Hi @Gauntlet,
Thank you for all the contributions Gauntlet has made to the Aave DAO over the past year. The inclusion of GHO in the stream outside of the insolvency fund was a generous gesture that is greatly appreciated.
Upon reviewing the proposal, I believe there is room for improvement. The below details three key areas where I think Gauntlet needs to improve:
- Response Time and Availability
Last year, Gauntlet committed to enhancing communication across the DAO, and I think there is still more that can be done in this area. During the period of frequent updates to Supply Caps, communication was slow, with a standard response time was approaching a week. Meanwhile other teams were able to turn around analysis a lot faster.
Even now, Gauntlet is a Monday to Friday business when DeFi is 24/7. Teams like the ACI, Chaos Labs, BGD and TokenLogic are available 24/7. General responsiveness needs to improve and there is no reason why the Risk Stewards are unable to push parameter changes on the weekend if caps are full.
The Supply Cap situation resulted in stalled growth on Polygon, causing frustration among partners providing Liquidity Mining (LM) incentives and communities who built products on Aave. Some patterns were going to do LM across several Aave v3 deployments and due to the Supply Cap issue on Polygon, were deterred and this hurt Aave’s growth prospects. The builders who developed structured products on Aave v3 experienced stalled launch programs and faced frustrated users unable to access the automate incentivised yield-maximizing strategies.
- Product/Dashboard
Gauntlet has invested heavily in modelling Aave and the broader ecosystem. Whilst Gauntlet’s dashboards are insightful, there is room for improvement. Looking at the Gauntlet Dashboard, the risk parameters settings for each Aave reserve are not to be found. Furthermore, there is no analysis indicating what the parameter configuration should be given prevailing market conditions.
There are many other examples that can be drawn by comparing the Chaos Labs and Gauntlet dashboard to highlight where Gauntlet can improve.
- Pricing
Please explain why the premium relative to Chaos Labs ?
While I understand that the 2023 contract was a $2M per year commitment, I believe the 2024 commitment should align with Chaos Labs at $1.6M. My personal opinion is Chaos Labs delivery and engagement with the community is a level above Gauntlets and I don’t see evidence of the Gauntlet premium in terms of impact at Aave.
A clear example, Chaos Labs shared insights into their proposal and sought feedback from TokenLogic. Gauntlet did not seek feedback from TokenLogic despite open dialogue relating to the composition of funding.
In addition to the points above, can Gauntlet provide insight into the decision to provide its mechanism design service to aspiring liquidity protocols, like Morpho ?
Given Gauntlet’s level of involvement at both Compound and Aave, how does Gauntlet intend to ensure the learnings from Aave and Compound are not directly incorporated into Morpho v2 ? This appears to be a large portion of the value additive service offered by Gauntlet whilst not in the interest of either Aave or Compound.
Vote: NAY
I am open to amending how we intend to vote provided the price is revised and the proposal is updated to incorporate the broader feedback.
Author: @MatthewGraham