Proposal: AmpleSense AMPL Grant

Ampleforth Governance
61

Oh god more personal attacks trying to discredit my opinion. C’mon guys it’s getting old.

Borrowing AMPL is a valid use case, again these comparisons don’t make any sense. Lots of people borrow and hold during positive rebases. AAVE takes a fee of the interest and they hold it in their treasure. I’m struggling to see the issue here. aAMPL provides a utility that was not there before without systematically selling AMPL for another token.

I knew this and it’s irrelevant for my point.

Still does not explain why you need the EEFI token to store that value, it can be done with literally any stablecoin. And I’m not going to support this on some “good faith” that the protocol will eventually make it easy to market sell their token to buy the token this DAO is fundamentally based on.

It’s laughable that you think:

  1. I care about what you or davoice think about me
  2. That I was targeting you or davoice in my comments in any way.

I was always talking about the protocol and I am still trying to but you keep trying to make it personal and it’s getting frustrating.

62

While this discussion has been constructive in many ways, we’ve all had to bear the burden of witnessing an appalling degree of ignorance - and that too, from community members who are ostensibly aligned with the growth of the ecosystem. It can be rather taxing.

People are under the impression that value is somehow siphoned away from the Ampleforth protocol. If that is the case, then do you think it is merely co-incidence that AMPL has been in neutral territory since the launch of the Elastic Vaults?

Value is not purely monetary, and there are various positive externalities resulting from AmpleSense DAO:

  • As mentioned above AMPL has been in neutral rebase territory and this correlates tightly with Elastic Vault launch, strongly suggesting causality.
  • AmpleSense DAO has educated numerous community members via their Educated Amplifiers Badge. Given that we - Ampleforth Ecosystem - have not been the most successful at driving AMPL’s widespread adoption (we’ve had to literally hire a marketing agent/manager and still AMPL is not very well known), this initiative has been overlooked and undervalued. When the time comes to educate the world about various Elastic Finance derivatives (e.g., tranches) and applications (Mooncake, Hourglass), it is again community that leads the helm.
  • Depositing AMPL into the Elastic Vaults entails a 90-day lock up period. This reduces sell pressure and further incentivizes the movement of AMPL into neutral to positive rebase territory.
  • When AMPL mega-expands in the future, things will be flowery and hunky-dory. But what happens when your average Joe buys the top and feels the same degree of pain that many of us did in the previous negative rebase correction? That is when the Elastic Vaults will again shine. This will also shift incentives for borrowing and lending of aAMPL on Aave during negative rebases.
  • EEFI minted during the positive rebases is rewarded to our own community members, not the bad actors that many of these responses make us out to be. This is a better alternative than allowing the value to be arbitraged away by opportunistic actors. Moreover, EEFI’s utility will also increase as we drive its utility across the ecosystem (lending, borrowing, collateral, etc.) → this will ultimately benefit Ampleforth Ecosystem and FORTH DAO.
  • AmpleSense DAO has existed for the past two years with a solid community that is not interested in flipping a quick buck. This patience, and the diverse range of enriching discussions on TG and Discord, are effectively Proof-of-Community.

The list can go on.

Importantly, we should be encouraging speculative use cases of AMPL at this time in its fledgling stage of growth, particularly if it is again being granted to a trusted group of people. This value is effectively being recycled back into the Ampleforth Ecosystem anyways…where else will it go? Cash? Pfft. 3.5% of AMPL is really not a significant amount of value…the protocol is barely $100M. Yes, there is unfathomable potential - but it is that only, potential - kinetics are needed to get there. We have to get there, together.

Much of the criticism is reflective of web2 mentality where zero-sum games are played. In web3, we play positive-sum games. Since DeFi Summer 2020 we’ve learned that Community is the rate-limiting agent, so in order to succeed we play long-term games with long-term people.

In closing, I will say that we should continue to foster healthy discussions. Vitriol and deriding criticism should be avoided - that is low value behavior. It signals that you are incapable of thinking beyond yourself, and that you have no idea about the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

If we are going to move forward with a revised version of the grant, then that is fine as it signals the voice of the community has been heard. But let’s also ensure it is not solely the vocal minority that rocks the boat for everyone.

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63

At this point I’m not going back and forth with you. This is embarrassing. You do not just want to have your opinion. You want everyone to treat it as facts. That is not how life works. Your position is a purely “religious” one in the sense you have blind faith the Elastic Vault does not work and EEFI has no value. Warren Buffet also had blind faith Bitcoin does not work, has no value, and is rat poison squared. And if you ask the Bitcoin MAXI’s AMPL does not work, has no value and is a Ponzi (they’re WRONG). But I guess we all have to be someone’s devil. Please go build this better Vault you keep talking about. And let me know when the code is audited.

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64

Everyone: Thank you for your comments.

@Brandon: I’m requesting that you please close comments on this proposal. We are working on a revised proposal and the energy and focus should be on that moving forward.

Thank you.

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65

I think it’s easy for everyone to see who is doing personal attacks and trying to smear others, and who is trying to keep the topic on the protocol and proposal at hand.

66

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.

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?)

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67

What I’m seeing in this thread are people who aren’t involved in Amplesense saying “This set of smart contracts automatically sells AMPL into EEFI with no corresponding automatic buyback method,” and people supporting Amplesense saying “You should trust us to buy back AMPL with our EEFI and ETH gains.”

I like Nick Szabo’s description of smart contracts like a vending machine. You put tokens in, the machine performs some operation, and it spits something else out. What Amplesense has built is a vending machine that accepts AMPL tokens and performs a bunch of operations that result in new positive rebase AMPL supply being sold for ETH and EEFI in a way that hedges negative rebase risk. That’s just how the smart contracts work.

A lot of AMPL holders here don’t like that vending machine design because it is only automatic in one direction: selling AMPL. I suggest to the Amplesense team that you need to re-think your vault design before asking for a subsidy from the wider community. Your product appeals to a subset of the AMPL community who want to hedge, but not everyone wants that and they are making their opinions known. That is not an attack on your community, it’s a reflection of differences in investment strategy.

If you want a grant from the Forth DAO, I suggest that your vault should be provably neutral between AMPL buying and selling. This means automaticity in both directions. That is the way to accomplish true countercyclical pressure that the broader AMPL community will find valuable (and subsidize for you, hint hint).

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68

@ducc

I think we need to differentiate between various motives behind comments we’ve received.

And we’ve acknowledged the interest – both from people in this thread, and people who are using the vault - to have a means of making buying AMPL with EEFI easier.

From a smart contract perspective, the Elastic Vault contracts are immutable, and the vault design is sound from the perspective of what it is designed to do. We’re not scrapping the Elastic Vault because we’ve received pushback on the design from SOME members of the AMPL community. In fact, re-designing it isn’t feasible, but creating proxy contracts that add to its functionality is certainly doable.

That being said, the focus of the next version of the proposal will be setting up an infrastructure where EEFI → AMPL sales are made possible for vault users, with the added need of ensuring any additional functionality serves the needs of vault users while further strengthening the AMPL ecosystem.

The lack of recognition of the impact of the vault on the demand-side dynamics of AMPL is curious to me. I don’t understand why that demonstrated benefit is being ignored, or under-emphasized in these discussions. There is a demonstrated positive demand-side impact on AMPL with the Elastic Vault that is more important than what happens during positive rebase.

So, I don’t want anyone reading this conversation to think that the MAJORITY of AMPL holders share your view. What I do think is that many feel it would be good to have a facility to encourage easier EEFI → AMPL sales. However, that will require three things:

  1. Additional development time: This will require funding
  2. Additional audits: This will require funding
  3. Sufficient liquidity for EEFI/AMPL, which will need to be incentivized and provided

We are happy to develop a proposal along these lines, but the benefits that the Elastic Vault have on demand-side dynamics (during negative and neutral rebase) for AMPL should not be under-emphasized – these benefits have been demonstrated. Demand-side benefits are even more important than what happens with the vault during positive rebases. Because this benefit has been demonstrated, I think we can agree that the Elastic Vault has been overall, a net positive for the ecosystem (because it is stimulating additional buying behavior during negative/neutral rebases, additional borrowing activity and reduction of sell-side pressure during a period when stimulating demand/reducing sell pressure for AMPL is essential), as opposed to the net-negative that some have suggested in this thread.

As I said before, we are revising our proposal to take the concern about driving additional demand-side momentum for AMPL into account. But the argument that the elastic vault is a one-way operation and does not incentivize AMPL buying behavior (or have other benefits for the ecosystem) is incorrect.

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69

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.

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70

I’m going to be completely honest here, your reply addressed none of the points I raised and it’s getting to the point where it seems like continual deflection rather than a good faith engagement. If you are locked into a certain design, that’s fine, and I guess we’ll see how the voting shakes out on your revised proposal. For the record, I’m still a kMPL holder and I want your project to succeed but the way your team has responded to community feedback in this thread has been disappointing.

Maybe another option is to create a new vault design, separate from the existing elastic vault, which incorporates automaticity in both directions? If you can create a proposal for a new vault which can achieve true automaticity for AMPL countercyclical pressure I’d be very much in favor, including funding development. However, I don’t see how the additions to the existing vault you have proposed can address the problems people in this thread have raised.

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71

Not sure where I didn’t address your questions.

In terms of automatically selling EEFI for AMPL, which is the desired approach you’d like to see, that’s something that has to be discussed within our community. There are various ways to look at this, including enabling vault users to sell EEFI for AMPL easily with a button click.
Regardless of the solution, a proxy contract would have to be developed, which is the most efficient (and feasible) means of going about this.

And, I’ve mentioned the requirements for developing additional infrastructure for facilitating EEFI → AMPL trading, above: funding, and additional liquidity.

So, we’ll develop a revised proposal along these lines.

We’ve been nothing but responsive to people’s feedback on the proposal, in fact we’ve been highly engaged and have addressed critiques and suggestions since it was submitted. So, I’m not sure where we haven’t been direct.

I believe we’ve been quite flexible and open to the conversation. We’ll continue along these lines for future conversations about the new proposal.

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72

what you miss there is regardless if amplesense build a eefi/ampl pool to rebuy it easy via a zap fonction to make you happy ,that is upon the choice of those staker , WHEN reinvest those reward earn with that ampl position hedge there .They earn that yield , it is at there discretion WHEN and WHAT to do with , rebuy ampl or lp eefi/eth or what ever they want to do with that eefi and eth earn ,may be repay a ampl loan into aave that they put into the vault first .

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73

It’s you who attacked the whole project with a very aggressive word from the beginning, you want to decide the fate of the project like a judge: EEFI is a robber-like project, but there is no convincing reason. You have a very strong desire to control and want to control the entire FORTH DAO. Although there were other opponents, they were not attacked in any way. If you are attacked, I think you deserve it。

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