Alchemix is a platform for creating yield-backed synthetic tokens. The requirement for creating such a synthetic token is that any existing token, such as stablecoins or ERC20s, must already have a yield generating mechanism on-chain. This could be lending markets, such as Compoundor AAVE, or vault-like products, such as the yvDAI Vault, or aLINK Vault.
The Alchemix team is targeting stablecoins for their first synthetic token, called alUSD (the al denoting the Alchemix platform). The plan is for alUSD to be mintable from several stablecoins, but the protocol will initially only support DAI. The examples in the following sections for alUSD will apply to other al-Tokens in a near-identical way. The dApp contains the following components: Vaults, Transmuter, Farming, and Treasury. Alchemix token (ALCX) is the governance token for the Alchemix protocol.
Alchemix, founded by pseudonymous developers led by Scoopy Trooples, went live in February 2021. The only collateral accepted at launch was Dai, which could be used to mint synthetic alUSD tokens and had a collateralization ratio minimum of 200%. The team has since created a new vault to allow users to deposit ETH and mint alETH tokens with a collateralization ratio minimum of 400%.
There was an incident involving the ETH vault shortly after launch in which users were able to withdraw collateral without repaying their loans, resulting in a loss of 2,200+ ETH. The Alchemix team organized a campaign encouraging users to return the lost ETH in exchange for an exclusive NFT and ALCX rewards, eventually recovering more than half of the funds.
Alchemix is commited to decentralization, with plans to utilize fully on-chain governance and convert into a DAO that is controlled solely by the community. In the future, a portion of the overall yield within the protocol will be diverted to the DAO treasury to pay developers and a permanent staff to grow and maintain the protocol.