Introducing StonkBase - Why we forked UMA

StonkBase: stonks on ethereum

StonkBase has launched and now stonks are live and trading on ethereum.

no team has yet dared to actually launch stonks as a censorship resistant freely traded ERC20 until now.

many projects have talked about it. even synth projects such as UMA and SNX have attempted it. but the teams always get cold feet because of regulatory concerns.

the problem is none of the existing projects are decentralized enough to really have censorship resistant stonks. the control of the systems are still concentrated in a few hands. this makes them weak to regulators shutting them down.

why UMA

the WSB stonks being halted on robinhood was a reminder that we still need permissionless access to stonks.

we wanted to build stonks on ethereum. we looked at many ways to do it. censorship resistance being the most important feature of stonks on ethereum.

tokenizing stonks does not create permissionless access or censorship resistance. only synthetic assets can provide this. we looked at the synthetic systems available.

we decided UMA has the best architecture for censorship resistance. the DVM model is the only way to have a decentralized oracle. all other systems can be oracle attacked. UMA was our choice.

but there is one problem with UMA. the core team is known and living in the USA. the big investors are known and located in the USA. there are too few token holders holding too many tokens. adding stonk price feeds is a big risk for them. it is not yet censorship resistant.

forking UMA

we know we want to use the UMA tech. but we can’t use UMA as it is today. so we decided to fork it and summon a more decentralized and censorship resistant version of UMA.

StonkBase is an experiment. it is an experiment in allowing riskier assets. it is an experiment in decentralized launches. it is an experiment in anonymous teams and contributors. it is an experiment in working to build a protocol and a product as a dao. it is an experiment true to the core ethos of ethereum.

we do not wish to compete with UMA. we wish to focus on the things that UMA chooses not to focus on. the way that CREAM was willing to work with riskier assets than compound. StonkBase is the more degen cousin to UMA.

StonkBase is focused on stonks. censorship resistant unstoppable stonks. we will make it easy to trade stonks with a new stonks trading interface and perpetual stonks.

the StonkBase team is anonymous. we have our place in kicking this off. but StonkBase belongs to the community.

get involved

without the UMA community none of this would be possible. we have committed to airdropping 20% of the StonkBase token ($SBF) to UMA holders.

we have allocations for the dao workers that make UMA run smoothly. dvm voters. bot maintainers. interface creators. code contributors. community managers.

many of the UMA workers can “dual mine” their efforts on StonkBase. its the same system and you can now earn twice for the same work.

now that $SBF is summoned we must grow the community and decentralize.

come join us. be anon. be yourself. the choice is yours.

stonkbase.org

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Interesting. Would be curious to know what exactly you changed to make it more decentralized and censorship resistant. I don’t think I completely agree with UMA not being censorship resistant, since I guess, yes they could delete your price feed but that would be it? And price feeds are voted on by the community. Not sure how they are stored though, but if they’re stored on ethereum they couldn’t be deleted?

Also, are users going to be able to add their own stonks? So if there’s a stonk that is not already added, could I add it myself?

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UMA is permissionless insofar as anyone can propose a particular price identifier. But I would imagine that major tokenholders who have physical homes in the USA and a phone number the SEC can look up might turn down individual stock listings.

Right, that makes sense. I haven’t taken part in a community vote before. Does the amount of tokens one holds make their vote worth more?

Interesting rationale