After much deliberation and careful thought Neptune Mutual decided to close the cover marketplaces.
After much deliberation and careful thought Neptune Mutual decided to close the cover marketplaces. Below the reasons for the decision as well as what it means for the community.
The marketplaces will be closed using an emergency withdrawal process whereby the liquidity provided to cover pools by LPs will be returned to the wallet addresses from which the liquidity was supplied. In addition to protecting cover pool LPs, there will also be refunds to all cover policy purchasers with an existing and valid policy who have paid over 10 USD in policy fees in one transaction.
For veNPM holders, please fill out this form to receive a refund for your veNPM to NPM conversion penalty.
From the end of June there will no longer be NPM emission incentives for LPs i.e. Epoch 3 of the liquidity gauge emissions will be canceled.
Unused funds raised from financial backers will be returned to those backers; this includes DEX liquidity that has now been removed from SushiSwap and Uniswap. A small amount of liquidity on SushiSwap Arbitrum has been left to enable a minimum amount of NPM trading.
The protocol will be open sourced, and become a true public good. Enabling the community to fork the code developed by the Neptune Mutual team such that others might use the existing resources to further our mission to make the blockchain space better protected against smart contracts and other risks.
There are numerous factors that have led to this difficult decision, some of which are external factors which are uncontrollable or unforeseeable. A few factors summarized below:
“Given Neptune Mutual’s Tier 1 backers, why have you not listed on a top CEX?”
This is perhaps one of the most frequently asked questions. In short, the answer is that for a variety of reasons Neptune Mutual was not able to achieve the diverse set of performance metrics (community size and engagement, marketplace user activity, DEX 24 hour trading volume, TVL growth etc.) required to list on top tier CEX. The CEXs that are prepared to list NPM token do not have the depth of liquidity or breadth of user-base to offer good prospects for NPM tokenholders.
“Why has Neptune Mutual not achieved strong growth?”
It is tempting to take a shortcut to answer this question by pointing a finger at one specific factor, but the reality is that there are many contributing factors. A few summarized below:
Since the outset of engaging with the community we have endeavored to highlight the need for DeFiInsurance; Neptune Mutual built a comprehensive dataset of on-chain hacks available, anywhere, and each week we highlight the many millions of dollars that are stolen as a result of smart contract hacks. Despite this, we have consistently been confronted by projects unwilling to spin up cover pools in our marketplace because of the sentiment that audits of their code are sufficient to persuade their community that their protocol is safe. Less than 0.3% of all digital assets are protected with some form of DeFiInsurance, and yet despite all the media reports of hacks, the conference discussions about the importance of governance or CEX proof-of-reserves, it continues to be the case that it is extremely difficult to get media attention to focus on the need for a fast and efficient means of mitigating smart contract risk.
A variety of approaches have been taken by different DeFiInsurance protocols to address this, from attending multiple conferences throughout the year and significant marketing spend, to the leaner approach that Neptune Mutual took (in part as a result of the bear market in 2023). What can be said is that no DeFiInsurance protocol has managed to achieve significant growth over the last 18 months, sadly the overall TVL of the sector has shrunk a lot.
For all the reasons above, at this moment the best course of action is no longer to double-down on investing in growth, but rather to refund unused capital and close the marketplaces.
The consequences are very tough for the Neptune Mutual team who have spent the past 3 years of their time on the mission to facilitate safer environments within DeFi. The team has delivered products according to the roadmap and the fact that the protocol was never hacked, despite attempts being made on the darkweb, is testament to the expertise, passion and absolute focus on security. The team survived the FTX and UST crisis unscathed, and believed that the continued growth in hacks would lead to growth in the demand for a good solution to mitigate these risks, but sadly, as can be seen right across the DeFiInsurance category, this is not yet in sight. So we would like to thank the team for all the dedication, skill and passion invested into the Neptune Mutual project since the outset.
The team will open source the protocol, including blockchain indexing protocol (subgraph alternative), frontend, middleware, database, and backend code, to make it a true public good. This will allow anyone to fork the code and create covers by defining parameters and premium ranges, potentially leading to innovative covers and organic usage.
The Discord channel will be closed to reduce the risk of phishing and other types of cyber attack, any questions / queries will be responded to in the Telegram channel.
We want to take this final opportunity to thank you all for your support.
Neptune Mutual will contact only its financial backers, with whom a signed agreement exists, in relation to next steps (i.e. holding NPM tokens does not qualify you for any form of refund). Contact will be made only from a neptunemutual.com domain email address so please check the source of any email you may receive very carefully. Please ignore any messages from any other email or social media accounts in relation to token/cash refunds.
The Rising Stars are members of our community who have made contributions to our discussion forums.
We have compiled a wide range of activities and initiatives for the members of our community to do and we both recognise and reward the contribution of members. One such program is the NPM Rising Star, a marketing initiative, where community members can win up to $1000.
The Rising Stars are members of our community who have made significant contributions to our discussion forums and helped to direct the course of our community’s growth.
The first round of the competition began on April 16 and ended on May 15. The second round of this session began immediately after the winners for the first month were announced, and ran through till June 16. Each month, we choose a rising star from the top six users with the highest levels; the rising star gets $250 and 5 runner-ups each receive $50. The competition is running for 3 months (3 rounds of 1 month), and at the end of the program, grand prize winners will be selected.
As a part of this scheme, we have decided to reward Discord members who have assisted us the most in terms of product feedback, community engagement, as well as any suggestions of enhancements that they would like to see on our platform.
Now is the time to award special prizes to lucky winners who, based on their engagement level, were the highest-performing and most active users, together with 5 additional Discord users who showed excellent involvement and provided substantial comments concerning our platform as a whole.
Many thanks to everyone who took part. For those of you who didn’t win this time, rest assured there are many more contests and bounty programs to come.
So heartfelt congrats from us to all of the winners.
The rising star for this month has won $250, and the winner is:
All the above winners can reach out to Brando on Discord, with their wallet address to receive their share of rewards.
NPM Rising Star Season 1 Month 2 winners. harry1LimeWire#2285 leads the pack with 56.9K experience and 5.9K messages at level 33.
As soon as the winners are announced, the levels will be reset, and you can restart your quest to be part of the Rising Stars winners for the last and final month of the current session.
In this, the final month, not only will top Rising Stars be rewarded but there will also be grand prize winners. Rising Stars and Grand Prize are two different reward buckets. We will choose the Grand Prize winners based on the Gleam activities for three months and contribution to the project. The reward of $1500 is split between 3 members from the winner list. The superstar receives $1000 and runner-ups each receive $250.
To begin with, you must sign up for this contest using Gleam and complete all required tasks. The optional tasks you accomplish on Gleam will be included in the grand prize winner selection process.
Join our Discord server and start participating in our community conversations after you’ve registered on Gleam. Bring in your ideas about our protocol, ask questions, provide feedback, and answer other community members if they have questions. Become an integral part of our community discussion and spread the word around. Each month, we will select the top 6 users having the highest levels. Note that we reserve full rights to disqualify a member if we think their activity is suspicious.
Your level will only increase if you send messages to the following channels:
rising-stars
testnet-feedback
product-feature-requests
suggestions
Please note that we will only allow insightful messages. Any spam or irrelevant messages will be deleted and will not count towards your progress. Any attempts to alter the outcome of the event will result in disqualification. This includes spamming, and other means to acquire exp in an unfair manner. We have the right to reduce your exp or level if you go against our guidelines.
If you participate in this program, you fully understand and accept the fact that the Neptune Mutual team’s decision is final and irrevocable.
Ensure that you contribute towards making the NPM community a positive and welcoming place for new beginners to participate in.
Be a part of our growth and help us achieve new heights.
Do not enter spam or too many meaningless messages. We value honest and hardworking community members more than the people who are just only interested in receiving rewards.
