The Ones in the Arena: bveCVX by BadgerDAO

Badger, badger, badger, badger, wo-olf, wo-olf: BadgerDAO’s latest initiative gets a Code4rena audit this week.

One of the fun things about Code4rena’s structure is that more and more often, we’re seeing people who initially joined our community as wardens hunting exploits, come back and sponsor an audit contest for their own projects. (The inverse is also true, with past sponsors showing up to compete in subsequent contests.)

If this were a sport, it’d be like the CEO of [insert stadium-namesake corporation here] coming out on the field to show us how they play.

BadgerDAO is a well-established DAO building out infrastructure to support the use of Bitcoin as collateral across other blockchains — so it’s no surprise they’ve got some heavy hitters on their team. Enter Alex The Entreprenerd, AKA GalloDaSballo, who is both one of C4’s elite group of leaderboard wardens and the Strategist and developer of the bveCVX Strat, a new initiative from BadgerDAO.

Read on to learn wha bveCVX is all about, what Alex/Gallo has to say about DeFi, and what BadgerDAO has coming up next.

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“History rhymes, so some of the advancements [in DeFi] are an ‘open source’ version of a CeFi tool, but sometimes you hit gold and see something new such as self-repaying loans or overcollateralized stablecoins that work — and the power of community.” — Alex The Entreprenerd, bveCVX by BadgerDAO

What are you building, and what sets it apart from similar offerings in the space?

We are front-running the opportunity of gaining major voting power on Curve via convex while building an ecosystem friendly set of vaults that provide great yield and bring new users to the protocol.

What’s your vision for your project? What are you building towards in the longer view?

We envision a future where users can put their BTC to work in the Badger App with one click. This process would automatically convert holdings to ibBTC, an interest-bearing, tokenized version of your Bitcoin, allowing users to earn interest on their holdings while allowing them to leverage their position as collateral to borrow against.

What’s the most innovative idea in your protocol?

Interest Bearing Bitcoin, which aggregates the yield from different vaults to offer one collateral that is interest-bearing and redeemable for tokenized bitcoin.

It takes courage to undergo a public audit by a swarm of anonymous security researchers. It also says a lot about how much you prioritize security. What advice would you give to those on the fence?

We’ve recently been exploring the idea of running a security-focused contest. When we identified an immediate need, CodeArena was able to help organize one quickly, giving us confidence that we will be able to ship our product on time while reducing the risk of making unnecessary mistakes.

Security has become an increasingly vital topic in DeFi. How do you think the ecosystem needs to evolve in order to rise to the challenge?

I think security bounties and contests need to become commonplace for protocols when shipping new products. With that said, I believe that the demand far outpaces the offer, so if you have the patience and are interested, you’ll find a job as auditor in no time. (DM if you’re interested, and are above me (GalloDaSballo) on the CodeArena Leaderboard.)

What gets you most excited about DeFi?

Every day, something new happens. History rhymes, so some of the advancements are an “open source” version of a CeFi tool, but sometimes you hit gold and see something new such as self-repaying loans or overcollateralized stablecoins that work — and the power of community.

Complete the following sentence: “I wish more DeFi projects would…”

Make it easy to find their source code. Anytime it’s not easy to find, it feels like they are trying to rug you.

What do you geek out about, beyond DeFi?

Honestly I am kind of boring, this is all I do.

Is there anything else you want to tell us?

I’d like to invite developers, artists and marketers to check out BadgerDAO’s Gitcoin Round 11 Bounties beginning on Sept 7th. We tend to hire talented devs after they submit a bounty — and we’re also looking for a Badger Intern that can shitpost and track meeting notes.

Learn more about bveCVX:

bveCVX’s $90K security audit contest opened September 2, 2021, and runs for one week. Details at code4rena.com.

The Ones in the Arena spotlights emerging and established DeFi projects and their founders, with an eye to celebrating and learning from them. The series’ name is inspired in part by Teddy Roosevelt’s famous quote, which has a central place in Code4rena’s philosophy.