Bumper’s innovation is the culmination of a three-year research and development programme, backed by $20m in early funding, and collaboration with the Swiss Center for Cryptoeconomics, known for work on Synthetix, and coded by renowned developers Digital Mob, who previously worked on protocols such as Barnbridge, Gnosis and Filecoin.
The result is a protocol that undercuts traditional options desks by one third, while paying between 3-18% APR to Liquidity Providers (LPs) that supply USDC to the protocol. Early adopters of the protocol will also share in $250,000 worth of incentives, by either protecting their ETH or earning on their USDC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBb9mYpWn9Y
Bumper’s Co-founder and CEO, Jonathan DeCarteret, says “Bumper removes the downside volatility of a user’s crypto tokens, paving the way for them to take leveraged positions with zero-liquidation risk. That in itself is a major breakthrough, but when you consider it’s on average 30% cheaper than the market leader, the value proposition becomes crystal clear.”
The protocol charges a premium which is calculated incrementally during the term, based on a combination of market conditions, protocol rebalancing and proximity to the user’s floor. This generates real yields for liquidity providers who realise returns ranging between 3-18% APR on average without the need to sell option contracts.
Until now, the methodology for calculating the price for hedging risk relied on the fifty-year-old Black-Scholes model, which has fuelled the $13 trillion options market.
“Fifty years is a long time in tech and although Bumper uses completely different inputs and a novel rebalancing mechanism, it is surprisingly correlated with Black-Scholes, but more efficient, even under the most volatile of market conditions.” said Mr DeCarteret.
Bumper has been deployed to the Ethereum mainnet, and is currently accepting deposits in ETH and USDC, with additional ERC-20 tokens and multi-chain support slated to be added to the protocol in rapid succession.
