[DRAFT] [GF: Phase 1 Proposal] Abracadabra Money - Cycle #8

This post reads like one youā€™d 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 itā€™s not a small matter. A funded project often follows the founderā€™s 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 itā€™s my responsibility to bring it to the table.

I donā€™t 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 whoā€™s behind Abracadabra (if he still is).

Iā€™ve 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. Iā€™m not even a committee leader. Iā€™m 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

Iā€™m here saying ā€œBe careful, this project is founded by someone with values not aligned with the Optimism visionā€

IF Iā€™m trolling because I say ā€œbe careful with the founder of this projectā€ then by all means I am a troll. Iā€™m not here to make anyone happy, Iā€™m here to provide the information I have. And this is my ā€œmeaningā€ to engage with this particular proposal and its founder merits.

If you donā€™t 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 Iā€™m involved in Optimism governance (as a committee member or delegate) Iā€™ll 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 didnā€™t even bother to ask a single question about their detailed proposal or the nature of Abracadabraā€™s 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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Iā€™m gonna focus purely on numbers and product here and not past drama as this is not of interest to me and I donā€™t 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 ā€œexit liquidity for those rugged by SPELLā€, it is purely and simply not true. As explained in abracadabraā€™s proposal, those OP will be used to achieve deep liquidity on Optimism, which is beneficial to abracadabraā€™s 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 ā€œattackā€ when someone is inquiring whoā€™s 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. Iā€™m asking if heā€™s 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?

https://snapshot.org/#/abracadabrabymerlinthemagician.eth

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Yes, that is correct. And you can see our governance forum here. :point_down:t3:

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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:-

  1. Defillama :- 377M
  2. Their centralized powerBI dashboard: - 425M
  3. 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

Abraā€™s 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 teamā€™s 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, weā€™d 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.

Weā€™ll 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 Abracadabraā€™s particular features. Things weā€™re envisioning are encouraging minting against novel forms of collateral, more uses for OP, and partnerships with some OP-native protocols.

One note: weā€™ve worked with Abracadabraā€™s team, and they are thoughtful, forward-thinking people. Itā€™s been a shame to read some superficial assessments of their team, and weā€™re 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 shouldnā€™t 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! Weā€™re processing through it now and will make the following changes for Cycle #8:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

[FInal]

Voting: Against

Following our own DeFi C committee recommendation. First this protocol is not fully deployed on Optimism and request a high amount. Second, this self-delegation should be more specific in its reasoning to do this. And last, we and our community donā€™t forget the events that happened with some founders or teams members of the protocol and friends, this lack of trust is inevitable, so seeing Abracadabra in action on Optimism and getting some traction can give a different perspective on adoption and commitment.

Snapshot vote - not passed