Meet Your Delegate: Episode #10

--- tags: Meet Your Delegate --- # Meet Your Delegate: Episode #10 ## Agenda - [00:00](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU): Introduction - [01:07](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=67): Doo Wan Nam - [30:16](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=1817): Flipside Crypto - [57:20](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=3440): Conclusion ## Video <https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU> ### General Introduction #### LongForWisdom [00:00](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU) - Hello to everyone. Welcome to the MakerDAO Meet Your Delegate episode #10. We are slightly out of order, but we are joined by two potential new recognized delegates, Doo Wan Nam and Flipside Crypto. - I will go over the brief ground rules for these meetings and how they are structured. The general format is that we start with one delegate and briefly summarize their platform for the group here. Then we will open it up for Q&A. It tends to take half an hour in total. Then we will switch over to the Flipside and get them to do the same. - Remember, this meeting is being recorded. Try not to talk over each other. We will call for questions. If there is a lull, feel free to chime in or raise your hand if you are more comfortable with that. ### Delegate Introductions ### Doo Wan Nam [01:07](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=67) - Thank you so much for inviting me. It is good to see you guys. My presentation will be largely based on my delegate platform, which I posted on the Maker forum. If you do not have the link, I will post it on the chat to check it out. I will start by introducing myself. I am a part-time contributor to Maker Growth to help with their Asian community. I am also co-founder of Stable Node, which invests and helps run different blockchain nodes. I will briefly introduce myself and then my core values and statement. - I joined Maker in late 2018. Initially, I started to help the Korean community. Later I went to business development and helped with its Asian market. The funny thing is that before Maker, I was in a different project, trying to create a different stablecoin. Back then, we did not have a term for a stablecoin. They wanted a coin that pegged to a stable value. I got to learn about Maker because they wanted me to review it. Back then, I realized there was not much material on Maker. Now, I was pretty confident in my ability such that I might beat Maker. I was like: "At least our team has me. Maybe it will be better". We saw that I could be more successful. But at the same time, we saw that there were not enough materials, especially in Korean or Chinese. That is why I translated some of the different guides on how to create it. As some of you guys probably remember, the initial way to mint what we called a SAI was pretty complex. Materials were needed. Fast forward to now, a lot of the Asian community has disappeared. Although Asia is still a vast market, with many users, we do not have ways to keep the community in place. This is the same for Korea and China. For example, we once had community leaders, but they disappeared once the Foundation dissolved. There are also different regulatory and social changes happening in Asia. I contacted our Chinese side, but we do not have a Chinese community chat for WeChat anymore, partly because the Chinese government has been cracking down on it. So, even for people interested in Maker, there is no good way for them to learn. This is also true for Maker holders. One of the truths is that we do not know about it, partly because there is no natural way to voice our opinion. Many do not speak English, and they do not have access. I felt that we needed a delegate who could represent their interests and communicate with them. As I can speak Korean and some Chinese, I felt it was needed to have a delegate to meet their needs and communicate with them. Apologies if some of my word choices are not optimal, as it is 3 am. Time zones are another barrier for people in Asia to participate. That is why I thought that somebody needed to be a delegate to be that bridge. - Different delegates hold slightly different core values. They have been focusing on the economic aspects. My focus has been connecting between the West and East, especially regarding information, interests, and feedback. Another one is diversity or different ideas and communities. Then the third part is being pragmatic. I put that one because not every initiative will be related to the first two. I did not want to limit myself to just two. Especially since it is pragmatic, which can help all kinds of communities, not just communities in Asia. I also wrote down some of the delegate's next steps related to core values. Regardless of whom they are proposed by, these initiatives will strongly support creating a significant presence in different content across different countries, mainly focusing on Asia. Right now, much content in our communities focuses on English speakers, which so far works. At the same time, there are so many different communities that need to access and learn more about Maker. - I believe this step is necessary for Maker to achieve DeFi for all. Another step is to aggressively increase Dai access. Especially in Asia, many users have been very sensitive to converting in terms of transaction fees. Many people here do not use MetaMask or Web Wallet; many use a mobile wallet. That has been true for payment as some of you guys probably visited Singapore, China, or Korea. Many people pay with their phone or WeChat. It is very easy for people to access their crypto and Dai through mobile. If you look at some competitors like Terra, many of their payments happen behind them. People do not even know that it is blockchain. - Since I am a contributor to Maker Growth, I have a conflict of interest. However, I have already voted against some of the proposed initiatives for our collaboration. I will not shy away from voting because if there is an initiative that, for example, goes against some of the core values, I think it is fair to vote against it. Since I am a co-founder of Stable Node and the company invests in different projects, some of the partners or portfolio companies might have conflicts of interest. Examples include Instadia, Superfluid, Montalis, Clayton, and Polygon. There will be many conflicts of interest. Before voting, if applicable, I will note it in my conflict of interest section. Unfortunately, I do not have too much regarding some of the personal holdings. I wish I had more, but I do not. I have mostly ETH, Maker, some stablecoins, and I also invest in some of the private sales for APWine, BlackPool, and SOLACE. I indirectly hold some of the Upbit exchange equity. If any other conflicts of interest come up related to voting, I will look at them, and then I will leave the rest of the time for questions and some of the clarifications. #### Questions [9:28](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=568) - Frank Cruz: Hello Doo. Thanks for the presentation and explanation. I am excited to have you on board as a fellow delegate. Regarding that side of the world, Asia, how can your platform help MakerDAO get more exposure? I know about the community's ability to reach that far out. From my point of view in the US, I only see you and Jocelyn of Growth CU and maybe a few other folks like Will of RWF CU. I wonder what your thinking is and how you can help MakerDAO get more exposure to that part of the world? - Doo Wan Nam: You can get involved in many ways. One way is to look for more MKR holders. This is something that the Maker Foundation did not look at back then. The community and government have looked at many Maker holders in the US or Europe. However, we did not discuss how ETH funds or others. Maker holders can have access. Despite being global with many voters, access is still very limited. We have to think about ways for them to participate more actively. Several funds based in Asia hold or invest in Maker, but they have not been put to use. For example, there was one fund based in Korea that holds Maker. They were interested in Maker Governance and participated a few times. However, they never delegated in a vote because they were unsure if they could share their opinion. They felt like there were a lot of big funds based in the West; their delegates might share their opinion. They felt the connection was not there. But that is not true. We are interested in feedback, whether it is from the West or East. One area that I will focus on is targeting some of the Maker holders in Asia to participate in the forum. If needed, I also got feedback that now Discord does not have a Chinese or a Korean section. That is needed. We can create that. We have to figure out what would be good ways to proceed. That is the first part, which is on the Maker holder side - The second part is more for Dai and Maker vault users. Historically, it has been decently maintained but has fallen off recently. WeChat once had thousands of users to demonstrate its extremity, but the community is now gone. This is for safety because the Chinese government has been cracking down on it. This means that we need a smarter way to have a community where people can access information and not put themselves in such danger. Whether it is a new marketing team, Growth, or others, we must think about ways to create a new strategy for Asia. In Korea, we have been seeing many users falling. It will be a combination of translation and active communication. Having somebody that can ask questions or give updates is very important because we do not have a specific CU that focuses primarily on it. We have a CU that focuses on different contents but does not necessarily translate into Korean, Chinese, or other Asian languages. I will be happy to discuss with any initiative or CU who wants to do that. If they have the initiative in the plan, I will be happy to vote as long as it is reasonable. This goes back to the core value: I want to be pragmatic. Even if it is good for the community, it does not make sense if it is too expensive. There are probably better ways to do it. [14:21](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=861) - Frank Cruz: It is always good to be pragmatic. I will say one thing quickly. You have always been a visionary. I like that you went out to Jet Protocol, a different Layer1. And you decided to put an application for Dai. What is your vision there going forward? Are you going to continuously push that envelope? - That relates to some of the points I mentioned earlier: to ensure that Dai is used everywhere and to increase its accessibility. There has been increasing usage on Solana, whether a dApp or via some exchanges that support it. For example, FTX has been growing its power. Many people use FTX itself as a bridge. Some of the numbers that I saw were that not many people use Solana's wormhole. Around 70% uses through FTX Exchange, which is very big. Since many people are starting to use FTX from Asia, having Dai on Solana and integrating with FTX can increase access, especially to people who are worried about the high transaction fee. That has been the thought behind unless they work with Clayton. There might be some new maintenance or L2 in the future. Within Maker, some people might consider me a heretic, but I always believed it is important for more and more people to access it. I had a very strong opinion regarding having a minimum amount to open a vault because I heard a lot of feedback. Many different people wanted to try out Maker vault, but they could not because they needed to open a much larger vault. For those people, a few thousand is not a small amount. It is understandable why we did it, but it reduced some of the access, excitement, and community we could have gotten from them. [16:44 - Someone](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=1004) - I am your great supporter, and it is a little biased because I have worked with you on the Growth team for a while. I know how knowledgeable and impactful you are to the Growth team. Hearing you talk about being this bridge to Asia led me to a question. I would love to hear your thoughts more broadly. Do you think decentralized protocols with governance systems like Maker should intentionally look towards having delegates representing geographical regions? It is important to have local voices that understand the cultures and the regulatory challenges more intimately to represent voters in those places. For example, not just Asia, but would you say it would be optimal to have delegates in each continent? Again, this is broadly maybe not just specific to Maker, but as a design of delegation overall, do you think that would be something that would significantly or incrementally impact the voter participation and decision making? - I am glad you brought that up. It will happen organically. Maker community or the governance is not thinking we should have somebody in Latin America, Asia, Africa, or others. For Maker governance, anybody can come. There can be another person from Asia or somebody else who focuses specifically on China. I know much about China and Korea, but maybe somebody focuses solely on China. Similar to any other governance or community, there might be people who have different opinions and interests that can be reflected. I would not say that it is the official policy and that the Maker governance should say to people: "From now on, you will represent all the Asian voters. If you are in Asia, you should vote for me". That is not the policy. However, there is a natural transition as Maker is becoming increasingly global. We will see more delegates or others that try to represent certain interests that they feel are neglected. If you look at the government or others, we see that if there is a voice unknown to the people, this does not mean there is no voice; it just means that there is nobody to hear them. We will see that happening in the future. It can be not just based on geography but maybe a certain industry. There could be some people who might represent more of the legacy finance, which we saw with some of the delegates. There are also so many different interests out there, not only geographical. We will see more of these interests. Hopefully, that will respond to your question. Thank you. [20:35](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=1235) - Payton Rose: I was curious about the scaling Dai aspect of things. A lot of the stuff you pointed out is really strong for helping scale Dai. But I was curious if you wanted to elaborate on your thoughts on the best way to grow Dai supplies. - There are many different ways that Dai supply has been increased. Some people in the Maker Foundation thought that I was a heretic because I believe Dai maintenance peg and its expansion is more important than trying to have only ETH as collateral. You can imagine some interesting fights, whether it is a philosophical debate or others. There can be many different collaterals. We will see more experimental ones. We have been seeing some of the RWA expanding. We have also been trying to work with Aave to ensure that we provide more to use for other DeFi protocols. Technically, Dai itself is not backed like a traditional one, but it is a good way to provide liquidity and make sure that we work closely with other DeFi protocols. We will see more of those experimental ones. Increasing Dai itself is great, but there are questions. First, who are we serving? Second, what can we do with it? We looked at the Dai supply and said, "there is ten or eleven billion Dai; that is a good milestone." If the point of DeFi is to change the world and bank the banks, people would still not have access to it. Even if I want to get a loan, I have to sign 30 times to get it. If we are trying to make it simple, we have to ensure that they have access to it. Increased access may bring smaller vaults, but we want to have more of them. This current may be difficult to do on ETH, but I can see it happening in the future on L2 or different maintenance. It could indirectly help; for example, there might be a different protocol that launches on different blockchains. We then have this PSM with them. We get to reach out to them so people can easily use it. That is also a cool way. We have to look at expanding Dai by asking who it is for and who can access it. - I was going to say that you do not have to ask serious questions per se. Feel free to ask any personal questions you are curious about. I talked about my experience at MakerDAO, but I am always happy to answer if you are curious about why I am passionate about Maker and things like that. [24:35](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=1475) - LongForWisdom: We have recently seen that the DAO revenues have been dropping slightly as a result of less demand for borrowing on Ethereum and the other vaults. How would you approach that as a delegate in a situation where the DAO is spending more than it is bringing in? What actions would you consider pushing forward? - Since I am looking for the pragmatic, we might also need to review our plans. I realized that people are afraid of sometimes voting no against some budget increases. I can understand that because CUs or others believe their plan to be good. They have this new plan: to expand and help Dai. But at the same time, we understand that there has been no government in the agency with fewer people. I have been afraid of this as well. If you look at the revenue side, you have to look at supplier Dai and things like that. Simultaneously, we also have to look at the expanding side. - We have to look at both for better uses. We have been researching different collaterals thoroughly, especially in RWA. There will be a time when the Risk team or others will have to think that we can technically earn more revenue, but then this might be a little riskier. The ideal situation would be: "this is a similar risk, but it is much more scalable." In response to your question, we need to look at our spending, which I think will be very controversial. Some of them might know me personally but do not get offended because that is also needed. The second part is that we will have to look at some collateral because the revenue comes from there. Unless Maker changes those different business models, the revenue comes from the stability fee, the collateral, and loans. The question is: How can we increase the collateral and the vault and others? Ultimately, it will come from how we can assess and scale it. If there are people who cannot use Dai or vault because of fees or a lack of awareness, we can help through marketing or a different mandate or Layer2. We will focus on that as well. [28:00](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=1680) - LongForWisdom: Thank you. We will think about moving on. Do you have any final words, shoutouts, or anything you want to share before moving to the Flipside? - I want to say thank you so much for inviting me. I must say that this was a very hard decision. I have been working for Maker for a long time, and I have been looking at many great delegates. I do not want to compete with delegates; it is more that I saw and heard from many people that they want their voice to be heard, and they want to share their feedback with others. If there is anything that you can teach or help me understand better certain protocols or this CU initiative, I would appreciate it. Thank you so much. ### Flipside Crypto [29:20](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=1760) - Francis Gowen: I think Avi, who has started the Governance team at Flipside, will start with a quick overview of who Flipside is and what we do. Then I will be happy to field any questions. - Avi Meyers: Can you introduce the rest of the team? - Francis Gowen: We are joined by Ian Dobbins. He is a new hire focused on the Solana ecosystem and has been involved in Savor, Marinade, Manga markets, and other developing projects on Savor. We also have David Louden, our trusty intern; he has been doing everything for ETH, Solana, Terra and supporting the team. Myself is Francis Gowen, and I joined Flipside back in October, focused mostly on ETH and Terra networks. [30:16](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=1817) - Avi Meyers: We are excited to be here. I recognize familiar names. I thought it would be helpful to give a quick background on Flipside, the impetus for Flipside governance, and why we are here. My high-level overview from SES has been around since 2017 refers to US data infrastructure provider multichain. We started analyzing stuff related to MakerDAO and Ethereum and spread out to Solana, Terra, Mirror, Harmony, and many other chains. - I would think of the business in two ways. On the data infrastructure side, and for those that are data-focused, they know how intensive it is to analyze, parse blockchain data, put it into human-readable databases, and make it queryable and all that good stuff. On the other side, we have an intensive or extensive bounty program where we work directly with protocols to educate users, get them integrated, and analyze data in a community-focused model. That is our overall model. The impetus for launching the Governance team back in September of last year was that we worked extensively in DAOs. We worked on engaging, contributing, DDD partnerships, and saw much deficiency within governance overall across the ecosystem. I felt like the infrastructure was at a place where it was starting to become usable and started to find product-market fit. I felt like some of the organizational structures on top of it, particularly DAOs, were deficient: they were not working. - As a core business ethos, we provide data objectively across all these ecosystems. Our goal as a business is to help blockchains grow and support that promise. It felt like a fantastic opportunity for us and our learnings to put that into effect. I am core to all we are doing as a team is education. Not only are we trying to help people understand what is happening within these networks, but we are making what is opaque on the blockchain more transparent, understandable, and analyzable. We felt that a qualitative piece was needed to the governance angle and DAOs. We felt Maker was in the big leagues in terms of organizational structure. There was a ton of opportunity and many things that we could bring to the DAO from other experiences. We can learn and grow from being here. It seems like a no-brainer for us to get involved. - I will step down off the soapbox and hand it over to Francis to address some of the other excellent questions. If Makerman is on, I have a last anecdote. We knew things were going to be awesome and intensive here. We put a delegate forum post up, and immediately, Makerman came with 10 to 12 great questions. It was real. Thank you for that. We are excited. [33:56](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=2034) - Francis Gowen: It was fun learning about Doo and his goals as a delegate. I would be happy to share our platform here in the chat. As Avi touched upon, Flipside is a multi-chain organization. We have been involved in different DAOs protocols for six to seven months. My primary responsibility has been on ETH and particularly DeFi - that has been my background. I joined crypto in June, working at Voyager, a centralized brokerage firm. Then I started working at a high-frequency trading firm out of Sydney, Australia. I was doing DeFi research for them. I enjoyed watching the industry grow, but I was not learning enough, and that is how I found Flipside. I saw this transition to B2D, business to DAO. I see a lot of opportunities in governance: speaking strategically about how a protocol grows, thinking about partnerships, and thinking about the organizational structure. Dai is one of the first things I learned about stablecoin. I liked the idea of creating a vault and borrowing and posting collateral. That was a start for me. I never was involved in it professionally. Now, as we see the delegate platform grow on Maker, we see an opportunity as a team to become more involved in and challenge ourselves in what we understand in governance. #### Questions [35:44](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=2131) - Payton Rose: I thought of a particularly relevant question for you. What might be the views on cross-chain, like multi-chain strategy? Is there any particular direction you want to see Maker going in, especially given your experience with other protocols on other chains? - Francis Gowen: When you were asking about the lack of interest in borrowers, this is not a problem that is just happening to Maker; anchors are dealing with a similar problem. I believe that the cross-chain future is now, not coming in a year to two years. It is happening. If you look at different governance forums, there are tons of liquidity mining proposals. There are tons of opportunities to integrate stablecoins into different exchanges and DeFi protocols. For Maker, I think this is an opportunity that we have not explored enough yet. Bringing Dai across the chain is incredibly powerful. Offering new collateral of different types is incredibly powerful. That would be something I want to pioneer. - Avi Meyers: We have seen some ecosystems or some protocols try and stretch themselves too thin in launching across multiple protocols. They even had trouble consolidating data and not having access to performance and being able to track. It is important to do that, but pragmatically and with some experience. Going to ETH compatible chains or arbitrary roll-ups to ensure that it is attainable and rolled out in a disciplined way is also important. In the DAO, many intelligent people can help outline that strategy. We are watching the world evolve quickly. ETH maybe not necessarily be the first place that users go to interact. Some of these other platforms on top may be where the new users onboarded in the ecosystem will go first. I want to make sure that they have access to MakerDAO products there. - Payton Rose: As are mentioned that this is currently happening, there is a call for speed. How do we develop safely and get this through the governance process so that we both take advantage of the opportunity but do not overlook security concerns? - Francis Gowen: That is a great question. I have seen several protocols pioneer exciting models, like community bug bounties. That is important to be willing to pay for a node tested in a production environment. Also, developing connections with the team is important. Community partnerships are critical, but also understanding the team behind these protocols and different networks is imperative to guarantee a smooth integration. - Avi Meyers: Table stakes networks that can be deployed are probably safer bets. We can develop a risk assessment to understand what it will look like to deploy and whether it is worth deploying. You hit deploy and then go to a ghost chain three or six months later. There are some confidence steps you could take short term. UniSwap is a great model for making decisions internally and within the DAO. They tend to be a little behind the curve - they just approved Polygon because they have the luxury of already having an established market and presence. They can make sure it is safe. I am sometimes at a safer post for such protocol, so that could be a strategy potentially that Maker deploys - you can make the strong decisions first and then ultimately reduce risk. [40:36](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=2436) - Kianga Daverington: Can you speak about permissionlessness? This is also connected to what Doo was saying about users in China with their safety and security concerns. Technically, we may need to re-architect some things. I would love to hear your thoughts on the permissionless nature of Dai and how that sits with you in this environment. Then also, we had to grapple with regulatory risk. There are some views about centralizing or centralizing aspects and incorporating somewhere to manage that risk. I was wondering about your thoughts to do with the permissionlessness of Dai and MakerDAO and how you would like to see us grow in that context. - Francis Gowen: In my perspective, centralization is a bell curve. You start very centralized, and you become more decentralized as you grow. You turn around and approach centralization again as you reach a certain threshold. This industry loves to tell the importance of decentralization. Some of the best products are very centralized, and I am not afraid of that. We can approach that smartly in terms of legality and onboarding new users. I think there is validity in becoming a more permission product. A permissionless product still cannot exist. I would look at something like Aave, exploring the ARK market. That is permission lending institutions, KYC, AML, all that. I see a future where there can be a permissionless and permission project, and I would be willing to support something of the source. [43:04](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=2584) - David Utrobin: This has to do with what you laid out about the multi-chain strategy. What do you guys think about Maker's current approach in multi-chain strategy? For context, we are building towards Optimism, Arbitrarum, and StarkNet. That is the primary place where our engineering resources are pointed. Do you agree with this direction? What would it be if you were to come in and change anything about it? - Francis Gowen: You are looking at many other money markets and lending protocols, and they are looking at other Layer1s. A lot of them do not include these roll-ups or these Layer2s. I think focusing on that is a great niche for Maker. I do not think many users are on these chains yet, but they will be in the future. You are laying the framework for adoption in three to five months. I would suggest broadening that list to include something like CK sink. But I like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Starkware so far. - Avi Meyers: With the architecture's architecture, it makes sense to naturally go to roll up focus chains, like Arbitrum. Since you are still utilizing the security, you have a mainnet, which seems the safest bet. By the time you roll out there in Arbitrum, it will start to kick off, and Optimism will also start to take off. Then, you will see what traction they are getting. If it is worth considering other chains, then the EVM strategy is probably the easiest transition in terms of dev resource and understanding the infrastructure. However, it introduces a bit more risk on the belt if it is Moonbeam, Polkadot, Avalanche, or whatever. You are exposing yourself to lots of other problems. I love that strategy. It is correct in its current form. You have time to see where other places are attracting critical mass and maybe be considered. We would love to provide that type of insight. That is where we play and specialize in; providing data on certain key metrics that might be important to the DAO. That is part of the value-added we would love to bring as a delegate. [45:57](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=2757) - David Utrobin: With the expansion of Layer2 approaches, there will naturally be an expansion of needed resources such as a new CU, a new sub-team of PE, or something that works on these. The question is related to the surplus buffer management strategy of the DAO. Are you for the burn? Or are you for a more aggressive growth strategy? What would you vote for? The vote was up today. - Francis Gowen: I lean towards a more aggressive strategy. To fund all these CUs, you need to have that. We are talking among delegates; there is currently 21 CUs at massive expenses. As you create more infrastructure and incur more costs, you need to be willing to spend more money. While the Maker burn mechanism is important for the asset itself, you need to allow the surplus to happen to fund growth. [47:22](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=2842) - Tim Schuppener: Thank you guys for putting up your platform. Sorry to jump into this a little bit late. I wanted to ask a clarifying question. You mentioned many of these strategic approaches to other EVM compatible chains. Is anyone on your team a protocol to people with that technical expertise? Or would this be more of your strategic insights coming from Flipside? - Francis Gowen: We are currently hiring for somebody focused on roll-ups and ZK knowledge. We do not have somebody for that role, but our larger organization has much experience. Right now, our team has 60 people. When you delegate with us, you get all power of full 60. The Flipside governance team is four and about to be five strong. We are focused on delegation and voting and in thinking strategically, but we have the capabilities to create these insights and understand growth across different networks and blockchains. - Avi Meyers: To clarify, are you asking do we have solidity devs that would be able to deploy contracts on these chains? Is that the nature of the question, or do we have experts to parse the data? - Tim Schuppener: In between. There is no dearth of strategic insights or high-level thoughts in Maker. Would you be able to provide a unique insight to say, "Hey, you will approach this EVM chain? Here are the steps you might want to take." This reduces the load. If you provide much strategic insight, and then it ends up falling on the dev's shoulders, then we are already a little strapped in that case. So, it is a two-fold thing. Like, "that sounds cool. I like that insight. What other additional thing can you do?" We already got a little bit of that answer. I was trying to dig a little. - Avi Meyers: In that sense, Francis covered most of it. Just clarifying, a node on our overall team structure at Flipside is being 60 strong. We are pretty flat, and the way we design it is everyone can find their interests and demands of whom we are working with. That is a great push. You need a more pragmatic, hands-on approach to these implementations or decisions. We have people internally that can surface that. We would just lean into their expertise and loop them in if that is what is needed. - Tim Schuppener: Totally. It makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. [50:21](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=3021) - Frank Cruz: If I understand correctly, you are not using agent-based simulations like Gauntlet. Gauntlet loves to use many tooling simulations of stability fees, interest rates, etc. Are you guys using that? - Avi Meyers: We built some simulation solutions ourselves. We are certainly not a competitive gauntlet at all. Our primary data infrastructure is designed to be leveraged in some of those simulations. Our community of analysts has good data science backgrounds and expertise in building solutions that may solve that. We have done it for Levana, a couple of Terra-based protocols, so it is there. I would think of us as providing the primordial soup for some of those analyses to be performed. - Frank Cruz: It could be a combination of both. - Avi Meyers: Exactly. - Francis Gowen: I would say gauntlets are more risk-focused. They are trying to surface different insights, no matter what form. We have an internal data science team, and then we also have a community north of 9000 full analysts. [51:54](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=3114) - LongForWisdom: From what I have seen, let us not assume too much. Maker is a lot more complex in terms of parameters and levels available to governance. In the structure mentioned, 21 CUs is a lot. That implies a relatively large management load on the shoulders of governance. I wonder if you guys have an onboarding plan or any strategy for getting up to speed with Maker. Is this something you considered? - Avi Meyers: As soon as we decided to run this as a team, we started researching. David is doing some very in-depth research on Maker, and he is presenting to us on Friday. Part of our process is engaging with any protocols to understand how they function and operate in-depth, internalize it, and then put it into action. I think they can, and we are already fairly familiar with how Maker operates; that is part of our onboarding process to make sure we got it down cold. - Francis Gowen: A lot is learned through conversations like these. This includes asking hard questions, meeting some of the people in the room that we are working with, being involved in different groups, and living on the forums is important. Maker is complex. We want to smooth some of that complexity. When looking at new user growth, they do not understand a surplus mechanism. They understand a stablecoin, which means it is $1. Translating that and representing it to a broader community is essential. [54:14](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=3254) - Payton Rose: How directly do you plan to engage with the governance process? Do you see yourself making proposals, similar requests, or more just weighing in on proposals that others have submitted? - Francis Gowen: I love to create proposals. That is a good thing and a bad thing. I do not think that will happen off the bat, but as you ramped up, maybe a month or two, I would love to create proposals and propose different partnerships. We will start a regular cadence to align with those Monday and Friday voting blocks. We are setting up some of that infrastructure internally and just getting used to some of the content and discussion on Maker. But yes! I love proposals. Be careful. ### Conclusion #### LongForWisdom [57:20](https://youtu.be/hNMKg9BNWjU?t=3440) - We will wrap it up. Huge thanks to Flipside and Doo Wan Nam. Thanks for doing this. It helps people get an idea of what you guys care about. See you all the next one. ## Common Abbreviated Terms `DAO`: Decentralized Autonomous Organization `RWA`: Real World Asset `DeFi`: Decentralized Finance ## Credits - Kunfu-po produced this summary. - Artem Gordon produced this summary. - Larry Wu produced this summary. - Everyone who spoke and presented on the call, listed in the headers.