🐶 WOOF! <> Compound 2025

woof · May 2, 2025, 4:33pm

Summary

WOOF! is set to become a team that supports core Compound Protocol developments, addressing the evolving needs of the community—including Compound v4, staked COMP, partial liquidations, and more—while also maintaining and supporting the existing infrastructure.

WOOF! seeks 2M USDC streamed over a 12-month engagement period.

Motivation

Compound is one of the oldest and most secure lending protocols in DeFi, a pioneer in its field. However, despite its strong foundation, it is gradually losing market share to newer protocols that can iterate and adapt more quickly.

Since Compound Labs stepped away, the protocol has been without a dedicated development team to spearhead innovation and maintain its competitive edge. The return of the Compound Foundation signals a promising new chapter and fresh opportunities for growth.

The WOOF! team has been contributing to Compound under the Compound Growth Program with limited resources and a narrow mandate. Our team also submitted proposals for several CGP grants, including Rewards v2 and the Migrator, as well as the Sandbox initiative.

Simply, Compound can capture more growth by having a protocol development team that can react proactively to new market trends and partnerships. Whether new adapters like ERC-4626 wrappers, integrations like Morpho, or core protocol updates pushing to v4 will make Compound more capital efficient, flexible, and secure.

Compound could also benefit from decentralizing and expanding its user-facing presence by open-sourcing its front-end, developing an SDK, and integrating more deeply with partner platforms.

At the same time, the Compound protocol must be well-maintained to preserve its presence in the market—whether that means integrations with platforms like DeFi Llama, updating documentation, or supporting new markets and chains.

Finally, every idea, RFC, or initiative laying for too long on the forum with no answer is available to competitors.

Why WOOF!

WOOF! is uniquely positioned to accelerate the growth of the Compound ecosystem, being the most experienced and active long-term contributor to the protocol to date. Since development efforts started in December 2023, we’ve led multiple initiatives and delivered key improvements—both within and beyond our original mandate—to drive progress and expand Compound’s reach.

Retrospective

Here’s a quick, easy-to-read summary of WOOF!’s key developments over the past year:

Proposals: WOOF! has pushed or supported delegates in pushing over 80 on-chain proposals to the Compound DAO.

Proposals

Markets: The WOOF! team deployed 17 new markets across 9 different chains.

Chain	Market
Mainnet	WBTC, wstETH, USDT, USDS
Optimism	USDT, USDC, WETH
Polygon	USDT
Mantle	USDe
Base	AERO, USDS
Arbitrum	USDT, WETH
Linea	USDC
Unichain	USDC
Ronin	WETH

Collaterals: ~100 collaterals were added across different markets on Compound Finance.

Rewards v2: Rewards V2 is an updated mechanism for distributing rewards in Compound V3, introducing a more efficient and scalable approach by leveraging Merkle trees to track and distribute incentives to eligible users. The system supports both retroactive and ongoing rewards distribution, ensuring fairness and flexibility. Moreover, Rewards V2 allows rewards to be distributed in any ERC-20 token/s, not just COMP, giving governance and integrators the freedom to customize incentive structures.

New Frontend: A fully open-source, decentralized front-end with no back-end makes it simple for anyone to deploy and customize Compound, helping attract more liquidity to the Compound stack. The open-source approach also enables contributors to integrate their own solutions—something that wasn’t possible before. Enhanced lending and borrowing flows, combined with advanced analytics, further improve the user experience and support broader adoption.

Comet Wrapper: The Comet Wrapper extends the utility of Compound cTokens by making them compatible with the ERC-4626 standard. This allows lending positions to be represented in a yield-bearing format, enabling seamless integration of cTokens into other protocols.

CAPO: Correlated-Assets Price Oracle prevents exchange rate manipulation for LST & LRT assets and caps the inflated staking APRs. More at the dedicated forum post.

Migrator: Migrator is a tool for seamless migration of lend or borrow position from AAVE, Morpho, or Spark to Compound v3. An advanced technical decision includes multi-protocol support implementation, the customized Uniswap router, a token proxy-conversion mechanism, protection from liquidation via Health Factor logic, and an administrative solution for scalability. The approach makes migration fully transparent and safe, the swaps are provided on the most beneficial conditions.

Sandbox: Sanbox is a Compound v3-based permissionless money-market platform, an extension of Compound Finance.

Arbitrum LTIPP: Dune Dashboard that allowed Compound to secure 1.8M ARB grant from Arbitrum LTIPP.

24 collaterals update: Updated that allows Comets to increase the cap of supported collaterals from 8 to 24. The update also consolidated the versioning of the markets to the same one.

CGWG Support: Dune Dashboard – metrics-driven evaluation of delegate voting patterns during the past governance period. It highlights the effectiveness of delegates in contributing to Compound’s key objectives, ensuring decisions are made in the protocol’s best interest.

Other Initiatives:

Community Multisig: Actively participating in Community Multisig.
Hosting of CDCC: We are hosting a Compound Developer Community Call every other Wednesday and driving Compound stack growth conversations.
Bug Bounty: WOOF! is taking part in the Immunefi Bug Bounty program.

Mandate

Our mandate is built on two pillars: Support and Innovations. Support covers the ongoing tasks that keep Compound running smoothly, visible, and up to date. Innovation, on the other hand, is all about developing new features that will take Compound to the next level.

Support

Chains: Adoption of new emerging chains to the Compound considering their uniqueness and efforts related to communication with different teams.

Markets and collaterals: Development and deployment of new markets and collaterals.

Support of builders: We will help Compound contributors to build for Compound, including support for Compound Grant Program grantees.

Compound Sandbox: Ongoing development and support of the Sandbox protocol and its user interface, including frequent updates, curator onboarding, and TVL-driven upgrades.

Protocol Versioning: Proper versioning is essential when updating core components across different protocol deployments (Mainnet, USDT, Scroll, etc.). We plan to align all deployments to a unified version and establish a clear backlog of upcoming updates and integrations.

Protocol Updates: As the number of markets continues to grow, we’ll develop a framework to update all markets seamlessly through a single on-chain proposal, reducing both development overhead and governance workload.

Packages Update: Outdated libraries and packages—such as Hardhat and Ethers—will be regularly updated to the latest standards, streamlining development and integration for contributors.

Tests and Scenarios: Outdated test scenarios will be reviewed and improved to strengthen protocol security and accelerate development for contributors. Additionally, infrastructure enhancements will help unify testing across all networks and ensure better coverage of edge cases specific to each chain’s characteristics.

Documentation: The current Compound documentation is outdated, making it harder for partners and contributors to work effectively with the protocol. WOOF! will update the existing documentation and implement automation to keep it in sync with governance proposals moving forward.

Assets and Markets Factory: We plan to build a factory contract that will significantly streamline the process of adding new markets and assets, reducing both development effort and time to deployment.

Innovations

WOOF! will lead community discussions and deliver cutting-edge products in alignment with the Compound community, with guidance from active participants such as the Compound Foundation, @Gauntlet, @Platonia, and others.

We will work on community projects that passed Snapshot vote and provide feedback to initiatives that are both technical and with finalised design.

We listed some features to be delivered in the nearest future:

Collateral Factors: Increasing the Collateral Factor will enhance Compound’s capital efficiency and attract additional liquidity that previously found limited utility in existing markets. To support this, WOOF! will implement a series of fundamental protocol upgrades.

Partial Liquidations: An increase in the Collateral Factor should be accompanied by a more efficient partial liquidation mechanism. Partial liquidations are less disruptive for borrowers—particularly those with larger positions—helping to create a more balanced experience.

CAPO: Correlated-Assets Price Oracle prevents exchange rate manipulation for LSD assets and caps the inflated staking APRs. More at the dedicated forum post.

Kill Switch: The Kill Switch is a rapid-response mechanism that enables Compound Governance to pause liquidations, withdrawals, and deposits in order to prevent potential market manipulation and mitigate the risk of black swans.

OEV Adoption: OEV is an important part of recapturing liquidation revenue from block producers to Compound. WOOF! will provide technical oversight of available solutions and will integrate the best one chosen by the DAO.

Staked COMP: Staked COMP is a staking mechanism designed to increase governance participation and align incentives among COMP holders.

Balancer Boosted Pools: Integrating Balancer will allow unutilized liquidity to flow from Balancer into Compound Earning, injecting the protocol with significant additional capital.

Cross-chain Lending: Unifying Compound liquidity through cross-chain lending and borrowing will make the protocol’s markets more capital-efficient, versatile, and resilient to high-utilization scenarios.

Close Borrow Position with Collaterals: An upgrade will enable users to close their borrow positions using existing collateral when they wish to withdraw funds but lack the liquidity to repay the debt.

Collaterals Swap: Seamless collateral swaps within a borrowing position allow users to change their collateral without closing it.

Analytics: Advanced analytics on markets and user positions will empower users to make more informed, data-driven decisions.

Front-end Distribution: An SDK will enable ecosystem partners to seamlessly integrate Compound into their front-ends.

The list of new features and builds will be continuously updated in real time based on the needs and feedback of the Compound Community. WOOF! commits to work on at least two labor-intensive innovations simultaneously.

Expectations

Communication

DeFi never sleeps—and neither does WOOF! Our team is deeply engaged in the protocol’s development, with members available 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. We’re committed to maintaining constant communication, enabling rapid collaboration with vendors, and managing bi-weekly alignment meetings. We’ve actively coordinated with Gauntlet, OpenZeppelin, Chainlink, Redstone, API3, and Compound’s delegators to ensure protocol efficiency and swift proposal execution.

Vendors

The WOOF! team has consistently served as a bridge between the protocol and its vendors. To improve coordination and ensure alignment on priorities and deliverables, we initiated bi-weekly meetings with all vendor teams. Our team actively collaborated with Gauntlet and OpenZeppelin to deliver new features on tight timelines, always seeking ways to improve both internal processes and cross-team workflows. We’re proud to have worked closely with all stakeholders to meet the goals of the Growth team and the DAO.

Delegates

We often had to push proposals over weekends and across various time zones. WOOF! made it a priority to coordinate with delegators at times that were convenient for them. Whenever support was needed, we were always happy to assist and ensure the process ran smoothly.

Other

Dedicated Posts: When we begin working on a project, we post an outline with estimated timelines on the forum. We update the thread as each milestone is completed or if there are any changes. We respond to all forum questions within two working days.
Community Calls: We host and attend all Compound Community Developer Calls on X, providing clear and transparent updates.
Forum Updates: We regularly share updates on all ongoing, completed, and upcoming projects—just as we’ve consistently done in the past.

Deliverables

Deliverables will be open-sourced and stored in the Woof Software GitHub repository.

Deliverables include:

Forum Discussion
Documentation
Deployment if applicable
On-chain proposal
Post-deployment support

Ask

Stream 2,000,000 USDC over 12 months to WOOF!

As an active community and governance participant, we are seeking a 50,000 COMP delegation.

Conclusion

This proposal accelerates Compound’s development, leveraging WOOF! expertise and resources to enhance capital efficiency, decentralization, and distribution, securing its position as the leading borrowing and lending protocol.

PGov · May 3, 2025, 2:59am

To start, we want to emphasize that the Woof team has been incredibly helpful with any technical issues or questions that we have had as a delegate, as well as part of the Compound Governance WG. A majority of the proposals we’ve submitted or worked on have been created by the Woof team and their response and turnaround times are always great.

We like the full on chain focus of the campaigns and breakdown of each technical area of support. We are confident that when it comes to devs team, Woof has been one the best teams team’s we’ve ever had to work with.

Some initial questions that come to mind:

How will success be measured here? Any specific metrics or usage/ KPIs to evaluate the success after 12 months would be helpful.
It’s mentioned that Woof was able to secure funding through the Alphagrowth engagement in the past. General outline or details on that would be nice to see how runway was like prior and the scope covered then.
Sandbox is included here, and would be nice to see general updates to get a gauge of what we can expect with future larger projects.

cmrn · May 5, 2025, 2:54am

Appreciate @woof for bringing this with the understanding that they aren’t rushing the proposal onchain, but mostly seeking community feedback. Below is my own with respect.

It’s clear WOOF! is a valuable protocol contributor but considering the crossroads Compound remains at, it doesn’t appear prudent to pass this in current form. I’d propose a lighter deal to keep the team paid as it relates to their core responsibilities (2-3 months which may seem short but the purpose would be to reevaluate at that time based on what is looking best).

This would leave room for greater deals post-Sandbox delivery.

woof · May 5, 2025, 5:27pm

Thank you for your feedback and questions, @PGov. We’re pleased our contributions have been valuable over the past year and hope to bring more value in the upcoming year.

It’s challenging to set uniform KPIs for every project, as each Innovation is unique and requires a custom approach. However, one strong indicator is our track record—every project we have committed to previously has been delivered fully, and to a high-quality standard within reasonable deadlines. For instance, when developing the Migrator under the Compound Grants Program, we significantly expanded its feature set without requesting additional funding.

Regarding Innovations, we’ll undertake projects both from our initiative and community suggestions. Before starting development, we’ll provide a detailed roadmap with clearly defined milestones and deadlines. Additionally, we’ll outline the project scope and specifications upfront, enabling the community to directly compare them with the final product.

Retrospectively, the work done under the Support Mandate is highly situational. For instance, when working with markets, our progress depends on various factors such as price feeds, recommendations, security audits of oracles/chains/proposals, and agreements with stakeholders. Priorities can also shift frequently. Our goal is to be flexible based on emerging needs. Thus, the most meaningful KPI here would be direct feedback from the requirement owners. For example, entities like Gauntlet or Compound Foundation might recommend listing a specific market, coordinating communication with the token teams, and evaluating how promptly and effectively we deliver our work.

Sure, here is a breakdown grouped by funding source:

Funding Source	~Amount, USD	Scope
Compound Growth Program 2024: Development Fund	400,000	New chains, markets, and collaterals development
Compound Growth Program 2024: Integration Fund	325,000	New frontend development and support; ERC-4626; LTIPP Dashboard; Dune Dashboards; Additional markets listing; Uni-LP Support Discovery; Gas fees.
Governance Working Group	10,000	Dune dashboard to analyze the governance activity.
Sandbox	600,000	Permissionless isolated money markets platform development
Compound Grants Program	75,000	Rewards V2; Migrator

We’re looking forward to Sandbox becoming a valuable part of the Compound ecosystem and are committed to its ongoing development. As previously announced, the planned release date for Sandbox is June 30, and we’re currently on track to meet this timeline. The community will be able to review tangible deliverables closer to the release date and act accordingly.

Thank you again for the meaningful feedback and questions. We hope our answers will bring more clearance for everyone.

robinnagpal · May 6, 2025, 3:26pm

Great team and great output. I’ve mostly worked with @dmitriywoofsoftware, and he’s always been there to help.

I recommend providing a more detailed budget breakdown, as this will increase the chances of it being approved on the first try.

Avantgarde · May 7, 2025, 12:20pm

Thank you to the WOOF! team for submitting this comprehensive proposal outlining a path for a dedicated core development on Compound. Having seen your consistent contributions and the significant work delivered so far, we highly value your experience and commitment to the protocol.

Clearly, this proposal addresses a critical need for Compound by establishing a dedicated team focused on both essential maintenance and driving key protocol developments like v4, among other things. The 2M ask seems proportionate to the scope outlined and in comparison to other service provider mandates, plus the governance delegation makes sense given your active involvement.

This is a significant proposal for the protocol’s future, and we appreciate the clarity on your proposed mandate and operational approach. We strongly believe that having a proactive, dedicated development team is crucial for Compound to, most importantly, innovate and compete more effectively in the DeFi space. Overall we think this proposal is well-considered, and your detailed retrospective highlights your significant track record of contributions leaves little doubt in terms of your capabilities.

All in all we’re happy to support this, and appreciate the added budget breakdown.

One question: with the extensive list of potential development initiatives, how does WOOF! plan to prioritise which features to develop and when, especially considering the commitment to working on multiple labor-intensive projects at the same time? What would the expected roadmap for the initial 12 months look like?

Looking forward to further discussion and seeing this progress!

woof · May 7, 2025, 9:34pm

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts @cmrn. We genuinely appreciate your feedback.

We’ll take your perspective into consideration as things develop and will keep your suggestion in mind going forward.

Appreciate you taking the time to engage, and excited to collaborate further.

woof · May 7, 2025, 9:37pm

We appreciate the feedback, @robinnagpal. We’re glad to be helpful and hope to collaborate more closely in the future.

The team will consist of 15 to 18 full-time specialists dedicated to Compound. We may also allocate additional internal resources or reallocate specialists since one project might be smart-contracts heavy, while another requires extended front-end work.

Also, we may bring in third-party vendors for specialized tasks. For example, we have an in-house auditor focused on improving pre-audit code quality and audit readiness, which will help boost OpenZeppelin’s throughput.

Under the last mandate, we’ve faced resource constraints that forced us to make trade-offs and prioritize selectively. For context, we currently have 3 to 4 specialists working under the Compound Growth Program 2024. However, now we aim to move beyond this limitation as we want to execute on all top priorities simultaneously.

We’re committed to staying competitive, especially when compared to similar DAO teams like BGD Labs at AAVE (~$6M annually) and the team at Euler (~$4.5M annually), which is 2.25–3x lower than our current proposal. WOOF! is prepared to deliver similar or greater output with a significantly leaner budget, reinforcing our commitment to cost-effective, high-impact development.

woof · May 7, 2025, 9:38pm

Thank you for your continued support and trust, @Avantgarde. We’re committed to keeping our work aligned with the community’s vision and expectations.

WOOF! strongly believes in continuous research and protocol improvement. We plan to dedicate senior researchers whose sole focus will be optimizing and evolving the protocol. This team will work independently from the core engineering team to ensure a steady stream of innovation.

Over the past year, we prioritized protocol expansion — deploying on new chains and onboarding new collateral types. However, protocol-level innovation has lagged behind. We see major opportunities to modernize key components, such as dynamic and more robust price feed mechanisms that improve safety and liquidation efficiency.

As you pointed out, our team is highly proactive when it comes to launching new initiatives. In addition to that, we’re always ready to support emerging ideas and respond to new requests.

That said, while we’ll propose new initiatives, the community will ultimately guide the direction of development, ensuring alignment between WOOF! and the Compound DAO, expanding on the current list of priorities.

We propose the Snapshot-based approach. Each feature or initiative would be clearly defined, and the community and delegates would rank them based on impact. This creates a recurring, transparent feedback loop that requires and encourages broader community participation.

Our Support mandate includes ongoing development throughout the entire period, while current Innovation priorities are as follows:

Priority	Scope	Impact
1	Partial Liquidations, CAPO, Kill Switch	Collateral Factor (Loan-To-Value) Increase. More opportunities for loopers impacting TVL growth.
1	Oracle Extractable Value	Additional fees affect the positive growth of reserves.
1	Improve the V3 codebase to the latest standards	Speed up the future development process.
2	Staked COMP	Impact on COMP utility and governance participation.
2	Rewards & Migrator Integration	Enhance user experience.
2	Improve documentation, consistency, and versioning	Provide a clean track record for the community and integrators.
2	Consider improvements for price feeds	Enhance liquidations and borrow management.
3	Cross-chain lending	Liquidity unification; Enhanced user experience.
3	Close Borrow Position with Collateral; Collateral Swap	Increase capital efficency and user experience.
4	Front-end SDK	Distribution of the Compound interface.
4	Analytics	Enhanced user experience.

Onedayimay · May 8, 2025, 4:06pm

I’m sorry if I’m missing something, but is this in regard to Compound Foundation?

In a Twitter post, they mentioned “a foundation, entirely separate from Labs or any other existing entity” which would mean that Woof or any other existing team wouldn’t qualify to be part of it.

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