Shimmer Growth Committee as part of Tangle Ecosystem Association

Governance Proposals Shimmer & IOTA [Phase 1] Discussions
43

These are just empty phrases to justify easier access to the community funds.

@the community: a community-elected committee of three people + 2 IF member does not represent the community. If the time comes for the commitee to vote on projects, the DAO can release the funds accordingly (have a vote in firefly like before). The TEA funds are big enough to bridge the needed sum for the time beeing. Some weeks ago we voted for DAO and TEA 1:1 and not 1:3. It was known from the beginning it will take some time to set up the DAO structure, all of sudden everything has to be quick. It is not about distrust but about the fact the community is an equal partner with its own important values, which should not get overruled by non specified reasons withhin some weeks. The community must assume responsibility and must not give 50% of the DAO funds out of hands at all costs.

See it as training wheels for upcoming raiding attempts of the IOTA Treasury (allegedly only 50 Ti instead ~65 Ti is left) and try to maintain the funds in community hands, while still supporting the IF!

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44

Thats the thing you are going for? All questions why you need 270M shimmer instead of 180M Shimmer are ignored. We still haven’t seen clarification on how this would more than double the value of Shimmer (okay is from Phylo and not from you). It is just to help the community treasury by taking half away from it? What has changed since the vote of just a few months ago?

Come on, if you post it here, then at least take comments serious. If the issue is the legal framework for the DAO, why not just copy the TEA legal framework? Considering also the DAO will just be run by a few members, it would be quite similar. And then it would be run by the community, it would be transparant, and the funds have to be used in a way the community decides on.

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45

so will we get smart contracts first? I think that’s what’s holding us back here. Also I want to vote that no money goes into projects where people from the IF are involved in.

And the problem is that wale don’t use the (almost free) iota they got to fund projects? But in the end they will show up to turn this vote into a yes with way to much voting power … and we all know who are the wale.
I love those “community” votes …

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46

This is how I currently see things with Shimmer, not 100% sure if it’s correct so everyone feel free to enlighten me.

Number 1 problem with Shimmer’s growth that we should address now is liquidity. Deep liquidity brings in the investors. Investors bring builders. Builders bring communities. Communities bring adoption and growth of the ecosystem.

So, how to build liquidity? Market makers and exchanges. How to make a deal with a market maker? You have to make a “deal” with them. What’s the “deal”? In my experience, they need large sums of tokens so they can fill the order books of exchanges (by large amounts of token I really mean large, like ~50M large). This deal is usually some kind of call option or another complex-to-understand financial product. And they will make sure that there is a hell of an NDA so nobody knows the deal terms. Why would we want to do this? It’s what opens the gates for our growth, period.

We can be sneaky or we can be left behind, it’s community’s decision.

I’m 100% backing this proposal cuz it’s what Shimmer needs, and what we need for the growth of Shimmer and ShimmerEVM.

All of the above is just my simple understanding of how things work in crypto and by any means it’s guaranteed to be correct. Just speculating. NFA DYOR

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47

Dom joined the community governance call today and responded to our questions which gave clarification to some of those concerns. One response was, that this initiative was well thought out, he feels the timing is right to commit this capital and the results will be very positive.

Though of course these grants would be under NDA. Personally, I would love to not have that restriction and all of the community can fully understand, have all the data presented in front of us, and then we all can understand exactly why this is a good move. Unfortunately we can’t, and it is under NDA, which means in a big aspect we simply have to trust. Saying that, this proposal doesn’t negate the community delegates. Phylo suggested which I also presented to some extent above, that I think is a great initiative; was that the top three delegates voted by the community for the Community Treasury DAO be seated as the community delegates in the Growth Committee.

Those individuals will of course sign NDA’s. They certainly will not be able to voice any disclosure about the grant funding, but they are the top three voted and trusted delegates. If they see the inner workings and find them to be completely irresponsible or have misdoings going on, they for one can suggest alternative approaches or some solution that better supports the community. So, we are not simply giving blind faith and trusting Dom & the IF representatives, but we are voting for the most trusted delegates from the community to represent us and relay these thoughts and concerns. The trust then lies in the delegates that we as a community feel can best represent us fairly and honestly.

I also think Alpha_Rho has very good insight as to what market liquidity expansion involves. Personally I am not 100% positive of his background but I believe he his close to being a subject matter expert or at least very experienced person with DEX’es and how liquidity providers support the growth of such ecosystems.

Dom also stated that many of the initiatives if not most of the grant initiatives will conclude in return funding in some way. No, it did not give specifics or exact amounts but let the community on the call know that the plan is to grow the ecosystem and market expansion while also some of these funding grants returned back to the Treasury.

I also am very low risk oriented and by trade focus on hard data points to make decisions. A big saying we say is, “trust but verify”… lol. It pains me to analyze a decision where one of, or a few of, the variables are “trust” and we can’t verify; yet our verification will be reactionary as we will be able to judge the initiative after the fact by assessing the market growth and ecosystem expansion.

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So the TL;DR is that he did not give any information whatsoever on why these funds are needed, why $15M is not enough but with $22M the marketcap of Shimmer will way more than double, etc?

Serious @Deep_Sea do you get why I and others have issues with this? We voted for giving $15M, a 1:1 ratio, and why does it need to become now 3:1? What has changed? What is this needed for? And sure we don’t need every single detail, but NDA is also a really easy cop out. I know I am repeating myself, but thats because we don’t get any response to our questions. Just emotional stuff while Phylo is telling us to be rational…

And related to that, are you after this still in favour of the current DAO proposal? Since to me it is of course really strange to have all these rules and processes, when before it even is implemented we throw them all overboard. I don’t think there is a single proposed rule which is not broken by this. If the community wants this, shouldn’t the logical conclusion be that we want to also give the DAO committee more options and freedom?

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49

Yes, I indeed think this is a good proposal. As to the rules *note: The rules are set for the “Community Treasury” was just that, for the community treasury. We have always stated that if “anyone” in the community wanted to propose something other than the Community Treasury, they can simply submit such a proposal through the Governance Framework which Dom did. As well, anyone can at the same time create a “counter-proposal” and submit that as a Phase I.

That is exactly what an NDA is, that detailed information can not be given. I don’t think that it is a cop out, especially when discussing with others how market expansion is conducted in economic markets. Though I would have much more hesitation if there was no community delegates involved and this proposal sought to seek strict IF control of the funding. However, the proposal includes, and may be revised to specifically include, the top three community members trusted and delegated to represent the communities interest. That is the key fact that I think gives confidence to the community and makes them feel comfortable with having a bit of trust given the proposals NDA status. The fact is, that the community knows that the delegates will have the direct knowledge and be involved in the process. That they will have access to the NDA information as thus represent the community accordingly as they were delegated to do so.

Again, by reading Alpha Roe’s post it explains the importance of liquidity and market expansion and the sensitivity and requirement of lock tight NDA’s. As a community it simply comes down to: A) do we have trust in our “community” delegates to approve/disapprove such NDA grant fund use in working together with the IF to expand the Shimmer’s market reach and ecosystem, or B) do not trust in our “community” delegates to approve/disapprove such NDA grant fund use in working together with the IF to expand the Shimmer’s market reach and ecosystem.

Unfortunately, there is no C) option. There won’t be an option where we can publicly understand such plans, nor really is there an option to give only half the requested amount. Though we should have trust in the framework to represent the community and understand that once delegates see the details of such grant funding proposals they can represent the community accordingly.

50

And yet again you use a lot of words, but you simply refuse to answer my questions:

  1. What happened since a few months ago that now $15M is not enough and it needs to be increased to $22.5M, thereby halving the community DAO
  2. In what way is this gonna double the marketcap
  3. How does it make sense to have a DAO with all kind of rules and limitations, if even before the DAO is setup you transfer half out to a place which is no more than: “Just trust me, bro”.

And yes, just “its NDA”, is a cop out. Are you gonna give people applying to grants via the DAO also money based on “NDA”? Even without specifying everything exactly, you could still give a reasonable estimate why you need this money, why the original funds were insufficient, and what you gonna do with this, and not everything will be NDA*. Seriously that is apparently too much to ask? Yet the DAO needs to be filled with restrictions to make sure the remaining funds are “properly” used. It just makes no sense.

* And if literally everything they gonna do with those funds will be NDA, you should wonder what it will be used for. That won’t be for a joint project with STM… And we obviously are not talking about using it all for liquidity either.

If I had proposed this thing a week ago (and no, not with funds going to me, but to some third party), you would have been the first one to tell me what a bad idea that was and completely against the spirit of the community funds.

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51

What do we have whales for. Why is there no contact with them or working on a solution with them. Why must it be the community fund.

It almost feels like the community first approach is not the healthiest way of doing things and is still utopian. A DAO is not the right approach for doing NDA stuff

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52
  1. Shimmer launched. SMR liquidity is terrible.
  2. Market makers providing liquidity at key levels and structuring support and resistance levels according to their algorithms. If they support SMR price at 2x or 3x from here - there is your increased MC.
  3. From capital efficiency point of view, it really makes sense to transfer the money out of Community Treasury into Shimmer Growth Committee because the capital would be deployed more swiftly and without much “complications”. No disrespect, but no serious liquidity provider or key player will go through application process. Those players have the opinion that we need them and not vice versa - and they are right.

Again, imho, and with all of my emotions on the side - that’s the realistic situation.

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53
  1. Well there is plenty of wash trading going on. Paid for by TEA? Regardless what is 270M Shimmer going to do which 180M Shimmer won’t do? And serious what kind of liquidity did you expect? Compare it to eg Polkadot and their staging network, and Shimmer marketcap is gigantic.
  2. Right, I don’t buy it, but okay. Lets go with it. So yet again, what is 270M Shimmer gonna do which 180M Shimmer will not do? Should I really buy that by increasing funding by 50%, the price increases by 100-200%?
  3. I am repeating myself, but yet again, isn’t that why they got already 180M Shimmer? What changed in the last 2 months that we have to go from a 1:1 ratio to a 3:1 ratio? And regarding DAO, then some community member, hell Dom himself, can propose it to the DAO and handle it. Or the DAO committee members themselves spend some time on reaching out. I fail to see the issue.

Not to mention why can’t we just have some simple overview. Eg just an example which categories TEA spend there money on, how much they spend, how much they have locked for eg future payments to a crypto influencer after he delivers his tweets, and what he wants to do with the funds. That doesn’t need to be on the level that Bitboy was paid $50k for his IOTA video, but it could be at least something about the plans.

Now the 1:1 ratio was not sufficient. Withoput any kind of information or transparancy it needs to become 3:1. And what is next? 5:1? 10:1?

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54

I’m a problem solving guy so all I’m trying to do is point out issues as I see them and offer my experience and knowledge in hope that we come to a solution together.

From what I read from those who oppose to this proposal is only calling out and not acknowledging problems or offer potential solutions.

For now I’ll just excuse myself from this conversation since I feel like I explained all points that I had. Anyone can feel free to ping me on Discord if they would be more interested in my opinion :+1:

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55

So I guess it is time for phase 2, right? Lets see what people think in phase 2, when the proposal is more clear, because that will be what people will be voting on in phase 3 in Firefly

56

The call today discussing with the governance community made some good points and strides. You are right, we are just about ready for Phase II, yet Phylo is going to discuss with Dom some of our concerns from here and from the community calls. He will and Dom will bring those back to the group, we may make a revised proposal incorporating some of the communities points and concerns, then submit a revised proposal for Phase II… which of course would be the Phase III Firefly version at that point if it gets voted in. So we are close! #SOOOoooOOONNnn!

57

I voted no regarding this proposal.
If there’s an opportunity for us to gain momentum, then I trust the IF to act in the best interest of the community and swiftly without complicating it by voting in three community members.

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So, I decided to bring up some of the options that were discussed in several discord calls into this forum.

  • It seems like there is a general unclarity between which things are funded by the Growth Committee and which by the TEA. It should be clarified who exactly deals with what. Ideally, there shouldn’t be any overlaps in responsibilities.
  • People expect the TEA to also do their part in growing the ecosystem or make money available for the Growth Committee. There were several suggestions to split the funding of the Growth Committee 50:50 between TEA and community funds.
  • There was a different idea to reduce the budget of the Growth Committee to 10-20%, but give them the option to request funds action specific via another forum proposal. I feel like giving the committee some budget to freely spend yet requiring them to return here for bigger projects keeps some checks and balances in place. Even if that slows things down a little, but if we are talking about spending millions, we should really discuss that in detail.
  • There was the suggestion to generally use TEA funds for anything that involves an NDA at the time of grant. This would greatly benefit transparency,
  • In the proposal, we need to specify how much backflow we desire. The Growth Committee must act with best intentions to fulfill this and lower the risk of the treasury running low on funds. This is a key risk for the treasury and we can’t really accept unless this is sorted for.
  • Tokens should preferably be sold OTC to avoid market dips. Liquidity is really low and dumping a few percent of the supply is going to cause a big price crash.
  • We should also look how we can empower the community treasury. Maybe there should be a proposal type for marketing actions/listings etc. The process would then be to have it checked by the reviewers and then voted on by the community.

My core point stays to keep this committee close to the community and not turn on autopilot when this proposal passes. Ultimately it is still community funds and IF can always resort to TEA funds if they want to do something the community is not in favor of.

Also, don’t rush it and keep chill. As already stated, I do not think it make much sense to actually spend lots of money before the EVM launch. This is what truly enables this network

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59

Actually I believe it’s quite contrary. We would need enough liquidity just in time before EVM launch so that investors could easily buy-in so, imo, those deals with liquidity providers (market makers) need to be in place before the ShimmerEVM launches.

In contrary - when EVM dApps start launching and with all the liquidity mining programs starting, the volatility of SMR price would be too high and no serious investors would want to buy-in.

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60

It almost sounds like there is no liquidity without communities 50%

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I’m merely pointing at the current problem. The reality is that it’s been over a month since the launch of SMR and liquidity is still very bad which blocks us from growth. We can acknowledge it and try to solve it, or we can keep complaining about it without doing any action. The choice is in community’s hands.

“Communities 50%” will be worth $0 if we don’t do something about it. I’m part of that same community and I don’t want my “bag” to become worthless in the end.

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Yeah, I get it, you now outlined a few times how solution-oriented you are, but it does not answer fundamental questions. Like, why would one ignore the correlation between the non existing liquidity/growth and non existing EVM. Why is it in the community hand only? Why has it to be rushed? TEA is capable of acting now, because the community made it possible.

We as a community are an equal partner to the IF, whose job among other is to keep control of our funds as long as possible and make sure it is used in our interest (not 3 people). Of course there has to be a compromise between governing funds and releasing them to make the ecosystem grow. There were proposed alternatives, but not getting a second look as there is overall low room for alternatives because the no-time-narrative.

It is not about distrust but rational and mature behavior, sending a signal, the community is not just a cash cow who will give 50% out of hands because a proposal out of blue air. Who would behave this way in his private or business environment? Acting like this opens up room for opportunistic behavior and leads to a general decrease in the quality of the partnerships. It is simply naive.

I also would like to outline a special case on transparency:

There are projects to be funded under NDA. While it is understandable, there is no committment beeing established to at least give a certain degree what kind of project it is. Not only isn’t the IF giving any commitments for a certain degree of transparency, but also the community is not claiming this obligation. For two years now, nobody knows where +4 Ti of the EDF went, the transparency all of sudden stopped; people demanded for it multiple times! We also see it today, as 47% of the TEA funds got transferred to new adresses (new owners?). This is all a gradual shift in transparency, a result of IFs past experience with the community (opportunistic behavior). Again it is not about distrust, but maintaining control as community, which is simply common sense. One has to understand the community responsibilty and who we are in the IOTA ecosystem.

IMO, also this 50% funding needs a propper set up. While we talk about selecting 3 people from community into the growth committee, there are already plans by the TEA what projects should be funded. There is no thoughts on what abilities these people should possess to not be simple “yes-men” (coding experience, skills to plausibility the needs of projects and related costs - how does the funding process look like within TEA at all?).

If there is no time for it, cut the BS electing three community member into the growth community just for formality reasons and make it a fundamental vote to invalidate the 1:1 ratio between DAO:TEA and make it 1:3 or 0:4.

And no, your own bag is not a reason to give responsibility out of hand rush anything.

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