Proposal: Onboard Fire Eyes DAO as Strategic Partner

Governance Ecosystem Fund [deprecated]
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Summary

This proposal outlines a collaboration between the Balancer Protocol and :fire: _ :fire: (Fire Eyes DAO) to act as governance stewards and a strategic partner to the Balancer ecosystem.

Background

Since November 2020, Fire Eyes has been actively engaging with Balancer governance and working with Balancer Labs to steward the Balancer V2 launch. You can read here about our work, but here are some highlights:

:fire:_ :fire: has always been focused on working alongside communities and projects that we believe are capable of achieving new heights of innovation in token and governance primitives.

This is something we see in Balancer and why we’re excited to present this proposal to the Balancer community outlining a continued scope of work.

Key Areas

:fire:_ :fire: Fire Eyes DAO will engage with the Balancer community, the Ballers, and Balancer Labs in recurring meetings to develop new governance and token frameworks. This collaboration will be focused on:

  • Acting as Balancer Protocol Politicians
    • Develop new governance proposals and lead discussions on improving the Balancer protocol, and generating value for the ecosystem.
    • Work to integrate BAL and BPT tokens into other DeFi protocols
  • Partnerships
    • Help onboard new partners for Liquidity Bootstrapping Pools, Balancer Smart Pools, and other protocol-unique applications like Aave Safety Modules.
  • Balancer Market Position & Narrative
    • Continue to develop the narrative of Balancer v2, asset managers, and protocol-unique applications.
  • BAL Tokenomics
    • Work with the community to propose a strategy for the BAL token to expand beyond governance, including potential ways for value capture and benefits for LPs.

These key areas will worked on with :fire:_:fire: and the Balancer community through bi-weekly workshops, forum posts & governance proposals.

Timeline

This proposal outlines a general timeline of 6 months and a commitment from :fire:_ :fire: to support Balancer as a protocol politician beyond the initial scope.

Terms

:fire:_ :fire: is proposing to be compensated exclusively in BAL tokens vested in accordance with grants larger than 1,000 BAL. This allocation will come from the Ecosystem Fund.

Fire Eyes is requesting 6,666 BAL for a 6 month engagement on the above Scope of Work. The allocation will be vested over 1 year.

Fire Eyes will utilize this allocation to actively participate in Balancer governance and seed liquidity on Balancer V2.

:fire:_ :fire: Squad & Experience

FireEyes has had the pleasure of working with amazing teams across the DeFi and broader crypto ecosystem including Aave, Gitcoin, Rocket Pool and others.

Conclusion

:fire: _ :fire: is requesting a one-time grant of 6,666 BAL vested over 1 year to become a strategic partner and active governance participant.

At the end of the 6 month period, this engagement should be reassessed and evaluated for future extensions.

Balancer finds itself in a unique position to differentiate itself in a growing DeFi battle for capital efficiency and we want to help with that narrative. We look forward to discussing this proposal with the Balancer community and collaborating in the future.

:fire::balance_scale::fire::balance_scale::fire::balance_scale::fire::balance_scale::fire::balance_scale::fire::balance_scale::fire::balance_scale::fire::balance_scale::fire::balance_scale::fire::balance_scale::fire:

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6,666 BAL for 6 months doesn’t strike me as an unreasonable ask. It was never disclosed how much BAL you guys got for your previous engagement stint but Fernando mentioned he was happy with the value fire eyes brought to the table.

I’m not totally sold on paying for governance participation. I think it works a lot better when it happens organically. We also have this partnership mining agreement, so there’s already a compensation mechanism in place for onboarding projects. Not sure if it ever went to a vote tho :sweat_smile:

Anyway, more ideas & discussion is a good thing, and maybe it is worth paying for at this early stage.

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Chiming in here as a member of :fire: _ :fire: .

Working alongside the Balancer team has been fantastic, and I see this proposal as a way to align incentives over a longer time frame, irregardless of specific protocol upgrades of key activations.

It’s clear that across the board, DeFi governance participation can be improved - and we hope this proposal can set an early foundation for how other groups may engage in either the Balancer ecosystem or others across DeFi.

As for my personal interest, putting more effort into DAO org structure similar to our work at FWB would be a great way to help mobilize and activate different members of the community. Creating workstreams with tools like Coordinape feel like an obvious win here.

As a long time BAL holder and liquidity provider, I’m also very excited to explore the different levers presented with Balancer V2 to maximize tokeholder engagement through staking and governance.

This proposal being public is something of a first of it’s kind for us, but there’s no one we’d rather do it with than Balancer.

Hopefully we can be a breeding ground for many more protocol politicians to come :fire:

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Dear @0xLucas and @Coopahtroopa, thanks for the proposal.

I have always closely followed the relationship between fire eyes and Balancer simply because both Lucas and Coopahtroopa appeared almost out of nowhere last November, received an undisclosed quantity of BAL (or voting rights, as they prefer to call it) to implement an initial governance structure (Ballers), the govFactor and propose a new Tier system for the LM incentive in Balancer V2.

Apart from the things specified above (which are good and still used today) I have never seen Coopahtroopa or 0xLucas participate in the community, bring some kind of added value to the daily management of the protocol, help members, grow with the community, within the community.
On the contrary, I see here (once again) an opportunistic proposal, decidedly based on seeking a monetary benefit FIRST instead of building and perhaps being compensated LATER.

The concept of the DeFi politician is something that is by no means new to Coopahtroopa. He talked about it in some tweets or discussions I’ve read in the past. It is a legitimate concept but one that I disagree with.

As a Baller, I would suggest to both Coopahtroopa and 0xLucas to get their hands dirty with Balancer, dedicate personal time to it, be an integral part of a community that needs selfless leaders.

Leadership and recognition must be built from within, and if the work produced is as outstanding as the Balancer Community, then I’m sure it will only be a matter of time before you will be compensated.

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A followup on the medium post Lucas Campbell wrote in february about the key outcomes.

I would appreciate some information about the success of the last collaboration.

  • Did the implementation of the govFactor lead to an improvement of protocoll metrics? If so, which are these?
  • You also made sure that “all aspects of the protocol could be well-understood by all levels of Defi enthusiasts”. Is this actually the case?

This proposal to me reads like :fire:_ :fire: is mainly looking to facilitate.

I think especially the point about Partnerships can be formulated in a more active role. Example could be:

  • Identify, actively engage and convert x protocols to use a LBP to distribute their tokens.
    Such an effort could then later on be tied to BAL spent / protocoll revenue generated.

This proposal outlines your planned activities. It would be beneficial if you could talk more about the expected outcomes.

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Thanks a lot for this proposal @0xLucas and Fire Eyes team! Also thanks everyone for your input. I’m also adding a few points which represent my personal opinion, not necessarily Balancer Labs’.

The first two projects we had with fire Eyes were done directly via Balancer Labs through the pre-approved batches which are 100% disclosed once completed and also half the payment in USD. We all agreed (BLabs and Fire-Eyes) that as we get more and more decentralized this new phase should be done entirely directly through the Dao (i.e BAL token holders deciding/voting).

I have been extremely satisfied with the fire Eyes crew in these first two projects. They have always brought a lot of insight from other projects (this was extremely useful for the Balancer Labs team which sometimes is not paying attention to everything going on as we work heads down on our priorities). They also help with a lot of stuff that few realized they were involved with: for example the V2 flash paper and some medium posts.

@Mkflow27 put it really well: I think the Fire Eyes team is a facilitator. I’m sure they will bring more valuable activity and ideas in these early days of Balancer as we work towards building an organic and selfless community (which is IMO definitely the objective here). They can surely help a lot with tokenomics and governance among others.

Another important aspect of their proposal that’s important to me is that they are committed to no selling BAL as it gets vested but instead to using it within Balancer (providing liquidity and voting). Maybe @coopahtroopa could be more specific about the duration of that commitment but I don’t see them selling their BAL any time soon even after the one year vesting. I think this is proof that they are in it for the long term. The DAO should be spending more BAL in long term commitments like this IMO.

I’d love to see more comments from the community and the fire Eyes team addressing them all before we proceed to a snapshot vote!

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I have no doubt that fire eyes DAO has made significant improvements to governance and that their contacts have (and eventually will) made it possible to better integrate Balancer into the defi ecosystem.

However, I want to point out the following points:
fire eyes DAO is asking for a grant of 6666 BAL tokens which until a few months ago was close to half a million dollars. Not an insignificant amount.

Some improvements they want to introduce are already in an advanced discussion stage (BTP staking; tokenomics etc.) and simply need a final push to become reality. The same thing goes for the community calls that Marta has already introduced and which are doing great.

So I also see the grant as a way to facilitate some sort of service to the protocol but I wonder how far would the Community at large go without the Fire eyes DAO input. Is their contribution so necessary for such a disbursement? I am asking while thinking on how to best use the available funds and obtain an optimal result.

Obviously, if the community decides that such a grant is justified, I will be the first to support them.

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Thanks for the input @Andrea81 @Fernando and @Mkflow27.

I’ve intentionally given this thread a few days breathing room for others to voice their opinions.

I’d like to address a few points here before getting into some wider objectives of this engagement.

Both Lucas and I have been contributing to Balancer since inception, best highlighted through our early coverage of the project on DeFi Rate and The Defiant starting as far as June of 2020.

This does not include any conversation which took place on Discord and in communication with the wider DeFi community on Twitter. Please note that all of these contributions were made without ever formally engaging with Balancer, and ones that I was more than happy to add to as a part of this community.

As for participation in the community, I would encourage you to look back on the Background of this proposal for four of the key elements accomplished during our partnership. I’m a proud signer on the Balancer multisig and will let Fernando’s comments speak to the quality of our contributions that were not public.

Outside of what was mentioned, Fire Eyes was instrumental in stating that the Ballers be empowered through BALaries and set up the first few community calls. I’ve personally moderated a number of conversations with the Balancer community on Twitter Spaces and plan on remaining engaged in these initiatives moving forward.

On the note of being compensated for governance, I’ve written extensively about this topic - best exemplified through my coverage on Bankless here. The TLDR is that compensation is necessary for the current state of decentralized governance, and without it - it will not happen.

Today, there is more than $10B sitting in DeFi treasuries. Fire Eyes has been lucky enough to be approached by many leading teams for proprietary work and has made a conscious decision to propose our long-term partnership through public governance with Balancer - something which has only been ever done a number of times in DeFi’s history across the entire space.

This decision was not taken lightly and our proposal reflects the confidence in our work and sets a larger precedent to encourage others to not be afraid to play a leading role in decentralized governance.

The final push is almost always what takes the longest. Speaking on behalf of the V2 liquidity mining strategy, this is something that was proposed multiple months before Fire Eyes helped take it over the finish line by proposing it here on the forum, revising it, and then helping to submit the vote to Snapshot.

We hope to be the one’s to see all of these initiative through, and I’d be willing to bet we will add key contributions to the discussion that will increase the quality of their implementation.

Simply put - yes. While I don’t have the exact statistics (cc @0xLucas) I believe that governance votes saw an increase of roughly 1M BAL per vote following the implementation of the govFactor. See this vote before govFactor (~90k BAL) vs this vote after it’s implementation (~1.25M BAL).

This is just one of the many ways Fire Eyes hopes to add value moving forward, and a shining example of where our work has had a direct impact on governance participation.

I’d echo both @Mkflow27 and @Fernando’s comments that Fire Eyes is a facilitator.

Outside of the above defined focus areas, Fire Eyes would love to act as a funnel for new LBP projects and integrations. In the coming week, we will better define what this looks like and seek to present targets to assess the quality of this work.

Closing Thoughts

The amount of BAL being requested for this engagement should not be glossed over.

We are asking for a significant stake of BAL in exchange for being a significant governance partner. While I hear and understand your concerns @Andrea81 - I would challenge you to find another group willing to go as far as Fire Eyes has and does, or find a group that brings as much context to the table as we do on a weekly basis.

I kindly welcome and all constructive feedback to this proposal. It’s clear to me with both Uniswap and Sushiswap governance as of late that these type of engagements are one’s worth spotlighting in a push for transparency and alignment.

I hope that at the end of the day, the community of BAL tokenholders agrees this allocation is net positive for the protocol as we continue to play a leading role in the evolving governance of Balancer at large.

And to the fellow protocol politicians out there - let this report serve as words of encouragement to let your voice be heard, and to be compensated for that voice. It’s people like us that make this industry into the bright future we all know and love.

I’m excited to be spending this week at ETHCC and look forward to seeing members of the Balancer community at ground zero.

With love,

  • Coopahtroopa
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hello @Coopahtroopa,

first of all thanks for the long and well-rationalized answer. I hope you understand that what I would like to avoid is that certain groups take advantage of Balancer’s treasury. What has recently been seen with Sushiswap and Uniswap must be avoided at all costs to preserve the integrity of the protocol. I have been seeing many sharks in search of easy money lately aiming at the treasuries of defi projects. For this reason, if I have to be the watchdog and the devil’s advocate well, I will!

Having said that, there are certain things that I agree with and others that I don’t.

Simply put - yes. While I don’t have the exact statistics (cc @0xLucas) I believe that governance votes saw an increase of roughly 1M BAL per vote following the implementation of the govFactor. See this vote before govFactor (~90k BAL) vs this vote after it’s implementation (~1.25M BAL).

The Gov Factor (as mentioned many times) in my humble opinion was not a success. While it is clear that there has been a dramatic increase in voting participation, the same cannot be said for participation in governance. A clear example is the number of comments on this proposal. Very few are interested because there is no economic incentive. Therefore, I would argue that the increase in votes has to do with the personal opportunity cost and not a renewed interest from the community.

GOVERNANCE
A few points here:
Balancer needs long-lasting governance that has clear objectives to be achieved and works overtime to reach them.
Identifying certain KPIs to be achieved in 6 months can give a boost, but it cannot be a viable long-term approach.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand your strategy of monitoring the discussions and proposals that take place on the forum, wait until a certain critical mass is reached and then intervene, proposing changes for the final push in exchange for economic compensation. Instead, I would encourage you and the rest of the FED team to look at a long time frame by making a robust and consistent contribution. In that case, you would clearly demonstrate that you have protocol-aligned interests and are not looking for a mere financial benefit.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS
I agree that Balancer lacks leadership. Various groups (or individuals) are working in different protocol areas/proposals, but none condense it all into something concrete (the staking proposal being slow is a good example). Fire Eyes DAO could fill this void. At the same time, I am perplexed about the amount of BAL requested and about the proposal to work for an unclear time as a partner and politician but for only 6 months as a “facilitator” of services.

Governance must be organic and consistent over time and not a “Deus ex Machina” event.

I would appreciate if Fire Eyes DAO could clarify what exactly they want to become:

Be a Governing Partner?
Some of its members are already Ballers. Balancer needs LM committee members and more generally speaking, support. I am sure the Community would appreciate their input and work. I’m unsure if this however requires financial compensation.

Be a Facilitator?
In this case objectives to be achieved (KPI) should be well defined, accepted and easily accessible to the community.
The issuance of BAL should be conditional on the achievement of these predetermined objectives.
The issuance of BAL should not be linear but progressive, so as to ensure the continuous alignment and incentive of the working group.
The issuance of BAL should be over a period reflecting the partnership timeframe with the intention to maintain that level of engagement necessary to make Balancer a competitive platform.

General KPI ideas to consider for your evaluation proposal in case you decide to become a facilitator:

  • BPTV2 / BAL usecase/integration for major DeFi protocols: AAVE; Compound; MakerDao to name a few;

  • Helping the team to build Strategic partnerships with nascent projects (Parallel for this can serve as a good example);

  • Increased user awareness across the DeFi ecosystem.

TIME VESTING PERIOD
BALs issued for your participation should be vested for a longer holding period. At the moment, the staking proposal has put forward the idea (which is now also a common practice initially launched by Curve.fi) of a lock up period of up to 4 years. I am of the opinion that any representative and ambassador of the project should be aligned with this timeframe. Any shorter time would make your position questionable.

These are just simple proposals to build a partnership that is lasting, well-defined and that creates a binding mechanism between Fire Eyes and Balancer.

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Thanks for your thoughts @Andrea81! While I agree with lots of your points, there is one central piece (which you start your post with) that I view differently:

I hope you understand that what I would like to avoid is that certain groups take advantage of Balancer’s treasury

I actually am afraid of exactly the opposite: If we become too restrictive and complicated with grants for community members that are dedicating an important/valuable amount of their time to Balancer, then I’m sure less and less proposals will come and we might die a slow death as a protocol that can’t attract enough community engagement. Balancer would still have a lot of BAL in its treasury but all the tokens might not be worth much because the community slowly lost interest (it didn’t feel adequately compensated by the project) and went to other DAOs that saw their value and were willing to get them more skin in the game, which in turn caused the project to lose value.

Balancer Protocol gives out 145,000 BAL each week to liquidity providers. I think we are extremely lopsided in terms of incentives: those who have the liquidity are getting all the tokens while those who want to contribute in valuable ways but not providing liquidity (like what Fire Eyes is proposing) aren’t getting anything (except for Ballaries and a few sporadic grants).

I think if this proposal is accepted (and I agree it could be tweaked in some ways for example extending the vesting period), we would set a precedent for other active DeFi members to step up and also become more active in our protocol because they would be duly rewarded with long-term (because of the vesting) skin in the game.

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@Fernando

thanks for your input!

I must admit I have not thought about this possibility and the imbalance of BAL distribution towards “idle” major LPs.

Perhaps if viewed from this perspective, the approach to those who want to participate and develop the protocol should be more welcoming!

Regardless, I hope my views can be used to build a sound proposal by Fire Eyes.

Looking forward to it.

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I generally agree with and echo the sentiments of Andrea81.

I can understand Fernando’s concern about the opportunity cost of unused funds stagnating the overall development of the protocol. At the same time though, it is important that the governors of BAL’s treasury protect foremost the interest of the protocol and thus the interests of anyone with an exposure to BAL. I also acknowledge that 6666 BAL over 6 months is not a large ask as a percentage of current spending.

However, I think it is reasonable for governance to demand that any treasury spending should come with an expected protocol value increase greater than or equal to the spending. I do not think that FE DAO has demonstrated their value add is worth more than the 6666 BAL they are asking for.

Here are some key thoughts:

I agree that a proposal like this should have a measurable outcome, with accountability should the team fall behind expectations or exceed them. If the impact of this team’s contribution cannot be measured, how can compensation be reasonably determined?

As FE DAO was being compensated for their work so far, their achievements should be discounted relative to the compensation. E.g. if FE DAO generates $100,000 of value for the project, but were paid $200,000 for the work, that represents a net loss for BAL holders. As the details of this are behind closed doors I would omit them from the decision. Fernando has vouched repeatedly for FE DAO and some may accept this. Others would prefer the underlying details to make their own assessment.

It is unclear to me how paying for governance is not a complete meme. Balancer governance at the moment seems very detailed and high level, and the community is high quality. People engage here because they are genuinely interested by the project and it’s flexibility (FE DAO in contrast are paid actors). Paying for governance may increase participation, but the quality of these new participants would be questionable.

FE DAO is selling themselves here as Balancer Protocol Politicians. I’m not sure what this even means. I will say that, just like in the real world, people who aspire to be politicians are usually not the type of people that you should want to be representing you. Again I echo Andrea81’s sentiments here. I’m very distrustful of the efficacy and motives of politicians.

FE DAO proposes to improve Balancer’s Market Position & Narrative. I’m curious to hear what FE DAO believes our narrative (and the protocol’s ultimate purpose) is. This was debated recently and it would be good to check that FE DAO is on the same page.

In light of all this, I can see cases where FE DAO could add value. This would be mostly marketing and using their connections with other protocols to onboard liquidity. Getting more bootstrapping liquidity pools would be amazing.

Balancer should spend money on this sort of thing, but I think we should wait to strike when we can get the most value out of our marketing. At the bare minimum, we need to have a concrete product and value proposition. Ideally, we would wait for a catalyst that the marketing can be timed around. For example, a lot of the tradeoff downside for balancer’s complexity is higher gas fees. When ETH solves these, a strong marketing campaign may be able to draw significant liquidity from the current market leaders.

On a side note: Paying 145,000 BAL/week for LPs is also pretty questionable but that’s a different conversation.

–

This is not relevant to the above but in context I did find this quote amusing when researching:

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Thanks @Coopahtroopa for your proposal, everyone for your thoughtful feedback and @Andrea81 for your kind words.

I wasn’t at Balancer Labs when :fire:_:fire: started, I joined toward the end of first phase of the collaboration. The help they provided, guidance and some of the community management was really valuable, from what I could see. Definitely as I was getting up to speed, having regular calls and relying on them was really good.

The slight pushback I’m seeing, to me, is actually a great sign of maturation of our Balancer Community. Checking Discord used to be the most depressive part of my day, when I started - it was filled with random chatter, repetitive questions and very little signal. These days it is my favourite thing to do - there is so much good and interesting discussion, loads of activities and so many people that are looking at ways to contribute. I think the Community has really grown and activated over the past few months, which is amazing to me. Of course, there is a long way to go, and we still need to build better contribution pathways and management processes that will help coordinate the efforts.

I understand why having an external group come on as governance stewards is concerning to active community members. And there is an argument to be made that it can lead to building of unhelpful dependencies (what happens after the 6 months? who will take the role of :fire: _:fire: ?) or centralization (now all the governance is outsourced to a single organization that can disappear as quickly as they showed up). Of course, I know this is not something that :fire:_:fire: would do - you are real supporters and champions of Balancer Protocol!

I am wondering if maybe we need a Governance Advisory Board? This would be a group of external experts (like :fire:_:fire: ) who would have public Discord channel and public meetings and share their observations and ideas on how to improve the governance, community management etc, and offer advice to contributors who want to work with Balancer Community and have less experience? We are already kind of testing it with the Liquidity Mining Committee. @HavOx and @jnapier as governance stewards (and whoever else would want to be one) would execute on the advice of the GAB. And members of the :fire: _:fire: could contribute as individuals and be the stewards as well.

WDYT?

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This. The greatest risk I see to the success of Balancer is the pace of execution on all fronts. We are fortunate to have a significant treasury, but so do many other projects, including competing DEXs. The Balancer community and Balancer Labs should be willing to pay a premium for top talent to help more forward more rapidly in a fast-moving and highly competitive landscape. The opportunity cost for talented individuals in this industry has never been higher. We should be sending a message that the coffers are open to those who can deliver, not that we will nickel and dime those who put forth thoughtful proposals backed by their track records.

The proposed grant is currently ~$130K of BAL. The 1-year vesting would be worth a >25% discount (and really quite a bit more than that), just based on the current APR of the 80/20 BAL/WETH pool. I think $100K for 6 months of the proposed contributions from a team of this caliber–let alone one that has already delivered so much for the Balancer community–is an absolute steal. If I could convince @Coopahtroopa and team to make a similar proposal to every single DAO Nascent has invested in, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

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Continuing my thoughts to address sentiment on this discussion.

Please expect a separate response with an updated structure to address specification around token amount, vesting and governance.

First off, thank you @delitzer for the kind words of support. I would like to highlight one bit in particular.

While coming from a place of good intent, the responses from @Andrea81 and @iyvy signal that because we are requesting to be compensated, our values and motives are not aligned.

As a group that has invested 100+ hours into this community, this feedback is very discouraging and does not set a good precedent for others to get involved. The harsh reality is that there are less than 100 people in the world capable of doing decentralized governance on a meaningful level, and every single one of those individuals has a dozen plus offers on where to spend their time.

Fire Eyes has very intentionally taken the time to make a proposal to this community, namely due to our strong belief in the Balancer team and the long-term sustainability of the project.

This proposal is our intent to continue this conversation as someone who’s played a key role in Balancer over the past year. While we look to better define KPIs, I’d ask that this proposal come with a degree of trust that our reputation and signal is stronger than any metrics to be measured.

In short, this proposal should be seen as a Yes or No vote that Balancer would like Fire Eyes to be a governance leader for a minimum of 6 months, and the expectation of it being much longer.

Governance Compensation

This thread has embodied this concern. I understand what Fire Eyes is asking for is substantial, but the general sentiment from our team is that the Balancer community is not receptive of our contributions and that our talents should be taken elsewhere.

I am here to vocalize and address this feeling, and reach a clear understanding on whether or not the Balancer community wishes for us to pursue this engagement.

Examples of this pushback are quoted below.

These concerns are in direct contrast to @Fernando @delitzer and @marta - three key players with substantial stakes in the project. Examples of support defined below.

While I’m thankful for this support, I see conflicting sentiment from the core team and investors, and the day to day community contributors.

To this - I would echo @marta’s suggestion for a Governance Advisory Board - essentially acting as a middle ground between the core team and the day to day community.

This would be included in the scope on top of the originally proposed proposal, and allow us to work directly with the community to better set precedent for how others can get involved in a more fluid manner.

To recap, next steps are as follows:

  • Clarifying sentiment around whether the community wishes to engage Fire Eyes (poll below).
  • Establishing clear guidelines and precedent around vesting and commitment to Balancer.

Please expect a follow up response to address the specifics of a proposal that would be put to a Snapshot vote, only if the following poll passes with majority.

  • Yes - Engage Fire Eyes as a Strategic Partner
  • No - Do not engage Fire Eyes.
0 voters

Thank you for your time and responses!

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I’m sorry man,

I held out my hand to you hoping for a proposal that would clear up all doubts. Instead the answer was

our talents should be taken elsewhere

and

every single one of those individuals has a dozen plus offers on where to spend their time

I am very sorry to read these comments. If you really believe you can bring something of value I would expect a much more proactive attitude in trying to convince everyone (by the way, I am not a core team member but I am a Balancer investor and not someone who end up writing on a random forum for lack of better things to do). Honestly, I feel you could have used better words to express your opinions and maybe avoided separations or various categories (core, contributors, this guy, that guy). We all want Balancer’s good here.

@Coopahtroopa it is not my fault if you guys keep moving the goalpost: first governance stewards and partners, then facilitators and now advisory board. Honestly, I am really really confused about what exactly you guys want to do.

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Looking at the conversation here, I get a sense of a few things:

  1. Those who worked closely with Fire Eyes clearly value their input, and the various endorsements from the Balancer Labs team & Dan reflect this. I don’t doubt the team’s capabilities & enthusiasm.
  2. Those in the community here perhaps have a sense that the Fire Eyes team haven’t been very involved in the “day-to-day”, and are only really seen around the time one of their proposals appears in the forum. Perhaps this creates a perception that much less work/value-add has taken place than is the case, as a lot of the work is out of view.
  3. There may be another element at play here, where the compensation proposed here is an order of magnitude greater than what’s available via the Baller program, and those who have contributed to the community for free or as part of that could feel as though their efforts are comparatively seen as low value.

I was a little disappointed when Fire Eyes appeared to disappear after the liquidity mining proposal was voted through. Within the Liquidity Mining Proposal Fire Eyes had committed to being involved in the Liquidity Mining Committee as advisors, but there has not been any input from them (or outreach to anyone on the committee as far as I’m aware: I tried to add Coopahtroopa as a friend, but it hasn’t been accepted: I’m guessing it’s just been missed in noise). There also haven’t been any contributions to subsequent liquidity mining proposal conversations on the forum. As far as I can tell no one from Fire Eyes has commented in any of the various LM Discord Channels since their proposal passed.

I’m sure they’re very busy, but I guess that is the point: in this case a commitment was made and ultimately not fulfilled.

I understand the need to ensure we’re welcoming to potential partners, and that getting involved carries reward. I support continuing working with Fire Eyes based on the recommendations from Balancer Labs team members who have presumably been much more involved in working directly with them over the last year.

I do think we need to be careful around commitments though (what specifically are they going to be involved with / what are they committing to?) Are they committing to time input? Or to deliverables? And we also need to remain aware of how this compares to those contributing to the protocol’s governance for free, or in a Baller capacity.

Ballers for example are being rewarded w/ unlocked BAL based on monthly time input, and report on it each month, to a max of $5,000 in BAL or 100 BAL (whichever is smaller). It means at the moment a Baller can earn a maximum of $2,000 in BAL per month, at a “nearly full time” (IIRC 30-40 hrs per week) effort level: this proposal is asking for 10x the maximum an individual Baller can earn each month contributing the max 30-40 hours per week, or 5x if you apply a 50% discount for the 12 month locking.

Naturally, time input doesn’t equal value output, but there is a large premium being placed on Fire Eyes’ time involvement here.

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I’m 100% in favor of this engagement between Fire Eyes and Balancer.

I do not at all doubt the motivations and values of the Fire Eyes team. I think anybody arguing against this proposal should look at themselves and evaluate their contributions to the Balancer ecosystem. Think Fire Eyes is overcompensated relative to you? Great - signal it here, and I would happily vote in favor of giving you extra rewards. I would even help you shape up a proposal.

WE NEED TO BECOME THE MOST WELCOMING AND NURTURING ENVIRONMENT FOR TALENTED CONTRIBUTORS. Open value networks are already scrambling for talented contributors: for good reasons, the livelihood and survivability of these ecosystems depend on those that pro-actively push development.

There are a limited amount of people that have the context, skills, and desire to contribute meaningfully to the emerging crypto-economic network, and I’m 100% convinced that each of the contributors of Fire Eyes is capable of delivering above expectations.

Let’s not get discouraged by individuals arguing against this proposal, everyone is free to share their thoughts, but the only way is forward. I’ve seen dozens of DAOs lose and die because contributors were not valued sufficiently, leading to passion and energy flowing away, leaving only a digital carcass behind.

Either we become a vibrant ecosystem, or we will likely go down the same path.

I believe that the Governance Advisory Board would be a helpful addition to this proposal and the Balancer Ecosystem.

To lower the potential friction created by this proposal - I would argue for shortening the commitment to an initial period of 4 months, after which BAL governance can re-evaluate and decide to continue the commitment or not.

Also, when in doubt – let’s use the Governance mechanisms that have been set up to make decisions: Vote with BAL.

Let’s work together to build the most welcoming and energized ecosystem.

Love

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Let’s shape up a proposal to INCREASE BALLER REWARDS. BAL should flow to those that care about and contribute to the ecosystem. We should keep each other accountable, but let’s do it in a way that promotes collaboration and continuous improvement.

We’re part of a bigger ecosystem and larger game - let’s make sure our ecosystem stands out as a welcoming and productive environment that rewards contributions fairly.

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Thanks so much for your input @bakamoto20 and @LuukDAO.

Let me address some of your comments:

I was a little disappointed when Fire Eyes appeared to disappear after the liquidity mining proposal was voted through. Within the Liquidity Mining Proposal Fire Eyes had committed to being involved in the Liquidity Mining Committee as advisors

I think it’s a bit of my fault too as I had proposed for there to be weekly meetings where they would participate, since these never happened because they would be to cumbersome, @Coopahtroopa (and also @delitzer who signaled availability to participate in discussion sporadically) never actually got a chance to participate. Maybe making clear that their participation is welcome also in discord and tagging them there would be a good start to engage them.

Ballers for example are being rewarded w/ unlocked BAL based on monthly time input, and report on it each month, to a max of $5,000 in BAL or 100 BAL (whichever is smaller). It means at the moment a Baller can earn a maximum of $2,000 in BAL per month, at a “nearly full time” (IIRC 30-40 hrs per week) effort level: this proposal is asking for 10x the maximum an individual Baller can earn each month contributing the max 30-40 hours per week, or 5x if you apply a 50% discount for the 12 month locking.

This is a great point and one that I have been thinking of for quite a bit of time. I think those in the community who were initially against this proposal would be much more willing to accept it if the lockup of the BAL requested was longer (better alignment of incentives). This would mean basically that FE will get much more if Balancer does well and cannot dump tokens any time soon. The problem with long vesting periods is the compounding effect that one would miss out on by not being able to add their BAL to the incentivized 80/20 BAL/ETH pool.

I have a suggestion that would IMO solve both problems at once: let’s have grants be paid in BPT of the BAL/ETH 80/20 pool. In practice (since setting up vesting contracts is costly both in gas and time) I would suggest having a Sablier stream that starts in 1 year and ends in 2 years (in crypto this is really a long time). This would mean that FE will only be able to withdraw liquidity from the pool after a year and only after two years will they get the whole amount.

I would like to propose to extend this offer to Ballers from the current batch of pre-approved grants on behalf of BLabs (using this batch means we don’t need to go through a formal snapshot vote): my suggestion would be to keep the current 100 BAL unlocked payments, but to give an extra 400 BAL/month to Ballers in the form of BPT. This would also be streamed with Sablier starting 1 year from payment date and ending 2 years later. I think this 5x increase in compensation should attract more Ballers and also incentivize the current ones to become more active, or else their spot should be passed on to other community members who would be interested.

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