[READY] [GF: Phase 1 Proposal] Saddle Finance

📜 Grant Proposals Governance Fund: Phase 1
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Thank you for the feedback @polynya - although I personally find this disappointing to see, I do feel this serves as an example of how not to manage your responsibility as a Delegate of $OP Token Holders - this Proposal is not about you or your personal gain here…but the ecosystem of Optimism: If those are the words you choose to use; I can’t escape the belief that this is how you view things.

I would very much appreciate it if you would read back through the Discord posts I shared and see how the discussion began with 12 months, moving to 6, then 3, to ultimately be the “most” effective way of having an incentive program best structured to iterate in cooperation and partnership with Optimism - which was done in reality to serve as the opposite of short-term planning; because this opens up more room for iteration along the journey.

I am still here; ready willing and able to answer any questions or concerns on the matter.

Weston

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I’m just adding a disclaimer and gauging if or not there’s a conflict of interest, the wording relates to that, not for governance voting at all. My conclusion is there’s not, so I can vote based on what I believe is the best use of Governance Fund Phase 1 - which is completely separate.

Accusing me of voting only according to personal gain is a damning accusation. If you can offer more evidence, I’ll immediately resign from my position as a delegate. Thanks.

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Ok - well I would like to thank you then for adding additional clarification; I am in agreement that holding $SDL is not a conflict in your voting decisions as a Delegate; I see this the same.

Also, my apologies re the question of personal gain then if that is not what you meant; reading the words exactly as you posted them left me thinking that was what you meant; I misunderstood there.

I noticed that you rather Abstained, but then quickly changed this to Against… due to the timing of incentives being too short; and I have responded as to why this was done as such…

It would very much appreciated if you would be willing to take some time to review the Discord again and perhaps some of the on-going updates happening with Saddle. It would really mean a lot to me as well personally as I have put quite a bit of time and effort into this Proposal and all with the best intentions for growing Optimism.

Regardless, I do appreciate the engagement and so thank you for this.

Weston

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good :smiling_face:
thank you for the update! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Hey @Bobbay_StableLab :grin: @ing you in here now!

Thanks for your willingness to review in light of new information. Much appreciated Ser!

The big thing again is the timing aspect - 3 months was decided as a means to iterate and partner in the most effective way possible with OP as opposed to just giving tokens for say an entire year and hoping for the best.

Instead; Saddle would have the intent of resubmitting at the end; discuss what went well/didn’t and then iterate on the process and share for all other projects to hopefully benefit from as well!

This keeps Saddle accountable to performance and is a win win for everyone.

One other exciting item: quick read but if you could take just a sec to view this; i hope you find this encouraging as well!

Also wanted to add this information as well - I have mentioned the Frax Partnership that Saddle announced last month a few times, but I think the potential impact of this may be being missed by many…so just wanted to highlight how important this could be - the Vote in Frax Governance to launch a FRAX/SDL FraxSwap Gauge just went live a couple hours ago…

https://snapshot.org/#/frax.eth/proposal/0x83ba7cc4a38814bac173ba058858b5bb4b7946033f2de7c9b4a678003cd65730

Appreciate you again! :red_circle:

Weston

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@0xWeston -

Three primary questions:

  1. Are any of the the swap pairs / pools you are bringing to Optimism unique to Saddle or not currently available on Optimism?
  2. For tokens already on Optimism, is there a good dashboard that illustrates the volume of swap activity or pool depth currently on Optimism for the tokens / pairs Saddle would be bringing onto Optimism? How much incremental liquidity would be added?
  3. I have seen a lot of comments re: “is Saddle also matching $OP grant rewards with $SDL?” Has that been addressed? Or is the current proposal still for the $OP grant to cover 100% of the liquidity rewards?

Thanks!

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I can answer this - of these pools,
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Velodrome covers all of them, including Alchemix’s coin (we’ve been in contact with them since launch and have been directly influencing them to move toward Optimism sooner rather than later)

The only one i think we don’t have substantial liquidity on is FRAX/USDT.

I’d also take a moment to point out that to give Frax a foothold on Optimism we gifted them a veNFT on our launch, and if they desired they could costlessly direct votes to the USDT pool as well. There is currently roughly $2mm FRAX in our pools, ultimately incentivized at our expense.

This means that Saddle would provide no new pools to Optimism under this proposal other than perhaps FRAX/USDT, and we’re already directly incentivizing many of these pools in coordination with the token issuers. Our own sETH/ETH pool, for instance, currently has $2.3mm of liquidity in it, also co-incentivized at our expense.

I’m probably too conflicted to make any value judgements regarding this proposal, although I’ve seen others do as much without too much pushback, but I think I’m fine to offer factual context.

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It looks like you’ve decided to spit up some word salad about your project matching any amount of OP that is granted, instead of making a commitment of any kind. This proposal is heavily focused on extremely short term liquidity and as a result, any tokens deployed via grant to this cause will not result in any long-term growth or meaningful infrastructure on Optimism.

Looks like you’re just asking the Optimism foundation to bribe your pools instead of fronting the money yourself. Very transparent handout begging. Voting no on this.

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This is pretty clearly a fake account just created, to just cause negativity - can posts like this be deleted by @bobby or @vonnie610 or some sort of admin please? It really does hurt the process.

Considering the name FantomFunhouse - I really wonder who would do such a thing and what their motivations might be? :thinking:

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Thanks for your input @jackanorak - I think Frax Finance will be just fine though and they also are not relevant in this post you are responding to.

I find it a bit concerning when someone seems consistently think they have 100% of the answers to every and all questions about DeFi, when in reality none of us do.

I respect strong views and engagement; even heated debate; but what you are doing feels of a much different nature and I would appreciate keeping the tone positive.

If you have something positive to add or constructive to say; please do; otherwise please refrain from engaging in negative dialogue.

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Hey.

I understand your process for coming to 3 months but it is too high of an amount requested for such a short of a time to encourage adoption and might leave you vulnerable to farming mercenaries. If 3 months is your time to iterate, i’d suggest reducing your OP amount.

You could request a smaller amount of OP and resubmit at the end of 3-6 months when you have a better idea of what went well. As a community, it seems that a lot of people prefer this path (from what I see in the discussions)

Might be worth including all this info in your new submission. Hope this helps.

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I respect strong views and engagement; even heated debate; but what you are doing feels of a much different nature and I would appreciate keeping the tone positive.

Because Weston has now maligned my character in multiple places and stood himself up as a defender of constructive feedback, I hope nobody minds a brief response to discuss his conflicts in doing so.

Here’s Weston, a competitor, unprompted, commenting in response to a governance proposal made by Thales to partner with us:

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Without disclosing his conflicts, he made up wild lies about my team, thinking we weren’t there to defend ourselves, and he couldn’t support any of his claims when we confronted him about them, instead continuing to insult us. I didn’t even know at the time he was at Saddle, and now things make a lot more sense.

Here all I did was share inconvenient facts in response to a question. Instead of considering potential means of improving his proposal or offering different sorts of pools that would meet an unmet need on Optimism, more dissembling and unprovoked character attacks.

I mentioned Frax because Weston had made leveraging their partnership with Frax to establish them on Optimism central to his case. Simply put, they’re already here, on Velodrome, on Uniswap, and on Perpetual Protocol (as collateral!).

I will continue to withhold my thoughts about Saddle’s proposal. Out of respect for people’s attention, I’ll do my best not to respond further here.

A final note: I wouldn’t hold myself up as a defender of DeFi and best practices in governance while multiple times trying to convince my VC to abandon her principles and vote for my proposal (much respect, @linda ) as Weston has done here. Shameful.

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Hey @jackanorak - thanks so much for the additional insight.

Ultimately, agree to disagree.

Onwards and upwards. Take care.

Weston

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Hey Weston,

As a proposal can’t change once it’s been to vote I will be forced to vote NO for now.

I will echo others and say that you should either increase the duration to something more like 12 months, or if you really need to keep it at 3 months, please reduce the requested amount of OP tokens.

500,000 OP in 3 months is very hard to vote yes on especially with the current TVL on Optimism.

Also I would recommend to match the incentives with SDL since this is to incentivize liquidity.

I hope to see a revisited proposal from you, and definitely encourage you to take the feedack from the people here to create one.

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We voted no on this proposal because we don’t believe it’s the best use of funds when comparing the amount requested to the current usage on Optimism.

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[Final]

Voting: No

Amount not appropriate for its expected distribution.

  • Contribution: Standard
  • OP distribution: Neutral
  • Co-incentives: No (or not confirmed)
  • Impact in LATAM: Neutral

Suggestions: Reducing the amount and including other pools made up of assets native to Optimism and not only pairing with FRAX would be a consideration.

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you should against other than abstain

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great to see Saddle coming to Op!
looking at TVL on Op, cannot believe my eyes, the liquidity is really nothing. Need to attract more users to Saddle!

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Snapshot vote - not passed

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