Forum at a Glance_ February 17 - 24, 2022.pdf -

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Welcome to the one-stop-shop for a TL;DR on everything being discussed on the MakerDAO forum right now. Links reflect my view of the most noteworthy activities in the governance, risk, and oracles categories. Disagree? Think something should be added? Leave a reply or send a PM. Table of Contents: Three-Point Summary ICYMI - Announcements Active Discussions Seeking Consensus Ongoing Initiatives Help Wanted Feedback Survey Three-Point Summary ‘What is the most relevant information on the forums this week for MKR and Dai holders?’ ● Check out the discussions (1, 2) on improving off-chain governance incentives via SourceCred. ● Part 2 discussing the strategies towards implement market liquidity is now available! ● To burn or not to burn; growth solutions that may increase MKR speculation without burning MKR. ICYMI - Announcements [3F Delegate Pre-Vote Notice] SES Incubation of the Proposed Talent Core Unit is Inadequate While attending ETHDenver, @ElProgreso had conversations with @manomad about his goals as a Talent Core Unit facilitator, offboarding processes, and the unique necessity for Human Resource procedures. Many questions were discussed regarding potential improvements for Core Unit incubation and education of recruitees. ElPro and Mano believe that the SES Core Unit requires additional resources to help improve their incubation process and align cross-Core Unit communication because Maker Talent presents some concerns with their KPI reporting, the long-winded search for a facilitator, and readiness to deliver. ElPro and Mano believe that SES should have performed a fitness investigation prior to releasing Talent CU on-chain. The recent successful strategic focus approach that @lenkla and her SES teammates placed on gathering Project Xray could have been used to understand if current CUs promote positive sentiment toward HR procedures. In conclusion, both ElPro and Mano himself believe the Maker Talent Core Unit cannot create a hiring forecast going six months out. Nonetheless, we applaud the team for being resilient and willing to demonstrate their value to the DAO. Growth Core Unit Offsite The Growth Core Unit had an offsite in Mexico from February 7th to 11th, 2022. Participants included the Growth Core Unit team and members from various CUs (PECU, Oracles, DI, and one Delegate). Objectives for this offsite included: Building relationships between CUs. Looking back on all the work achieved in 2021. Presenting strategic initiatives for this year. Presenting upcoming opportunities. Understanding various perspectives between different Core Units and members. The Growth Core Unit presented their completed agenda, which can be found in the original post. Outcomes from the offsite were positive and helpful; there was a shared conviction that involved relationships will further enhance collaboration and communication between Core Units. The teams have identified Maker priorities that will require collaboration in the coming weeks and months. In addition, they identified the priorities that are of particular concern to the Growth CU. Visit the original post for a detailed list of the Maker and Growth priorities mentioned above. NPS score (n=9): 90% ! (8 promoters and 1 neutral at 8/10) Forum maintenance announcement - Wednesday, February 23rd, 2022, 9-10 UTC The TechOps Core Unit performed maintenance work on the forum on Wednesday, February 23rd, 2022, between 9 and 10 UTC. Activities included: ● Upgrading the Forum to the latest version. ● Applying security fixes. ● Installing a necessary plugin. ● Updating some configuration and configuration files. For current and future maintenance progress, keep an eye on or subscribe to the MakerDAO Statuspage or the #general channel on Discord, where TechOps posts live updates. Progress Update on the legal structure for Centrifuge RWA vaults @elidco shared the progress on the legal structure for Centrifuge US-based assets. They introduced the Jersey Real World Asset (RWA) structure and explained how they expect this structure to work in the future. The Jersey structure will provide formalization for Centrifuge’s pool transactions and is intended to better protect investors and issuers from potential litigation claims. It also provides a consistent and coherent story for discussions with regulators and third-party service providers such as custodians and banks. Two key changes are highlighted: ● We propose that issuers appoint a third-party trustee to act on behalf of the DAO and other investors. The trustee will be able to protect the interests of the DAO and ensure independent control of the assets. It would also handle distributions in case of default, leaving it no longer in control of the issuer or a liquidator. We are in initial discussions with some potential trustees. ● The second proposed change is the introduction of a lock-box. A lock-box is a term of art meaning a segregated account for assets held outside the control of the issuer and the SPV. This structure means that the SPV assets are no longer in control of the issuer but in control of the trustee. It will be the role of the trustee to receive and handle payments to and from the lock-box and make sure the right parties (for example, Maker) receive the payments. This means the issuer does not control the funds from the borrowers to the Maker vault, reducing the risk of loss of funds or misuse of funds by the issuer. Using this structure should make it easier to bring TradFi players into DeFi, which will expand the types and quantity of real-world assets available to Maker. Centrifuge and @christiancdpetersen provide a work-in-progress schematic of the Jersey RWA structure. The Centrifuge team just had a Community AMA Call; keep an eye out for the video recording and editorial transcription to be posted in the AMA Call thread! Looking for more posts and updates? *Check out recent Core Unit monthly updates. Check out the weekly updates and summaries from our teams and Core Units. Check out the monthly Financial Reports here. Active Discussions ‘What is going on? You think what?! You are 100% wrong, and here is why…’ SourceCred and Coordinape Tool Comparison Adding to the ongoing discussion about using SourceCred to reward MakerDAO contributors, @LongForWisdom has put together a comparison of SourceCred and Coordinape, a similar tool. SourceCred Coordinape How to use Users feed data to the algorithm by Users need to connect to just using the forum. The algorithm Coordinape site and manually fetches forum information by using allocate their GIVE to other its API members of the circle each period (epoch) Target Performs better when used in Although a circle can have team/org relatively large 200+ users, they are thought size groups/communities. The larger the to be used for smaller groups community, the more data it can where members interact with evaluate to produce better results each other since it can become difficult to remember contributions from tons of users Contributio It can measure lots of contributions It offers a more direct reward n evaluation easily in an automated way, but its allocation mechanism where precision precision depends on every user in every user gets a limited the forum correctly understanding amount of tokens that they how the algorithm works and what can distribute based on how giving a like represents valuable they think other users contributions were Overhead SourceCred needs maintainers to Coordinape circles and user ensure the instance works well and information live inside to develop the best configuration Coordinape DBs and can be parameters based on weights given accessed through their app, to contributions, which can take making maintenance almost time. They also handle user unnecessary. Distributions onboarding and distributions are easily generated at the generation end of an epoch, and the members can handle user onboarding. Off-Chain Governance Incentive Objectives Continuing the SourceCred discussion, @LongForWisdom made a post aiming to clarify the objectives of off-chain governance incentives. Four main objectives were identified: 1. Attracting new members to the community. 2. Retaining new members of the community and compensate their time and energy. 3. Encouraging community members to take initiative and get more heavily involved in the off-chain portion of Maker governance. 4. Encouraging meaningful forum engagement from Recognized Delegates. GovAlpha feels that the focus should be on objectives two, three, and possibly four. As @LongForWisdom points out, “Maker is a very complex system, with its own history, norms, levers, and baggage,” which can make it intimidating for new members to join. SourceCred distributions have already been shown to be effective in improving retention. Incentivization may result in improvements when it comes to governance actions, such as higher quality MIP submissions. It may also be useful to measure and incentivize delegate engagement on the forums. Off-Chain Governance List of Options and Recommendations Continuing the SourceCred discussion, @TheExistence presented a set of options and recommendations to encourage governance engagement within the community with greater precision and effectiveness. Once again, the objectives are: 1. Retention: Retaining newer community members and compensating them for their time and energy. 2. Governance Initiative: Encouraging community members to take the initiative and get more involved in the off-chain portion of Maker governance. 3. Delegation Engagement: Encouraging meaningful forum engagement from Recognized Delegates. To achieve these goals, the post outlines seven different options together with their pros and cons: 1. New SourceCred Instance ● Pros ○ Separate budgets. More transparency. Greater predictability and flexibility in the allocation of incentives. ● Cons: ○ Separation in two instances does not ensure greater participation or encourage community engagement. ○ Greater management and operational costs. 2. Exclude Groups from SourceCred ● Pros ○ Prevents Core Unit members getting double-paid and reducing payouts to other contributors. ○ Facilitators are paid and mandated to communicate actively with the MakerDAO community. ○ Delegates are already paid. SourceCred could provide input into that payment rather than paying out to delegates as part of SourceCred. ● Cons ○ On-going maintenance cost, adding and removing accounts as employment status changes across the DAO. ○ Causes issues when an individual goes from excluded->included due to how SourceCred tries to make catch-up payments. ○ Excluding delegates may be counter-productive to objective C. We want to incentivize delegates to engage in the forum. 3. Limit Rewards from SourceCred ● Pros ○ Incentives placed more efficiently with contributors not affiliated with the DAO receiving larger SourceCred payouts. ● Cons ○ Risk of Sybil abuse by employees of the DAO to avoid limits ○ Core Unit Members and Core Unit Facilitators less incentivized to engage with the community 4. Reduce/Remove SourceCred ● Pros ○ Reduction in the budget will reduce perceived overpayment in situations where there are only a small amount of engaged and active contributors. ○ Allows budget to be used to trial or run other off-chain incentive options. ○ Removing all payments, or the entire system would remove the ongoing maintenance costs. ● Cons ○ Individuals currently benefiting from SourceCred would no longer benefit (or not as much) ○ SourceCred provides useful information in the form of Cred scores separately from issues of monetary incentive that would be lost if we abandoned it completely. ○ Would reduce the incentives for delegates to be very active in the community if these were not replaced in some form. ○ A number of upfront costs paid in relation to SourceCred would no longer provide much benefit if it were completely removed. 5. Delegate Engagement Metric ● Pros ○ Encourage Delegate’s engagement. ○ Add a new indicator of the Delegates tracking performance, making the evaluation of their contributions more accurate. ● Cons ○ More work to track and produce delegate metric reports. ○ Greater management costs for option B since Soordinape is likely to have an ongoing management cost than the SourceCred instance. 6. Direct Proposal Incentives ● Pros ○ Directly helps with objective B, encouraging community members to trigger governance processes that can have tangible outcomes. ○ Should result in better community knowledge of the governance processes. ● Cons ○ Risk of spam proposals, though this should be partly mitigated by the ‘if successful’ clause. ○ Some upfront cost to develop a framework to determine how proposals are rewarded, especially with multiple authors or contributors. ○ On-going maintenance cost, though not hugely problematic given the existing GovAlpha involvement in the governance processes. 7. Coordinape ● Pros ○ It generates direct recognition of each other’s value by manually allocating Give between members. ○ Indicator of the value that Core Unit Members bring to their working groups ○ Sybil resistant. ● Cons ○ Doesn’t scale well. Although a Circle can have many members, they are thought to be used for smaller groups where members interact since it can become difficult to remember contributions from tons of users. ○ Potentially more management cost. The post closes with a pair of recommendations and asks trust_level_2 forum members to participate in a poll. Recommendation 1a: ● Slightly increase existing delegate compensation to balance removed access to SourceCred rewards. ● Use the third delegate metric (engagement) input into the existing delegate compensation formula. Recommendation 1b: ● Create a new SourceCred instance for Recognized Delegates and divert some of the SourceCred budgets to this instance. ● Change the payout formula to 100% recent contributions. Expectations of a delegate Recent discussion concerning whether to exclude certain categories of contributors from SourceCred led into a debate concerning delegates and their role, which revealed a gap between expectations and reality of what delegates do and should be doing. @JustinCase assembled an overview of the current state of requirements for delegates accompanied with expectations previously expressed across on the forums. JustinCase aims to initiate a discussion about these expectations and push for clearer consensus from the community on what kind of delegates they want going forward. The formal requirements to become a delegate is as follows: ● Sharing contact details ● Publishing a delegate platform post. ● Appearing on a live call to speak to MKR holders and community members to answer questions about their platform. ● Publicly agreeing to follow a Code of Conduct. Following the code of conduct gives certain responsibilities that requires a time commitment: ● Delegates should make a professional and unbiased review of each proposal prior to the submission of their vote ● Delegates should ensure that they communicate the rationale behind each of their votes in a clear and accessible way. ● Delegates should maintain a working knowledge of developments at Maker and in the wider cryptocurrency space. ● Delegates should - within reason - be accessible to the community to answer questions, respond to comments, and discuss issues. Expectations by the community: ● Should delegates work full time as delegates (time commitment expectation tied to compensation) ● Should delegates stick to Maker exclusively or be free to work for other protocols at the same time (non-compete considerations) ● Should delegates be part of a core unit (possible conflict of interest) ● Should delegates initiate governance processes like signal requests or MIPs (possible separation of powers issue, same person initiating and voting on a proposal) ● How closely should delegates be involved with Core units? (time costs, possible infringement on CU autonomy) ● Should delegates communicate with outside entities on behalf of Maker? (possibly creating expectation of protocol action) A culminating question arose from these requirements and expectations; how active should delegates be in trying to shape the community? Please visit the original post and submit your feedback or opinions! The case for payouts to token holders In this post, @someone asked what gives MKR value without “a possibility of cold hard cash being distributed to MKR holders in the distant future,” listing several potential arguments for holding MKR and explaining why they think these arguments don’t work. 1. MKR tokens give you voting power. ● @someone argues that while voting power may be desirable for some people who want to influence the protocol for non-financial reasons, it doesn’t generate any financial value. 2. Burning tokens increases the Earnings Per Share ratio. ● “…if there will never be a method for returning cold hard cash to holders (as opposed to buybacks), there’s never going to be any “earnings” distributions, so really the EPS is 0 (or, conversely, P/E ratio is infinity).” 3. Burning tokens increases buy-side pressure and so increases MKR price. ● But the moment we trade some DAI for MKR to burn, we are not worth more; we are worth the same because we are down an equivalent amount of Dai. Framing The Debate on Market Liquidity - Part Two - Strategic Goals GovAlpha core unit contributor @LongForWisdom has published the second part of his series to facilitate discussion about how and why to increase the market liquidity of DAI and MKR. While Part One discussed Decision 1: How does MakerDAO fund its liquidity strategy?, Part Two focuses on Decision 2: What is our liquidity strategy aiming to achieve, and how? Part Two focuses primarily on objectives: What does MakerDAO stand to gain by implementing a market liquidity strategy? Part Three will bring the focus to practical methods for achieving these objectives. The post outlines three potential goals a liquidity strategy may seek to achieve and what makes them desirable. Increasing adoption of DAI on L2s, sidechains, and other L1 chains Increasing DAI adoption on other chains will increase the demand for DAI directly and indirectly, ultimately “convert[ing] directly into revenue and profits” for MakerDAO. Attempting to add DAI to the ranks of USDC and ETH as a default routing token for on-chain liquidity Securing a place alongside ETH and USDC as a default routing token will dramatically increase demand for DAI and encourage further adoption. Dampening MKR price movements and increasing ease of entry into and exit from the token Improving MKR liquidity across the market will help reduce MKR volatility, bolstering MakerDAO’s resiliency. It will also make it easier for MKR holders and potential holders to enter and exit positions. Read the full post for a detailed breakdown of these objectives, their potential risks and benefits, and a discussion of how we can achieve them. Proposal for the Creation of a MakerDao Nft Marketplace @cryptenthusiastic proposes the creation of an NFT marketplace in which 2% of sales commissions will be distributed as follows: ● 1% for the Maker treasury ● 0.6% to the buyers (each in proportion to their purchases) ● 0.2% to increase the multi-collateral backing of Maker Collection ● 0.2% for maintenance and reinvestment in the development of the marketplace. Under this proposal, each NFT will be backed by a certain number of different tokens, giving them a more consistent floor price. Against the burn @krzkaczor has previously promoted and discussed the benefits of growing the Surplus Buffer to fuel revenue growth. Now, he presents his argument to disable the burn in the belief that burning MKR before we dominate the stablecoin market is very shortsighted. Kris provides a summary of MKR and burn history, which has been happening for years, and displays that despite the fundamental theory, MKR burn and MKR price increase does not correlate, and simple mkrburn data analysis proves this… unless it’s a very massive burn! We have seen a very large amount of MKR burned during January 2022, which influenced an increase in MKR price that ultimately reverted. Rekt. The buying pressure caused by burning ~1% of total supply yearly is just too small to cause a supply crunch anytime soon. We would need to burn huge amounts of MKR (a few % of supply) every year to see immediate burn effects. Kris believes that we should focus on aggressive growth, which can be easiest done by growing the Surplus Buffer. That new revenue can then be reinvested, avoiding the risk of flop auctions. In addition, we are currently facing a DAI supply crisis. We will need to use our cash flows to help DAI dominate the stablecoin market; DSR, cashback, and increasing the real world DAI adoption – it all requires a lot of funds. In conclusion, Kris believes that a joint refocus on MakerDAO growth is exactly what will make MKR price more speculative. Seeking Consensus ‘Yo, do you even signal?’ Implement Governance Mining Trial Signal Request Ends March 2nd In recent months, a decline in governance participation has been brought to light. Unfortunately, attracting engaged, informed voters is a problem that has largely gone unsolved. @GFXlabs believes it is time to take an actionable approach through a governance mining trial to help improve voting participation to compare polls treated with potential payments vs. polls before and after the treatment and the difference between treated/untreated and governance participation one year earlier. The initial trial is aimed at polls, with more straightforward metrics to monitor. The design of this trial includes an assurance payment of .1 MKR provided to any address that contributes ≥ 1 MKR in a non-abstain vote on at least one low-turnout poll. A maximum of .1 MKR may be awarded to any address for any individual closing date of this trial. All MKR rewards will be sourced from the MakerDAO treasury. A budget of 8 MKR will be reserved for this trial. This trial will be in effect until the MKR budget is exhausted or after six weeks, whichever occurs first. This design offers the potential for payouts without guaranteeing that MakerDAO will incur expenses and provide a meaningful reward to smallholders willing to provide a public good at their own expense. @GFXlabs agrees to take management of the reporting and administration of this trial. They will track and provide public updates on which addresses (if any) are eligible for assurance payments following the close of each trial date. @GFXlabs will provide a written report (via forum post) and oral report (if desired) on a Governance & Risk call after the close of the trial. Pros: ● Potentially increases governance participation, particularly among smaller holders ● Offers payments only when marginal increases in participation are needed ● Allows experimentation with a novel mechanism without committing to large or ongoing payments ● Trial will be administered by GFX Labs to avoid adding to the governance burden of core units Cons: ● Could incur a maximum expense of 8 MKR and 1000 DAI ● May not generate conclusive results ● If chosen to be extended or made permanent, this program would likely require an increased workload to administer on an ongoing basis ● Will require some measure of marketing/communication to make MKR holders aware of the trial program ● If the assurance payment amount of .1 MKR is too low to attract voters to polls, then rewards would accrue to those already voting rather than the marginal voter @GFXlabs is asking the community whether MakerDAO should implement the Governance Mining Trial. Fund Ambassadors Program Pilot Signal Request Ends February 25th The Ambassador Program, which provides non-English-speaking communities with resources and educational materials, had its funding disrupted by the offboarding of MKT-001. @Kat took the initiative to spearhead the Program without the attachment of a Core Unit and is seeking 25,000 DAI to complete the pilot and associated projects over the next three months. She is asking the community whether MakerDAO should fund the Ambassador Pilot Program. Allocate 20M to Protocol-Owned Uniswap V2 MKR/DAI LP Signal Request Ends March 3rd In response to a recent discussion, @psychonaut believes the simplest method for improving MKR liquidity is to add protocol-owned Dai/MKR LP shares to UniV2. He asks the community whether Maker should allocate 20M to a protocol-owned UniV2 MKR/Dai LP and presents his argument that the pros outweigh the cons: Pros: ● Simple ● No need to wait on sweeping tokenomic redesigns that have had difficulty finding consensus (e.g. Sagittarius Engine, gbMKR, etc.) ● Mostly orthogonal to MKR flap auctions ● Helps identify a minimum and maximum MKR price for both flap and flop auctions ● Automatically buys low, sells high and captures the spread ● Obtains some return on otherwise idle capital sitting in the surplus buffer ● Extremely gas efficient (i.e., set it up and forget about it) Cons: ● Potentially interferes with the ability to raise large amounts of DAI from MKR sales ● Trading strategy is nearly the opposite of flop auctions Bring Back the MKR Burn Part II Signal Request Ends March 4th @ultraschuppi states that the recent executive vote to temporarily disable Surplus Auctions and MKR burn had intentions to return to the original lerp mechanic. However, an on-chain poll added the Rate Limiter to the Flapper Module. In response, Schuppi asks the community whether the protocol should return to the previous partial burning configuration as agreed in November, but with the following conditions: ● The Rate Limiter has been installed on mainnet; this will take a couple of weeks. ● An initial configuration for the Rate Limiter has been set. Ongoing Initiatives ‘Oh my god, this is taking ages; why can’t things be simple?’ Maker Operational Manual - @GovAlpha-Core-Unit release the launch of the Maker Operational Manual and invite all members and Core Units to reach out if they wish to provide any help or documentation to add for the Manual. Recognised Delegate Requirements - @LongForWisdom writes a detailed overview of the current requirements and application system to become a delegate in the Maker community. Check out this thread for more posts related to delegation. Where to Find Opportunities at MakerDAO and Open positions at MakerDAO - Looking for job opportunities at MakerDAO? Perfect! @Davidutro and @manomad set up individual threads containing resources to help find available job listing and hiring practices. If anybody has additional information on unique hiring practices or job listings, please comment on the thread. Collateral Calls - Calling all Projects! - @juan sets up a signup thread for projects wishing to present on the bi-weekly collateral call. Know any potential collateral partners that want to present? Refer them here. Collateral Status Index - Confused about the current status of the various collateral types that have been discussed recently? Check out this post to determine the status and current position within the onboarding process. Weekly MIPs Updates - @blimpa brings the latest updates in the world of MIPs. The Official Welcome Thread - A welcome and introductions thread. Not strictly governance, but if anyone new or old wants to introduce themselves, now is your chance! Help Wanted ‘Oh %#$?, we need a doodad, and we need it now.’ Wanted: Governance Contributors for GovAlpha - @LongForWisdom puts out the call for new team members! Different tracks are available depending on interest and time commitment. We could always use help reviewing MIPs in the Request for Comment phase. Feedback Survey Please, check out the Forum at a Glance feedback survey to help us improve and scale these reviews - It will be fun, I promise. Credit @Artem_Gordon @nothsa