---
# System prepended metadata

title: 'Episode 151: July 22, 2021'
tags: [G&R]

---

---
tags: G&R
---

# Episode 151: July 22, 2021

## Agenda

- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dixuxRgT2A&t=1430s): Introduction
- [01:02](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=62): Governance and GovAlpha Update
- [04:13](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=253): Forum at a Glance
- [07:00](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=420): Protocol Engineering Team Update
- [17:06](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=1026): Oracles Team Update
- [20:55](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=1255): Risk Team Update
- [23:50](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=1430): Real World Finance Update
- [26:22](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=1582): Growth Core Unit Update
- [31:00](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=1860): Content Production Core Unit Update
- [38:48](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=2328): Sustainable Ecosystem Scaling Update
- [45:45](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=2745): MIPs Update
- [55:30](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=3330): Open Discussion

## Video

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dixuxRgT2A&t=1430s>

## Introduction

### Agenda and Preamble

#### LongForWisdom

[00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwPjQ9qTOzo)

- Hello everyone, and welcome to the MakerDAO Scientific Governance and Risk meeting number 151, taking place on Thursday, July 22nd at 17:00 UTC. My name is Payton. I am one of the Governance Facilitators at MakerDAO.
- We like people to get involved and ask questions or comments, so please, do not be shy if you have something to say.

## Weekly Updates

### Governance

#### LongForWisdom
 
[01:02](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=62)

- No polls ended this week. However, two sets of polls are active 1. Both are greenlit polls: G-UNIv3-DAIUSDC and U-Drop Tokens. Ratification polls are still active. Last week's executive has not yet passed.

### GovAlpha Core Unit update

[02:14](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=134)

[GovAlpha Weekly Update](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/govalpha-weekly-update-2021-07-22/9485)

- @longforwisdom created a thorough [post](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/delegation-and-makerdao/9429) on the Delegation process.
- Will be hosting the new [Meet Your Delegate](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/meet-your-delegate-1-wednesday-july-28-6-00-pm-utc/9424) calls on Wednesday, July 28th @ 18:00 UTC.
- The GovAlpha Budget will be updated per quarter instead of the regular 2-quarter update.
- The [MIPs Portal](https://mips.makerdao.com/) has some new addition, which will be live today!

### Forum at a Glance

#### Sébix 

[04:13](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=253)

[Forum at a Glance for July 15 - 22](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/forum-at-a-glance-july-15-22/9486)

#### Three-Point Summary

- Surplus Buffer went down to 48M DAI due to [Core Unit Budget Distributions](https://vote.makerdao.com/executive/template-executive-vote-rates-changes-july-core-unit-budgets-and-psm-dc-iam-july-2-2021?network=mainnet#proposal-detail) last weekend after hitting 50M for the very first time.
- Total Value Locked went down a bit too (but not too much) to almost 9.2B.
- Pegs looking stable since last week.

#### ICYMI - Announcements

- Tim (@twblack88) posted a couple of interesting articles in this week's Relay you may have missed:
    - Messari: [ Stablecoins facilitated an astonishing $1.7T in transaction volume in Q2](https://www.tronweekly.com/stablecoins-1-7t-in-transaction-volume/) Explores the growth of stablecoins and notes that decentralized stablecoins like Dai have maintained a consistent upward trajectory.
    -  [Stablecoins Swelled by $13B in 30 Days, Captured 67% of Today's Crypto Trade Volume](https://news.bitcoin.com/stablecoins-swelled-by-13b-in-30-days-captured-67-of-todays-crypto-trade-volume/)
    -  @LongForWisdom brings us two posts about Delegations, which details the purpose, types, and requirements to be a Delegate:
        -  [Delegation and MakerDAO](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/delegation-and-makerdao/9429)
        -  [Recognised Delegate Requirements](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/recognised-delegate-requirements/9421)
    - [Guide to the Signaling Process](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/guide-to-the-signaling-process/9400)- @AstronautThis posted a very helpful guide on how to participate in the signaling process at MakerDAO by starting a signal request.

#### Active Discussions

- [Dai on Different Chains #2](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/dai-on-different-chains-2-july-16-2021/9395) 
    - @alec delves more about the wallets holding Dai on non-EVM chains.
- [I will vote NO on the ratification poll for Strategic Marcomms Core Unit](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/delegate-i-will-vote-no-on-the-ratification-poll-for-strategic-marcomms-core-unit/9335) 
    - @Planet_X has expressed his opinions against the Ratification Poll for Strategic Marcomms CU, prompting various responses from several members of the pointed team.
- ["Taming Wildcat Stablecoins" Paper – MakerDAO vs Centralized Stablecoins](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/discussion-taming-wildcat-stablecoins-paper-makerdao-vs-centralized-stablecoins/9416) 
    - @PaperImperium brings his thoughts on the recent paper released by the Federal Reserve (with the National Bureau of Economic Research) about regulating stablecoin issuers as banks.
- [Amazix, the Marketing firm with the worst track record in the ICO era](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/amazix-the-marketing-firm-with-the-worst-track-record-in-the-ico-era/9387) 
    In the final stretch of the voting for the onboarding of the AmaZix Core Unit in the executives, an anonymous post reignites debate. Some community members believe this might not be the best approach to discussing this kind of matter.

#### Signal Requests

- [Adjust UNIV2DAIUSDC-A DC-IAM-line](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/signal-request-adjust-univ2daiusdc-a-dc-iam-line/9481 
    - @ultraschuppi is signaling to raise the debt ceiling for UNIV2DAIUSDC-A). Go vote!

### Protocol Engineering Team Update

#### Christopher Mooney

[07:00](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=420)

- A large part of the team is in Paris right now, so our update is a little sparse.
- We have been encumbered by a really big review. On top of that review, we have been looking at revising the four new Centrifuge assets for RWA. We created a large comprehensive checklist of things to go through every time we onboard these. This is an upfront work that will hopefully make things faster in the future. Those four collaterals are currently in Kovan. That Spell has been executed, and they are running. We are in the process of reviewing the main Spell now. You will get a kick out of the checklist if you go to Spell's Mainnet repo and look at that checklist.
- For contract work, we have the DssVest code, which is still in audit. They have sent out a few new things, but I have been heads down on other stuff. I will need to look at what they found.  We added the Lerp helpers to the DssExecLib. The `ClipperCallee` Implementation for SushiJoin is still in review.
- For discussions, we will start deploying to Goerli within the coming weeks. We just need to clear out that slate a little bit. We will not likely be on Goerli when London has Mainnet, which is not ideal, but it is what it is. If that is a major problem for another team, please let us know. We will probably be completely cut over to Goerli in the next month. 
- The DssCharter, a kind of "Permission Vault," has been reviewed and discussed with the Risk and Growth teams. I think they met in person in Paris; they might cover that in more detail.
- We had a postmortem that we are reviewing now, and we will post for the Spell that was off. The DC for that Spell needed to be increased. Our normal process goes to the DssExecutive directly to increase the DC. Whenever we do that for RWA, there is this additional caveat where we need to also bump the price because those do not have real Oracles. In a normal case, an Oracle is always adjusting the price. In the case of RWA, we mock out the Oracle. We then need to adjust the price in the Oracle at the same time we increase the DC. Since it was the first time we have ever increased a DC for an RWA, the price adjustment was forgotten. There will be more details on that postmortem. 
- That list is on the PE team because it was a sparse list. The list has a thing they have been working on that I missed. Is there anyone that wants to add an update or anyone that has any questions?

#### Discussion

- Matthew Rabinowitz: Is that a MIP21 or MIP22 issue?
    - Christopher Mooney: It is going to be a MIP21 issue. Anytime that we increase the DC, we need to bump the price of the collateral. The tokens that we use for the MIP21 adapter are basically mocked-out tokens; they do not have a real discoverable price. We are the ones creating the market value based on the loan that we give to it. 
- Wouter: Can you provide a little more background on the connection between the Goerli test net and why it is relevant to the London update?
    - Christopher Mooney: Coven, which is the testnet that we use now, is at the end of life. They are no longer going to support updates, so we will not get a chance to see London as deployed on the Coven. I made those changes because I keep updating my open Ethereum nodes to get them to keep up to date. Coven may end up supporting London, but that will be the last thing it does. It may not hit it in time for the release, so I am unsure where Kovan stands regarding the London Hard Fork. Robsten went first, which is relevant because there was a consensus bug yesterday or the day before, which I might have seen a few weeks ago. After all, I could not sink a note against Robsten post their London update. Goerli had the tail end of the change for the upgrade to London. Goerli is multi-client. Robsten is multi-client, too, but in the Gov Dev call, it seemed like Goerli would be the testnet in the last staging environment before things went to Mainnet. In my experience, syncing Goerli was good, but the downside is how gas is handled and wallets. The biggest impact would be with UIS on Coven. It would be nice if we were already on Goerli and test that. The Coven shut down news came a little late for our ability to stay on schedule and react to it. 
    - Wouter: Did we have a Robsten deployment or not?
    - Christopher Mooney: I think we might have a Robsten deployment. It is the changelog. You can look there, but it may be very old.
    - Wouter: The consequence is that the front-end teams should have their front-ends as soon as the London Hard Fork happens, right?
    - Christopher Mooney: Yes. I would even say that how we calculate gas is going to be totally different. Keepers need to think about how they calculate gas. If you are describing Dai and those APIs have calculated the gas, then you will be okay. How you calculate gas is the biggest caveat, and I do not mean that in a good way. They are trying to figure out how to do the gas calculation for my crypto.
    - Wouter: Maybe we can move this discussion to after the updates because it grants more in-depth discussion. Especially because there are a few scenarios that can unfold. This is a big update, and it can bring volatile market conditions with it. At the same time, the processes that prevent things like Black Thursdays will be retested in a new environment.
    - Christopher Mooney: Exactly. We all calculate gas wrong, and we get volatile network conditions, then the keepers do not work, and we are in trouble. We can think about a few things at the end of the call altogether and maybe develop some action plan.

### Oracles Team Update

#### Nik Kunkel

[17:06](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=1026)

- Next week is going to be my team within the Foundation's last week. Beginning August 1st, we will officially be spun out. The legal entity formation is underway for the new Oracle CU. It is a transitionary period where we are trying to ensure that the transfer of information for things like infrastructure, internal processes, important historical documentation, etc., is possible. We want to identify the new processes that we need to spin up within the CU. Those used to be responsibilities that were covered within the Foundation. 
- On the technical side, the production deployment of libp2p is continuing. We moved on to a new phase.  Now that we have ascertained that the build is stable, we have been rolling them out to the rest of them. We are in the final stages of that rollout. Hopefully, next week I can be telling you that the rollout has been 100% complete. The timing of that is quite good, considering it will be right when we leave the Foundation. It is a good breakpoint before we start the next projects that we have in mind.
- On the development side, I have been taking a deeper look at staked ETH and the Oracle that would be needed for the fast Dai Withdrawl bridge for optimism. We will be doing the two interim projects before we kick off the big roadmap that we have for the Oracle CU and the Oracle protocol.
- We added support to Matic, and testing for that is underway. We should be good to deploy it within the next weeks.
    
### Risk Team Update

#### Marko Štemberger

[20:55](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=1255)

- Primoz is on vacation; that is why I am doing this weekly update.
- From the previous week, we are still working on simulations for lower Liq ratio Vaults. Hopefully, we will publish the results next week, but it is currently in progress. 
- This week, we started working on the AAVE monitor. It will help us monitor the risk-relevant for the Direct Deposit Module. It will include segmentation of the largest users based on the type of their position. It will be similar to what we showed in the risk assessment: what percentage of assets is used for recourse leverage farming and what is not. This information will be related to Maker Vault users. It will give us a better understanding of what users can easily unwind their position in the case of market drops. Something similar will be built for Compound because there is also a lot of recourse to leverage farming with Dai.
- We have started working on a historical analysis of Vault users and their behavior. This will include some Growth and Risk related topics. For example, how many Vaults did we manage to retain based on different periods when the Vault was created? How are users managing Risk? This will include when the price drops and users need to increase their collateral ratio. Are they doing so just by adding more collateral or repaying debt or some combination of it? Also, things like who is protected by DeFi saver and similar things.
- We started working on the gUNI-DAI-USDC risk assessment. It will be published in the following weeks.
- Finally, we made some updates to the [collateral onboarding prioritization table](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IX9e2fyfz7djtDMKn5gMyGsyFxHoY75GncMbAjnSXrM/edit?usp=sharing), merged it with the official public file in the following days.

### Real-World Finance Team Update

#### Sébastien Derivaux

[23:50](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=1430)

- @aes published a [budget analysis](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/makerdao-budget-simulator-as-of-7-21-21-revenue-cash-flow-forecast/9469) on the forum. It looks forward to expenses and revenues for the upcoming 12 months. If we onboard all CUs, we will be negative in net income; we will make a deficit. We will still be cash flow positive which is good because we can increase the surplus buffer this way. We can follow the discussion in the forum and participate in chiming in and seeing what the Protocol should do regarding the situation. We can have more news in the following month, but it is always good to have a spreadsheet to work on and test some hypotheses. 
- Four Centrifuge assets will be on the Spell tomorrow.
- On the SolarX front, we might be too late to take the opportunity to invest in the first solar farm project they are working on. We are still working with them on another kind of project, but our main focus is to donate, and we are working a lot on our common Foundation. Most of the stuff is more or less solved.
- We have started to work on the MIP, focusing on communication between MakerDAO and the Foundation. More on that should be in by the end of the month. Matthew said that it would not be possible to do it in one month, and he was right.

### Growth Core Unit Update

#### Nadia Alvarez

[26:22](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=1582)

[Growth CU Weekly Updates](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/growth-cu-weekly-update-july-16-july-22/9484)

- It has been an amazing week in Paris. We are happy to meet people from the community. We had a [Maker Mafia](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/keeping-up-with-the-maker-mafia-tickets-161918960971) side event yesterday, which was great. I think it is important to maintain the presence of Maker in different conferences. T explains to everyone the process that we are going through: the importance of the DAO, the community, how we are becoming decentralized because that is interesting for the crypto community in general and for people outside of the crypto ecosystem. It was also interesting to see all these Maker followers always wanting to understand what we are doing. We definitely have to have more presence in conferences like this. Gustav and I participated in EthCC. Gustav spoke about RWA, and I spoke about the transition from the Foundation to the DAO.
- During the past month, we have been working with Grayscale. They announced they would include the Maker token in the [DeFi fund](https://grayscale.com/introducing-grayscale-defi-fund/) they just launched. We have been working with them, explaining Grayscale legal team everything about Maker. In the following weeks, we will start an educational program that they want to launch for their investors. Thank you so much to Nik, who was in the Twitter space of Grayscale on Tuesday to tell everyone about Maker.

#### Questions

- LongForWisdom: Any major surprise at the event? Was anyone two feet taller or shorter than expected?
	- Juan: Derek. Definitely Derek. ***laughs***
	- Nadia Alvarez: During the Maker Mafia event, every CU told the audience what they are doing. We had Juan, we had Kat, Derek, and Sam. Juan was also Payton. @Payton, maybe Juan created some confusion. And, Long, a guy said that he was you. 
	- LongForWisdom: Really? That is funny.
	- Nadia Alvarez: Yes, with a British accent and all of that. I do not know what to think...
	- LongForWisdom: Well, it was not me! ***laughs***
	- Juan: That is what you would say...
	- LongForWisdom: It is what I would say, but I have been writing docs all week. Super glad it went well. 

### Content Production Update

#### Seth Goldfarb

[31:00](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=1860)

[Content Production Biweekly Updates](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/content-production-bi-weekly-update-july-8-july-21-2021/9487/1)

- We published a [quarterly update](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/content-production-bi-weekly-update-july-8-july-21-2021/9487#quarterly-update-1) this week, which is the last update for the first quarter of operation. We'll be doing an accounting update in the next forum update, so it's clear how our funds are managed.
- The [budget](https://vote.makerdao.com/polling/QmbLa1Wm?network=mainnet#vote-breakdown) that we proposed for the next quarter is currently [passing](https://vote.makerdao.com/polling/QmbLa1Wm?network=mainnet#vote-breakdown), so thank you to everyone who supported it.
- A big focus for the last couple of weeks has been creating audio and video [clips](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvje--f34Ww) for Maker Relay. Three videos covering this week's Relay are on [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/c/MakerDAO/videos) already. We're going to create videos covering current events, the state of Dai, and votes and polls. It's taken a little bit of work to get production rolling, but once we get two or three weeks into this, the process should get more streamlined. We think this will be a pretty low-effort, high-quality spotlight on our leadership in decentralized Governance. 
- We've also met with GovAlpha and Protocol Engineering to discuss future [explainer videos](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R2FEhK1g2iAQJF_JHeG0YGyOKYyfeifsKDNHdfJFrPY/edit#gid=0) focused on Governance in the Protocol. We're honing on the organization of those. If anyone has any ideas for specific videos they'd like to see or how those videos could be organized, please feel free to reach out with feedback. All of the past requests have been incorporated already. 
- The [art contest](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/art-contest-dragon-vs-capybara-a-mascot-for-makerdao/9059) for the MakerDAO mascot will be running through the end of the month. Please send in your submissions to mascot@makerdao.world.
- We got the Community Portal redirected, so it now points to [makerdao.world](https://makerdao.world/en/). We were finally able to get technical support on dealing with the backend, which proved more work than anticipated, meaning it's more efficient to overhaul the whole thing than to bring someone on to keep it updated. Apologies to anyone I promised to publish articles on the community blog that has to go on the back-burner. The Community Portal will be back with a friendlier content-management system.
- Kat got the opportunity to speak at the EthCC MakerMafia event yesterday. If you want to know what the content team is up to, please get in touch.
- We put a [post](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/participate-in-brand-research-support-marketing-efforts-for-makerdao/9341) in the forum about conducting brand research. We want to speak with everyone willing to answer the question: "Why does MakerDAO matter to you?" We're aggregating these results to share with the community. It will help inform the content we'll be creating over the next months. Please sign up; we're looking for 15-30 minutes of your time.

#### Questions

- David Utrobin: What's the blocker for the blog?
  - Seth Goldfarb: The Portal was created to make it easy for contributors to update it. It, unfortunately, requires too much technical work to be a robust solution for us.
  - David Utrobin: Do you mean it takes a lot of time because the process of publishing is work-heavy?
  - Seth Goldfarb: Somewhat, but it's more about the number of dependencies that have been integrated with the backend and would need to be updated on an ongoing basis, resulting in a larger problem that we may want to deal with. 
  - David Utrobin: I see, thanks.
  - Wouter: Would the new version still have the possibility for outside contributors to send in suggestions?
  - Seth Goldfarb: Yes, we want it to retain that functionality. 
 - LongForWisdom: I was curious about the mascot competition. Have you received any submissions so far?
   - Seth Goldfarb: To be honest, we haven't received any submissions yet. With EthCC, we didn't expect to get many submissions until later in the month. We're going to push this week and promote it more. I know Kat's been giving out cards during EthCC. 

### Sustainable Ecosystem Scaling

#### Juan Guillén

[38:48](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=2328)

![](https://i.imgur.com/hol15sE.png)

- [Public Folder](https://drive.google.com/file/d/14Mx6CyJXvlo2Jw_KGoSw5zmn776gsWaD/view?usp=sharing)
- [Dai Foundation MIPs in RFC](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/mip39c2-sp17-adds-core-unit-daif-001-dai-foundation/9239)

![](https://i.imgur.com/OGgzlfb.png)

- [The DAOist](https://www.thedaoist.co/schedule)

![](https://i.imgur.com/rOkM7Ll.png)

- Wouter: We are working on better visualizing the different projects being done and the milestones we have planned for the future. 

#### Questions

- LongForWisdom: I am curious on what the length of time for the incubees is the plan? Is it just until they are ready? Is any of them close to ready? Is there a fixed cutoff, or how does that work?
	- Juan: It really depends. The official answer is that we aim for four to eight months, but it depends on each team's background. Some of them are really well acquainted with Maker. They have been working among themselves. They have a really solid base on anything that has to do with decentralized organizations. Depending on what they need to do, it might be "let's provide value, let's make sure that all the checklist is done and you are out writing the MIP." Or it could be a much longer process where we need to give courses on what Maker is doing, how they can help, and more. We have a list of all the modules that we have built with potential deliverables at the end. That would be useful for CUs that cannot incubate because of bandwidth or because they do not fall into our mandate. Still, everyone would be able to follow the course on their own with the provided templates. We will make that list public soon.
	- Wouter: I would expect that tomorrow, at least at the DAI level, these objectives and key results that we include for everything will be included in the presentation that Nikolaj will be giving. Also, the timeline is heavily influenced by the configuration of the team. Mostly whether they have worked together before or if they are a new team. A new team takes way more time to set up and make efficient than a team working together for a long time. 

### MIPs Update

#### David Utrobin

[45:45](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=2745)

[Weekly MIPs Update #45](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/weekly-mips-update-45/9427)

![](https://i.imgur.com/ZK1OG0X.png) 

![](https://i.imgur.com/EDf8Pd1.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/bJMiBMK.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/F3Lhfvj.png)

- I'm really curious to hear MKR holders' opinions on why voting on Collateral Engineering Services leads with a 'no.'

![](https://i.imgur.com/dVSdzor.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/VN9P3Zf.png)

- As for Strategic MarComms, it's their second attempt submitting a CU. 

![](https://i.imgur.com/YUNH7ab.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/8CJxGiL.png)

- MIP52: Dispute Resolution was leading last week, but the winds have changed. Now, it's a very split vote. I'm really curious to hear this discussed.
- To summarize the Formal Submissions, three-quarters of the CUs and MIP52 are not doing well. Everything else is currently passing. We have until Monday 26th to change our votes. 

![](https://i.imgur.com/DjK1DD5.png)

![](https://i.imgur.com/8PU0DSl.png)

- Please pay attention to Dai Foundation CU's proposed budget as it's changed from last week when I posted it incorrectly. 

![](https://i.imgur.com/oU6AlJh.png)

- @ultraschuppi proposed a MakerLabs CU. Even though it's an RFC, it's more of a conception. There's no facilitator proposal nor budget proposal, but the idea is there.

![](https://i.imgur.com/f58YqVW.png)

- MIP56's components have changed since they were first posted. Make sure to check those out!
- MIP57 was posted by @g_dip. There's a lot of back and forth in the forum on whether this is needed as a MIP. Feel free to jump in there if you're interested!

![](https://i.imgur.com/I24PGzJ.png)

- We're continuously improving [mips.makerdao.com](https://mips.makerdao.com/mips/list?&search=). A huge shoutout to @blimpa and DSpot for putting tons of work into the portal in the last month. 

## Presentations and Other Discussions

### Open Discussion

#### Announcements

[53:31](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=3211)

- PaperImperium: Please remember that on Wednesday, July 28th at 16:00 UTC, we will have [Representative Ted Budd](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/speaker-series-3-representative-ted-budd-wednesday-july-28-12-00-edt-16-00-utc/9458) of the US House Financial Services Committee as our third guest for a Q&A with MakerDAO. Go ahead and mark your calendar! There's [an anonymous question box](https://app.suggestionox.com/r/VPqPdb) available. 
- LongForWisdom: I'll plug another meeting that will take place on the same day, July 28th, at 18:00 UTC. During the first [Meet Your Delegate](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/meet-your-delegate-1-wednesday-july-28-6-00-pm-utc/9424) call, there will be an opportunity to recognize delegates and ask them questions. It's a great place to show up if you plan on delegating MKR to someone and you're not sure who. 

#### Restructuring Marketing in MakerDAO

[55:30](https://youtu.be/9dixuxRgT2A?t=3330)

- Christopher Mooney: I won't plug them, but I have a question considering the MarComms CU. What's the story behind how the voting goes? Are the MKR holders not content with the team's structure or their performance? As we build stuff, we will need somebody who would champion that and push forward a narrative. We need some sort of a marketing group. Since that group is in limbo, we've had situations where we wouldn't do well against our competition. Regarding MarComms, do we think we can do better? Or do we think we don't need marketing?
    - Wouter: As an MKR holder, I would also ask if having no marketing team is better than having one you're not 100% convinced of? 
    - Planet_X: I believe it's up to me to answer. As an MKR holder, I voted against the formation of the MarComms CU. I don't believe they're up to the task. We could say it was the Foundation that gimped them. Still, I think they never prevented the team from planning something useful. I'm torn by the whole situation. However, I believe it'd be better to start all over again. This is because it's not only Dai that needs marketing but also community, vaults, etc. I don't see the potential for that in the MarComms CU. I have put my arguments in the forum. It's hard to prove my opinion as marketing is not as strict as mathematics. Right now, I couldn't look another MKR holder straight in the eye and say that the marketing is handled well enough. I'm open to changing my mind, but I think we should start from scratch. Even if it means having no team for months. My view on MarComms might be unpopular, but it's real and honest. Please, voice your opinion if you don't agree. Also, the issue with AmaZix proved we don't have an effective interface for dealing with an external marketing team. They made a proposal that got rejected by everyone. 
    - David Utrobin: To clarify, my understanding is that the Strategic MarComms team, as it's proposed now, is not the same as the one in the Foundation. Some members were on that team. It's led by Kathleen, who worked with Coulter. So it's a derivative team, but they are starting from scratch. Personally, I'm not convinced we should be starting from total scratch. People who worked at the Foundation gained a lot of foundational knowledge and built out the foundational image of Maker. I don't think that should be put to waste. Having people from the original marketing team in this new marketing team makes sense to me, and that's part of the reason for my voting 'yes.' 
  - Planet_X: I'm not 100% on this, but my gut feeling says we should start all over. 
  - David Utrobin: Okay, thanks for sharing.
- Christopher Mooney: Part of the issue is that it'd be hard for any marketing team to develop a very detailed plan. As Maker, we haven't established what image we want to project or what we want our DAO's semi-official messaging. 
- David Utrobin: Also, it's not always clear to people what the actual product offerings on Maker are. There's a huge focus on Dai, but it's only one side of the coin. There's a potential line of business in oracles; there are many new vaults, there's the DSR, etc. External marketing teams will have a hard and long time getting up to speed on what exactly their marketing is. 
    - Planet_X: You are entirely correct about that. Everyone can have an opinion on marketing, so there's also a risk of making them a scapegoat. The job is very hard, I know that. Still, I've stated my opinion. 
    - Nadia: From what I hear, another problem with MarComms might be their budget proposal. Without the brand, products, or market defined, we don't know what the team could do within Maker. It's hard to tell if the budget proposal is relevant. From an MKR holder's perspective, it could raise doubts. In addition, it's a one-year budget. As the Growth CU, we decided to present a quarterly budget. My thinking behind it was that we should first present results and show the community what Growth is about. It might be a good idea for future CUs to start with a quarterly budget. It'd help the community and the group see and understand what they can do within the DAO. For example, what we are doing now in Growth is different from what we did when we were at the Foundation. The new context required recalculating our budget.
    - Planet_X: I don't have a perfect solution to the whole problem. Yet, I could imagine having at some point a marketing steering group that would navigate and provide directions on what we want marketing to do. Based on that, the initiatives could originate in-house. 
- Juan: We will see as a DAO that it's very hard to come with a unified vision, for better or worse. We will probably end up seeing different CUs getting their marketing budget. I could imagine Growth getting one, and Nik already announced some marketing budget for the Oracles CU. I don't know if it's the best way. However, we will have a hard time until a CU comes with a vision that resonates with the DAO and the MKR holders. Deciding on a vision within a committee would also be difficult. We would get as many visions as there would be people in the committee. As we grow more and more decentralized, we'll probably have to see either the marketing function within the CUs or maybe we'll have one CU with a message that resonates with the rest of the community. 
    - Planet_X: You could be completely correct about that. 
    - LongForWisdom: I don't love the idea of every CU handling their own marketing stuff. It seems a little inefficient, though maybe more decentralized. I wouldn't like to be the one worrying about how to spread the message of, e.g., how the delegates work. Even aside from the vision discussion, it would be useful to have a CU you could go to and ask them to organize a marketing push on something. 
    - Juan: Absolutely. I can imagine having a group or just one person doing the marketing on a per-hour basis and then later getting a budget from the DAO. It could address the concern with a new CU being paid upfront before proving their quality. I don't think every CU will need its own marketing function. However, I see potential in CUs getting marketing people to help from within or a small group of people who want to prove that they can do it. It could start small and then scale up. 
    - David Utrobin: I agree with the 'starting small and scaling up' approach. It makes a lot of sense to me. 
- Monkey.irish: One of the key aspects of this particular CU is that there are constraints in the Foundation and the DAO. Speaking from the experience of managing that transition for the past six-plus months, there's a lot that the community will never know about the constraints that we had in our systems for a variety of reasons. I know that the past is an indicator of future results, but it might not be the case. We also have a governance system set up to enable us to say, "let's put you in there, but we'll evaluate your performance later on. I'd encourage us to use those built-in systems in this case.
    - LongForWisdom: Most of that is on the proposing team. The team proposes a budget for a period of time. If they want to propose a shorter budget, maybe that gives it more chance of passing. If a CU proposes a year-long budget, it's hard for the government to cut it off halfway through.
    - Monkey.irish: I hear you. Yet, we're in a monthly budget cycle as the execs go through. There are checks and balances in the system to ensure that we're not spending money where we don't need to. Again, let's utilize the systems we have set up to try and give people an opportunity to put them closer to action and utilize their domain knowledge. If they're not successful, let's work with them to ensure that we can achieve success.
    - Juan: One of the factors for this disconnect with MarComms might be that there are usually no members from the team on the G&R call. Time zones might be to blame as people are located all around the world.
- Seth Goldfarb: Regarding AmaZix's proposal: typically, agencies work with companies with some sort of a marketing director or manager, and the agencies know what they're supposed to do for the company. With the AmaZix proposal, I was concerned that we don't have a team ready to take that responsibility. As part of Content Production, I wouldn't want to take it on. I think there's a dissonance there from a structural perspective. To that point, I think Planet_X's suggestion about a committee-based approach would be the way to go. We've had discussions around the parallelization of CUs, and that's an effort I generally support. However, I do see some issues with marketing units in particular. As others have brought up, there needs to be some level of cohesion around branding. I love the idea of having multiple CUs working on marketing. Still, they definitely need to be synced up on messaging. Another issue is the lack of specificity around the type of marketing activities that teams will engage in and why they make sense for the DAO. We've struggled with this even in our team. We can come up with different ideas, but we have to decide what's currently most effective at the end of the day. We do have certain needs that it'd be helpful to address. One is specifically around PR. I believe GovComms will take that on, so I'm excited to see that. We could work on some forum posts in the upcoming weeks to get a clear vision of what marketing activities the DAO would find valuable.
    - David Utrobin: I think it'd be a great idea for MakerDAO as an organization to devote a month annually to solidifying and revisiting the vision of what we see as a success, what we want to market at MakerDAO, etc. Marketing teams are at the whim of who participates and who interacts with them. That's why I encourage people from other CUs to participate in those conversations because without their input, it's hard to understand what the consensus is. I believe a marketing or vision month would make it more inclusive. 
    - Christopher Mooney: There's an alternative which we could go with right now. It'd be agreeing that we don't need a unifying vision for marketing. We have individual features that we'll release and individual audiences that these features are targeted at. To give an example, we just pushed the ability to take and use a 500 million Dai flash loan in a single block. I just looked at the contract. Not a single person has consumed a flash loan off that thing and sent it. It's because most people don't know they can do it. It might also be a problem with the documentation. We don't know that unless someone is trying to market it. Meanwhile, the PE team's moved on to work on something else. We don't need a unified vision to tell DeFi or engineers that a feature exists. We don't really need to know exactly what the audience is as it may change. There's no reason we can't be targeting institutions and end-users. Right now, I'm worried that without any kind of marketing, we will end up in a default scenario, e.g., Growth is pushing hard. Still, they might bucket us into the institutional direction. Maybe we could end up with more end-users, but it's hard to take a gamble there, and I believe you would get a ton of growth. Millions of users might not amount to one institution. Yet, we are trying to build an inclusive place without gatekeepers. We don't want to repeat mistakes from the past. I'm afraid that without a marketing CU, we won't be able to market to end-users. Even without a unifying vision, we need minimal marketing to gain adoption for the features we create. Eventually, we probably want to develop a unifying brand image, but we don't have to do that now.
    - Wouter: I want to go a step further than Chris. I'd challenge the fact we even need a single vision and brand image in the long term. I don't find pushing in this direction good. As a DAO, it's impossible to agree on that and do it effectively. Instead, we should focus on smaller groups and maybe use the so-called guerilla-style marketing. It might concern marketing individual features, or individual CUs, etc. We're not marketing Coca-Cola, we're marketing a decentralized ecosystem, and there'll always be different views on the ecosystem. I believe it should continue to be the case in the long run. Otherwise, we could lose out to our centralized competitors. 
    - Mariano: In a discussion in the forum before, as Growth, we came up with an idea of product marketing where each CU could market their product they know well. I like, e.g., how Oracles have their own marketing budget because they know exactly what people who use oracles are looking for. It could work the same for flash loans. It's hard to develop a message and look for an audience when a feature is very unique. I can imagine a small CU that would handle the branding, but I find product marketing the best and most efficient for us. 
    - LongForWisdom: I think I saw a lot of agreement with what Wouter was saying. From a governance perspective, it's a lot of expense for something that doesn't give us too much gain.
- Matthew Rabinowitz: One brief point on the successful capital structure. We've been waiting for a movement with the broker-dealer for the last few weeks to get the documentation finalized. It's giving us our Dai address. It arrived about half an hour ago. Now we will be getting that Dai address put into a target address set up in MIP21. Then, we'll be moving to close with the trustee in the coming weeks. So stay tuned! 

### Suggestion Box Question(s)

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## Common Abbreviated Terms

`CR`: Collateralization Ratio

`DC`: Debt Ceiling

`ES`: Emergency Shutdown

`SF`: Stability Fee

`DSR`: Dai Savings Rate

`MIP`: Maker Improvement Proposal

`OSM`: Oracle Security Module

`LR`: Liquidation Ratio

`RWA`: Real-World Asset

`RWF`: Real-World Finance

`SC`: Smart Contracts

`Liq`: Liquidations

`CU`: Core Unit

## Credits

- Artem Gordon produced this summary.
- David Utrobin produced this summary.
- Gala Guillén produced this summary.
- Sonya Olechnowicz produced this summary.
- Everyone who spoke and presented on the call, listed in the headers.
