⚙️How we do it

Kassandra Protocol is the core technology that allows for tokenized investments that are permissionless, non-custodial, and actively managed, yet monetary efficient.

Kassandra Protocol

The Kassandra Protocol is the core technology that allows the DAO to deploy investment products. It starts from the premise of building tokenized investment baskets that are permissionless, non-custodial, and actively managed, yet monetary efficient.

Given an investment basket, it is necessary for the protocol that price changes of the underlying assets do not change the percentage shares of each asset in the basket, preserving the original participation weights of the assets. But being these investment baskets actively managed, it is also crucial that external data providers could change the asset allocations, giving new participation weights to each asset.

Smart Indexed Pools

As our first generalized approach to creating tokenized investment baskets, we borrowed the design of Smart Indexed Pools (SIP) from Balancer Protocol and added Oracle compatibility to allow active management from third-party data providers.

Under the hood, a SIP works essentially as an Automated Market Maker (AMM) for multiple assets, but with dynamically adjustable weights, that can be changed using external data. Using this approach removes the need for rebalancing operations by creating small arbitrage opportunities that external users can profit from and ensure that the desired proportions of each asset in the investment basket are maintained.

By making a monetary deposit in a SIP, the user will receive a deposit representative token, namely Index Token, that represents fractional ownership of assets in the pool. The assets managed by the pool will have adjusted participation changed by the data provider, and at any time, the user can return his Index Token to the protocol to redeem his investment, which will be evaluated by the total value of the assets managed by the pool at the time of the redemption — functioning similar to a traditional market ETF.

The First SIP

For the development and launch of the first SIP, Kassandra partnered with the social data company for cryptocurrencies Heimdall and will launch the first SIP and Index Token, namely $HEIM. The investment basket represented by this token will have its weights defined by the Social Score data provided by Heimdall, becoming a financial product that delivers exposure to the most socially active cryptocurrencies in the market.

Heimdall’s Social Score does not necessarily represent cryptocurrencies with the most social posts or the largest number of active users but rather represents an approximation of the network factor of the communities of these cryptocurrencies. For Heimdall, more important than how many are talking about a certain asset is who is it, so the Social Score can often be quite high even for projects that are not yet widely known, as long as those that socially interact with the projects have a lot of reach and social influence, in this way, the Social Score is often a pre-indication of a project that is becoming more popular.

Given a whitelist of tokens and currencies that can be invested, the composition asset strategy for SIP of $HEIM will be as follows:

• The protocol will choose the ten tokens with the best social activity in the last 30 days, using Heimdall’s Social Scores, and make a weighted investment in each one, according to their respective social scores.

Frequently and smoothly, the protocol will use the new Social Score data to update the investment weights within the investment basket, and can even rotate the ten invested tokens with others available on the whitelist. For a more in-depth analysis and strategy, performance backtests, check out the document dedicated to the $HEIM token available on the Kassandra website.

Whitelist Mechanism

The $KACY token holders can participate in the whitelist curation process for SIPs, thus defining a list of the tokens that SIPs can trade and add to their portfolios, which is one of the key activities done by token holders for long-term protocol success.

The success of SIPs depends essentially on two factors, first, the data provided by the company that feeds the Index, in the case of the first Index Pool, by Heimdall, and its strategy using its Social Score. That is, for an Index Pool to be profitable, it is important that it has a good operating strategy, and that depends exclusively on the company that provides the data. But secondly, the success of the Index Pools depends on the curation done by the $KACY token holders to define which tokens can be invested by the SIPs. This feature is essential, and it is one that guarantees the security of the protocol without relying mostly on the trust in the company that provides the data. Without this feature, it would be possible for the company providing the data to issue a new, worthless, token and to make the entire SIP buy that token, in an attempt to Rug Pull. However, with a whitelist, this exploit is impossible, as there is a well-defined list, approved by governance, of which tokens the protocol can invest.

The creation of a whitelist has the role of curation since it is essential that for every investment a fundamental analysis is carried out a priori. In this way, any Index Pool uses a double system to make investments, at first a market curation is made, defining which cryptocurrencies are worth investing in given the analysis of $KACY token holders, and then investments are automatically managed by SIPs data providers.

Fees

The SIP is a generalized and dynamically adjustable AMM, any swap carried out through the pool is subject to a fee of 0.3% that goes directly to the portfolio holdings.

A 3% fee is implemented when redeeming any SIP token, which will be sent to a wallet under the control of the Kassandra DAO. The fees collected this way are under total governance control and can be used for the purchase and subsequent burn of the $KACY token.

As an additional rule, to flow value to the $KACY token holders, every SIP must hold at least 5% of the $KACY token as part of the portfolio. This holding percentage of the $KACY token ensures that the success of the SIPs will result in the growth of the $KACY token value.