System Architecture

Cerus is managed by the Cerus DAO. The DAO members govern Cerus to ensure its efficiency and stability. Besides technical development, the Cerus DAO’s mandate is to promote Cerus and recruit new users with educational content, promotional campaigns, and affiliate marketing.

The Cerus DAO should do the following:

  • Launch Cerus

    • Deploy protocol smart contracts

    • Set fees and other protocol parameters

    • Select the multi-sig participants

    • Facilitate the creation of the signature account for DAO treasury

    • Determine the initial narrative pools

  • Cerus Governance Responsibilities

    • Propose and update Cerus’s parameters

    • Approve incentives for parties contributing towards DAO’s goals

    • Propose and update Cerus’s implementation using DAO treasury funds

    • Manage the Cerus DAO’s liquidity reserve, marketing, and development funds

    • Respond to emergencies

Cerus is implemented in a trust-minimized way as a set of LayerZero smart contracts. Cerus allows users to earn staking rewards on their SYN NFT positions, without locking capital or maintaining staking and farming.

Cerus consists of several parts:

  • CERUS Token;

  • Deposits and SYN NFT minting;

  • SYN NFT redemption and burning;

  • Balancer extensions and oracles; and

  • External AMM connection and oracles.

To stake with Cerus, the user sends USDC to the smart contract and mints a funded SYN NFT in return. SYN NFTs represent a tokenized staking deposit. SYN NFTs can be held, traded, and sold on secondary markets or OTC. The balance of the SYN NFT is based on the total amount of staked USDC plus total staking rewards and collected protocol fees.

All deposits into Cerus SYN NFTs are delineated in USDC at a minimum of 100 tokens and assigned to the various positions within a narrative with weighting determined by Cerus DAO governance.

Redemption of SYN NFTs results in USDC rewards in the amount of the initial stake, any additional stake added plus auto-compounded yield, current yield rewards and liquidity provider fees. Using the Balancer extension gives Cerus the benefit of single transaction entry and exit to positions.

As well, when users of Balancer swap tokens existing in Cerus narratives, NFT holders will earn liquidity provider fees, introducing another yield bearing aspect of the SYN NFTs. Finally, as TVL in SYN grows Cerus will have the opportunity to join the METIS CEG program and other incentive programs on various blockchains for boosted rewards.

The Cerus system design separates SYN NFT AssetManager, PoolManager and VoteManager contracts. This allows for the following upgrades, if required:

  • Add new collections to the NFT AssetManager

  • Upgrade the PoolManager to support new external AMMs on additional chains

  • Change voting mechanisms in the VoteManager

When users enter an SYN NFT it mints an amount of pool tokens. Those pool tokens represent a share of the underlying assets. All those assets collect liquidity provider fees and get yield from token AssetManagers. The FundManager can add tokens to the fund and deposit a portion of the tokens in a staking pool or a lending pool for yield generation.

Users will earn Balancer/AMM swap fees on the tokens remaining in the pool if they are not engaged in yield bearing strategies. Tokens outside of the pool either auto-compound or need to be compounded by the FundManager in the case of more complex strategies.

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