- Edited
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?