• Proposal

  • OIP-41 - Launch Olympus Incubator program

kleb Thanks Kleb - because each incubated project will be unique and have differing negotiated agreements I don't think putting to many strictures in place at outset is desirable.

As a DAO all the agreements will be public and I am sure receive rightful scrutiny - the DAO will track any payments and assistance provided to projects and report back to the community. Over time processes and policies for dealing with the program will be developed - but we have to have room to see what works to begin with.

As the level of assistance required and size of grants will vary from project to project so will the amount of governance token the Olympus Treasury will receive - this will all be by negotiation.

We are probably not going to get it right every time and some will think we got a good deal and others not - each agreement will be negotiated by the partnerships contributors and approved by Strategos.

If after allowing the program to run for a few months the community wishes to put certain strictures in place or decommission the program - they can of course do so by OIP vote.

In response to your specific questions:

  1. So far you've mentioned $250k but this doesn't account for DAO time which is a specified service we would be offering.

    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.

  2. What are the criteria for incubating a project?

    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.

  3. Which ohmies are deciding whether a project gets accepted or rejected?

    The partnerships contributors will negotiate the agreements and they will be approved or rejected by Strategos. Any one is free to join the DAO and get involved in the partnerships team.

  4. How long is an incubation period going to be?

    This will vary from project to project - it may be 1 month or 6 months - it will be by negotiation and, I imagine, affect the size of the share of governance token received by Olympus.

  5. How many projects will the DAO take on at once?

    This will no doubt vary from time to time - but I would say we wouldn't accept new projects if we don't think we can deliver value to them or that we can't maintain our reputation because we have taken on too many.

  6. Who will have visibility of the work?

    Given the sensitive nature of new projects the current thinking is we will limit it to the person managing the incubation, Strategos & Core, and whoever is required to assist. We will be transparent with the community on the amount of assistance we are providing to projects.

  7. Do we have an expected ROI and how will this be measured? Or do we have another measure of success?

    The ROI will be in the value of deposits of governance tokens to the Olympus Treasury, any fees from our products (this are likely to be low or waived given our interest in an incubated projects success) and other intangibles like utility from OHM and use of OHM as a liquidity pair or holdings in the project's Treasury. It probably won't be useful to measure until sometime after the first few projects go live and have had time to mature.

  8. Or do we have a max cost we are willing to reach before we cut a project?

    Yes $250K or where, after a period of time, the DAO judges that the project is not likely to be viable without unreasonable further expenditure of contributors time and energies.


    There is a little bit of trust required from the community for the DAO in approving the program - but the incentives are aligned for the DAO to maximize the value for the community. Being given the bandwidth to conduct the program nimbly as we get it up and running is very valuable - so we can find what works without having to regularly come back through governance which is very time consuming and diverts a lot of resources.

  • kleb replied to this.

      ProofofSteveGM

      Thanks Steve - the project onboarding will be negotiated by the partnerships contributors and approved by the Strategos - given incubations may be occurring quite frequently I don't think it is desirable for it to come through an OIP process or similar. Additionally, going through an OIP process or similar would likely require the disclosure of confidential information, for the community to be able to usefully reason about whether to agree to a potential project joining the program and any terms of agreement. The diversion of resources and contributors time to come through governance would be quite an additional cost to the DAO in a very competitive landscape. You, having run the gauntlet more than once, know the unseen hours it takes.

      The incentives of the DAO are aligned to maximize value to Ohmies - and Strategos are best placed to reason about the value and value-add given they have most visibility to see the road ahead. Having said this of course the DAO will not always get it right and some will think we got a good deal or a bad deal depending on each agreement. The DAO members will have to wear that in the proposed process of negotiation by partnerships team and approval by Strategos.

      The DAO will be transparent about the agreements, the assistance, and financial disbursements - if the community would like further oversight or strictures in place over the program - an OIP can be made at any time. I think this will be a matter taking a chance trusting that the DAO will get it right and of it building up trust with the community in relation to the program - or not getting it right and rightfully getting reigned in. I think it's worth the risk.

          siainsin

          Hi siansin - the process will be for the negotiations to be done by the Partnerships team and approved by Strategos - the DAO will be transparent in the agreements, the assistance it provides and the financial cost of the program. The community have ultimate oversight of the program through the OIP process.

            Mark11 That's all totally valid and reasonable. But I'd like to suggest that in the Snapshot vote, you include an example of how exactly the intake process works. We did this for the bug bounty OIP recently. A literal 1, 2, 3 detailing how a request is received, how it is approved, and who approves it.

                As the DAO scales and grows, this is an exciting time to also support new entrants into DeFi.

                I am of heavy support!

                i really like this proposal and i think we can hold a ohmers hackthon

                Extremely exciting! The first steps into becoming the bank of DeFi. You love to see it.

                Smol brain here: would this have avoided situations like the retreat of TIME regarding the 33% ohm buy? txh

                  Olympus is already having good networking with other protocols and projects with OlympusPro, strong (3, 3) community and plenty of capital to deploy. These are all going to give the synergy affect to the new projects who are looking to partner with Olympus. If Olympus able to get good projects or protocols at early stage then the backing per OHM will increase significantly if any of the partnered project becomes huge success. And ofcourse most of the upcoming projects which are looking to partner with Olympus will be having a good rate of success. I am fully agree to this proposal

                  Mark11

                  I think this is a good ideal, but also see it as a way to slowly bleed the treasury. $250k is a not insignificant amount of money.

                  Is OHM to be used for high-risk VC activities now, and deviate from its focus as a risk-mitigated reserve currency? Also, what additional burden does this place on the core DAO team? What kind of vetting for each project will be required? This proposal carries an entirely new set of work load as a result of the new line of business.

                  I'm a fan of helping the community out. This feels more like a manic urge to enter high-risk arena with little benefit.

                      Mark11 we need more details on this proposal. Entering the world of crypto VC is littered with high risk which isn’t the core expertise of Olympus DAO.

                        That’s a big agree from me! Less go

                        Mark11 a very good proposal, lately OlympusDAO is very much in the news and many related projects (fork, nft) are coming up. For a healthy development of the OHM ecosystem and to continue our progression in DeFi we must reward good initiatives

                          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.

                            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.