Request for Discussion: Methodologist Accelerator Program

Thanks for giving your feedback, @Matthew_Graham - I hope you will join the DATA Community call today to discuss further!

@Matthew_Graham I think this perspective is "penny wise and pound foolish". The Methodologist Accelerator program is constructed to increase the market capitalization of INDEX by ~10x more than the cost of the program. The Index Coop community is now closely examining costs, but not return on investment (ROI). This proposal is oriented towards maximizing ROI, not minimizing costs. Index Cooperative is a startup and should be focused on maximizing ROI for tokenholders.

I would agree with you if every product launched with $100m+ in TVL at no cost to the Index Coop or Methodologist. That is simply not the case. The implicit assumption here is that Methodologists are handling their own startup financing before a product is self-sustaining profitably by doing the following:

  1. Becoming a community methodologist
  2. self-financing,
  3. creating a company to sell equity to investors
  4. creating a DAO with tokens that given tokenholders rights to future streaming fees.

I’d argue Index Cooperative has already done #4 so the Methodologist Accelerator Program is simply making Index Coop a co-investor alongside the Methodologist in the product.

This is a sunk cost. It is not incentivizing Methodologists and the program will not even exist in 10 months. We should be focused on making decisions and building a foundation for future growth, not dwell on past mistakes or decisions.

The intention is not to “front-run” a community led direction, but respond and build upon the community’s new thinking around incentives. The Methodologist Accelerator Program was built on the understanding that BED was not supported with INDEX liquidity mining rewards and DATA is not expected to be supported with them etiher.