive their pro-rata share of those incentives (no need to claim). The earlier you deposit, the greater your share of the incentives!
As MegaETH DeFi expands, we'll diversify TVL into the best risk-adjusted yield. Staying on top of what's live, what's safe, and where the yield is, that's our job.
Deposit once. We do the rest.
Steven Pack | RockSolid retweeted
The RockSolid Looped ETH Vault uses @LidoFinance v3 to allocate ETH directly to @PierTwo_com validators.
Excited to have our institutional-grade solution highlighted by Lido 🤝
Public Vault: RockSolid AutoPlus Looped ETH Vault
An automated looped ETH staking strategy for institutional stakers, with flexible liquidity, robust security, and transparent onchain performance
Built by @rocksolidHQ · Curated by @tulipacapital
lido.fi/stvaults-products-ov…
Single click, all of MegaETH DeFi!
Steven Pack | RockSolid retweeted
If the global financial system was re-built from the ground up today, it would all 100% be built on blockchain rails.
Nobody would seriously suggest replicating the tradfi system as it currently stands, which is a bizarre hodgepodge of carrier pigeon level technology sewn together with duct tape for all intents and purposes.
This means- by extension- that blockchain-based rails are inevitable.
They are where the global financial system is heading - no matter how many painful exploits or mishaps we have a long the way.
And "vaults" increasingly look like the UI that will power that transformation.
As @rocksolidHQ co-founders @wardy_ben and @paladin_eth state in the below interview with @wyatt_khos from @CastleIslandVC:
"If we believe this future...
the financial plumbing for the whole world, and replacing the existing tradfi ecosystem...
Then there has to be simplicity.
And there has to be a better user experience.
Right now defi is hard."
This is an older interview from late last year but only got uploaded online here recently, and there's a bunch of great clips in it.
The exploit Ben references is an older one from the time of recording, but the exact same thing could be said now in the wake of the KelpDAO attack or other recent exploits.
The interesting conclusion that I think can be drawn though, is NOT that the recent exploits mean that defi won't work- again, defi and blockchain-based rails are 100% inevitable- but rather that defi will primarily be navigated via vaults, precisely BECAUSE vaults are actively managed.
Indeed this is one reason I always used Beefy Finance alot last cycle- even for stuff like LP'ing or staking that I could have ostensibly just did myself- because I liked the idea that the Beefy team was constantly monitoring the strategies in question.
And that line of thinking very much presaged the direction defi has gone in since then and is currently going.
The best teams in defi today all have top-tier 24/7 threat monitoring that can instantly pull liquidity if anomalous activity pops up.
This is something that an individual defi user just cannot really replicate.
And that sort of setup- where vaults serve as intermediaries ensuring a) you get the best yields possible, and b) your funds are secure- will increasingly be the manner in which most capital utilizes the advantages of on-chain finance via a vis yield generation.
Obviously there's still a ton of work to be done re: security in defi (and the elephant in the room that 90% of these attacks are being done by an actual rogue nation-state), but again- if you view blockchain-based rails as inevitable, then all of this will have to be accomplished.
But yeah...
Tl/dr - we are all gonna hear the term "vaults" more and more as crypto ramps up, and the trillions of dollars of capital sitting in tradfi accounts and idle balances and RWA's starts getting brought on chain via them :)
And that is exactly what Ben and Steve are focused on at @rocksolidHQ.
I am an Advisor to RockSolid and have been helping them with various stuff behind the scenes, so flipping the 'partner' switch on this.
And yeah, highly encourage you to check out the interview in full!
Will provide more details and some additional links below :)
🤝 Paid partnership
So ~$200M of rsETH released during a bridge with no corresponding burn, supplied to Aave on Arbitrum and Mainnet and borrowed against.
With rsETH missing ~12% of its backing. Aave holds the bag (bad debt), but some combination of Kelp/LayerZero likely the cause.
Scenarios?
- Aave umbrella? Most of the rsETH on Aave is for looping, so nearly all the borrows are ETH. There is $50m in Umbrella for ETH on mainnet and $1.2B rsETH supplied, so a 12% hair cut on that is > Umbrella ETH coverage. I.e. there will be bad debt if the 12% haircut is recognized on mainnet. (rsETH redemptions currently frozen). No Arbitrum Umbrella AFAIK?
- Some combination of parties plugs the hole? rsETH goes back to fully collateralized before redemptions are re-enabled, liquidations and bad debt avoided?
- Limbo? rsETH redemptions stay frozen while the parties battle it out. No liquidations until it is. ETH borrow rates stay elevated.
He knows things.
Heard live at @Blockworks Digital Asset Summit
“Eventually, all asset management will be done through vaults.” - @Matt_Hougan
Yessir 🫡. Short term sugar hits are tempting wrt to TVL, but as you'd appreciate @rektdiomedes; it's empty calories. Better to grind and build up rocksolid, sticky customers and TVL.
It is easy to be disheartened about defi right now...
However at the same time... there are fresh, idealistic teams absolutely getting after it...
And sowing the seeds of what will be our (imho) pre-ordained long-term subsumattion of the archaic and ossified legacy tradfi financial rails...
@rocksolidHQ is a perfect example (see QT'd tweet from co-founder @paladin_eth below)...
I joined up with these gents as an advisor late last year and have watched them build and ship in the time since then and they have literally bent over backwards to do everything by the book:
- Obsessive, hyper-intentional focus on security (again see tweet below)
- No mercenary deals for short-term TVL gains
- No weird gimmicks or campaigns
- And in addition, they have even taken the bold position of eschewing a points program despite being tokenless, and are attempting build a fully-functioning successful on-chain business without any airdrop-incentivized infusion of users and/or TVL...
And they've been pretty darn successful thus far... with one 8-figure $ETH vault and one 7-figure $ETH vault despite $ETH cratering in the time since they launched (right around the market peak in early October)...
And imo they are perfectly positioned to thrive when the bull market arrives later this year, as I agree with the suggestion many have put forth that "vaults" will be the defining term of this cycle and the primary manner in which defi reaches the masses 💪
But yeah - @samkamani just published a few great clips from his recent interview with them, so I am going to embed all of those below in the thread!
Also I am going to flip the partnership tab thingy on this since I'm an advisor for them (although I've noticed half the time it doesn't show up when I do threads for whatever reason)...
And then will also provide a link to their two vaults at the end of the thread too :)
And finally, if the above sounds appealing to you, make sure to...
- follow the official @rocksolidHQ account
- follow co-founder @wardy_ben
- follow co-founder @paladin_eth
- check out their vaults if you want some good hearty yields on $ETH!
And as always please RT to support 💪🙏
A few thoughts on Resolv and other vault blows ups recently
1) Resolv was an OpSec hack. An EOA controlled an admin role and the key was hacked or used by an insider
-> Check your vault platform uses either an MPC or a Safe for all admin roles.... If it's not possible to do onchain, an auditor can help.
2) The hack is a specific version of a generic type of hack; oracles. The SERVICE_ROLE wasn't an oracle in the traditional "price oracle" sense, but it was an oracle in the sense it was an external entity verifying some action had taken place (USDC deposits had been made and a swap requested).
DeFi in general and especially vaults keep getting hit by this over and over. Even sophisticated designs and sophisticated teams (e.g. the Aave wstETH oracle) make mistakes.
Vault platforms have essentially 2 options; trust the code only or add human oversight.
-> RockSolid vaults require 2 parties to agree in order to "oracalize" an NAV update. A valuation manager submit their suggested price (can be automated or human) and a secondary MPC that uses secure enclaves and humans in the flow is required to confirm. Hacking one or the other is insufficent.
It's not possible for "block-by-block" live NAVs, but it's RockSolid and it's how we've avoided many of the recent issues.
3) Stream/Elixir was just blindly handing deposits to another party with "Trust me bro" agreements.
-> RockSolid allocations are visible realtime onchain (see Debank link on our vaults) and we add human commentary as allocations change so our depositors can understand the why, not just the how.
-> RockSolid vaults operate under a mandate. A curator can propose a change in strategy, but they can only execute whitelisted strategies that have been reviewed and are then published. Separation of roles make our vaults more RockSolid.