GN, was eating and reading all of the comments. First of all, wanna point out how productively active Gearheads are - across the forum and Discord, you properly laid out some of the arguments. Admiration, sers!
Now onto the topic of subjective numbers… I guess I will split the message into a subjective personal first, and then into a more call-to-action objective one. But before I begin, please keep in mind (1) I am just one of the contributors (2) I am not even a dev or a tech person, my opinion is not as valuable - truly, honestly (3) I am not a director of any company that can have conflict of interest here, and (4) I hate the word equity and non-token accrual mechanisms. SoI guess I can see the picture from both sides.
Subjective perception of any FDV and its formation
Having been on the project side and angel side quite a few times, it’s always a drag-and-pull scenario even if parties try to avoid these measly materialistic things. Let’s say a founder you like raises a seed round in a bull market. Is giving at 60M FDV retarded? Yes, most likely. But you kinda believe in them, so you give anyway… and then they release while bull is still there, and you make 10x! But you could have said FDV is too high, right, and pass? Well, the same goes for inverse conditions, where investing at 10M FDV seed is actually inverse result just due to market conditions. So what am I trying to say? It’s hella subjective. I personally look at Solana’s old projects raising at 500M+ and cry. I find it truly retarded. But there were willing buyers at a fair market price. And you know what? Buying SPY or MATIC 2 years ago seemed retarded just before Covid hit… but oh well, they turned out to be right.
Everybody has their own tolerance, their own risk management system in plans, their own understanding of the market cycle, their own horizon. You will never be right or wrong here, because that is only determined by time and by subjective things like DAO willingness and ability to be agile with products, security breaches being avoided and so on. Basically, this conversation doesn’t have any meaning.
But okay back to data: look at Yearn, Curve, Aave, and other FDVs and CMCs… If you want some “but ser, we gonna be 1B protocol”. Do I subjectively believe in it and want to see it? Hell ye! But it’s a dumb argument to make when trying to secure resources for growth, because by that logic you should never give any equity away, never do an airdrop, and so on. You see how it makes no sense? Then maybe Credit Account Mining should have never happened, and GEAR token should have never launched? This is silly!
Keep in mind that the terms are:
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The same FDV as an average of Credit Account mining (see the dune dashboard in the OP post) from December 2021 in USD terms - despite ETH having gone down 3 times since then. I am personally badmouthing large capital players often, but here I admire them for sticking to this benchmark and respecting the community! Wanna keep same ETH terms… oef, well let’s not count, you’d “lose”.
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The lockup is 1 year from basically July 1 or whenever the DAO approves this proposal (if at all) + 1 year linear vesting after that. While all community stages are fully unlocked. Yes I know the token is not transferable yet, but imagine the level of risk one is taking in case the transferability i allowed like Q3-4 2022? Right, that’s not a small amount of risk. Or however you call that. What if it dips below then, and you could have bought in secondary? This is not the speculation I wanna be doing, but it is what goes through the mind of anyone taking any position be it monetary or not. Opportunity costs.
What have the parties done so far? Well, just check what the contributor round of over a year ago has done already back then - and they continue with it now! Here is the old medium post.
The above is arguing as a devil’s advocate, literally making the case “weaker”. But the parties willing to dive in the Strategic Funding Round are chads so far. So keep that in mind. Don’t be one-sided.
Actually practical things a DAO member can do
Disagreeing is fine, asking questions is encouraged. But a talk doesn’t get one far. So what we have on the table is the need for the DAO to have more finance before a few PMF approaches (V2 being the first one) are tested & revenue flows in. So, to fill that gap, this proposal was created.
If you do not like it and do not buy into the arguments / storyline - you must (yes, must) talk to other parties who would be willing to get involved at higher terms and propose them to the DAO as counter-proposal. Yes, that means selecting your own group of potential participants who have connections in the space and have done something before + making sure the aggregate size is worthy of DAO’s attention. Meaning that one single 500K cheque at 300M FDV doesn’t actually mean anything. It has to be meaningful to support the DAO for the next few months of building and iterating!
IDEA TIME
As per Sha’s message, and Juan’s on Discord - I believe it is not cool to fully silo this "great deal " (for those who think that) and that is exactly why the total participation list in my proposal framework is not finalized. I also believe that members who want to dive into this DAO Strategic Round should have the opportunity to. I don’t think it’s fair to ask to lay all your cards on the table, but a few suggestions on what you can be doing - are welcome. As for the sizes, I am sure a few angel cheques would be totally in order here.
IMHO (in my honest opinion)
I love transparency and going back and forth. Helps see the picture from different sides. But disagreeing must come from a stance of concrete alternative solutions. Bring them up then!
Now onto a bit of fun:
If the goal is to get funding from those long-term key-industry participants, their values should be aligned enough for a 3-4 year vesting schedule.
Well, @grin, lock your tokens and others’ for 2 years and let’s see how things align? Don’t think so. And maybe if you yourself want to do it, I am not sure others would want to per se. And you can’t un-coordinate these things, in my opinion. So this suggestion is not practical.
I’m willing to provide $50k-$100k even with a longer vesting schedule if needed. I’m sure if information that Gearbox is willing to accept other participants with a $50k minimum, a lot of other DeFi users will also be interested with 1 year cliff + 2-4 vesting schedule.
Respectable move, love seeing action. @Sha256 please feel free to check the above section “what a DAO member can do” and maybe you can change course with regard to this? I have to be honest, I don’t think you will magically get 5M out of good parties at like 2x of the current terms, so keep that in mind. But I am being subjective again, and can be totally wrong. This is why we are discussing now!