🚀 Core Unit Launch Pod Sessions ||| Session #3: Smart Contracts Core Unit

[blimpa]

Core Unit Pod Sessions - Session #3: Smart Contracts Core Unit

Core Unit Launch Pod Sessions ||| Session #3: Smart Contracts Core Unit

This time @Derek will be talking about MIP39c2-SP7, a subproposal for adding a Smart Contracts Core Unit, and related subproposals MIP40c2-SP7 (Modify Smart Contract Core Unit Budget) and MIP41c2-SP7 (Facilitator Onboarding, Smart Contract Core Unit). Everyone’s invited to join. Bring your questions!

As usual, your favorite host @juan will be the moderator.

When

Time in your local-timezone format:
2021-03-17T18:00:00Z

Where

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Meeting ID: 829 4277 3725
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attn: @derek, @cmooney, @kurt_barry, @brianmcmichael, @LongForWisdom, @juan, @wil, @elihu, @Prose11, @ElProgreso , @g_dip , @mrabino1, @psychonaut, @Aaron_Bartsch, @tadeo , @amyjung , @iammeeoh , @MarianoDP, @planet_x, @SebVentures

[Aaron_Bartsch]

Nice! I’ll definitely be tuning in for this one!

[rojosnow]

When you get a chance, would you post the link to the recording. I wasn’t able to stay on for the entire call. Thanks!

[Anna]

Hi @rojosnow! Here’s the recording: Core Unit Pod Sessions - Session #3: Smart Contracts Core Unit - YouTube

[blimpa]

Core Unit Launch Pod Sessions ||| Session #3: Smart Contract Core Unit

Agenda

• 00:00: Intro with Juan Guillén
• 00:59: Smart Contracts Core Unit with Derek Flossman (@Derek)

Video

Core Unit Pod Sessions - Session #3: Smart Contracts Core Unit

Introduction

Juan Guillén

Agenda and Preamble

• Hi, everyone. Welcome to Core Unit Launching Pod Sessions #03. Today we have the Smart Contract Core Unit. Derek is joining us to present their mandate, budget, and himself as Facilitator.
• The vesting topic was heated up, so today we’ll try to focus mainly on the Smart Contracts Core Unit implementation and not in vesting in general for the Maker community.
• For more episodes of the series, follow this link

Presentation

Smart Contracts Core Unit with Derek (00:59)

07:30 — Planet_X: I have a question about the team size. What are you planning to grow to specifically 14 people and not, say, 24 or any other figure?

19:46 — LongForWisdom: I noticed on your Safety side that you mentioned game theory analysis/design and I was curious if you were explicitly planning on hiring an expert in game theory or mechanism design. In my experience, that’s a different skill set to development work. I think I felt that’s potentially missing where we are now compared to where we were or when MCD was designed.

26:33 — Planet_X: I have a question regarding the necessary time to train new team members. How long does it take before a new person is able to contribute?

35:29 — Juan Guillén: Does this mean that, if there were 100 developers joining and staying for four years, we would dilute Maker by 10%?

38:06 — LongForWisdom: If it’s 10% over four years, that’s 2.5% per year, which is not really that much assuming that we burn nothing and assuming that we have 100 people that are getting 0.1%. I think the point is that the magnitudes aren’t huge.

39:24 — LongForWisdom: Maybe a little bit off-topic, but from a Governance perspective I’d actually be pretty happy if everyone who was involved got 0.1% over four years because that’s quite good at distributing Governance power.

39:39 — Amy Jung: I have a question about these four years. How did you get to four versus three or five or something?

41:52 — Juan Guillén: Are you thinking about any type of cliff, Derek?

42:35 — LongForWisdom: I think the one-year cliff makes sense. You don’t want people just bailing in less than that time, but I’d maybe consider making these subsequent cliffs more like a continuous scale rather than like cliffs. Because it kind of sucks to be stuck in a job that you don’t like for an extra six months because you’re waiting for some vesting cliff. Or viceversa, if you do decide to leave, it feels bad if you leave after six months and you get none of the vesting […]

Free discussion ensues

45:58 — Andrew Burban: We can maybe mint if the minting cannot be unlocked until we’ve burned a certain amount, but in general I’m very anti-mint […] I think having the printer button just there is very tempting and can lead to unintended consequences that I think are dangerous. If we’re going to allow minting, we need to have very strict codified limits […] I’m much more pro taking it from the burn […]

Free discussion ensues

56:46 — Juan Guillén: Potentially, using the burning function is going to… You’re incentivizing people to burn a lot, so maybe they will say “Ok, we should not research L2. We should onboard more tokens because that’s more burning. So we’ll receive more MKR compared to potentially growing it more in the long term and suffer from the vesting during those months”. I don’t know if we want that.

Free discussion ensues

57:31 — LongForWisdom: Another interesting question is: assuming that the MKR treasury gets burned —which is obviously not guaranteed—, are you then feeling better about minting, Andrew?

Free discussion ensues

01:00:56 — Planet_X: This has to do with the coordination. You said on these slides that you coordinated with the other groups. Is this in some way coordinated with the Oracles team? Because after you there will be an Oracles Core Unit, I guess. As a community member, what I really don’t want is for you to get packaged A, B, C, something, and then the Oracles team come out with their proposal, and what they propose tops everything you got. So, is this reasonably coordinated with the Oracles team?

01:02:30 — LongForWisdom: I just want to follow up and say that’s kind of my main concern at this stage as well, that either we’ll get into a situation where Governance is feeling like they have to kind of pay out all these small vesting things because the first one was 0.1% and now they’re all that; or I don’t want to get into a situation where the next Core Unit comes along and says “We want more”, “We want less”, and then when you’re half down the line, someone is feeling dissatisfied with the amount of vesting they’re getting in comparison to some other core team. To some extent that’s going to be unavoidable, but I feel like maybe if we have some sort of more global or system setup that covers multiple teams… Maybe that’s beneficial.

01:08:39 — Frank Cruz: I heard Derek said something about possibly looking at L1s in the near future. I was wondering if your team was well-versed when it comes to working with Rust, Vyper, WASM… How does that look? Is that a 2024 event or is that something that maybe can come a little earlier like 2023?

Outro (01:12:30)

Juan Guillén

Thank you, everyone. So, Derek, where can people find you? (01:12:33), Potentially give out your address if they want to go with their pitchforks. Big thanks to the rest of the Smart Contract Team for coming and answering all our questions

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Credits

@blimpa produced this summary. Everyone who spoke and presented on the call, listed in the headers.