Symmetric Balancer Friendly Fork Proposal

My original intention with bringing up all this was to say “Wtf just happened with Hexagon, why did that pass so easily with absolutely no product to show?” I admit that I was not actively watching the forums as that proposal was brought up; if I had been, I 100% would have brought this all up in that thread instead. Since I missed that opportunity, I felt this was the best time to raise my concerns.

I feel like I have been very clear each time I post that my thoughts on this are not directed at the Symmetric team, and rather directed towards BAL voters saying “let’s formalize what base requirements should exist before something can even be considered a friendly fork.”

My original post started with:

This comment isn’t directed at the Symmetric team, but rather to the DAO/community that votes on Friendly Fork proposals.

I have also said that I’m very pro-Friendly-Forks with Beethoven as a fantastic example.

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I believe some input from my side is needed here:

  1. the Hexagon team is not full anon. I personally know them and their professionalism has been endorsed by Avalabs. Let me reiterate this point: Avalabs recommended the team. Is it enough? maybe not for what I can see. Any future proposal should take into consideration all this. Totally fair.
  2. The main backlash here is coming from the capital allocation: while the previous deals required zero disbursement from the DAO, in this case we have a different set of standards. It is fair to also ask what the DAO is getting in exchange and what are future implications. Why 100K and not 200? or 500 for that matter? all valid points that need a deeper conversation.
  3. Probably at this point, would be good for Luuk to clarify what level of involvement he has with symmetric/Celo/PrimeDAO and so on. Just to clear the air and make everyone feel more confident going forward.

Apart from all this, I am 100% confident that the Symmetric team can deliver an excellent product

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Hey Andrea,

The comment I made was mainly directed towards the strict technical diligence proposed by @gerg (which I think all make sense, and most of it was part of the Friendly Fork Framework you, me, and the Partnership group have been working on).

  1. About Hexagon, you mentioned that Avalabs endorsed the team, and they left comments on the Forum, so I think it’s wonderful and therefore also upvoted the proposal.
  2. Yes, which has been outlined in the agreement - it gets up to 7.5% in an experienced and native team on two chains - where from both chains core members have shown support to this proposal. In addition, BalancerDAO would support the biz dev and marketing efforts around the launch of V 2.0 on these chains.
  3. Happy to clarify my role - I’m the founder of Kolektivo Labs, a Web 3.0 system innovation lab that works on a couple of leading projects. One of the main DAOs we contribute to is PrimeDAO, an early Balancer grantee that has developed an LBP product called Prime Launch in addition to a hand of other products. I’ve been in touch with Balancer and Celo early - since the first time the ecosystem leads of both projects met, and I have been trying to bridge the two ever since. I am part of the Climate Collective, which is a movement that was incubated by Celo to develop the nexus of Climate action and Web 3.0. I have known the SYMM team now for a couple of months, and when they received a Celo grant to build V 2.0 started engaging them so we could collaborate on getting the LBP technology built by Prime onto Celo to support launching Regenerative projects.

I’m convinced Symmetric is the right group to build and expand the Balancer technology onto Celo and Gnosis - both as an individual and as a member of BalancerDAO.

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In my book, no. Is it nice that someone is vouching for them? Sure, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s a weak criterium. In every single industry even well-meaning people/teams/companies over-promise and under-deliver. I personally want to see a functional product, not just a team. And I don’t care if a team is anon or not, I care that the Balancer community endorsed a product that doesn’t yet exist.

I urge you to think about the precedents that each vote can set. In this case, you personally orchestrated the Hexagon agreement, and I truly do applaud you for it. It has obviously been a ton of work, and as I have said here already, I have high hopes for their team and their fork. But think about a case where someone joins the community and starts vouching for a team and tries to push a vote through without proper due diligence, or an outside team convinces an existing community member that they are something they are not.

Social engineering attacks are rampant, especially in DeFi. Here is an example I’m sure many of you have read. The TL;DR is that someone(s?) showed up in Arrow DAO’s Discord and became an active, contributing community member, only to nearly steal a founder’s ETH stack.

At the end of the day, talk is cheap; code is law.

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If this friendly forks means Balancer will not come to Gnosis Chain, I’m not sure I’d support this proposal.

Is Balancer planning to come to Gnosis Chain?
@Fernando

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If this friendly fork is approved then that would effectively mean Balancer will not come to Gnosis chain, meaning a deployment by the core team. We would have to vote to ‘revoke’ the friendly fork first. The purpose of friendly forks is to bring Balancer’s technology to other chains without requiring the efforts of the core team or BAL incentives.

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I agree with @joeywong that all BFFs (Balancer Friendly Fork) should be measured by the same standard, Beethoven X is a good paradigm. We should not treat one BFF project in particular. So I don’t agree to donate cash. BFF is different from Balancer Grants. The Grants program supports protocols and products built on Balancer. BFF is the brand that authorizes projects of other chains to use Balancer. BFF needs to prove its ability to the community, rather than seeking financial support.

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Thank you for your feedback, @khbw . You are truly our loyal and faithful Chinese community member. I m proud of you. :slightly_smiling_face:

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The discussion is great and should be continued. Very surprised to see this prematurely move to a Snapshot.

The proposal was posted 3 days ago, there is no consensus around it on the forum – this proposal was definitely not ready to move to a Snapshot. If it fails, we wouldn’t even know what part was the objection, the BFF altogether? The finances? The Grant part? Or the BAL part? We could’ve used forum pools to at least get a sense of what parts of the proposal need more discussion.

What even was the rush to move it to snapshot? Same thing happened with the Hexagon thread too.

This is a suboptimal process, guys. Come on.

Also, can people who move proposals to Snapshot post a ‘hey this was moved to a vote’ comment under the proposal please?

Did we even try to get confirmation from BLabs that they’re not currently thinking about Gnosis Chain or Celo deployments? It would be a shame if governance approved this and found out later that there was plans or works.

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https://snapshot.org/#/balancer.eth/proposal/0xf9e44f6659b0a3a3249341bf8588b192ab923374fbca3f9be929c156036565e7

Sorry meant to post the link but forgot.

Ultimately it is the discretion of the proposer when the vote occurs, assuming all conditions of a “well defined proposal” are met. See Snapshot

Otherwise all fair criticisms. Anyone can propose a new governance framework.

@solarcurve fair, but, the thing is, the terms as proposed are not clear. So, even if it went through, there will be confusion about how to execute this proposal, at least on the points below:

  • On the 10k BAL point: is this a grant or a loan? If grant then, this is a very expensive endeavor for Balancer.
  • If the 10k BAL is a loan, how long do you guys need this for, when will we get it back? Who’s covering the IL? Will you return 10K BAL or whatever’s left of it post-IL?
  • By far the most contentious part for me is the fact that SymmetricDAO is going to lead Friendly Forks on other chains that are not specified in the proposal? Does the Balancer DAO get a say in that? Seems like a blank check to deploy anywhere the SymmetricDAO pleases.
  • Is the $100k coming out of the treasury or the grants?

So, my argument is that there are unknowns about how to execute this thus, shouldn’t have been voted on. How does the voter know what they’re voting on.
I would love to participate in any discussions around the governance process. I will consider writing a proposal but folks who are more active should not wait on me.

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Some other comments and questions that I have:

  • I believe @solarcurve brought this up, but why do you even need BAL liquidity against SYMM on those chains? Why not against ETH?
  • What’s the current composition of the SYMM token? Who has what amount?
  • Is there one SYMM token and DAO for both of the chains?
  • “We are experienced with the Balancer protocol, having successfully run a Balancer V1 fork on two chains for over 9 months.” lol, v2 is a completely different beast. I don’t contend your technical understanding of v2 but having deployed v1 once is not an indicator.
  • What’s the nature of the partnership between Symmetric and PrimeDAO. @Andrea81 was kind to disclose his stake in Hexagon. @LuukDAO would you please disclose your affiliations and stake?
  • Why do you need a $100K grant? What’s the current funding of the team like? What does this further development entail?
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The members of the Governance Council (myself, Xeonus, Zekraken, mkflow, and Mike B) voted in favor that this was a well defined proposal.

It’s clear the 10k BAL is effectively a gift (or a grant if you will).
This covers a friendly fork on Celo and Gnosis Chain. Not a blank check for other networks.
The $100k comes from the Treasury, as all Grants do. So this is not a distinction that needs to be made really. This is not going through the Grants process (no application was made). It will be a simple transfer from the treasury of $100,000 stablecoins.

Hey @LongJuanSilverado,

Yes, of course

I have purchased from the open market about 600 SYMM tokens around the time of the Prime <> Symm partnership. I purchased approx 90K D2D tokens during the Prime LBP in December. Kolektivo Labs, the collective I’m part of has received D2D options for three years as an early contributing group. These options are yet to be divided, and execution will be based on an individual’s preference.

I did not get paid or receive a bonus for this specific arrangement - even so, I’m just here trying to back the SYMM team as I genuinely believe this to be a mutually beneficial engagement. I’ve seen the team from a-close and think they are the right group for Gnosis Chain & Celo.

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Given the amount of input on this proposal - I have opened a new forum thread to Gather more input around the formalization of a Friendly Fork Framework.

It feels that some of the comments are more related to the concept and set-up of the Friendly Fork Framework itself.

Anyone who wants to share their perspective on what they think a Friendly Fork is, what objective we aim to achieve with it, what we expect from counterparties, and what BalancerDAO is willing to provide in return (support, knowledge, access, BAL tokens, funds) please share your thoughts in the forum thread below.

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Hey everyone!,

Uzi here, co-founder of Symmetric. First off wanted to thank everyone for their time and input, very much appreciated!

When I first reached out to Fernando in December after speaking to Luuk, I wanted to make sure he knew about us and that he was not opposed to a friendly fork partnership. I deeply respect what he said that day and repeated when I ultimately met him and some of the core team last month, “this for our community to decide, not me.” I admire the strength of community at Balancer DAO. I also admire and share the commitment to decentralization.

And Fernando was right, at the end of the day this proposal was for the Balancer community to decide on. We are thankful for the opportunity and for the consideration, and have kept quiet in this process as we did not want to interfere with Balancer governance. Even when we felt things might be a bit inaccurate, this is ultimately your process alone.

Even as this proposal is certain to fail, we will continue to build and are hopeful we can learn and work together while we do. All of our tech is open source and will continue to be, as I know Balancer will be as well, and we hope to find arenas for mutual benefit. We believe in transparency, collaboration, and the friendly fork model. Ultimately, we believe that Balancer is a fantastic project, we have a lot of common values, and we thought a formal partnership would make sense to both.

As we move forward here, I do want to clear a few things up:

• Regarding our relationship with Luuk: We are not paying Luuk anything as an individual in any way, shape, or form. We are not paying PrimeDAO in any way. He wanted to help us as he believes in the same values of transparency, decentralization and collaboration. We did complete a token swap with PrimeDAO, because we are building a launchpad using LBPs on both Celo and Gnosis as a joint project.

• Anonymous or semi-anon: You can find out who we are on the Symmetric Medium page. We are fully doxxed and have been since we launched. Also, it might be google translate that confused me about the message in the Chinese community, but I want to make sure the Chinese community knows we are not anonymous.

• SYMM <> BAL pairing: This was meant to be a way to create a mechanism to connect the projects and liquidity. Ultimately, this was always meant to be a point of discussion. We also saw it as a way to allow BAL to exist on other networks and find a way for BAL holders on Celo and Gnosis to participate in governance. We saw it as mutually beneficial. In hindsight, we should have explained this better or visited this separately.

• 100K USDC grant: We are building launchpads, with Prime Dao to help provide a safer and more stable mechanism for launch of new projects on Gnosis Chain and Celo. And new products using managed pools. Additionally, prior to BFF proposal we started discussions with 2 other networks to bring Symmetric to them. We left a large chunk of grants and incentives behind to try to work with Balancer as we identified this as our top priority, the grant would help counter the loss and allow us to look at chains where Balancer DAO wanted to establish a presence instead and negotiate better terms as partners… The grants page states that ‘Balancer aims to become the number 1 source of decentralized trades" and I believe it will - and we hope to contribute to that!

In the coming weeks and months you will see v2 launched, a new launchpad, new partnerships new rewards and farming structures, really cool investment vehicles built on top of Managed Pools, new governance process and tons more, feel free to drop by and check it out.

We know we have a bright future, believe in what we’ve built and what’s coming next with Balancer v2 tech on Gnosis and Celo. Both chains where we have an established presence and have support of those communities. We thank Rene, Martin, and Mojmir for their public support here, and countless others from the Celo and Gnosis community for their help along the way!!

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We went with Balancer tech for a reason. It is the best in league - secure, flexible, and innovative - we are proud to build on it and we want to thank the community and the team at Balancer for this opportunity and remain hopeful that is not goodbye - but a see you later!!

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I believe that this BFF could go through if we took the time to discuss it thoroughly and hash out all the bullet points.
As mentioned earlier, this went to a vote so quickly that we don’t even know which point stuck out for the voters.

I’d suggest running a series of forum polls to gauge the popularity of each bullet point.
I also encourage those who voted no to come out voice the areas that they think need modification.

For myself,

  • I don’t quite see a point in having BAL/SYMM liquidity in those chains. That’s regarding the purpose of the BAL grant.
  • Regarding whether there should even be a BAL grant all together, I would say no. There’s no precedent for this with previous BFFs and it’s not a part of the BFF framework. The treasury subDAO could contemplate a treasury swap through their framework.
  • The grant should go through the grant committee separately and shouldn’t be lumped into the BFF proposal as there’s no precedent for it, neither is it something that was a part of the BFF framework.

I don’t think these should be sticky points for the Symmetric side. If they are, would love to hear why they’re a deal breaker.

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MakerMan here Maker delegate and Gnosis/Symmetric etc. investor DAO participant/voter.

At this time I am still anon but rest assured I am a person that doesn’t dump anon’s willy nilly.

I have been with Maker pretty much since launch of MCD and am now an approved and paid Maker Delegate proper. I took on the whole Black Thursday situation both to help people who lost funds vent, and provide as much information to the community about what happened and how compensation might proceed. The goal here wasn’t to get compensation but to allow the DAO to speak. I believe that goal was satisfied even though compensation proposal ultimately failed. In my delegate platform my core mission statement is:

My service to Maker involves the following commitments:

  • In good and bad economic times, look out for the all the important Maker work-economic stakeholders (MKR holders, vault owners, DAI holder and users, MakerDAO, DeFI in general etc.).
  • To looking at the system of Maker from both the internal microcosms of contracts, people, operations to the greater macrocosms of DeFI and the real world in terms of governance, law, and finance.
  • To creating Safe, Scalable and Sustainable Systems as Simply and Efficiently as possible.
  • To growing Maker in a way that is Sustainable for the long term.
  • To use Data driven analytics to drive decision-making to achieve goals. Look towards the future by analyzing the past and present.

The above principles hold for all DAOs (replace Maker with every DAO I participate in). I continue to work diligently to guide all the DAOs I participate in towards sustainable scalable growth.

After a year at maker I became an active member in various DAOs on Gnosis Chain (1Hive, Agave, SNAFU, and Symmetric). I hold tokens not just in GNO, but HNY, AGVE, SNAFU, and SYMM. I work mostly behind the scenes looking at sustainable tokenomics, and bigger picture issues (DAOnetwork, DeepLiquidity) guiding governance with analysis and opinion. I believe the flexible structure of AMMs in Balancer can play a significant role in building DeepLiquidity even though I often talk about 50:50 pools (like the uniswap v2 type).

I have watched Symmetric perform a fair token launch on Gnosis as well as bring a Balancer v1 Symmetric launch and then grow TVL there while working hard to bring Balancer v1 as Symmetric on Celo. I believe the core Symmetric team here has put together pretty significant work, with very little resources, and continues to look towards bringing Balancer technology beyond Gnosis and Celo. I am convinced Symmetric would be a very positive addition to Balancer as a friendly fork both from a team and technology perspective but also by bringing not just Balancer v2 to Gnosis and Celo but other networks that Balancer proper may not be interested in at this time.

I agree with many of the posters here. This particular proposal was brought hastily and without sufficient discussion.

I also agree that the BAL component to build BAL-SYMM liquidity as @Uzi remarked was ‘optional’ and in my opinion doesn’t help SYMM liquidity but fragments it.

I know for a fact that it is the intention and desire of the Symmetric Team to work more closely with BalancerDAO to bring Balancer v2 to as many networks as possible because this team really believes in the technology. We want to give back, but our resources are small, we really want to be part of the greater BalancerDAOnetwork via BFF.

So could we perhaps discuss reframing the proposal.

All the best!
MakerMan
DaiMakerman@gmail.com

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good post sir!

For me, if there was no 100k USDC and 10k BAL and need to farm our 3.5% (so we just got 7.5% of total supply, period) it would be an easy YES.

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Great… lets find middle ground! happy to get polls on each point and figure out what works for everyone!

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