Data Economy Index (DATA): Forward to DG2!

Hi All,

I am going to echo @verto0912 & @BigSky7 here. Let’s give the streaming fee and associated discussions adequate time to be flushed out. I think this may take a fair bit of going back and forth, with time in between to gather and consolidate thoughts.

I am expecting the Liquidity Mining, Seed Capital and the who does what post launch discussions to take time. Also, we know from BED - having little visibility into what is communicated/agreed with Bankless is not a great place to be. I suggest some kind of binding document captures what is agreed. We can not repeat past mistakes. We need to flush out all the details up front, document them and have something legally binding to protect each entity.

If this was a traditional business model an agreement between two entities like this would be captured in a contract. A frame agreement or something of the sorts. The days of little visibility into the T&Cs and having little to no supporting documentation around it are behind us. We need binding agreements and we need to ensure the integrity to agreement is honoured. This protects both parties.

The culture of the Index Coop community will always be too honour a contract negotiated in good faith and to have a really good relationship with the methodologist to facilitate any amendments in an open transparent, mutually beneficial manner.

5 Likes

What’s the rush @Thomas_Hepner? IMO the middle of the bell curve, planning/strategizing and market research to see if anyone would give a damn about DATA as an investment is exactly what we should do before launching a major product within the IC. Iteration is great but we shouldn’t skip the correct process on the IC side to work out all the implications of the streaming fee associated discussions that could set the precedent for future aspiring methodologists in your shoes.

I have nothing against DATA as a product at all, but the rush to market seems redundant considering the current bear market & a retail engagement - I think now is the perfect time to actually take the necessary time for important decisions like this.

3 Likes

All past methodologist deals were dealt with by set and personally I am not satisfied with any of the results. As a coop member I would feel much more secure having BD as my advocate than Set. Also product team is shit at selecting products/methodologists, properly designing them for DeFi, and bringing to fruition (em.g. CGI, SMI, BED) so I can’t imagine BD team performing any worse than they have

@tradespot and everyone else I can understand wanting to take time but based on past evidence, more time does not make the coop make better decisions. Mostly that is because the people actually making decisions in this specific process previously (PWG, Set) have not performed well. I believe by having expert negotiators and product people from community (the best product people on coop or not in PWG) the entire deal will be better constructed for Coop and us as Methodologists. This also happens to take less time.

Yes. The fact that previous deals are holding us back is common knowledge and has been acknowledged by everyone here. No one is saying that Set should lead this conversation. I don’t see how what I suggested can be interpreted this way.

I personally think this statement is wrong and doesn’t take any of the context into consideration. Calling our product team shit in what they do is also inappropriate and does not belong on this forum. Again, I’m not suggesting that product lead this conversation either.

As I said above, my preference is for a cross-functional group of people with context to take a lead here. This is going to affect the entirety of the Coop and our business model so it seems pretty inadequate to me that we have one single WG work on it.

7 Likes

This is completely unacceptable content for our forum. We simply cannot engage in name calling or slandering each other and expect to remain a respected community in DeFi and Crypto.

I understand that tensions are running high across a number of themes in our community. The only way that we can successfully navigate the most difficult challenges our community faces is by adhering to our core principles.

There are a million toxic chat rooms on the internet composed of people sniping each other and complaining. That is not why I joined Index Coop and not why you did. We have the opportunity to come together, rise above our frustrations, and solve some of these problems once and for all.

We cannot devolve into a working group vs working group, contributor vs contributor, or methodologist vs methodologist mentality. Nothing could be more detrimental to the long term success of IC.

None of us are here for the money or the prestige. I walked away from traditional employment with no guarantees because I saw a brighter future with Index Coop than anything the traditional world could ever offer me . We are all here on this forum because we love this community, deeply care about each other, and want to build something incredible . Our dialogue needs to reflect that.

15 Likes

I agree with you here. From a incentives/negotiation/compensation perspective, I think it’s very important for all parties to be aligned pre-launch.

For context, the origin of DATA is that @Kiba and I started building it because we wanted to solve a problem we both had. We both wanted exposure to a sector that we felt was missing from our own portfolios.

We’ve already done quite a lot of market research since then, and will do even more ahead of the product launch. For a few data points, please see this comment from Corbin Page at ConsenSys Codefi and this comment from ChainLinkGod.

Ultimately, we believe the passing DG1 vote signals that the Community is in favor of launching the DATA index from a product perspective.

Responding to both @Tradespot 's comment and Kiba’s (rude) comment. @BigSky7 @verto0912

While I view Kiba’s disparaging language towards the product team as inappropriate, I think he has a valid point. It is extremely difficult for anyone to know before a product is launched whether or not it will be successful, regardless of the strength of the idea. It is very risky for Methodologists and the Index Coop to spend time and resources on research and development of a product for 3+ months without testing it in the market.

One really cannot know if anyone will buy your product until after it’s available on the market. Launching a product is testing a hypothesis. Relaunching and making product changes are also hypothesis tests.

The long time to market for new products limits our ability to test new ideas (i.e. hypotheses) in the marketplace and discourages methodologists from bringing their ideas to the Index Cooperative. This is why I was such a strong proponent of the Index Labs idea. Creating a tokenset takes 10 minutes, but launching a product at Index Coop currently takes 3+ months. While I don’t think it ever will, or ever should, take only 10 minutes to launch a product at Index Coop, we need to find a way to reduce the time to market for our proposed products.

FWIW - My views on product philosophy (i.e. speed of hypothesis testing ) comes from my experiences working at a FinTech startup where I led a team of 5 data scientists that built and sold software & data products to some of the largest banks in the world.

I don’t believe this to be true. The entire space is nascent. We have years to develop products before they hit mainstream adoption. So I, personally, don’t think there is risk for Index Coop.

That said, we do need to considerably improve speed to market. As indicated in the Q3 priorities, unblocking product and engineering bottlenecks are at the top of the list for this quarter. As I mentioned on the org call last week, we can’t do everything at the same time. We need to keep unblocking product and engineering bottlenecks, but we also need to have autonomy conversations, discuss the new methodologist compensation for DATA, discuss the fee split for the FLI series of products, address liquidity mining incentives in the context of Uniswap V3 and, oh yeah, support the existing products. It’s perfectly reasonable to me that we need to prioritise things and, as a consequence, the timing on some of these items will slip. The question we need to ask is how critical and time sensitive different priorities are and move forward accordingly. I personally think of our priorities in this order of importance:

  • support the existing products

  • keep unblocking product and engineering bottlenecks

  • autonomy conversation

  • address liquidity mining incentives in the context of Uniswap V3

  • discuss the new methodologist compensation for DATA

  • discuss the fee split for the FLI series of products

I’m happy to go into detail on why I see them in this order. To be perfectly clear, the role of Index Coop, as a community, is not to service methodologists. We have a big vision for the future of the Coop and releasing a single product a month sooner or a month later, does not meaningfully impact that vision.

3 Likes

Happy we can agree here :smiley:

I agree with this, but I think it’s worth highlighting how we’re both currently being incentivized as individuals by the Index Cooperative’s mechanism design.

I have been working 50+ hours per week on Index Cooperative in some capacity since mid May. I received a total of $750 worth of INDEX in compensation for June because I’m an “external methodologist” so my work on DATA is not compensated (Kiba received $0 for June).

Every month DATA is delayed @Kiba and I lose a substantial amount of INDEX rewards per the existing program and are also not being compensated for the opportunity cost of our time and efforts pre-launch. We are incentivized to be urgent and launch quickly.

On the other hand, you are a FT contributor so are receiving $5k USDC plus 0.15% INDEX vesting over 2 years, the equivalent of ~$14k per month at current INDEX price completely decoupled from MVI’s AUV growth. You are not incentivized to act as urgently because your compensation is not dependent on speed.

Emphasizing this is not a personal attack, I am very happy you have determined a compensation structure that enables you to sustainably contribute to the Index Coop FT for the long-term. Kiba and I hope to find a structure that fairly compensates the value we bring to the Index Coop as well.

1 Like

@DarkForestCapital and myself were not compensated for our work on MVI until the launch. We found other ways to contribute to the Coop in the meantime.

I understand. But it’s feasible that if your incentives are to be urgent and launch quickly, they might go against what’s best for the Coop. Which is why we need to go through a proper process that will help us determine a solution that is fair and benefits both parties. For what it’s worth, I believe you should be compensated for the work that went into launching DATA when the product is launched. This is what we did with MVI. So, in that context, I honestly don’t see the urgency here.

I would like to point out that myself and DFC do a lot of work around the Coop outside of MVI. This was the primary reason we wanted to come on as internal/community methodologists. Further, the methodologist bounty from MVI goes to the Coop. That goes a long way towards paying for our compensation. I would also like to highlight that because my compensation is fixed and depends heavily on the long-term success of the Coop, it is in my interest to do what I believe is best for the Coop as a whole. I have no incentives whatsoever to delay DATA or any other product. But I do have the incentive to make sure that whatever the methodologist compensation package ends up being is long-term beneficial and fair to the Coop.

5 Likes

Isn’t this expected as an external methodologist? The work you are doing on DATA shouldn’t be considered work for the Coop if you are an external methodologist - you are doing that work for your DAO (Titans of Data). Or are you referencing other work that you have done that didn’t get compensated (which, if so, doesn’t seem to belong in this conversation, that should be disputed elsewhere)?

Just want to signal my agreement with this sentiment from Verto. I don’t think this necessarily has to delay the launch, but we do need to be aware that we are re-laying the foundation for Coop <> External Methodologist relationships if we are to negotiation a new compensation structure here, and I think you have noted multiple times how complicated of a problem this is @Thomas_Hepner (regarding the mechanism design for methodologists).

Recognize that you are incentivized to launch as quickly as possible. The Coop is incentivized to ensure this foundation is set right. Hence, why negotiations are necessary and this is an important topic! Let’s keep the momentum going and figure this out together!

6 Likes

Yes, this is absolutely the expectation, and it’s also important for the Index Cooperative to set clear timelines/expectations with Methodologists . Knowing if you can expect to launch your product with IC in 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, etc. and what hurdles you need to jump over, is critical for getting Methodologists to choose us over other options. @Kiba and I have an (unfair) advantage over other Methodologists in this regard because we’ve been Index Coop contributors since 2020.

For instance, Llama is expecting to launch LDI in 6-8 weeks (with PAY) and from my understanding that is just not realistic.

But how should Llama know that’s not realistic? And how can we tell them when we would be able to launch so that they choose Index Cooperative over some other provider?

Absolutely - @Kiba and I are very excited to see all the progress being made and want to keep the momentum going (really the intention of this post).

Just FYI as it seems there’s some need for clarity here - the LDI proposal was developed primarily by @Matthew_Graham and @AcceleratedCapital with help from other members of the Llama community. They are quite aware of the timelines.

3 Likes

@verto0912 @BigSky7 @puniaviision @overanalyser @oneski22 @jdcook @Tradespot @Kiba

I addressed this in yesterday’s Product Working Group meeting, but want to leave a comment here for the community and other observers.

In yesterday’s meeting, I acknowledged that in some of my comments on this forum post that I had failed to “interact with empathy” so I am holding myself accountable for this and committing to interact with all of you to the standard of the Index Coop’s Guiding Principles. I hope you will accept my apology and that we can all continue to work together.

I am also in agreement with @BigSky7’s comment that Kiba’s disparaging comments in this thread, and others on Discord/Twitter, were and are completely unacceptable, but I cannot speak on Kiba’s behalf and you would not accept it if I did.

Because of these issues, @Kiba and I discussed his relationship with the Index Cooperative and agreed that I will be the key point of contact for the DATA launch moving forward.

I also want to reiterate that I am in 100% agreement with @BigSky7’s comment below and share some additional personal context.

I walked away from my secure, high-paying job as a Data Science Manager (with a lot of upward mobility) to take a risk on Index Cooperative and Set Protocol because of how much I believe in making financial products accessible to all.

To that end, I started a company, Token Terrier, and have worked with the Index Cooperative to launch the Data Economy Index via a DAO, Titans of Data, for very little pay in the short-term.

My goal is to find a way to sustainably work with this community by building financial/data products.

I hope all of you can see that this is primarily about purpose and passion for me, and that the money is secondary but ultimately required for doing what I love to do sustainably.

5 Likes

I received a lot of pushback on the timelines shared in this post:

We had a productive, helpful conversation about Product Launch Philsophy in yesterday’s PWG meeting and have shared the notes here for those who are interested:

Minimum Viable Product Launches

3 Likes

Congratulations on passing DG1 :partying_face:. That is a big step forward. When I think of DG2 - I see it as an opportunity for our community to do a true deep dive into a few of the most relevant issues prior to final confirmation.

Prior to voting to move this index forward, we need to have serious community-wide transparency and discussion around a number of significant questions with DATA. This community due diligence is meant to avoid a repeat of the CoinShare Crypto Gold Index. We are simply at too strong of a position as a protocol to have a major product flop.

Question #1

Methodologists as Distribution Platforms

DeFi Pulse currently gets over 1 million views a month of their website, Index Coop on the other hand receives 25k. When we say methodologies are distribution platforms that is what we mean. Having a large and active distribution platform is vital for the success of our indexes ( note in the absence of such a platform we need to create it internally which requires MASSIVE amounts of work- see how much effort Paul and AG have spent on Metaverse to make it a success).

In my eyes the primary reason for Index Coop’s success over the past 9-months is the strength of the methodologists we have partnered with. None of our competitors have been able to partner with strong outside methodologists and this is reflected in the lack of traction of these products.

Indexes do not need to be massively differentiated, however, the market segment covered by each distribution platform should be meaningfully differentiated.

  • We give external methodologists a very attractive deal 70/30 and part of the methodologist bounty program to attract methodologists with blue-chip data distribution platforms like DeFi Pulse. (note: this is bigger than just website views, it comes down to trust, reputation, brand name, and ability to build quality methodologies)
  • If the methodologists do not have a strong platform to distribute the Index then the majority of the support will fall on Index Coop. Organically creating a distribution platform is incredibly hard. Metaverse is a great example of this - Paul and AG have worked extremely hard to support MVI over the past four months and have seen great success even when limited to $256k total on liquidity mining.

Bottom Line: Does the DATA team have a strong enough distribution platform to justify a 70/30 fee split? It seems clear that making this index will require a VAST amount of resources from the Coop. I would like to see more than just support from crypto influencers.

Question #2

Where is liquidity coming from?

In the original proposal, you mention some liquidity tentatively being supplied by Filecoin and then potentially some support being received from Chainlink. While these communities will obviously be enthusiastic to their token being included in DATA - I don’t think any have enough skin in the game to provide the level of liquidity support needed for a successful product launch. I also do not think we have a firm written commitment from any of them that they will provide liquidity.

I don’t not want us to get in a situation three months from now where DATA has little traction and little liquidity and no strong distribution platform. Leading to our community being in a position where we have to provide LM to support DATA.

There are numerous large-scale LPs out there who are desperate for quality pairs to LP. They are sick of providing liquidity for high emission farms where the underlying tokens have no real value. These LPs would love to provide long-term liquidity for a quality product like DATA.

Bottom Line: What is DATA’s long-term plan to ensure liquidity for this product? We need commitments around who will provide liquidity and how much they will provide. We are running a major blue-chip DeFI protocol - it should not be difficult to run down a few million in liquidity support.

Question #3

Methodologist conduct

This product has moved extremely quickly through the Index Coop pipeline. At the same time both methodologists have been very vocal in other highly contentious topics in the Coop. While many of these conversations are necessary, the style and tone from the methodologists have introduced large amounts of friction to our community.

This creates an impression that DATA is being rushed through. It also may create significant frustration from community members (specifically our Product Team who were very aggressively insulted - without any apologies forthcoming) - who may ultimately shoulder a large amount of the work needed to support DATA.

If Index Coop is to survive as a long-term project we cannot have highly contentious or aggressive lobbying campaigns that obfuscate the true support a product has and rush the community through the process. Do you believe that the DATA team has conducted itself with a level of professionalism commiserate with our core values?

I fully understand that it takes an aggressive mentality to make things happen in the Coop. I value that about both of you and we will need that same aggressive mentality if this product is going to be a long-term success. With that said we need to seriously discuss some of these issues or they will continually resurface. We cannot completely re-orient everyone’s focus every time we want to release a new methodology.

Numerous community members have reached out to me to express frustration with how the DATA discussions have evolved and how aggressive these conversations feel. We need to step our game up.

DATA will launch and it will be successful. The above questions above are not meant to denigrate the extreme amounts of hard work put into this product up to this point. They are also not meant to erase your very valid frustrations with various aspects of the Coop

10 Likes

@BigSky7 @Pepperoni_Joe

Could we schedule a community call for DATA on Tuesday, August 3rd (8/3) at 2:00 PM PST (9:00 PM UTC)? Would be great to address each of the items that @BigSky7 has brought up above and have a Q&A session with the community about DATA.

@Kiba is in South Korea now so unfortunately there is not going to be a better time to meet across time zones.

1 Like

I think we should proceed with the August 3rd community call, but drop the notion of a “negotiation” occurring on a community call. Anything agreed upon can and should be aired publicly, but this is complex and as you pointed out, you have incentive for urgency that the Coop does not. Anything agreed upon on behalf of the Coop should be carefully considered and no team should be able to commit the Coop to terms on a live call.

Is the proposal to split these 70/30 Coop/Titans? I think that’s implied but couldn’t find that quickly. Could just be my miss.

I want to expand something you laid out in our 1-1 conversation that I found compelling. With this point, you’re saying that the existing methodologist bounty program combined with the current state of DFP-as-methodologist products produces a non-linear relationship between new product AUM and bounty compensation. Hence, the relationship with DFP is not “positive-sum.” I think that’s a fair criticism that our external methodologist incentive has been somewhat dulled and the bounty doesn’t reflect its original intent. So I think you could quibble with the levels for the DATA team’s proposal, but I agree with that principled argument against the existing bounty program as it’s realized today.

Curious about @verto0912’s thoughts on this and the others he name-checked with prior methodologist comp negotiation experience (@Matthew_Graham , @MrMadila , and @puniaviision).

1 Like

Thank you for your thoughtful response - It is much appreciated :pray:

100% agree with you. I will adjust the governance forum post and slides accordingly. If possible, @Kiba and I would prefer to spend more time focusing on general Q&A with the community on the call and this would help us in that regard.

That was our original thinking when we posted IIP-55: Data Economy Index - it was in our initial draft compensation proposal. I later examined the Methodologist Fee Menu which actually implied the fee split should be 50-50 or 60-40 (Titans of Data <> Index Cooperative) because of the high likelihood that no liquidity mining incentives will be provided by the Index Coop. Regardless, this is an open point of negotiation that we think should be considered alongside the Methodologist Bounty Program.

It is worth noting that that document was created with an assumption of a standard 95 bps streaming fee like DPI. We’ve conducted research which suggests that a lower streaming fee (50 bps) with a 10 bps mint fee and a 20 bps redeem fee will generate more revenue without sacrificing TVL. See our revenue model.

An Additional Note:

My apologies if we’ve made the negotiation and launch process feel adversarial. This is sincerely not our intention. We’re extremely excited about DATA and eager to go to DG2, launch the product, and continually improve over time.

I am genuinely sorry if our proposed timeline(s) have come across as inconsiderate or demanding on the Coop’s people and resources.

I understand the Coop has many other priorities, but I would feel a lot more at ease if we knew who we should be interacting with and what timeframe we can expect. Given the opportunity cost to Titans of Data, would it be possible for someone to respond with (1) who we should be negotiating with, and (2) what the timeline is? Thank you for your consideration :smiley:

I’m giving you my time because I think the Coop owes DATA a way forward. But I want to be clear about something. You have that path forward and a timeline for the existing external methodologist compensation structure. You are also asking, in a principled and reasonable way, that we revisit that structure.

Revisiting a founding, structural aspect of the Coop requires community buy-in. And that means you should be dealing with a cross-functional team. @BigSky7 and @verto0912 come to mind and have stepped forward to provide feedback (including different views on who should negotiate). But I actually feel much better as a Coop member knowing both are weighing in and thinking about it. For my own part, I think the BD team should run point, but we should be sure to include those with prior context and/or ensure they’ve uploaded that context to the BD team to their satisfaction. And to be clear, “run point” does not mean “have the authority to bind the Coop.”

6 Likes

That makes sense. Thank you for your time and energy on this and getting a cross-functional group together.

Completely understand changing the foundation requires community buy-in. I would not feel comfortable including an alternative structure in a DG2 vote for DATA if it did not have broad consensus.

1 Like