[TEMP CHECK] Aave Events & Sponsorship Grant 2024

[MarcZeller]

To clarify ACI’s position: we’re not against events, we’re in favor of budget optimization.

We strongly support the principle “If the DAO pays the bill, the DAO partners & DAO users should be the priority.” We’ve received ticket requests even from service providers of this DAO, which is not acceptable if Avara wants the DAO to cover the costs.

We’re supportive of rAAVE, Open Finance Day & Devcon, and some aligned side events.

However, we’re against allocating a single dollar to SheFi as a whole and we believe that funding for hackathons should be postponed until V4.

If Avara Events wants to support some initiatives, they can mobilize their own budget and treasury.

A revised and refocused budget that aligns with these points will earn our vote and support.

[Alex_BertoG]

Supporting this proposal! I agree with the feedback so far, the pricing is on the higher side, yet I do believe it reflects the high-quality service and unmatched combined experience of the team across Aave, web3, and events. When compared to marketing budget of big brands or that of recent headlines in our space, the ROI is good!

As per our space’s ethos, the more transparency the better, I do encourage efforts to breakdown the budget to actual spendings and invoices, & provide accountability. In the past, some of the events budget from one year extended to the following year, lets further map the costs to analyse which areas could be optimised and improve

The Aave DAO has reached peak income, and it’s fair that those who have contributed to this success should reap the benefits, including Aave’s community

Aave’s success stems not only from top-tier technology but also from years of community building. Despite Aave’s competitive edge as the largest DeFi liquidity pool, new challengers are emerging, aggressively fighting to attract builders and contributors. To maintain its lead, Aave must invest in its builder ecosystem to remain welcoming and leverage its edge. With its modules, Aave V4 could be the perfect platform for new builders to have a tangible impact on Aave

Few have the expertise of Avara (combined with Bored Ghosts, and ACI) in supporting high-impact events and hackathons. Their experience ensures Aave participates in the most valuable events while steering the community towards impactful ideas

Since 2019, Aave’s incredible swag has made Aave’s booths the most attended at conferences, capturing audiences beyond degens. This swag creates emotional attachment to Aave, further reinforced during the rAAVEs, where we celebrate together in world-class events that never compromise on quality. Users, service providers as well as those creating value for Aave should get tickets

KOLs deals are loud but have you rAAVed with your favorite degens?

Cutting corners now, when the DAO’s revenue is at an all-time high, would send the wrong message. This is the time to invest in our community, onboard curious builders, and prepare for new DeFi users

[AaveLabs]

Thank you for providing an opportunity to address your concerns. We appreciate your feedback. Below we seek to clarify and respond to your comments:

@MarcZeller

1. The ACI strongly supports the credible neutrality ethos. A protocol should be permissionless and provide the same yield or debt cost regardless of any off-chain factors, which is what we built. The ACI also prefer to lead by example than by virtue signaling.

• There is no virtue signaling in the Aave Labs proposal. All the proposed activities are objectively important to the Aave ecosystem and reinforce Aave’s leadership in the DeFi space.

@MarcZeller

2. Maybe due to my swiss origins, we’re strong supporters of the “aggressive neutrality” doctrine at the social layer. The DAO should remain neutral on all political, social, or “current-thing” issues. We take an aggressive “keep us out of this” stance on these topics and refuse to give a penny to any “cause”. We’re not on any side but the side of decentralized finance. that’s a doctrine token holders delegating to us highly align with.

• The proposal is neutral with regard to political, social and other issues. The support of side events, such as SheFi, focus on inclusion and access – principles of DeFi – and education of audiences that are difficult to reach.
• Regarding SheFi, we want to clarify that the proposed budget is for supporting their strategic side event, SheFi Summit and not the SheFi online course. SheFi Summit in Brussels will have 800+ attendees, where we will be giving a keynote on Aave with “Freedom to Transact”. SheFi Summit is a large and popular side event during key main events in Brussels, Singapore, and Bangkok. The revised budget continues to support SheFi Summit, as the organization includes an important audience that is otherwise difficult to reach and whose participation benefits the Aave ecosystem.

@MarcZeller

3. Regarding the Grants DAO, one of the first things the ACI did after forming was to advocate cutting unnecessary spending in our DAO’s budget. The DAO allowed people without vested interests in its success to spend millions of dollars for an upside that was hard to grasp. Simple game theory shows it’s never optimal to allow someone to spend other people’s money when that person has no real downside if the project fails. Since this cut, the Aave TVL is x4 and protocol went from slightly below breakeven to near 100m annual revenue.

• Events, education, sponsorship, brand-building, and outreach are all necessary to stay competitive and relevant. To minimize spend and control costs, we negotiate all price quotes and get multiple bids from reputable entities, and we choose a balance of cost-effective vendors, venues, partners and campaigns without sacrificing quality to maximize impact.
• We have provided a comprehensive plan that continues to build awareness through Aave-branded community events (in different geographies, including Asian markets, developing markets, and prominent conferences), quality merch that people use, educational programs, and sponsorships. Brand-building is not direct revenue-generating activity. It is worth remembering that brand equity is built through consistency and cadence and builds customer loyalty, sets user expectations of quality and reliability, and builds user trust in Aave over time, which the Aave DAO programs have done. It’s important to note that GHO Pass generated 30,000 GHO during DevConnect Istanbul and is set to do another 20,000 GHO to the Aave DAO for EthCC Brussels.
• Regarding cost-cutting. We agree that the DAO should remain diligent and thoughtful about spending and cutting costs where necessary and prudent. However, we would venture that Aave’s good reputation and track record as well as market factors and brand awareness are key drivers of growth.
• All the proposed initiatives are made: 1) in good faith after careful research and vendor negotiations, 2) reasonable costs, given the array of projects planned, reach, and geographies, and 3) executed by a professional team (including professional accounting services, designers, engineers,and event planners) and are provided gratis to the DAO.
• The comprehensive program is designed to outreach, educate and build awareness, trust and loyalty towards Aave Protocol and the Aave community.

@MarcZeller

4. The DAO treasury is not a free buffet. Every dollar there is the result of service providers’ hard work and should be earmarked to either increase growth with visible results or be returned to AAVE stakers and users via safety modules and growth initiatives such as Merit.

• The programs outlined in the proposal are not intended to be directly revenue-generating. Brand-building initiatives support user awareness, consideration, participation, and loyalty. These key pillars, in turn, support Aave’s sustained growth. They also require long-term thinking and are measured over time.
• The proposed initiatives return value to the Aave community in the form of brand awareness and brand equity, which require consistent, repeated programs that reinforce Aave’s community and brand goals.
• Additionally, with the adoption of the DAO-supported new branding design components, it is essential to introduce, reinforce and elevate Aave brand ID within the competitive DeFi landscape.

@MarcZeller

5. Hackathons & Bounties: We haven’t seen any interesting projects gain traction in the Aave ecosystem from hackathons or bounties in recent years. The ecosystem and protocol are more mature now, and synergies are found in more complex use cases that can’t be built over a weekend.

• Hackathons bring engineers, entrepreneurs, projects and others from within and outside the DeFi and the Aave ecosystem to explore building new features and technologies on Aave, and they reinforce Aave’s permissionless code and create enthusiasm and brand awareness and affinity. Hackathons are expensive, agreed, but they are a necessary element to stay competitive. DeFi protocols in general, sponsor hackathons and bounties. To step to the side of the hackathon circuit would mean to fall behind our competitors. Moreover, the wider blockchain community has a tradition of hosting hackathons and bounties to bring talent together and build awareness for any number of projects, including well-established DAOs and protocols. Welcoming talent is generally considered a good practice and part of the Ethereum ethos.
• However, a more focused approach to Hackathons brings meaningful budget savings, and the most impactful of the suggested hackathons would be ETHGlobal Bangkok. We have adjusted the proposed budget accordingly. See below.

@MarcZeller

6. Continuation of GHO Pass: GHO Pass is similar to a hackathon project. We built a similar experience with the ACI (https://wallet.aavechan.com ) to showcase account abstraction and GHO payments, resulting in about 100 T-shirts sold in GHO to the community. It took an afternoon to build and while commendable, it’s not really a significant innovation or value-add that justifies substantial funding. These types of projects, while fun and demonstrative, don’t typically drive meaningful adoption or protocol growth.

• GHO Pass is an ERC 721 contract with a frontend designed and built to support multiple event iterations. The pass is intended to build awareness and consistency of GHO being utilized for events. GHO Pass places emphasis on design and user experience. The passport is a dynamic representation of engaging with the Aave Protocol. GHO Pass generated 30000 GHO direct revenue for the Aave DAO treasury, and during the sale, the number of GHO token holders increased from 666 → 913 (37% increase) during early days of GHO. https://dune.com/queries/3102744/5178085?token_t6c1ea=0x40d16fc0246ad3160ccc09b8d0d3a2cd28ae6c2f.

@MarcZeller

7. rAAVE: While rAAVE events make the Aave brand shine, they’re a bull market luxury that may not provide significant upside to our actual audience. These events are known to be “anti-networking,” where business discussions are discouraged. And while some speak all day about “inclusivity”, every year, The ACI uses its small ticket allocation to allow actual Aave partners and significant users who were kept off the invite list to attend in favor of more “cool” people that don’t have a penny in Aave.

• As noted in earlier Aave Labs posts, rAAVE is a successful, well-recognized program that has done a stellar job at building awareness in important geographies and among crypto users, garnering broad praise.
• Additionally, we have collaborated with the DAO to build the invitation list. The list is composed of partners, service providers, DAO members and potentially new users of Aave. The list is carefully balanced across all these groups and this effort should be acknowledged. If distribution can be improved, we are open to feedback and will incorporate this into the process.

• Finally, bonding is good business and the cornerstone of building positive brand intimacy, which is how people feel about the Aave brand. There are numerous studies that show that fostering an authentic connection with a brand through positive, bonding experiences significantly increases customer loyalty. With rAAVE, the focus has been especially on building positive brand intimacy rather than making it a transactional activity, which defeats the purpose, and does not lead to strong, favorable connections to the Aave brand.

Regarding your other comments:

1. We stand behind our wish to avoid sharing a detailed breakdown of Aave’s events, programming, and merch solely for competitive and confidentiality reasons. Each event is tracked on an accounting level to assure that every penny is spent as planned. Please see previous posts addressing this issue.

2. Regarding the Devconnect vendor specifically, we believe that the DAO needs more context, and that the information that was posted does not represent our costs accurately, so here are some further details that we hope are helpful:

3. This vendor was chosen because of their proximity to the event as it was very difficult to get external supplies into Turkey and EthGlobal suggested everyone use them. It is not a vendor we would select to represent the Aave brand otherwise, for quality reasons.

4. This quote is not what we had invoiced, it was a quote to be negotiated and discussed. After this quote, we requested a separate invoice, and any insinuation otherwise is baseless, harmful and wrong. Aave Labs has a robust, compliant, and professional finance team and financial reporting system.

5. The DAO has always generally supported outreach, events, branding initiatives, hackathons and bounties, education and sponsorships in previous budget requests and seems to understand the value of these programs.

New Proposed Funding Request:

Based on community feedback, we have revised the proposed budget and proposal is as follows:

• Aave Labs will request a revised funding proposal of 650,000 GHO.
• The proposal budget will be used for:
  • EthCC Brussels Week (45%)
    • Open Finance Day – An Aave branded event
    • rAAVE Brussels (up to ~1600 tickets)
    • Sponsorship of side events
    • Supporting high quality merch and brand assets
  • Devcon Bangkok (55%)
    • Sponsorship of Devcon
    • Sponsorship of side events
    • EthGlobal Bangkok: We reduced the number of hackathons to one, focusing on quality developers at ETHGlobal Bangkok during Devcon week
    • rAAVE Bangkok (up to ~1800 tickets)
    • Supporting high quality merch and brand assets

Thank you for the opportunity to address these issues and to submit a new funding request.

[MarcZeller]

We consider the modified proposal by Avara events insufficient to change our voting decision.

We hope we’ll find a consensus allowing us to cast a YAE vote.

@MarcZeller

We’re supportive of rAAVE, Open Finance Day & Devcon, and some aligned side events.

However, we’re against allocating a single dollar to SheFi as a whole and we believe that funding for hackathons should be postponed until V4.

[AaveLabs]

Aave Labs will continue to support SheFi and cover the associated costs. The revised budget will remain at 650,000 GHO to support other side events or Aave-branded events, such as Open Finance Day and Certora’s Security Summit, during the conferences.

[MarcZeller]

We acknowledge Aave Labs’ decision, and the ACI will support the Temp check proposal.

[EzR3aL]

I’m supportive of the changed numbers. But I do not support Shefi grants. If Avara or any of its companies wants to support them, they are free to do so with their own money. Shefi is already 5 years old and still asking for funds, just recently got 50k from Arbitrum although a course costs 799$ (before that it was 299$). Had support from Optimism for round 7 and basically from any other DAO.
Grants should be focused on the Aave ecosystem. I haven’t seen any impact by Shefi to the protocol.
Also there should be a limit for grants. If you have to ask for grants all the time, your business is broken.

Gitcoin is there to help, but the Aave DAO nor the Aave grants DAO should be the place to fund initiatives again and again. Grants are a kickstart and then you have to learn to walk by yourself.

[TokenLogic]

Creating and maintaining a strong brand identity is strategic for the Aave DAO. The Aave swag and brand are renowned across DeFi, and people expect the Aave DAO, as the market leader, to position itself accordingly. Being a leader involves hosting events that focus on topics expected to shape the future of the industry, the Aave Protocol and the Aave DAO. The recent Open Finance Day at ETHcc Brussels is a great example, it created awareness about MiCA and the pending regulatory changes across Europe.

While hackathons are great for attracting builders, in our opinion, a select few hackathons each year are appropriate. We see more value in side events that help position the DAO and protocol for future upside through being ahead of regulatory changes and growing market share over the long term.

We welcome the revised budget from 850,000 GHO to 650,000 GHO. With the revised budget in mind, @TokenLogic supports this proposal.

[MarcZeller]

hello,

@EzR3aL

But I do not support Shefi grants. If Avara or any of its companies wants to support them, they are free to do so with their own money.

Our understanding from Avara answer:

@AaveLabs

Aave Labs will continue to support SheFi and cover the associated costs. The revised budget will remain at 650,000 GHO to support other side events or Aave-branded events,

We understand this as Aave Labs support of Shefi with their own ressources and DAO’s money will be allocated to “Other events” and not SheFi, this switch was acknowledged by us and is the reason for our full support.

If this was a misunderstanding, this would change our vote as we echo zero support for SheFi in general.

Can we get clarity on this @AaveLabs?

[EzR3aL]

If thats the case then im 100% supporting this TEMP CHECK/ARFC, as it shows that @AaveLabs listens to the DAO and focuses on events that are net positive.
And I will have to apologize for not fully understanding their comment.

[AaveLabs]

Hi @EzR3aL , thank you for your feedback and questions. Please note that per earlier DAO feedback, Aave Labs confirms that no Aave DAO event grant funds are directed towards SheFi. Although we view SheFi Summit as an important gateway to new Aave members, we have taken the feedback and this revised budget will only support side events or Aave-branded events, such as Aave Open Finance Day and Certora’s Security Summit.

[EzR3aL]

Thank you for the explanation and apologies from my side. Now it’s clear and full support from me.