Gelato Network launches ‘G-UNI’ Uniswap v3 management token

While Uniswap’s highly-touted v3 has been racing to the top of TVL charts as of late, the need for active management has kept some retail participants out of their pools — a problem that a new product from the Gelato Network is aiming to fix. 

First teased in a community call last week, the Gelato Network has released today the details of their “G-UNI” Uniswap v3 management system. G-UNI aims to perpetually maintain a liquidity range of 5-10% within the current price, with an oracle network checking prices and rebalancing liquidity pool positions every half hour. G-UNI also automatically re-invests trading fees for compounding returns.

“Passive G-UNIs work by just providing very broad liquidity, similar to Uniswap v2 that never has to be changed,” an announcement blog post reads. “It thus can be completely free of anyone’s control as it does not require changes in its price range.”

While Uniswap v3 allows liquidity providers to earn more fees by concentrating their funds at specific prices, it opens them up to risk of impermanent loss if the price range of the trading pair moves beyond the provider’s specified range.

Update: REKT ☠️ https://t.co/0MF0gCd9sm

— ameen.eth (@ameensol) May 29, 2021

The blog post notes that G-UNI’s auto rebalancing brings the benefits of concentrated liquidity, but with the option of passively managing the position in a manner more in line with Uniswap v2. 

“The advantage of this includes that users can sit back and relax as all the difficulties that come with monitoring LP positions are taken care of.”

Composability and incentives

While the new tool will be a boon to passive liquidity providers, the real benefits of G-UNI might be for other DeFi protocols. 

A self-described “Legendary Member” of Gelato, Hilmar, noted that projects can now incentivize concentrated liquidity in “pool 2” liquidity pools. Pool 2 is a colloquialism for a native governance asset paired with a popular base asset, such as ETH or MATIC.

3) Having an ERC20 wrapper around Uni V3 LP positions is extremely powerful, as this enables teams like Instadapp to offer “Liquidity Mining” incentive schemes on top of G-UNI.

This means you can now incentivize your community to provide liquidity around specific ranges

— Hilmar X 冰淇淋 团队 (@hilmarxo) June 16, 2021

Projects often have to provide ample liquidity mining incentives for participants in pool 2s, as liquidity providers take on the risk of the native governance token collapsing in price. Concentrated liquidity rewards may help stabilize native asset prices to a more regular range. 

Additionally, G-UNI is a ERC-20 token as opposed to a NFT, which opens it up to a broader number of possible applications in DeFi. Many lending platforms accept liquidity pool tokens as collateral, but aren’t yet widely prepared for positions represented as NFTs; G-UNI will allow them to onboard v3 liquidity positions faster. Likewise, yield vaults like Yearn.Finance, which has been planning to incorporate exchange positions for some time, may find it easier to integrate ERC-20s.

G-UNI will be used out of the gate as part of the launch of Instadapp’s governance token. The team is setting aside 1,000,000 INST tokens for INST/ETH liquidity mining, with 3/4ths of the rewards focused on a higher INST price liquidity range.

Per the Instadapp dashboard, the incentivized pools are currently live and offering 2,200% and 1,800% APY respectively.