Not knocking the effort that’s gone into it but my understanding is the vaults currently have ~$150k worth of deposits? I don’t believe it has had a tangible impact on AMPL’s ($100mil) market at this stage, and instead I ascribe AMPL crabbing lately to the wider crypto market crabbing lately.
Are there wider market dynamics at play? Of course. Causality is notoriously difficult to infer, but if we refer to the simple framework of, say, - Granger Causalities (change in X → change in Y) - then the relationship between Elastic Vault Launch + AMPL deposits and AMPL entering neutral rebase territory cannot be neglected. There is a strong temporal association that goes beyond pure statistical dependency (correlation).
Degree of Causality is another question entirely. I have observed AMPL for a while now and it does not just crab sideways in this fashion, especially when the wider crypto market is crabbing downwards. In fact, AMPL was in positive rebase territory for the past few days and was stronger relative to the blue chips. It is not lost on me that it could also be related to excitement around SPOT. In either case, Elastic Vaults are a net value add and there is strong evidence to suggest, at the very least, they have facilitated movement of AMPL into neutral rebase territory.
This has been touched on before but if you account for the hopes and expectations people have for AMPL’s price action then that measly 3.5% becomes worth quite a lot more. I don’t find it reasonable to handwave concerns on the premise that it’s a paltry sum. (Indeed, if this was a small enough sum that it’s not worth worrying about, then surely it could be easily obtained through means other than a grant proposal?)
I agree wholeheartedly with your point here, but at this point they are only hopes and expectations. Nothing more. So if there is a community of trusted benevolent actors that is adding value to the Ampleforth ecosystem to materialize those hopes and expectations, I’d prefer rewarding that kind of behavior. On the other hand, we run the risk of allowing entities like Alameda and 3AC to take off like bandits opportunistically when the expansion begins.
I’m still not sure why this proposal is perceived as adversarial.