[eGP] Grant request for Yacht Labs Inc. to improve native iOS interface for Euler Finance lending & borrowing

Euler Grant Proposals Voted Proposals
1

Title: Grant request for Yacht Labs Inc. to improve native iOS interface for Euler Finance lending & borrowing

Authors: Adam Straus, Henry Minden

Submission Date: 10-20-2022

Summary:

We are requesting an $18,000 grant for continued improvement of a native interface for Euler Finance in the Yacht iOS app. Yacht is a native mobile application and dApp platform which allows users to interact with DeFi protocols on their devices. You can download our MVP on our website. It allows Euler users to view their accounts and configure custom notifications triggered by changes in health score and interest rates. By building a mobile interface for Euler, we will increase the user base of the protocol, increase TVL and give users the ability to manage their loans and borrows on the go.

Abstract:
Yacht is a team of engineers bringing decentralized mobile finance to all. Henry Minden, a founder of the Constellation Network, and Adam Straus bring nearly 20 years of engineering experience to the team with a focus on mobile development. Julian, our lead designer, has worked as a founder and CEO of web3 based fulfillment company, Project Verte and has worked closely with tech startups, emerging consumer brands, and Fortune 500 companies as a brand consultant, creative director, and advisor for over 15 years. We are developing an iOS (and later Android) application which provides users with native interfaces for core DeFi primitives starting on the Ethereum network and expanding into multi-chain support.

There is currently not a single native interface for any major lending protocol on Ethereum. Users must interact with these protocols on their PCs which limits usability and potential for reactivity. In lending protocols, token price and interest rate volatility can require quick user action either to re-collateralize loans or to take advantage of market conditions to short/long an asset. By enabling users to take action on their phone, they no longer worry about having access to their PCs to manage their assets.

We have already built out the basic read-only interface for Euler Finance lending and borrowing including notifications. This grant will continue development to enable signing transactions with a hardware wallet and building out the mobile feature-set to more fully match Euler’s desktop user interface. This includes hardware wallet functionality for borrowing and lending in any activated market, self-mint and burn, visualization of profit and loss and health score v time trajectory.

Motivation:

DeFi is growing at a rapid pace: there is $15 billion dollars in TVL in Ethereum lending protocols and a billion dollars flowing through Ethereum DEXs every day. But there are still only about 5 million active DeFi wallets in the Ethereum ecosystem. If we want the decentralized finance user base to grow and our protocols to be secured with higher TVL, we need to increase accessibility by enabling users to interact with core DeFi protocols on their mobile devices.

There are many mobile wallets out there, the most famous being Metamask and Coinbase Wallet. But these wallets are not native integrations of DeFi protocols but rather require you to find the protocol you want to interact with in a dApp browser and open a web browser view on your phone to begin using the protocol. Web views on mobile devices are not a natural path forward to onboard millions of users into DeFi. As users of these protocols, we find interacting with DeFi on our mobile devices to be a painful experience. At Yacht, we build integrations from the ground up with mobile UX in mind, leveraging our years of experience to provide users a great mobile product.

We chose Euler as our lending protocol because of its borrow/lending integration with any ERC20 token that has a WETH pair. We value the core web3 tenets of composability and decentralization, so Euler Finance was a natural fit for Yacht.

With the completion of this app, Euler will have the distinction of being the only major ETH lending and borrowing protocol with a native mobile interface. By enhancing the accessibility at the application layer, our goal is to bring more users and liquidity to the Euler protocol.

Benefits of Native Mobile:

With a mobile device, it becomes easy to stay updated on your borrowing and lending positions. Push notifications enable users to respond to price changes and re-collateralize or pay back their loans quickly to prevent unexpected liquidations. Users can also quickly check their borrowed assets interest rates to ensure they have enough tokens to pay down their loans and prevent liquidation.

Onboarding with Yacht and managing your Euler accounts is simple. We enable users to connect their ledger and manage any existing loans and borrows right when they start up the app.

Specification & Implementation:

We are requesting an initial $18,000 grant to fund the development of the Euler mobile interface with a full feature set that matches the web application’s interface:

  • Connecting a Ledger device to sign and send txs
  • Borrowing and Lending in any activated market
  • Ability to self-mint and burn
  • Visualization of profit and loss on deposited funds
  • Visualization of health score v time trajectory based on current market conditions

How Long Will Development Take:

To ensure that we have built a robust system, we expect development to take 4 to 6 weeks from the proposal vote going through.

What will the $18,000 be used for?

  • AWS costs ($1000)
  • Node provider cost ($1000)
  • Contributor Compensation ($16,000)

To enable notifications, we will need to host a database which tracks users’ loans. We will only store data that is publicly accessible on the blockchain and will not be collecting any personal data or other information that is not publicly available. A mapping will be stored between a user’s device ID and settings they have determined regarding when to notify them of changes in market conditions.

Future Roadmap:

After the successful completion of the aforementioned scope of work, the Yacht Labs teams intends to add the following feature set:

  • Android App
  • One-touch leveraged longs/shorts through self mints and AMM swaps.
  • Enhanced visualizations of portfolio

Voting

  • Yes Vote - Yes, fund $18,000 to Yacht Labs Inc. Ethereum address (0xa6a486D1419A2ADdE61035e8Ac9d5e2FA100e31D) for 6 weeks of development work on Euler Finance Yacht iOS app integration
  • No Vote - No, don’t fund $18,000 to Yacht Labs Inc. Ethereum address (0xa6a486D1419A2ADdE61035e8Ac9d5e2FA100e31D) for 6 weeks of development work on Euler Finance Yacht iOS app integration

Contact: straus@yachtlabs.io, henry@yachtlabs.io

2

Hey! Thanks for the detailed and well crafted proposal!

Did not fully understand one thing, is it possible to manage Euler account with your app or just following it?

Another questions concerns By building a mobile interface for Euler, we will increase the user base of the protocol, may I ask u what is the average number of daily/monthly users of your app?

4

Hi Raslambek,

Thanks for the great questions. Currently, in the app that we have already built, you can view your account and receive push notifications regarding your health score and interest rate changes.

In the scope of the grant proposal, we would be adding the ability to manage your account. (deposit, borrow, self-mint, burn, and withdraw)

Currently, the app is not in full production so we only have a small cohort of test users, but I encourage you to join the alpha test group via TestFlight and check it out.

When we do launch to production we will be investing in marketing to target DeFi users who may not yet be aware of Euler. This is what we mean by increasing the user base and liquidity of the protocol.

5

Additional high-quality interfaces targeting different form factors are worth building, and the proposed budget is reasonable – nice proposal.

Benefits only really accrue to the DAO if the app moves to full production; would Yacht be open to having the support split into an immediate (e.g. 70%) allocation with the other e.g. 30% payable on public release of the app with these features implemented? That should be enough for full infra costs plus >50% of the compensation. I just think this can be structured so that Yacht Labs is directly incentivized to reach the stage where the benefits start to accrue to the DAO.

2 Likes
6

Good point about the split of financing

7

Hi,

I had a look at the demo version of the app. It looks GREAT so far!

I think it’s a very good attempt at addressing the problem of Euler not supporting notifications (neither on desktop nor mobile).

Regarding the native mobile app, based on some UX research we did with the Euler Labs team, we didn’t see enough market demand to justify investing much in native mobile products. It seems that the vast majority of DeFi users (especially our “power users”) use desktop exclusively – or they use mobile simply to check prices.

Euler Labs is currently working on a refreshed version of the UI, which will be fully responsive and allow for installing it on home screens of iOS and Android devices thanks to being a PWA. It will be open source, with desktop and mobile views sharing a common codebase.

Regarding notifications, I hope the protocol will start supporting EPNS or HAL (https://www.hal.xyz/) notifications soon. HAL, in particular, should provide a solution that would let users get customized notifications regardless of their device. E.g., it would be easy to create a telegram bot or alerts that match certain criteria.

Therefore, personally, I don’t think the protocol itself would benefit much from having a proprietary, non-open source mobile app.

However, I think the costs are reasonable – I won’t vote against it.

8

Hi Wojtek, thank you for your thoughtful consideration of our proposal and valuable feedback. Glad you like the app so far!

Our market research closely aligns with yours. Most DeFi users currently use desktop, which is not surprising because there are very few native mobile interfaces available for DeFi, and none (that we are aware of) for DeFi lending. When we asked users if they would use DeFi on mobile if there was a native interface that supported hardware wallet signing, there was considerable interest.

We’re excited to see the next iteration of the Euler front-end and integrate some of its innovations in our app, too. One thing that we can enable with a native app that wouldn’t be possible with a PWA is greater composability as we integrate more protocols that can benefit from a user’s ability to take out a loan, as well as the ability to compare interest rates across protocols like liquid staking, LPing, and lending.

We are fans of what EPNS and HAL can do and see it as a supporting technology for us. We are working to give the users the ability to get the push notification and go straight into a relevant app context where they can take immediate action if necessary on whatever device they are on.

Regarding the comment about “proprietary, non-open source mobile app”, we are actually planning to open source the codebase! We firmly believe that the application layer of web3 needs to be openly auditable to ensure security and fairness for users.

We would also be open to releasing an Euler-only version of the app if that is of interest to the community.

9

Great to know that the app would be open source :ok_hand:

1 Like
10

Thank you for your comment. We’re glad you liked the proposal!

We agree with your proposal that 30% of the funds should be held until we ship the app into full production. That would properly align the incentives of Yacht Labs and the Euler DAO.

We have edited our proposal on snapshot to implement a 70/30 payment schedule.

11

First of all, I’m a little confused by the speed at which Yacht Labs is trying to push this proposal. Snapshot voting’s already started, even though it’s only been five days since the proposal. Why do we need this speed? It’s not urgent, required wider discussions.

We should carefully take into considerations this results. Perhaps Euler Labs will share some figures of mobile device usage later.
Euler app in mobile browser looks the similar to the desktop app. I don’t understand how mobile app in alpha test will boost the current usage.

It makes sense to see how the new user interface will be in demand, and only then reconsider this proposal.

1 Like
12

Hi Nikita, thank you for sharing your concerns. Regarding the question of how much demand there is for a native mobile app, I think it would be difficult to gauge by looking at current mobile usage because the mobile web experience in a wallet browser (such as metamask mobile) is fairly difficult to navigate. I would be surprised if many people are engaging with the protocol on mobile at this time. If there was a native app, I think mobile engagement would rise significantly. This is a classic example of the innovators dilemma, it’s hard to accurately assess demand for a product that doesn’t exist yet.

A native app would lower the friction of the mobile experience greatly and also provide the ability to receive push notifications which is a feature that is not available for PWAs on all platforms.

Furthermore, our long term goal is not only to translate the current functionality of the web app into mobile, but also to make the Euler functionality seamlessly composable with other protocols.

This is a big reason we are open sourcing our app: so that other developers can easily implement the Euler protocol in their apps, further extending the accessibility and popularity of the protocol. We envision an open SDK that allows mobile developers to assemble multiple DeFi protocols like lego pieces to create new powerful user experiences.

13

I’ve tested out the alpha on TestFlight, nice work so far guys. I like what you guys are trying to achieve and I think the costs are reasonable.

Having multiple front ends/apps is an important feature for large and ambitious projects like Euler.

It’s a yes from me.

14

First, thanks to the team at Yacht Labs for putting together a detailed proposal and answering the community’s questions.

That said, I am leaning no. I think the cost and breakdown are reasonable, but I just don’t know if I see enough value add to invest in mobile at this time.

It’s also been my experience DeFi power users prefer a desktop experience (as noted by others in this thread). Are there any statistics on new entrants to the industry and what their device preference has been? That might help me think about this differently. I don’t think it’s reasonable to infer from pure usage data that a lack of mobile presence is solely due to UI/UX. I also don’t know many TradFi power traders that trade on mobile even though that industry does have apps with great UI/UX.

So if the app doesn’t “need” to be full functioning (e.g. excluding deposit, borrow, etc.), then I don’t know if $18K is justifiable in the context of another mobile dashboard. Zerion, DeBank, and others have successful mobile apps/web apps that track these positions already. Sure, this may offer a little bit more detail, but I don’t know if that’s enough of an incremental add.

16

Thank you kindly Knightsemplar, we appreciate your support. We agree, having high quality interfaces on all platforms is important to meet the user wherever they may be. By open sourcing our work, we hope to help many other projects adopt the power of Euler as well :rocket:

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Hi Defioperator, thanks for voicing your concerns. I think that it’s a fair point to say power traders prefer a desktop experience. If your typical mode of operation is full-time trading and exiting short term positions when you know you won’t have access to your main rig, it definitely makes sense to take advantage of multiple monitors for maximum access to charts and data feeds.

However, there are situations where a power user could benefit from a mobile app with the ability to enter/exit/modify positions. Perhaps you know you will be away from the desktop for a while but it’s not a great time to exit your position. It would be nice to know you can get notifications on the go and act on them immediately, especially given how quickly crypto markets can change. Having been through 3 crypto bear/bull cycles myself, I’ve experienced wild volatility, often coming with little warning. And trading hours are 24-7 :slight_smile:

Secondly, we think there is a huge, mostly untapped opportunity in bringing DeFi to more casual, retail users. The total downloads of fintech and crypto mobile apps was over 6.1 billion in 2021 alone (source). There is a lot of VC investment going to building on mobile, as well as massive efforts going to onboard users in developing nations where people are underbanked and in many cases only have access to mobile devices.

So while I agree, DeFi has historically been a desktop only experience, I strongly believe we will see a shift toward mobile. We would love to help the Euler community and protocol to be well positioned to welcome the incoming wave of mobile adoption.