(Compiled by the Strategy task force, based on Community feedback since inception)

This proposal builds on and synthesizes previous community efforts on strategy, including early discussions and collaboration held in discord by the community, and later the Olympus12 plan. The strategy is meant to focus efforts and resources to help optimize growth in the short to mid term.

The vision and fundamental principles described in a parallel post are meant to be stable and change infrequently. The strategy in this proposal is constantly reevaluated and should be reviewed at least every six months, as the nature of strategy work and opportunities means that strategy should be adaptive.

What is strategy?

“Good strategy almost always looks simple and obvious in retrospect… It identifies the one or two critical issues in a situation—the pivot points that can multiply the effectiveness of effort—and then focused and concentrated action and resources on them” - Richard Rumelt

A core idea of strategic work is to enable strong focus on key issues.  At Olympus it should lead to measurable outcomes. Olympus is a mission-driven project, which means strategy is built around short-term actions that are highly impactful on the long-term mission.

The structure of the strategy proposed is Diagnose -> Guiding Policy -> Coherent Action. This means it starts with identifying key challenges or problems, then defining a high level guiding policy and finally specifying a number of identified actions that will address the key challenges.

Why strategy at Olympus?

Olympus and OlympusDAO have evolved much over the last 18 months. As the initial launch and expansion phase is over, there is a need to align effort and work towards a few set goals. Not everything can be done at the same time. 

The nature of the DAO is that all contributors, and the community at large, are spread around the globe. Everyone should be able to get daily guidance on priorities from the strategy, without need for lengthy alignment discussions.

Additionally, the DAO has identified a set of OKRs, and the strategy should align with the OKRs in order to measure outcomes at the end of the year. 

The Olympus 2022 Strategy

Diagnosis

A reserve currency ref

  • Has the depth and liquidity to allow for reliable and efficient transactions

  • Can be freely and easily exchanged for other currencies

  • Is held by many monetary authorities and institutions, in significant amounts

  • Maintains stability with low volatility towards other currencies, assets and goods

  • Establishes markets for financing via credit and debt instruments

Two key unaddressed challenges for Olympus to grow as a reserve currency are:1. significant adoption by other protocols, DAOs, and DeFi institutions (demonstrating utility to the DeFi ecosystem at the same time) and  2. demonstrating increasing relative stability over time.

Guiding Policy

The guiding policy consists of two main themes: drive adoption, and demonstrate increasing stability over time.

Adoption and utility: Build OHM reserve currency status by servicing DeFi protocols and DAOs. Provide direct benefits for protocols and DAOs that onboard OHM as a long term treasury asset and liquidity pair.

Stability: Lower volatility by implementing Range Bound market operations and a clear Treasury management processes. Reduce required trust by implementing a transparent, codified monetary policy and governance system.

Coherent Actions

Adoption (via utility)

Provide a clear value proposition to DeFi protocols and DAOs

  1. Increase OHM adoption by focusing on Flex Loans and other liquidity products via DeFi services to drive adoption amongst DeFi protocols

    1. Align all Olympus work groups around Olympus Flex Loans adoption 
    2. Develop use cases and user journeys that integrates Olympus and partners (e.g. Bond Protocol)
    3. Establish a customer research process to inform product development and needs in the market, a partner funnel, and standardized protocol review framework

  2. Increase utility from emissions Ensure that protocol emissions are used for maximum protocol benefit

    1. Evaluate gOHM vs vaults

    2. Framework for mint & sync to OHM pools (to attract third party LPs) 

    3. Framework for mint & sync to Flex Loan partners that offset negative effects from Olympus monetary growth

  3. R&D efforts to build products, features or services that drive utility and adoption

    1. Evaluate generalized lending market implementations

    2. Evaluate an Institutional OHM offload facility

    3. Identify potential markets that can be be OHM denominated (e.g. NFTs)

Stability (via monetary policy) -

Increase autonomy and transparency of the monetary policy,  aim for stable growth of monetary supply and reducing volatility

  1. Launch Range Bound Stability v1

    1. Deploy v1 to test and evaluate parameters and demonstrate increased stability of OHM

  2. Launch Internal (OHM) Bonds 

    1. Define core design goal of internal bonds 

    2. Tie into Emission Framework and define rollout implementation

  3. R&D efforts to improve and simplify the monetary policy and protocol mechanics

    1. Evaluate Range Bound Stability with TWAMMs

    2. Evaluate simplified RBS (Indigo’s Bollinger Bands Range Bounds)

  4. Align communication, protocol phase, and position - Olympus is in stable growth phase (after launch, before stability)

    1. Designate the main long term OHM token (OHM vs gOHM)

    2. Redefine protocol/user personas and core mechanics (3,3 9,9 etc)

    3. Emphasize positioning vs fiat currencies and core protocol values

      1. Provable autonomous monetary policy, provable reserves

      2. Transparent, decentralized, community governed

    4. Aim to reduce volatility while reducing market operations over time

      1. Develop the underlying OHM based economy in DeFi, e.g. LP with other assets

      2. Communicate that reserves and price are not 1:1. Move away from using the term backing

      3. Reduce market operations over time while maintaining relative stability

Stability (via transparency and trust) - 

Increase stability through clear governance and transparency

  1. Launch on-chain governance

    1. Launch on-chain governance v1 and evaluate
    2. Propose delegation structure based on on-chain governance system
      1. Framework for community voting
      2. Framework for delegation to multisigs
      3. Evaluate delegation structures, including DAO/sub-DAOs

  2. Evaluate separation of Reserves and Strategic Assets

    1. Evaluate protocol separation of backing assets and strategic assets

    2. Evaluate restructuring of protocol and DAO assets, DAO OHM reserve size and OHM minting to DAO

      1. Protocol - reserve assets and LP

      2. DAO - strategic assets, OHM reserve

    3. Evaluate using strategic assets to short term incentivise OHM adoption (e.g. incentivize Flex Loan usage), sustainably fund the DAO long term

    4. Evaluate gamification of strategic asset rewards

    5. Propose Reserve and Strategic assets framework

      1. Reserve assets managed by community vote

      2. Community vote to delegate strategic assets management to the DAO

In order to progress to OIP, please provide your feedback as follows:

This poll has ended.

This is a great write-up and initiative to focus energy and add transparency through a clear vision statement and a connected strategy. This write-up will have a good educationary value, and I hope it will be published somewhere suitable so people may find it easily.

Some comments:

  1. I would shift the definition of reserve currency to the vision statement - not likely to change.
  2. You may want to split the definition into 3 parts for increased clarity:
    a. "Currency" definition
    b. "Reserve" definition
    c. What enables or facilitates a currency to be chosen as "reserve currency" (strategy)
  3. The "currency" definition I am too lazy to lookup but its the yada yada about being used and thus circulating. Like water in a stream. Its a current. Hence currency. Medium of exchange, store of value, unit of account, etc.
  4. The "reserve" definition is where it gets interesting. A currency "earns" its classification as "reserve" when it is held by many monetary authorities/institutions. Your bullet point 3. Thats the simple definition. Why? Because once they hold it, it goes into their balance sheet and it gets classified as a "reserve" for them once they do their financial reporting/auditing. It is how those monetary institutions use the currency that makes it a "reserve currency". Just like Olympus holds a number of assets on the balance sheet - they are reserve currencies from Olympus accounting perspective. Once other protocols hold OHM on their balance sheet, OHM becomes a reserve currency for them.
  5. The other 4 bullet points in your referenced definition are what makes a currency interesting for others to use as "reserve currency". These 4 are the way for OHM to become appealing as reserve currency; ie liquidity and stability.

A crisp understanding of the "reserve" concept will be critical for long-term success.

Good stuff.

    Thank you! This is a really good explanation, I hope it's ok if we reuse it in coming explanations?

    A currency "earns" its classification as "reserve" when it is held by many monetary authorities/institutions. Your bullet point 3. That's the simple definition. Why? Because once they hold it, it goes into their balance sheet and it gets classified as a "reserve" for them once they do their financial reporting/auditing. It is how those monetary institutions use the currency that makes it a "reserve currency".

    Splitting the definition is a good idea, but I'm not sure we should do it at this stage. Yes, it's good to keep the static parts in the vision doc, but at the same time it's good to have everything relevant in the same doc when going to implementation. Also, another point came up when preparing this approach. Although the long term aim is reserve currency, it is possible that short term there are other strategies that could lead to larger impact in specific areas (e.g. leverage times of market turmoil to expand as a stablecoin liquidity pair).

    Really appreciate the comments!

    bubbidubb quick note to say nice one on the Reserve Currency definition, haven't ever heard it described so succinctly

      Regarding (4) in Stability (via monetary policy) - I'd be really interested in hearing more on this point to understand the core messaging framework and how it interacts with older messaging (particularly around things like (3,3 and {shudder} 9,9 - the latter being one I'd love to see consigned to the past entirely)…

      The line between retail and the need for institutionally focused messaging is going to be a fine one to walk - bubbidubb's Reserve currency definition is excellent in its simplicity and still not a retail-focused message at all - lots fo good opportunity I think to be more focused on the benefits of growth in ecosystem alongside growth in personal assets. Ohm's dashboards continue to get better and better so the usage of historical data to display Ohm asset strength, growth and stability is a great story, obviously that has been getting some cut through against the 'Ohm down bad' narratives of late but will take some time…

        Separately in (1) Stability (via transparency and trust) -

        "Evaluate delegation structures, including DAO/sub-DAOs" - would love to hear more on this one as well - Ohm continues to be part of the wider DAO experiment and current market conditions and some bad actors haven't helped the wider market's view on DAO governance too much (i.e. Tribe et al.) - building in transparency is key and Ohm's communication around OIP's and governance votes has gotten better and better, I do think that without delegation and the potential for Sub DAO or other governance ownership structures there is weakness built in as far as the ability to influence or subvert votes as a large holder - this has happened before already and doesn't help to build trust in DAO governance process.

        I should make sure to say thanks for the above, excellent to see the write up

        seijaku Yes, and I see an outcome from this strategy (if accepted) to be new communication guidelines. Specifically in this case to keep 3,3, redefine 3,3 or remove it altogether as the protocol evolves, but this applies to many other things as well. Always a balance of potential benefit of evolving and changing, versus the cost of doing these changes.

          Write a Reply...