The Avantgarde Finance team is excited to release v2.0 of the Melon Terminal (f.k.a. Melon Manager Interface), the first release by Avantgarde Finance.

As lead developer of the Melon protocol, Avantgarde Finance developed a new browser-based and open source interface to access the Melon protocol for Melon managers and investors. If you had tried the Melon Manager Interface v1.0, you will be able to witness the major improvement in experience, performance and stability that this release brings.

This interface runs on a new version of the Melon protocol (v1.1.0), deployed in February and vetted by the Melon Council on 02/20/2020 through a protocol upgrade vote. It interacts with the protocol contracts using the melonjs library.

Melon Protocol

The Melon protocol is a protocol for decentralized on-chain asset management. It allows anyone to:

Deploy an on-chain fund to Ethereum: this fund’s operational, administrative, accounting and regulatory functions will be entirely automated by technology and performed on-chain

Define parameters which will govern the behaviour of your fund: fee structure, risk engineering profile, authorized subscription assets, investor whitelist etc.

Choose the decentralized exchanges you want to be able to trade on (OasisDex, 0x, Kyber Network, Uniswap)

Invest in your own fund, and/or in other existing Melon funds

Redeem your shares in a Melon fund

Track and observe funds’ metrics (NAV, GAV, share price all computed on-chain)

Keep track of and collect management and performance fees

Permanently close your fund

… all in a trustless and permissionless fashion.

In a nutshell, Melon powers the full asset management stack in an entirely automated and democratized way; it allows anyone anywhere in the world to deploy their own fund, on-chain. This used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, take several months and involve a lot of paperwork. Now you can do this with a couple bucks, under 10 minutes and from the comfort of your sofa.

What’s in Melon Terminal v2.0?

The Melon Terminal is a user interface that allows interaction with on-chain funds. All the information presented on this interface is either retrieved directly from the Melon smart contracts, or from the Melon subgraph built leveraging The Graph.

In what follows, we will give a high level overview of the functionality you can expect in the Melon Terminal v2.0.

Browsing the Terminal as a visitor

If you just want to have a sneak peek into the Melon Terminal, you can visit the website without having to log in with an Ethereum account. This will allow you to browse the Melon Fund universe, discover new funds, and inspect fund details.

On each fund’s page, you will have access to the following information: performance metrics, fund factsheet, fund risk profile (ruleset), fund holdings and, subscriptions/redemptions history and trade history.

If a fund sparks your interest, it is time to switch to investor mode.

Browsing the Terminal as an investor

In order to be able to subscribe to funds, you need to log in with an Ethereum account. You can do so with Metamask, Frame, Coinbase Wallet, Dapper Wallet and Fortmatic (more to be added in the future). Once logged in, you can visit the Invest/Redeem section of the fund you’re interested in and make an investment request there. (Warning: Do not attempt to directly send WETH to your fund address — this will lead to a loss of funds).

The same interface will allow you to redeem your assets from the fund at any time that you like. You can invest in a fund using any of the assets that the fund accepts as a subscription asset, as indicated in its factsheet. If you want to invest in a fund using ether, you will need to wrap your ether to get WETH (you can do so in the wallet section).

Ok now, do you think you are more talented than the other managers? Time to switch to Melon Manager mode!

Browsing the Terminal as a manager

Here, you also need to be logged in with an Ethereum account in order to create a fund. Once you are logged in, and have some Ether in your wallet to pay for Ethereum and Melon gas, you will see a button in the top right corner that invites you to create your fund. The fund creation process is quite straightforward, and will require you to sign 9 transactions that will deploy the different components of your fund. Once that is done you are ready to go.

Managing a Melon fund is a way for you to:

Manage all your Ethereum-based investments in one place (in the future, including access to lending protocols and other exciting integrations)

Build an immutable on-chain track record

Pool capital to execute your strategies on a larger scale

As a manager you have access to the full feature set of Melon:

Invest/Redeem section

You can invest in your own fund (and others)

You can redeem at anytime

Admin section

You can change the DEX’s you want your fund to trade on

You can change subscription assets you accept as investment into your fund

You can collect your management and performance fees

You can shut down your fund at any time

Ruleset section

This section allows you to deploy policies that will be enforced by the smart contracts throughout the lifetime of your fund. You can deploy as many as you want, but keep in mind once a policy is configured in the fund, you cannot remove it. This ruleset serves a simple purpose: providing guarantees to the investors of your fund on the behaviour that you will be able to adopt.

There are 6 policies available (more to be added in the future):

Price tolerance : This policy defines the maximum (harmful) deviation in trade price from the current market price source.

: This policy defines the maximum (harmful) deviation in trade price from the current market price source. Maximum number of positions : This policy defines the maximum number of different asset tokens which can be held in the fund at any one time.

: This policy defines the maximum number of different asset tokens which can be held in the fund at any one time. Maximum concentration : This policy defines the maximum value as a percentage of fund value that any single position can have.

: This policy defines the maximum value as a percentage of fund value that any single position can have. Investor whitelist : This policy defines a list of Ethereum addresses that are allowed to invest into the fund. If this policy is not set, the fund is open to anyone.

: This policy defines a list of Ethereum addresses that are allowed to invest into the fund. If this policy is not set, the fund is open to anyone. Asset whitelist : This policy defines a list of asset tokens eligible for investment by the fund.

: This policy defines a list of asset tokens eligible for investment by the fund. Asset blacklist: his policy defines a list of asset tokens which are ineligible for investment by the fund.

Trade section

This section allows to enter and exit positions in your portfolio (ie. rebalancing into a desired allocation). A Melon fund can hold any asset of the Melon Asset Universe (currently 19 assets, constantly being expanded).

There are 3 ways for a Melon manager to trade on behalf of the fund:

Trade against an aggregated order book: the order book shown aggregates the offers from OasisDex and from all the 0x relayers through the 0x Standard Relayer API.

Trade against liquidity pools: on the current version, both Kyber Network and Uniswap are integrated. Get instant quotes both from Kyber and Uniswap, compare and swap!

Trade through a non custodial RFQ (Request For Quote) system : make a request to a market maker, who will send back an offer. If you accept the offer the settlement will occur on the 0x contracts.

Now enough said, it’s time to get your hands dirty and get a feel for what asset management 3.0 looks like! Visit https://melon.avantgarde.finance/ and deploy your fund!

If you have questions, please join our Telegram channel. If you encounter issues, please report them on our Github interface repository. If you want to develop on Melon and need technical guidance, join the melonproject keybase channel.