Request for Discussion FLI-Fee Split

[BigSky7]

Title: Request for Discussion FLI-Fee Split
Authors: @BigSky7 , @verto0912
Created: 8/3/2021

Request for comment from the Index Coop Community

This forum post is meant to begin a community discussion around the fee split for the FLI suite of products.

This is a community-wide issue that needs further discussion to reach an equitable solution for all parties. We encourage every community member to provide comments and further context.

For starters, we want to highlight the tremendous support our community has received from DeFi Pulse up to this point. They are one of our most trusted and valued partners. We are lucky to have them as both community members and methodologists. Index Coop would not be where we are today without them.

As a community, we strive to prevent an “us vs. them” mentality with these discussions. We are all true believers in the long-term vision of Index Coop. No single person or entity is solely responsible for the success of Index Coop - everyone and every organization has a valuable role to play. We must ensure that we work through these problems collaboratively and not adversarially.

Introduction

The purpose of this post is to lay out the current methodologist fee split in relation to the FLI suite of products and set the groundwork for further discussion around the distribution of streaming fees for these products.

Currently, FLI streaming fees are split 60/40 between Index Coop and DeFi Pulse. These products have been tremendously successful for both organizations and generate strong revenue. Due to the technical complexity of these products, maintenance costs are higher than for other products, in terms of both rebalancing as well as product maintenance by the Leverage Indices pod. They also require a significant engineering lift from our partners at Set Labs. While launching new FLI products is relatively straightforward at this point, Set had to invest in significant infrastructure updates to improve the security of the FLI suite and will likely continue to do so as these products grow.

At the time of this post, both the gas costs for rebalancing and the engineering work are handled by Set. With the completion of the recent treasury diversification alongside our rapidly expanding engineering capabilities, IC anticipates transitioning to handling both rebalancing expenses and engineering over the coming months.

Principles

DeFi Pulse is a valued partner for Index Coop. We want a long-term relationship and envision a thriving partnership that will continue for decades to come. Both organizations thrive through collaboration and mutual trust. Index Coop is committed to fair and equitable partnerships with methodologists based on mutual value creation.

Designing and launching methodologies with Index Coop should present an attractive value proposition for our partners. We want to see that continue and evolve.

Here is how we see things

We believe that the current FLI fee structure is misaligned for the Index Coop given that the Index Coop & Set are contributing more than 60% of the work. This includes:

1. Gas costs for rebalancing are high, especially during periods of significant market volatility. Over the past four months, the ETH2x-FLI product has incurred a cumulative total of $158k on rebalancing costs. The total revenue generated during that time period is $401k, leaving total profits for the Coop at $83k after factoring in the $160k paid to DFP for their share of revenue. The two graphs below illustrate these expenses. (Further FLI information can be found here).

We are working with AWG and the Leverage Indices pod to get data on the BTC2x-FLI for additional context.

The current fee structure does not account for the gas cost of rebalancing as fee split is done on the revenue, not profit basis. At the time of the launch of ETH2x-FLI and BTC2x-FLI we had limited data for the magnitude of these costs. Now that we have the data, it should be taken into consideration.

2. Costs also extend beyond simple gas costs. The FLI suite requires significant engineering work from the Set team (soon to be IC team). An example of this would be the AMM trade splitter for faster rebalancing, which improves the safety of the FLI products. This work is a consistent drag on valuable engineering resources and contributes to a slower product release pipeline. This is not to say that the FLI suite has not been incredibly valuable - however, these considerations highlight that the costs incurred extend beyond simple gas costs.

3. Leverage Indices pod + Set team is doing the majority of work around the actual monitoring and maintenance of the FLI products. We are lucky to have a cross-functional team of community and Set experts that can take this on. In June, contributor rewards for the Leverage Indices pod were $20k and @overanalyser has budgeted $35k per month for Q3. Further, scaling the FLI pod to support more FLI-type products is not easy. The current processes are manual so the only way to scale fast is to onboard more people, and/or to invest heavily in automation over the next few months. Which will lead to a higher budget and more technology to maintain. More thoughts on this from @afromac here.

4. DFP contribution beyond the initial formula for FLI-style products is understood to be limited. As far as the Coop is aware, DFP doesn’t provide any meaningful assistance on engineering, marketing, or sales efforts and doesn’t bear any costs associated with the FLI products. If this is incorrect, we would love to hear it. As you’ll see below, we are very open to understanding the full-picture.

Here is a list of some examples of the work being done by the Coop:

• FLI Operations Updates - 2x-FLI Operational Response, Challenges, and Next Steps
• Discord Bot in #fli-parameter-status
• Twitter bot for FLI products (soon to be launched)
• FLI Educational materials: Everything You Need to Know About FLI Product Parameters, Understanding the Risks of Owning FLI Tokens, How Volatility Drift Affects FLI Products
• Product improvements i.e. IIP-47: Upgrade FLI to use Chainlink oracles, IIP-50: Upgrade FLI to Support Multiple Exchanges
• Volatility decay calculator, ETH2x-FLI modelling, dynamic risk model, FLI tokens dashboard web app, FLI profitability dashboard
• Parameter updates:
  • ETH2x-FLI Parameter Update #8
  • BTC2x-FLI Parameter Update #5
  • BTC2X-FLI Parameter Update #4
  • ETH2x-FLI Parameter Update #7
  • ETH2x-FLI Parameter Update #9
  • BTC2x-FLI Parameter Update #6
  • IIP-40 ETH2x-FLI Parameter Update #5
  • IIP-44: BTC2x-FLI Parameter Update #3
  • IIP-42: ETH2x-FLI Parameter Update #6
• Management of the Discord #fli-discussion channel, including addressing technical questions about the products

All these costs add up on the Coop side. The below analysis (thank you @allan.g ) highlights the impact of these costs on the long-term profitability of these products for the Coop.

We believe there’s near unlimited potential to launch more of these products in the future. However, the current fee split does not seem to fairly represent the level of support the Index Coop provides for FLI products. We believe there’s a need to further discuss the fee split for the FLI suite of products before moving forward with the exciting prospect of launching more of them together

Questions for DeFi Pulse

We are excited to learn from DFP. The continued success of DeFi Pulse’s business is vital to the long-term success of the Coop. We suspect that there are ways you support FLI products that we may not be aware of as well as major business expenses incurred as methodologists.

To move this conversation forward, answers to the following questions would be tremendously useful for the Index Coop community.

1. What specifically is the value add of external methodologists for exchange-traded products outside of the formula used in initial product specifications?

2. What is the cost of creating this formula and does that match the costs incurred by Index Coop?

3. Given the costs highlighted above - what does DFP see as an equitable long-term fee split?

4. How can we improve direct and public communications between outside methodologists and our community?

We are excited to see this conversation move forward. Ultimately we believe that Index Coop and DeFi Pulse will be partners for years to come. We want to see the DFP business succeed and we want to ensure that both parties have long-term clarity and trust in the relationship. Hopefully, this post helps build a solid foundation for the relationship between Index Coop and DeFi Pulse and contributes to a shared understanding between us.

[afromac]

Thank you @BigSky7 and @verto0912 for this thoughtful and detailed post outlining the issue.

I have had a great experience working with @Jo_K and @snasps over the last few months, as we have built a team who are focused on ensuring the FLI products are safe and scalable, and we look forward to launching and working on many more together in the future.

During that time, it has become clear that the FLI products have the potential to be incredibly successful, and we should celebrate that success and the effectiveness of our collaboration. That said, they are incredibly complex products and scaling them further will require great investments by the FLI team in both technology and personnel over time.

According to cost analysis, to date the FLI products have generated $ 184,494.80 in profit for DeFi Pulse. This does not include DFP’s costs relating to FLI, so please correct me if you have more information.

During the same period, the products have produced $ 5,474.20 for the Coop after expenses (including contributor rewards).

Clearly this is unsustainable. As responsible partners who are deeply committed to each other’s long-term success, I look forward to overcoming this obstacle and renegotiating a fee split that fairly rewards each party for their effort and contribution.

[Thomas_Hepner]

I have two beliefs about this:

1. The current 40% (DFP) / 60% (Index Coop) fee split is fair and reasonable to the Index Cooperative.
2. The incentives for Methodologists and their products need to be redesigned to include shared costs and be more reflective of profits.

Different products have different types of costs for both the Methodologist and Index Cooperative. For instance, you’ve noted that maintenance costs (rebalancing, Leverage Indices pod compensation, and Set Engineering resources) for leverage indices are significantly higher than for simple indices. On the other hand, simple indices have been far more expensive to the Index Coop in terms of liquidity costs; DPI and MVI have both had massive liquidity mining (LM) incentives whereas ETH2x-FLI and BTC2x-LI have not received any LM incentives.

The principle of the proposed Methodologist Accelerator Program is to only compensate Methodologists for generating Unincentivized Revenue. In the case of FLI, the incentives it is receiving from the Index Coop are in the form of rebalancing costs as opposed to liquidity mining costs.

Deducting rebalancing costs before calculating the Fee Split would be a good solution that is both fair and reasonable to both Index Cooperative and DFP.

Using the numbers in the image below, making this change for ETH2x-FLI would result in ~$100k for DeFi Pulse and ~$123.7k to Index Coop after deducting FLI Pod Rewards. This results in ~44% of the product net income going to DFP as opposed to ~73% in the image below, which I believe is far closer to the spirit of the fee split arrangement.

On the other hand, BTC2x-FLI has considerable losses so I would not expect DFP to earn any fees from this product until it reaches profitability.

Given that BTC2x-FLI and ETH2x-FLI share roughly the same product methodology, it makes sense to combine their revenues and profits into a single Income Statement (i.e. Profit and Loss Statement). If this additional change was made, DFP would have earned ~$97k in fees across the two products, and the Index Coop would have generated $119k in net income after deducting FLI pod rewards (they appear to be double-counted in the image above).

After making these two changes, DFP would retain ~45% of the profits generated from their FLI product suite which is very close to the spirit of the fee split arrangement.

It is also worth noting that it should be easier to have these conversations once the Methodologist Smart Contract Permissioning is implemented and Methodologists know that the Index Cooperative cannot unilaterally change Fee Split agreements without their consent.

[allan.g]

@Thomas_Hepner

On the other hand, simple indices have been far more expensive to the Index Coop in terms of liquidity costs; DPI and MVI have both had massive liquidity mining (LM) incentives whereas ETH2x-FLI and BTC2x-LI have not received any LM incentives.

An important distinction is that LM incentives are an optional expense that we as a community can turn on and off as needed (although you could argue that LM rewards are less optional when we’re trying to get products off the ground). Conversely, rebalancing costs are essential for fundamental FLI operations and we have much less control over those costs as a community.

I agree with your sentiment though @Thomas_Hepner that we should consider alternative fee split models for different product types across the Coop and I’m eager to read your post around un-incentivized revenue splits once it’s live. I’m also in favor of a fee split for FLI products that takes essential costs (i.e. rebalancing) into account when deciding on a fair fee split. We’re currently working on modeling a few different scenarios with varying fee split percentages that will allow us to…

1. determine comparable net income amounts for IC and DFP, all costs considered
2. continue using the functionality that already exists in the relevant FLI fee adapter contracts

@Thomas_Hepner

If this additional change was made, DFP would have earned ~$97k in fees across the two products, and the Index Coop would have generated $119k in net income after deducting FLI pod rewards (they appear to be double-counted in the image above).

Also, the FLI pod rewards were split evenly across both products (which is why you see the same value in both columns). Cumulative rewards were ~$53k for the pod as a whole.

I’m looking forward to a constructive conversation here around a fair fee split, and I’m also looking forward to launching future FLI products! The methodology has been battle-tested and it makes all the sense in the world to rinse-and-repeat for other tokens.

[snasps]

Big thanks for @BigSky7 and @verto0912 for opening this up for discussion. Here is a quick answer on the points raised:

@BigSky7

Gas costs for rebalancing are high, especially during periods of significant market volatility. Over the past four months, the ETH2x-FLI product has incurred a cumulative total of $158k on rebalancing costs. The total revenue generated during that time period is $401k, leaving total profits for the Coop at $83k after factoring in the $160k paid to DFP for their share of revenue. The two graphs below illustrate these expenses. (Further FLI information can be found here).

Gas costs were indeed discussed & taken into consideration during the fee split discussions that happened with Set Protocol’s product team prior to the product’s launch. Ethereum transactions were even more expensive when initial discussions took place. Still, everyone agreed that FLI products will thrive and gain much more traction when deployed on L2’s , since they are heavily traded, minted and redeemed. Considering that Set is already close to deploying on different L2s (2-3 months latest estimate for FLIs), we think that gas costs are only a circumstantial issue. At the same time, we think that the costs are irrelevant when compared to the massive adoption of FLI products , and their impact in increasing the value of the network we bootstrapped together. It seems non-optimal to make long term decisions on fee splits based on conditions that are circumstantial.

@BigSky7

Costs also extend beyond simple gas costs. The FLI suite requires significant engineering work from the Set team (soon to be IC team). An example of this would be the AMM trade splitter for faster rebalancing, which improves the safety of the FLI products. This work is a consistent drag on valuable engineering resources and contributes to a slower product release pipeline. This is not to say that the FLI suite has not been incredibly valuable - however, these considerations highlight that the costs incurred extend beyond simple gas costs.

I am not sure this is accurate. As Dylan mentioned in Monday’s meeting when replying to Matthew Graham, the engineering lift for new FLI products, as well as the maintenance of current FLIs, is minimal. On several occasions, the Set team has mentioned to us & in public that they are ready (from a technical standpoint) to spin up as many FLI products as possible when this discussion about fees is over.
It is also important to note that, due to economies of scale, the engineering cost decreases with each new FLI product, whereas the ROI increases… Finally, all of the long term infrastructure investments (like the trade splitter) can be used in other products as well, further decreasing costs. Please take under consideration that Set asked to include DPI on this new infrastructure to improve their own (and ultimately the Coop’s) operating efficiency. It’s already a win-win to everyone.

@BigSky7

Leverage Indices pod + Set team is doing the majority of work around the actual monitoring and maintenance of the FLI products. We are lucky to have a cross-functional team of community and Set experts that can take this on. In June, contributor rewards for the Leverage Indices pod were $20k and @overanalyser has budgeted $35k per month for Q3. Further, scaling the FLI pod to support more FLI-type products is not easy. The current processes are manual so the only way to scale fast is to onboard more people, and/or to invest heavily in automation over the next few months. Which will lead to a higher budget and more technology to maintain. More thoughts on this from @afromac here.

First of all I’d like to point out that the creation of this group was a great decision by the Coop.

Any new product being launched by the Coop requires an upfront investment to educate target users & ensure smooth operations. We believe that this is baked into any new product being launched, and we are thankful to the leverage indices POD for supporting this new line of products.

Please consider that FLI products are a unique design from DeFi Pulse which represent around 60% of the Coop’s revenues with no liquidity incentives, and little marketing efforts from the Coop when compared to other products.
The 40/60 split agreement was agreed upon by following the guidelines set by the methodologist fee menu post by @verto0912 . According to these guidelines, the Coop was supposed to provide liquidity mining for the FLI products, but this never happened due to their success. We are happy that this is a net saving for the Coop which can be used to bootstrap other products. Factoring in that info, FLIs definitely classify as the Coop’s most sustainable & profitable products.

@BigSky7

DFP contribution beyond the initial formula for FLI-style products is understood to be limited. As far as the Coop is aware, DFP doesn’t provide any meaningful assistance on engineering, marketing, or sales efforts and doesn’t bear any costs associated with the FLI products. If this is incorrect, we would love to hear it. As you’ll see below, we are very open to understanding the full-picture.

Direct marketing is only the tip of the iceberg from a go to market and cost structure point of view. We believe that the FLI products are leveraging the value of the DeFi Pulse brand, which is one the most recognized brands in DeFi and has been built throughout more than four years.

It’s also important to consider that, the joint work of the Coop & reputable methodologists, has shown time and again to be a large driver of success for products, and this is a large differentiator for the Coop from competitors.

@BigSky7

What specifically is the value add of external methodologists for exchange-traded products outside of the formula used in initial product specifications?

What’s the key differentiator between all indices providers in the DeFi space? External Methodologists and a flourishing DAO have proved to be a great match that is generating excellent results and benefiting all the stakeholders. Why change it now? Why consider changing a winning recipe that’s beating everybody else in the market?

@BigSky7

What is the cost of creating this formula and does that match the costs incurred by Index Coop?

I have a few points to address here :

• The value a partner is bringing to the table is never measured by their cost. This seems like the wrong way to approach this discussion. I think the right question to ask is what is the value of the innovation in FLIs, and the answer to that is clear through their un-incentivised TVL & revenue streams growth. On a different note, why are we debating costs, whereas the upside is virtually unlimited if we keep on succeeding like we currently are? The DeFi space is still a niche space with, barely, hundreds of thousands users. We should be focusing on growing the space by onboarding millions of new users instead.
• Now on the cost, (cost =/ value) the innovation is a result of all the contributions that Defi Pulse has made in the space during more than 4 years. Defi Pulse is a 20+ person company that is working & is trusted by hundreds of partners. The company’s trajectory plus the contribution of every one of its employees’ since inception has ultimately led to the creation of this product in some way.
• Never take the simplicity of a product for granted, as some of the most innovative products and services in the world are the simplest ones! Think of the Iphone abstracting away all the clutter from smart-phones. Products like this did not exist before in their innovative form and took Apple years of experience to be able to nail right.

@BigSky7

Given the costs highlighted above - what does DFP see as an equitable long-term fee split?

The current fee split was a revision of the initial 50/50 split that was discussed during preliminary negotiations with Set, on the premise that the Coop would provide liquidity mining incentives to bootstrap the FLI products, which never happened. As I mentioned above, this was modeled according to the guidelines discussed in the methodologist fee menu proposed by the community at the time.

The current fee split gives the majority of the fees back to the Coop, whereas, as the creator of the Index (which is unique), we only keep 40%. As discussed with a few members of the Coop.We will keep launching new FLI products with the Coop only if we stick to the fee split agreed.

@BigSky7

How can we improve direct and public communications between outside methodologists and our community?

A few months ago, we circulated the idea of creating a methodologists committee. All methodologists would meet together with the Coop’s representatives to discuss common concerns, set working standards, and build on top of each other. This seems like an excellent way to set a formal channel for discussions between the Coop & the methodologists to happen. It could also help drive a more collaborative relationship between the different methodologists to create even more value for the Coop.

Big thanks again for everyone at the Coop for their support, especially @BigSky7 for driving this discussion, and looking forward for everyone’s ideas & comments.

[verto0912]

Thanks Nassim (@snasps) for providing DFP’s perspective here.

A couple of points, before I dive into the specifics.

1. The below responses represent the consensus between myself, @afromac, @allan.g, @oneski22, @BigSky7 and @Mringz. While we can’t speak for everyone in the community, we hope that our views are somewhat representative of Index Coop.

2. I would like to touch on the many references made to prior agreements between DFP and Set. I consider these references not relevant to the matter at hand. I do want to acknowledge that it might be frustrating for DFP to continue having the same conversation with different parties. But it is also extremely challenging for Index Coop to function as an independent and autonomous DAO while having to abide by previous backdoor deals that we don’t have full context into. As such, we are really trying to approach this conversation from first principles and would really appreciate it if DFP would work with us on that basis.

Now for the specifics.

@snasps

Gas costs were indeed discussed & taken into consideration during the fee split discussions that happened with Set Protocol’s product team prior to the product’s launch. Ethereum transactions were even more expensive when initial discussions took place. Still, everyone agreed that FLI products will thrive and gain much more traction when deployed on L2’s , since they are heavily traded, minted and redeemed. Considering that Set is already close to deploying on different L2s (2-3 months latest estimate for FLIs), we think that gas costs are only a circumstantial issue. At the same time, we think that the costs are irrelevant when compared to the massive adoption of FLI products , and their impact in increasing the value of the network we bootstrapped together. It seems non-optimal to make long term decisions on fee splits based on conditions that are circumstantial.

I don’t believe that this is an accurate representation of the original conversation about costs. As far as I understand, it was communicated to DFP that we knew very little at launch in terms of what the final costs would be. I also believe that it was communicated that the fee split might have to change as we get more information.

Further, I don’t think gas costs are a circumstantial issue. No matter what, we will continue maintaining FLI products on L1 for the foreseeable future even if L2 products are launched simultaneously. We have spent the last several months investing engineering resources in improving the security and cost efficiency of the rebalancing process. While those improvements have been meaningful, gas costs continue to be quite relevant.

@snasps

I am not sure this is accurate. As Dylan mentioned in Monday’s meeting when replying to Matthew Graham, the engineering lift for new FLI products, as well as the maintenance of current FLIs, is minimal. On several occasions, the Set team has mentioned to us & in public that they are ready (from a technical standpoint) to spin up as many FLI products as possible when this discussion about fees is over.
It is also important to note that, due to economies of scale, the engineering cost decreases with each new FLI product, whereas the ROI increases… Finally, all of the long term infrastructure investments (like the trade splitter) can be used in other products as well, further decreasing costs. Please take under consideration that Set asked to include DPI on this new infrastructure to improve their own (and ultimately the Coop’s) operating efficiency. It’s already a win-win to everyone.

It’s true that launching FLI products is quite straightforward and doesn’t require much engineering effort at this point. Although this is an outcome of many backend scalability improvements on the part of Set Labs and IC. For example, building adapters for Aave to access those lending markets and increase the hypothetical number of FLI products that we can launch.

That said, maintenance of FLI products consumes ongoing engineering and other resources. In fact, maintenance costs are not fixed meaning economies of scale are not relevant here. Launching more FLI products will increase the overall maintenance costs.

While the trade splitter can be used for other products it was prioritised and developed specifically for the FLI suite. Furthermore, the trade splitter actually creates more maintenance work for the Leverage Indices pod as they now have to monitor liquidity on 3 DEXs and maintain 6 sets of parameters for each FLI product. Again, trade splitter is just one example.

@snasps

Please consider that FLI products are a unique design from DeFi Pulse which represent around 60% of the Coop’s revenues with no liquidity incentives, and little marketing efforts from the Coop when compared to other products.
The 40/60 split agreement was agreed upon by following the guidelines set by the methodologist fee menu post by @verto0912 . According to these guidelines, the Coop was supposed to provide liquidity mining for the FLI products, but this never happened due to their success. We are happy that this is a net saving for the Coop which can be used to bootstrap other products. Factoring in that info, FLIs definitely classify as the Coop’s most sustainable & profitable products.

First, the methodologist fee menu was never implemented. Second, the Coop has never agreed to providing liquidity incentives for FLI products. We understand that there were conversations between DFP and Set where this might’ve been discussed. However, it’s very challenging for us at the Coop to get to the bottom of those previous conversations and we are really trying to approach this from first principles.

On the uniqueness of the FLI series, it’s great that DFP came up with this design which opened up an entirely new line of products for IC. ETH2x-FLI has been incredibly successful. However, DFP continues to ignore our arguments around the cost of implementation and execution of the FLI suite. It took almost a quarter of R&D by the Coop to implement this product.

Further, as it currently stands, the IC is doing all of the maintenance work on the FLI suite. That work doesn’t scale with more indices. Instead, the IC will need to onboard more resources to manage a growing suite of these products.

@snasps

Direct marketing is only the tip of the iceberg from a go to market and cost structure point of view. We believe that the FLI products are leveraging the value of the DeFi Pulse brand, which is one the most recognized brands in DeFi and has been built throughout more than four years.

It’s also important to consider that, the joint work of the Coop & reputable methodologists, has shown time and again to be a large driver of success for products, and this is a large differentiator for the Coop from competitors.

I acknowledge your points but it doesn’t change the fact that DFP is not providing any support for the FLI suite. For example, DFP and Index Coop are both lending their brands to these products. But Index Coop is doing much more than just bringing brand value to the table. What are some concrete examples of DFP value add?

It is also my understanding that DFP promised engineering and marketing support during the negotiations with Set on the fee split, including hiring developers to help with the FLI suite. To the best of my knowledge, DFP hasn’t delivered on any of those promises.

It seems unfair that DFP receives ongoing 40% of revenue despite no contributions beyond the initial formula. This is much higher than any licensing arrangement out there. Would DFP be able to provide any real world examples where attaching a brand to a product results in perpetual 40% share of revenues?

@snasps

What’s the key differentiator between all indices providers in the DeFi space? External Methodologists and a flourishing DAO have proved to be a great match that is generating excellent results and benefiting all the stakeholders. Why change it now? Why consider changing a winning recipe that’s beating everybody else in the market?

We believe that the current fee split is not fair and equitable. Further, this fee split was not negotiated between DFP and IC. If we were to launch a dozen more of the FLI suite products, we need to ensure that the partnership between IC and DFP is set on fair and equitable terms.

@snasps

I have a few points to address here :

I understand your points but these comments do not directly address the question. As I said above, we are discussing costs because IC believes that the current arrangement is not fair and equitable. IC takes on all of the costs and maintenance work, all of the risks associated with the FLI suite and ends up with less than 5% of profits from these products.

@snasps

The current fee split was a revision of the initial 50/50 split that was discussed during preliminary negotiations with Set, on the premise that the Coop would provide liquidity mining incentives to bootstrap the FLI products, which never happened. As I mentioned above, this was modeled according to the guidelines discussed in the methodologist fee menu proposed by the community at the time.

The current fee split gives the majority of the fees back to the Coop, whereas, as the creator of the Index (which is unique), we only keep 40%. As discussed with a few members of the Coop.We will keep launching new FLI products with the Coop only if we stick to the fee split agreed.

Again, referring to the negotiations with Set is not relevant here. Also, the methodologist fee menu was never voted on and never went beyond an idea so is not binding in any way.

[Matthew_Graham]

Hi All,

This is a very interesting topic and a lot of good intent is on show here. We certainly do have a vibrant and engaged community which is great to see. I see two main issues here, 1) we lack a collaborative feel with this approach and 2) we have pigeonholed the conversation to a subset of a broader economic model.

I have had a number of chats with various people and have pondered how we can converge on an everyone wins solution. The TL:DR is up first and for those who like more detail, they can keep reading to learn the reasoning behind my thinking.

TL:DR

1. Future gas costs are borne by the FLI product (Not Index Coop and Not Methodologist)
2. COMP rewards accumulated within the FLI products is used to reimburse past gas costs
3. Future COMP rewards are split 80/20. 80% rolled into the product and 20% distributed to Index Coop. This is basically directs around 25 basis points to Index Coop with moves the product to equivalent to a 70/30 split
4. Top level 60/40 streaming fee remains 60/40

Reasoning:

1. Yearn vaults push recycling costs to depositors, all the costs are contained within the strategy. FLI can transit to this and the gas costs can be socialised. L1 costs high and L2 cost are no existent. The big future market for FLI is on L2. By socialising gas costs, we spread a very small fraction of the products AUM, which is the gas cost, over an incredibly large bas. The individual holder is not going to notice a rounding error like change in the price of FLI. This becomes increasing the case as FLI scale to a higher AUM.

2. Fact: The ETH2x-FLI product has around $460K of COMP in its wallet. Why well the functionality to recycle this capital hasn’t been built and is the by product of launching an incomplete product. For BTC2x-FLI its is $57K.
   It is super hard to retrospectively distribute COMP rewards to holders and TBH not a single user ever buys a leverage product thing they’ll benefit from COMP rewards… Similarly, no user ever thinks about gas cost savings.
   With $460K of COMP rewards in ETH2x-FLI, we can reimburse past gas costs and rebalance the economics of the product. FLI don’t know these rewards exist and there a very small dollar when distributed per FLI token. Easy win here is to reimburse Index Coop for gas costs associated with the product - Not Set Labs, Index Coop.
   Gas cost to date are $146K, COMP to date $460K.

3. Future COMP rewards can be used to recenter the FLI product. Index Coop likes COMP rewards for the metagovernace benefits and the treasury diversification benefits. We can re-centre the fee split by adjusting the COMP rewards. If we look at the revenue generate from ETH2x-FLI, I estimate 20% of the COMP rewards is worth about 25 basis points at the time of writing. If we route 20% of future COMP rewards to Index Coop then that is equivalent to a 65/35 fee split.

4. By adjusting the COMP rewards we adjust the streaming fee. Originally Index Coop was not meant to refine the methodology of a product, that responsibility falls to the methodologist. If we find ways to improve the product or grow the offering we should be working together to optimise the relationship and user experience together. If Index Coop is to be more actively involved in iterating the FLI methodology, perhaps there is reason for a fee split tweak. Perhaps this is in the spirit of collaboration and relationship building. Growing the pie makes everyone a winner. Energy spent growing the pie creates a win / win dynamic.

With that said, I digress on a side bar here. I want to straighten out a misconception that is going around.

Having spoken to both teams, there is a lot of enthusiasm for bringing a bunch of FLI products to market. The FLI product series is ready to be scaled now. Minus that design flaw with the COMP rewards that needs addressing.

The days of Set saying no to new products and don’t post new products on the forum are behind us. That blocker has been overcome. We should not be listening to people/entities who say don’t post ideas on the forum. We should be encouraging ideas via the forum and we should be working together to improve the products we have as best we can with the methodologist collaboratively.

[verto0912]

Hey @Matthew_Graham, some initial thoughts from me.

1. COMP or AAVE rewards are not permanent and shouldn’t really impact long-term thinking.
2. The functionality to execute on your suggestion needs to be built out which, again, falls on IC in terms of engineering lift.
3. I believe 70/30 is still not an equitable and fair outcome.
4. The scale of COMP and potential AAVE rewards makes it more attractive for us to pursue the vision of our own leverage product line-up by the Automated Indices Pod.

[Matthew_Graham]

Hi @verto0912

On 2) The functionality should have been built out prior to launch. This point really is void.

On 1) Yes, the COMP and AAVE are temporary rewards which makes them ideal for reimbursing costs.

Gas costs incurred to date can be reconciled with a decision to do so. That is 100% something that can be done outside of the 60/40 split discussion. This can be done collaboratively in harmony. To this end I mentioned this with people from BD, FLI pod and DeFi Pulse. There was general acceptance for this. Both ongoing gas and past gas expenses can be managed independent of the fee split. These are easy wins that enables progress to be made and completely actionable now.

Regarding 3) I disagree, I feel 70/30 is the best Index Coop can hope for here. The question becomes, do we need the FLI pod once the tech is fully built out. What is the value add once the product is fully scaleable ?

It is probably worth noting anyone could have come up with the FLI concept, but no one did until Defi Pulse did. We can collectively iterate and refine FLI together collaboratively or we can launch similar variations and fragment the market. I can refine the MVI methodology and have it on the forum, a simple risk optimised returns modelling shows it will outperform MVI. If the FLI pod does this to FLI, then there is precedent and the action of doing so encourages similar behaviour towards other products like MVI. The point being we don’t want a precedent of taking methodologists ideas and iterating on them to launch competing products. That will turn away all external methodologists.

[puniaviision]

@Matthew_Graham

The days of Set saying no to new products and don’t post new products on the forum are behind us. That blocker has been overcome. We should not be listening to people/entities who say don’t post ideas on the forum.

It really baffles me and makes me feel terrible when you continually attack my work and intentions after bending over backwards to make sure you feel supported. Especially when it has seemingly no relevance to the rest of the post.

Can you let me know when this has ever happened?

[Matthew_Graham]

I remember vividly @puniaviision openly stating in PWG meetings we should be telling methodologist not to put proposals on the forum. I’ve cross referenced this fun fact with multiple people, it was very clear and it has stuck with me ever since. I also had others from PWG state they run interference for you, so methodologist can not progress there products. This was the directive that led to the emergence of a less tactful and more openly direct approach to moving products forward.

[puniaviision]

So maybe before you make posts that hurt other people and their relationship with you, you should have real examples of the thing actually happening.

[oneski22]

Let’s take a step back and remember our core principals and code of conduct please!

Code of Conduct

Code of Conduct Our Pledge We as members, contributors, and leaders pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation. We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcomin…

[anon10525910]

it sounds like there is a mixture frustration and hurt feelings here

the challenges we’ve overcome so far, and those we know we have to overcome in the future, are not easy. If they were, every community would be doing what we do!

I think we can all agree that ideas flowing to the forums and working together are two important pieces of how we’re going to keep on winning together

+1 to our code of conduct & guiding principles.