Gaur.Money Post Mortem and future plans

Gaur.Money went live on the 21th December at around 4 PM UTC. As detailed in the docs and website, Gaur is an algorithmic token pegged to ETH on a 1000:1 ratio. GShares and GBonds are the mechanisms used to help keep the peg. The protocol uses Gaur Shares (GShare) when the peg is above and Gaur Bonds (GBond) when it is below.

During the 3rd epoch, Gaur printed 5x times the supply and some users were able to claim and sell off large amounts of Gaur into the market, which the liquidity could not handle. This started a bank run until the liquidity virtually dried up causing the token to collapse. At the peak of the first epochs, the Gaur token was over 10 times its peg, which caused a very large mint of it.

So what happened?

Gaur.Money is a fork of Tomb.Finance, a popular project running on Fantom. Since Tomb is at a 1:1 peg of FTM and Gaur is pegged at a 1000:1 ratio to ETH, our team looked at several other Tomb forks that applied the same principles. Our dev team made notes on the section of code that deals with expansion limiters and was sent for review from our CTO and other devs. In a human error, our team completely removed the differences causing the expansion limiter to be removed too. The code acted as it should and kept minting the correct amount of Gaur without the limiter causing a huge emission of tokens.

What’s next

After the incident we have been reviewing the code along with other projects who have reached out including one of the original Tomb founders who designed the tokenomics for Tomb Finance. We have decided to relaunch the project with a generous compensation plan for all those who were affected until a certain point.

Our team is currently reviewing all on-chain data, our snapshots and other factors to determine which addresses were affected by the collapse of the token. This process will take us about one week. At that time we will publish all addresses and how much compensation they are entitled to from our relaunch. The users will have a grace period to check to make sure they are on the compensation list and notify our team in case of any omissions or discrepancies.

Relaunch

The relaunch will take place during the first week of January after we have finished modifying the code, running a new test with 100 epochs on testnet, peer review and consulting with experts who have reached out. As stated one of the tokenomics designers of Tomb is involved with our relaunch and we are thankful for his expertise. The launch sequence will be modified to build a better liquidity position before the boardroom opens. After the Genesis pool, the Gaur-ETH farm will be opened, this will allow us to build healthy liquidity and lessen volatility. After a week the farms which reward GShare will open and some time later the boardroom. This will allow the project to be less prone to volatility. The initial 28 epochs will have an expansion limit of 4.5% of the circulating supply. We will build back and stronger!

Compensation

Compensation will be a two fold process which includes both Gaur and GShare tokens.

Once relaunched all affected users which result eligible once our analysis has finished, will receive a portion of 9000 Gaur tokens distributed in proportion to their original holdings. Although this could vary, this is expected to happen around 1 or 2 weeks after the relaunch. This makes sure that we have adequately bootstrapped the initial phase and contributes towards the sustainability of the protocol. It will also help users get access to some lost funds as soon as possible. This will be done with a claim section on the Gaur website.

Additionally and more importantly, we will allocate most of the dev share to compensate users long term. We have allocated 3% of the GShare supply to compensate eligible users who lost funds in the collapse. This will also be available to claim by each address on the Gaur website once the list is out. Distribution will be done with each epoch and will last the full 12 months. Our initial model shows that this will reward those users much more than the losses they suffered during v1.

We know that compensation will only make a difference if we get community buy in during the relaunch. We hope that BiShares’ history, peer review, as well as the involvement from a core tokenomics designer from Tomb helps instill confidence in the v2 of Gaur. We look forward to everyone coming out of this fully recovered and being part of a thriving project as it was during the first day of the initial launch. We have noticed that the community is eager for a project like Gaur on the Cronos network and that Gaur v2 will be an important part of the BiShares ecosystem going forward.

Summary:

• Snapshot of addresses within 1 week
• Relaunch during the first days of January 2022
• Airdrop aprox 1/2 weeks after re-launch
• 3% supply of GShare distributed over 12 months

We are deeply sorry how this has played out and we are doing everything we can to set things right. Recovery won’t be instant but if we all come together around the project we will get stronger.

Please note that BISON, the core token of BiShares, wasn’t affected at all as it is non-related to the Gaur protocol. All core BiShares products outside of Gaur have been audited multiple times and will remain fully functional. The foundations around BiShares are transparency and security, we have been developing and releasing products with real utility for more than 5 months with no issues to report and flawless audits.

We wish you all a happy holiday and hope that you join us for the relaunch in early January.