Episode 188: April 28th, 2022

--- tags: G&R --- # Episode 188: April 28th, 2022 ## Agenda - [00:03](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3): Introduction - [02:08](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=128): Votes and Polls - [03:49](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=229): MIPs Update - [08:21](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=501): Forum at a Glance - [14:17](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=857): Initiatives Updates: Amsterdam Recap, Offboard Collateral Management, and ESG Research - [50:09](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3009): Discussion: Managing Core Units - [01:25:56](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5156): Open Discussion - [01:40:39](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=6039): Conclusion ## Video [Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5bliF28cbM) ## Introduction ### Agenda and Preamble #### Payton Rose [00:03](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3) - Hello. This is the 188 Scientific Governance and Risk meeting at MakerDAO. My name is Payton. I am one of the governance facilitators, and I go by Prose11 online. I am joined here by amazing people interested in contributing to the Maker protocol. - Today is April 28th, 2022; this is our weekly call. This session is being recorded. There is a raise hand function in Zoom. If you are unable or otherwise unwilling to hop on the mic, you can always drop a comment in chat. With that said, this is intended to be an open meeting. We want your input and questions. - I will go over the agenda to give you an idea of our discussion. If we have time, there will be an open discussion section: save your comments or drop them in the chat if there’s something unrelated you would like to discuss: awesome. We will start over with the governance Roundup, go over Votes, Maker improvement proposals, and what is going on in the forum. - We have initiative update reports that would be great to see and discuss, from conference collateral management to our sustainability questionnaire, from assisting the Sustainable Ecosystem Scaling Core Unit. Our main discussion will be on managing our CU. Those are structures for organizing the DAO and how the work primarily gets done in the current paradigm. ## General Updates ### Votes #### Payton Rose [02:08](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=128) ![](https://i.imgur.com/LgMkpDa.jpg) *Polls:* - 2 Weekly Polls - **PASSED** - Extended Strategic Happiness Core Unit (SH-001) Budget Until May Governance Cycle - Add wstETH-B as a new Vault Type - 12 Monthly Ratification Poll - Result in MIPs Segment - 2 Greenlight Polls (Voting ends May 2nd) - sETH (Stakewise Staked ETH) - HVBANK (Huntington Valley Bank Loan Syndication Collateral) *Executive:* - Last week's Executive - Whitelist Oasis.app on Multiple Oracles - **Passed and Executed** - Tomorrow's Executive Proposal - Core Unit Budget Transfer and Streams - PE-001 - COM-001 - DIN-001 - SH-001 ### MIPs #### Gala [03:49](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=229) ![](https://i.imgur.com/aAyWs0l.png) - This is Gala from GovAlpha. This week we had 12 certification polls that closed on Monday, 2/12 did not pass. Those were MIP66: pairwise licensure and one of the Governance Communications’ Budget did not pass. I suggest that you go to the voting portal for the board breakdown. Please take our weekly MIPS update that Pablo worked on number 84 in the forum, which has all the details and breakdown for this ratification polls. ![](https://i.imgur.com/320Dk3X.jpg) - Regarding Frozen Period: The proposals that want to be eligible for May's cycle. They assume most of the monthly proposals have a seven-day frozen period. They must remain unchanged for that period. Next, we can see which proposals are eligible for the May cycle. ![](https://i.imgur.com/iiotVRx.png) ![](https://i.imgur.com/FVywFSK.png) - Real-world assets arranged application from 6x Capital. The author of MIP 72 expressed that this proposal will remain under RFC for the next cycle. We also have some CU proposals related: this is CU offboarding process amendment. We are working on this, and it will stay under RFC for the next month as well. Then there's a CU budget process Amendment and the Strategic Happiness Budget. ##### Proposals in RFC [07:32](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=452) ![](https://i.imgur.com/HfoM1sB.png) ### Forum at a Glance #### Artem Gordon [08:21](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=501) Post: [Forum at a Glance: April 21st - 27th, 2022](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/forum-at-a-glance-april-21-27-2022/14839) Video: [Forum at a Glance](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=498) ![](https://i.imgur.com/dzeY9d5.jpg) ![](https://i.imgur.com/ghSaP3O.jpg) ![](https://i.imgur.com/4tksFfj.jpg) ![](https://i.imgur.com/mcyBFES.jpg) ![](https://i.imgur.com/E1H2WNO.jpg) ![](https://i.imgur.com/uovhwMs.jpg) ![](https://i.imgur.com/QmeEI9B.jpg) ![](https://i.imgur.com/TH0EkGb.jpg) ![](https://i.imgur.com/NFs85RP.png) ## Initiatives Updates ### Amsterdam Recap #### Prose11 [14:17](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=857) - Our first topic is Maker and Amsterdam. - David Utrobin: It is a little funny that I am introducing it because my team decided not to go to Amsterdam, which was hard considering how many people from the DAO were going. Lots of different teams went. Lenka from SCS provided an excellent summary on the forum that I believe Prose11 will break down for us. Feel free to share your experience and pass the mic over. - I know we got into my individual experience a little bit with last week's call talking about the global governance gathering and Dennis presenting his and Thiagos's workshop on Governance which was very fun. That was the highlight of my experience, other than meeting many wonderful Maker people for the first time. Shout out to everyone who could grab a coffee or meet up with me and one of the events attending was fun. We had quite the house back there. It was great to see so many Maker people from different teams; we had recognized delegates, just people generally interested in the protocol, kind of all together in one place. Lenkla's post because I thought she did an excellent job summarizing. David has already posted some key talks out of Amsterdam. Devconnects was a little unique. Several different conferences were occurring across other focus areas over two weeks. There are many opportunities to select what you are interested in. I was at the Global Governance gathering, so we got to see many of those mentioned on Tuesday, including Lenkla's office hours. Wouter did a talk on bringing Dunbar's barrier. That's the number of social interactions humans can keep track of, which is pretty cool. These recordings and the links are in the chat if you want to take a look. We got a special preview of Dennis's presentation last week. - The L2 guys from Protocol Engineering were also there. I heard many good talks and watched the recording, but it sounded pretty interesting with a risk framework. If you’re familiar with L2, that is a great site: how the different L2 are developing and what backgrounds and implementations they are utilizing to work on, whether roll-ups or something else. [17:59](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=1079) - MEV day was after I left, so I did not see any of these talks live in person. We saw a lot of cool tweet threads on them. We had Sam from Protocol Engineering there, who spoke about wallets, aggregators, and apps and hosted and a moderator for one of the flashbacks of the panel. Some of you might recall that one of the recently recognized delegates began to flash bots. That is just one small sampling of several events and many talks, but these are ones with recordings. If you are interested in any of the ones we brought up, you can check that link. I know a bunch of people were there. - Raphael Spannocchi: I think the whole decentralized nature of the events was amazing because one person did not plan it; it was a global matter. Then, others piled on top and did events in parallel. That was fun. [20:17](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=1217) - At the coworking space, you got to meet a lot of very young, up-and-coming devs that are either looking to build something new, learn, or participate in the hackathon. That was the biggest takeaway: there are many late teens to early 20-year-olds looking to get into the ecosystem. They are out there, and they will build something, and hopefully, they will build on top of MakerDAO. To me, that was the biggest takeaway. - Niklas Kunkel: One of Karthik’s stats during the intro session was that 31% of the participants there had joined crypto last year. They are entirely new: talking to some of these people, their idea of what is crypto and DeFi is quite more segregated than what veterans of the industry might think. One of the ways that it was expressed is that Maker has had a strong brand. We have had a strong association with decentralization and DeFi. There are a lot OGs and veterans that naturally support Dai because it was one of the first functional adapts created on Ethereum. Many of the newbies lack that context, and it shows because many of them have no idea what Maker is, or they have no idea about the association between Dai and Maker. And even for Dai itself, some of them did not even know what Dai was. The lack of marketing that we have right now is affecting us. We must expand on that and invest the resources to do that outreach. This industry is still tiny, and the industry will keep growing. This front-runner OG and cultural advantage that we have will keep diluting with the message about Dai, decentralization, and Maker. There were many great things about the conference, but you can check out our post and see them. In particular, this was one of my takeaways and something that we need to work on. ### Offchain Collateral Management #### Retro [24:21](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=1461) - Retro: I am Retro from the Sustainable Ecosystem Scaling Core Unit. As a project manager, I support the CMOs initiative, and I am also a part of the resources incubating the Real World Asset CUs. I am here to update the progress that the six initiative teams are making on real-world onboard assets. We will have six milestones for review today. The first milestone was created at the start of the CMOs working group. This milestone ensured that all deals progressing through the Real World Finance pipeline due diligence pipeline transitioned smoothly to this new working group. MS1 will soon conclude since this focus on existing deals and production, updates, and the ability to track it will be captured in the new collateral status index that the CES team has rolled out. - Today, we will break up this milestone into two discussion points: the existing deals published on the forum and the pre-MIP deals that the team is working on. I will quickly try to go through much information here for MS1A: existing deals. Since the last update, we have updated this chart to show the recently published MIPS that has moved on from a pre-MIP stage: the Oasis pro markets, MIPS, and HVB. - To get some flavor around the work involved and the purpose of forming this milestone, we wanted to capture the work going into the assessments and then improve the process and just servicing the deals. To touch upon topics that occurred while servicing these deals, Monetalis is a great example. The initial assessment was submitted for a MIP6, and the deal evolved based on that initial discussion. The deal status update: Real-World Finance teams have delivered all assessments for the MIP6, MIP65, and MIP68. We are currently waiting on the governance cycle for MIP65 and 68. - For Sachin, the work is ongoing for technical and legal mechanisms, and it is currently pending a due diligence review for the proposed Dai and Fiat broker. This set of legal documents is three documents where two are further along than the one, and there is also ongoing work to test the upgraded version of the smart contracts. 6S is another example of some of the team’s challenges in working through evolving deals. Specifically for due diligence, 6S and MIP6 had an assessment delivered. [27:59](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=1679) - MIPS72 was published during the wave of self-contained MIPS that we saw a couple of weeks back. Like Monetalis, they delivered the work, and the team is waiting on a response from success at this time. - The Oasis pro markets are the two new deals that the team is planning to release on market comparables to provide the community with a way to assess the deals. LTS is also completing a high-issue spotting review for the initial legal elements of the deal. HVP is currently in a green light polling with three days left. I believe it’s still at 100% voting in favor. The reason to include it on this slide is that it touches on some elements of prioritization. Prioritization has been a big subject matter that our team has identified that more work and definition need to go into: this is just a quick summary of these deals. We see evolving due diligence deals, and the other milestones support new challenges that have come up, making them more mature and robust. - Milestone 1B then is the work that the Real-World Asset CUs perform for potential applicants. Since our last update six weeks ago, this process has resulted in one borrower determining that they are not ready yet to engage with the DAO and will reengage at a later date once the organization is better suited to meet our standards. - This process has also been formalized with the MIP67 ratification earlier this week. Once the borrower's MIPS are posted to the forum, the MIPS will go into a production cycle again; the MS1 will be depreciated, so the production cycle of MP is communicated in the CSI. - This update has been published to the forum that captures a lot of the information I just provided. This was dated April 8th, and over the past three weeks, I have tried to communicate the latest developments. This will be an excellent resource for the community to keep track of a similar detail that I just provided for deals moving through the pipeline and into production. This is planned to be released on a regular cadence moving forward. - The MS2 speaks to the restructuring of the real-world finance CU to highlight the support it needs to onboard billions of dollars of real-world collateral. The initial strategies we presented to the community will develop the lending incubator for portfolio expertise. It will also develop legal and transition services CU for legal expertise. Then, the lending oversight team will support all functions of real-world asset activities. The major update here is that Love is planning their RFC publication for the May 8th deadline and is planning to enter the June cycle. We anticipate that LTS will follow close behind in terms of graduation. - MS3 was a focused engagement about revamping the collateral onboarding pipeline for applicants. The work manifested from this milestone could be broken down into four different categories, starting with the MIP76. This defined and solidified the methodology for completing reviews for real-world assets. Again, this was recently ratified. Due to this methodology change, the MIP6 application also needed an amendment with both of those passing. Then, we make sure that applications are up to speed with the new standards. Some of this process the community could have already seen for on-chain collaterals. Robert recently posted and went through the greenlit applications that needed updates asking for them to update or withdraw their application. - A similar process will follow for off-chain assets based on the ratification earlier this week of MIPS. All this information is now being communicated through the collateral status index for transparency purposes. Those updates that Robert has been providing have given great clarity to the community and organized the work of the CMAF team providing better structure and engagement points for the different CU stacks this one to support the initiatives. Another part of this is continuous improvement. As a quick preview, we anticipate forming a new milestone that will build on the success already and focus on prioritizing MIP assessments. [33:45](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=2025) - Reviewing what this looks like, then to provide some context for off-chain collateral, the applications shown here are currently submitted or undergoing polling. Applications that have been submitted are pending assessments being released. If the assessment has been released, waiting for the poll to go through. Once they move on to the green light pool, they will be prioritized for assessments sitting in a green light, then move into assessment and further implementation. - The list of collaterals needs to be refreshed according to the new methodology and application. As a quick review here, this is the current deals in assessment and implementation to show the pipeline that has been developed. The last slides speak to the maple finance D3M research and development specifically for the legal review. Growth, Protocol Engineering, and CES are leading the integration for Maple finance. Real-World Finance, LTS, and Love support the initiative from a legal and credit standpoint. Christian from the incubating LTS CU spearheaded this. In the last update, he was kicking off this milestone with maple. Since then, work has been made to identify a pool delegate, and LTS is now engaging with this new kind of counterparty for further development. In the background to CES and protocol, have a seat scheduled for the technical challenges that are coming up. The next step is to publish the agreements with recommendations for possible amendments if needed. - MS5 is similar to MS4 in terms of legal research. This is for a Centrifuge. LTS, Real-World Finance, and Centrifuge have all worked together to produce an indenture, which will serve as the foundational legal agreement for the new structure. This is in the final reviews by LTS and real-world finance and external legal counsel. - MS6 is publishing a report on asset management liability strategies: the goal speaks to doing something for the first time and is a way for Maker to bring new assets to replace USDC. With this real-world, DeFi touchpoint, it’s currently locked. The more discussions we have with counterparties, the more clear that this becomes. Christian and the team are engaging several counterparties to continue the conversations and research, and they are preparing to publish a mid-project report. The anticipated timeline for this milestone to be completed is closer to the end of Q3. To keep the community up to date, we will be publishing some of our findings soon. That does it for our update. - ElPro: Retro, thanks for the presentation. This might be more geared towards RWF, and I brought this up to them because I am seeing some progress being made by other competitors in the RWA realm. Some have been MIPS6 applications posted in the Maker forum; they are now shifting. They pretty much have left anyway. Regardless, they seek a different approach; just wondering if there are always some of these milestones can be? Not necessarily fast track, but there is a possibility that we could get something delivered by June of this year. - Retro: I would have to defer to the Real-World Asset team. - Luca: I do not know if there is somebody from Real-World Assets. We want to do differently from Aave or our competitors when real-world onboarding assets in terms of the medium-term ambition. However, I get Frank’s point. Max has commented here that HVB is currently in the green light process. It has the ambition to complete all the milestones by late June, which will be great for us and subject to the approval of the Governance of the MKR holders. The real-world asset team will do its best to make it happen. I think it is an incredible opportunity. We would like to onboard a regulated bank with billions of dollars to deploy, which excites us, and a regulated bank for which linking with Maker is strategic. This is not comparable to the situation around where they had this toy. They have this project to which they dedicate time, but it is not strategic. And that means that they do not have the same sense of urgency that we do. [40:08](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=2408) - Luca: We still hope that it will be delivered by that time, but it’s not in our hands. At the same time, we are waiting for Oasis promarket to bring the two opportunities they currently have on the forum for the next cycle. This depends on them. If they come in and get approved, they should be in good shape. The D3Ms that we are exploring with Maple and TrueFi are hybrid and have the ambition to go live before the end of Q2. Again, I know that there is frustration because this thing is complex; we raised the bar, which has created much noise initially. We are finally in great shape to deliver something tangible to the community. I get your urgency Frank; I have the same feeling we don’t have. We do not have to strive for perfection. Otherwise, we will never get anything done. - ElPro: I heard it through the grapevine that many banks out there in the EU are more focused on dealing with some of the sanctions than figuring out how to make money in Q2 of 2022. Just a little bit concerned if we are going to sit around and wait for a large institution of banks to come in knocking at the door of MakerDAO or if we’re going to take some affirmative action to take some of these innovative platforms that are starting to ramp upright. I only see a trend that I think will get better. You have prominent - PaperImperium just posted Goldfinch. They onboarded a former MIPS6 applicant of MakerDAO. I appreciate the understanding: this is pending, and looking forward to seeing something get onboarded soon. - Luca: I also think that they’re not necessarily competitors. Onboarding somebody who leaves MakerDAO out is what we would love to do because Goldfinch is a different play; they have other risk appetites, cannot absorb losses, and are not magic managing a currency. We hope that Goldfinch comes to us, and they asked for a D3M in the same way that Maple and TrueFi are thinking about, so this will be our ultimate goal. I know that Will is not on the call, but I know that Will is in contact with the Goldfinch guys, so we would love to explore potential interactions with the protocol, the same way we are doing with TruFi and Maple. - Someone: There has been discussion lately with Goldfinch. We were in talks with them a long time ago, actually less last year, but they had their priorities and time to organize themselves. Now they are also getting a bit more in line with our initiatives. Something coming from Goldfinch similar to D3M initiatives is probably not out of whack. I can assure you that the team has already re-engaged with us. - Someone: I think on the other topic covered with you, Frank, they have an internal target date: once the summer holidays hit France, we will not hear from them for two months. They are doing everything we can to get asked implementational all done and validated before summer starts. ### ESG Research #### Julian Frede [45:34](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=2734) - I’m here to briefly introduce a survey request related to this ESG research. It’s part of SES research. What are we doing with this research? We pulled out relevant topics about sustainability and Maker. - *First step*: SES and I discussed the range of topics and discussed which of them were somehow related to Maker, and then we clustered them into seven topic clusters: - **Ecological footprint** - **Community** - **Cyber ecosystem** - **Financial inclusion** - **Talent & employer** - **Regulation** - **Strategy & Processes** - *Second step*: In Sustainability, you first speak with the relevant stakeholders about how you see the relevance of these topics. For example, here, on **ecological footprint**: ![](https://i.imgur.com/C6HjytW.jpg) - You drill that down to different topics in that cluster; for example: how relevant is consider the active management and reduction of CO2 emissions? And that is something you now do in a survey approach. - From there, the discussion can start. It’s possible to analyze who sees the topic, different topics, and who sees the topics related here as relevant or not relevant; from there, you can start and implement, discuss, and so on. - The goal here is to learn which topics are relevant to the stakeholders. #### Juan [48:36](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=2916) - Something very interesting for me when we sent the initial links to the participants was that one of them was like, “We do not need ESG within Maker,” and you told me this is a very valuable point, and it is something that we want to hear as well. So maybe you can comment on that so that we can get more voices, even from dissenting people. That, for me, was very revealing. And I think it’s important to highlight. #### Julian Frede [49:13](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=2953) - We usually use this approach as the standard in Travefy, corporations, and financial institutions to grasp sustainability topics. We get this gloomy normative discussion out of the way and go more on a science-based or methodology systemized approach to this discussion. ## Discussion ### Core Unit Management #### Thomas Flitter [50:48](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3048) - I’m Thomas Flitter, engagement lead for the GovComms team. Longtime listener, first-time caller, and excited to talk discussion segment today. - Our topic today is managing our CU. - We stand at 19 CUs, with about 115 employees involved in MakerDAO. And we’re facing some challenges. - Many of the CUs have at least one facilitator. They manage many things (objectives and vision, developing strategic initiatives, etc.) and develop and submit budgets to support that CU. - And on that —the budget proposals— have their challenges. - We want to take a look today at some of those underlying themes and get some feedback from the folks here on the call to discuss some of these challenges and some of these underlying things? - We can structure this in three axes: ![](https://i.imgur.com/2GJkisy.jpg) - When you look at **Needs vs. Wants**, we are talking about clarity on justification: What do you _need_ versus what do you _want_. And I want to ask everyone out there: **what are some of those challenges? Are we limiting ourselves to what we need versus what we want?** - I want to open the floor a little bit to ask folks about **what are some of those underlying things you're facing when you've got a budget or budget proposal?** - Because those proposals have their challenges, I wanted to open the floor up to start generating some thoughts about some of the challenges of budget proposals. #### David Utrobin [53:42](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3222) - I'd like to open it up first and leave my experience with our team's last couple of budget proposals. - As many of you know, GovComms put up SP62 and SP63 to this month's government cycle. Thankfully, SP62 passed, but for a short while, it looked like both wouldn't be passing. - The interesting thing is that ---from our perspective--- SP63 was part of a larger strategic direction for how our team would like to expand so that we can cover our mandate and do better at really fulfilling our mandate. - The challenges that I've faced are basically **how do I make the case to delegates?** The value of the proposal: **is it a _need_ or is it a _want_?** - Well: **I did present a bit of both**. Because on the one hand, it is a need. But it's kind of hard to define that line. Is it something that needs to be approved now? Or can it be approved in six months? - The biggest thing that helped was all of the different conversations I had with delegates. Sharpening my relationship with the delegates was key to getting some of that missing feedback that I wasn't getting throughout the quarter. - It was also key to understanding why my budget proposals were struggling. - It was also key to helping align the direction that I have in mind for my team with the direction and expectations that delegates might have for my team. #### Thomas Flitter [56:25](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3385) - Related to **Tells vs. Asks**, good facilitators better communicate how or why they make decisions and justify their costs. - Another thing is to think about **Growth vs. Trim**. - There's been much discussion about being aggressive vs. conservative, where we want to focus on our spending. **What are some of your thoughts and approaches to that question of growth vs. strength?** because I know that comes up often. #### Payton [57:26](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3446) - From the Governance angle, we did have at least one of the delegates dedicated to not voting for budgets with significant increases for CUs. That's something that plays into this growth vs. trim debate within the community. That's perhaps one tangible example of what we're talking about. #### Derek [58:00](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3480) - For Protocol Engineering, a lot of the impetus for the way we created our budget proposal was driven by direct community discussion. And a lot of that happened in Denver, where we had direct one-to-one discussions with delegates and community members, being the topic of late, of course, the workaround L2. - That's driven many conversations and, therefore, also a necessity for what we're trying to do and the resources needed. - I think it's key to the communication between the community, MKR holders, and the teams that are doing the work in all these cases. It all comes back to those discussions, the Forum, Discord, and ensuring that that discourse happens. #### Thomas Flitter [58:55](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3535) - Seems one of the main issues is aligning needs between the community and the needs of the CUs. I think it's the communication and the relationship between the delegates and facilitators; that build that relationship. - One of the things too is the direction setting and the delegates in providing that constructive feedback. It's very important as we continue to develop our CU strategic initiatives--- to have that feedback. - One of the other things, too, is that **part of the issues do come from dealing with misinformation**. We've gone through several CUs conversations, the tension between folks coming up with misinformation. And that's been a challenging piece to it. - As you submit a budget and get information back; **what kind of misinformation have you been dealing with? And what are the challenges you've been facing?**. #### David Utrobin [01:00:35](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3635) - I think there were two main buckets: - **Number one** is misinformation about how the protocol as a whole is doing. How do we view the protocol's status and health as a whole? And I think this was mainly driven over the last month or two by some UI quirks with Maker Burn maybe not accurately representing financial information. - **The second bucket** is sentiment, facts, and ideas around CUs themselves. One of the things that our team dealt with during this governance cycle was addressing many criticisms around our team. And some of them were just not true like we're playing or making a lot more money than we are. Pretty simple things, but things that delegates would be told by the people delegating to them or people in the community. And all that is not verified information that gives a loose idea about the CU and the team. The number one thing that helped us deal with that for our team was **direct communication with delegates**. I appreciated it when two or three different delegates came to me and said, "Hey, this is the problem," and they gave me the chance to defend myself and to give them our viewpoint that aligns everybody closer to the truthful information and the real cause of helping us grow. So, yeah: **direct communication with delegates is the key message that I want to share**. #### Juan [01:03:00](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3780) - To Thomas: **What are you referring to with _misinformation_? Do you have any particular case that you wanted to address?** #### Thomas Flitter [01:03:05](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3785) - With "misinformation," we refer to folks not being clear on the objectives for the CU and what the strategy is. I also think it was a question about profitability and ensuring that certain aspects of that CU are communicated correctly. And so that was one of the things we wanted to point out. And I see many people not liking the misinformation. #### David Utrobin [01:04:06](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=3846) - I think there's a difference between saying something is misinformation or something is just a flat-out lie. - And I think misinformation as a term has been overused. I think it captures a neutral stance on a person's motive regarding the information they share; is it a lie? Is it intentional? Unintentional? Has the person who shared the info just been misinformed? - MakerMan makes a fantastic point. He's not a fan of binary thinking concerning the information. Certain kinds of information have statistical relevance, but, in general, information changes, and getting an accurate understanding of the current case of things is also important. Maybe you hear something that might have been the case a month ago, but it's not the case today. - I'm interested and excited to see how direction setting at the DAO evolves because I think one interesting aspect of it is that CU facilitators are the closest people on the ground to their work. So they have the most wisdom and insight concerning their function. - I feel there's a little bit of space between delegates and facilitators in this regard. I feel delegates are tempted to be direction setters. But at the same time, soar facilitators. #### Kianga [01:06:45](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=4008) - David, as you mentioned direction setting, I'd love if anyone else on the call would share their views on the role of the delegate. - **What is the view today from the community of what do you think delegates should be doing?** - **Setting the direction or doing more listening to kind of try and perceive what the community wants and then provide leadership around that input?** - **And how do we get that input?** - Someone spoke about this idea of an executive delegate role in the call we just had before this on the strategic initiative. #### Unknown [01:08:08](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=4088) - I can just add a little more context about the mentioned call. - With SES, we have started the Strategic Initiative, the DAO Resilience Improvement Initiative. And that one has two big elements. - One element is truly about creating a roadmap for the practical execution of tasks and changes that may improve the resilience, whether it be on the financial or operational level of the DAO. But to put the roadmap like that together and make it possible to make also big changes might require more coordination than we're currently capable of. - I think we need to have a clear expression of the vision and the strategy that each delegate would want to pursue. - And maybe also see which delegates are closer to each other in their outlook of what Maker DAO should be in the future and which ones are further apart, and what the different dimensions are like: is there a difference in opinion about decentralization? is there a difference in opinion about risk appetite? Is there a difference in opinion about the aggressiveness of growth? - There's a lot we don't know yet. We don't even know if these are the right dimensions. But this is what the DAO Resilience Improvement Initiative also includes. - There is a Discord channel on the MakerDAO Official Discord for people interested in that, which is called _The Resilient Stakeholder Initiative_. - Today's meeting was recorded and made available, and future meetings will also be open attendance. So everyone interested in those aspects is welcome to join. This is a longer-term focus, and we're trying to get to the bottom of the issues and find how delegates are aligned or not aligned around vision and strategy. We only just kick-started it today. But I hope it can add a lot to the conversation we're having here. - As it goes to direction setting delegates vs. facilitators, if we do assume that delegates have a clearly expressed vision and strategy for MakerDAO (even if there may be competing ones), then I think that's the level of direction setting that we would typically like to see; it's very high level, and it does not stay away from micromanagement. - In the absence of high-level direction like that, people tend to micromanage instead, which risks removing a lot of the advantages that a decentralized organization should have. - And I think that if there is a high-level direction that is set by the delegates, and ---as a consequence--- they can stay away from micromanagement and just fund the projects, the CUs, and the budgets that they support through their vision strategy and make it clear why or why not, then there is plenty of room for facilitators to create their projects and manage their CUs with a great degree of freedom, which is needed to keep things going in a DAO because people need to be able to operate fairly independently from one another. They need to be motivated, work the way they like, and not have too many micromanagement rules to worry about. #### Eric [01:13:57](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=4437) - I guess one question/observation I have is... **should delegate at times take more initiative around difficult subjects?** - At times, there are decisions to be made or not made, and where the community might have split. We've generally found that when a complicated issue arises, the delegates want to hear about it but don't necessarily want to step forward and lead on it. And at the end of the day, **how much are we supposed to be leading?** In some of these things, we'll get accused of being tangled. And if we just report to the delegates, **should they be taking more initiative on tough issues? Providing leadership and honestly taking some personal risk by taking a position and bringing it out before the community?** - Otherwise, it always falls back to the CU, and I wonder how that should work out? Because on the one hand, they want to see you take the initiative, but on the other hand, you got a fair amount of criticism when they see us take too much initiative. #### Niklas Kunkel [01:16:00](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=4560) - I wanted to give the counterpoint to what I just heard about delegates stepping up and making decisions vs. ---as I heard on the other side--- facilitators that need to take charge and contribute to tough decisions - As a facilitator of a particular CU (Oracles), my mandate is just to do Oracles. So, often, when it comes to these decisions within the DAO, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be contributing to those decisions. - When I do, **am I contributing as a community member who would like to see a decision be made in a certain direction, or am I contributing as an Oracle facilitator who technically has no authority on anything outside of Oracles?** - I think there's a little bit of a disagreement; it's quite unclear. Some people feel that it's within our remit to contribute to decisions outside of our mandate. In contrast, others are more strict constitutionalists and go, "this is my mandate, and I shouldn't be contributing to anything else." - Having a little more clarity around what the expectations are, I think, will help things go a lot more effectively in whatever direction we go. #### Nadia Alvarez [01:18:21](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=4701) - I agree with you, Nick. But I also see that sometimes I would love to stick to my mandate and do that, but there are so many things that I see that someone has to do in the DAO, and no one is doing, like the Twitter account. - We have so many holes in the DAO that I can't just sit on my mandate and do nothing else. - At the same time, I understand what you said about facilitators not being involved in these decisions. Still, we are doing everything, and we understand what's happening within the protocol from a different perspective. I don't know who else is that much exposed as we are to the current situation of the protocol. - I hope that, with this new initiative that SES is leading, we can define it because I see that there are so many things to do but then when we arrive at a crossroads. We need to make a decision, some say _yes_, some say _no_, and then it is super hard to do something and commit yourself; there is a disconnection. #### Niklas Kunkel [01:21:09](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=4869) - I don't disagree with anything you just said. There's much stuff to do, and there's no one responsible for doing it, and so people step up, and they do things that are outside of their mandate, and it benefits the protocol, and the community, **but is that a long term, viable process?** - I disagree. I think it's a failure of the DAO not to have committed people and/or teams for those things being medicated by people like Nadia and Sam stepping up and doing things going above and beyond right and doing things outside of their mandate. - I guess one of the things that concern me too is... we're trying to get more oversight and more accountability in the DAO; more transparency of the CUs, but, ultimately, I'm going to be judged based on how the Oracles CU is performing, and so I'm incentivized to focus on my CU because if I start solving all of these problems that are outside of the CU. Then the CU suffers for it; I'm doing a poor job, right? - I think everyone feels differently about this. But I think it will fall back to that type of behavior. So we need to plug these holes that we see and not just expect people like Nadia and Sam and a whole host of other people to do that work. That is not a sustainable way of working. It's just a stopgap. #### MakerMan [01:23:38](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5018) - I want to echo both what Nadia and Nick are saying. In the loosest sense, **who has the authority and responsibility here?** Maker holders, right? In this case, delegates fall in the middle of this: if we weren't here, it would all fall to Maker holders; that's where you would want to see such a strategic unit form. - The way I see it as an organization is this: it has many groups that should be focused on third tasks and their tasks alone; they can look across the spectrum, and they definitely should coordinate, _but_ when it comes to information and doing their job, they do their job, and then they feed information up to somebody or some Unit. Everybody hates this idea of centralization, but the concept is valid, that information must flow up to some group that then makes a strategic decision and then basically allocates resources that then funneled down to everybody that sets the new direction. - I liken it to a ship with many rollers: if the Norse were across the ocean and all these guys who were rolling were barking orders, they wouldn't get anywhere. You needed one guy going, "we're going this way, and we're doing this," and maybe they argued about it, but in the end, somebody had authority and responsibility to do it. - I see that MakerDAO doesn't have a centralized direction. Delegates could form a strategic unit because we're the ones with most of the vote, and we can coordinate. CUs can funnel up information and how they're doing their jobs, and then we set the strategic tone and direction, right? - I agree there's a huge hole that needs to be filled, and from my seat (and I'm not doing this just because I want to be this person or this delegate), I think it's the delegate's mandate to form such a strategic unit and coordinate CUs. ## Open Discussion #### Max Glass [01:26:06](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5166) - Firstly, that conversation was wonderful. And I think that we could talk about growth vs. trim as it relates to Content Production CU, which is oriented towards increasing growth, and at the same time, I think it would run on an incredibly lean budget or at least lean margins for the for Glass Entertainment. - We had a conversation this morning with Mariano, and he was wonderfully helpful. I look forward to working and collaborating with him and getting his guidance. We're committed to coordinating with him and with Growth CU. - I think he described the potential path to this group (Glass Entertainment), getting a development budget so it can put together a cool proposal, and I think we will collaborate on putting that in front of everybody. - I see the comments saying that if we want to onboard new CU, we better figure out what message we want them to project, and that's part of this three-month development process of us being in the community and communicating with as many parties as we can to figure out the best narratives. And this is all about narratives. It's all about storytelling. And Glass Entertainment is a storytelling machine. - The idea is to leverage this storytelling machine to identify the best narratives for the benefit of MakerDAO and each CU and get those narratives pre-approved. - I'd love to see if anybody has any questions for us. I think that the long-term goal is not to be an outside provider. I work in MakerDAO every day related to onboarding real assets, so I'm sort of on the front lines of one part of the growth strategy. I don't know as much as Nadia about how MakerDAO operates, but I'm trying my best, and I am doing my best to understand the levers. - I think that being better at telling our story is one great lever that we can pull, especially with so many growth initiatives coming online with L2 scaling and all of our institutional options. - I think instead of being an outside contractor, the idea is to build in a crypto native and MakerDAO native group that's embedded, that has real long term, long-standing relationships with the CUs, that understands truly how to operate in this political system, and is essentially long term incentivized in the same way the CUs are. - The CUs, ultimately, by proving themselves, can earn an MKR vest once they've proven that they're worthy of it. And I think that if you look at the budget proposal for the initial 125,000 development budget, there's only 10% that's actual profit for Glass Entertainment Group. 90% of every dollar shows up on the screen, and they are a low-margin business that primarily serves cable television, which is a dying industry. - So, I think there's an opportunity for that company ---It's my mom's company--- to serve a growing industry instead of a dying one. But they can still operate superlean, in 90% of it showing up on screen and then earning a low production fee. #### Nancy Glass [01:30:53](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5453) - We're also a huge digital unit and a huge and super successful podcast unit. We're one of the top 100 companies in the world in production. - We don't think about it 10% profit; we usually make less because we don't care. I've never thought about money in my life; what I think about is: how do you tell a great story? How do you get involved in something that is super cutting-edge? We have been involved in the growth of so many different companies because that's what's exciting. - Somebody asked us an interesting question: **are we trying to be the brand messaging leader or just content production itself?** Well, we want to be both. But what we want to do is respond to what you need. - When you say, "you guys are gonna hate working with us because we have different ideas every week, and it will be opposite the last one," well: welcome to my world! This is what we do. Every day, I have dealt with executives who say, "I want it to be smart, but not intelligent," and "I want it to be fresh but familiar." We don't care what we're attracted to our brains, innovation, and opportunity. - We just launched a brand new fitness app. It's a new piece of fitness equipment that works with AI and robotics to measure what your body is doing and respond to you instantly. We did it just because it's fun. We will eventually make money on it, but it was so exciting and fun in such a successful launch. And it's an international launch. We also understand the international audience. #### Max Glass [01:32:49](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5569) - Just a comment. We don't want to step on anyone's toes. We don't. And I think the advantage of Glass Entertainment it's listening first. It's about listening. - I'm new. I've only been involved in Maker since August. And I've made a little bit of an impact so far. I hope. And I think everybody here intends to do more listening, primarily listening and not being pushy or stepping on anyone's toes. I think Glass Entertainment has been successful for many years, working for some very difficult clients. #### Jen [01:33:50](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5630) - I have a question. I guess where I'm landing is the model, right? **Why does this need to be created as a CU when you guys can excel, as you have been successful for so many years?** I don't think anybody is questioning the quality and the potential you guys can bring. - You just said you're going to have to operate in this DAO political landscape. **Why would you want to bring on that additional burden to yourself when you could be freely left alone and operating through, whether it's a brand CU or another CU, to funnel you the pertinent information you need, and then you execute on that?** #### Max Glass [01:34:48](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5688) - Well, because I don't think we want to burden you with that. I don't think we need to be seeking CU status off the bat. I think it'd be nice to get funding to do this development budget and have a three-month period where we can prove that we can work in the community and don't have to be a burden on Growth to be a conduit to all of the other CUs. Instead, I can have direct relationships and be savvy enough. - The other answer is that the idea here is not to make money from the DAI. It's not about squeezing dollars out of this thing (because ---again--- 90% ideally goes on screen). It's about earning a stake in MakerDAO long-term. - And that's my understanding of CU: they have long-term compensation; they're aligned to Maker DAO. And we're not asking for any MKR at this point, I don't think we'd ask for six or eight months until we're up and running in production and we've built credibility. Does that make sense? Is that reasonable? #### Jen [01:36:12](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5772) - Definitely. And it's great to hear you want to be long-term in Maker. I see it will be much more difficult right off the bat in this developmental phase for you to source the critical information you'll need to the on-ramp and get your heads around this world. - If you liaised with CU, that could guide you, which will make your lives a lot easier. You can simultaneously participate as a community member; you don't have to be a paid community member; you can simultaneously buy MKR, should you want to, and get that upside (I'm not recommending that, of course). - It feels unnecessary to start as a CU when it could be much more elegant in a hired agency capacity. #### Max Glass [01:37:11](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5831) - I understand. And I think we don't start on day one as a CU so long as maybe Growth can provide a budget to get the development started. - If that's a possibility (I think Mariano had said that was a possibility), we could be incubated inside Growth. However, part of my job every day is helping outside institutions understand how to interact with MakerDAO. - And I can provide that service to Glass Entertainment. I've got a good relationship with the company. I can provide that guidance. Hopefully, you and Mariano will be okay providing guidance. Initially, we just want enough development budget to get this going. #### Nadia Alvarez [01:38:04](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5884) - I don't think it is because of your proposal; I think we, as a DAO, do not know when someone should be a CU or a service provider. That is a question that will happen currently, and we have no idea that. It is not just because of your specific proposal, but it is in general, we do not know. - If companies like yours become CUs, we will have 500 or 1000 CUs. I do not know what should be the path that we should take. And I think the community does not know either. There is much debate around that. #### David Utrobin [01:39:07](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5947) - I think one thing to consider is the tools that potential contributors have at their disposal, so you do not have to go for CU status. You can, as you mentioned, approach a CU like Growth or SES to see if they have a budget to help incubate you or give you some sort of chance. I want to point you guys to the SPF tool in the MIPS. SPF stands for Special Purpose Fun. It can be used to propose a limited engagement or project, and it sounds like that might be perfect for Glass Entertainment. #### Max Glass [01:39:47](https://youtu.be/V5bliF28cbM?t=5987) - That is great. I have never heard of the SPF. So thank you so much, David, for suggesting that. - I think that my goal here is to get to the point where there is a development budget as fast as possible so that Glass Entertainment can show you what they are capable of. I have my credibility on the line here if they fail. - I hope to have a long-standing, good standing with this community, and they have their reputation. And reputation is essential ---over the long term--- what matters most. So I do not think they're going to fall on their face or let anyone down with a 125,000 development budget to put together an amazing proposal. [Suggestion Box](https://app.suggestionox.com/r/GovCallQs) ## 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 - produced this summary. - Andrea Suarez produced this summary. - Iván produced this summary. - Everyone who spoke and presented on the call, listed in the headers.