I’ve received multiple answers to this, none of them end-all be-all clear on what is required. We want to be flexible but ultimately if our entire multisig has to KYC it’s probably a no go. Anything else I think we can work around. If the proposal passes and it turns out we can’t KYC, OP doesn’t lose anything and all we lost is time. So if we don’t figure out the exact KYC requirements by the time it’s time to vote, I would prefer to go to a vote and just state that we aim to follow KYC requirements and will work with the Optimism Foundation to do so.
There are dozens of L1 projects willing to shell out if you build on their chain. We chose Optimism because of its EVM compatability / Ethereum alignment (being an L2), as well as the vibrant DeFi ecosystem.
I understand concerns with governance, but I think an argument for self-delegation is that if you want us to make Optimism a true home for Alchemix, then we would like to have a voice in it. Having that initial voice lets us experience OP governance firsthand to determine if we would like to purchase more OP to have a more sustained voice. Understood though that there can be concerns with protocols partnering up / gaming votes with that concentrated power.
Since we have a week until community feedback ends, I’m going to take a few days to think about if I can more clearly dictate our plan for delegation or if it does ultimately just make sense to remove it.
We are live! Deposit caps will be 100k for a week, then cranked up to $5m so long as there are no issues: Alchemix
Why not using your community to leverage the Governance position instead of using grants for that?
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My suggestion here would probably be simply to include the self-delegation component in one of your other asks - your delegate power would draw down over time, and the stickiness of that power would depend on, to @Prometheus point, perhaps your community’s interest in delegation.
For what it’s worth, I do think the primary source of new delegation will have to be protocols and especially their communities. And protocols are more likely to animate their communities once they come to appreciate the possibilities inherent in participating in governance. And no, I’m not talking about self-interest – i’m talking about helping to shape the ecosystem people want to see. It’s an exciting thing to consider if you’re a protocol.
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My question is what happens when the incentives in Optimism run out.
I think self-delegation can also bring parasitic protocols into the network as well as users farming the token in their protocols.
I also believe that if Alchemix had any interest in this governance it would have appointed at least one delegate, why didn’t it do so if it sought to have a say in this governance? Asking for support in your community is a good start and has a cost of $0 as well as appointing a delegate to represent Alchemix’s interests.
In the event that the proposal is not voted YES, will Alchemix still be interested in governance as one of the protocols they seek to develop in the network? Self-delegation with token grants is the same thing @jackanorak complains about from users.
What I don’t see in the protocols being pushed by @jackanorak for self-delegation is at least minimal participation beyond his own proposals.
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However, I will stop commenting on the thread beyond the proposal itself. I think it is a long discussion but worth addressing and discussing in governance. This kind of conversations make the governance of Optimism grow, which is what we all want.
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Honestly I think we just haven’t wrapped our heads fully around OP governance, there’s a lot going on and you have to understand that many of the protocols applying are not going to be nearly as knowledgable as someone already very familiar. So I appreciate all your insight.
And yes - even without being given an initial say, Optimism is still very interesting to us as a long-term deployment. Obviously the potential for incentives led to us narrowing down to Optimism as our next L2 launch, but we passed on numerous other chains that reached out to offer significant incentives to deploy on them. And quite frankly I think the incentives just made us prioritize dev time - it was already shaping up to be our next launch without incentives because the team already liked what Optimism was doing and it’s one of the first EVM L2 with the right DeFi ecosystem (which is a good sign for future growth).
As mentioned I"m going to do a deeper dive into delegation and watch the other thread for discussion, then revise the proposal either with a more detailed delegation ask or with it removed, leaving at least a couple more days for community feedback. Ultimately the delegation is not our primary goal for the proposal.
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hello @Ov3rkoalafied, it’s marc from Candide Wallet. Thank you for your proposal and congrats to Alchemix on their Optimism Launch! Alchemix is one of the protocols that really highlight interesting use cases enabled by DeFi with their self-repaying non liquidation loans.
Overall, well written proposal that highlights both Alchemix ecosystem value proposition and its values to contribute to public goods through Gitcoin.
I will echo previous feedback from other commentators:
- I encourage you to reconsider the amount you are requesting for your future alOP integration. Since this is still in the pipeline of possibilities like you mention, you can always come back to request this amount in another proposal once the integration is live and have some traction. This integration is interesting for Optimism and will bring lots of value.
- At the current state, your total requested value amount is sitting around x8 the protocol deposits on Optimism (since you have just recently deployed). The expectation is that the amount requested would somehow match your protocols deposits. I believe your proposal have a higher chance of getting through if you lower your ask and your timeframe from 1 year, or wait until you show some more traction for another cycle.
Should the deposit caps on Optimistic Alchemix quickly fill, that will be indicative to Alchemix that we should look to re-allocate some bribes from CRV/CVX on mainnet to veVELO on Optimism to further scale the deployment.
- can you clarify exactly when and how much of rellocation to from CRV/CVX bribes on mainnet?
Overall, I am in support of this proposal as Alchemix has a unique proposition to Optimism in terms of its innovative mechanism in DeFi.
Hello! A few updates related to this comment/others here:
- I’ve entirely removed our ask for future alOP / self delegation. While it appears self delegation could be acceptable, it isn’t the primary reason we applied for the grant and it makes sense that a future use case could be addressed with a future grant.
- Looking at some other protocol asks, I’ve reduced the total ask from 750,000 to 500,000 (ie, the tokens that were being asked for for self delegation were completely removed, rather than reidistributed).
- I updated a few statistics here and there just to reflect the present day #delegate-updates
I do want to note that The “total requested based on current TVL” feels a bit backwards to me. Isn’t the point of OP grants to incentivize TVL and genuine defi activity on Optimism? I think our (reduced) ask is fair for these reasons:
- we have a proven use case on mainnet, being live for a year and a half, and the quality defi / low gas environment of optimism strengthens the use case without needing users to sacrifice their loyalty to ethereum
- We’ve explained that TVL is rather sticky so incentives are necessary to get people to migrate to try out Optimistic Alchemix
- Without an OP grant, users are less likely to use Optimistic Alchemix, as they could use another protocol that gives them OP incentives (which would then put Alchemix on uneven footing where our utility needs to overcome their straight financial incentive)
it’s a bit of a chicken & egg scenario, where we need a grant to prove we deserve the grant, but I believe the points above + the reduce total amount (from eliminating the delegated tokens) addresses the concerns. This also means we aren’t requesting dev or DAO funds - every OP token we get will go into the hands of those bringing TVL to Optimism through Alchemix / Alchemix partners.
For CVX/CRV bribes, it will be dependent on alAsset peg. As seen in the proposal it’s expected that the incentives bring more TVL to depositors than to liquidity (which is good, as that TVL is stickier). This also means that if we hit our TVL expectations, we will need more liquidity on Optimism. A clear sign of need would be either high TVL or lower alAsset peg on Optimism. Usually liquidity equivalent to half of TVL is sufficient / a good target.
So - if we meet our goal of >30m TVL, we’d need ~15m of liquidity. The incentives we have asked for in theory put us at 30m TVL, and 5m of liquidity. The liquidity comes from 250k OP tokens plus our VELO position. So we’d effectively need to provide another effective 500k+ of OP (in the form of ALCX) get up to the required liquidity. Which happens to be the grant we requested (that actually wasn’t intentional haha). So effectively, the way the proposal is set up is that we are providing the incentives to make Optimistic Alchemix feasible for launch, Optimism provides incentives start the growth, and then we can step in with more incentives to sustain the growth.
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it’s a bit of a chicken & egg scenario, where we need a grant to prove we deserve the grant, but I believe the points above + the reduce total amount (from eliminating the delegated tokens) addresses the concerns.
I share this concern and think the focus always ought to be on evidence-backed expectation of growth unlocked by a grant – that is, what we think the grant catalyzes for the ecosystem-- rather than by existing TVL. One of the core purposes of the gov fund is to migrate protocols that have demonstrated PMF elsewhere, and Alchemix clearly fits this bill, even if it has yet to hit its ‘full’ numbers on Optimism.
This isn’t to say TVL isn’t irrelevant – it is a fine enough (but messy and manipulable) proxy for use, utility, and market acceptance – but there’s a risk in using it as a crutch as we have. Part of it is that it’s an easy thing to point to relative to other metrics, which is why we ought to be asking more from protocols in furnishing use data and perhaps pointing delegates to known resources on our end to help evaluate.
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Thank you for the clarification. You make a solid case for Alchemix’s proposal and the adjustments you have made strengthens it. I encourage you to summarize the clarification for the CVX/CRV bribes in the original proposal post, as well as highlight changes that you have made throughout your proposal in the top (based on the feedback you received).
I am giving support for this proposal in its current form, both for Alchemix’s value going beyond simple DeFi primitives with its unique proposition as well as its proposal that is well revised to increase activity on Optimism.
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Thank, you, done and done!
Not sure whether I need to do this again, but I’ve been asked to do so, just in case:
I am an Optimism delegate [Delegate Commitments - #136 by jackanorak ] with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.
The defi shadow committee – which is not an official committee – supports this proposal.
We broadly support Alchemix’s proposal as written but advise halving their ask generally by time and size – there’s simply no good argument for running a grant past six months, and even that amount of time is a stretch.
They’re in the minority of proposals to date that have offered a bottom-up approach in outlining the size of their ask and explaining the additionality of the grant, and we’re inclined to agree with their view.
Another key piece is that Alchemix’s proposal is rare in that they are explicitly committing to move resources over to Optimism themselves — that is, they’re not just trying to draw users and capital, they’re moving the deployment of their own capital to encourage more use on Optimism. This goes beyond the simple idea of “incentive matching” — it’s a reflection that a grant can beget follow-on activity, and it’s exactly the kind of behavior we should be encouraging.
We think there is still some work to be done to determine KPIs, demonstrate migration from Mainnet, and discuss potential integrations with other ecosystem protocols, but these are nits in an otherwise well-presented proposal that seems advantageous for Optimism.
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Defi Committee A Recommendation
Voting recommendation: No with caveat to resubmit
Rationale: We like the overall token distribution plan and value proposition. However, we would like to see the proposal resubmitted with the amount and distribution timeline split into 2 separate proposals. We would be happy to approve this proposal once these changes are made.
My interpretation of this request is that we would split it into 250k tokens for depositor incentives, and 250k tokens for liquidity incentives - is that accurate?
Additionally, can the split simply be a note in the proposal that the two 250k asks will be voted on separately, or you’d actually like us to split it out into two new forum posts?
Thanks!
We would like to see the distribution timeline and amount requested both reduced. The current ask is 500,000 over one year, so ideally we would like to see 250,000 over 6 months, so we can re-evaluate and make an additional grant based on performance metrics. Thank you for following up and please reach out if you have any additional questions.
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