First of all, given that there is some “intense” discussion on the thread, I would like to clarify that I have no specific relation (e.g. no investment or anything of the sort) with Gauntlet or Chaos Labs. So my opinion only represents what I think is good for the Aave DAO.
In addition, I was against the initial Chaos Labs proposal, but I don’t really have a decision taken at the moment about the updated one, even if I will explain on the following post some negatives points imo.
Let’s try to be a bit serious and stop with this type of argument, thinking that a community, because of being decentralized and having important coordination matters to improve, is so naive.
Precisely because of the aforementioned, having 2 (or more) different parties, with 2 different systems to do for example recommendations, will just lead to 2 potential results:
- Continuous conflict of interest on what is better for the protocol.
- One of the parties just not doing much.
What Aave does needs, apart obviously from multiple contributors, is optimality. It is too easy to say “being a big protocol, you need as many risk vendors as possible”, but 1) not true, what Aave needs is a good vendor, compromised, showing continuous results (and additional independent contributors, via grants for example) 2) the Aave DAO is the main “victim” of these “we are all friends, anyway the Aave DAO pays”.
This is pretty simple, when proposing a continuous engagement with the DAO, not even presenting as a conflict of interest existing collaborations of the DAO (until other people comments), should be understood as disrespectful. It creates an important cognitive overhead for all discussion participants, as they are not fully informed of all details around, them and obviously not risk/technical experts.
That leads to members of the community being forced to address the “elephants in the room”, because the OP doesn’t.
I still don’t really understand this. There is something called Aave Grants DAO, giving millions of dollars to participants in the ecosystem. Let’s try to not normalize or adopt any “victimized” position on what is not: the issue here is not (only) about the budget, is about the fundamentals. It is almost certain given the previous grantees that the contributions of Chaos Labs would be really strong candidates to receive grants. From what I know, it was already the case.
So this argument of “we found big opposition, so we change the model of $3m to free 6 months (and still a pricing model afterwards)” is just not strong, and only helps to set a “soft obligation” on the DAO to engage after the 6 months.
Let’s be clear again, I’m probably one of the main critics in the past of Gauntlet (and support when good work was done ofc), and honestly, the name behind the risk vendor doesn’t really matter to me, if it is fully professional and optimal in all senses for the DAO. In addition, Gauntlet didn’t try to “lobby” me, apart from professional collaboration with BGD (and everybody can be sure that lobbying would matter more or less 0 to me, my interests are with the DAO).
But since reading the initial proposal, my clear impression is:
- No proper due diligence of procedures on how everything is at the moment on the Aave DAO (could be good to answer on who is the non-existent AAVE risk team Chaos Labs - Risk & Simulation Platform Proposal - #16 by PennBlockchain).
- Quality project on top of Aave, but really early. Basically same as dozens going through the Aave Grants DAO.
- Speculation on fields to cover (GHO, community contribution, etc), without really understanding what the community requires at the moment.
If Chaos Labs really wants to do parameters recommendation, it should create a Snapshot for the Aave community to choose if parameters recommendation should be done by Gauntlet, Chaos Labs, or whoever else shows will/credentials.