Intro to Shell

DeFi, Unified.

What is Shell Protocol?

In five years, no one will build dapps for their protocols. Instead, they'll just plug into platforms like Shell and instantly connect to users.

Shell minimizes the first mover advantage, ensuring new protocols can immediately access a strong user base, while users gain the latest tools without navigating a tangled web of browser tabs. It's DeFi, unified.

Swap and LP anything across major DeFi protocols from one intuitive interface. Trade tokens and NFTs, stake, optimize your holdings, and track market data in the DeFi super app.

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Why Shell Protocol?

  • Reduce development and marketing costs by plugging your dapp into Shell and instantly connecting with other major DeFi protocols.

  • Shell Protocol lets you atomically combine any set of transactions, like LPing, lending/borrowing, or making multi-token and NFT swapsβ€”all while significantly reducing gas fees.

  • Shell is the home for clean, modular DeFi contracts: Its design reduces code complexity for builders and improves user experience.

Architecture Overview

Shell Protocol is a set of EVM-based smart contracts (currently on Arbitrum). Unlike other DeFi protocols that rely on monolithic, single-purpose smart contracts, Shell is a hub for a modular ecosystem of services. Its design makes it much simpler to bundle several smart contracts or build new ones, and for users to batch many services in one transaction.

Shell's main smart contract is the Ocean, a shared accounting system for easily composing DeFi primitives.

Love AMMs?

The first primitive built on Shell was the Proteus AMM engine. Proteus lets you use or create custom pools with concentrated liquidity and fungible LP tokens. Proteus pools can also be designed to evolve over time, from one bonding curve to another.

Proteus can precisely replicate any shape bonding curve with dramatically increased precision. Well-designed curves capture significantly more trade volume than the competition.

History of Shell v1 (Retired)

In October of 2020, Shell Protocol launched its first-ever AMM pools on Ethereum mainnet, known as Shell v1. They were a novel approach to a particular set of problems, offering deep liquidity and (presciently) broken peg protection for like-value tokens (such as stablecoin-stablecoin or wrapped BTC-wrapped BTC). Unfortunately Shell v1 was unique in offering broken peg protection, otherwise more protocols may have been able to mitigate damage caused by the great stablecoin crash of 2021.

A visionary product in many ways, Shell v1 also contained the seeds of an ambition for a composable liquidity networkβ€Šβ€”β€Šan ambition now borne out by its v2 and v3 successors. As such, after nearly two years of active life, Shell v1 transitioned into a graceful retirement.

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