Welcome to AQTIS Quarterly. These articles will provide a high-level overview of all the work the team has done in the last three months, as well as add some context as to what’s to come for the relevant AQTIS teams further down the line.
AQTIS Quarterly is broken up into distinct sections:
- Tech / Dev Round-Up: An exploration of what the dev team has been working on.
- Product Round-Up: This captures other developments that have taken place that might not fit with the other two labels. This includes content, marketing, and changes to how we’re building AQTIS.
- Quant Round-Up: A closer look at how the technology underpins the AQTIS ecosystem.
Tech / Dev Round-Up
This quarter the dev team has been super busy building out all of the requirements needed to ensure the AQTIS LSDs will be stable and secure. Highlights can be found below:
- Finalizing LST smart contracts — We’ve been busy finalizing the smart contracts to ensure they perform as expected. Various challenges have been overcome to make the contracts both sustainable and optimized for our unique reward mechanism, based on Time-Weighted Average Balance (TWAB). We have completed testing and deployment on the Ethereum testnet and all smart contracts are stable.
- Writing test scripts for smart contracts — In Q1 we put our smart contracts through their paces, by writing test scripts to ensure they behaved as expected.
- Isolating Smart Contracts Github repository for Audit — Ahead of our full-scale audit by a top security company Debaub, we had to create a GitHub repository to allow a full audit to take place.
- Audit Smart Contracts by Dedaub — We hired class-leading Web3 audit company Debaub to audit our smart contracts ahead of launch. Debaub is trusted by Chainlink, the Ethereum Foundation, Lido, and Ledger to ensure their technology is up to scratch. We have received feedback and are refining the contracts based on Debaub’s recommendations. We’re very happy to say these won’t cause a delay.
- Optimize UX for claiming rewards — We spent considerable time improving the user experience for claiming rewards in the app. Upon launch, users will be able to toggle on or off auto claim or auto compound options with the click of a button.
- Switch testing dApp from local Hardhat Environment to Sepolia — We migrated the test environment over from our local environment to Ethereum’s testnet, called Sepolia.
- Rebranding Dapp — While all the technical elements of the dApp were being developed, we also began upgrading the design to fit in with the incredible work our design team had completed.
- Rebranding AQTIS website — Thanks to our stellar design team, AQTIS got a new look and feel. In Q1 we completely overhauled the website to make it easier to navigate, as well as incorporate the new brand elements. This will be unveiled in Q2.
- Create Season Pass 0 NFTs — As part of our Season 0 loyalty program, we awarded our top community members with limited edition NFTs that gave them access to unique features not found anywhere else. In Q1 we created, deployed and delivered the yield to those winners.
Looking ahead
What does Q2 look like for the dev team? Here’s an overview of what we’ll be focusing on:
- Launching dApp — dApp launch! We will be approaching the launch with a gradual phase-out, to ensure testing and stability remain consistent for all users.
- New website launch — We will unveil our much-improved website with new functionality.
- Bug testing and improvements — We will iron out bugs as part of the dApp rollout.
- ELA and ELIF refinements — We will monitor the Ecosystem Liquidity Aggregator and the Ecosystem Liquidity Insurance Fund carefully during Q2 and look to make refinements where necessary.
- OPL — Oasis Privacy Layer — As part of our private yield function, we’ll be finalising and rolling out this functionality in the dApp once all features are stable and secure.
- AQTIS token staking — We’re are conducting preliminary research on the feasibility of offering staking services directly on the AQTIS Token.
Product Round-Up
We’ve been full steam ahead on the product side of AQTIS in Q1. Here’s a summary below:
- AQTIS Rebrand — we grew our design team in Q1 and tasked them with reinventing the look and feel of AQTIS. And we have to say they’ve done a brilliant job of delivering on the vision of making AQTIS the premier destination for LSTs.
- Launched Seasons — We successfully developed and deployed our season format alongside our Loyalty Rewards program. The winners of Season 0 received their limited edition NFTs and the yield that comes with it.
- Content audit — as we get closer to launch, our content team revised all existing documentation to ensure it is accurate and compliant with regulatory requirements.
- Legal Structure — we worked with Dutch authorities to develop the legal structure that will underpin AQTIS as we move forward.
- New hires — AQTIS grew a lot in Q1. We brought on a head of operations, A senior art director, a Quant team manager, a Software engineer, a Head of HR, and a Social media manager.
- Released QRT Documentation — we unveiled the third of our LST lineup, QRT, giving a glimpse into one of our flagship LSTs.
- Built and released our Quant newsletter — we took the AI that works in our quant tech and built the Quantor. We have built multiple models to measure the state of the market for BTC, ETH, and an Altcoin Index. For each model, we get a score and our system gives us an insight based on a decision tree system. Then, we feed our Quantor LLM with the current and past data and the current and past insights. Each week Quantor produces a report, and each week we will be sharing that with you.
Looking ahead
What does Q2 look like for the product team?
- Dapp launch — Our focus will be on ensuring the launch of the AQTIS dapp goes smoothly.
- Partnerships — we’re working with a number of key partners across the Web3 space. We will be revealing these over the coming weeks.
- Marketing / KOLs — Once the product is launched and stable, we will be launching our marketing campaign and onboarding KOLs to help support the launch.
- More hires — Our team is still growing, and we’ll be adding to the headcount over the coming quarter.
Quant Round-Up
Our quant team spent much of Q1 2024 testing and refining the strategies that form the backbone of our Quant Tech system. A summary can be found below:
- Final Refinements to Trend-Following Strategy — The team completed the testing and refining work on the Trend-Following strategy. Extensively verified across our chosen trading assets, it has shown remarkable success. Especially effective in longer timeframes, this strategy has outperformed traditional hold strategies in over 50% of the assets by adeptly detecting upward trends and exiting during downturns.
- Built and deployed BTC Perp Alerts Signal — Over in Discord, we built and deployed a free signal for the AQTIS community called “BTC Perp Alerts.” This tool monitors changes in open interest, allowing us to accurately predict asset movements and for our Discord members to use how they see fit.
- Built a Portfolio Optimization Model — We successfully developed our first model for continuous portfolio optimization. This model allows us to fit the optimal weighting for every strategy within our portfolio, maximizing our ability to adapt as market conditions change.
- Development and research on Market Making & DEX MM Bot — we have been conducting research on an AI and Quant Tech-Powered Market Making tool for $AQTIS and the creation of a DEX Market Maker bot.
- Upgraded our data acquisition and processing techniques — in Q1, we made significant strides to upgrade our models to lower timeframes to enable a more nuanced understanding of what’s happening in the markets. As a result, we’re harnessing data directly from exchanges using WebSockets, ensuring that we ingest data at the finest resolution offered by the exchange: tick level or microsecond. This allows us to create aggregated versions from multiple exchanges in real-time, helping us further understand the differences between exchanges.
- Historical data acquisition — Before Q1, our analysis and backtesting primarily revolved around Binance and Binance Futures. This quarter we acquired historical data from all exchanges since 2019. This endeavor allowed us to uncover unique edges in the behavior of each exchange.
- Better data sources — We incorporated a third-party data source to allow our machine-learning algorithm to stabilize returns and minimize drawdowns, significantly enhancing the overall robustness of our strategies.
Looking ahead
The Quant team will be spending Q2 making continued refinements to the strategies and trading tools that power the AQTIS ecosystem.
We hope you are as excited as our team for the coming year!
❓ Questions or Feedback?
As always, we’re eager to answer all your questions and consider your suggestions. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please share them in our Discord.
That’s all for now. Stay tuned for more exciting updates, and we’ll catch you in the next one!
