Hi @mel.eth,
Great post and the topic here really resonate with me. My personal view is the genesis token distribution is unfair and mis represents the relative value each group brings to building out Index Coop.
The elephant in the room is the 28% Set Labs allocation. The product that lead to Index Coop’s existence came from DeFi Pulse and they received 2% for it up front and a head start at the methodologist rewards by being first out the gate. Even with 9.5% to DeFi Pulse and 28% to Set Labs in the same sentence - it reads really lop sided, doesn’t it!
28% Set Labs to me is clearly an issue. The 52.5% the community has largely been spent to date growing the protocol and we are all aware of the tens of millions spent on liquidity mining which is many, many multiples more than what we have paid to the community. The metal owls, make the community what it is today and give it an economic value. Products don’t scale or sell themselves. But the community receives the least ownership and does the majority of the work.
The genesis distribution.
My thoughts, we have a discussion about redirecting part of Set Labs Year 1 vesting contract and all of the Year 2 and Year 3 vesting contracts to the community Treasury. The community then determines a way to retrospective distribute some, or all, the tokens to past and present contributors. A fair amount of ownership for Set Labs in my opinion is maximum 10%.
The 1 Year Set Labs vesting contract is 14%, the Year 2 and Year 3 vesting contracts are 8.4% and 5.6% respectively. We should recognise the value of the community, we should revisit our genesis contract and we should distribute more to the community. We should also restructure the methodologist program into something sustainable and the INDEX from the Set Labs vesting contract gives the community capital to work with.
The alternative is to fire up the printing press and mint INDEX tokens to be distributed to the community. But given we mint tokens from nothing when we extract fees on our product, this is not an ideal way to go about it. If we do a federal reserve on our governance token, we can do a federal reserve on tour clients who hold our products. We should probably burn the keys if we have not already.
And yes some Full Timers have been discussion minting INDEX tokens for a Yearn style solution. My idea presented above has been pitched several times to Full Timers and various fellow metal owls. The idea received caution but no blockers. Perhaps too bold, perhaps no one wants to risk their political capital by being the face of such a bold challenge.
I am going out on a limb by publishing this and my opinion is my own. I am driven by my values, my principles and I will always voice what I believe is right, independent of who it affects. I honestly believe the right thing to do is revisit the genesis contract. 28% to a single entity (including the community) is straight up wrong in my opinion. I am also aware there will be unspoken consequences for publishing this post and that just motivates me to do what I think is right. Community first.
The above is an example of what moving the Year 2 and Year 3 Set Labs vesting contracts to the community could look like. 14% spread evenly over 60 people is 0.23% each, or 0.07% per year over 3 years. Not an ideal methodology as it fails to compensate contributors for their relative contributions, but it gives a flavour and moves Index Coop closer to a fair launch model. There is also the added benefit of being able to dissolve the Full Time systems and move to a holistic vesting philosophy for all owls with adjusted monthly rewards. We can create community ownership, we can have a fair renumeration program that compensates for relative contribution towards growing the community.
We can also expand the methodologist program by dipping into the 1 Year Set Labs vesting contract and move towards something potentially more sustainable. This is another burning topic which can be addressed.
This idea addresses a genesis bias towards a single entity, builds community ownership, enables overhauling the contributor rewards process eliminating the bias divide and can strengthen the methodologist program well beyond the initial 18 months design lifespan.
Let’s do a sentiment check. IT IS A PRIVATE POLL 
Vote:
- FOR Revisiting the Genesis Contract Distribution
- FOR Redistributing INDEX from Set Labs to Contributors
- FOR Making this a priority for Q3
- FOR Putting this idea in the round filling cabinet
- FOR Reducing Set Labs ownership via vesting contracts to 10% or less
- FOR Making this an Autonomy Group Priority
0 voters