Gelato Network (GEL)

Automating smart contracts

Basics

• Based in: Switzerland (16-3-2022)
• Founded in: 5-2019
• Mainnet release: 3-7-2020
• A tool for developers to automate smart contract executions on Ethereum.

History

• Started out as just Gelato which Allowed (5-2-2020) users to create a personal bot that automatically interacts with different applications on Ethereum.
• From their Mainnet announcement (3-7-2020):

"In February 2020 Gelato published its Alpha release. The alpha hid away most of what Gelato actually is meant to be behind a Web Interface, which meanwhile has been deprecated. This early phase showcased how Gelato can be leveraged to equip end-users with their own IFTTT-like Ethereum bots that can execute arbitrary actions on their behalf, in just one or two transactions, without them needing to write a single line of code. For many users, this opened the door to a new kind of decentralized app usage — an automated, yet fully non-custodial one. However, underneath this simple UI a new smart contract protocol was hiding that now has been audited and deployed onto Ethereum Mainnet."

Audits & Exploits

• Bug bounty program can be found [insert here].
• Got audited by G0 Group (17-6-2020).

Bugs/Exploits

• From Week in Ethereum (18-12-2021):

"Gelato G-UNI Router vulnerability, $26 million secured with no funds lost, alerted by samczsun, revoke approvals given to vulnerable contract."

Governance

DAO

• From their blog (6-5-2021):

"All token holders will be able to have a say in the future direction of the protocol via voting on proposals in the Gelato DAO. The goal is that in the long run, developers that use Gelato to automate their smart contracts functions will govern over the protocol in order to determine the “rules” by which the Executor bots that serve the network have to adhere by. Decisions include setting fees for Executors, deciding on developer incentive schemes, and enforcing that Executors always execute transactions in the best interest of the end-user."

Token

Utility

• Governance, staking & slashing (6-5-2021)

Tech

• Whitepaper can be found [insert here].
• Code can be viewed here (11-7-2020).

Implementations

• Built on: Ethereum, and will expend to Polygon, BSC 'and more' (6-5-2021).

• From Cointelegraph (8-10-2021):

"The Gelato Network currently supports smart contracts on Ethereum, Polygon and Fantom and will add additional support for Binance Smart Chain, Arbitrum, Optimism and Avalanche.

How it works

• From Cointelegraph (8-10-2021):

"Gelato automates Ethereum smart contract operations by using what it calls “arbitrary logic” and bots. Its most prominent use case is addressing liquidity and volatility issues with cryptocurrency trading. The protocol can protect traders from severe losses by automatically rebalancing portfolios and executing trades on their behalf. Third-party servers and systems are required to monitor smart contracts and conditions for their execution. Gelato does away with the intermediaries by using a decentralized network of bots to carry out these operations, simplifying decentralized finance (DeFi) for end-users."

Upgrades

• From EthHub (20-4-2021):

"Gelato v2 is a major upgrade for the platform with features that make developers lives easier."

Staking

• From their blog (6-5-2021):

"For Executor bots, in order to be able to participate in executing transactions in the Gelato Network and thus earning rewards from doing so, they will need to acquire & stake $GEL. Staking will allow executors to earn the ability to reserve “slots’’ which give them the exclusive right to earn fees from executing transactions in a certain period of time.

Potentially slashing the stake of Executors bots will serve the purpose of disincentivizing bad behavior, such as censoring or front running transactions, making such actions uneconomical. The Gelato DAO will have the power to enforce these decisions and the obligation to monitor the behavior of Executors. Executors will become more accountable for their actions which will enable us to further decentralize who can run these Nodes as well as providing some interesting future functionalities such as executing transactions based on off-chain conditions."

Their Other Projects

• Arrakis Finance

Roadmap

• Can be found [Insert link here].

Usage

• From their X (28-10-2024): "Over 50 projects rely on our Rollup Platform processing over 4.5M daily txs & securing over $600M in TVL."
• Has been securing and automatically managing positions worth over $180M (6-5-2021).

Projects that use or built on it

• From Cointelegraph (8-10-2021):

"The Gelato Network currently supports smart contracts on Ethereum, Polygon and Fantom and will add additional support for Binance Smart Chain, Arbitrum, Optimism and Avalanche. Several projects are already using the system to automate contracts, including MakerDAO, Instadapp, B Protocol and QuickSwap.

In June, Gelato introduced an automated liquidity manager for Uniswap called G-UNI, which combined the capital efficiency of Uniswap v3 with the user experience of v2.

In August, Gelato integrated with DeFi aggregator Zerion to improve liquidity management for its users. This enabled Zerion’s 200,000 or so active monthly users to have their Uniswap v3 positions managed automatically."

Pros and Cons

Cons

• When Gelato spun out Arrakis, GEL holders got the short end of the deal, from a DeFi Prime thread (15-3-2022):

"And what $GEL token holders get is a meager 15% of a new tokens supply vested for 4(!) years when you lock $GEL in an airdrop contract for a year!"

Two days later following up with:

"Aha ha you probably should not delete discussion from Discord if you want to pretend that you are a community-driven project"

Team, Funding, Partners

Team

• Full team can be found [here].
• Hilmar Orth; co-founder
• Comes from Gnosis.

Funding

• Raised $11M from Hack VC, IOSG, Animoca Brands and Bloccelerate (28-10-2024). Called it the Series A+ funding, totaling now $23M.
• Espresso Systems; part of their $28 Series B (21-3-2024).
• Got a grant in 2020 from MetaCartel (4-4-2021).
• From Cointelegraph (8-10-2021):

"Gelato has raised $11 million in a Series A funding round led by Dragonfly Capital and with participation from ParaFi Capital, Nascent, IDEO CoLab Ventures and Aave founder Stani Kulechov. The funds were raised through a closed-door token sale and will go toward onboarding more blockchains to the network and increasing its staff from the current team of 15."