---
tags: G&R
---

# Episode 193: June 2nd, 2022

## Agenda

- [00:00](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI): Introduction
- [02:11](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=131): Votes and Polls
- [04:13](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI): MIPs Update
- [09:09](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=549): Forum at a Glance
- [17:16](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=1036): Initiative Updates: Priorization Framework by GovAlpha
- [48:38](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=2933): Discussion: Visions for MakerDAO
- [1:28:44](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=5324): Conclusion

## Video

[Link](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI)

## Introduction

### Agenda and Preamble

#### Payton Rose

[00:00](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI)

- Hello, everyone, and welcome. This is episode #193 of our Governance and Risk call at MakerDAO. My name is Payton Rose, and I am a facilitator at the GovAlpha CU, one of the governance facilitators for the organization. I go by Prose11 online.
- We are at our weekly G&R call. This is being recorded. So hello, if you are watching from YouTube later. This is a meeting where we get together, talk about what is going on with Maker, have some open discussions and dialogue, and try to keep everyone updated and informed.
- A few ground rules. Before we get started, let us try not to talk over one another. There are a couple of useful facilitation tools that will help me out with running the meeting. One of them is the raise hand feature on Zoom. You can find that under reactions. If you would like to add a comment or question after whoever is speaking is done, go ahead and use that raise hand function, which will let me know I can call on you. Likewise, if you have something you would like to add but either cannot or do not want to come on the mic, you can always drop your comment in chat. We will also go through those. There is an agenda that we will be showcasing shortly. I will try to keep us to that agenda; if your comment or question does not quite fit in, we might have to wait till the open discussion section. We will try to get everyone's comments, questions, and concerns.
- Our Agenda Today:
- We will start with our governance roundup that includes the votes that have taken place. We will go on to the Maker improvement proposals and what is happening on the forum.
- We have a quick initiative update from me about Propritization Sentiment Polling. You might remember that being introduced a few weeks ago, and there has been an update.
- Finally, we have a pretty broad discussion topic today. Hopefully, it should be good to get a lot of different voices and opinions. That is going to be on visions for MakerDAO.

## General Updates

### Votes

#### Payton Rose

[2:11](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=131)

*Polls:*
- 8 Concluded Weekly Polls - PASSED
- Vault Offboarding: UNI-A, UNIV2DAIETH-A, UNIV2WBTCETH-A, UNIV2UNIETH-A, and UNIV2WBTCDAI-A
- PPG - Open Market Committee Proposal
- Modify Oracle Data Models
- Update Oracle Expiration Time for All Oracles
- 1 Concluded Greenlight - DEFFERED
- FEI (Fei USD)

*Executive:*
- Last Executive - Passed and Executed:
- Raise ESM Threshold - 150,000 MKR
- Adjust "lid" Parameter - 30,000 DAI
- MKR Transfers - DUX, SAS
- Next Week: CU Budgets, MOMC Proposal, 1st Step Collateral Offboardings, Recognized Delegates Compensation, and Starknet Bridge Changes

### MIPs

#### Pablo

[04:13](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI)

[Weekly MIPs Update #89](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/weekly-mips-update-89/15464)


















### Forum at a Glance

#### David Utrobin

[9:09](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=549)

Post: [Forum at a Glance: May 26th - June 1st, 2022](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/forum-at-a-glance-may-26-june-01-2022/15569)

Video: [Forum at a Glance](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=545)

- _Announcements_:

- [Mhonkasalo & teemulau Delegate Platform](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=576)
- [Amended MIP40: Important Information for Core Units](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=615)

- _Discussions_:

- [The Endgame Plan parts 1&2](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=659)
- [MakerDAO: Long-term Growth Strategy for the Future of DeFi](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=688)
- [[Informal Poll]Require 2/3 approval to issue MKR or debt](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=738)

- _Active Signal Requests_:

- [[Signal Request]Deploy a Trial Permissionless Open Market Operation & Resurrect the Burn](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=738)
- [[Signal Request]Incoming Velodrome Airdrop on Optimism - $VELO veNFT](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=845)
- [[Signal Request]Request Minting of new MKR Tokens to Replace MKR Tokens Inadvertantly Sent to MKR Token Address(Burned)](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=934)
- [[Signal Request]Update dust limit analysis](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=953)

## Initiative Updates

### Prioritization Framework by GovAlpha

#### Payton Rose

[17:16](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=1036)


- I will talk briefly about the Prioritization Framework - Sentiment Polling. Patrick posted the link on there; thank you. It has already got some great discussion. Maybe some of that will carry over to today, but I did not want to spend too long on this unless there are many questions, just because we introduced it briefly a few calls ago.


- As introduced a few weeks ago, the problem we face is that the governance can pass many things. Over 100 items have been passed and not actioned on if you count all the individual green light bulbs and sentiment things and the very soft balling we do. This is one way for MKR holders to tell CUs what they think they should be working on. But the problem with it is that you cannot define the prioritization. It basically just adds another one to the list, and the CUs try to figure out what we are capable of doing, what we feel would be a good use of our time, and then they come back and communicate that to the community.
- CUs have many methods for communicating their priorities. They can do it in informal updates and say what they are working on this week, this month, and this quarter. They can do it when they submit budget updates. They can say what they are going to use the funds for. And they can also do it in cross Core Unit, and other Initiative Update calls. MKR holders do not have that option currently. All they can do is pass or reject items as they get put up for vote and governance. That is why this was a focus of GovAlpha, and we wanted to roll out this first trial.


- The implementation will be in the form of month-long polls on the voting portal. They will be taking the rank choice format asking all MKR holders to rank their preference in terms of what items they would like to see prioritized. Then their voting weight will be applied just like it normally would in a poll. One slight issue with doing it this way is that rank choice polls are hard to visualize. You can imagine a long output list from a bunch of different delegates. You can look at them individually and see what individuals want to prioritize. But when it all comes together, at least traditionally, you are left with a single result. And that is the winner once a 50% plus consensus has been reached. To counter that, we will display and break down the winner on a 50% basis and run to the natural conclusion of the instant runoff vote format. For those unfamiliar, the way that works is that a vote takes place each round. Everyone's top preference is included in their vote. And then the last item is dropped off on each round. Again, traditionally, this is until you get to a point where at least 50% is in support of the top candidate. But in addition to doing that, we are going to run into the end with running the instant runoff choices dropping the last one. And that will give us a reverse order of how delegates and other voters rank their priorities.


- The other important point is that we will be using multiple polls. So that way, we can pull on specific items. The first will be the Technical Resource Deployment. This is essentially the idea that in terms of ideas and things we want to implement, some are soft or on the social layer, and some are perhaps on the procedural layer. But we will start with the technical layer because there are only so many people that can work on items that will be implemented into the code base.
- What should they be spending their time on? We came up with this list of 12 items from things. They have either been proposed to the community formally through a vote or the ideation phase and have captured sentiment. Or, they tend to pop up in one way or another, as well as some input from relevant CUs.
- To quickly go through the list:
- The Flapper Distributor/upgrade to the flapper is the idea of splitting funds. And its revenues coming into the protocol go straight to the Surplus Buffer. Or, if the Surplus Buffer is full, they will go into the burner. Flapper Distributor could say distribute 25% to the burner, well 75 goes to the surplus. That is just a random example. You can set up several things, I am sure.
- The Sagittarius Engine is the tokenomics framework Rune proposed.
- And then a broader category of Collateral Onboarding, which we will discuss later.
- The Compound D3M is probably the D3M implementation we are the closest to in terms of CUs and what has been voted in and worked on so far.
- Then, there is MIP43, the Term Lending Module(TLM). That is another fixed-rate option. Remember that we have the Deco CU working on a fixed-rate solution, but MIP43 was passed first but never implemented.
- Then there is Maker Teleport which is the idea of a hopping dive between L1 and L2 and, eventually, between other L2s, which is a prerequisite for other L2 deployments of MCD. Next, we have DssKiln, the mechanism for using a stagnated buy. You can set for token swaps that can be used for buying the protocol ETH, used as a different way to set up buybacks of MKR, essentially just a module that would allow the protocol to swap one asset for another over a predefined period.
- There is DssSnog which I was happy to see came up in the Discord today. That would be a method for pushing some of the Oracle maintenance outside of the executive spells.
- Next, we have DssGate as a mechanism for establishing a sandbox, an area where people could develop with limited Dai exposure for specific costs. We have seen that with Deco, their experience in iterations on the fixed-rate side can be applied to many things.
- Next, we have the Vox: Target Price Adjustment Module. This is ideal for negative rates. That has not come up for quite a while, but it is one of the older technical MIPs passed in.
- We have ESM Simulations, and this is the idea that we have this mechanism called Emergency Shutdown. People can submit to it. However, what would happen in an Emergency Shutdown? We have a pretty good idea of what we have yet to simulate. So that would be a technical load for figuring out how that process would work.
- And finally, we have a Technical Solution to Returning "Lost" DAI. Similar to the signal David brought up a little earlier today, this idea that people tend to send tokens to contract addresses, coming up with a technical implementation for fixing that can be quite helpful.
- That is a long list of items. I do apologize for that. But hopefully, that gives you an idea of at least what they are and why they were included.


- With the actual function of how the poll works, we would have voters rank their options in this individual poll. They would only like the ones that they support and would like to see prioritized. At the end of the month, we would drop off the underperforming bowls, essentially the last two, and any work that could reasonably be considered complete. And then replace them with new ones. Earlier, I said: remember to put a little pen in the collateral onboarding. And that is because this is our first attempt to test these nested poll options.
- In the first poll, you can rank where you want the collateral onboarding prioritized. And then, on the second poll, you could express sentiment on what types of collateral classes you would like to see prioritized. If collateral ends up being at the top of the list, you would want to know which collateral you want to work on. We have Broader Market Demand-Based Solutions (Aave D3M is a good example). Then Real-World Assets Vaults: you can think of New Silver or some of the traditional vaults like 6x we have not placed now. 6x might be slightly more of an arranger so I will stick with the New Silver option. Real-World Asset Arrangers, we have seen the arranger model, the idea of lending to a group, and further lending. We have Core Crypto Collateral (BTC and ETH implementations and derivatives). Alternative Ethereum-based Crypto Collateral, so anything that is not ETH, but that is an ERC20. Crypto Collateral from other chains. This could be L2s or other side chains. You name it. Traditional instruments (Bonds/Treasuries). And finally, Peg Stability Solutions.
- The idea is that this will give MKR holders a way to input their preferences, and then CUs will have some data to say: well, voters tend to wipe this solution, or they tend to think we should be focusing more on this. And then they can either say: we agree, and we will start working on that, or we disagree, and we are not going to work on that, and here is why. So it is important to note that these are nonbinding. It is simply a way to gather data and have the MKR holders communicate some of their sentiments toward people building on the protocol.
- Are there any questions that have not been addressed? Feel free to hop on the mic if someone wants to cut one out.

[29:17](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=1757)

- David Utrobin: Something that Kianga brings up in the chat is a feeling of being overwhelmed by all of the choices. So it is challenging to keep up with actual votes and communicate the reasoning. But then, on top of that, trying to rank priority on technical projects or collateral stuff gives a feeling of overwhelmedness.

[29:47](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=1787)

- Joshua: You just went through the slides and described the background for each item. It would be helpful to have maybe that transcribed and expanded to inform the voters so they can make intelligent choices in the polls.
- Payton Rose: I agree. The short descriptions will be what is there for the actual vote. But the text of the polls that we are putting up will have broader descriptions and links to things to describe this. I think it is important to address the feelings of overwhelmingness. Perhaps we have too many options, or we could limit it to shorter polls in the future. This will be our first code to see how this is working. And if this is a viable model to continue to deploy some resources towards. On the flip side, for CUs, the overwhelmingness is shared. Because these are all things that have been talked about, advocated for, or even passed by the community, part of this goal is to get a little more focused input on what is important from all the things discussed.

[31:22](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=1882)

- Tim Schuppener: I think the list is not overwhelming. I get why Kianga is coming from that point. Honestly, I would have been in the same situation two years back. More important is that effective CUs that have a particular interest in some topic being pushed forward, or maybe even put down from the list or put lower to list, advocate for the decision and point out why they think this needs special treatment or attention. The context is more visible for those voting on that stuff. Let us take an example if Nadia would advocate for something really important from her growth perspective. And the delegate is saying: I am pushing more on topics that are helpful for growth than security, for example. It is a bad example, but you get my point. This is going to influence the decision-making process there. This is vital because those items are not necessarily the perfect items. But we have some space where the people affected by this voting can make their point and advocate for that. Maybe there could be some consolidated format. Somebody will have a good idea of how this could be visualized. But the list is pretty decent. I would be able to work with that.
- Payton Rose: I appreciate that feedback. Just to briefly respond, I think CUs can communicate. We organize these calls. We can hop on and say: MKR holders are right now supporting this option. But we think that is a bad idea because we feel this is more important. Hopefully, the voting and these topic categories will spur further discussion. And then we will be able to work from there.

[33:28](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=2008)

- Wouter: This is a great experiment. In our discussions that we have had, one of the things that came up the most is the CUs looking for clear direction and what the priorities should be. This is a very useful and needed experiment. There is one thing I am wondering about, which is the question of resource allocation. It is quite a technical question as a technical planning question. For example, the kind of questions that came up in the chat, which is the priority of a certain item, depends on what is on the critical path, when it is needed, how much work it is, etc. And one way, I think there are good ideas to ensure that the people who need to execute the work can provide the necessary context.
- But still, maybe one thing we should consider, instead of prioritizing technical solutions, is to prioritize challenges, problems, and opportunities that we should focus on. And then what a technical solution is the most efficient one. What a critical path is, whether useful or not, to allocate resources for it today.
- That is more of a technical planning question. To take the example that was given in the chat, let us say Deco is the absolute priority for MakerDAO; if people want that, then still, it could be that it does not make sense to work on DssGate next week because maybe they only need it in six months. Perhaps some audit work will push other important work aside, while it is pointless to do it now. Instead of leaving that technical planning puzzle to the voters, one thing to consider might be to select a collection of high-level challenges, opportunities, and problems that we need to focus on and poll on that level. And then leave it to our organizational framework to devise the right resource allocation mix to prioritize a certain challenge or opportunity to work on.

[36:25](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=2185)

- Payton Rose: That is a great suggestion, Wouter, and definitely one we consider. It would probably be appropriate if I could provide a little context on why we went with this implementation.
- Essentially, it was to get feedback as quickly as possible with actionable solutions. One worried about doing the broader categories for direction, and that sort of thing was that let us say, Dai generation is the winning option. There are ten different ways we could generate Dai. Having that poll may not necessarily help CUs allocate the resources. That said, it would probably spur the discussion to get to that answer. That is probably a great starting point for the polls for our second run.
- Another intentional design decision was to make the technical role as specific as possible and then have the collateral poll. We chose to be collateral class to be much more general. And that was to get feedback and say, both CUs and voters, do you like the more specific or broader list? And that will also help us set up for future iterations of this. Since these polls are ongoing, I want to add that the nice thing is we can respond to them in real-time. People can shift their sentiments as work gets completed or more information becomes available, then voters can respond. The idea is that this is hopefully like a living feedback mechanism, rather than just a static one.

[38:23](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=2303)

- Tim Schuppener: This holds even for the approach that Wouter is putting out. Not voting on particular items on a to-do list, but on the direction we want to go. I would also favor what Wouter is bringing up. But we can evolve to that at some point in time.
- Wouter: I wanted to add one more clarification there. The point about prioritizing challenges and problems is that this does not give instruction about which solutions should be built. To a certain degree, that is a very valid point. But even on that level, there is a big difference between highlighting a high-level opportunity or a solution and not specifying a specific implementation. This is often complicated because it is a gradient. Some items on the list are already more high level than others. And also the interpretation of the vote. That is the level of detail as a valid discussion. I hope that we can push it to a high level as possible.
- But then the other thing is the interpretation of the outcome of the vote. I do not think the best outcome would be that the expectation is that now everyone drops what they are doing and start working on number one on the list. Because of the critical path problem I mentioned, it is not smart to work on some items if you do not need them soon enough. For example, you might be very ineffective because the information is unavailable. Or it might just be something you can build now but will only be able to use in six months. Maybe we should consider the intended interpretation of the vote and how CUs should work with the outcome.
- I want to interpret if we have an outcome that gives a list of priorities to ensure that the critical path is executed as fast as possible. That, for example, is already a more nuanced interpretation. It leaves a lot more room for optimizing the plan.

[41:38](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=2498)

- Payton Rose: Again, the goal is to spur conversation and let this be a data source for CUs to do but not say: voters express their sentiment, why are not you following the list? Because there might be a mismatch in information. Something really important to voters, maybe the CUs have not realized that and have not explained why they have not been giving updates or putting priority on that.
- Chris: The nice side effect of Wouter's approach is that we document across CUs and MKR holders and all the stakeholders what we think the problems and opportunities are, in general, even if we do not rank them. There is an enormous benefit in just understanding that list. Some of you, in private conversations, have probably noticed me talking about generalized problems that Maker has. I have been pushing the problems I see into your heads, so when you are out reading research papers and are seeing things in DeFi, that might be the perfect solution for one of those pops up. Then, you can surface it. That can happen that wide if we push these major problems out. It is a nice side effect that we all get to think abstractly about that sort of problem/solution space. Then ranking would be like a bonus on top of that.

[43:42](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=2622)

- Tim Schuppener: A few points about this interpretation of this thing. So the correct amount of anarchy in every system is above zero. If something is losing and the poll position goes to place number three, that does not mean that anybody should stop working. If you are top of the list, let us say we have DssGate on the top of the list, and it is not on the critical path. And at some point, Maker would have some material for a discussion and say: hey, now it is going to the critical path. And since it is ordered on top, we have a pointer into a fast-forward mode with this topic. We should not be dogmatic about the interpretation of this thing. It is more about the temperature check and some justification that somebody can discuss between a different CU focusing on a different problem or challenge. That is the biggest thing; that would be good enough for now. But we should not be dogmatic, and nobody should stop working on topic number two just because topic number one is there. There is still some common sense to be applied.
- Payton Rose: Awesome. All this feedback is super valuable. We will learn a lot from just trying to give this a go and seeing what results from it. I appreciate the community's willingness to experiment.
- We have a big discussion topic following this. I did not want to take too much more time. However, if there are urgent questions or concerns, I will give one more chance for them to be brought up.

[45:25](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=2725)

- Eric Rapp: I like this. But when people think about Collateral Class Sentiments, and there will be voting, if you do not present, what is the total addressable market, what is the risk, what is the technical implementation, what is the timeline, it feels a little too idealized and abstract. Because ultimately, these are all potential actions, they will have economic upsides or downsides. And they are competing in a certain sense. If I were a big Maker holder, I would say, " Oh, this is great, but you need to guide me on the pros and cons and start lining them up and ranking what you think is the best bang for your buck for the protocol." However, "I like Real-World Assets better than Core Crypto" does not say much. I need to have an investment thesis around effort in both, or I am talking randomly. It needs to be an informed set of alternatives. If it is not, I do not think you are doing much favor to anyone. It is like, what is today's flavor? I go to the store and am excited by a flavor, but I do not have a deep insight into the pros and cons of the various choices. That is a fundamental problem. Because at the end of the day, the DAO must allocate resources and capital. You can just think of capital period: human capital, or financial capital, whatever it is, across competing projects and priorities. How do you decide what is in the best interest of the community? But how do they make informed decisions? Maybe I like this one word better than another word. That is not a great way to vote? People need to provide meaningful guidance to the community and our voters on this, or I do not think it serves much help. The idea is good, but it is got to be informed. Or it is not helping with the spiraling complexity. Let me put it that way.
- There is a whole other discussion that you will probably need more specialized delegates and voters because not everyone can be an expert on everything. Some delegates might know half of the dead cold. Maybe they can help explain it. But ultimately, there has got to be a way to make informed votes, or we would end up being idiocracy, which I do not think is a great way to clap the future.
- Payton Rose: I appreciate this point. Thanks for jumping in. I do not want to present this as a silver bullet. Hopefully, this is the start of better prioritization input, and it will be made better thanks to all your feedback. Thank you.
- We will start to move on. So we can get to all the cool stuff David has prepared. There is the forum thread. Please visit that and drop additional or reiterate these thoughts if you want to continue the discussion.

## Discussion

### Vision for MakerDAO

#### David Utrobin

[48:38](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=2933)

- Hello to everybody. Today, I want to ask, what is a vision? Vision is typically a picture of an achieved end state. It is something that aligns people. It is something that acts as a guiding principle. Vision produces inspiration and motivation and drives coordination in organizations. Visions are dynamic, and they end up changing with context often. Many of us in the room today have been inspired by one of Maker's many visions over the years. But the question is, which vision am I talking about? Because Maker has had several.
- Today, judging by the conversation in the community, it seems like there is not a clear vision anymore that everybody is captured by. During this segment, we will be taking a very basic look at Maker's vision over the years, intending to explore which of Maker's historic visions are still in play, which have we already achieved, and where are we heading? A part of that will be just a series of three short polls, asking people some of the foundational questions that were very important to the early days of Maker.
- We invite discussions to align us on the greater context of vision at Maker. Understanding its history is the first step to understanding how we should try to drive the vision forward from this point on.
- Let me go through a short history from my perspective. The very first vision was to solve volatility on the blockchain. Rune's classic e-dollar post on the Ethereum subreddit kick-started that back in March 2015. And then it turned into not only do we solve volatility? That is the stablecoin vision. Now, we want to do it in the best way. We want to create the best stablecoin, a trustless stablecoin that is asset-backed, censorship-resistant, and a hard currency. That was Sai into Dai. That was 2017 into 2018. And then, as MCD came about and the DSR came about, the vision became that we are solving volatility in the blockchain. We are in this great stablecoin and Ethereum's decentralized central bank with a retail-accessible risk-free rate. We serve the underserved. We are financial services available for all. We were this permissionless financial primitive in the landscape of the global economy.
- Then, the vision was simplified because we realized, previously, that it was a little hard, especially with rising gas costs. Dai is an unbiased world currency. This was towards the tail end of the foundation's life. This effort was to re-align everybody around the Maker protocol's central product, Dai. After that, there was Rune's Case for Clean Money. It also supported the idea that this is the best stablecoin that not only solves volatility and is asset-backed and censorship-resistant, but it is something that actually can have pragmatic, positive effects on the world. There was this vision of more RWA, not just real-world assets, but more like ESG and Clean Money Assets. This was not super Central or macro, but an interesting and important vision. That leads us to where we are today. Since then, all of these visions have been fulfilled, and some have not been fulfilled to their full extent. And some are just in straight-up research and development like RWA, ESG assets, and even getting Dai to become that trustless, truly decentralized stablecoin is a lot. What we are seeing in the conversation around the centralization of governance power right now and wanting more delegates like we want the management of the protocol itself to be decentralized. That brings us to where we are today. This was a helpful context for me to understand where we have been and where we are today.


- In the next part of this, I want to ask three questions. The first is: Is Maker's primary goal to make DAI the #1 stablecoin?


- How do we define number one? That is super subjective. I am just curious from the highest level. Is this a goal? Does your mother think, "I will not use my credit cards today? I will use Dai." We have 27 responses. Thank you all for participating. Keep it up. We have about 50 people on the call, so shoot a quick answer. It looks like 60% are yes, about 20% are no, and another 20% abstains.


- Let me move on to the next poll. Poll 2: Should Dai remain decentralized, censorship-resistant, permissionless, borderless money? It is okay if you are mixed about any of these. They are meant to be high-level and subjective polls. Here it is 92% yes. So far, with 27%, we do not know yet. They are meant to be loaded. I am curious about the no's here. Who says no? There is one person and about 32 responses. Give it maybe ten more seconds, and we will close it up.
- An overwhelming majority still believe that Dai should remain a decentralized censorship-resistant permissionless and borderless money. Almost unanimous.


- Poll 3: Should MakerDAO focus on the unbanked as a primary user? One of the visions over the years has been to serve the underserved and utilize DeFi as this permissionless global financial tool. So far, of 25 people who responded, about 80% are saying no. The way that the question is asked needs to be put in context. The unbanked cannot be a primary user right now, just by Ethereum. I should have probably asked the same question a couple of ways. It might be an interesting way we could play around with the utility of these polls. Although they are not MakerDAOs primaries now, it might still be valuable in the community to prioritize them as a very important user group in the future when we scale to retail products, L2s, and stuff. Here is 12% yes. Then 70% no, and 18% abstain. I want to open it up from here. You guys have seen the vision so far. Maybe it would be good to focus on maybe one of the more interesting polls. Between two and three, those had the most interesting results. Poll 2: Should Dai remain decentralized censorship-resistant permissionless, borderless money; that was an overwhelming yes. At the same time, some aspects of the Maker protocol are not decentralized, which are permission like the RWA. How does this fit into MakerDAO's vision for the future? How does it coexist with the permission side of the protocol?

[1:01:33](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=3689)

- Mariano: I am more interested in Poll 1. It is a long discussion that I have been having with a lot of MKR community members. Dai as a stablecoin, a byproduct of the protocol, is not the main thing we should push. I have been working here for almost five years. In every Dai use case that you could imagine, one of the first things I saw that is a total lie is serving the underserved. Probably in all little places of Latin America, the underserved do not have the financial literacy to understand what an application internet is, even less what a cryptocurrency is. Serving the underserved is a total lie. That thing does not exist.
- Dai, being a stablecoin, or us trying to compete against USDC or USDT, does not have any sense. They are on RAMPS. We are a technological operative system for stablecoins. It is a completely different thing. We are an over-collateralized thing. USDC and USDT are just on RAMPS. They are financial companies. We are a technological company; they have a growth rate and pace that we will match anytime.
- Then, do you have to understand how the financial market works? This is one of the things that sometimes amaze me that not many people know, but when you talk about OTC companies, with banks, with financial companies, they sell their model for one basis point of rebate. We cannot compete with USDC and USDT in that regard. We will always be more expensive. We will always have less supply than USDT and USDC. It is way different what they do from what we do. That is why I always said that our main focus is not to make Dai the number one stablecoin but to make the Maker protocol the easiest and the cheapest way to get credit. Then we can fill the world with Dai. That stablecoin level is a liquidity game, not a demanding game.
- No one demands stablecoins. No one demands, only emerging markets. Here in Argentina, we had the shittiest economy in the world. We demand that because our peso is shit. If you talk about volume and the things that matter, no one in the world demands stablecoins. There is only liquidity, not demand. And liquidity is just a thing of time. If we make the Maker protocol and Maker vault the best thing to get a decentralized credit, we will fill the world with Dai. That is our goal, not to make Dai the number one or whatever thing that people would choose because it is decentralized. No. No one is choosing decentralization over liquidity. It is always gone, first liquidity and then decentralization. As a community, we have to be all together in this idea. Because if not, we will have all this first effort thinking or acting in a wishful way, saying Dai is the best thing when it is not. The best thing needs to be the Maker vault.
- David Utrobin: Thanks for that perspective, Mariano. That resonates with me. I have always considered the Maker protocol to have three main lines of products: stablecoin, Dai, vaults, and Oracle's. I thought: "These are the three verticals that MakerDAO has."
- Payton Rose: It circles back to user experience. The people using your product care about how smooth it is. We see these adoptions of chains that have some fundamental problems, that do not lack decentralization but cannot stay up all the time. And we still have users flocking to them because they are cheaper, quicker, and easier to understand. The complexity is probably not just present for CUs in our organization but also falls to the end-user.

[1:07:14](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=4034)

- Chris: I do not disagree with everything that was said there. I care very much about Dai being the sort of the number one global unbiased world currency. Because I have certain conjectures about where I think the future is headed. We get little snapshots of exactly what is coming. The future will be littered with central bank digital currencies, and there will be some of the worst possible things humanity has ever experienced regarding liberty and freedom.
- Our ability to transact is essential to exercising our rights. And you can already see with many of the movements with sort of global sanctions regimes where exactly things are headed. At this particular moment, I agree Dai may not have that use case. In the longer-term vision, that is exactly the type of user we should be targeting. Probably other technical problems on the way there make it not viable. We should be looking for technical solutions that make things cheaper for end users. Specifically, I care very much about users that are non-technical altogether. Some of you have heard me talk about creating a system where users can print Dai notes on their home printers and then exchange them with their neighbors. There is much innovation. The world is going to need a solution to that problem. But the bigger problem in the short term is that you need to balance the equation.
- You cannot just have insane amounts of Dai adoption without being this sort of decentralized permissionless credit facility for people. You need to increase supply. You cannot increase supply without increasing demand. There is this double helix dance that we have to do with supply and demand on the way there. We cannot immediately start minting all kinds of Dai for RWA and dump it on the market. We would break the peg and would not be able to balance that supply and demand. I am maybe adding color to it. This is a good conversation to have. Because maybe our visions are not aligned. Or maybe we have to talk about timeframes when discussing vision alignment.
- David Utrobin: The question is mostly timeframe. Focusing on the vault is a very important or even central product. At this stage of the protocol might not be the worst idea in the world, improving the user experience on every level at the Maker protocol, governance, auctions, drawing Dai from a vault, etc. The actual vaults that we have everything might be leading up to the day that a permissionless decentralized, trustless; the world needs all that censorship-resistant currency. You are foreseeing that feature, Chris.

[1:11:31](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=4291)

- Eric: It is a fair question: Do we want Dai to be the number one stablecoin? Or do we want Dai to be the number one decentralized stablecoin, which is a different question? Having spent too much time in different ventures over the years, I want to stress that these cryptocurrencies have a substantial economy of scale and network effect. People know this. Let me say it anyway. I do not see that you will have dozens of currencies at scale. They will probably be a handful, but the bigger ones will dominate. Other ones will die on the line. When I look at this, we should be promoting active Dai demand growth and organic demand growth. However, we do that. When I look at our risks, I sometimes think that one of the biggest risks is not growing fast enough. I am not saying grow stupid. But if we are safe and conservative and do not grow Dai demand aggressively, some other folks will grow demand for their currencies, and we could shrivel on the line because we never really hit scale with huge network effects. So much of what we want to do in the long term depends on having a business at a scale that works well. It is great to have all these other visions, and I like them, but when you are still trying to get to scale, I think it is premature to focus on too many other things. You want to work on becoming the number one, some type of coin. Is it a number one DeFi coin? We can argue about that. But if we do not have a vision of how to build this big and hit network and economies of scale, there is a real risk; that it will not make it to scale. It will not be able to do any of these broader visions if it does not get big into scale.

[1:14:02](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=4442)

- David Utrobin: Judging by the sounds, let us move on to poll number two. Should DAI remain decentralized, censorship-resistant, permissionless, borderless money? This one had almost unanimity? But the feeling in the community has been that some aspects of this are being sacrificed for growth. Does anybody have thoughts on that?

[1:14:38](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=4478)

- Someone: Maybe I can constrain the discussion a little bit here. Because Dai and the token itself, let us say these end-users that will have all this demand for the token that they exchange is the thing that it specifically should have these attributes. There is an argument that we should probably also have these attributes for Dai generation, so for vaults being the thing that creates Dai. But the technical reality is that it is pretty much impossible. It is not impossible, but it would mean the protocol goes completely immutable today if we were to yank governance permissions on the core of MCD. Maybe in a longer-term vision, we can talk about that for vaults for having these attributes. But in this case, we are just talking about Dai. Does anybody see any future compromises or anything that would compromise these attributes on the Dai token itself?

[1:16:13](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=4573)

- Kianga Daverington: It is maybe connected or an answer to Chris. I love this as the core value or vision. But, what is the strategy? And then what are the tactics? To Eric's point, in anything we decide, any timeframe, let us check to make sure that in the future, we are protecting this attribute at the core of what will exist in the world? Then think about, can we iterate different models, different types of Dai? Maybe it will be Dai that is clean or Dai that is permission to serve a particular market, but can we evolve that while still providing this central function to the world of permissionless-ness? If we dominate in permission, centralized coin, that is not necessarily the kind of network effects or moat that maybe we want to achieve. But perhaps some strategy or timeline says different versions of Dai or different versions of business lines will help us get there. This is a great conversation. We need to take the vision, then back to kind of tactics and strategy.
- For me, Poll 2, this idea that if we all disappeared tomorrow, would there be something in the world that is operating and serving humanity? If that does not sound too absurd?
- Eric: This is the critical issue, honestly. I have been digesting the struggles at Maker. I see us wanting to grow dramatically, and I also see various elements of centralization dramatically creeping in. It is one of the reasons I wanted to focus on my growth vision. Let us dramatically change Maker 3.0 and use multiple Maker incarnations to achieve different goals and synergize. Then, we could have the decentralized Maker that does the stuff here in number two. And we can synergize it with a Maker 3.0 that has centralized stuff. To grow massively and drag Maker to with it. We have been struggling with this core question: fighting to maintain this and doing much growth. It is a really important discussion to have. We need to solve it. Otherwise, we will continue to struggle. We need to solve this core issue and resolve it so that we can drive forward with the strategy and goals to get to what we are trying to achieve. If we have two sets of goals, two sets of makers might work for that, right? They can synergize with each other. I do not know. It is just an idea.
- Chris: I wanted to add some context. Dai itself is a fungible token. We all know that that is a little bit of a lie that we all tell ourselves with Bitcoin and Dai and all the other ERC20s that are perfectly privacy-preserving coins because you can always determine where the source of funds is. As long as Dai is open, introspective, and transparent, there will be markets that may pop up where all the participants in that market, let us say, our KYCed, or institutions that have gone through this sort of rigor of KYCing. And it is certainly possible that for that market, we can allow pristine Dai to be minted, that is such that no counterparty would need to be kind of KYC. We get at least this narrow focus of if there is a market that requires permission actors. You have the flexibility to make either a vault or some Dai generation mechanism for those markets, where the Dai itself still has those attributes, where it is permissionless, censorship-resistant, and decentralized. But it would be injected directly into those markets. That might help. That starts to answer maybe both of those previous discussions, but where Maker itself does not have to compromise on those values for Dai, which I do not think it ever should. But where we can also possibly have a role in those markets.
- Eric: I think Chris has a spot on point where the principal is we want permissionless. But we have not seen the regulatory actions by the big countries yet. And this is very theoretical until we see the EU, the US, or someone, make a big change. And we can be presented that we are out of the market completely if we stay 100% pure. Chris suggested a way where you split the difference? Do you find a way to still be relevant in that market? Or do you stay true to your underlying principles and leave that market? That is a really good question. I would tend to want to find a way to work with that market if it is a big one. Because I think if you start to move away from big markets, you start losing relevance, as long as you are not giving up your core values. That is an important question.
- Chirs: I do not think where the markets are headed in the future, at least in the traditional sense, is anything anyone will want to participate in. We are much better off trying to build a better financial system, even if that means we might need to languish in irrelevance for some years. This entire thing will get so captured that it will be such a blight on human liberty, especially as we give centralized powers the ability to determine what you can and cannot spend money on and whom they do and do not take money from. Who can and cannot exercise their rights. For the most part, we need to be building the escape hatch. When they lock that cage around everyone, Maker should be firmly outside it.
- David Utrobin: It is like the whole value prop of crypto. It is a really good context for Maker.

[1:24:52](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=5092)

- Payton Rose: Chris, your point kicks off the conversation. There are a lot of different vectors where we could come under attack not only from the collateral but from our organizational structure, smart contracts, and social entanglements. So it is something we have to stay vigilant on. And I appreciate conversations like this for aligning vision and helping bring up some of those risks.
- If anyone wanted to watch a great talk from the early days of ETHDenver in 2019, Andreas Antonopoulos gives a great talk on the difference between "Can't and Won't." The TLDR is that we have to be able to say we cannot do something, as opposed to we will not do something. Eventually, the pressure will get so great that the "won't" is not going to cut it. At least for Dai, it comes down to answering those questions and sticking to them. We are certainly in a "won't" scenario for vault generation. But there are several technical strategies you can also employ to be an account scenario.
- David Utrobin: We are at a point where we have to define the core and lock it down.

[1:26:30](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=5190)

- Eric: I got a key question. I think that should go to the Maker voters. That will be a hotly debated question. There will be a lot of big Maker holders who will see that as profit minimizing and might not be on board. I am a bit agnostic myself. I think that needs to be well debated and fully voted on. That has strong implications for short, and medium-term growth and profitability.

[1:27:30](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=5250)

- Payton Rose: Things are quieting down, and I feel bad for going over. I appreciate all of the discussion that went into today's call. You could go there using polls before and after. This was for our very fun experiment that seemed it helps spur engagement. Please do consider leaving feedback both on the forums and our Discord. We will continue to iterate and hopefully make for even more engaging and better feedback loops for these calls.
- David Utrobin: I already sent some of the stuff I prepared for this call to a handful of people. If you are interested in playing a more active role, giving feedback, and improving the slides. GovComms has a budget for contributors. And if you want to take an hour out of your week and help us ask better questions around pertinent topics, please contact me.

## Conclusion

### Payton Rose

[1:28:44](https://youtu.be/_tOhFiReRkI?t=5324)

- Awesome. I think we will wrap up there. Thanks for joining us. We will be around the same time, the same place next week. Please continue the discussions and feedback. And thanks, everyone, for giving us some of your time today. Thank you.

[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

- Kunfu-po produced this summary.
- Artem Gordon produced this summary.
- Everyone who spoke and presented on the call.​