Introduction
This post serves to inform the community about my initial engagements with KyberDAO in my Kyber ambassador role for the Coop. To get more of an idea on what my role will be like and what the community can expect from me as a protocol ambassador read my introduction here.
After my formal introduction post on their forum , Loi Luu (Kyber founder) and I had a conversation and I attended the monthly Kyber Discord Community call. There are also ongoing conversations within a Telegram group I initiated between Kyber Core and Index devs/BD
Kyber Network Governance
KyberDAO is a community platform that allows KNC token holders to participate in governance. KNC holders can stake KNC to vote on important proposals. In return, they receive rewards in ETH from network fees collected from trading activities in Kyber Network. Since the new deployments on different EVM chains and interactions with different tokenomic models of exchanges (more on that below), also other tokens are now collected as fees. These will, according to a new KIP, be swapped into KNC and rewarded to stakers.
Kyber staking works with no lockups or minimums, only active voters get rewards and rewards are calculated with epochs. For example, you can stake more KNC tokens in epoch n+1, but you will get rewards based on your total KNC staked only in the following epoch (n+2 in this example).
As an individual KNC staker, your share of the rewards received after the epoch will be determined by your voting points (the amount of KNC you have staked during the epoch x the number of campaigns you voted on), in proportion to the total voting points of all KNC stakers.
Proposals are discussed on the Kyber forum and votes are held on their own voting portal. Having their own custom made voting portal is typical for the Kyber community. They are well known for their technological skills and decentralization purism. It is possible to delegate your vote to a pool. One of which is the Kyber Community Pool for example, run by, among others, DeFi Dude.
Meta-governance
We currently have 1,563,026.81 KNC in DPI but due to the nature of DPI we cannot stake KNC. There might be possibilities around delegation, or other ways to involve our holders in Kyber governance. Kyber staking has no lock ups, but Index would have to stake for the whole epoch, if it wanted to participate. I will continue my conversations with both Index and Kyber to explore potential pathways.
Kyber Governance Updates and Proposals
As part of my role as ambassador I have been actively following Kyber updates and have attended their community call, last Wednesday the 25th. I will briefly summerize the updates and proposals currently happening within the KyberDAO.
This last month has seen two major proposals being accepted in the KyberDAO. KIP-11, the framework I mentioned earlier, which approved KNC to be the reward token prior to reward distribution (fees in different tokens accrued on other chains/DEXs that leverage Kyber get swapped into KNC). And KIP-12, which approves KyberDMM expansion to other chains, first of which is BSC. This will go hand in hand with a liquidity mining program.
Currently there is a proposal live, KIP-13 on whether to deploy on Avalanche. If approved (so far a 100% YES), this would be coupled with a LM program of $3M worth of KNC + $2M worth of AVAX.
There is one week left of the Rainmaker program on Polygon, and about a month left on Ethereum. This program has put Kyber at number 1 by TVL growth in July on the Polygon chain. With $500M reached!
Another topic currently discussed is potentially blacklisting Binance, since its staked KNC could theoretically move outcomes. This so far has not happened yet, and there is no official vote live on the matter yet.
Kyber Treasury Diversification with DPI
Some Owls have already started a discussion around treasury diversification. I have been in contact with the initial owls who started it and will collaborate and push this further. While raising the topic within the community call, the Kyber team answered positively towards the idea. Core dev Shane says they are open towards this proposal and Sasha of marketing and community at Kyber agreed to look into it.
DPI Listing on Kyber DMM
In regards to DPI listing, I have initiated a Telegram group with the core team of Kyber and @Mringz , @oneski22 and @bigsky7 to make this a reality. Things have not gone as fast as we might want it to go. But I have reinitiated the conversation which has reignited the effort. It looks like Mringz is near completing the DPI/ETH pool on the Kyber DMM! Conversations on incentivizing this pool have started.
The ambassador program is still new and I would love to hear input or feedback from the community. Hopefully the work that is being done so far is being appreciated of course. I am putting my contacts and skills to work, however, the direction of this push should be decided upon by the whole Coop. So let me know your thoughts!