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Almanak Research Report: DeFAI Star Project, the Inclusive Path of On-chain Quantitative Finance
Author: 0xjacobzhao and ChatGPT 5
In the research report "The Smart Evolution of DeFi: The Evolution Path from Automation to AgentFi", we systematically sorted and compared the three stages of smart development in DeFi: Automation Tools, Intent-Centric Copilot, and AgentFi (On-Chain Intelligent Agents). We pointed out that a considerable portion of current DeFAI projects still focuses on the core capability of "intent-driven + one-off atomic interactions" in Swap transactions. These interactions do not involve ongoing yield strategies, lack state management, and do not require complex execution frameworks, making them more suitable for the lightweight execution model of intent assistants and cannot be strictly classified as AgentFi.
In our high-level vision for the future of AgentFi, in addition to the two most valuable and easily implementable scenarios of lending and yield farming, swap combination strategies are also a potential direction. When multiple swaps are combined in sequence or based on conditions, they form a "strategy linkage," such as arbitrage or yield harvesting. This model requires a state machine to manage positions, trigger conditions, and execute multiple steps automatically, possessing the complete closed-loop characteristics of AgentFi—perception → decision → execution → rebalancing.
1. DeFi Quantitative Strategy Map and Feasibility Analysis
Traditional quantitative finance is centered around mathematical models, statistical methods, and algorithms, relying on historical prices, trading volumes, macro indicators, and other data to make data-driven decisions. It achieves low-latency, high-frequency, automated trading through programmatic execution, supplemented by strict risk controls (such as stop-loss, position management, VaR, etc.). Its main applications include high-frequency trading (HFT), trend following and mean reversion (CTA), cross-market/cross-asset arbitrage, and derivatives pricing and hedging. In traditional markets, a mature infrastructure, exchange system, and data ecosystem have been established.
On-Chain Quantitative Finance continues the logic of traditional quant finance, but the operating environment has shifted to the programmable market structure of blockchain. Its data comes from on-chain transaction records, DEX quotes, and DeFi protocol states, executed in smart contracts (AMM, lending, derivatives protocols). The trading costs include Gas, slippage, and MEV risks, and automated strategy links can be built through the composability of DeFi protocols.
Current on-chain quantitative finance is still in its early stages, constrained by multiple factors that make it difficult to support the implementation of complex quantitative strategies: first, in terms of market structure, insufficient liquidity depth and the lack of ultra-fast matching mechanisms in AMM limit the feasibility of high-frequency and large-scale transactions; second, in terms of execution and costs, on-chain block delays and high Gas fees make frequent trading difficult to profit from; third, in terms of data and tools, the development and backtesting environment is not完善, and the data dimensions are singular, lacking multi-source information such as corporate finance and macroeconomics. Among the practical DeFi quantitative strategies, the current mainstream directions are concentrated on:
Potential areas for future growth include:
2. Almank's Positioning and Vision: AgentFi Exploration in On-Chain Quantitative Finance
In past Crypto AI research reports, we have introduced many excellent AgentFi projects, but most still focus on intent-driven DeFi execution, lending, or liquidity management for fully automated operations, with few teams deeply engaging in quantitative trading strategies. Currently, there are almost no projects in the market that clearly focus on quantitative trading as their core direction, except for Almanak. This project enters the field of no-code quantitative strategy development, providing a complete toolchain covering strategy writing (Python), deployment, execution, permission management, and vaulting, which has a unique positioning in the AgentFi field and can be seen as a core representative case of on-chain quantitative finance.
In traditional finance, Inclusive Finance aims to lower participation thresholds and cover more long-tail users. Almanak extends this concept to the blockchain, aiming to democratize quantitative trading capabilities. The platform executes strategies through AI-driven agents, significantly reducing capital, technical, and time costs, providing full-link support from strategy conceptualization to on-chain execution for active traders, financial developers, and institutional investors in the DeFi ecosystem, allowing ordinary users without professional technical backgrounds to participate in crypto asset trading and yield optimization using fully automated, transparently on-chain, and customizable quantitative strategies.
The Almanak platform introduces AI multi-agent collaboration (Agentic Swarm), allowing users to quickly create, test, and deploy Python-based automated financial strategies in a no-code environment during the strategy development, execution, and optimization phases, while ensuring an unmanaged, verifiable, and scalable execution environment. With modules such as the State Machine strategy framework, Safe+Zodiac permission management, multi-chain protocol access, and Vault asset custody, Almanak maintains institutional-level security and scalability while significantly lowering the barriers to strategy development and deployment. This report will systematically analyze its product architecture, technical features, incentive mechanisms, competitive positioning, and future development path, and explore its potential value in inclusive finance and on-chain quantitative fields.
3. The Product Architecture and Technical Features of Almank
The product architecture of Almanak is centered around the main line of "Strategy Logic → Execution Engine → Security Guarantee → Assetization and Expansion", constructing a full-stack on-chain quantitative finance system aimed at AI Agent scenarios. In this system, the Strategies module provides a strategy development and management framework from conception to execution, currently supporting Python SDK and will support natural language generation in the future; the Deployments module, as the execution engine, automates the operation of strategy logic within the authorized scope and achieves adaptive optimization through AI decision-making capabilities; the Wallets module ensures fund and permission security with a non-custodial architecture of Safe + Zodiac, realizing institutional-level key management and fine-grained permission control; the Vaults module transforms strategies into tokenized financial products, relying on standardized vault contracts (ERC-7540) to achieve fund raising, profit distribution, and strategy sharing—making strategies fully composable and able to seamlessly integrate into a broader DeFi ecosystem.
1. Strategy Infrastructure (Strategies)
The strategy infrastructure of Almanak covers the complete link from ideation to execution, including strategy ideation (Ideation), creation (Creation), evaluation (Evaluation), optimization (Optimization), deployment (Deployment), and monitoring (Monitoring), among other aspects. Compared to traditional quantitative trading stacks, it has three core differences in design: first, it is oriented towards AI Agent-led strategy development rather than relying on manual workflows; second, it introduces a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to protect the privacy of strategy Alpha; finally, it adopts a non-custodial execution model with Safe Wallet + Zodiac permission management to ensure the safety and controllability of funds and execution at the underlying level.
Core Features
Under this architecture, the strategy framework is designed based on a persistent state machine, fully encapsulating on-chain interactions and execution layers. Users only need to write business logic in the Strategy component. Developers can either conduct highly customized Python development through the SDK or, in the future, use a natural language strategy generator to directly describe goals in English—subsequently, a multi-agent system will generate code for user review. Users have complete autonomy to approve, reject, or adjust strategies before deployment, and can choose to release them as independent strategies or Vaults. The Vault also allows for permission management through a whitelist, providing controlled access for entities such as institutions or liquidity funds. Strategy code is encrypted by default to protect proprietary user logic; underlying transaction construction, signing, and broadcasting are all maintained by the official team, ensuring high reliability and consistency in execution.
In the currently whitelist-only accessible Almanak strategy library AI KITCHEN, one can glimpse its strategic landscape: the strategies currently online include Tutorials and Technical Analysis, while internally developed strategies encompass Liquidity Provisioning, Automated Looping, and Custom Strategy. The future roadmap plans to introduce advanced strategies such as Arbitrage, Advanced Yield Farming, and Derivatives & Structured Products, reflecting a complete product evolution path from basic entry to professional quant, and from single strategies to complex cross-protocol combinations.
2. Deployments
Deployments are the core execution layer that connects strategy logic with on-chain execution, responsible for automating transactions and operations within the scope of user-authorized permissions. The current main form is StrategyDeployment, which operates on a scheduled or triggered basis according to preset logic, suitable for executing clearly defined and reproducible trading strategies, emphasizing stability and controllability. The upcoming LLMDeployment will introduce one or more large language models (LLM) as decision engines, enabling strategies to adapt to market changes and continuously learn and optimize while exploring new trading opportunities within a strict permission control framework.
The deployment workflow covers the entire process from authentication and authorization, policy execution, transaction construction, permission verification, to signature submission and execution monitoring. The underlying execution is completed by core classes maintained by the official: TransactionManager converts policy actions into compliant on-chain transactions and simulates verification; AccountManager generates transaction signatures; ExecutionManager broadcasts transactions, tracks status, and retries when necessary, forming a highly reliable closed loop from policy to on-chain execution. In the future, Almanak will expand to support multiple Deployment collaborations, cross-chain execution, and enhanced analytical capabilities, enabling more complex multi-agent policy execution.
3. Wallet System and Security Mechanisms (Wallets)
The wallet system is the core of ensuring the safety of funds and the controllability of strategy execution. Almanak adopts a non-custodial solution of Safe + Zodiac, ensuring users have complete ownership of their funds and precisely and controllably delegating the permissions required for strategy execution to the automated execution account (Deployment EOA). Users directly control the Safe Wallet through User Wallet (EOA or ERC-4337 smart account). The Safe Wallet has an embedded Zodiac Roles Modifier module, allowing for strict function whitelisting and parameter restrictions to be set for Deployment EOA, ensuring that "only allowed actions can be performed," and permissions can be revoked at any time.
Deployment EOA is hosted by the platform, with its private keys stored securely using enterprise-level encryption and managed by Google’s security infrastructure, making it inaccessible to anyone throughout the process. In extreme cases, the platform will immediately notify users to revoke permissions and generate a new EOA to complete the replacement, ensuring that the strategy continues to operate without interruption. To ensure continuous execution of the strategy, users need to purchase the Autonomous Execution Fees service package, which covers on-chain operating costs (including Gas). This architecture achieves institutional-level security standards through complete isolation of funds and execution permissions, refined permission management, institutional-grade key security, and rapid anomaly response, laying a foundation of trust for the large-scale adoption of automated DeFi strategies.
4. On-chain Quantitative Strategy Vaults
Almanak Vaults are user-deployable, fully on-chain, permissionless vault contracts that transform trading strategies into tokenized, composable financial products. Unlike static "closed containers," these vaults are built on the asynchronous extensibility standard ERC-7540 based on ERC-4626, designed to be programmable capital allocators that can natively integrate into the DeFi ecosystem.
By tokenizing AI-generated strategies, the treasury introduces a brand new DeFi primitive: the strategy itself becomes an ERC-20 asset, which can be used for LP, staking, trading, transferring, or combined into structured products. This composability unlocks the "DeFi Lego" at the strategy level, allowing for seamless integration with protocols, funds, and structured products.
Vaults can be curated by individual curators or owned by the community. Almanak Vaults are implemented based on Lagoon Finance's open-source contract (MIT license), inheriting Lagoon's auditing and security guarantees, and comply with the ERC-7540 standard. Its permission management mechanism is consistent with Almanak Wallets, relying on Zodiac Roles Modifier to execute function whitelists and parameter restrictions, ensuring that all operations are strictly completed within the authorized scope.
The operation process includes:
Core advantages:
In short, Almanak Vaults evolves DeFi capital management from isolated packaging containers into a smart, composable system. By transforming AI-generated strategies into tokenized financial primitives, it drives DeFi beyond passive yield containers towards a responsive, modular capital network, realizing the long-held vision of programmable, interoperable finance.
5. DeFi Agentic Swarm
The Almanak AI Swarm architecture serves as a one-stop platform covering the entire strategy development cycle, enabling users to independently conduct research, testing, creation, and deployment of complex DeFi strategies while fully maintaining control and non-custodial assets. It aims to simulate and replace the full operational processes of traditional quantitative trading teams. It is worth noting that the AI Swarm "team" is composed of AI agents rather than real people.
Strategy Team: Transforms users' natural language instructions into directly deployable on-chain strategies, covering strategists (designing logic), programmers (writing smart contract code), auditors (verifying correctness), debuggers (fixing errors), quality engineers (running simulation tests), permission administrators (configuring execution permissions), UI designers (building visual panels), and deployers (executing mainnet deployment), ensuring a complete chain from concept to implementation.
The strategy team implements deterministic process orchestration, persistent state sharing (TeamState), human-in-the-loop validation (HITL), parallel processing, and interruption recovery mechanisms through LangGraph. The entire process can be executed automatically but defaults to requiring human confirmation to ensure reliability.
Alpha Seeking Team: Continuously scans the entire DeFi market, identifies market inefficiencies, explores new ideas and Alpha opportunities, and proposes new logic and strategy concepts to the strategy team.
Optimization Team: By conducting large-scale simulations on historical and forecast market data, we rigorously assess strategy performance, carry out hypothetical stress tests and periodic performance analysis before deployment, identify potential drawdowns and vulnerabilities, and ensure the stability and robustness of strategies in different market environments.
In addition, auxiliary AI tools include Stack Expert AI and Troubleshooting AI: the former focuses on answering users' various questions about the Almanak tech stack and platform operations, providing instant technical support; the latter focuses on real-time monitoring and problem identification during strategy execution, ensuring the stability and continuity of strategy execution.
The core principle of Almanak is: all AI operations will be recorded, reviewed, and processed in a structured manner, no AI will operate independently, and all strategic logic must undergo complete human-machine dual verification before going live, with users retaining ultimate control and custody.
4. Almank Product Progress and Development Roadmap
Autonomous Liquidity USD Vault
Currently, Almanak has officially launched the Autonomous Liquidity USD (alUSDC Vault) stablecoin yield optimization vault deployed on the Ethereum mainnet through the community. Like other lending yield products such as Giza and Axal, its core is the Stable Rotator Agent, which continuously scans the DeFi ecosystem to identify and capture the highest available yield opportunities, and automatically rebalances the portfolio based on customizable risk parameters. The strategy conducts intelligent trading cost analysis before execution and will only adjust positions when the increase in yield is sufficient to cover all costs, while also maximizing capital efficiency with advanced routing optimization and automatic compounding features. Currently, the vault is connected to various USDC derivative assets from protocols such as Aave v3, Compound v3, Fluid, Euler v2, Morpho Blue, and Yearn v3.
Almanak Liquidity Strategy and Swap Trading Strategy
The strategies that Almanak has launched can be divided into two main categories: LP Series (Dynamic LP Blue Chip, Dynamic LP Degen) and Indicator Spot Strategies (MyAmazingStrat, PENDLERSI_Momentum, VIRTUALBollingerBandsMeanReversion). The detailed strategy content is as follows:
Through the analysis of the above strategy code using AI tools, we can draw the following conclusions:
Almanak Development Roadmap
The platform evolution of Almanak is divided into three stages, gradually achieving expansion from a technical foundation to full-chain popularization.
In addition, Almanak will continue to expand multi-chain support (including Solana, Hyperliquid, Avalanche, Optimism, etc.), integrate more DeFi protocols, and introduce a Multi-Agent System and Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), driven by AI to automatically discover Alpha and build the world's most comprehensive AI DeFi smart execution network.
5. Almank's Token Economics and Points Incentive
The token economics system of Almanak aims to build an efficient and sustainable value exchange network for AI-driven financial strategies, enabling high-quality strategies to be efficiently matched with liquidity capital on-chain. The platform constructs an ecological closed loop through dual core roles of Strategy & Vault Curators and Liquidity Providers: the former utilizes an Agentic AI-Swarm to design, optimize, and manage verifiable deterministic strategies in a no-code environment, introducing external funds through deploying permissionless vaults and collecting management fees and performance shares; the latter deposits funds into these vaults to gain tokenized strategy exposure and participate in profit distribution.
In terms of strategy privacy, strategy curators can choose between a private mode (closed source, not included in the strategy library, accessible only to themselves) or a public mode (open source and included in the strategy library, available for community and third-party protocol use), thus achieving a balance between IP protection and knowledge sharing.
The token economic model draws on the dynamic capital allocation logic of traditional hedge funds and integrates Bittensor's demand-driven emission distribution mechanism with Curve Finance's governance incentive model: the former allocates emissions weighted by TVL and strategy returns, encouraging capital to concentrate on high-performing strategies; the latter introduces the "veToken + Bribe" model, allowing protocol parties to increase the emission multiplier of specific Vaults through voting, thus guiding agentic traffic towards designated protocols.
The emission allocation uses a weighted formula based on AUM and ROI, ensuring that the Vault's contributions in attracting capital and generating returns are directly converted into token rewards; the governance bonus mechanism (Almanak Wars) can add up to 3 times the weight to the target Vault, forming an incentive market for the project party, curators, and liquidity providers to engage in a three-way game. To maintain long-term sustainability, the protocol fees (Vault revenue share, computation resource markup, etc.) will partially flow back to the emission pool, gradually offsetting the pressure of new emissions as the ecosystem matures.
The token functions cover Staking and Governance: Token holders can obtain discounts on platform computing resources, increase voting weight, direct emissions for specific Vaults, and participate in DAO governance to determine key parameters such as computing resource markup rates, Vault fee ratios, and emission curves. The governance structure is expected to include an Ecological Parameters Committee and an Innovative Development Committee, responsible for protocol parameters, revenue distribution and fund management, ecological funding, and other matters.
In terms of token distribution, Almanak has set up the team (54 months linear release, 12 months lock-up), institutional investors (48 months linear release, 12 months lock-up), advisors (48 months linear release, 12 months lock-up), innovation and ecological development (35% released at TGE, remaining 36 months linear release), community and early participants (45% released at TGE), and the Legion community round (divided into two rounds, the first round 30% TGE + 24 months linear release, the second round 100% TGE). The emission pool is used to reward network participants and provide early incentives, distributed according to an annual halving inflation model to maintain long-term incentives and governance activity.
Almanak Points: Platform Participation Quantification Incentive Mechanism
Almanak Points is a core mechanism for measuring user engagement and contribution on the platform, aimed at driving asset accumulation, strategy usage, and community growth through a points system. Points are distributed in phases according to seasons, with adjustments made to the emission volume, participatory activities, and calculation methods for each season.
Users can earn Points through various methods: ① Deposit funds into the community Vault listed on the Almanak platform, with points calculated based on the deposit amount and holding time (current Vault deposits enjoy a 2× points multiplier); ② Hold assets in the Almanak Wallet, accumulating points based on balance and holding duration; ③ Activate and actively manage Deployments to earn additional points based on the scale, duration, and complexity of the management strategy; ④ Recommend new users to participate in platform activities, receiving a bonus of 20% of the points earned by the referred user as a reward for the referrer. Points are non-transferable and non-tradable, but will be converted to tokens at a 1:1 ratio during the token issuance. Additionally, points will serve as the basis for governance rights, functional usage permissions, and ecosystem benefits.
Project Financing and Token Issuance Strategy
Almanak has deep cooperation with Cookie.fun and Legion.cc, introducing the Snaps/cSnaps mechanism to analyze on-chain traceable contribution points through Attention Capital Formation (Attention Capital Formation) model. This directly links users' multidimensional activity in community dissemination, content interaction, capital support, etc. with token distribution, achieving a transparent and structured distribution logic of "contribution equals ownership."
In terms of capital background, Almanak received early incubation support from Delphi Digital and the NEAR Foundation, and subsequently attracted investments from well-known institutions such as Hashkey Capital, Bankless Ventures, Matrix Partners, RockawayX, AppWorks, Artemis Capital, and SParkle Ventures, with a total financing amount reaching 8.45M USD.
This issuance mechanism not only optimizes the fairness of token distribution and lowers the participation threshold but also deeply binds capital raising, community building, and long-term governance, forming a sustainable community of interests, laying the foundation for Almanak's long-term expansion in the AI × DeFi sector.
6. Investment Logic and Potential Risk Analysis
Investment Logic
Almanak currently aligns more with the positioning of "the easiest DeFi strategy sandbox for retail investors," showing significant advantages in user experience, security architecture, and low entry barriers, making it particularly suitable for retail investors who have never written code or lack on-chain strategy experience to get started quickly. Almanak's core competitiveness lies in the deep integration of AI multi-agent architecture and non-custodial execution systems, providing institutional-level security and strategy privacy protection while ensuring performance. Its technology stack consists of TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) + Safe wallet + Zodiac Roles Modifier, enabling fully automated on-chain execution under permission management that is precise down to contract function parameters, significantly surpassing most AgentFi models that rely solely on EOA for delegated signing.
The technical architecture has formed a complete closed loop: from data acquisition (Sensors), strategy logic execution (Persistent State Machine Architecture, Prepare / Validate / Sadflow), transaction execution (TransactionManager / AccountManager / ExecutionManager), to monitoring and metrics systems, and then to productization (ERC-7540 Vault) and external fundraising fees, with smooth links and commercial scalability. In particular, the Vault productization capability allows strategies to upgrade from internal tools to financial products that can be issued externally, bringing the platform scalable management fees and performance-sharing income.
On the operational side, the Points incentive system has been launched, with transparent rules oriented towards AUAM (Assets under Agentic Management), effectively driving both the locked-in volume and activity levels; through the Attention Capital Formation (Attention Capital Formation) model analysis of on-chain traceable contribution points, capital raising, community building, and long-term governance are deeply intertwined, forming a sustainable community of shared interests, laying the foundation for Almanak's long-term expansion in the AgentFi sector.
Potential Risks
Despite the high level of completeness in the technical and functional system of Almanak, it still faces several key challenges:
First, the protocol testing is not fully open yet. Currently, it only supports lending protocols on the Ethereum mainnet, as well as LP and Swap strategies based on Uniswap V3. The underlying Kitchen already supports Ethereum, Base, and Arbitrum, and has the capability to expand to 8+ EVM chains and 200+ protocols. The broader pace of multi-chain expansion (such as Base, Solana, Hyperliquid), multi-protocol access, and CEX integration will directly impact the diversity of strategies, yield opportunities, and market competitiveness.
Secondly, the strategy level is still relatively basic. The existing strategies are mainly based on entry-level technical analysis (TA), and there is still a gap compared to institutional-level or professional quantitative standards. In the future, it is necessary to introduce a richer library of advanced strategies (covering on-chain liquidity management, funding rate arbitrage, cross-pool price differences, and multi-signal integration, etc.), and improve backtesting and simulation trading tools, built-in cost optimization engines, and multi-strategy portfolio management functions, in order to grow into the preferred entry point for retail investors to enter DeFi quant.
In addition, the ecosystem and user base are still in the early stages. Although the points program and Vault mechanism have been launched and entered the first tier of AgentFi, the AI-driven Vault management of TVL growth still requires time to validate, and user activity and retention rates will be key indicators in the medium to long term.
Overall, Almanak combines mature technical architecture, clear commercialization pathways, and strong incentive mechanisms, making it a rarity in the AI-driven on-chain quantification and asset management sector. However, the speed of ecosystem expansion, the evolution of the competitive landscape, and the stability of technological implementation will be the three core variables determining whether it can maintain its leading position in the long term.