Hi there,

I wanted to try to address many of the concerns that you have and where possible, provide potential solutions. However, I don’t think going back and forth in the forum is effective and has proven to be a negative and hurtful tactic many times so far.

Therefore, I am choosing to send this information directly to you.

Your opinions are interesting to hear and bring a good alternative/outside perspective. Others may have differing opinions.

**On the Process and Timing of Proposals**

This post is to kick-off a contributor proposal period:
https://daotalk.org/t/skymine-labs-contributor-proposal-9-22-to-10-22/4544

It’s a normal and more effective process to adjust based on feedback when starting the period.

The kickoff proposal was passed here:
https://develop.dxvote.dev/#/xdai/proposal/0xc4a252edf046a17f21294cfd93cc6dbebfc6d7f119bed02c9a229eee2a48098d

Your feedback and feedback gathered from others could be included in potential future proposals.

**On Spending Time Across Squads**

As stated at the kickoff, I estimate my contribution focus to be 50% DXbiz, 10% DXvoice, 10% Governance, 10% DXventures, 20% Other/ContributorX/Product/Testing/Strategy.”

There are some people that do many different things for DXdao, and have been doing many different things for DXdao for a very long time. Some of this gets lost in the proposal process.

I disagree that it is not important to have senior contributors that are involved in many/all of the areas that make up DXdao.

I could suggest speaking with more DXdao contributors that understand the inner workings of DXdao.

There is a reason why we don’t have people dedicated full-time to DXbiz as of right now. You’ve laid it out yourself. So it also makes sense that my time is not 100% towards DXbiz.

**On DXbiz Squad’s Value Contributed to DXdao**

I disagree that DXbiz has not contributed a lot of value to DXdao.

This is an internal detailed summary of just some of DXbiz's contributions over the past year: https://hackmd.io/Lya3FFw7RKaRWZu09Z6GBg?both

Yes, it is very hard to put a USD value on something like this. However, if we compare all of it against some type of marketing spend metrics or the the value of token rewards attracted to Swapr (plus other ideas), I think its value holds up.

Potential Solution:
We could try to spend some more time putting a USD value on it.

**On Discord servers:**

Personally, I think it’s quite odd to judge someone by Discord servers, but:

I looked because I figured something must be wrong. I am also in over 100 Discord servers and our only overlap is DXdao. I looked and it appears you aren’t in so many servers that are super important to DXdao. For example:

Arbitrum
GnosisDAO
CoW
SAFE
Gnosis Chain
Gnosis Guild
Agave
ETH Denver
Pocket Network
HOPR
Hats
Double
Tally Ho
Atlantis World
GitPOAP
DAOist
Stake DAO
Bankless DAO
Bankless Inner Circle
Swarm
Uniswap
Augur
Aave
Compound

You are not even in the the Infinite and Nimi servers.

How could this be?

My guess is that a set of Discords like yours fits a separate narrow space that DXdao hasn’t been operating in and probably isn’t planning to any time soon:
Pirex
GMX
Dopex
Convex
Frax
Redacted

DXdao doesn’t even want to hold USDT.

To compare, how many of these projects presented their DAO (are they even DAOs?) and their Defi product at the best DAO event of the year? Or at an event in Bogota?

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t hang out in these communities. But I would love to learn how you see DXdao leveraging those communities. There are two parts to interacting with those communities. There’s yield seeking and there’s building tools that yield seek.

As for yield seeking, you do know DXdao is on the quite conservative side of things. This conservatism actually stems mostly from some of the people who helped get DXdao going. And with some effort, DXdao has explored a bit, but as you know is doing just a bit of yield seeking.

As for building tools that yield seek, it doesn’t appear DXdao currently has the protocol level resources and knowledge currently to build these yield seekers and compete in this space.

One of the ideas of expanding the opportunity field would be to find protocol teams that have that knowledge, are already creating and support them (and use our tech and knowledge to tie it into our system).

(We are talking to a more DAO friendly Aave-looking fork that could be an interesting opportunity.)

I think maybe one of the big differences here could be where focus has been. You can very transparently see where focus has been by looking at people’s detailed proposals.

If a person is DeFi degening all day long, this could be one of the reasons a person has his focus. At this point, I am not aware of a good opportunity for DXdao down at this further end of the spectrum of DeFi. With all the Discords people are in, if anyone sees an opportunity, it would be great for you to share it with the DXdao community.

If anyone has ideas or goals for scoping out a DXlend product/protocol, I’m sure people would be interested in hearing the idea.

Possible solution:
Propose how DXdao could participate in this proposed DeFi space and why and, if desired, find an expert in that vertical (and replace or add to current contributors).

**On DXdao Actually Doing Things**

I am not doing DXbiz full-time.

You mention a few times that “more junior” people should be doing certain things. Unfortunately, DXdao does not have “more junior” contributors that can take care of all the things “more senior” people shouldn’t be doing.

As people say, DXdao runs on initiative. Nothing happens unless someone takes on the responsibility. It’s hard to count the number of new ideas that wouldn’t have happened unless I took the initiative. This even includes things like finding and sharing problems with products. Which is an example of things that you might say shouldn’t be the responsibility of a senior contributor.
I think these things are critical.

Possible solution:
Get more contributors in DXdao taking the initiative to do more of these things.

**On DXventures**

For those that haven't been following DXventures, this is a helpful place to start:
https://daotalk.org/t/dxventures-update/4424

Obviously, there is more progress in the past few months as well. Projects are always moving along. We are not getting public updates from them. Keep in mind these are "grant and grant investments". Nimi one was the first "incubation grant". And keep in mind that DXventures IS DXdao.

DXventures is NOT operating separately or outside of DXdao governance. And currently doesn't have a plan to. There was an idea for Idea: Plan for the Expansion and Maturation of DXventures last year, but it didn't get much momentum or consensus or excitement to move forward with that path.

DXdao even trying to "incubate" or "help move along" Nimi is the first time for DXdao. If comparing it to a "professional incubator" it likely looks quite a bit different.

Clearly, if DXdao was going to take on an outside (versus something created from within) project, there would likely be more of a process that needs to be sorted out. Maybe now DXdao is learning what would need to be in place via this first internal trial.

If anyone has any bigger/more concrete ideas, they can always share or propose these to the DAO.

While DXdao is Refocusing, it could be that DXventures could expand and have a larger spot in the future path of DXdao.

Possible solution:
DXdao needs to determine how DXventures fits into the future DXdao. There are already been some ideas shared where it has a larger part in DXdao.

I don’t think it is fair to say that DXdao shouldn’t have supported Atlantis World and have a presence there. With DXdao trying to grow the awareness and usage of its DeFi and DAO products, becoming a part of this project where other DeFi and DAO projects were also participating is a good opportunity. The Carrot portion of that deal was also ground breaking and led to a bunch of awareness.

Similarly, we could look back and say our Copenhagen Flames deal didn’t produce what we hoped for. Part of it has been timing.

I also don’t think supporting Opolis is anywhere close to a failure because DXdao can’t stake the tokens itself. It comes down to choices DXdao makes around decentralization.

**On Carrot v1**

I have been one of the main people coming up with the ideas on how to use Carrot. From Carrot in DXventures to the Carrot campaign in Amsterdam to the only idea we had for Carrot in Colombia. (which we decided not to do because Carrot v1 wasn’t ready)

**On Infinite Hackathon**

You stating that I just “showed up” to the hackathon and that the “technical contributors were more pivotal and value-add to the Hackathon” shows the lack of knowledge.

You think DXdao’s other events just come about as well, like our happy hour event at ETH Denver or our partner event in Paris?

If you think again these should be done by a more junior person, please let me know who.

Possible Solution:
Come to one of our events to see?

**On $222k per year**

I also wanted to share some notes about the payment logic you are using.

I think it’s very important to have an appropriate perspective especially for younger contributors to understand.

You and also another poster use the same $222,000 a year reference. This is way off from actuals.

In 2022 so far, I have been actually paid 67,950 xDAI from DXdao so far, a long way from $222,000! At this rate, even the full year would be only 90,900 xDAI.

Throwing around that $222,000 number is incorrect and irresponsible. Some people call it a “bonus”, others call it “pay”, but either way it’s not paying people’s bills.

I think it would be great to find other people in the wider web3 space (with even basic knowledge of web3, much less DAOs, DeFi, DXdao, etc.) who are willing to contribute to DXdao and deliver this type of contribution in 2022 for $68k. We had one and unfortunately, he left/was forced out/it wasn’t worth the pay.

As you know, DXD is locked up for 3 years with a one year cliff (which we used to get at a terrible basis and it’s still not at market so it’s not even the incorrectly stated USD amount).

As some people smartly do, one should likely treat locked up DXD (that you DON’T hold) as zero for a long time. There is also a massive social pressure to never sell your DXD even to pay bills. There’s also a risk it could end up being worth nothing.

To base much of the post off getting paid $222,000 as an undeserved Level 8 when it’s not even close to correct is misleading.

If you think I should adjust my level, and others do as well, please reach out. I am now thinking that DXdao should be paying higher USD-based amounts to contributors.

I also think some would say that us DXD holders would be better off not paying out DXD at current values, no?

Possible Solution:
Adjust things to pay out less DXD.

**On Moving Forward**

With Nathan being pushed out or forced to leave, DXbiz has an even bigger hole now. You think DXdao should operate without any DXbiz squad?

What are you proposing?

You want to replace me with another better/cheaper contributor?

You want me to reduce my level?

Is this what other DXdao contributors and community members want also? Or this is currently your personal opinion?

I’ve talked to people about this.

I am curious to know what your proposal is, and that others think that is a good idea as well.

I appreciate any additional feedback and ideas you have.