Fully agree.
OIP-41 - Launch Olympus Incubator program
That’s a big agree from me! Less go
- Edited
Not a big fan of the proposal. Things need more clarification.
- The opportunity we invest in / thesis here should be explained better. Now it's fairly open ended.
- No upper limit on spending (cap on amount of projects, etc). VC math needs to be worked out or run this as a trial of X amount of projects where the expected value is 0. Or put it off completely as a marketing effort with a budget similarly to grant programs.
- Bleed on the market. The projects dumperino (yes they will).
- Potentially skews incentives. Teams should come to Olympus products because they want them, not because we fund them.
In general there's unlimited risk money in crypto including, professional funds, unprofessional funds, angels, the public, DAOs and valuations can be sky high. Not a business I'd want Olympus to be in.
- Edited
Thanks for putting this forward. I want to vote yes for this, since it is a good idea. But I also want more community involvement. Saying yes to it without any involvement in the selection process for the "incubees" feels odd to me. Nothing against the Strategos, but it's just that the ask seems a bit like a stretch.
What I mean is: If the idea is for this to occur so frequently that it makes OIP votes undesirable, then in that case, at least in my view, either:
A- 250k is too big of an amount per project without more community scrutiny, especially if confidential information is to be part of the agreements, as it is likely to be expected. I understand the reason for confidential parts of an agreement, but (IMHO) in that case a possible solution is that the "pre-authorized" sum could be lower so as to preserve the DAO OHM reserves. An optional expansion of the incubee distribution could then be subjected to an OIP for projects that seem specially beneficial to the DAO as evaluated by the rest of the community. Or we could set up a milestone framework for all agreements, to be able to stop funding towards any project that is not meeting expectations.
or
B- It means taking we're too many incubees right off the bat and exposing the DAO to a lot of risk that might be unnecessary. Proposed solution in this case is to be more selective and subject incubees to a OIP vote where the value of their proposal is to be assessed by the DAO community
I guess my main question is: How many projects can we expect per "round" of 4-6 months? Is there a preliminary list of projects? No need to post specifics, but just a ballpark figure or an estimation of the number of projects that are to be expected would be really helpful to estimate how much OHM reserves the DAO is exposing by saying "Yes", since we are talking about n*250k and that's a very different number if n=10 than if n=200.
I'm 100% in favor of this coming online. Ohmies already have the potential to incubate multiple projects at will, and I think we're already demonstrating that informally.
My only concern is that governance tokens can be a point of failure. On one hand, Olympus becomes a central target if it accrues enough voting power in enough protocols; on the other hand, Olympus may be compelled to swap out voting power for risk-free assets, thusly opening the incubated protocols to external influence. I understand that in the first scenario, OHM would have additional monetary premium and be hardened as such, and in the second scenario, we may be able to swap with other sufficiently decentralized protocols. Is this an issue, and if so, are there any additional parameters that could mitigate them?
happy to vote YES
Great idea(s).
ProofofSteveGM Will do!
Amazing , the Olympus team doesn’t stop building , so grateful to be an Ohmie and watch it become a behemoth in real time 
I’m 100% supportive of this endeavor. Positive sum games > Zero sum games.
Olympus has amassed a significant treasury over the last ~ 6 months and alongside its main value prop - has built out the Olympus Pro product. An Olympus incubator, is a natural extension of its base infrastructure and Olympus Pro offering. This incubator idea will allow for more dynamism within the OlympusDAO ecosystem with increased value accrual per ohm of capital deployed.
If Olympus is to become the De-central bank of Defi, it makes sense to support innovative financial primitives. The associated risk in these endeavors is clearly outweighed by the potential upside.
One thing worth noting that could be interesting to explore: creating a vc marketplace with individual tickets (NFTs) that also allow Ohmies to participate in the incubation process. Setting aside a % of the grant that only the community has access to.
All in all, I’m very excited for this to be implemented. Well done to everyone involved 
gnostication it would take 28 projects using the full 250k for us to get to 1% of current-day treasury in spend.
But the gains in terms of positive-sum interactions, and the differentiation from the ohm forks, are all incredible value drivers, the risk-reward is lopsided
gnostication Thanks for the feedback - totally agree that 250K is a lot of money and I imagine that it would be a rare case that that sum would ever be dispersed - it is the upper bound of where I consider we would fund depending on the negotiated deal. I imagine that the average would be under 100K.
Is OHM to be used for high-risk VC activities now, and deviate from its focus as a risk-mitigated reserve currency?
The plan for Olympus is to be a decentralized reserve currency backed by a basket of assets - the updside from a gaining significant share of the governance token of a promising protocol on a risk adjusted return is stratospheric.
Imagine for a moment that we paid 100K and got 5% of a protocol's governance token - then that protocol goes on to be a $500 million protocol - we just turned our $100K into $25,000,000 in Treasury assets a 250x return. You get the idea.
I can’t understand how the activity of incubating projects could be considered high risk.
Also, what additional burden does this place on the core DAO team?
The DAO is made up of over 100 contributors in my answer to Kleb I set out that - Advice and assistance carries with it certain inferences about the amount of time required and, as it would be remunerated in comparison to the ordinary compensation, it would be minimal if the assistance is a small part of their overall roll in a given week. I imagine it would only amount to a few hours a week from several DAO members depending on the advice or assistance required - it would of course vary from time to time, maybe less at the start but more in the week before they launch.
What kind of vetting for each project will be required?
We would look at the founder and team’s background, experience, development to date and any industry references – in terms of vetting and additional considerations concerning selection. We would expect the any funding provided to be held in a multisig.
This proposal carries an entirely new set of work load as a result of the new line of business.
The minimal work required from some contributors some of the time would be characteristic of their ordinary area of contribution.
Separately - I am currently workshopping some additional parameters to put a cap on total quarterly expenditure of the program and reporting requirements - and will post back soon.
Baitfish Thanks for taking the time to comment on the proposal. In response to your concerns I would say:
- The opportunity we invest in / thesis here should be explained better. Now it's fairly open ended.
I expand on the thesis in my response to kleb: The criteria is maximizing the benefit to Ohmies - this will depend on the estimation of the value of return to the DAO Treasury from the project governance token received or other strategic benefits it may provide for example building on top of OHM or increased utility for OHM.
- No upper limit on spending (cap on amount of projects, etc). VC math needs to be worked out or run this as a trial of X amount of projects where the expected value is 0. Or put it off completely as a marketing effort with a budget similarly to grant programs.
I hear the concern here and am workshopping a quarterly cap and reporting requirements.
- Bleed on the market. The projects dumperino (yes they will).
I don't actually think this is likely considering we will own a material share of their governance token and the projects will be adding value to Olympus for example by either be using OHM or building on top of it. I actually think it likely that projects will keep a share of their treasury in OHM or use it as an LP pair.
- Potentially skews incentives. Teams should come to Olympus products because they want them, not because we fund them.
In the situation where one product is as good as another they would then be able to choose Olympus - incentive alignment is a powerful force.
In general there's unlimited risk money in crypto including, professional funds, unprofessional funds, angels, the public, DAOs and valuations can be sky high. Not a business I'd want Olympus to be in.
If we are able to uniquely assist founders and teams to ship with a valuable product that builds network effects for Olympus and captures outsized value and influence in our treasury then I think we should - the DAO would be remiss not to.