Meet Your Delegate: Episode #13

--- tags: Meet Your Delegate --- # Meet Your Delegate: Episode #13 ## Agenda - [00:03](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=3): Introduction - [00:00](): monetsupply - [30:18](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=1818): Chicago Team - [1:00:31](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=3631): Conclusion ## Video [Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYiC2hVHwII) ### General Introduction #### Patrick J [00:03](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=3) - Welcome to the meet your delegate call we are hosting with Mhonkasalo and the Chicago DAO team. We will start with me and continue to present their delegate platform. We will give them about five to 10 minutes, then we will have a space to answer questions, and then we will hand it over to the Chicago DAO team in about half an hour. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. Avoid interruptions and keep your microphone on mute when you are not talking. Feel free to raise your hand. If you have any questions, you want to ask or put them in the chat. One of them will ask for you. ### Delegate Introductions ### monetsupply [02:20](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=140) - Mhonkasalo: Thanks for everyone taking the time to join us here. The structure for our slides here is first to introduce ourselves: why we are doing this and what we bring to the table, and then some focus points for MakerDAO and how we approach them. More than specific issues, we also want to show how we think through problems and our operating methods. There is a two-person delegate platform: Tim and I are working together as a team on various political research efforts. One thing we have noticed about projects we fought for a while and are these blue chips in the space is that more active delegation is required; we hope to be part of the solution. Both of us, our longtime Maker holders, have followed the projects since their inception and are excited to contribute in a more active role. You can think of us as the defined crypto native folk who can get pretty deep into the weeds on the technical and financial side of many protocols, not just MakerDAO. - As background, many of you may know me from Twitter, but I was a researcher at the block, writing a lot about the DeFi market and more about the technical side of things like scaling. I have also made community tools, such as the first Compound and Balance or liquidity mining calculators. For the past year, I worked at petrifying capital on the investment team. Now I am taking a more independent route as a researcher and investor. - Teemu Laurikainen: my background is from Slush, one of the world's largest technology conferences organized in Helsinki. I was there as one of the main organizers between 2015 and 2018. I also pushed Crypto content quite heavily and organized some events. I think MakerDAO has been at slush a couple of different times. Then I joined a startup, a real estate-focused startup; as a CFO, I was the 10th employee. I was there for three years, and the company grew to roughly 50 employees. I left the company last September and have been focused on crypto and DeFi research ever since. - Teemu: Why do we want to get involved in MakerDAO? We have long believed that stable coins are the essential use case in DeFi, and as I mentioned, we have followed Maker for a long time and view it as the leading stablecoin protocol. Stable coins have a market cap of roughly 150 billion, which is very tiny compared to all money, so the market opportunity to grow is still huge. Secondly, MakerDAO needs a lot more active delegates. We have a situation where we have a lot of large token holders, specifically funds that do not participate in day-to-day governance. At the same time, we don't have that many active delegates. That creates an opportunity for new delegates like us to step in. Thirdly, our long-term professional interest is to do the protocol research and governance professionally. We view the recognized delegate program as a significant first step in enabling this. We will see that the program could extend to other projects in the future, as other DeFi protocols suffer from the same problem. We see ourselves perhaps building a firm around research and protocol governance in the future. [06:42](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=402) - Teemu: What do we bring to the table concretely? We believe we have a deep understanding of the crypto and DeFi industry. We have been involved since 2015, starting as a hobby and obsession, like many others. Having done the deep dive into Maker in the last weeks, it is clear that brilliant people are involved in the project. We are not that deep in Maker yet, but I think what we bring to the table is an excellent understanding of the industry as a whole and many, many different projects. Secondly, we have a growing distribution in other channels, like Twitter and SaltStack. The supplies space specifically to mica right now, as he has been professionally involved during that a couple of years in crypto, and I am doing my best to catch up here. Thirdly, we are committed to active participation in governance and promise to express our opinions and be actively involved. Of course, we bring with our mindsets that they will, so we have lived through bear markets and never accepted the industry entirely. We have stayed invested and interested and obsessed with different projects so, so it is a commitment from us to sustainable and long-term as mentioned, we see ourselves building a firm specialized in protocol governance. - Mhonkasalo: Obviously, the first step is finding the Northstar here and aligning and communicating and growth strategy so that the community can come behind, and large token holders who have not been active so far can also get behind. I think there is plenty to do here, just on the communication side. In practice, I think it also means that we would be going deep into the financials of, for example, proposed fundraising. There, our thoughts are that debt financing is better. The detail needs to be ironed out on what that means for MakerDAO going forward regarding its risk profile and how attractive that kind of thing is. That is the practical example where we would be deep in the weeds helping out. - A problem we see is a mismatch between some MKR holders and those who know what is happening daily. This is a two-sided issue, with Maker holders first not being active. Until now, maybe a bit more, we are starting to see those steps on it, and this is what we are hoping to drive as well. Then, the complexity of the Maker system: we want to be a bridge between what is happening and what is happening there. From my experience, even large holders may not be up to date on what is happening and on the day-to-day level. How is Maker moving towards this vision? There has been some appetite for this recently. It is good because the bear market brings everyone back into focus and into these problems, creating the opportunity for much healthier growth. Also, there has been quite a bit of discussion on budgets and profitability of the system; the positive side is that there is quite a bit of the wrong runway, and there is no need to panic. - In our voting, we would like to emphasize financial discipline and restraint and let things through that improve the protocol and make a difference on the sort of PNL in the short term or something strategically valuable over the long term. One of our hobbyhorses is just how Maker is communicated: how the vision of Maker and how excited people are about it, but then the community versus sort of the broader crypto community and people in DeFi, and I think there is a large delta, that is why there is a considerable potential to change how the market views Maker and Maker has held its position as the main protocol by TBL. There is a massive opportunity here, and starting a competitor is difficult. - I think all positive pieces are in place. I think overall, like positive community sentiment, that leads to more people wanting to integrate Dai as a default option, which increases fees and gets us into a positive cycle. One final point we have noticed over just researching everything is that it is clear that Maker is showing the traditional strengths and weaknesses of the flat organization to improve this. We align with some other community members, where delegates should have more of a board role and help out the strategic vision. The Core Unit that is doing a great job should have better control over like day to day things so that it is not much time goes not go into micromanagement, but governance in a way can be minimized. Day-to-day decisions can be left to those who are doing the best and understand those situations, the best mechanism in a different position, and lots of other protocols because Uniswap, for example, has Uniswap Labs that drives the development. This is very different, and I think there are some things that Maker suffers from because of this very flat organization and could improve. Also, it is a strength of the protocol that it is a real DAO and moving forward. [12:33](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=753) - To highlight our opinions, we strongly think the b2b model and getting through a type of approach will contribute a lot of revenue to the system. That is how Maker can best strategically position itself within the ecosystem as the sort of wholesale lender to other protocols and projects that can bring in, so Maker does not have to specialize in many of those things. Maker can provide the infrastructure for more specialized individuals to take over those initiatives, and Dai is the backbone that funds those. As delegates, we view our role as being active in the weekly polls and executives and communicating our thinking. Looking forward, I think the value-added and contribution to specific strategic initiatives was sort of with quality over quantity in a way where we can hone in on something significant and help out there. As I said earlier, we would not mind allowing CU to handle some things daily because not every decision gets voted on. As delegates, we think it is more important to have a big vision of making Maker holders ensure that people are aligned with the idea and that Maker holders are participating. We do not believe in forcing participation their way, but the market more taking care of these things and, and that people will find sort of the incentive to participate as long as there are people and, and ways for them to do it and in a way where they feel like they are on top of things. - Finally, relating to a bit of the external community excitement. We think a change in the token economics approach would be helpful over the longer time horizon. The most important thing is to invest in growth, even if the system is profitable at the moment, but the buyback and burn have been okay. It is attractive during times when Maker prices are low. We think that the future token economic model should consider more users who are acting in some way taking on risk in the system, and that benefits those who are MKR token holders who will drive better actions going forward. Those are high-level thoughts. I am happy to answer your questions. #### Prose11: Reading through your platform and seeing that growth is significant to you. You cite a business to business, particularly as a model of upscaling prayer for Maker. Other than the d3m you mentioned there, I was curious if there were any other avenues or areas you think Maker should be exploring to realize that business-to-business potential? [15:37](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=937) - Mhonkasalo: jumping into that, I think a lot of it is contained in the Ethereum module, just like expanding to include real-world assets and other types of asset originators. The way we think about it is from the crypto side, BTC and Eth have only driven a lot of the volume and revenue, and it is difficult to see how that changes going forward. When there is a demand to borrow with diligence collateral, that's good for the Maker system. I do not think on that side; there is necessarily that much like onboarding, the following collateral that is diminishing returns. Even if the different models right now aren't producing that much revenue for the system? The potential for those to do so over time is so large that the focus should be there. #### Do the two of you disagree? How will you resolve that to make a building decision? [17:08](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=1028) - I think we align with a lot of our thinking overall, which is why we are doing this. The way we feel about Maker is pretty straightforward. In the big picture, I think we are very much aligned, and it will not be a matter because the delegates' role is to enact the vision of large token holders. We can get token holders who are excited about and share the same idea as us. I think in the big picture, that is not an issue. I think the smaller stuff is a real thing that may come up in some sense, but I think those are also the kinds of decisions that we do not feel are essential for delegates to be correct. The most important thing is that we are aligned on the future from Maker, which fixes 99% of all issues we will have. #### Each of the delegates and the delegate's structure is very flat as well, without distinction between whether someone is a student group or a seasoned professional is spending a few hours a week or wants to devote full time to the work. Yet, each of us has the same obligation to vote on every single thing put before the community. How do you view that in terms of divide and an approach? How does the delegate group function when each person or organization is supposed to cast an informed view on every detail and subject matter before the DAO? [18:22](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=1102) - At the moment, the involvement of delegates is on an average operational level. I also think that the incentives and rewards for delegates should be improved. There should be delegates specializing in deep thinking and deep analysis of specific strategic initiatives rather than participating in every vote on a very operational level. Mick mentioned this in the presentation: in some cases, the CUs should handle operational decisions; this is the direction we see. #### Mica specifically, I see you talk much about DAO treasury management on Twitter? Could you share if you have any ideas regarding the MakerDAO Treasury funds? How would you like to see them utilized as a delegate? [20:21](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=1221) - I think we are still forming our opinion. We generally aligned pretty well with the kind of thinking in the house, for example, posted on how treasury management should work. There is a real opportunity to extract or get more value from the current collateral base that probably is not used. There are many risks to consider; maybe the general answer is that we are still thinking this through. People tend to view everything new thing Maker onboards as a risk. Still, I think there is also a tremendous risk in not aggressively pursuing growth. You have these situations where, even though they are not that sustainable in a bull market, someone with a desirable offer can quickly create a massive supply of stable coins. Even if those initiatives do not tend to be sustainable, if Maker does not pursue things more aggressively on that side, that will lead to growth stagnating or someone being able to take over. We think about balance sheet risk, as well. It is something that we are under specifics we are still thinking through. #### About pivoting: we have seen proposals such as the end game, take a pivot, other ones where there is an aggressive growth strategy, I believe it's called Task Force, etc. We will get an idea of how you guys feel about companies pivoting. Have you had an experience where you owned an investment that completely pivoted, or were you working at a company that did the same thing? [22:11](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=1331) - We pivoted from my previous experience in the block enterprises. I was there for one year. I believed that we created a more scalable product through a pivot when the company had 10 or 12 employees, and then the company grew to 50 employees. I have experience of leading through that. This is much more difficult to achieve for an organization of a size like Maker. It needs to be discussed and on what aspects. I have some experience living in that environment. - Mhonkasalo: we do not think in the Maker context like a pivot; we believe that there are a lot of good ideas and initiatives that people have; it is making sure that the most important one is pursued at any given moment. I think all the right ideas are on the table at the moment. It is just what is feasible and how much risk you are willing to take. That is something that Maker needs to discuss: the level of risk the system is ready to have and what risk is willing to take more broadly. I do not think there is anything we are not very radically coming in and thinking we ch - Teemu: It is clear that regarding growth initiatives, the Maker ecosystem is divided on where to go. We think that is the number one priority for the community. #### What is the biggest competitor to Maker and its product Dai? What do you see out there that the Maker community needs to stay aware of? What do you think about Dai as a product fit, and how should we scale going forward? [25:09](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=1509) - Teemu: Dai already has a powerful network effect globally as a product. I do not see other stable coins as decentralized or want to be decentralized stablecoins as Dai competitors. I think the large bear case for Maker is that there is no real need for a decentralized stablecoin globally, but rather decentralized competitors like USDC, and others, just like we need. That is the biggest question: will there be some macro moment proving the utility of decentralized stable coins related to regulation? - Mhonkasalo: this is an interesting discussion. I was going to answer the same thing, going back to works in history and thinking about adding the PSM modules and a time when Dai was trading above $1. I was at the camp where I wished that Maker had a system design that allowed for negative interest rates and not having this sort of floor on being able to incentivize more of the supplier to come onto the market. Now there is a situation where Maker is a wrapper for USDC, which is what it is right now. There are good reasons behind it. Although it does not currently look like it, we need to wean away from those things as much as possible over time. Then, we should be able to get to a place where the collateral basis is more distributed in ways where people accept the risk distributed even if everything is not decentralized. #### What is the greatest risk to the protocol in its present state? [28:21](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=1701) - Mhonkasalo: Dai does not build enough excitement around the fact that it is the number one decentralized stable coin, and things and apathy moved towards USDC. I think that is the number one problem. - Teemu: Yes, that is the number one problem in a way, but I do not think that technical risks are that high any more than they have been before, but I guess there is a case to be made about financial risks and understanding the collateral qualities and stuff like that. Of course, the Makers' emphasis should go from technical to financial risks since the b2b growth and everything happening. I guess there can be new risks emerging from the collateral. ### Chicago DAO Team [30:18](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=1818) - Simon Mahns: thank you for your time. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I'm a third-year will now, going into my fourth year at the University of Chicago as an undergrad studying computer science and national physics. I am computer-primarily, will be doing engineering at Meta in reality labs over the summer, finished up an internship at a derivatives exchange on Solana, and have prior experience working in full-stack and participating in various hackathons. Within the web3 space in UChicago. I am one of the founders of the undergraduate blockchain club and one of the core contributors to this DAO. - Madhav Vats: I am a rising third year in college. I am studying computer science and economics. Most recently, I worked at Alchemy on the product side, and this summer, I will be doing cloud engineering at CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm. I have been involved in the web3 space since 2018. I have been part of the core team for Chicago DAO and the undergraduate blockchain club at Chicago since my very early days. - Our main goal is to connect the different blockchain communities around campus and create a community where we can learn and build together in the web3 space. We want to focus on education, facilitating entrepreneurial spirit, and producing new ideas and projects. We started two months ago. We are still somewhat centralized: we have a core team, which has representation from the business school in the law school in the undergraduate population. We are working on creating our white paper, our core internal governance structure, and our various initiatives. - Our initiative, the first one here, is external governance, where we currently have delegation for Uniswap, Compound, and hopefully Maker. We will get more into our external governance process after this slide. We are also working on exploring DAO tooling and governance, just philosophy of governance as well, by building our own DAO tooling platform that we have started at a Hackathon and won a documentary award for. We have a trading slash quant team competing in the FDX trading competition and are working closely with FTX to start this trading competition. - We also have an education initiative, where we will be doing a Hackathon quarterly to end with a lot in with complementing workshops to get people that are beginners on our campus into the web through space. We also want to have a research focus publications on our website. And we'll be pulling information from people on our campus faculties as faculty alumni and from all the different schools at the University of Chicago. We also have a hackathon team that competed in three hackathons. - Last month, we won multiple prizes, and we are planning on continuing to attend various hackathons over the summer and into the following year. We are also planning a conference/hackathon in October in Chicago, hoping to spotlight the way through space in Chicago. - We are working closely with trading firms in Chicago to make this happen. AWe also created a job placement platform to collect resumes from everyone in the Chicago campus, not just in the blockchain space but also in people that are into trading and are more finance-related. Anything web3 that could be considered web3-related, we have a resume book for people interested in hiring talent out of UChicago. We're planning on building this into a platform other University clubs could use. Finally, since we have much help from excellent law students on our DAO, we are working on a parallel entity to our DAO. This includes a 501c3 nonprofit foundation and LLC to reduce liability for handling different things, mainly because the 501c3 will take a while to establish. - We will be using LLC for now. We are also fortunate enough to have pro bono from a large law firm in the web3—moving more into our external governance, just introducing our diverse team, in the sense of experience, as well as the backgrounds they have, and what they're currently studying. We have MBA candidates and law students who have had much industry experience and undergraduates with development experience and experience at different finance-related firms. [36:45](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=2205) - What we bring to the table is this diverse set of backgrounds and experiences, as well as an unbiased look at Maker since we are all students and do not have any association or close association with competitors and Maker. We are also ravenous to learn, which is another of our values. - Regarding our external governance team and processes, we make decisions on upcoming votes and even proposed votes for the protocols that we are stewards of, which currently include Compound and Uniswap. - Our external governance team has been working on these two protocols for the last month or so, maybe a little more essentially, as Simon said. Our governance team is very diverse and has a wide range of perspectives. Our external governance team has several people assigned as protocol leads. - For example, if we were to become Maker delegates, Simon would be the Maker protocol lead. It would be his responsibility to conduct some ongoing monitoring of the protocol, watching the forums, watching the Discord, and understanding the sentiment around growth and the opinion around proposals. - When something comes up that would be relevant to the external Governance Committee and require discussion and a vote. The protocol's key responsibility is to create a pre-proposal brief with an outline of the relevant information: and present it to the governance team, who then deliberate whether it is a sink for relatively low priority votes or a same-day synchronous meeting. - For some more high priority votes over 24 hours, while in parallel, there is a Dai broad input via the public channel for folks that are not necessarily voting members of the external governance team. However, they might still want to provide their input and share their beliefs about the protocol's future. - Finally, the governance committee votes and executes the vote via the multisig wallet, which Chicago DAO holds. There are many processes here, but our goal is to reach a unanimous decision and come to a point where the majority of the governance team can agree on a path forward through the level of discussion and debate back and forth. - We found that that has worked well because it allows all the viewpoints to be heard and reach a consensus. There are more policies for a tiebreaker or all different parliamentary procedure-type things. In terms of metrics for success that we are looking for out of this process: we would like to be one of the highest levels of participation and communication in forums and delegates that Maker has. We meet weekly and consistently and have high engagement from our internal governance team. As we start to expand, we're also hoping for a broader DAO. We are relatively small on a campus, and it is mostly just the core team. As we start to open up, we would like to bring more and more people into this process. The other thing is that I continue to have ongoing refinements and improvements to our governance process. [40:39](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=2439) - Regarding our iterations, we hold a monthly meeting where everyone can come and voice updates on this process. Everyone was in Chicago DAO, and there are various proposal processes for changes to any of these processes I outlined. - We have different policies for quorum and upcoming updates about how it will be updated. Since we are all students, every couple of years, this slate is changed of students that are part of the DAO and right now relatively new. Still, we have thought a lot about ensuring that if we become a delegate for protocol, this is sustainable and a long-term engagement, even if the individual members are not around after a couple of years. - We have created succession processes and ensured that there are at least seven of 13 sitting members on the governance team based on a nomination process and a succession process as one member graduates to bring on somebody new who is interested and excited in the governance process. - The other thing I forgot is that we have one external governance team that handles all of our delegates' protocols. As we grow, one of our most effective plans is to split these external governance committees into separate teams for each protocol. Folks interested in knowledge about Maker would be able to join Maker-specific teams and spend all their time concentrating on that. - Some of our core governance values are sustainability, which our DAO continues to be known for regardless of the individual members. We like to prioritize. Chicago DAO is an organization over any individual of the external governance team. That is why we work hard to reach a consensus and debate it to the point where we have a unified Chicago DAO view on any of these protocols in any of these decisions. - We want to be diligent stewards, who are optimistic about the future of these protocols, help them grow, help them move forward, and, more broadly, help them innovate in the web3-space. This unites all of us as students because we are passionate about blockchain and the web3 space in general. We would like to see the space grow. In the upcoming years, we have been working hard to create a culture of transparency. - We are undergrads: our booth and law school students have industry experience in the past, but as undergrads, like, many of the current members of the DAO, they are just starting to get experience with these protocols, especially in the web space. - We think a lot about how we can make this an educational experience, focusing on growth and knowledge with humility, as a DAO and as a team, to ensure that we are learning and educating our members about these protocols. - Finally, to follow the ethos of web3, our DAO is working on building out these on-chain governance protocols to be deployed in the fall. Until then, ensure that each member follows an ethos of decentralization and democracy that is so prominent in web3. That is all we have for you today. There is an appendix where you can check out some of these further links. #### What happens when you graduate? [44:51](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=2691) - Madhav: One of the big things is that we want to shadow each person about to graduate. Another big thing is sustainability: one of our biggest priorities because everyone in the Dao will graduate within four years. One of our biggest things to achieve sustainability is the shadowing process. When people are moving out within the last quarter or last few quarters, they would be able to find this nominee that would be able to learn as they are heading out to ensure a clean pass-off. - We are still reviewing this process, but it is one of our strongest convictions about the space and our DAO. In general, we can prioritize the organization and the viewpoint of the DAO over any one individual or any one sort of student that is currently at the university. Whether it is this process or if it evolves into something else, we would like to have a focus on succession and a focus on sustainability throughout the DAO. - I think there is more than enough interest on campus. Through many of our educational initiatives each quarter, we bring in a cohort of 20 to 30 students to educate them on blockchain space, development, and more on the business side. Then, we onboarded them to DAO, which is something we did for the first time this spring. We will have more than an adequate number of students and a continued pipeline of people who are interested in the external governance committee specifically to make it grow over time. - There is an undergraduate club, a club at the booth, and the start of a club at the law school. For the undergraduate club, that is primarily for getting the essential beginners and teaching them within a quarter everything they need to know about the blockchain space from DeFi to actual smart contract writing and getting them up to speed to join the DAO. - We did that for the first time, this last quarter in the spring is that offset, and ideas that will have this continual cycle of great talent coming into the DAO would also be able to take up the reins for other people who are graduating. #### Prose11: It is awesome to decentralize decision-making; that is something that has much value. Do you have an emergency response procedure? Many votes are planned, but sometimes we call on our delegates because we must pass through governance rather quickly. How would you handle that with your organizational setup? [48:28](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=2908) - We have done this in the past for compound vote, which came up relatively quickly after we first became delegates for Compound. Our governance team is so significant: there are 13 of us that focus on these three protocols. At any given time, there will be people busy with any commitments, and we have set policies for quorum in our governance team based on the number of people currently on the team. We built policies, which are outlined here for calling a high-priority synchronous meeting that is on the same day. We found that with 13 people, we can achieve the quorum of seven members present to vote on any given subject in the same-day meeting for those high-priority votes. I think we will add some more processes to that in the future as our committee expands and as the number of protocols we are stewards of grows, but I think there is a process as well to make sure that this is something that you are willing to commit the time and the energy. There is a whole nomination process, and the committee votes to ensure that the people involved here will be active and have the time to commit to this, whether it is the weekly assigned work or things that come up from these emergency votes and meetings. - We communicate primarily through Discord. We also created a Discord bot, including Maker, specifically for pinging the new proposals. We also have that as a fallback in case anyone can see it, so it is not just the protocol lead pushing it; there is the bot telling everyone we need to do this, we have this, we have X amount of time to complete this. If those two things are in hand, with the people being active on there in the pot, I think we were able to put together these calls in the case that we need to. #### Jun (from Penn blockchain at Penn). All universities in the past have had a poor track record with voting, especially with new projects or new clubs that have just formed. I think you mentioned that you have a union compound delegation. I know unions are a little messy, but at least for the Compound front, you see many clubs coming in. Getting delegation from main injuries, and I presume where you are from, they seem to delegate to every other club, right? This is not only directed at Chicago DAO, but during our earlier days, we were inactive. Our participation rates are pretty low with these different groups, and we will continue improving. What will your DAO do now with Maker to make the participation rate better than what I think the compound profile is? Set around like a 30% participation and Compound for you? What incentives will you align with? How will you incentivize your club to have that higher participation rate? I think one of the great things about Maker is the participation-like dashboard, where you see where everyone participates. How will you motivate your members and have incentives aligned to be active in everything? This could be good insight for our club as well. [51:47](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=3107) - I think that is one of the most difficult things here. As Madhav stated before, we are still working. We started two months ago and are working together on creating this process. We presented what we currently have, which is the most sustainable at the moment: where one person specifically has the box stops at a single person instead of what we started with. We had a group of people ambiguously assigned to a specific protocol, like Compound or Uniswap. We realized that we were able to give one person a particular responsibility. One of the other things was that we created the spot to make sure that everyone was informed, not just the leads as well, as a fallback that that was our solution to fix that issue by making sure that we have 100% participation across the board. - On the backend as Compound, we also reevaluated who is involved with that process. Then, assign the leads for a more decentralized leadership structure for each of the protocols because initially, we think there would be just one over the entire external governance team, which is not very decentralized. That is why we chose this structure. Your feedback is also appreciated since you guys have been Maker delegates for longer than us and also doing the external governance longer. Do you think that is a viable solution? One person has the responsibility, in combination with a bot, to ensure everyone knows what's going on? Do you think bounties are the way to make everyone do what they need to do? [55:37](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=3337) - Jun: I would be happy to talk offline or after this. Reach out on Discord. Long story short, our club has many opinions on it, and it is hard finding a way to incentivize people but also want them to stay involved and interested in the protocol. - Madhav: We have had one of the biggest challenges since the beginning: finding a balance between efficiency as an organization and decentralization, which we strive for progressively. I think the external governance process has been most exemplified in this process. Something that we have been discussing since very early on is a bounty system. As our legal situation moves toward - I know, you guys work with Edu DAO, which has built that legal framework for you. We are planning to do the legal incorporation with some of our partners separately, which is something we have been trying to figure out: how to mitigate liability from individuals and how to pay out. That does a bounty system without running into any legal issues. I think within the next couple of months, that can be resolved. We want to move toward several incentives, not just social but also potentially financial. It is an ongoing discussion. We would love to connect with you and chat about what Penn does. #### Our other university-affiliated blockchain clubs have had issues with kind of university charter and not being allowed to own the tokens themselves. Is that something that also applies to your club? Does the Chicago DAO own MKR tokens they plan to delegate to themselves? Are you going to be reliant on external entities delegating your MKR? [57:56](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=3476) - We have external tokens delegated to us. We do not hold any Maker as Chicago DAO, but that may change in the future, given how we go with our legal incorporation process. We are still very nascent. #### Unrelated when I guess you have more technical skills than many of the delegates, at least so far. You did not mention in your platform that you would be willing to consider governance proposals when appropriate. Was there anything you have been thinking about building for Maker? Or otherwise that you might be looking to contribute in terms of actual technical development down the line? - We are excited to continue growing our hacker team on our DAO and pulling more people from our computer science graduate department to contribute to open-source projects. They also contribute to different things in the web3 space as devs since we want to be able to build as a DAO. One of the biggest priorities is down the road: doing something like that and being able to contribute in a technical aspect as well, not just within this realm of voting. - Prose11: I dropped a link in the chat for an example: which was this issue of returning funds to our surplus buffer. Some technicalities have to be done. Someone without permission set up a contract to do it, so now, an even less sophisticated CU can send Dai to this particular address. I think there are many fun opportunities just by being around in the Maker ecosystem. You will see something that you might be able to put the team to work on. ### Conclusion #### Patrick_J [1:00:31](https://youtu.be/KYiC2hVHwII?t=3631) - The time is up. Unless anyone has got any more questions, I think that is at the end of our half-hour period. Thank both sets of delegates for coming along today; everyone who came asked questions and listened to this call. We look forward to getting you guys live on the voting portal. ## Credits - Andrea Suarez produced this summary. - Larry Wu produced this summary. - Everyone who spoke and presented on the call.