Maven 11, proud seed investor in OlympusDAO, would like to express our strong support for the proposal. We had a several conversations with Olympus and concluded that CEX listing would considerably improve visibility of OHM to new investors that are not acquainted with the DEXes and/or are not tech savvy enough to go through the process of acquiring it (withdrawing from CEX to a private wallet, approving and buying on Sushi, staking etc.). We believe that Olympus belongs to all OHMies and that CEX listing will enable a new wave of supporters that will join our (3,3) movement. One question may arise with the above mentioned proposal - if the trading pairs will be expressed in OHM and not sOHM or gOHM, how will that simplify the whole process for new participants? Together with the DAO, we are actively working on implementing an inhouse staking module into CEXes that will make it possible for OHMies to stake their fresh OHMs directly inside of the exchange with only a click of the button. (3,3) will become even easier for all of us and definitely cheaper and faster than the current options. 

In the past, we have worked with GSR on other projects and can vouch for their integrity. We also believe that GSR's determination to partner with Olympus and their professionalism has been outstanding and that no other MM has a similar reach in terms of listing on top tier exchanges and experience in the DeFi space.

As pointed out by @Don_G_Lover, we think that both of these scenarios are very favourable to all holders and that GSR focuses heavily on the potential of excerpting the trading fees from trading OHM and that the so-called call option on the loan is treated more like a bonus in case OHM performs extremely well in the coming 6 to 12 months.
On top of that, GSR will not have governance rights and the loan will not be staked which will prevent the dilution to (3,3) OHMies and decrease in the APY.

To conclude, we are supporting this proposal as it benefits the growth of the whole Olympus ecosystem. Finally, we would like to say thank you to the whole community for engagement under this proposal. Once again we all show what it means to be an OHMie and we are very proud to be a part of this movement.

    GM Ohmies!

    Personally I am not in favour of a CEX listing at all. It just seems so counter to everything we are trying to build with Olympus and DeFi in general. CEXs are used for two things: Speculation and Fiat on-ramps. I don't think we really benefit from the first one -- we all know how valuable what the Ohmie community is building here in Olympus really is. We don't need retail punters to tell us that. The second we don't need as we own our own LPs - retail can find their way to us if they want. Crypto is an educational journey as much as anything and the "doing in DeFi" is a critical piece to understanding why there is so much value in being an Ohmie.

    Ok just a couple of other thoughts:

    • I agree with all of the points @davoice321 makes -- the questions around process/legal issues are very complex. We would be breaking new ground as a DAO should we proceed, which would be pretty cool, but I'm not sure being the guniea pig when we have so much else to be working on is the best risk/reward move at this time.
    • A zero interest loan is also unacceptable. Shit Orthogonal Trading charges 10% on USDC lending to prop desks so there is no way we should support a freebie to GSR. Better yet, like the rest of us, let GSR purchase their OHM on market. We can't really stop anyone from using their OHM however they want. If GSR still decide to use their holdings to fund a CEX listing and MM program, good for them. We end up in the same place -- a CEX listing of OHM, but one we didn't have to bank roll.
    • How much control/input does the DAO actually get from this agreement over the listing criteria for whichever CEX GSR MM on? In truth we couldn't stop CZ or SBF coming in and buying up a swag of OHM and then listing it on their exchanges, so any say from this agreement may be better than no say at all.

    When I look to the future of DeFi and crypto in general, I actually don't see CEXs at all…any of them….anywhere. DeFi is eating their lunch and they are just trying to retain a seat at the table. Whether or not OHM lists on a CEX will not be the deciding factor in our long term success imho.

      Ulysses31

      The second point I strongly disagree with personally. Any market maker can just OTC this same amount easily today and list on an exchange where we don't have any say in the matter. Here it's a collaborative partnership with mutually aligned incentives to make Olympus succeed. Also want to stress that we currently have 800 million worth of OHM sitting idle in the DAO treasury. This would give us extra liquidity for free basically.

          gsr_nyc

          To approve GSR as an official market making partner of OHM, and to authorize the transfer of 25,000 OHM from the community treasury to GSR for market-making purposes in the form of a loan.

          GSR agrees to either return the full 25,000 OHM loan amount to the community treasury at the end of the 12 month contract period OR exercise one or both of the two repayment options, allowing GSR to purchase the OHM token amounts specified below on the respective option expiry dates.

          12,500 OHM 6 months from market making inception date at a market value of $15,625,000.

          12,500 OHM 12 months from market-making inception date at a market value of $18,750,000.

          There are 4 choices that GSR can do with this deal.

          1. return 25k OHM. 0% interest rate.
          2. buy out 12.5k OHM 6 months from market making inception date at 15,625,000. That's a 6 month 1250 OHM call option. No premium paid.
          3. buy out 12.5k OHM 12 months from market making inception d ate at 18,750,000. That's a 12 month 1500 OHM call option. No premium paid.
          4. Exercise options 2 and 3. No premium paid.

          The retail and institutional CEX buyers will be diluted because there will be no staking services. If staking services are offered, then obviously CEXes will have a cut to that reward, not sure if GCR will have a cut there as well.

          I propose that GSR revise this deal, and put up a reasonable collateral or pay a premium.

              FluctusLux

              Olympus receives a “premium” via the work GSR does for the protocol.

              This proposal is a win-win.

              Also I’m shocked at those who think there is some principal we are violating by wanting to be on a CEX.

                  I'm generally weary of market makers, having worked with several that were weasels. Regardless, I have heard good things about GSR. In spirit, I support this proposal. However, some further thought belows:

                  1. I would be inclined to charge an interest rate for the OHM loan. Even if only nominal, as a show of good faith.
                  2. Should GSR decide to return the OHM at the end of 12 months, what is the plan for it? Will it be staked at that time? Will it be divided up against other current liquidity pools? Will GSR have an option to extend the term of the loan?

                  I think the forward buy out rates are fair, and at the end of the day, more liquidity is good for the protocol. I trust the team to have assessed the quality of GSR appropriately.

                  I am kind of new to this so I am wondering what prevents people from borrowing OHM and then just staking it?

                  davoice321 1. How does this agreement, and push to facilitate trading of OHM at CEXs, fit within Olympus' mandate to become the reserve currency of DeFi?

                  this!

                  davoice321 Why should Olympus enter into this agreement as opposed to simply letting market makers and CEXs gather inventory on their own to market make and provide liquidity to CEXs?

                  well said

                  gsr_nyc they will help expend your community in unexpected ways

                  "Your community" ? why would I trust anyone to act in this communities best interest when they don't even consider themselves as part of it?

                  Iceman This is one of the most bullish and positive things for Ohm rn.

                  a very bad take. Most bullish and positive thing for ohm is to keep building, growing as a community and helping their partners grow along the way, not giving free loans some tradFi firm to help people speculate on things they don't understand. remember 3, 3 ?

                  biscuit I also don't understand why a centralized exchange listing would increase DEX volume

                  because as soon as they inject the liquidity in CEX's they will also set up arb. bots and make the real money by buying from cexes and selling it on dexes and vice versa...

                  bone They’ll help onboarding people.

                  they will not be onboarding anyone. They will be providing new toys to speculators. I don't agree that people buying a coin on a CEX because it's cool and hyped by some influencers is actually a person who we need rn… That stage will come but at this point in time I think the people we need are those who are actually interested in reading, learning and contributing…

                  Maven11 We had a several conversations with Olympus

                  Who is Olympus exactly?

                  Maven11 new investors that are not acquainted with the DEXes and/or are not tech savvy enough to go through the process of acquiring it

                  Sad to see an OG ohmie having a mind that didn't evolve since 2018.
                  it is and has always been our job as a community to educate people who are joining crypto about the values of which this space has been built upon. Providing a way for new investors that doesn't have a metamask and don't know what DEX is (which is quite primitive tech at this point in time) to get their hands on ohm (a protocol they don't understand, don't know the problems it solves and has really high risk) is irresponsible even if we were to profit heavily from it. That should not be the culture we are trying to build and not the behaviour we should promote. Wanna bring new people? Use some of your "seed" investment profits to build an education platform instead, we ohmies can take the dump for you to build that platform.

                  Ulysses31 It just seems so counter to everything we are trying to build with Olympus and DeFi in general

                  Thank you

                  Ulysses31 Crypto is an educational journey as much as anything and the "doing in DeFi" is a critical piece to understanding why there is so much value in being an Ohmie.

                  very well said!

                  Wartull Any market maker can just OTC this same amount easily today and list on an exchange where we don't have any say in the matter

                  what say do we exactly have in this matter?

                  In general I have a couple of comments after reading through every message.

                  First of all I want to say I am quite disappointed by how some people in the team are trying really hard to push this through while most people haven't even heard who GSR is and what they do. I am having a lot of backroom deal vibes and makes me question the motives and the integrity of those members.

                  I do not get the argument "we have idle money in treasury and it's ok to use it that way". If the best thing you can think of doing with that money is to loan it "interest free" to a corp to make more money for themselves while bringing (imho.) no value, you have bigger problems than not having liquidity on CEX's. if they want to be a market maker they are free to do so with their own money. There are enough incentives for them to do so without us giving them free money.

                  I do not like the look or the smell of it. and I don't understand what benefit it brings to us as a community. This feels like a step backwards while we've been pushing hard for decentralisation. I understand some of you do not care about this stuff, maybe you are new, maybe you do not have reason to care but it's about time for you to learn because you will need it.

                  For those who got excited to dump their profits on people in cexes that has no bloody idea what Olympus does, I say greed is the enemy of the soul and your soul is what you need to work on as you move up in the hiararchy. Otherwise you won't make it as a human being.

                  as you may have guessed this is a big no from me.

                                        In follow-up to my previous post: If this proposal does pass, and the ETH repayment option I suggested removing is retained, the amount of ETH to be repaid should be specified at the time of the loan, rather than being calculated at market value at the time of repayment. As another comment noted, we should not be in the business of handing-out zero risk options with no discernable benefit to the Olympus protocol.

                                        Everything about this proposal is iffy. I'd ask myself why OG Ohmies are now trying to shove down our throats a CEX listing when since day 1 Olympus has been of the opinion that a CEX can simply acquire OHM freely on the market.

                                        I voted no, and to be honest this makes me very sad for the protocol's future. Seems people forgot their principles.

                                          Wartull That is what the community of Ohmies is debating now. There is no guarantees that by them getting a risk free loan of OHM that they will follow through. We saw this with the whole LOBI deal.

                                          Other entities that would like to attach themselves to OHM are doing so to ride the coat tails of OHM. Nobody in here would ever get a risk free zero interest loan nor if you were a billionaire would you give one out.

                                          I agree with others that asked who all you guys have talked with to make you come to the conclusion that GSR is the best fit. Also @Maven11 stated that they had been used on various other projects in the past with no mention of what or the outcomes of said deals.

                                          GSR should come in here and make the case for why this is beneficial as well. Right now most of us in here see no benefit outside of a little publicity from a press release stating GSR and OHM work a deal to provide liquidity to X.

                                          The community here has been supportive of a ton of the measures put forth by the Olympus team. The most common point used by the team to persuade us is that we have 700-800 Million worth of OHM sitting idle making us nothing so why not. But I along with many others are finding it real hard to see the benefit of spending 15 million on this GSR deal vs maybe using the same amount of cash to Market OHM to the world. To me a better risk vs reward outcome spending it on marketing or investing into expanding our team to grow.

                                              I feel like we are moving too fast if we try to go for a CEX listing. We just launched the Proteus program (phase 1), lets at least see it through first and consider if we really need to CEX listing. At the same time an interest-free loan with no collateral? I am not knocking GSR, they seem to be a great MM to deal with. But this is business, is the DAO registered as a legal entity anywhere? For example in the US, Wyoming seems to be the only state that accepts DAO's as a legal entity. So we could register and build out a legal framework then hire a legal firm through the DAO. There just seem to be many loopholes in this proposal for us to even look move forward with it.

                                              @gsr_nyc You seem to be great, but I vote NO.

                                                h0botnic4 sorry my typo, I meant 100,000 strong indeed
                                                Now, according to Dune, there are slightly over 4m DeFi users, and about 400k sushi users but Coinbase alone for instance has over 70m registered users.
                                                As OHM gets listed, the right trading environment will be a catalyst for those people to get interested and get involved.
                                                https://dune.xyz/rchen8/defi-users-over-time

                                                  biscuit
                                                  1. the loan is to be used to create liquidity, it will not be staked
                                                  2. if the price moves on a centralized exchange, then arbitragers will either sell it so it is back in line or match that move on DEX, leading to increased volume there and as a result visibility.
                                                  3. that depends on the exchange and how they engage with Olympus DAO, but we expect most exchanges might want to list without necessarily asking the community, especially once volume increases. To be clear as many commenters seem to think GSR is pushing for centralized listings, this is not our mandate, what we want is when those listings happen (like Gate.io did for instance) for it to be a constructive experience for the token holders and the new potential investors. There should be a tight bid-offer and size on both sides of the market, so one can decide to get involved with confidence.
                                                  4. we are integrated with over 50 exchanges where we would be active if and when the exchanges decide to list OHM, most of them would be exactly who you think: Binance, Coinbase, Huobi, OKEx, KuCoin, Gate.io, Gemini…

                                                    As a top holder who has accumulated every dip and will continue to do so…and have NEVER sold because I believe Olympus is going 100x from here, I will vote for this proposal because the pros far outweigh the cons in my analysis.

                                                    We need the CEXs for the next phase of Olympus' growth. In addition, we need to think in terms of the opportunity cost of delaying this effort. Proteus and this initiative are very complementary and the time is NOW.

                                                    Having said that, I do agree that a community call-in Discord with the GSR team is needed as the next step.

                                                      On the surface this seems like a win-win proposal subject to further diligence. Increased visibility for the project (which will be critical in achieving the goal of becoming a reserve currency), if they don't stake, then they don't participate in the growth - and their call options are way out of the money.