Maya Protocol Update

Introduction

Maya Protocol is a friendly fork of THORChain and holds a complementary mission to its brethren, albeit with some notable design distinctions (to be discussed below). Blockchain genesis for Maya Protocol occurred in March 2023, while trading started in April 2023 with RUNE, BTC, ETH, USDC ERC20 and USDT ERC20 — all paired with CACAO (Maya’s version of RUNE) — in Liquidity Pools (LPs).

In July 2023, Dash blockchain was integrated, which is Maya Protocol’s first unique chain (not already integrated with THORChain). Users can now swap between DASH from Maya to any supported chains/tokens on Maya, and on THORChain (and vice versa) using CACAO and RUNE as the intermediate asset.

At the the time of writing in Oct-2023, some of Maya’s metrics (from https://www.mayascan.org/stats):

• Highest amount of total value locked: $20m
• Highest daily swap volume in past 60 days: $1.05m
• Total Maya Protocol wallet count: 3200
• Top swap paths:

Differences vs THORChain

There are a few significant differences between Maya Protocol and THORChain. Let’s dive into some of the major ones below:

Liquidity Auction & MAYA token

Maya Protocol’s March 2023 launch kicked off with a novel “Liquidity Auction”, where all depositors into said auction were matched 1:1 in value with CACAO to kick-start Maya’s LPs. In so doing, 90% of total supply of CACAO was distributed, with 10% allocated to Reserves.

This meant that there was zero CACAO allocation for team, seed, venture capital, or the like. Instead, for team and project funding, a second token, MAYA, was created, which is a revenue generation token. 10% of all yield (in CACAO) from Maya Protocol will be distributed pro-rated to all MAYA holders. Besides team funding, some MAYA was also airdropped to RUNE holders, Tier 1 Liquidity Auction depositors, and node operators/bonders. Finally, Treasury expenses (e.g. payment for developers, marketing, etc.) are also usually paid in MAYA.

2. Reserves

As stated, the CACAO Reserves available to Maya Protocol at genesis was only 10% of total supply (vs 44% for THORChain), and primarily for the purpose of Impermanent Loss Protection (ILP). In Maya, there are no block emissions; and Protocol Owned Liquidity and Lending, if implemented, will have a different design since on THORChain, the designs are intimately woven with the Reserves.

3. Impermanent Loss Protection (ILP)

In Maya, ILP will kick in after 50 days from the deposit.. That means users who withdraw an amount less than 50 days after their most recent deposit will receive no ILP coverage. ILP will start on day 51, with full ILP after a further 100 days (if CACAO underperformed vs Asset), or 400 days (if CACAO outperformed vs Asset). More details: https://docs.mayaprotocol.com/deep-dive/how-it-works/impermanent-loss-protection-ilp

4. Liquidity Nodes

Instead of bonding only CACAO, node operators bond Liquidity Units instead, which are Liquidity Pool positions. Nodes are then both Liquidity Providers and security bonding at the same time. This increases capital efficiency and also necessitates a different design of the Incentive Pendulum, which targets an optimum of 85% of LPs being bonded into nodes.

Upcoming Developments

Kujira Integration

Update v1.107 will bring about the fifth chain to be integrated, which is Kujira. Details: https://thorchain-university.medium.com/maya-protocols-kujira-integration-f6e513cc056c

2. Savers and Savers Bonding

Update v1.108 will enable Savers, bringing yield opportunities for single asset exposure. In addition, since Savers are backed by Liquidity Units in the LP, this enable Savers position to also be bondable to nodes.

3. Arbitrum, Kaspa and Cardano Integration

The next chains to be integrated are expected to be Arbitrum, Kaspa and Cardano.

4. Streaming Swaps

Streaming swaps, when enabled, will auto break a large swaps into multiple smaller swaps, to enjoy better overall price execution, while still paying only single inbound/outbound L1 fees.

5. Dex aggregation with THORChain

Both protocols are working together on a one-click aggregation between Maya Protocol and THORChain. When launched, this will enable seamless trading of any assets on Maya to any assets on THORChain, via the CACAO:RUNE pool on Maya.

6. Aztec blockchain

Aztec will be a brand new, separate, smart-contract enabled blockchain, but also secured with the same Maya Protocol validators, using CACAO as the staking token. This will expand the Maya-Aztec ecosystem to offer more smart contract dapps.

Complementary to THORChain

While we highlighted some of the differences between Maya Protocol and THORChain; at its core, both protocols are highly complementary of each other. There are benefits of redundancy, extension, validation, experimentation and others. For example, Maya has and will integrate chains which are not on THORChain. It is an exciting time for both protocols, as well as the wider decentralized cross chain infrastructure maturation.

More details can be found in Maya’s whitepaper: https://docs.mayaprotocol.com/white-paper/readme-1-1/introduction

Feel free to hop into the TC University Discord to chat about this, or any other Maya Protocol questions that you may have.

Explore Maya Protocol, the first friendly fork of THORChain: Website, X, Discord, Telegram.

Decentralized, permissionless, non-custodial, trust-minimized, open-sourced, economic-secured, non-wrapped, native-to-native cross-chain swaps and soon, savings!