[SWAT] Public Debate for the Bureau Candidates

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Introduction

GM everybody :wave:

The Bureau Member applications period has now ended. It warms me to see that the DAO has received six (!) very strong bids to join the Bureau, and I am excited for the election process and the potentially heated contest among the very strong candidates.

These are the brave individuals that put forward their bids to join the Bureau (in the order of appearance):

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We salute you fellas.

PS. The bids are available for review here:

Next steps

Now comes the fitness test by public scrutiny. All DAO members will have an opportunity to ask the candidates the important questions that will help determine the best fit for the Bureau and the SWAT program.

Questions like “What is the direction you would set for the SWAT program?”, “How do you plan to prevent submissions fraud?”, and “Does pineapple go on pizza?” will hopefully shed more light on their drive to make the SWAT program a success and make their ideas about the operational side of running the program known to the public.

For the record, pineapple does not go on pizza - that was a trick question.

Process

  1. For the next 5 days, any registered member of this forum may ask the candidates a question related to their future potential engagement with the Bureau & the SWAT. Questions are limited to one per forum member, so choose wisely.

  2. The Bureau member candidates are requested to answer each question in as much depth as they want. It is important that every applicant addresses every question posed by the community. Skipping responses will result in negative karma and will surely not go unnoticed by the DAO members in the Snapshot vote that will follow this stage of the election.

  3. To set the stage, I have prepared a short list of questions that will help us get going and hopefully cover the baseline level of information we’d want to hear from the candidates. I kindly ask all the applicants to address them in their responses.

  4. At the end of the 5-day period (September 7th), we will close this thread and proceed to a Snapshot vote. The SWISE holders will have two forum threads to consult with to form an opinion about each candidate and make their preferences known. More info about this to follow.

Mandatory questions for candidates

  1. Which area of the DAO activity deserves the most attention from the SWAT program?
  2. What are the examples of some specific tasks you would lobby to get included into the SWAT program? What would be your winning selection criteria for these tasks?
  3. What are the metrics by which to judge the success of the SWAT program?
  4. Would you participate in the SWAT program as a SWAT member (i.e. completing tasks instead of setting them)?
  5. In your opinion, what is the most important rule to follow to ensure a healthy resolution of a disagreement on the internet?

Open call for questions from the community

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With the stage set for learning more about the Bureau member candidates, I invite all the community members partial to the success of the SWAT program and the DAO to ask meaningful (but short) questions from the future SWAT leaders!

Let’s cheer them on for their enthusiasm and stay mindful of the time it takes to write public responses - ideally please look for questions that have concrete answers. LFG! :rocket:

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What challange do you foresee being the most important to Stakewise in the next 2 years?

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Thank you, Kiri, for the questions. I am trying to answer them as good as I can:

  • Which area of the DAO activity deserves the most attention from the SWAT program?

I think the greatest challenge StakeWise is currently facing is outreach and publicity. Seemingly, we are still pretty much under the radar of the whole staking sphere. So, my focus would be to create incentives for DAO members to help spread the word. See the next question for some examples of what I have in mind.

The goal being to increase the community and with that, TVL.

The second thing that, I think, needs some attention is community building and growth, which both tie right into the first point.

  • What are the examples of some specific tasks you would lobby to get included into the SWAT program? What would be your winning selection criteria for these tasks?

I have various tasks and projects in mind that could improve visibility, outreach and publicity. Here are some examples, in no particular order:

  • Grow the community: Incentivize SWAT members to invite others to the community, e. g. the Discord. We can track invites with bots and call out winners every month - whoever invites the most people that convert into community members wins and receives the incentive. There can be one winner, or there can be two or three.

  • Social Media Campaigns: Incentivize SWAT members to write blogs, Twitter posts, Reddit posts etc. that increase awareness about StakeWise. We could run various “missions”, where we call for writing how-to articles, as an example, or count participation in Reddit posts where StakeWise is mentioned. Another idea could be a “Youtuber Outreach Campaign”, where SWAT members reach out to their favorite crypto youtubers and get them to make videos about StakeWise.

  • Support the community: The team can only do so much to answer questions on Discord and Telegram. We could create a SWAT taskforce that acts as “Community Support”, consisting of members that know StakeWise inside out and can support community members with their questions. Ideally, we always have at least one person around at any given time, to monitor Discord/Telegram and answer questions. Those who participate in this program will get paid in SWISE as an incentive.

  • Engage the community: Incentive SWAT members to engage with the community in a fun way. This can be a simple as talking to people, start interesting dicussions and so on, but could also lead to creating events for the community like game nights, as an example. This can be incentivized.

These are just some examples and not very well planned out yet, given how early we are in building the SWAT. But as mentioned above, I think outreach/publicity/marketing are very important right now, and community building leads to similar outcomes (a happy community that is engaged and commited will also spread the word, which leads to more outreach - perpeteum mobile).

  • What are the metrics by which to judge the success of the SWAT program?

That is really hard to tell at this point. I think it really depends on what kind of tasks and missions we set up for the SWAT. If one goal is more outreach, we can measure community growth, we can measure social media mentions, etc.

  • Would you participate in the SWAT program as a SWAT member (i.e. completing tasks instead of setting them)?

I think I would, yes.

  • In your opinion, what is the most important rule to follow to ensure a healthy resolution of a disagreement on the internet?

Swinging the ban hammer, of course.

No, just kidding. This plays into community moderation best practices and really depends on what kind of disagreement we are talking about. The goal should always be to deescalate. As someone who moderated Discord servers since 2015, I really live by Discord’s own moderation guidelines found in the Discord Moderator Acadamy and try to follow them where possible - because they make sense. In particular, the “FACILITATING POSITIVE ENVIRONMENTS” is a very good guide.

This is all I have right now for the mandatory questions. I am looking forward to answer questions from the community.

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Let’s goooo

I think community engagement, governance involvement, marketing, and SWAT participation are all very important targets that the SWAT should try to attack.

Very specific tasks that @cryptochrome hasn’t mentioned regarding community engagement + marketing, I think not many more come to mind for me. All his ideas here are excellent and i support them.

I think the only specific thing i’d add are maybe some tooling like what @brianchilders has built in the community launchpad or the dune analytics dashboard.

Another SWAT task could be more technical writing of documentation around the protocol. Tutorials, etc.

More ideas should come with necessities that the DAO and the team consider in the future as well. The SWAT should be an entity that must be leveraged to solve punctual problems that can be assigned gitcoin-style to willing community members.

A board of tasks with completed tasks, continuous activity and engagement from members, growing opportunities for SWAT members to target are all very good measures of success for the SWAT.

As long as I have time and the ability to complete a specific task, absolutely!

Violence :angry:

I think a disagreement on the internet should be a give and take thing. I like to think (most) of the discussions i’ve had with @cryptochrome on the lounge channel of the server are a good example of this. An exchange of ideas should take priority over ‘winning the argument’, as with disagreements, there’s no ‘winners’.

I don’t have any specific rules for this, but I think this entirely will depend on the individuals involved in such disagreement. As long as they’re civil, the disagreement can be solved meeting each other in the middle or asking other peers for their input as to what the most optimal path to take is (assuming the disagreement occurs over a decision, the most important kind of disagrement).

IMO the biggest challenge for any project in crypto is remaining as secure, resilient, safe and credibly neutral as possible. If we manage to keep those in check, almost nothing else matters.

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I would invite the community to read a white paper that I wrote back in December 2021 to consider a framework for analyzing DAO activity and how to determine what deserves the most attention from the SWAT program.

The public can make comments here (as one person already has). I would love to see the rest of the StakeWise community to review this paper, make comments and even challenge the thinking within the paper to make it better.

tl;dr (but I highly encourage you to read the paper) -

DAO Function Actual Score Possible Score
Token Services 11 15
Governance 19 20
Treasury Management 9 15
Risk Management 0 10
Growth 6 20
Community 11 25
Operations 3 15
Development 13 15
Overall StakeWise DAO score 72 135

I belive the paper would benefit from some additional comments / and review. I feel that the StakeWise team has addressed the lowest score (Risk Management) by supplying insurance for the protocol.

I would submit that based on the scores derived from within the framework we would want to focus on Growth, Community and Operations.

This objective review is very much in line with the sentiments already shared by @cryptochrome and @dreth in their previous posts.

Again - ideas are outlined within the framework of the paper, but if it’s tl;dr - I will focus on the primary two: Growth and Community.

Growth

Resources include Bankless, The Defiant, Delphi Digital, The Block, RabbitHole and Zapper.

Education

Summary: Educate customers on the benefits of interacting with the StakeWise Platform.

Score: Idea Conceptualized (1). Currently not aware of any active roadmap. Did get one mention by Bankless recently.

Events

Summary: Host events to make people aware of the StakeWise protocol. The team has hosted two community calls.

Score: In Active Development (3). More could be done in this space, but the core team has done a good start. Probably should start planning Community Call 3 in light of V2 launch and SWAT.

Community

Event Sponsorship

Summary: Participate and sponsor events like ETHGlobal, ETHDenver or NFT parties

Score: Idea Conceptualized (0).

Hackathons

Summary: Sponsor hackathons to grow the StakeWise Protocol.

Score: In Active Development (3). The SWAT team could be leveraged to deploy opportunities to improve the protocol.

Membership

Summary: Use tools like Unlock or Collab.Land to employ membership-based / members-only areas.

Score: Idea Conceptualized (1).

Meme Contests

Summary: Who doesn’t like a good meme? Have a meme contest like colony.io did recently. Have the meme contest on Discord.

Score: On StakeWise Protocol / Product roadmap (2).

Communications / Translations

Summary: Use tools like Discord, Telegram and GitBook to communicate about StakeWise. Support translations of the StakeWise website in multiple languages.

Score: Acceptance of Idea / Feature (5). Active community in Discord and Telegram. GitBook updated to include v2 (Node Operators). New website launch supports localization.

I would also highlight the comments a reviewer made of this paper as well - education and awareness as the top priority. To quote this person - “Liquidity calls on more liquidity”.

To answer the question on what would be the winning selection criteria for these tasks - the goals defined for the tasks selected would need to be SMART.

The SMART in SMART goals stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Defining these parameters as they pertain to your goal helps ensure that your objectives are attainable within a certain time frame. This approach eliminates generalities and guesswork, sets a clear timeline, and makes it easier to track progress and identify missed milestones.

To read this framework in detail, please review the source of this idea here: How to write SMART goals (with examples)

I would humbly suggest to whoever is elected to the Bureau that they can use the framework of the paper to get started with the high level metrics and then define detailed KPIs within each metric. The model can be always be refined over time to be “made better”.

Rather than defaulting to complete a task that I know I could complete, my philosophy would be rather, to mentor a SWAT member and teach them how to complete the tasks if they needed help to complete them. It doesn’t do the protocol any good if the knowledge to complete tasks or do the work on the StakeWise protocol remains with a select few. I would rather assist the SWAT member first with the task that the Bureau set. (e.g. Servant leader mindset)

As a last resort however, if needed, I would help to step in to complete the task - but my philosophy would align with the education metric. I feel that the Bureau members should be leaders, and look to mentor others - rather than complete the work. This is how we can make the StakeWise community and protocol grow.

Most important rule: Always treat people with equality and respect.

Source: Ten Simple Rules for avoiding and resolving conflicts with your colleagues - PMC (It has a great framework for conflict resolution).

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I think the challenge that is most important to StakeWise in the next 2 years is to continue on the journey of making staking more accessible for everyone.

There is a generational bias that I have when I make this statement, but “when my grandmother is able to go onto the Internet, buy some ETH and start staking on StakeWise with it” - then I know that we have accomplished the goal of making staking more accessible for everyone.

Whether it is institutional or consumer staking - we have to make the staking process as easy as going to the bank to deposit money into savings and have the customer (whether institutional or consumer) feel confident that their staked ETH is also secure.

Making staking more accessible may also mean implementing new technologies like SSV or coming up with new integrations that allow DeFi users to leverage their tokens for further yield.

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What idea or project would you work as the community advocate to try to see implemented/completed by the end of your term? (i.e. Protocol Fee Distribution, architect DAO Structure, etc.)

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  1. Which area of the DAO activity deserves the most attention from the SWAT program?
    Marketing in general
    IMO StakeWise requires marketing activities on 3 levels:
    Active crypto users already interested in staking (70-80% allocated time/resources).
    Our main goal should be to emphesive the superiority of Stake Wise unique dual token model and what influence it has on APR. This is what sets StakeWise apart and it should be used to our advantage. A simple and comprehensive video clip which explains how the model works would be great and can be used as promotional material on many platforms (YouTube, Twitter and so on).
    Having this simple tool, we could reach out to crypto/web3 newsletters like The Mild Road or Whop Weekly Digest and see if a cooperation is possible with given resources. Highest APR of the 3 leading defi staking protocols should, in theory, lead to largest TVL in that group. This fact alone should be levereged to expand the user base. Being present on Zapper cannot be a harm either - both our biggest competitors can be found there. We are also trailing on socials (smallest follower base on Twitter ie.), which should also be adressed.
    Active crypto users, who are not familiar with staking (10-20% allocated time/resources)
    Reaching out to ETH hodlers, who are yet to discover the benefits of staking. What should be outlined here is how simple it is to use the protocol as well as the LP pools. This crowd can be targeted either by newsletters and sponsored articles or well written SEO blogposts. We should also think about which other communities could consinst of our potential future users. Perhaps the trading community or crypto mining crowd. Discord can be used to spark an interest of our service.
    SWISE being traded by major CEXs would also be helpful with that. LDO is already traded on most of them.
    Raising awerness of crypto in general. (0-10% allocated time/resources)
    It’s no secret that a lot of people with capital are still reluctant to use crypto at all. Wheter it’s becuase of how volatile the market is or simply how difficult it’s to set up and operate. Stake Wise can participate in local or global incentives in order to familiarize the larger crowd with crypto - it’s risks and rewards. This is a very broad category and should but should also be addresed in the future.
  2. What are the examples of some specific tasks you would lobby to get included into the SWAT program? What would be your winning selection criteria for these tasks?
    Making of promotional materials
    Reaching out to newsletters
    Discord networking
    CEX lobbying
    Comunity engaging activities
    Selection criteria depends on available resources but FWIW I’d focus on the tasks that have the highest estimated ROI in terms of TVL growth.
  3. What are the metrics by which to judge the success of the SWAT program?
    The most obv one would be the TVL growth or rather it’s acceleration.
    Community growth.
    Media presence growth.
    Overall satifaction of DAO members.
  4. Would you participate in the SWAT program as a SWAT member (i.e. completing tasks instead of setting them)?
    I will be equally as enthusiastic about becoming a SWAT member as joing the bureau itself. No problem with that at all.
  5. In your opinion, what is the most important rule to follow to ensure a healthy resolution of a disagreement on the internet?
    Commom sense for starters. IMO It’s quite rare to come across an argument that isn’t fueled with one’s narcissism or closed-minded approach. We are all adults here and I hope everyone understands that others are allowed to have their own opinion. In terms of DAO’s affairs, there’s voting of course, which can undoubtedly resolve all the disagreements.

Dealing with potential failure or success of the merge is one that is right around the corner. It can go extremely well or totally sideways. DAO should be prepared for both options.
Getting the most of new users and capital and retaining the current stakers after withdrawals are available.

Marketing projects, web3 platform cooperations, referal program

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I would focus more on the DAO structure and organizational concepts that future Bureau and SWAT members will be able to leverage going forward. I would help to put structure and organize into place the overall program. I would like to help the DAO be more of a DAO.

I am not the first to focus on building SWISE value, but I would look to make SWISE usable - eg through the recent idea of enabling voting for LP providers.

I would commit to the idea of protocol fee distribution to SWISE holders post merge to see where we land here.

What I would really like to see is taking the excellent work that you’re doing with the information / data you’re presenting and build upon it to create a research area type group that will help provide the information needed to make decisions for the strategic direction of the StakeWise protocol.

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Thanks @kiriyha, @sid, @bZ1 for the question ! I will try to answer as best I can

Which area of the DAO activity deserves the most attention from the SWAT program?

As already underlined by the previous answers the most important challenge from my point of view is the recognition of StakeWise as a major actor of the sector by the individual stakers community.

I think that while the StakeWise team needs to focus on institutional partnerships, it is the role of the DAO/SWAT team to grow the community’s awareness. The TVL will follow !

What are the examples of some specific tasks you would lobby to get included into the SWAT program? What would be your winning selection criteria for these tasks?

@cryptochrome already did a great job to regarding community engagement, I totally support them.

I think we may want to run more large campaign for social media campaign : I would advocate the use of layer3.xyz (for low-level task) and guild.xyz (for community building/Discord role). The use of Dework as stated by @kiriyha is a great suggestion for more specific “one wins all” tasks.

Another idea that came to me is an NFT collection. We would have a task to create the NFT collection itself and another one to mint it. Selection criteria for the former might be very subjective though :wink:

SWAT Bureau might want to have an analytics dashboard to monitor media coverage and brand awareness. Building such a thing could be an important task imho.

What are the metrics by which to judge the success of the SWAT program?

The first indicator of success would be a growing TVL.

The media coverage and the community growth and activity come right after.

Would you participate in the SWAT program as a SWAT member (i.e. completing tasks instead of setting them)?

Not sure to have a lot of time to give if I’m elected. In the opposite case, I will as long I have the skills !

In your opinion, what is the most important rule to follow to ensure a healthy resolution of a disagreement on the internet?

As a manager of a team I can say that discussion and the search for consent is a key to a peaceful and positive community. The ban hammer should be a last resort tool.

What challange do you foresee being the most important to Stakewise in the next 2 years?

The most important challenge is to ease the staking for individual (non-technical) stakers.

However stakewise must also make a broader commitment to the health of the ethereum protocol. IMHO it’s the most important thing : developing a trustless, decentralized web !

What idea or project would you work as the community advocate to try to see implemented/completed by the end of your term? (i.e. Protocol Fee Distribution, architect DAO Structure, etc.)

Having a solid DAO structure and organization is by far the greatest challenge for SWAT Bureau. One cannot decree the birth of a community, it must be built stone by stone. Once in place, the rest will flow.

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Thank you to all 6 of you for your applications to the Bureau. Great to see the community grow organically.

Recently in the governance forum a lot of the discussion were about creating a strong fundament from which we can start to take over the market vs. grow quick and settle the foundations afterwards (strongly simplified). What is your vision on how to best build out Stakewise and increase its market share of the current liquid staking market?

And sorry for the second question but I have to follow up on @kiriyha 's question if pineapple belongs on pizza or not? A simple y/n is sufficient for me. :wink: (I for myself like it from time to time, so its a yes for me.)

Many thanks in advance!

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As others have noted I believe the focus of the SWAT program should include most importantly: community engagement, then governance involvement and lastly creative marketing pushes. While Kirill is the face of StakeWise I do not think he needs to be the face engaging the community on a day to day basis. There is low hanging fruit here for SWAT members to take this over while making communication with the community more effective and expedient.

Would like to see the SWAT Program curate bi-weekly or monthly updates on all things SWISE. In an effort to engage the community we can host community calls / chats and creatively incentivize users to participate. Also I believe the more information the community has the better and we should try to push out as much information about the protocol and liquid staking itself to keep community members informed (i.e Rook). While the team can focus on marketing pushes such as Bankless Messari etc. the SWAT program can facilitate lesser degrees of marketing via social channels, collaborations with influential accounts (twitter), research reports (see Steel Key Capitals report), infographics, memes etc. How to select winning criteria: Simply what pushes our agenda forward in a way that is either cost effective or brings the most value in alignment with our goals and mandate.

Obvious answer is to always be trying to increase TVL but more quantifiable into our role would be social and community metrics on the social channels (i.e discord analytics). How many of our community members are engaging with us in a week by week basis. How many participants do we have in monthly calls / Q & A ~ obviously we would expect this number to linearly go up over time. Should also see an uptick in questions we are facilitating in these channels initially but if we are doing our jobs correctly we should see this decrease over time as we are educating our community and user base.

Most certainly.

Not sure of just 1 but a few rules: lower the emotional temperature, foster more effective communication, help uncover less obvious interests, offer face-saving possibilities for movement, and suggest solutions that the parties might have overlooked to help them move forward in a healthy way

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Thanks for the Question. Liquid staking isn’t going away and I expect we start to see more of it integrated into other Layer 1’s. Typically in this world things that grow quickly have more often than not come crashing down (i.e STEPN). Without solid footings over time your house has an increasing probability of crashing down. For this reason I think the team has done a great job since inception and besides some of the SWAT initiatives I think they are on a good course trajectory at an appropriate pace. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

In regards to pineapple on pizza I am ambivalent on the subject

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There are some proposals put forth on protocol fee distribution. Do not think it is our job to do anything with that other than communicate proposals and snapshot votes with the community to get as much participation with the community. There could be some improvements to the DAO structure etc but it is up to the community to implement those changes. It may be a mandate of SWAT to help brainstorm some of this which is fine but we are here to facilitate and communicate for the community on behalf of the DAO / protocol.

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While I have some ideas that I laid out in my first post (marketing, marketing and marketing > Community Growth > Growth of TVL/marketshare), I think this is more something that the DAO as a whole, the community and the team have to develop and come up with together. It will be the Bureau’s objective to define tasks that can be derived from such vision and then put the SWAT to work on those tasks. But I don’t think it’s the Bureau’s task to define StakeWise vision, broadly speaking. It’s the management structure for the SWAT, rather, if that makes sense.

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Increasing TVL & market share of liquid staking. Need Stakewise to have name recognition alongside LIDO

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It will be a highly collaborative approach - e.g. team / DAO / community - but overall it will come from education and awareness of the StakeWise platform.

Also I think the numbers are starting to speak for themselves. The APR for StakeWise has been consistently higher than other staking platforms (e.g. Lido / RPL). I believe when the Shanghai fork occurs, there will be interest in investors to exit their staking position and reconsider other platforms. So there should be some marketing around that timeframe - because - (pure speculation / NFA here) the market should correct the “depeg” and provide an incentive for people to “cash out” of one staking platform to consider others that provide higher value.

But not content to rest on a single event to increase market share - we should continually be aware of other important Ethereum ecosystem events and capitalize on those as well.

Re: Pizza - Pineapple is ok. Anchovies are ok. Cat food is ok.

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IMO growing quick and settling the foundations on the go is quite more in the DAO spirit. The team deserves all the credit for pushing it so far and now SWAT will play a supporting yet important role in the upcoming act. It’s the next level of project development. Now is the time to make a strong effort torwards rapid growth and expanding user base and TVL. It will be too late after the Shanghai reshuffling, which has been mentioned above. Lets not miss our chance for greatness.

And for the Pizza question - on New York style pizza it’s fine but pls don’t put it on a proper neapolitan :pizza: it will be a disaster :sweat_smile:

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Thanks @Georg for the question !

SWAT and Bureau role is to build StakeWise community, not StakeWise itself, at least for a moment.
StakeWise team did a great job building a robust product and great partnerships.

The big challenge for SWAT is to grow individual stakers awareness. We need some educational material and a permanent marketing campaign. Another idea that comes to me is some type of partnership with communities that have a long term vision of the ethereum ecosystem.

I would like to insist on this last point that I have already addressed and which seems to me to be very important: the community that we are building should have in its very top priorities the health and independence of the Ethereum protocol. The staking pools will have a crucial role after the merge.

It’s a no (as already discussed in Discord). But let’s build a community of acceptance :stuck_out_tongue:

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