💰Revenue Model
"In a gold rush, sell picks and shovels"
At El Dorado we believe that the 2019-2021 crypto bull market saw a complexity bubble. Vast overcomplication of revenue and token models meant to line the pockets of team members by utilizing ponzi-like tokenomic and business designs.
By contrast, the El Dorado model will be simple and transparent, consisting of several revenue streams:
Transaction Fees
Node Revenue
Incubation/Investment
1. Transaction Fees
Our primary revenue stream is platform transaction fees. El Dorado is currently processing ~12 million in swap volume every month through our Maya Protocol backend, generating fees in CACAO. Data on fees collected via Maya Protocol is publicly available on Mayascan.
Transaction fee revenue will expand to more assets as we integrate more backends. Currently, with Maya Protocol as our sole backend, revenues are in CACAO. This will soon change.
With Chainflip integrated as our second backend, revenues will be in CACAO (from Maya) and USDC (from Chainflip).
When we integrate THORChain and Rango after Chainflip, our fee revenue will expand to CACAO + USDC + RUNE.
Further integrations will follow suit. We will also be able to customize which assets we collect fees in depending on the backend.
Comparable Fee Models
As we are the first Native Maya DEX, and Maya is a fork of THORChain, the best comparable of our business model are the four THORChain frontend DEXs — THORSwap, THORWalletDEX, DefiSpot, Rango:
| THORSwap | THORWalletDEX | DefiSpot | Rango |
|---|---|---|---|
0.3% Fee *( .3% - 0%) | 1% — Basic 0.3% — Affiliate 0.1% — Community | 0% Fee (0.03% planned) | 0.1% Fee (All Tx) |
We benefit greatly from the precedents set by THORChain DEXs and the affiliate revenues they are generating. You can see their affiliate fees revenues below:
Affiliate Fees Generated from THORChain:
THORSwap: 1.092M
THORWallet: 169k
TrustWallet: 349k
XDEFI: 52.3k
Defispot: 31.9k
Rango: 29.3k
Asgardex: 31.1k
Shapeshift: 28.4k
El Dorado's revenues will depend entirely on the TVL and volume we can drive to our integrated backends (Maya Protocol, Chainflip, THORChain, Rango) from our frontend.
Our current focus is on attracting more users, growing our community, and gaining feedback on our product so we can continuously provide a better user experience.
Our current affiliate fee for transactions occurring on the platform is 75 basis points.
2. Maya Node Revenue
Protocol Owned Nodes
Our team is currently running 1 active Maya Node as of May 2023 that is 100% owned by the team. This node helps secure the Maya Protocol network and provides revenue to our treasury.
Community Nodes
In addition to our protocol owned node, we have worked with our infrastructure partner to spin up several more Maya Nodes to help with the security, decentralization, and resilience of the network. Our community members with LP positions of more than $50,000 have been invited to bond to these nodes, allowing them to get both the APR of their pool and an additional APR from node rewards.
If you are interested in providing liquidity to one of our Community Maya Nodes to earn long term rewards, please reach out to us on Discord for instructions on how to bond in.
THORChain nodes currently net node operators ~$17,000/Month. Considering the Maya Protocol starting TVL is 25M, 20% of THORChain's 125M TVL, a roughly estimated starting point for El Dorado's Node Revenue is ~3-5k/month, a number that will grow as Maya liquidity and utilization increase.
3. Aztec Incubation and Venture Arm
Aztec Chain is the programmable L1 of Maya Protocol in the works for mid 2024. It is a Cosmos based chain that will support smart contracts and thus enable a large number of use cases such as NFTs, Lending, Borrowing, Perpetuals (and more) to launch on top of Aztec. In addition to its primary function as a full suite personal finance solution, El Dorado will be the central development hub for Maya Protocol and its upcoming Aztec Chain — Funding, Launching, Listing, and Facilitating Transactions for Maya’s breakout decentralized companies built on Aztec. Potential Use Cases:
Stablecoins
Lending / Borrowing
Perpetuals
NFTs
El Dorado plans to grow a Venture arm to help fund aligned projects both on Aztec and beyond it.
Last updated
