Spot/Ampleforth update

You may recall I was doing a series of posts on the Spot token earlier this year. This was used to track the progress between how Spot was used to stabilize Ampl, the token that is used as collateral for Spot. There are a series of posts highlighting how it works and how it performed in its history, and you can check those posts out in my profile. For those who just want the abbreviated lesson, 1 Spot = 1 future Ampl, Ampl rebases, while Spot does not - this can create a series of unique arbitrage scenarios, but the main focus is that Spot becomes a flatcoin for Ampl, as 1 Spot will always equal 1 future Ampl. The long and the short of the story since my last update: everything has continued to work as intended. While the market cap of Ampl sank lower these past few months, the price of Spot has remained relatively stable.

The biggest addition since my last update is this: the devs have introduced the perpetual rollover vault. This vault is a one-sided Ampl vault. to my knowledge, it serves two main purposes. The first is to lock up your Ampl into a contract that transforms it into the pool of assets held within the vault. These consist of a mix of raw Ampl (which rebases at the set amount declared each day on the ampleforth.org/dashboard), Spot (which does not rebase), and Z tranche (an asset class that rebases at a higher rate than raw Ampl). The Z tranche is constantly rolling over with fresh deposits, which reach maturity every 4 weeks, at which time they mature into raw Ampl, or in the case of the rollover vault, refresh into a batch of new Z tranche for 4 more weeks. The goal of the team is to give holders a place to store their Ampl where it won't be dumped quickly - you can unstake whenever, and when you do, you will get a mix of the assets mentioned above - some raw Ampl. some Spot, and Z tranche with maturity dates ranging from one to four weeks out. This 1-4 week unlock period helps stabilize the price of all assets held in the vault, since there won't be the same rush for the exits that happens in other runs.

The second purpose is to incentivize holders to refrain from selling - by depositing into the vault, you receive a rebase multiplier. Depending on how big the rebase is on a given day, the vault will multiply your rebase at the appropriate hour. Yesterday was our first 3% rebase in quite a long time. The multiplier of 1.25 means my 3% rebase became 3.75% on my vault holdings (this does cut both ways, however, and a negative rebase will also have the multiplier applied as well). The vault is about to surpass the 2 million Ampl mark soon, which represents 5.82% of the total Ampl network, and has been growing consistently through the past nearly 2 months of compounding positive rebases. Without the VCs ready to dump their bags on us like in the Defi summer of 2020, and the long term holders who recognize that this asset is one that is innovative, with a dedicated team to back it up and to do the work required to create a stable ecosystem.

Everyone says this about their favorite tokens, but I believe Ampl is massively undervalued right now, and just broke back into the top 500 a couple of days ago. If you check the volume on various exchanges, you will see the same thing - not much sell pressure. The price of Ampl is not dropping after rebase by more than a couple of cents, which it easily makes back up in the following hours. The main problem is liquidity, since no one wants to sell; we know what is possible with this token, and what it represents for the world of crypto. What might be easier to buy right now: Spot. Spot becomes Ampl in 4 weeks' time, and is selling at a discount - $1.14. The target is $1.17, so even by that metric it is on sale. Couple that with the fact that it will become Ampl when redeemed, which is selling at $1.54 at time of writing, and with few exchanges or DEXs with anyone selling raw Ampl, it's a great way to dive into the ecosystem.

We went from Ampl @ ~$20M MC at its lowest, and now we are hovering at $43M today. Impossible to predict the future here, but I've been a long time fan of Ampl and think it will continue to do well in the space.