Bento thanks for this! Great list of questions to approach possible exchanges with.
Appreciate the thoughtfulness to this response!
Request for Comments - CEX Listing
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I am for CEX listing. And currently against CEX custodial bonding - but open to suggestions.
Currently there is nothing stopping a CEX from listing OHM with or without the DAO's blessing, it is better to do this in co-operation with a CEX rather than waiting for it to be listed anyway.
Additional CEX markets will have to arb against the protocol's AMM market depth which is increasing all the time. This will improve price stability as total market depth will also be increased through the CEX, and at the same time will be moderated by protocol owned liquidity.
Bonding will remain attractive, and it will continue to increase market depth.
As for custodial Bonding, it depends on how it is implemented. Would a CEX be interested in frax/ohm LP or ohm/dai SLP bonding? I cant see how this would benefit them, since they want to encourage liquidity on their exchange, not a competitor such as UNI or Sushi. Would a CEX have someway of integrating an in house Market Maker type Bond, with an algorithm that is an analogous mechanism to Sushi or UNI LP's that are permanently locked to the CEX market? And this would mean we would have to trust the exchange, which is a very large negative.
So for: Listing
Against: Custodial Bonding
From someone who got goxxed in a big way.
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CEX listing in a down market is a bad idea...Might be better to wait a while so that we do it during the next bull market...whenever the next bull starts....
For now lets focus on building partnerships with other strong defi communities...
Ohm can flip the game on its head...if we play it right.....
At the risk of incurring some down votes I'll try to just mention the points and be a devil's advocate as to why a CEX might be an important step.
Any project aiming to be a currency should try to increase its usability not just through horizontal integration but also through increasing its consumer base as much as possible. Why a CEX? Almost nobody within the crypto space ever has his first interaction through smart contracts, CEX are the point of sales/introduction to crypto for most people. While the disadvantage of CEXes are a dime a dozen, like centralized custodians for which we might have to negotiate, if we want to offer staking and the fact that they might dump any tokens given to them. If a CEX listing is done, I hope that the amount to be paid is in the form of dai that is in our treasury so as to avoid any senseless dumping. We should probably not offer staking services at the start, and just let the cex be an introduction or a platform to buy. Another advantage of cex is that we can move towards deeper order books something which we lack right now. Why do we want this at all? To become the native currency of crypto, you need to have the vision to see through the fact that ultimately we want to increase usability in terms of holder base (the normal people that use a currency the more it becomes the defacto standard) and horizontal integrations, we don't simply want ohm on a CEX we want other currencies in ohm denominated pairs. We have to start somewhere.
pipoctopus CEX needs to deposit $1m of their own funds into OHM bonds
no....50Million, because we'll lose at least that much going forward, basically a hard no!
cex listing will screw up protocol, we are defi, not cefi...cexs only want our revenue and will be leveraging/shorting
to no end, just bad news
depends: when? which CEX[es]? will there be an overall advantage to (3,3)-OHM-Stakers (guaranteed :-)? how much will the CEX offer or even pay Olympus for the CEX's privilege to get this superb project listed ...?
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many infos and deep auditing would be necessary; it seems too soon, though. yet in case Olympus was booming for a long time, the power of the DAO could be high enough to negotiate superb deals for the community.
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so there could be a third voting possibility displayed: "maybe in the future". to see if this community would like OHM to get listed under best conditions at all. because: why could there not be a time down the road when everything fits together with the right CEXes? who can exclude the chance of that?
and then possibly OHM should be listed on the best OHM-fit CEXes on the market nearly simultaneously? in any case there should be this third voting possiblity "maybe later" to not exclude future movements on this case in principle.
Something to explore once we hit 1 billion
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I am strongly AGAINST cex listing at this point in time.
I think it's HUBRIS to think about a CEX listing BEFORE locked staking is in place.
The volatility that a cex listing will bring will shake out some of the newer 3,3ers. Higher probability that people buying on a centralised exchange will have no idea about the protocol and it's long term vision.
Also agree with the points made above that it is far more lucrative to be on a DEX where we own liquidity and can accumulate fees, why not proceed with Uni and 1inch listing first before the CEX?
ps. I am so glad to be an ohmie 
, I think it's a really good sign that about 95% of ohmies here look at long term value rather than a quick short term influx of money that comes with CEX listing
The dynamics of buying on a CEX will be different from someone buying OHM off the blockchain. They aren't able to stake, which will mean they can't (3,3). All they can do is buy and hold. Given the long term direction of OHM price, that's not a compelling case to long HODL OHM if you can't get in on the staking. As a result, CEX action may lead to a lot of volatility and short term trading. Doesn't seem to be beneficial to OHM.
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some thoughts on questions/topics brought up above:
- For someone like Coinbase, no OHM would have to be minted or given to the CEX, they would acquire on their own. in the hypothetical scenario of a CEX trying to buy OHM from the treasury as an OTC transaction, that would require approval from the DAO and I don't see a CEX wanting the publicity of that (especially if the community voted no)
- Coinbase does allow staking for some coins. the fact that OHM is ERC20 makes it much easier for them to enable than other tokens which represent their own blockchains. staking functionality would be clear value add for coinbase too though (locking up capital in their custody) so i would imagine they would be motivated to add it given demand
- DAO doesnt get anything in return for a CEX listing, "just" marketing, but i think there's lots of value there in the long run as CEX are still the gateway to DeFi knowledge and adoption
- I don't know how active exchanges are in governance of tokens, i imagine some may have a policy listed somewhere. one thought would be that as a business and regulated entity, they don't want to overcomplicate things by getting involved in the governance of individual tokens. this could be bad for them from a number of perspectives including (importantly) from an optics standpoint. another thought is that they'd be "late to the party" anyway so may be moot point, but certainly smart to continue to think about.
- requirements to be listed vary by exchange, some are much more transparent than others in their review criteria. at a high level it is a question of regulatory compliance (is it a security?, are they adequately protecting consumers from a scam?, etc.) and security (tech) of the token. with the opaque nature of the review processes, some literally take months. the "expedited" review timeline at coinbase for example is 30-45 days after an application has been submitted. non-expedited could be significantly longer than 6 months
- Marketing of a listing would be more on us i'd imagine than on a CEX. CEX's like to promote the diversity of their offerings as a selling point to their customers, but for the most part they don't actively promote individual tokens unless they have a paid partnership (Coinbase Earn) or they are doing a user grab publicity thing like with Dogecoin
- Game theory may be outside of my wheelhouse, but I'll take a stab. if exchange holds a lot of unstaked OHM, that would presumably benefit those that are staked as the unstaked holders would hypothetically be diluting themselves?
Sorry if I'm repeating anyone else in the thread (it's a long thread and I didn't read all the responses) but my first thought is: Isn't one of the main sources of protocol revenue currently generated from LP fees? The fact that we own such a large portion of our own liquidity is a strength, I think. I can't think of another protocol that owns so much of their own liquidity. Taking that into consideration, it seems like listing on a CEX might compete with a significant source of protocol revenue.
BrianPeace True, but the same thing happens on UNI and Sushi, there are independent pools not owned by the Treasury. Owning the majority of the liquidity is great for price stability, but other markets are inevitable.