yHarvest-as-a-Service (yHaaS) Budget Request

[mil0xeth]

Scope

This budget request is an add-on on top of the existing ZooTroop budget request.

The purpose of this budget request is to create a new position of handling all harvest automation for V3 across all chains, as well as developing a new Harvest-as-a-Service product.

With the upcoming launch of yearn V3, we urgently need a reliable and unified solution for harvest automation:

• Dumping reward tokens (commonly price depreciating) fast & often means securing profits (and thus our fees) and displaying better and more accurate APRs.
• Reliable automation means reliable security. If a strategy needs to be tended, it needs to be tended fast! Getting liquidated as a yearn strategy is not a good look.
• V3 is explicitly written to rely on expert keepers: harvest/report or tend calls that get sandwiched can lead to massive exploits & losses.

To maximize profitability & security, we should offer a professional Harvest-as-a-Service (HaaS) for anybody.

Harvest-as-a-Service (HaaS)

Setting up your own harvest automation is complicated, requires set-up cost, and is horribly gas inefficient when not done in bulk. Then there is the constant maintenance and troubleshooting. Existing and aspiring strategists will definitely want to offload this responsibility to someone else and will pay a good premium for it.

yearn's HaaS will offer two easy solutions for automated harvests & tending:

1. Usage-based fee payment to yearn.
2. Set-and-forget: the keepers will pick up any registered V3 strategy or vault that meets the required protocol fee (=yearn's cut) threshold.

The 2nd option provides a heavy incentive for V3 strategists to agree to have yearn's performance fee share of their strategy be set to that threshold. The exact protocol fee threshold needed to qualify for yHaaS is chosen by yearn according to market dynamics and can thus always be profitable. Especially for L2s, the extra performance fees earned by yearn will easily outperform the actual harvest costs.

Plan

My work plan for the period of this budget request has changed from simply exploring the best harvest automation solution described in the ZooTroop BR scope with a 15% commitment, to actively assuming the new position of handling all harvest automation for V3 across all chains with a 100% commitment.

Goals:

• Implement robust V3 harvest automation for yearn's own V3 strategies and vaults.
• Create new yHaaS system to allow anybody to have their V3 strategies and vaults harvested in exchange for either direct payment or setting a higher protocol fee.

With my vast experience in V3 architecture and strategy writing, I understand the need for reliable automation that works with simple and complex strategies, as well as the potential vulnerabilities. I have been actively working in this new position since the start of August to develop this system. This budget request add-on is for the ZooTroop BR for the 2-month period September-October

Profitability Model

A profitability model is provided in the internal budget request channel, showing that the service can be run profitably.

Deadline

2023-10-30

People

mil0x

Money

Monthly: 12k DAI

Amount

24k DAI

Wallet address

0x35a83D4C1305451E0448fbCa96cAb29A7cCD0811

Reporting

Once