I am an Optimism delegate [Delegate Commitments - #136 by jackanorak ] with sufficient voting power. I believe this proposal is ready to be reviewed and voted on.
Abracadabra is a project founded by Daniele Sestagalli who also founded Wonderland and Popsicle Finance. All the projects were started around the same time and all the projects had their ATH in the same month.
Danieleās word on Abracadabra: Abracadabra.Money is a spell book that allows users to produce magic internet money.
āMagic internet money?ā Optimism space is not your regular CT frog space. Either you explain the math or get out.
When he was asked if wonderland was a Ponzi he answered āWell I guessā
Go to 0:40 on this vid:
Even if Wonderland is unrelated to Abracadabra, I will not promote a known Ponzi builder on any project he touches.
We have hundreds of proposals looking to do good that never ever saw 100k USD in funding. And we are considering giving 800K $OP to a well-known Ponzi?
Even if Daniele is out of the project (I donāt know), this will be exit liquidity for those rugged by SPELL. I am sorry for the honest people trying to build behind what started as a Ponzi even if itās not now. But I canāt have any certainty that Daniel or even 0xSifu donāt have SPELL tokens and wonāt rug the community and OP as they did in the past.
My vote for this proposal is no.
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I feel like I really have to weigh in on this one.
Not sure if you know me, my name is Romy and I have been involved in Abra since the beginning through community management, QA and BD.
First of all, I really donāt see why Wonderland matters in this discussion about bringing the Abracadabra products onto Optimism. Wonderland has not been involved in Abra in any way, other than the fact that we offered leverage on their token in the same way as we do for many other protocols.
The fact that one of our founders also worked on a controversial project should not be the primary decision criteria for judging our protocol. And more importantly, this does not affect the positive effect that having MIM and our leverage engine on Optimism could bring to the community.
Even if that mattered, the Abracadabra team is composed of many individuals that have been working non stop to improve the DeFi ecosystem. As a proof of that, you can see the amazing relationships we have with bluechips protocols such as Curve, Yearn and Sushiswap. In addition, we have been also closely working with a pillar of defi on Optimism such as Velodrome.
Judging our product, and what we do, just because of past actions that were not even related to us seems unfair.
If you have concerns or feedbacks on what we do, we are more than happy to address them, but if you are judging us for the characteristics of another product with a different business model and a different team, this is simply wrong and offensive to all the people that work everyday to have MIM on the edge of DeFi innovation.
Lastly, I agree with you that in the video you linked Dani made a bad joke, but once again it is completely not related to Abracadabra.
If you wanna discuss more you can easily come on our Discord and speak with me directly, either in General or DMs, I will be more than happy to explain you everything you need.
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This post reads like one youād expect from a troll, not a delegate.
If you are unwilling or unable to meaningfully engage with a DeFi proposal on its merits you have no business sitting on a paid committee overseeing DeFi.
Judge the proposal and project in front of you, not Dani or Wonderland.
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Thank you Romy for your reply.
Is Daniele still involved in the project? This is the main link between Abracadabra and Wonderland and itās not a small matter. A funded project often follows the founderās culture.
I did apologise in advance to the honest people working on the project.
I understand what you do, but if I know your founder is involved with a different cultural mindset to what Optimism vision proposes itās my responsibility to bring it to the table.
I donāt want you to take offense if you, your team, and everyone honestly involved in the projects feel attacked by what I said. But everyone deserves to know whoās behind Abracadabra (if he still is).
Iāve seen projects like SushiSwap be rugged by people like Chefnomi and later (when the bad name goes away) the community builds something great behind it. If this is the case then you only need to confirm Daniele Sestagalli is not part of the project anymore.
I never said this is a committee opinion, this is my own. Iām not even a committee leader. Iām bringing my knowledge about the project founder to the thread for everyone to know who is behind it.
A project and an active founder have most of the time the same core values.
Hayden Adams is not Uniswap but represents its values
Stani Kulechov is not AAVE but it represents its values
Kain Warwick is not Synthetix but it represents its values
Iām here saying āBe careful, this project is founded by someone with values not aligned with the Optimism visionā
IF Iām trolling because I say ābe careful with the founder of this projectā then by all means I am a troll. Iām not here to make anyone happy, Iām here to provide the information I have. And this is my āmeaningā to engage with this particular proposal and its founder merits.
If you donāt like I am getting paid for providing what I believe is relevant information by all means create your own committee proposal and vote me out. This is how this system works, but while Iām involved in Optimism governance (as a committee member or delegate) Iāll provide any information I believe is relevant to any project I see fit.
If you think a committee member or a delegate has to follow a code of conduct you can also make a proposal about it. Until then I will respectfully say what I considered relevant to say.
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You are welcome to attack any team or proposal you want and I am welcome to say it is unbecoming conduct for a delegate paid to oversee DeFi proposals.
You didnāt even bother to ask a single question about their detailed proposal or the nature of Abracadabraās relationship with Wonderland or Dani. Your note read as hit piece, not the beginning of an honest inquiry.
I agree that ultimately the wisdom and composition of these committees will eventually be revisited by governance at large. We can see what impact, if any, behavior like this has when we get to that point.
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Iām gonna focus purely on numbers and product here and not past drama as this is not of interest to me and I donāt think it should affect the fate of that proposal.
As for Magic Internet Money, the stable coin is a CDP and it is overcollateralized, Abracadabra is definitely not a ponzi, the business model is very sound and simple, people pay for loans, leverage and strategies, and those fees are distributed to the community and the treasury.
As for the grant being used for āexit liquidity for those rugged by SPELLā, it is purely and simply not true. As explained in abracadabraās proposal, those OP will be used to achieve deep liquidity on Optimism, which is beneficial to abracadabraās partners on optimism, and optimism at large. It creates an alternative for the Optimism users which is critical to achieve healthy competition, lifting the whole community up.
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First of all I appreciate your apology, I am sure your intentions are in the right place.
To reply to your question: yes, dani is still involved in Abracadabra, even though he is no longer involved in Wonderland. You can check his resignation here.
In addition, I would like to point out that Dani took a period of reflection after what happened with Sifugate, and the rest of Abracadabra team, like me, 0xEdwardo, Merlin and Wicked have stepped up and now handle most of the day to day operations. We have never been involved with Wonderland in any way.
I very much doubt that the philosophy with which Abra operates is misaligned with the vision you have for Optimism. Furthermore, it is important to note that Abracadabra is a DAO and any major decisions are taken by SPELL holders. The team mostly executes them.
To reply to your second question, behind Abracadabra there is a team of individuals who have the best interest of DeFi at heart. Actions speak louder than words and I hope that the actions that we have taken in the past months and going forward will prove this to you.
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All of the technical questions were covered by others.
Implying an āattackā when someone is inquiring whoās the project founder and his/her past, seems like a way to change the topic. Are you trying to avoid talking about Danielle?
Again there is no rule book for what community, delegates, or committee members can ask about a proposal. Iām asking if heās still involved.
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Thank you @melenXYZ for your kind answer.
Thank you Romy this is what I needed to know.
Just to be sure is this where Abracadabra DAO votes?
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Yes, that is correct. And you can see our governance forum here. 
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Recommendation from DeFi committee C
Detail
Proposal is written thoroughly, and author was actively seeking feedback on proposal but only few feedbacks are reflected in the proposal.
Value-Add
Abra allows users to mint their collateral-backed stablecoin, MIM, which can be used to swap any other traditional stablecoin. Abra is not fully deployed on Optimism yet but their TVL on mainnet is large - despite trending down since the bear market started & demand for leverage went down.
Traction
During the bull market, Abra had several Billion USD in TVL across chains. Today, Abracadabra is a multi-chain DeFi platform available on 4 chains with maximum liquidity on the settlement layer Ethereum.
TVL as per:-
- Defillama :- 377M
- Their centralized powerBI dashboard: - 425M
- In Proposal: - 450M+
Average loan side is approx. $20K and total open loans are 10.5K (as per their BI Dashboard)
Amount
800K $OP - amount on the high-end but reasonable for a large stablecoin project. Strong focus on liquidity mining might not be long-lasting.
OP Distribution
640K Op for Liquidity mining and 160K Op will be used for delegation. Their goal is distribute $10K weekly bribe distributed between $OP and $Spell
Co-incentives
7.5M $Spell (approx 7.5K) /week
Alignment
Abraās TVL on chains outside Ethereum was short-lived and seems to have very little traction now. Abracadabra is not yet fully deployed on Optimism and we are not 100% confident in the teamās long-term alignment with Optimism.
Recommendation
NO
We would like to see Abra fully deployed on Optimism. Once its deployed and they have some user traction, we recommend Abra to submit their proposal again. Preferably, weād also like to see more sticky incentives and not a pure focus on liquidity mining.
Our committee expects grant recipients to use grant funding for specific actions to spur growth on Optimism. Our committee does not believe that grant recipients should use $OP received for governance. Optimism governance is open, transparent and community oriented, anyone can participate and have their voice heard by simply being an active part of the collective. If voting power is needed, we encourage to seek other available options such as market buying $OP or asking community to delegate their tokens.
Our past recommendation is available on committee recommendation thread.
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Voted no - The amount requested is pretty large and it seems the project is not fully deployed on Optimism. It also looks like there may be a self delegation component but that was left out of the proposal. I would like to see Abra fully deployed on Optimism and the amount requested reduced.
Voting no on current iteration. The request amount seems way too large.
In lieu of writing a full report, the Shadow Committee is hoping that Abracadabra resubmit its proposal with some different requests.
Although building liquidity does offer essential support for the uptake of MIM and deployment of cauldrons on Optimism ā as convincingly laid out by 0xEdwardo ā the ask as it stands is too large and one-dimensional for the sorts of things we envision Abracadabra bringing to Optimism.
Weāll be working with them to devise a more interesting slate of asks that could bring new types of activity to Optimism. We invite some other delegates to weigh in on specific things they might like to see as well, given Abracadabraās particular features. Things weāre envisioning are encouraging minting against novel forms of collateral, more uses for OP, and partnerships with some OP-native protocols.
One note: weāve worked with Abracadabraās team, and they are thoughtful, forward-thinking people. Itās been a shame to read some superficial assessments of their team, and weāre hopeful that as they spend more time delivering on big plans on Optimism, people will come to appreciate what they add to the community.
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I agree that Optimism shouldnāt fund unsustainable liquidity mining. Especially for large multi-chain protocols which are not special to Optimism at all.
Thanks everyone for providing feedback in Cycle #7! Weāre processing through it now and will make the following changes for Cycle #8:
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It seems controversial to use any part of the $OP grant for participating in the ecosystem. As such, we will modify the proposal and use 100% of it towards building / participation incentives.
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It seems that Optimism is no longer encouraging grants to be used solely for liquidity mining incentives. Because funding liquidity is vital to the success of the rest of our development, we cannot eliminate it entirely. That said, we are happy to fund incentives from our treasury and instead find alternative uses for the $OP grant, including funding development and incentivizing community participation on Optimism. More details will be added to the main proposal.
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As stated above, we will increase co-incentives on Optimism to show our commitment to the chain from 7.5M SPELL per week to 10M SPELL per week.
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It seems like most folks think the ask of 800K $OP on $400M TVL is too large. We will look into adjusting slightly and will provide more proof points as to why we think we are justified (on a relative basis) for requesting that size.
I am voting against the proposal, following the reasons stated by DeFi committee C.