Proposal: Onboard Fire Eyes DAO as Strategic Partner

[Coopahtroopa]

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.

@Andrea81

Lucas and Coopahtroopa appeared almost out of nowhere last November

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.

• Interview with Fernando.
• Balancer announcing BAL
• Balancer’s response to early FTX yield farming.
• Balancer’s first liquidity mining vote.
• Introducing the wrapFactor
• BAL Liquidity Staking
• Balancer x Aragon Snapshot Grant

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.

@Andrea81

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.

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.

@Fernando

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.

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.

@Andrea81

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 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.

@Mkflow27

Did the implementation of the govFactor lead to an improvement of protocoll metrics? If so, which are these?

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.

@Mkflow27

Partnerships can be formulated in a more active role

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