ICYMI #14

Week ending 14th May

Optimistic Oracle is liveBehind the scenes, UMA’s engineers have been putting the final touches to the new Optimistic Oracle. UMA’s contracts have been operating optimistically for over a year, securing a value of $200m in assets with less than five legitimate disputes. This expansion, audited by Open Zepplin, allows contracts which are not built on UMA to request a price from the oracle and have a proposer suggest a price by putting up a bond.

If there are no challenges to that price within the dispute period, the data is finalized and the proposer gets their bond back; if there is a dispute, the disputer posts an equivalent bond and escalates the dispute to the DVM, where tokenholder resolve the dispute by voting. If the disputer is correct they earn the proposer’s bond as a reward; if the disputer is wrong, they lose that bond as a penalty that goes to the proposer. The system is fast, cheap and available for developer use.

Vitalik Buterin weighs in on Oracle DesignPosting on the Uniswap governance forum, Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, highlighted some of the issues in oracle operation, and the importance of a minimalist alternative that is focused on optimizing incentives and maximizing the cost of attack.

With its 0.05% inflationary rewards for DVM dispute resolution and and the inbuilt guarantee that the cost of corruption is always greater than the profit from corruption as a design feature, UMA’s optimistic oracle provides a quick, cheap alternative for defi protocols to plug into where they require intermittent settlement data, rather than continuous price feed information.

DIGG rebase miningBadger DAO have launched rebase mining for $DIGG, a token algorithmically pegged to Bitcoin through a rebase mechanism. The rebase mining utilises UMA’s KPI Options design, where those who hold DIGG, or who are providing liquidity for DIGG are able to claim tokens which are redeemable for DIGG with the amount dependent on the number of positive rebases of the DIGG token between May 13th and June 11th.

Clayton Roache, community lead for UMA, interviewed Jon Tompkins from the BadgerDAO team, who explained why they decided to impliment rebase mining to support the elastic supply, and use UMA’s KPI options as a tool to achieve and maintain the peg.

UMA collaborates with YAM and Crypto.com on NFTs.uLABS recently announced the CryptoPunks Index, a synthetic token that tracks the CryptoPunks market. UMA is working with YAM to prepare the product launch, and together collaborating with Crypto.com to explore the possibilities to bring the product to their user base.

Crypto.com positions its NFT platform as “the premier platform for collecting and trading NFTs”. Discussions are underway for future collaborations on products in the NFT space, including research into second order financial products built in the space.

UMA is HiringUMA has a range of opportunities available for both technical and non-technical positions. If you would like to work for one of the most innovative and cutting edge Defi protocols with a supportive and collaborative culture, vacancies can be viewed on Angel (and at the bottom of this post!).

Clayton Roache, Community Lead at UMA, has highlighted why he feels that UMA is a very special to work within the Defi space, with feedback from team members about why they also love working at UMA. If you know someone who would be a perfect fit for us, our Talent Referral programme offers up to 1000 $UMA for pointing talent in our direction.

And finally….University KPI Options UMA GrantUMA is interested in having a student, professor, or blockchain enthusiast group build and launch “KPI Options. UMA is able to offer a grant of up to $10,000–$25,000 for the payouts, plus up to $5,000–10,000 for compensation for executing the grant. These ranges are open to discussion for an ambitious program. In particular UMA is seeking proposals which

• aim to measure the effectiveness of financial incentives using KPI Options, such as from a behavioral economics standpoint.
• have social impact in mind
• increase blockchain use and adoption
• are matched funded by the university

UMA is able to offer a grant of up to $10,000–$25,000 for the payouts, plus up to $5,000–10,000 for compensation for executing the grant. These ranges are open to discussion for an ambitious program.

Want to see your name in lights on UMA’s ICYMI?

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As we continue to build and innovate, our need for talented people grows as well. Come join us on our journey to making financial markets universally fair and accessible. Below are our currently open roles:

Talent Acquisition Specialist:Growing our talented teamSenior Software Engineer:An engineer to work on our entire Ethereum-based web 3 stackSmart Contract Engineer:An engineer who’s expert in solidity and smart contractsLaunch Engineer:An engineer to take products from ideation to mainnetCommunications LeadA communications professional to tell our story and present our vision

Know someone who would be perfect for one of those roles?Why not refer them to us.

ICYMI #14 was originally published in UMA Project on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.