announcement Featured

Flat Money Launches on Base: Bringing Decentralized Money to the Masses

Taminater

Apr 16, 2024 • 9 min read

We’re excited to announce our launch plans to bring the Flat Money protocol to life on Base. The launch will be rolled out in phases, with phase one beginning on April 15th.

Last week, the Flat Money team deployed the Flat Money smart contracts on Base and began depositing the Early Depositor Vault funds into the protocol to begin earning yield. We’re ready to bring decentralized onchain money to the Base ecosystem.

Welcome the Flat Money protocol to Base!

We’re excited to bring Flat Money to life and offer users a decentralized alternative to centralized stablecoins, which continue to expose our onchain economy to offchain legacy financial risks.

As we start our journey to Flat Pill more DeFi users, we wanted to share the Flat Money launch plan with our community.

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Details of the Flat Money Launch

We’ve deployed the Flat Money smart contracts and allowed Early Depositors to be the first to hold UNIT and earn yield. However, Flat Money’s launch is only the first milestone in our roadmap as we work to bring decentralized onchain money to the masses.

As part of our launch plan, the team will be rolling out the Flat Money protocol into two (2) phases, which are outlined in detail below.

Phase 1 Rollout

During Phase 1 of our launch, we’ll be limiting deposits in the Flat Money (UNIT) Market to 1000 rETH. The Flat Money Early Depositor Vault represents $2.5M of the total capacity, which leaves an additional 300 rETH that can be deposited in the protocol to mint UNIT. As we begin our journey, we want to ensure we reward our earliest community members and users.

We’ve sent an email to anyone who participated in our first testnet competition and/or signed up for our second testnet competition. We’ve also notified our Flat Money OGs on Discord about the chance to deposit into the Flat Money Market before the 1000 rETH TVL cap is met.

If you helped us shape and improve the protocol along the way, we want to reward you with first access to deposit and earn in the Flat Money Market.

Initial Caps, Incentives for Leverage Traders in the Perpetual Futures Market

During Phase 1 of our launch, Open Interest (OI) in the Perpetual Futures Market will be limited to a maximum of 20% greater than the balance in the Flat Money (UNIT) Market. Leverage Traders on Base will have access to competitive funding rates and the only liquid rETH Perpetual Futures Market onchain.

Early Leverage Traders can earn FMP incentives based on their trading volume. At launch, FMP incentives will be the greatest and will decrease over time as trading volume increases in Flat Money’s Perpetual Futures Market.

Traders can earn FMP for every 1 rETH of volume according to the following distribution schedule.

100 FMP per 1 rETH | $0–$10M of volume
50 FMP per 1 rETH | $10M–$100M of volume
25 FMP per 1 rETH | $100M–$500M of volume
10 FMP per 1 rETH | $500M–$1B of volume

Learn How Flat Money Works on Testnet

If you’re not able to participate in Phase 1 of the Flat Money launch, you’ll be able to take a hands-on approach to learning about Flat Money by using our updated testnet, which will go live in a little more than one (1) week.

We want to ensure everyone understands how the Flat Money protocol works and has a chance to test the protocol in a sandbox environment before depositing their rETH into one of the Flat Money markets. When the updated testnet is available, we’ll make an announcement on our blog and across our socials.

Phase 2 Rollout

Our rollout will move from the Phase 1 limited launch to the Phase 2 full launch once the updated DHT staking vault is deployed and we’re ready to kick off Season 2 of our FMP Seasons Series.

In Phase 2, there will be no caps on either the Flat Money (UNIT) Market or the Perpetual Futures Market. We’ll welcome everyone in the Base ecosystem to participate in the Flat Money markets and help us present more Base users with the Flat-Pill choice to choose decentralized onchain money to store and grow value.

Flat Money’s Focus on Security

During every step of Flat Money’s development, our team has put security first. We’ve taken steps to ensure the Flat Money launch is safe, secure, and successful for our users. Over the last several months, the Flat Money team has conducted extensive testing, which includes fuzzing, unit testing, and routine peer reviews of the codebase. We’ve also worked with a leading auditor to review and secure the Flat Money codebase ahead of launch.

Flat Money’s Sherlock Audit Contest

The Flat Money team has been working with Sherlock to audit the protocol’s codebase since January 2023. Sherlock is an incentive-aligned auditing protocol that provides a hybrid audit, which combines the benefits of a legacy audit and an audit competition. The end result is more experienced eyes on the Flat Money codebase.

The Sherlock team is still finalizing the results of our first audit competition. Once it’s published, we will provide an update on our blog, website, and across our socials. While Flat Money team members have been involved in many audits in the past, the consensus among the team is that Sherlock’s audit was the most comprehensive audit anyone on our team has been a part of to date.

We're thrilled with the quality of our first crowd-audit with Sherlock. The dedication and expertise of Watsons, the lead judge, lead senior Watson, and the Sherlock team were invaluable. Thank you!
- The Flat Money team

The Sherlock team also shared their appraisal of the audit process and their experience working with the Flat Money team:

The Flat Money team was very collaborative and responsive throughout the audit contest, showing they take the security of their protocol very seriously. After this effort, Sherlock is sure the Flat Money Protocol is much safer. It was great working with them and the Sherlock team looks forward to doing it again soon!
- Sherlock

Our audit with Sherlock has enabled our team to have over 200 security experts review and secure the Flat Money codebase ahead of our launch.

Additional Sherlock Audit Competition

Our team is so impressed with Sherlock that we’ve made arrangements to host another audit competition during Phase 1 of our rollout, which started on April 9th. While our initial tests and audits ahead of launch have been rigorous, we believe there’s no such thing as too many audits and security reviews.

Before we move to Phase 2, we will complete our work with Sherlock to further secure the Flat Money codebase and make any additional improvements ahead of our full launch.

We know the security of the Flat Money protocol is paramount to our users, which is why we’re doubling down and investing in Flat Money’s security.

Flat Money’s Bug Bounty Program

The Flat Money team will be launching a bug bounty program with Immunefi before the Phase 2 rollout. After our second audit competition with Sherlock concludes, we’ll be working with their team to secure the Flat Money protocol with Sherlock’s Bug Bounty Coverage, a coverage policy that would pay for Critical-severity bug bounties submitted through Flat Money’s bug bounty program.

This Bug Bounty Coverage provides benefits that include:

Assured attention from Sherlock who is deeply invested in uncovering major bugs before the bug bounty program goes live
An attractive bug bounty program that offers increased protection to Flat Money users against hacks

Sherlock’s Bug Bounty Coverage would allow the Flat Money protocol to offer a higher bounty for critical severity responsible disclosures and further incentivize whitehats to continuously review the Flat Money codebase over time.

During Phase 1 this coverage will not be active, but we’re working with the Sherlock team to finalize the details and launch our bug bounty coverage after the second audit competition wraps up. Once the second Sherlock audit is completed and we finalize the terms of our Bug Bounty Coverage, we will make an announcement on our blog and across our socials.

Celebrating Phase 1 of the Flat Money Launch

The Flat Money team has been working hard to launch the protocol and spread the Flat Pill message. We know our community has been eager for the protocol to launch, as well. If you’re not already, we encourage you to join us on Discord, follow us on Twitter and Farcaster, and sign up for the latest news from the Flat Money blog.

We’ll be celebrating Phase 1 of the Flat Money launch all week in our Discord server. Join us and help us spread the Flat Pill message to more Base users.

Want to learn more about the philosophy, core values, and fundamentals behind Flat Money? Read out Building Better Money Series: