Alchemistresses

Alchemix Finance
7 min readJan 12, 2024

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Artwork example

Alchemistresses is an Alchemix grant project that combines NFTs, DeFi, and on-chain governance to create a community-owned treasury. The treasury will farm yield within the Alchemix ecosystem on Optimism.

This is an Alchemix grant project meaning while it is supported by Alchemix, it is not built or owned by Alchemix. The project has been managed by rootdraws in coordination with other contributors.

The art for each Alchemistress NFT is themed around dark fantasy inspired by the Moloch and Alchemist wizard theme, with some scifi and elements and some cheeky crypto twitter meme elements in the mix. The art style aims to stand out with a painted approach instead of the cartoon style that is common in NFT collections.

Each Alchemistress NFT will be on sale for a fixed amount of ETH. From the sale, 97.5% of the ETH raised will be deposited into a Gnosis Safe, which is converted into a Moloch Treasury. The remaining 2.5% is sent to the Alchemix treasury to recoup the cost of the grant.

In practice a Moloch Treasury means each NFT has one vote, and one share of the Treasury, with the following powers:

  • Burn your share and claim your equity at any time (NFT is kept)
  • Keep your NFT and share, and govern the treasury, until a proposal passes to dissolve the whole thing, and then take your share of equity.
  • Sell your NFT on secondary, and the share transfers with the sale.

This is an NFT project that represents a DAO with a very narrowly focused goal of farming the Alchemix/Velodrome ecosystem, specifically on Optimism.

We think it’s a really cool way to merge Culture and Finance.

How to purchase

The Open Edition (OE) will be available for 5 days at the link below, for a price of 0.42 ETH each. Remember that 97.5% of the sale price will become your share of the treasury.

Each OE will be airdropped 1 of 420 unique Alchemistresses that Shizzy painted. Once the treasury is transformed into a Moloch DAO, each Alchemistress NFT will also be airdropped Soulbound Moloch Shares to their token bound accounts. Welcome to the Future of France.

All excess Alchemistress NFTs will become inventory of the DAO to be managed on Sudoswap.

If any of these apply to you, then you may be interested in purchasing an Alchemistress Open Edition on Manifold:

  • You have a greater investment thesis in Alchemix | Velodrome | Optimism
  • You would like to be a part of a novel LP Cooperative | Governance Experiment.
  • You are curious about NFTs that own Moloch Shares via ERC 6551.
  • You are comfortable holding your NFT while the underlying positions of the DAO move along with the Market.
  • You are curious about Managing an LP Cooperative as a Multi-Player game.
  • You believe that once the treasury exists, there will be sufficient demand for you to sell your NFT into the Sudoswap Pool at a profit.

Building blocks and beginnings

Many aspects of the Optimism ecosystem, including many public goods, come together to make this project possible.

  • Optimism provides a public goods ecosystem with scalability and affordable transaction costs.
  • Alchemix provides the alAsset ecosystem and self-repaying loans.
  • Manifold Mints the NFTs.
  • Velodrome Relay Vaults automate LP Management and Voting strategies.
  • TokenBound enables NFTs to own Shares via 6551 Accounts.
  • Moloch v3 provides DAO Tools for Proposals, Delegation, and UI.
  • Gnosis Safe provides Treasury Management Tools.
  • Sudoswap deploys to Optimism, and provides Batch Auction tools and DAO owned LP Pool.

Moloch RDF is the DAO Expansion Pack for Manifold on Optimism. RDF (Retroactve DAO Formation) allows any NFT collection to be retroactively airdropped MolochDAO shares representing responsibility & ownership over a DAO treasury.

The project began with a grant funded by Alchemix. A portion of the grant was used to commission shizzy.eth to paint an NFT collection of 420 Alchemistresses.

Initially, the raised funds will be sent to a Gnosis Safe consisting of Alchemix and Alchemistress contributors. The multisig will set up the following initial yield strategy:

  1. Deposit 2/3 of the ETH into Alchemix, using a mix of yvWETH and stETH yield strategies.
  2. Take a 50% LTV alETH loan
  3. Deposit the alETH and remaining ETH into the Velodrome alETH/ETH pool to farm VELO.

Once the yield strategy is set up, the multisig will relinquish full control of the MolochDAO to the Alchemistress NFTs. At this point, the community will need to coordinate to take any on chain actions related to the DAO. Alchemix will offer a channel within their discord server for coordination between Alchemistress NFT holders.

DAO Strategy / Roadmap

The Alchemistress project aims to show how NFTs, DeFi, and governance can come together with a shared goal. The initial aim of this project is to accumulate capital by supporting alAsset liquidity on Velodrome. The project also aims to accumulate additional capital through Optimism grants and Velodrome’s Tour De OP.

The following ideas are potential options for how the DAO may wish to manage the treasury and increase the ROI for NFT holders in a way that benefits the various Optimism ecosystems:

  • Spread the word about Shizzy’s submission to the welovetheart Contest, to win more OP for the Treasury.
  • If Shizzy is awarded a prize, the Treasury will receive between 500 OP & 25k OP.
  • Build LPs for alAssets.
  • Yearn are incentivizing alETH/ETH LP with more OP if staked with Yearn.
  • OP Gained from these strategies could be farmed in an alUSD/OP LP.
  • Earn OP over 10 Weeks of Locking veVELO:
  • veVELO vAPR earned weekly from bribes can be used to pay back Alchemix Loans.
  • The DAO can use its veVELO to vote for additional incentives to alAsset liquidity pools

Think of this as a multiplayer LP Management game on Velodrome, focused on Alchemix related LP Pairs.

Available Actions

The following actions are available for individual NFT holders to coordinate around:

OPTION ONE: Burn your Share and claim your Equity at any time.

Alchemistresses is about Membership and Equity, not Yield.

At any point you can burn the share associated with your NFT to receive a fair share of the liquid value of the treasury. Note that this would NOT include veVELO and Alchemix loan positions, as those are not liquid. It WOULD include staked yearn vault positions, and Velodrome LP. To receive a share of the Alchemix loan, the DAO would need to vote to first unwind the loan. If looking to burn your share, you should keep an eye out on any major increases in liquid assets by the DAO (or propose a vote yourself!)

OPTION TWO: Rage Rug | Dissolve the Treasury

Imagine a scenario where VELO, OP and ETH are all at ATH. The new paradigm is here. Up Only.

If at this time, Alchemistresses Holders can pass a proposal to liquidate all assets and dissolve the treasury, then, each NFT that still has its Equity Share at that time gets an equal share of the dissolved value. In this case, the project is unique, because unlike NFT projects that bleed into obscurity in the following Bear Market — it is possible for this project to have a positive sum exit.

After your NFT’s Shares have been burned, you can keep your Alchemistress for the group chat and the memories.

OPTION THREE: Dump your NFT on the DAO owned Sudo Pool.

The Equity and Membership of your NFT transfers to the new owner when sold on Secondary Markets. Sudoswap has offered to deploy to Optimism as a part of its own roadmap, and to support to this project. The Sudo Pool will be owned and managed by the DAO itself. One imagines that the floor price of these NFTs will oscilate around their Liquid RQ Value, and that the DAO will capture the value of the spread by setting buy and sell prices with Sudo LP Curves and Auctions.

OPTION FOUR: Manage the Treasury in Perpetuity as a Decentralized Hedge Fund

The Treasury is built on top of Gnosis Safe, and there are Velodrome and Kwenta dapps built right into the Safe interface. The Treasury can modify its portfolio on a high time frame to respond to the market, including changing LP positions, holding Spot, or using DeFi products on Optimism.

Discretionary position changes are not going to be precise, but the DAO can elect a managerial vault, or pass proposals to respond to the market on the DAILY or WEEKLY chart, in an attempt to preserve or grow its AUM.

DeFi can be fun.

Multi-Player DeFi can be educational.

Disclaimer and Thank You

Alchemistresses is an Alchemix grant project built by the grant applicants. Alchemix has supported aspects of the project but has not conducted a review of any code.

As noted, this project will become an on-chain DAO very quickly. We recommend joining the Alchemistress channel in the Alchemix discord server after launch to ensure that you are up-to-date on the latest with the community! Participation by a majority of holders will be necessary for the DAO to be functional, but delegation is included.

A massive thank you to the Alchemix Community for Sponsoring Alchemistresses with a Grant, and helping Moloch RDF become a reality.

What next?

You have 5 days to mint the open edition, here. The mint ends 17th Jan.

After the mint closes, everyone who minted the open edition will be airdropped a unique Alchemistress NFT from a limited collection of 420.

Join the #Alchemistress server in the Alchemix discord to get involved and stay up to date!

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