S6. Ep. 6 - Web 3 Grants and Governance W/ Nneoma & Juanbug

Transcript

welcome to the green pill. network podcast in September green pill will be hosted by the cartographers a high context community of individuals and teams dedicated to advancing the web 3 grants ecosystem they'll explore the web 3 grants ecosystem with topics ranging from novel funding mechanisms Grant councils and governance to emerging trends like Ai and direct to contract incentives this series seeks to bridge theory and practice by examining real world examples and featuring discussions with those who are closest to the action the next voice you hear will be Sav who contributes at getcoin and founded the cartographers sav will be hosting this entire season and I think that it's going to be a great season because Sav brings deep experience in web 3 grants

and capital allocation I'm excited for you to hear some of the perspectives from him and his guests without further Ado the next voice you'll hear is Sav [Music] enjoy hey coordination welcome it's great to have you again for another episode of the greenp podcast uh i s and as you know I am taking over some of these episodes focusing on subject matter near and dear to my heart around grants and incentives and all the different things that tie into that today's episode we're going to be taking a look at web three grants and governance and I've got a couple people on the show today that you may recognize they're super active in the space around those two things grants and governance got Noma from stable lab and then onean

BG from peov so I will turn it over to each of them to give some introductions on theirself and we'll jump into the episode n maybe I can start with you yes of course hi everyone I'm nma from stable lab I'm a technical governance specialist stable lab we're a governance service provider we support over 25 Dows on ethereum L1 and L2 with everything from professional delegation active participation framework optimizations um datadriven governance um and we also do a lot of work on Grant programs and incentive designs which is is pretty aligned with the theme of this episode my background actually started more on the speculative angle but um I got introduced to D's early 2021 as a means

of participating in decentralized work my background is in Computer Engineering and some product work on the side um so I started contributing to DS like index Coupe I started contributing to a bunch of Solana dals as well that was how I got connected to actually a lot of the people that I worked with today so it's a little far off from what I was initially doing when I joined the space but I think everything came together really nicely and with Dows they all have really unique and uh specific needs so a wide range of skill sets typically apply and yeah I'm glad that I found myself here enjoying all the Dow drama totally it's always fun for sure you

know appreciate the introduction there uh one bug I'll turn it over to you everyone so one bug on the FL forums arpo I guess you know similarly Realms I I started in crypto sort of not really you know anticipating going anywhere with it was in school getting a finance degree long too along the traditional Banking and private Equity route I think I got really interested through through governance and uh the space as a whole through our school's blockchain Club where I led 10 blockchain's governance arm for about two years and then recently for about almost two years now as well have led peov which you know very similarly to stab lab were involved in over a dozen Dows across L1 l2s and different D5 blue protocols I think more specifically we've been focusing on

different committees and councils Within These Dows and currently uh our main focuses are Unis swap optimism compound and arbitr and ends up I guess just working out that a lot of these DS have pretty active governance ecosystems right now and on some of these we s on a few Grant councils and so have decent exposure and then you know also have applied for quite a few of grants for ourselves in in the past thank thank you so much for having us on this podcast today K yeah absolutely absolutely so this episode um as I mentioned will be around grants and governance and really we want to jump into you know delegates and Dallas stakeholders the impacts they have on grants programs um how we B manage and kind of balance Community input with expert oversight really looking into transparency and

accountability around Grant allocation and then get the guest thoughts on any future Trends and approaches we might see in kind of governance around you know Dows and Grant programs as we go forward so I think as we start let's jump into kind of like the relationship between grants and governance for anyone that's you know paying attention to Dows today so much work uh happens in the governance forums and you know people are having active discussions Lively Discord we might say um talking about different topics and you know so many of those topics revolve around um growth you know how do we grow these ecosystems how do we place our bets in the right places that is going to drive the right types of growth and so governance is very you know active in those realms obviously grants and incentive programs

are a primary method that we use to to drive growth and so you know in my mind I see grants as or governance as a place where in some ways it the functions of that can precede these Grant programs and incentive programs um and building structure around them building kind of like the desired outcomes that are wanted getting consensus from all the major stakeholders and then implementing you know the systems that um and the programs that then will go and kind of manage to you know allocate incentives and grants and hopefully that drives the right type of growth we want to see in the ecosystem so as we look at that you know I want to start off by maybe turning over to youa and kind of ask a little bit about you know the emergence of professional delegates in this mix you know how you've seen that Evolution

over time um obviously stable lab does a lot of work that way and how do you look at you know through the lens with your partners um in terms of balancing you know when the objectives from these Dows are to drive growth in their ecosystem how to stable lab partner with them in that timately how have you seen you know grants and incentive programs help to enable those types of things absolutely in the realm of Delegation in general I think one existential problem with Dows has always been maintaining sustaining a high level of participation and I don't think that's limited to Dow governance I think that's with any sort of like participatory system so I think governance is a 247 job especially in crypto balancing the need for consistent

feedback around different metrics of the protocol different decisions that need to be made that affect the community the protocol and all the stakeholders in the ecosystem and as Dows have continued to grow and mature we see that not everyone has the expertise required has the bandwidth or even the interest in consistently participating in governance and that's where delegates come into play as high context members of the Dow that are entrusted with the power from token holders to actually represent them in the voting process in the discussion process and so on stable lab has taken this a step further by professionalizing the role by making sure that there is a

set of roles and responsibilities that we follow as delegates for one is active participation so making sure that we maintain High record of voting of participating in discussions joining calls and so on we also take it a step further by making sure that our inputs into these discussions are research backed so our team is very diverse in terms of experience and we typically get assigned to support the Dows that are well aligned with our interest and experience for example like I said earlier on my background is a bit more technical so I take on more of the technically inclined products uh projects for stable lab and so it's

really interesting to see this Advent of professional delegation and and another thing that we advocate for is actually compensating these delegates for the time that they put in to work on the governance of these protocols because like I said governance is never ending it's 247 it moves at the speed of crypto delegates are taking on really crucial roles in the ecosystem acting as a filtering function for potentially malicious proposals that can come and affect the way the protocol functions and you know affect the ecosystem as a whole so I think delegates are really important in affecting Topline metrics for dials like growth like security and we figured they deserve to get

compensated for their time so that's sort of where we are as it relates to Grant and incentive programs I also think that because delegates are high context members of these Dows they also take it a step further than just voting on proposals than just you know writing responses to foreign posts by actually joining these accountability bodies for for the gr programs that the Dow wants to undertake and being able to as a high context member make these decisions as to where the allocation should go from the treasury what projects are worth supporting um because I think they have a unique vantage point that helps them make um these informed decisions so yeah I hope that answered your question no

totally that was a great rundown you know uh Juan bug maybe over to you maybe tell us a little bit about um you know piga the The Entity that that you work with and you know how you look through the lens of some of those same things as a delegate you know thinking through what growth looks like for these protocols that you help to support um and what your role has been in that you know from a governance perspective yeah I think background like being around maybe like four years or so ago like when governance was first like guting started it's really interesting to see the growth of you know governance becoming you know both School clubs and professional delegations and delegates over the last four years um you know I would say like four years ago when we were just first starting beginning with

compound and Unis swop I think those were the two like through Andre's like initial school cohart I I think they did like pen blockchain and blockchain at Berkeley I think that was like a really interesting landscape it was very nent it was much different from what it is now right and you know within a quick couple years you know every you know different organizations have have sprung up um different structures a lot of different committee structures and everything and so I think it would be really interesting to see where everything is in two years from now with relation to PV I think one of our main things is just you know we want to be there for Blue Chips and for projects that we think have substantial growth in the future um all our bets are uh I guess specifically siphon in a way that

or I guess section off in a way that you know these projects or projects that we think will have significant growth in the future and then as for I guess how do we structure professional governance and what sort of why I think one of the main reasons was that you know we I I personally am really passionate about governance I think it's there's a lot of growth of it in the future I think this is a way to ort of structure that you know Keeps Us in for the ride you know over the next couple of years as I guess professional delicacy and professional governance as well as sort of paid governance becomes a more sort of you know stabilized and I guess recognized thing good one yeah and as that relates to Grant programs and even incentive programs um you mentioned a couple names

in there with Unis Swap and compound and obviously they've had um long-standing grants and incentive programs that have gone through some different iterations over time maybe give us some perspective on you know how you've SE that you know working with those groups um over time and maybe how you participated in some of those those working groups or you know those committees to help to form you know the direction and Implement those programs yeah I think a lot of dows have seen a bunch of I guess growth over time when it comes to these grants so like you know starting off at some of these Dows it was sort of just like a a really unformalized thing you you'd have the the core Foundation or the core teams were to managing a smaller I guess treasury or small allocation and and then over time it sort of gradually

morphed into like a really you know across most of these STS like a really fledged out structure where I think you know they're is oftentimes elections as well as sort of you know governance oversight in the sense of everyone sort of reports the community and sort of you know tells them everything about what's going on I think optimism has a really good I guess model or interesting sort of approach on this where at the beginning it was a matter of you know you had you know for they have different Seasons right and like season one it was a bunch of I guess it was in my opinion it was all over the place you know everyone was sort of voting on everything and you had people who generally sort of gave feedback and and recommendations for where these grants went and now you know season six you

have I guess I want to say like 17 different reviewers across four or five different topics you have specific you know categories for audits for super chain grants and then you have different you know I guess we'll call them they call them I guess builders growth which basically just means like are you funding a project that has incentives or are you funding a team to build something and also part of the a Milestones metrics committee to sort of follow up on all grants that are approved and make sure everything's in tiptop shape and when Milestones are ready to go and funding is ready to be dispersed you know making sure that all the Milestones are there so I think it's the TDR I guess is just that you know over the course of the last couple of years like you see a lot of gr programs

going from small sort of you know workshops into like properly fledged teams where people have almost you know made careers out of sort of leading and being on them absolutely you know no I'd be curious your perspectives on that too I know stable lab has been kind of a key driver behind some of the larger incentive programs that are out there I know that your you know team helped to Steward kind of the L tip um and some of the work there there's other you know incentive and Grant programs I know that stable Labs participated in um how has the thinking evolved on that over time you know how do you help um consult those Partners when they're think about structuring those programs and then ultimately what role does the stable lab team play as those programs get scoped implemented and then you know start to

allocate funding absolutely you said it correctly we've been very Hands-On in some of the larger incentive programs for the most notable Dows in the space including arbitrum short-term incentive program which allocated about $40 million in ARB to support ecosystem projects same for the L tip my colleague Matt was really instrumental in supporting on that end I personally have been involved with some incentive experiments in the arbitrum and uniswap ecosystems the uniswap arbitrum grants program actually last which was it was initiated last November and it's set up with really clear objectives to Foster

growth user growth usage growth driving volume TBL and also supporting protocol Integrations that positively affect both of those ecosystem um and so our mission as you know participants alongside the team at aretta was to fund projects that are adding tangible value to both ecosystems so we went through an application process it also went through a voting process and US alongside three others were chosen to sit on the council the GRS Council for that program we were able to evaluate over I think almost about 15 applications over five RFP categories that we also helped to set um so as it

refers to like your initial question how do we scope out these programs it typically will start with you know involving Community input figuring out where the gaps are in the ecosystem that need to be filled what Builders are saying where the interests are what trends are you know driving the most activity and then actually setting rfps around those core needs if you call them and then as it relates to the treasury we're looking at what percentage of the treasury would be you know sensible to put forth towards these incentive programs and then actually operationalizing everything by setting up the process of applications the review process the voting process and so

on so we actually have played you know both sides in different scenarios where we are applying for these grants and incen or we're actually stewarding the program itself and administering it so yeah I think Unis Swap arbitrum Grants program which I can speak directly to because I had um Hands-On involvement in this program was very much a cross ecosystem grants experiment and we learned quite a bit from that we had really broad reach we were also able to expand our Runway by making some you know now looking back really great decisions in terms terms of how we utilize the funds how we converted arbitrum to stable coins to

preserve its value and so on we were able to remain in continuous dialogue with the stakeholders in the foundations Unis swap Foundation arbitrum foundation and also the developers themselves the core teams that are working you know every day on these protocols asking their feedback on applications that we were getting in and many of the projects that were eventually funded were the ones who were laying the groundwork for future Innovations and so we could we could see their impact be more visible in the long run and yeah looking ahead we're always looking for ways to support the Unis swap ecosystem and and all other ecosystems that we work in um we have made recommendations for example

you probably know that certain DS receive token air drops from other Dows and are constantly looking for ways to utilize that so that's another way that we help d achieve growth sustainable growth by making these recommendations as to how they can utilize These funds and then we also take it a step further actually with our Flagship product Force which is a governance intelligence platform we are actually reflecting on the impact of these programs so what I can say that looks like so far is or the reason actually behind this product is I think so far governance has been a pretty subjective game and many people are actually just going off of assumptions

as to how these incentive programs are actually impacting the protocol are impacting their Topline metrics and we actually want to bring some more objectivity to that we want to bring some more certainty to what these funding decisions are impacting and so with Force we're able to go in and analyze on an offchain data for different incentive programs we recently did the arbitrum STI analysis and Report just posted in the Forum and there's also a Blog about that where we analyzed the impact that the $40 million in ARB that was allocated towards that program had on things like user growth increase in activity in tvl and so on we were able to compare it to larger incentive

events like the arbitrum airdrop and see which drove more Roi for the Dow and so on so yeah I think we take a very holistic approach to participating in the these incentive programs from you know really scoping them out thinking through what the best decisions to be made are thinking about you know the best people to chair some of these councils and Advising on on some of that and then actually administering the program and seeing it to the end and then the reporting aspect and Analysis yeah I love that you touched on a lot of different you know themes in there and some of those are even um episodes that we've hosted this season around some of that you know we had Bernard from Moretta on earlier this season to touch

on grants as a service very familiar with their work um with UAG and you know they they've done a great job there for sure and it's been really cool um to see the progress and you know more of the proliferation of these types of service providers um that are looking to take on you know some or all the function of Grant programs you also touched on this concept of what I call Downstream Grant programs right it's something that we're seeing an optimism we did an episode on that around super chain grants and how optimism has incentives for super chain partners that meet certain criteria to help launch their own Grant programs and then there's this other aspect you touch on around um you know some of these larger protocols that have received significant air drops and it creates this opportunity for creating kind of

this this shared Downstream Brant program like U AGP which was basically a partnership between Unis Swap and arbitrum that stable albereta and others um helped to facilitate and ultimately use the proceeds from that airdrop to drive impact right and the last thing you touched on is like a super important topic that I'm hearing more and more and it's really this concept of verifiable impact right when I look at the history of Grant programs you know I've been active learning about them researching them for more than three years now and I've definitely seen them evolve from in the 20120 2021 cycle it was all about what's the largest amount that you can name that you're allocating how can you use that as marketing to drive awareness

and create buzz and you know ultimately you know hopefully those funds drove kind of the right impact in your ecosystem but I just don't think we were as mature then as kind of a space as we are now and I think the progress that we've seen just over the last two or three years around grants it's really cool you know I think I've said in a couple episodes when you look at um Grant giving as a whole globally you know it's something that's been going on for much longer than crypto but the reality is it's pretty much all direct grants and it hasn't changed a whole lot in a long time um and so when you see the progress that's happened just over the last few years in the crypto space and the opportunities that we have in terms of like being able to program our

values you know and and our money right um being able to look at verifiable metrics on chain and you know um being able to program different types of funding mechanisms and have those align you know to these onchain aspects and you know the impact it's I think we're going to see you know more and more of that and you touched on you know with Force I think it was a great move by stable lab taking a look at how you start to harness some of those metrics that are onchain and verifiable tie those back to the incentives that were given and ultimately I think that's going to shape a lot of how the arbitrum incentives move forward right as we look at the incentives detox and some of the work happening there you know as they paint a vision for the future what I'm hearing through those talks is they want

more verifiable impact and they want more one chain metrics that tie back to the outcomes that they desire for the incentives you know that that were given so with that I would say um you know bug I'm kind of curious your thoughts on on this concept of verifiable impact right as a as a key delegate you've worked in this space for a long time um have you seen that Evolution you know of of programs how are you seeing the protocols and you know teams that you work with thinking about this concept of impact and how we align incentives to that so yeah maybe if if that's something that you're seeing as a trend right now or um in more of the the Dows that you work with how does that look to you yeah I think I think you brought up

arbitrum which is a really good example of this um starting off from the past I think arbitrum had a you know Mass decentralization sort of vision and with that you had a bunch of you know service providers you had a bunch of people coming to the forums and proposing sort of you know various different sides of I guess allocations for themselves or entities that they work with and I think you got to a point where you know specifically with grants there's I think there still is but like there's you know over half a dozen different Grant programs that are running you have you know different you know initiatives through quite a few different you know people in the Dow and it got to a point where it was like Hey like you know how much of this sort of funding can we sort of sustain to keep arbitrum maybe as a

whole keep the ship upright before you get to a point where everyone just sort of you know consistently dumping the token and you know token price only falls down and you get a sort of death spir in that sense and you sort of saw it happen right like the second the market took a dump you know you had the ARB token go from I want to say what like over two bucks to just around half a dollar you know down 75% in the course of of a few you know short months and it got to a point where it was you know the D was like all right let's take a let's take a chill pill here you had a detox proposal that got passed and pretty much for the time being like you know the the Dow is taking a stance of let's put a

hold on these different you know Grant programs let's put a hold on what's going on and sort of reassess right I think that is needed um and I think it's needed in every Dow sort of being able to sort of assess the impact of specific grants that you know you apply for and that you allocate for and then from there you know red deciding if a grant program in the current form is what you even want to do as a whole and a lot of times Dows will spend a significant amount of money on the actual grant program themselves and then the you know operational costs to even operate a grant program end up being considerably High let's say you're operating like a million dollar Grant you see you sometimes see operating budgets that are

you know well over a quarter or a third of sort sort of what the entire Grant budget is um and then on top of that you often times you know have this mandate to sort of give out money and so you're sort of giving money to like these suboptimal Grant programs in my opinion just to sort of meet that Mandate of you know reaching the the whatever budget spend you need to justify maybe the same budget for a renewal or to justify the same budget for the next season and you know to to sort of show your worth of how much money you've distributed I think an issue that I sort of see and I don't want to name too many names here but is that you know these teams and these foundations will sort of request for these massive check sizes and then they

sort of just lurk back you know go away into the shadows and you're not necessarily sure what's going on every so often you hear like a little update of you know massive grants they funded but there's not much Community sort of input and there's not much sort of transparency regarding where these sort of funds are going and then further sort of you know what actual impact these grants have had absolutely now you talk you touched on some really important topics there I agree that for the longest time we've looked at impact as how much money we gave out you know and that's like the easiest metric right but probably the one that is uh not truly impact like how much you gave out um really it's like what was accomplished with that you know for sure and so I am

starting to see some some signs of hope that way in terms of like starting to ship P you know per perspectives and and how we look at impact you know in a more mature way and how we use the systems that really crypto enables to be able to dive into that more right and as we look forward I'm definitely seeing you know more programs starting to think twice about you know the funds that they're allocating and how that contributes to impact you also bring up another interesting point that you know I've had a few discussions about where you know growth in one sense can be tvl it can be active users it can be you know these these types of metrics that we focus on a lot and they're definitely important but what if growth occurs at the expense of token price right I think that we've

seen that in a few cases where the metrics are going up that the programs um were hoping you know they they could impact maybe it wasn't clear how much we want those metrics to go up over what period of time but it's clear that tvl Rose active users is up we're deploying more DBS more contracts are being created like all of these things that we look at but if that's happening at the expense of the token going down which is like a very critical part of what essentially these tokenized communities that we have with Dows you know it's it's a it's an interesting dilemma right where you don't necessarily see that as much in kind of the traditional Grant

giving space outside of crypto where you know typically Fiat currencies are kind of pegged to their value and so they run into different pressures in terms of budgets and justifying their existence and all those types of things but I think that we have kind of this interesting other consideration and crypto around the token price because as as we all know many of these treasuries are valued in the native token that is the primary you know method that grants are distributed and every time you give one of those native tokens out you risk sell pressure on that um and ultimately there has to be a certain amount of that to be able to you know fund the work that's being done but uh it's an interesting uh dilemma you know and I

think in some ways presents opportunities where if you can create kind of positive effects potentially ways that you don't have as much impact to the Token price you could see some positive things come from that I guess maybe on that point to you Noma how do you advise your partners oh did you have something to comment on that one I was just saying like I think I think it's a bit misleading right to sort of classify and sort of talk about you know everything and the output of of gr programs in the sense of just you know purely uh you know number of dabs deployed number of transactions etc etc right I think it's a misleading I think it's like you know it is sort of what you look for but I think it's mislead or of just focus everything on that you come into an issue where in any doubt

right when you pour an eror just any company right like if you pour millions of dollars incentivizing like of course numbers are going to go up right they're not going to go down I think the main thing you have to care about is like sustainability um you see a lot of Dow sort of you know incentivizing and I think I think a good example of this was like polygon rush back in the day right what was it like avac Avalanche rush or something along the lines of that right and so those two programs will incentivize like hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars over the course of very short amount of time they got a bunch of bunch of TBL and then the second of those rewards sort of you know stopped right everything sort of moved off chain gradually and so I think

arbitrum is in a spot right where you know there's a lot of activity and there's a lot of growth already naturally incentivizing the hell out of you know people sort of doing any sort of onchain action creates a like a very PVP environment where people sort of just you know picking off yield from one another and then the actual I guess ecosystems a whole after those you know incentives are gone goes back pretty much to where it was Prior and you're effectively just selling off a bunch of equity and raising a bunch of equity to to fund these operations which in any normal company right would would be really a bad decision um I think you you basically just come to an issue where the token holders aren't necessarily aligned with the equity and with the you know I guess growth of the company as a

whole because they have no sort of financial alignment um and I think that is probably even a bigger question than sort of just you know how can grow program Grant programs incentivize people to to do what they want to do yeah know great points couldn't couldn't agree with you more there and you know I think that Unis Swap and optimism would be examples I would point out that I think it yet to be seen if the model quote unquote works but they're trying different things and what I mean by that is for a long time I kind of feel that most Grant programs were just these large direct grants right it was open application hey if you have a great idea submit this form we'll fund it we might or might not track the Milestones well right so to your points earlier it was all about just volume and like how much

we allocated maybe we had specific rfps for certain things um but did we look at sustainability of those projects and those initiatives after the funding was gone whether or not those things were built right and so I'm seeing a pivot where if you look at Unis swap you know their main Unis swap Foundation grant program has really um focused more on these larger service agreements placing bigger bets and so far if you look at you know all the information they're putting out there like some of those bigger bets are are starting to pay off right in terms of you know the types of projects they're funding and then they're being strategic about maybe smaller Downstream programs U AGP could be an example of that some of the work they've done around like the analytics bounties you know I know that they're

thinking about Hooks and how they incentivize that you know and then you contrast that with like optimism right who you know obviously I sit on the optimism grants Council and a lot of what you know we focus on is direct grants um that have a pretty you know strict vetting process that you know once they get through that process we allocate based on the missions and intents and you know try and be as intentional about the metrics and things that we want to see you know from those over time um and then you also see retr funding and you know the the sunnies and like some of these other you know experiments that are being tried that some of them are gaining pretty significant traction and so you know in my mind like I think that's part of the opportunity we have in cryptos again we

have like these one chain verifiable you know the possibility of like these onchain verifiable metrics and ways that we can tie incentives to that and even adjust the funding mechanisms right so it becomes more objective right versus subjective is how you know those are given out no what i' be curious your thoughts on this topic right I mean I think you know one buug brings up some really good points around how do you balance you know cell pressure the token price like all of these things versus you know growth how is that something that stable lab thinks through when you know working with your partners yeah absolutely I think that is also another existential problem of the current model of Grants and just like you said I think with this space we have access to some

really powerful Primitives that allow us to get creative on how grants are administered and how to make it sustainable in the longer run like for example one of the newer trends that I'm seeing come up is folks thinking about Equity like grants so providing equity in tokens that are investing over time which ends up aligning the incentive for longer term contribution from these teams um over a longer time scale and that will essentially minimize that immediate Market selling pressure that you might get when you fund folks like outright um with no equity structure in place another thing that I think is

really interesting that people are thinking about and we we've been talking about internally is potential like for Revenue sharing or like buyb from generated value from projects so so implementing some systems where for example a project is funded and then the revenue that they get after you know development takes place and they're achieving some transaction fees some success in like transaction fees product revenues so on and those are used to potentially buy back tokens from the market or just directly contribute to the treasury so I'm starting to see a lot more creativity and more utility around these Primitives that we have access to to think in the longer term about how you know when we're doing

incentives let's just let's not make sure it's all vanity metrics and that after the program it's not just going to fall back to pre-incentive numbers so we're actually like maintaining this activity over a longer time scale another thing that I see is already being being implemented I think it's you know lowest hanging fruit right now is just Milestones based funding so making sure that teams are setting Milestones to get funding over a period of time rather than just giving a direct Grant upfront so they're actually being held accountable by you know stable lab also plays a role in these accountability bodies so we're checking in with them we're always you know verifying these

metrics that they claim to have achieved because it's all on chain it's all there for all to see um and then we're allocating that funding after this this has been verified so those are just a couple ideas that I know are floating around some already being implemented and I would love to see more creativity more experimentation around balancing uh those objectives absolutely you know one question I kind of have for you on buug is for the stakeholders that you represent the tokens that you've been delegated across different entities how does that relationship work right like or is this something that you're actively discussing with them and you know getting their input and thoughts and kind of how like you best represent you know their interests is it something where they're more kind of like

Outsourcing the function of management you know to you and teams you know like yours to make those decisions like what does that relationship look like for those token holders you represent and you know how do you make sure the way that you're thinking about things and voting ultimately aligns to to those interests yeah I Think It's tricky because most of the times we won't know who our exact delegators are so so outside of a few like sort of VC arrangements or sort of specific delegations right often times it's just the community sort of you know entrusting us with whatever token power that they have and so it becomes you know often a conglomeration of you know hundreds if not thousands of different you know I'm sure individualized viewpoints and so I think one way that

we try and sort of um stay aligned almost is that we have pretty substantial I guess bags of all the projects that we are delegates for and so we I guess ourselves are aligned in a way of like hey like we want these token prices obviously to go up into the future as well right and we have almost sort of like an internal sort of you know bylaws or internal sort of code that like we will you know if if there's we get compensation for these tokens we will maintain like a baseline level of you know those tokens and either lock them up or hold them for at least a year before we sort of even decide to sort of sell off right and we'll always be sure to maintain sort of a a greater than zero dollar

I guess denomination of that of that token whenever we are active delegates and I guess that's just sort of the the way that we take a look at things because it's really tricky to have direct you know proper alignment with the Dow and especially when you're not an investor and you're not sort of you know holding those tokens stakeholders yourself it's it it becomes quite convoluted pretty quickly in terms of extracting value from the Dow for your own personal game and for I guess your own delegation game versus you know what's what's best and healthiest for the doubt itself self I love that answer right like some in the audience might hear that and say well gosh like how can you represent those interests if you don't know who they are but you know for me I think that that really speaks to one the power of decentralization and

kind of what we're looking to achieve in some ways right and two you know I know you're very active in forums and you know stable lab as well and so anytime you know you're making decisions you're you know commenting on things you're giving direction you know that's all done in kind of like a transparent way that you know anyone who is interested in enough to kind of follow those types of things um and know how those decisions are being made you know I think you kind of view it as incumbent upon yourselves to to make sure that that's all out in the open so that you know anyone knows you know what what that could look like no how do you balance that at staple lab right like in terms of you're helping on one side consult advise you know and do various things from a partner perspective with

these programs but then stable lab is also a pretty significant you know delegate in some ways so how do you um you know balance that internally yeah I think the question of balancing those objectives is something that we have to evaluate every time we're taking on a new project I think for example with Unis swap we engage with the da on different levels so we have once been part of the accountability committee we're also delegates at Unis Swap and sometimes we want to push an initiative through for the Dow sometimes you want to administer an initiative and we want to avoid a conflict of interest as much

as possible and so in certain situations we are recusing oursel from certain roles where we know that because we have an advantage as delegates to you know push a certain initiative through we will recuse oursel from sitting on an accountability body or or vice versa and so it really is like a case by casee thing that we're always constantly talking about and constantly affecting like talking about how to potentially affect the Dow affect our reputation and so on um we received delegation from a few different people from the foundation from token holders from investors and so on and balancing our objectives and the things that we think are right and

sustainable for the da versus some of these other opinions it's definitely challenging and sometimes we go against the grain um I think my uh colleague du and also the co-founder of the company is very opinionated in the Forum about what he thinks is right for the da what he thinks is not right for the da and so on and I think just being transparent about our opinions and not being afraid to have the unpopular opinion is I think something that we're kind of known for so yeah I think it's it's a line to toe of course there's a very delicate balance between those two but I think we've been successful so far

in Towing that line and in making sure that we're keeping the priorities of the Dow top of mind and we are constantly you know not doing anything to jeopardize our reputation on that end holy no I love that right I mean I think that you know balancing kind of the incentives and the accountability and doing that you know in a transparent way is super important I mean ultimately to to wook's point you want to have a vested interest right and these interests that you're representing and so you know I love the the way that you know you're you're kind of balancing those priorities and making sure that you're making sound decisions that aligns with maybe incentives or things that you know could have a positive impact you know on on the organization

um if and done correctly right um I guess the last question I would have as we kind of like wrap the show up is and I I'll kind of post to each of you and maybe start with you first one bug is how you know if I hold tokens today or I'm thinking about you know delegating um how can I learn more about you know the work that you do where would I go to to see that and you know how could I you know delegate tokens you know to you and even start to maybe participate more in the function of governance if if I'm new to it I think you know for us specifically just check out our Twitter peov team or you know my my personal Twitter Juan bug eth uh you know I'm I'm always active and so if you want to

shoot me I guess uh a telegram message as well right it's Juan buug son same uh you know same I guess selling for Juan bug and then Su you know I'm happy to you know talk with you I'm happy to chat about anything I think for anyone who's interested in sort of getting into the governance space as a whole I think forums are just the easiest way to go to so I would literally just you know go to unisoft forums go to arbitrum go to optimism forums create an account and just start commenting and start you know perusing around what's going on uh I think a few different platforms such as like boardroom for example have great weekly summaries for lat Styles which is a good place to start and just generally speaking like just put some time in and you you'll find yourself going down the

rabbit hole really quickly absolutely I think I'm living proof of that myself that you know find something that you're interested in dig in might be might seem like a strange hobby at first but then you can actually make something out of it and you know that's been like super cool Journey for me uh to see realized you know my journey in crypto no I guess same question for you right like how can people find out more about the work stable lab is doing you know how can we get you know up dates on the things that you're weighing in on and helping you know to drive forward um yeah what's that look like yeah absolutely so to learn more about the work that we've done and are currently doing um I think the best place to go is the website stable lab. XYZ we are also stable lab

across all platforms Twitter LinkedIn you will also find me on Twitter at nomac CK so you can always shoot staple Lab at DM if you're interested and engaging with us on any level or even just giving feedback on maybe a proposal that we put up or some opinion that you might have on a discussion in forums that we're active in um and not much different from what Juan bug said about how to get started with contributing I think it's just a matter of figuring out what you're interested in if there's a protocol that maybe you transact on the most and you're interested in getting down to the nitty-gritty of how things

work and where these decisions originate from then the Forum is always a great place to start I think active users of protocols would be really great to have more of in these governance forums because I think they also have un unique and interesting points of view on decision making so yeah just create the account get on the Forum start gaining some context by reading into historical discussions and then maybe you will feel more empowered over time to start proposing initiatives of your own chiming into higher level discussions and so on I think Dows really require a broad set of perspectives and opinions to be successful and to actualize that

vision of true decentralization so yeah I think you know it's it's very wide open you're always welcome and we're always happy to support another thing I wanted to point out was um like I said earlier our product Force you can find more about Force on the website force. um and that's where you'll be able to see some of these um dashboards and reports that we have created for different um incentive programs and their evaluations like like I said the arbitrum stip and that way I think you will get more familiar with the concept of um verifiable impact like we had touched on um in the episode so yeah that's about it awesome well I thank you

both for the time it's been great to have you here and a great disc discussion I know this will be an ongoing topic that we're going to see evolve and you know goow over time and I'm sure that both you and your teams will be at the big middle of that so thanks again for your time thank you very much thanks for inviting us [Music]