Hi everyone, the discussion in Discord made me realize for the Professor’s Proposal to go anywhere that it needs to be outlined as steps to take. To that end, the below includes my understanding of The Professor’s article in step-by-step form:
Scrap wMEMO and replace it with only one token
The benefits of rebranding the current tokenomics of WL into one token is twofold:
- We remove confusion surrounding the greater crypto-community’s understanding of TIME, MEMO, wMEMO, etc.
- The frogs are moving forward with a new vision for WL and a new token will wipe the slate clean and effectively remove our old, bad MEMOries. It may seem like a small thing, but I seriously propose that Dani come up with the name for this new token. He is the idea man and a huge proponent of the success of this project and the community, so having his creativity be part of this is important.
Scrap APY and institute a robust, well organized Revenue Share model –
I fell for the 80,000% APY gimmick when I first heard of Olympus and WL, and, putting all the considerations of the interplay between APY, market cap, and dilution aside for now, I think our next steps forward need to be about clarity and consistency in how WL, management, and the treasury is seen by the frogs and potential investors.
The crazy huge APY is an incredibly useful tool to bring in new investors, but I don’t believe it is needed anymore. WL has already proved itself as one of the most successful DAOs of all time with a massive treasury and supportive community. Moving towards a Revenue Share model will benefit current frogs and future investors, and with the right limitations and dedicated Revenue Share percentage from the treasury to token holders we can see profit from our investment in WL while simultaneously increasing price pressure due to a maximum supply of tokens.
The specific steps of this part of the proposal include:
- Bring APY to 0%.
- Dedicate only a portion of the monthly earnings to yield farming activities to token holders as revenue share on a monthly basis.
a. The Professor suggests 20% as the portion dedicated to revenue share, but I believe this amount should be decided by the DAO.
b. The Professor suggest the revenue share should be paid out in a stablecoin, and I believe that MIM is the perfect option that will also support circulating the supply within the WL and Abracadabra framework, whether or not the DAO decides to keep the two protocols separate (discussed below).
- Invest the remaining portion of monthly earnings into growing the treasury and future VC investments.
- Have a Revenue Share qualification requirement where you must hold your tokens for at least 30 days to participate in the revenue share.
a. This reduces selling pressure and provides less opportunities for price manipulation.
- As part of removing APY and rebases, have a maximum supply of tokens in circulation to build price pressure.
Management Structure
I would definitely read this portion of The Professor’s post to understand how sincerely he believes Dani to be the creative mind and driver behind WL, but the basic steps of this part include:
- Keep Dani on as the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) so that he can focus on the big picture ideas and continue doing the things that helped build WL while not having to worry about the day-to-day management of the Treasury.
- Bring in a Chief Operating Officer (COO) to be the engine of the project who is responsible for the day-to-day operations, including managing the rest of the team, investor relations, PR, social channels, reviewing and updating SOPs, maintaining quality control and risk management, and vetting external contractors and developers.
a. The COO does not need to be doxed to the public because they would be handling treasury keys, and their identity only needs to be known to the core team. Though we all understand people’s hesitancy with the Sifu fiasco, we have to understand that this position is one that needs to maintain high levels of security, both for themselves and for the project so that outside forces cannot manipulate the treasury or take advantage of the project.
- Bring in a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to manage the treasury with an additional two (2) individuals to act as multi-sigs to execute transactions.
a. Create disaster relief protocols in the case of emergencies or sudden death.
b. The Professor suggests that these individuals be well known to the WL community and greater Defi community to re-instill trust in the project.
c. Have Dani act as interim manager of the treasury until these positions can be filled.
- Bring in a full time Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to manage backend development and any external third party contractors.
- Bring in an Investment Director or experienced M&A consultant to handle and hunt down investments for the protocol.
a. Additionally - Build a portal for the WL community to submit investment proposals to leverage our community for scouting opportunities.
- Bring in experienced yield farming consultants to help create innovative ideas for new profitable farms for the protocol to create.
a. Additionally – Build a portal for the WL community to contribute ideas to the team.
b. Note – The Professor includes the possibility of an algorithmic liquidation protecting yield optimizer, which would essentially help WL to leverage on any farm and reducing or completely eliminating the risk of liquidation. I would give that section a read as well.
- Bring in an experienced Communications Director/Risk Manager to handle all Social Channels (Discord, Twitter, etc.) and public relations with the possibility of periodic AMAs with this director and Dani to keep up community engagement.
Allow a Rage Quit solution
This is the hot-button issue for a lot of people in the community right now, and we all understand the potential risks with allowing this option. However, putting emotions aside this option needs to be seriously considered and voted upon to help bring the community back together. Importantly, we need to provide this option without allowing for those who quit to simply rejoin and take advantage of the arbitrage at the detriment to those frogs who hodl. The steps here include:
- Shut down the LP and all trading of wMEMO/MIM for a set period of time (The Professor suggests 48 hours) to allow those people that want to exit to claim their party of the Treasury.
- Prior to opening the LP, burn all tokens from those who exercised the option to rage quit in addition to any DAO tokens to bring the market price up to a set percentage point above backing (The Professor suggests 20%).
- Create an automated bot/procedure to defend thet backing price at exactly the backing price, so that price manipulators cannot take advantage of manual rebuys that occur below backing.
- Phase out buybacks to help sustain the longevity of the protocol.
Reminder here, these steps included are simply recommendations. Some of the steps should be included together, but nothing is stopping the DAO from having individual votes on some of these steps to allow the community to decide
Monthly Audits, Treasury Dashboard and Backing Price
Again, this part of The Professor’s post that I highly recommend reading yourself, but the basic steps include:
- Incorporate periodic audits of the Treasury by an external blockchain auditor (The Professor suggest monthly, but recognizes this will be difficult considering WL is a DAO).
- Build a specialized dashboard to show the following Treasury balances and positions, as well as current profit/loss with the possibility of additional sections to the dashboard including:
a. Assets Held
b. LP Positions
c. Farming Strategies
d. VC investments
Backing Price
The current backing price and Treasury Balance in WL includes the value of the native token (TIME, wMEMO) held in the Treasury, and in the case of an actual bank run on the project where backing price would become essential to recoup our investments thee value of those tokens would be ZERO. So the recommendation is to remove all DAO owned native tokens from the calculation of the Treasury Balance as well as the circulating supply because those amounts are not meant to be sold and are kept for bonding events. The upside of making this change is that contracting in the circulating supply would have a greater effect on increasing price.
Removing Leverage
We all saw the devastating effect that liquidations had on WL the moment the crypomarket turned bearish and the ability to leverage creates particular weaknesses for rebase protocols like WL (again, suggest reading The Professor’s article here and doing your own research). However, if rebasing is taken out off the equation as proposed above, and there is a max supply of the tokens also proposed above, then leveraging would not be subject to the same levels of volatility and the ability to leverage could be reinstated by vote of the DAO anytime in the future.
Importantly, whether the events detailed by The Professor are evidence of an actual orchestrated attack on WL by directly taking advantage of leveraging and liquidation prices, The Professor’s explanation of what happened prior to the liquidation cascade points out the extreme weakeness of allowing a leveraging option as part of a rebase protocol. Without additional protections, a similar event could occur in the future.
Basic recommendation step for this part is: No more wMEMO leverage on Abracadabra.
No Bail Out for Liquidations
The Professor includes this in his suggestion to Remove Leveraging because the topics go hand-in-hand, but I believe its important enough to be addressed by the community separately. Risk is risk, and the people who leveraged their positions and got liquidated took that risk and suffered the consequences. Even some of the most capable cryptoinvestors did not see the recent crash coming, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that investing in anything with any level of risk that has clearly outlined consequence of liquidation is a personal choice made by the individual.
The purpose of the backing price is to secure that amount for people who actually own, currently, the wMEMO that is being backed, and when you get liquidated you unfortunately don’t own the wMEMO you leveraged. This point should be obvious, but as The Professor says, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
Halt the Merger w/ Abracadabra
This is another point I highly recommend reading for yourself, and that I believe should be voted on by the community:
- Keep the WL and Abracadabra protocols and brands separate while still giving those that want to merge the ability to so. WL will still be able to utilize the synergies with Abracadabra to gain a competitive advantage in the market.
Create an Education Platform
The recommendation here is relatively simple:
- Allocate a small portion of the Treasury to hire a professional team to create an education platform to educate the community and that can be updated on a regular basis.
a. This will help to bring in new investors in an efficient way.
b. We already have invested members of the community who could either help to explain what type of education (videos, guides, etc.) or actually do the work themselves. One such recommendation are individuals like Defi Magick who is himself a huge proponent of Dani and WL and has experience doing exactly this type of education on his youtube (which I highly suggest watching if you are starting out in crypto or would like updates on new projects).