Some feedback and my opinion about the proposal:
- First, congratulation to @ChaosLabs for the 2 years anniversary contributing to the Aave protocol. Similar as with Certora or other long time contributors, from an AAVE holder perspective is nice to see quite some stability of entities working with the DAO.
- In terms of performance during the currently ending engagement, from my perspective the quality has been kept from before, while adapting to the ever-changing environment and requirements: the Aave protocol has changed importantly (e.g. new types of assets getting big important, new networks), GHO was released and even if still growing, having a important role; and growth has accelerated even more, which sometimes requires the risk side of the DAO to move at different speed.
- In a field like risk, transparent communications on this forum is very important, and frameworks around them. Also, internal communications and synchronisation between the risk providers (LlamaRisk engaging early this year) looks from my external perspective good, without the friction we continuously saw previously with other providers.
- Risk is a very “hot” contribution line, sometimes perceived externally as very conflictive with growth. It is fundamental for providers to keep a good balance between protecting the interests of Aave, while being communicative and reasonable with partners. From my perspective, Chaos has kept this balance correctly.
On the side of feedback for this renewal, I see the following areas as points of potential focus/improvement:
- Risk frameworks should be less “monolitic”, and more evolving continuously as new assets get listed, new versions of the protocol are released or Aave expands to different networks. Yes, the Aave protocol design is elegant enough to allow very generic risk management, and still efficiently, but in my opinion we are going to see more and more custom use cases within Aave v3’s and within chains; and risk strategies should be aligned.
- It is a continuous improvement process, but at the moment there are still too many governance proposals related with risk. The Aave DAO is in a very privileged position, as strong delegates assure always participation. But that should not be a reason for apathy, and the community needs service providers on both technical (where I participate via BGD) and risk areas to keep improving.
The expansion on the Stewards side should improve this very significantly, but the target should be always moving up. - In my opinion, it is mandatory to maximise the collaboration between Chaos Labs and LlamaRisk, ideally getting more and more joint initiatives in the context of Aave, combining the strengths of both contributors. And of course, always keeping indepedence between both parties.
- Chaos Labs has disclosed historically its non-exclusive service provider nature, and similar as with others like Certora, LlamaRisk or Karpatkey, personally I don’t see any problem with it.
However, it is very important that on the side of establishing frameworks, or innovation, on one hand Aave is prioritised compared with any other lending protocol, given the historic relation; and on the other hand, any new collaboration of Chaos with potentially competing customers is transparently disclosed in the forum, for the community to evaluate.
In summary, I think Chaos Labs has delivered during the previous engagement\s and don’t have any reason to think this will not continue being the same. Support on this proposal.