Terminology

It's dangerous to go alone - learn these.

Archcontroller

  • Smart contract which doubles up as a registry and permission gate. Borrowers are added or removed from the archcontroller by the operators of the protocol itself (granting/rescinding the ability to deploy controllers and/or markets), and the addresses of any controller factories, controllers or markets that get deployed through the protocol are stored here.

Base APR

  • The interest rate that lenders receive on assets that they have deposited into a particular market, in the absence of the penalty APR being enforced.

Borrow

  • To withdraw assets from a market that has a non-zero supply and reserve ratio less than 100%, with the intent of repaying the assets (plus any accrued interest) to the market either when the required purpose of using the assets has concluded or as a response to withdrawal requests.

Borrower

  • Both:

    • The counterparty that wishes to make use of a credit facility through a Wildcat market, and

    • The blockchain address that defines the parameters of a market and deploys the controller and market contracts that comprise it.

Capacity

  • Parameter required of borrower when creating a new market.

  • The maximum amount of an asset that a borrower is looking to source via a market - the sum total of what all lenders can deposit and earn interest on.

  • Can be exceeded by the current supply of a market token depending on interest accrued.

Claim

  • Removing assets from the unclaimed withdrawals pool that were requested for withdrawal by a lender at the end of a withdrawal cycle.

  • Depending on the reserve ratio of the market when the withdrawal request associated with a claim was made, claiming may require the burning of market tokens (see Lenders for details).

  • Note that retrieving your deposits from a Wildcat market requires a withdrawal request and then a claim - it is a two transaction process with the conclusion of one withdrawal cycle in between.

Controller

  • Smart contract deployed by a borrower which contains the list of addresses which are authorised to deposit to any markets deployed through it.

  • Contains logic concerning parameters of markets deployed through it (e.g. maximum grace period, minimum penalty APR).

  • Controls APR adjustments and enforces reserve ratios of markets.

  • Imposes protocol fees (either lump-sum origination or APR-based) on markets.

Default

Delinquency

  • A market state wherein there are insufficient assets in the market to meet the reserve ratio as specified by the borrower.

  • Arises via the passage of time through interest if the borrower borrows right up to their reserve ratio.

  • Can also arise if a lender makes a withdrawal request and moves assets within the market into the unclaimed withdrawals pool.

  • A market being delinquent for an extended period of time (as specified by the grace period) results in the penalty APR being enforced in addition to the base APR and any protocol APR that may apply.

  • 'Cured' by depositing sufficient assets into the market as to reattain the required reserve ratio.

Deposit

  • Both:

    • The act of sending assets as a lender to a market for the purposes of being borrowed by the borrower,

    • The act of sending assets as a borrower to a market for the purposes of being withdrawn by lenders,

    • A term for the lenders' assets themselves once in a market.

Escrow Contract

  • An auxiliary smart contract that is deployed in the event that the sentinel detects that a lender address has been added to a sanctioned list such as the OFAC SDN: this check is performed through the Chainalysis oracle.

  • Used to transfer the debt (for the lender) and obligation to repay (for the borrower) away from the market contract to avoid wider contamination through interaction. Interest ceases to accrue upon creation and transfer.

  • Any assets relating to an attempted claim by the affected lender as well as any market tokens tied to their remaining deposit are automatically transferred to the escrow contract when blocked (either through an attempt to withdraw or via a call to a 'nuke from orbit' function found within the market).

  • Assets can only be released to the lender in the event that a) they are no longer tagged as sanctioned by the Chainalysis oracle, or b) the borrower specifically overrides the sanction.

Expired Withdrawal

Grace Period

  • Parameter required of borrower when creating a new market.

  • Rolling period of time for which a market can be delinquent before the penalty APR of the market activates.

  • Note that the grace period does not 'reset' to zero when delinquency is cured. See grace tracker below for details.

Grace Tracker

  • Internal market parameter associated with the grace period.

  • Once a market becomes delinquent, begins counting seconds up from zero - when the value of the grace tracker exceeds the grace period, the penalty APR activates.

  • Once a market is cured of delinquency, begins counting seconds down to zero - the penalty APR continues to apply until the grace tracker value is below the grace period value.

  • Enforces the rolling nature of the grace period.

Lender

  • Both:

    • A counterparty that wishes to provide a credit facility through a Wildcat market, and

    • The blockchain address associated with that counterparty which deposits assets to a market for the purposes of being borrowed by the borrower.

Market

Market Token

  • ERC-20 token indicating a claim on the underlying assets in a market.

  • Issued to lenders after a deposit.

  • Supply rebases after every non-static call to the market contract depending on the total current APR of the market: always redeemable 1:1.

  • Transferable to arbitrary addresses.

  • Can only be redeemed by authorised lender addresses (not necessarily the same one that received the market tokens initially).

  • Name and symbol prefixes are customisable in market creation, prepending to the name and symbol of the underlying asset.

Master Loan Agreement (MLA)

  • Legal agreement binding borrowers and lenders together on a one-to-one basis for a specific market.

  • Defines expected behaviour and various covenants and representations concerning identity, usage of funds, security practices and various events that constitute default.

  • Sets jurisdiction for any arbitration or civil suits as the UK.

  • Must be signed by borrower when deploying a market using the protocol UI.

  • Is offered to lender to countersign when first encountering a market via the protocol UI (which can be signed or declined depending on lenders preference, or whether counterparties have entered into another agreement).

  • Offered by Wildcat as protection for lenders.

  • As of 20th December 2023, not yet enforced: drafting in progress.

Penalty APR

  • Parameter required of borrower when creating a new market.

  • Additional interest rate (above and beyond the base APR and any protocol APR imposed by a market controller) that is applied for as long as the grace tracker value for a market is in excess of the specified grace period.

  • Encourages borrower to responsibly monitor the reserve ratio of a market.

  • No part of the penalty APR is receivable by the Wildcat protocol itself (does not inflate the protocol APR if present).

Pending Withdrawal

Protocol APR

  • Percentage of base APR that accrues to the Wildcat protocol itself.

  • Fixed parameter in controller contracts, applying to all markets deployed by said controller.

  • Can be zero.

  • Does not increase in the presence of an active penalty APR (which only increases the APR accruing to lenders).

  • Example: market with base APR of 10% and protocol APR of 20% results in borrower paying 12% when penalty APR is not active.

Reserve Ratio

Sentinel

  • Smart contract that ensures that addresses which interact with the protocol are not flagged by the Chainalysis oracle for sanctions.

  • Can deploy escrow contracts to excise a lender flagged by the oracle from a wider market.

Service Agreement

  • Agreement that must be signed by all users of the protocol (borrower or lender) when first accessing the protocol UI and connecting their wallet.

  • Presents - among other things - protocol terminology and logic, and constitutes a waiver of protocol responsibility for any damages incurred via its use.

  • For the full text, please see Service Agreement.

Supply

Unclaimed Withdrawals Pool

  • A sequestered pool of underlying assets which are pending their claim by lenders following a withdrawal request.

  • Assets are moved from market reserves to the unclaimed withdrawals pool by burning market tokens at a 1:1 ratio (reducing the supply of the market).

  • Assets within the unclaimed withdrawals pool do not accrue interest, but similarly cannot be borrowed by the borrower - they are considered out of reach.

Underlying Asset

  • Parameter required of borrower when creating a new market.

  • The asset which the borrower is seeking to borrow by deploying a market - for example DAI (Dai Stablecoin) or WETH (Wrapped Ether).

  • Can be any ERC-20 token.

Vault

  • See market.

  • If you see this term anywhere, it's a mistake that we should have cleared up!

Withdrawal Cycle

  • Parameter required of borrower when creating a new market.

  • Period of time that must elapse between the first withdrawal request of a 'wave' of withdrawals and assets in the unclaimed withdrawals pool being made available to claim.

  • Withdrawal cycles do not work on a rolling basis - at the end of one withdrawal cycle, the next cycle will not start until the next withdrawal request.

  • In the event that the amount being claimed in the same cycle across all lenders is in excess of the reserves currently within a market, all lenders requests within that cycle will be honoured pro rata depending on overall amount requested.

  • Intended to prevent a run on a given market (mass withdrawal requests) leading to slower lenders receiving nothing.

  • Can have a value of zero, in which case each withdrawal request is processed - and potentially added to the withdrawal queue - as a standalone batch.

Withdrawal Queue

  • Internal data structure of a market.

  • All withdrawal requests that could not be fully honoured at the end of their withdrawal cycle are batched together, marked as expired and added to the withdrawal queue.

  • Tracks the order and amounts of lender claims.

  • FIFO (First-In-First-Out): when assets are returned to a market which has a non-zero withdrawal queue, assets are immediately routed to the unclaimed withdrawals pool and can subsequently be claimed by lenders with the oldest expired withdrawals first.

Withdrawal Request

Whitelisted

Last updated