Gotta say, I’m left pretty confused about this reply as I see no precedent for it. I have so many questions about the approach, I can’t imagine how Julien must feel to see a response like this from the Coop.
Fundamentally (and I may have missed something having pulled back from the forum recently) I don’t understand why the community is deciding whether an index has PMF prior to DG2, but after work team analysis is already complete. Is that part of the onboarding process now? Aren’t the experts in the product team supposed to assess this as part of the analysis?
Speaking of which, iROBOT was rated higher than BED (a product that is already live!) in the product scoring table, and YHI which didn’t have to jump through the same hoop prior to DG2. What is the difference here? If the response is that the numbers in that sheet are illustrative then why have it at all.
If the community feedback is lukewarm or negative, will iROBOT be shelved or scrapped entirely? How do you even judge it, who judges, and what is the pass criteria to move forward?
I think Coop members should put themselves in Julien’s shoes, as he’s worked tirelessly for months on this product, and put his faith in the product onboarding process during that time. If part of that process suddenly changes, then it is no longer credibly neutral. A big reason Coop products do so well is the trust in methodology and things not changing on a whim, we should strive to repeat that in all our interactions. I see no reason why iROBOT shouldn’t proceed to DG2 where the community gets to vote on it anyway.
Since the question is ‘what does the community think?’ I have to say I’ve been looking forward to this product launching. This and $GMI to me both fill the niche of projects I’m interested in allocating to but haven’t had the time or conviction. Index products using a methodology to allocate in this middle ground are something that’s missing in our lineup, and as stated in the GMI proposal:
‘$DEGEN by Indexed Finance – perhaps the closest alternative to GMI – is the most successful non-Coop index in the market.’
So there is room for IC offerings in this space, a sentiment backed up in the original work team analysis.