With Luna Foundation Guard's increasing holdings of BTC as a stable UST reserve (at the time of writing: LFG addresses hold a total of 42,530.8 BTC, more than Tesla) and the Curve 4Pool proposal, the Terra ecosystem is destined for a major explosion. Eco #1 DEX Astroport now has a TVL of $1.5B+ and $ASTRO is up 66%+ per month!

The reason for Astroport's explosion is not only the above-mentioned reasons but also its adoption of Voting Escrow (Voting Escrow) and the ensuing Astro War. At the main table of Astro War, Retrograde is likely to be the "Jesus" sitting in the middle.

Retrograde

Retrograde is based on Terralessons learned' from Curve War on Ethereum and aims to create a meta-governance protocol that will enable the community to unify governance on Terra. This will better align the incentives of the DeFi protocol and give real governance, energizing the Terra ecosystem.

Protocol Mechanisms

1. Conversion: allows users to convert their tokens into derivative tokens of Retrograde. For example, the original token (e.g. xASTRO) becomes part of Retrograde and is permanently pledged or locked in the local protocol for that token (e.g. Astroport). In return, the user receives a Retrograde derivative token (,e.g. rexASTRO). Therefore, each Retrograde derivative token in circulation corresponds to a token locked in the Retrograde treasury.

(Noted: xAstro is the pledged credential of the user who pledges the token ASTRO to Astroport and the holder receives the Astroport agreement fee)

2. Staking: Derivative tokens of Retrograde can be pledged to earn native protocol proceeds. rexAstrograde also offers RETRO yields and a boosted share offered to other ecosystem participants. For example, by pledging rexASTRO, users can earn the normal vxASTRO yield (part of the Astroport protocol revenue), RETRO tokens, and a boosted share of the ASTRO release that can be earned by Retrograde's liquidity provider.

(Noted: veAstro is a pledged credential after a user has repledged the token xASTRO to Astroport. veAstro holders will receive the Astroport Agreement voting governance rights in addition to the Astroport Agreement fees!)

3. Voting: refers to the use of the Retrograde treasury assets for voting. One of the tokens, RETRO, must be locked in by voting for 16 weeks in order to participate in the voting mechanism.

4. Boosting: Retrograde integrates with agreements that boost LP yields or rewards for its token holders.

In the case of Astroport, for example, liquidity providers can provide liquidity through Retrograde and can receive boosted ASTRO rewards without holding or locking any ASTRO. At the same time, rexASTRO pledgers can earn a portion of the ASTRO rewards issued to the liquidity provider.

rexASTRO liquidates and debt rolls the voting rights of veASTRO that are not transferable on Astroport, by converting ASTRO into rexASTRO in perpetuity and locked by Retrograde, with RETRO tokens exercising the voting rights of ASTRO by proxy, and by creating rexASTRO:ASTRO close to 1 :1 liquidity pool, which gives ASTRO holders a significant incentive to put ASTRO into Retrograde to increase the yield.

5. Governance: A management agreement is in place for RETRO token holders. No further details have been officially disclosed.

The short version is that Retrograde allows users to earn additional income on their yield assets or focus on governance utility through voting in the Retrograde treasury. Those users who earn primarily on token pledges can continue to earn more through Retrograde than they would on a native protocol. And users who vote in governance polls can participate in the most efficient way possible through Retrograde. Finally, protocol participants, such as liquidity providers, who want to benefit from the enhanced yields and rewards given by holding protocol tokens, such as ASTRO ANC, and without worrying about lock-in or price risk on the tokens themselves.

Tokens

RETRO - Retrograde's native governance token, with a total of 100 million tokens.

Staking: Staking RETRO earns a portion of the protocol revenue of the protocol behind the Retrograde derivative token. In the case of rexASTRO, for example, RETRO pledgers earn a portion of Astroport's protocol revenue.
Governance & Voting: Participate in the governance of the Retrograde agreement (e.g. matters such as reward allocation, agreement integration, etc.) and vote on tokens in the Retrograde treasury.
RETRO token Distribution: 62% to community eco, 10% to investors (linear release every other year for 4 years), 5% to key contributors, 10% to protocol team, 10% to $RETRO Issue-2 phase, 1% to $RETRO Issue-1 phase, 1% to airdrop, 1% to initial RETRO liquidity provider.

rexASTRO - A derivative token corresponding to xASTRO.

1 rexASTRO corresponds to 1 xASTRO in the Retrograde treasury.
rexASTRO can be pledged in Retrograde to receive tokens vxASTRO, RETRO incentives and revenue enhancement incentives in Astroport.
rexASTRO is pegged 1:1 to xASTRO via a RETRO incentivised liquidity pool (i.e. as xASTRO accumulates automatic compounding rewards from Astroport fees, the value of rexASTRO grows in parallel with xASTRO).

Airdrop - Retrograde will airdrop 10 million RETROs to the Astrochad community (snapshot completed).

Astroport Bootstrap auction participants (1.5 million RETROs).
Astroport Lockdrop participants (3,000,000 RETRO).
ASTRO Token Holders (4.5 million RETRO).
Non-locked ASTRO-UST liquidity providers (1 million RETROs).

Financing Information (the amount of this round is not yet disclosed)

Investors: Terraform Labs, Delphi Digital, #Hashed, Jump Crypto, Arrington Capital, Apollo Dao, Qi Capital, Kinetic.

(Noted: Delphi Digital, #Hashed also participated in the seed round of Retrograde's competitor Reactor)

Angel investors: In addition to the project partners of Terraform Labs, Anchor, Stader, Mirror, Pylon and LIDO, Sami Tannir, the project partner of bribery platform Redactedcartel, and 0xMaki, the project partner of Sushi&Tokemak, also participated in the investment.

(Noted: Retrograde is 0xMaki's first investment in Terra)

Astro War

Astroport: Terra-based AMM DEX, developed by Delphi Labs, We3, Attic Lab, and Terraform Labs and operated by Delphi Labs on its official Twitter account.

Astroport creates three types of pools

1. Constant Product pools;

2. Stableswap Invariant pools;

3.Liquidity Bootstrapping (LBP) pools;

(Astroport subsequently allows builders to create new pool types)

Astroport's token ASTRO has two important utilities: pledging into & locking. One of these locks is the now popular Voting Escrow mechanism, where vxASTRO is obtained by locking xASTRO to have protocol voting governance, increased LP returns, and more transaction fees. Similar to Curve, the longer the xASTRO is locked in, the more vxASTRO is earned and the higher the yield.

The risk of participating in voting governance & increasing returns by pledging a locked position in their ASTRO is obviously not small. In order to enhance the value capture of ASTRO tokens and achieve effective voting governance of the protocol, Retrograde follows the example of Convex, allowing users to earn more without locking their positions for a long period of time, and the protocol can fully utilize the voting governance of ASTRO.

The relationship between Astroport & Retrograde is therefore similar to the relationship between Curve & Convex in the Curve War, where the project owner of the Terra ecosystem needs to get the Astroport community to vote for itself as much as possible, so that Astroport can allocate more ASTRO tokens to incentivise its own pool of liquidity providers and thus attract more users to provide liquidity to boost TV. more users to provide liquidity to boost TVL.

Market Competitors

REACTOR - Not yet live, just completed a seed round led by Delphi and Hashed, with participation from GT Capital.
Apollo DAO - already live but more of a partnership with Retrograde/Reactor. -
Retrograde and Reactor are more clearly in competition, as the ASTRO that gathers more users in the market will determine who becomes the "Convex" of the Astro War. Reactor has not yet revealed any timeline.

References:1. https://docs.retrograde.money/general-information/why-retrograde

2. https://medium.com/coinmonks/the-current-state-of-terra-governance-3dce3f0258ae

3. https://medium.com/@Retrogrademoney/retro-airdrop-explained-d8a539e1b89d

4. https://astroport.medium.com/astroport-litepaper-1fab783b77b5

5. https://twitter.com/packformoon/status/1510607084181925888

6. https://docs.astroport.fi/astroport/tokenomics/staking-and-locking

7. https://medium.com/@Retrogrademoney/the-retrograde-launch-b067d43207ec