Index Methodologist Follow Up [11/25/2020]

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Coming out of the Growth team meeting Monday (11/23), one of the biggest discussion points were around the future of the Methodologist Rewards Program. As a recap, this program allocates 7.5% of the total $INDEX treasury to be distributed to Methodologists pro-rata to their revenue contributions to the Coop. The goal of this program was to incentivize the best brands to work with the Coop in launching structured products and offer a competitive environment where entities can compete for these rewards.

The concerns raised by community members of the program are as follows:

  1. When the program is expected to be competitive, the current program is non-competitive, as there is a lack of a rigorous process by which we can evaluate and onboard structured product providers
  2. We have not done any marketing to increase awareness of the program and thus are not launching it without having methodologists lined up.
  3. The persona and requirements to be a methodologist eligible for the Index Methodologist program targets is not clear. As a result, many individuals have the expectation of launching indices - where this was not made clear.
  4. The coop / community may not have true independence / autonomy if all the awards are captured by a single party

Scott, from DeFi Pulse (DFP), also took time to explain his anxieties when it comes to working with DAOs and things we should keep in mind when it comes to establishing our reputation. Namely, many partners would be wary to work with an organization that is unable to keep commitments.

As a stop gap measure, DFP and the community showed willingness to extend the start date of the program to the New Year to give the community a chance to come up with an onboarding framework and market the program. DFP expressed the intention to introduce a second Leveraged-related index to trial the framework.

These notes are meant to fill in others who were not present and allow a venue to continue the conversation.

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cool - this mean you gonna look after all the 3rd parties who’s time you wasted for over 6 months with unannounced major pivots? Would be fair to use the 7.5% to make people whole.

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This is what Greg and I briefly discussed. We’ve got a team of 5-6 with different finance and tech backgrounds, just looking to get clearer vision of where we go before we spend 6 months developing a product that never launches. It’s so important we all work together to give 3rd party communities like ours a proper guidance to develop projects that turn into something rather than remain ideas and unfinished thoughts. I look forward to joining the next call.

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@Techemist Not sure what you’re talking about here. Index Coop has only been live for 2 months, not 6 months and there is no major pivot let alone multiple. We are merely discussing starting the program later so more people can participate in it so this benefits you if you are working on an index product.

@TheGameTheorist Totally agree, there is some structure outlined in IIP-2 that covers product proposals but we still need to solidify evaluation criteria and onboarding process for new products.

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