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title: INCUBATION PROPOSAL

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# INCUBATION PROPOSAL

**Sriram Vishwanath (Professor, University of Texas Austin)**

**ChainHub & Texas Blockchain Incubator**

**sriram@chainhub.net**

#### INTRODUCTION

This proposal details an incubation partnership agreement between ChainHub (the incubation arm of Texas Blockchain) and The Evmos Community. ChainHub is an incubator, currently based in Austin TX (which is expanding to other cities in the USA in coming months) focused on University students and College Blockchain clubs. ChainHub actively incubates projects from The University of Texas, Austin and the surrounding Austin community and, post-expansion, will be incubating projects from Carnegie Mellon University as well as other Universities/Colleges within the USA.

ChainHub is managed by Sriram Vishwanath. Sriram is a Professor of Engineering at The University of Texas, Austin. He has a PhD from Stanford, an MS from Caltech and a BTech from IIT Madras. He is the faculty sponsor and founding faculty advisor of Texas Blockchain ([https://www.texasblockchain.org/](https://www.texasblockchain.org/)) and he teaches the engineering and software centric blockchain classes on University of Texas Austin campus.

Linkedin Profile: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sriramvishwanath/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sriramvishwanath/)

#### OUR EXPERIENCE

Texas Blockchain has been working on projects within the blockchain/crypto domain for roughly 5 years, and ChainHub is its incubation arm. We currently incubate projects within two other ecosystems: Polkadot and NEAR, and we have similar agreements in place with each of the ecosystems. Some of the incubated projects include: Quai Network [https://quai.network/](https://quai.network/), Zyfty [https://zyfty.io/#/](https://zyfty.io/#/), Mirror World [https://www.mirrormy.world/](https://www.mirrormy.world/) and a few other projects still in stealth.

ChainHub proposes to work with Evmos to incubate approximately two projects a year, on a calendar year basis, tailored to Evmos's priorities and needs. To this end, we will work closely with Evmos to converge on two or more projects and bring together a highly capable team to deliver on each project. These teams will be mentored, managed and funded by ChainHub through a grant provided by Evmos (see budget request below).

#### SUMMARY OF TERMS

1. ChainHub will:
  
      a. Incubate approximately[^1] two projects per year, starting with September 2022. These projects will be selected in close coordination with the Evmos team.
  
      b. Support these projects from their inception to minimum viable product (MVP) completion. We will staff each project with a talented and passionate team of students/alumni from the Universities/Colleges with which we are co-located.
2. Evmos will:

1. The Evmos Foundation will work closely with ChainHub to identify projects and mentor each project team.
2. The Evmos Community (see budget request below) will provide resources necessary towards execution.
3. The Evmos Foundation will partner with each project team: help with pitch-deck/fundraising, product roadmap and long term strategic growth of each entity resulting from this incubation process.

With the exception of 2022, ChainHub will submit a new proposal in Q1 of each calendar year for the Evmos Community's consideration for renewal of this engagement for that calendar year.

#### BUDGET REQUEST

As tokens are volatile and ChainHub/Texas Blockchain will bear all the costs of development of the project, we request $1M in tokens per calendar year for the duration of this incubation agreement. This will cover the costs of project incubation (including developers, designers, audits, incubation space and operational support for each project).

We request the tokens be provided as follows:

1. The first 50% at kickoff with Evmos (310559 Evmos equivalent to $0.5M)
2. The next 25% when the first project is determined to be completed by Evmos Foundation (155279 Evmos equivalent to $0.25M)
3. The final 25% when the second project is determined to be completed by Evmos Foundation (155279 Evmos equivalent to $0.25M)

A breakdown of costs across the two projects are (these are rough order of magnitude):

1. Engineering Team/Developers/Product Lead - 625K
2. Full time Designer (for both projects) - 75K
3. Incubation space - 100K (covers space rent, utilities, laptops, monitors, all infrastructure including 6 servers)
4. Audits - 125K (for the entire platform(s) including full stack software, not just the smart contracts)
5. Operational Staff (payroll/HR/health insurance/misc software) - 75K

Each engineering team/devs/product lead will comprise of: approximately 2 Web3 + backend engineers, 1 part-time or full time front-end engineers, and 1 product lead.

The initial 500K worth of Evmos token will be used to fund development to reach the funding milestones. These tokens and existing incubator resources will be used until those resources are exhausted. We will primarily aim to use OTC services to convert tokens to USD. When OTC services are unavailable or limited, we will use other means of conversion to USD. If OTC services are unavailable, we will limit ourselves to at most 50K a month in conversion to USD. The remaining 500K worth of Evmos will be staked until their corresponding development milestones are reached. 

A multisig will be set up to manage this schedule by members of the community. When the Evmos Foundation marks a particular project's MVP as complete, the associated tranche of tokens will be released to ChainHub.

#### MULTISIG COMPOSITION
The multisig composition is 3/5. The signers are as follows:
- Loredana | The Laurel Project
- Liam | Tharsis
- Tricky | EvmosDAO
- Outcast | Legion Validators
- Chainhub

#### PROPOSED PROJECTS

1. **EvLend**

Project Specs: [https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmZfxh8KBtf4r1ZFaJ9Za6jaYVH1FjbTR8y16TeLVAiT7s](https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmZfxh8KBtf4r1ZFaJ9Za6jaYVH1FjbTR8y16TeLVAiT7s)

EvLend aims to be the most efficient variable rate borrow-lend market on Evmos.

EvLend uses reactive interest rate technology to target specific utilization rates (% of funds in the money market being borrowed) for stablecoin assets while still providing support for borrow & lend services to other assets.

Reactive interest rates are a more recent innovation popularized by Euler finance. EvLend takes the power of this concept and maximizes it for stablecoin markets.

EvLend can demonstrate a standard model by which maximum efficiency of interest rates may be reached. Building such a system can lead to economies of scale and majority share of lending volume for a given core stablecoin.

The lead developer for EvLend is Max Feldman.

Here is a video walk-through of the documentation by the team: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG0uZpD26w8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG0uZpD26w8) 

More information on reactive rates, our stablecoin focus, and project development timeline can be found in the GitBook specs link above.

2. **Evmos Bridge**

Project Specs: [https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmQ91nSC5ZDun6xw5Kuc4agMnfX7i4y5fKPe5ESqchSWox](https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmQ91nSC5ZDun6xw5Kuc4agMnfX7i4y5fKPe5ESqchSWox)

We propose a bridge tailored to maximize the ease of onboarding into the Evmos ecosystem. Our solution focuses on supporting the most bridge paths into and out of Evmos as well as focusing on user education to increase usage within the Evmos and broader Cosmos ecosystem.

The proposed bridge will consist of a liquidity network architecture utilizing native assets and thus no minting and burning. Additionally, we will build the cross-chain protocol leveraging a battle tested security and consensus model that is as secure as the economic security of the blockchains it is built upon.

With the minimal bridge paths available today, Evmos will continue to struggle with onboarding users and value into the ecosystem.

Providing routes for users to bridge from the most popular DeFi hubs streamlines the process to onboard value into Evmos by orders of magnitude. By the end of Q3 2023 we plan on having Evmos, Ethereum, Avalanche, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism integrated into the network.

Additionally, Chainhub will be resposible for running and maintaining the required validators for the liquidity network while this contract is active.

The lead developer for Evmos Bridge is Thad Hutcheson: 

Here is a video walk-through of the documentation by the team: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjqmVj5UhVk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjqmVj5UhVk)

For more information regarding the specifications of the bridge please refer to the documentation or reach back out to us for any further questions.

[^1]: We say "approximate" as we may not converge on two projects, or may converge on more than two per year. Our goal will remain to incubate at least two per year.