About SPOT
Last updated
Last updated
SPOT is a decentralized flatcoin that uses tranching to provide durable, scalable stability. SPOT can be held directly as a refuge from inflation, used as a peer-to-peer digital cash, or held as alternative collateral to USDC within reserves.
Commodity monies like gold and Bitcoin are durable, decentralized, and inflation resistant, but they are not stable enough for commerce. SPOT is a . It is durable, decentralized, and inflation resistant, like a commodity money, only far more stable. It is designed to:
Low Volatility
Decentralized
Tracks CPI
Durable
Scales up and down with demand
At a high level, the SPOT protocol resegments the volatility of its underlying collateral asset (AMPL) into senior and junior that have different volatility profiles (SPOT, stAMPL).
The Senior Perpetual (SPOT): Is a low-volatility derivative of AMPL. It is debt-like instrument that can be used as a durable, inflation-tracking, stable asset across long time-horizons.
The Junior Perpetual (stAMPL): Is a high-volatility derivative of AMPL. It is an equity-like instrument that is more volatile than AMPL and captures the bulk of network changes. It is a staked AMPL position that facilitates rollovers. Additionally it pays or extracts an unsigned fee to those who stake.
Any user can mint (SPOT, stAMPL) pairs by depositing AMPL.
Similarly, any user can redeem (SPOT, stAMPL) pairs for AMPL:
Tranche Ratio: The magnitude of volatility insulation and amplification created by senior and junior tranches respectively, is determined by a preconfigured tranche ratio.
Conservation of Volatility: The combined volatility of senior and junior tranches always equals the volatility of AMPL because capital is conserved in the system. For this reason, holding both SPOT and stAMPL tokens (in the right ratio) is like holding AMPL.
Tranching is the process of resegmenting volatility into two or more derivative assets with different volatility profiles. In our case, AMPL is first resegmented into fixed-term senior and junior tranches. These tranches are minted at weekly offsets.
These fixed-term tranches are the primary building blocks of the system. tranches are low volatility derivatives that can be used as stable stores of value. tranches are high volatility derivatives that capture the majority of network changes. At maturity fixed-term tranches automatically become AMPL.
Next, the fixed-term tranches are bundled into collateral sets of only 's and 's respectively to make them fungible across vintages.
— Is a proportionally redeemable claim on the basket of tranches
— Is a proportionally redeemable claim on the basket of tranches
Rotation is the process of continually replacing fixed-term and tranches nearing maturity with fresh counterparts to create perpetual senior and junior (SPOT and stAMPL) tranches that are perennially liquid.
At the weekly time of rotation (referring to the diagram above):
Process 1 — The maturing tranche rotates into the stAMPL vault and beomes raw AMPL. The maturing tranche becomes raw AMPL.
Process 2 — AMPL is tranched into fresh pairs. The new remains in the stAMPL rotation vault. The new tranche rotates into the SPOT collateral set.
Timely rotations ensure that SPOT is collateralized by fresh senior AMPL tranches. In this state, the SPOT token behaves as a stable asset. The process of rotation is upheld by a system of incentives covered in the About Rollovers section.
At steady state the SPOT collateral set holds fixed-term senior tranches while the stAMPL rollover vault holds a combination of fixed-term juniors and raw AMPL. The net effect of this is, the volatility of AMPL is resegmented into two perpetual tranches (senior and junior). When held in the minting ratio their volatility is similar to that of AMPL.
In the left diagram above, the white bordered region shows the volatility of stAMPL, while the black bordered region shows the volatility of SPOT. The right diagram above shows the underlying volatility of AMPL over the same period.
The SPOT protocol is a significant departure from current-generation solutions. However its benefits can be easily seen when the following axioms are embraced:
Given the above, what we need is a decentralized asset that can:
Account for all volatility transparently
Significantly reduce volatility over long periods of time
Bend rather than break under extreme market conditions
Resume stable value storage after disruptions without reliance on bailouts.
Both SPOT and stAMPL are floating-price tokens. Neither token is vulnerable to bank-runs or insolvency, and in this sense they are similar to UNI-V2 LP tokens.
For every quantum of stability in the SPOT system there is a transparent quantum of volatility that affords it. This allows all risk in the system to be priced. And for every market condition affecting the value of SPOT's collateral, there exists an equilibrium price for SPOT.
Moreover, SPOT's collateral uses tranching rather than liquidation-markets to secure stable value and is immune to cascading liquidations that risk damaging broader markets.
The SPOT protocol design optimizes for decentralization, long-term stability, and durability. In turn, the protocol is willing to accept near-term volatility in times of turmoil. This is because:
There already exist fiat currencies like the US dollar which are stable in the near-term.
Such currencies are widely available within their respective regions but highly permissioned outside their regions.
Commodity monies on the other hand, are highly durable, uncensorable, and absolutely scarce (ie: we can’t arbitrarily increase the supply of gold or Bitcoin causing price inflation). They’re just not stable enough for commerce. Thus in our view, the primary opportunity to innovate lies in producing instruments that are:
Much less inflation-prone that fiat monies
Much more stable than commodity monies
Similarly durable / uncensorable to commodity monies
For this reason, the SPOT token will be more volatile than assets like the USD in moments of extreme market turmoil. However, it will be permissionless and capable of storing stable value in the long-run.
This makes SPOT less valuable to those who are unconcerned with inflation and can freely use fiat currencies for all their purposes. And more valuable to those who seek refuge from long-run inflation and to those who require self-sovereign value storage.
From the user’s perspective, the SPOT token is a freely redeemable claim on a basket of on-chain collateral. Let's illustrate this with a simple example:
The price of SPOT is free-floating and left up to the market but will simply reflect the value of what the token is redeemable for in a collateral set. At no point will the price of SPOT affect Alice's ability to redeem.
If the value of the collateral goes up, the price of SPOT will go up because each SPOT token is redeemable for more value.
If the value of the collateral goes down, the price of SPOT will go down because each SPOT token is redeemable for less value.
In the event that there are multiple asset types in the collateral set, SPOT tokens redeem proportionally across all asset types:
The benefit of free floating price and proportional redemption is the system has no bank-run conditions and can safely unwind to an empty set.
Free-floating Price: The price of SPOT can be any value because SPOT is just a one-directional claim on a basket of assets. Just as the price of Uniswap-V2 LP tokens can occupy any number without breaking, so can the price of SPOT.
Proportional Redemption: Means the composition of collateral remains the same before and after any given redemption, so the value of SPOT remains the same even as users withdraw to an empty set. Just as Uniswap-V2 LP tokens can safely unwind to an empty set without triggering any bank-runs, so can SPOT.
The combination of free-floating price and proportional redemption means at any time, regardless of market conditions, users of SPOT can always hold, sell, or redeem SPOT without triggering a race to zero.
We mention above that the SPOT token is a proportionally redeemable claim on a rotating basket of fixed-term senior AMPL tranches, thus:
Because these fixed-term tranches are insulated from the AMPL’s supply volatility before maturity and they become raw AMPL after maturity— a claim on Srn tranches can be thought of as a claim on future AMPL.
Think of AMPL as a price-stable but supply-volatile cryptocurrency that targets the CPI-adjusted dollar. Rather than price increasing and decreasing with demand, the quantity of tokens in user wallets increases and decreases with demand.
You can think of holding X senior AMPL tranches with 28 day maturity, as similar to holding X future AMPL tokens that are insulated from volatility for a period of 28 days. Since an X SPOT claim is a claim on X future AMPL, and the price of AMPL targets the CPI-adjusted dollar, an X SPOT claim tends to be worth X CPI-adjusted dollars. In shorthand:
These are bound by two important properties:
To create senior and junior , the SPOT protocol first resegments the volatility of AMPL into . Then it bundles the fixed-term tranches into rotating collateral-sets to make them perpetual. The remaining documentation explains how we derive perpetual tranches from fixed-term tranches and discusses the benefits of our approach in detail. There are three steps to this: 1) tranching, 2) bundling, and 3) rotation
For a detailed description of how tranching works, please see .
Important Note: Rotation halting is not a critical failure point for SPOT. If rotations halt for a prolonged period of time, the assets in the SPOT collateral set mature gracefully into raw AMPL at which point the SPOT token becomes a proportional claim on raw AMPL. Thereafter, the SPOT system can resume stable value storage when rollovers recommence. For more details please see .
SPOT's collateral is insulated from volatility and can thus be used to hold stability over .
Unlike liquidation-market-based systems, SPOT does not rely on continuous demand for leverage to maintain a fixed circulating supply. Instead, the supply of SPOT for the token through mint & redeem arbitrage, which doubly serves to promote long-term stability when markets face inevitable secular changes in demand.
Lastly, in the most extreme (albeit unlikely) case where rotations halt, the fixed-term senior tranches in SPOT's collateral set progressively mature into raw AMPL and SPOT becomes more volatile, . After bending, the system can later resume stability without reliance on capital injection or bailouts.
On the left, as demand increases the price of a token increases correspondingly. On the right, as demand increases, the quantity of units increases but the price per unit remains constant. In practice, the automatic process of adjusting supply in response to demand takes time to find equilibria, but the long-run result is a price-stable but supply-volatile cryptocurrency. For more details please see the .
For more details see the section, we recommend reading it after you've completed the expanded sections. Next we'll cover .
