[Poll] What is the mission/vision of MakerDAO?

[SebVentures]

Following the brainstorm, now is the time to quantify what is our mission/vision for MakerDAO. I keep the objectives on the side for now.

Below is the description of each possible mission/vision for MakerDAO. Those are stereotypes, the reality is obviously more complex than a one-liner. If needed I can detail more some aspects. I can’t change the poll after publishing, but if you come up with a new type of mission/vision, please put it in the comments for discussion.

Below, there are two polls. The first one only allows one choice and the second one is multiple choices. I suggest that you avoid selecting all options in the second poll (I know it is tempting). There are pros and cons for each method so the easiest way is to do both.

If the results are interesting and if that makes sense (I delegate that to @LongForWisdom ), the same question will be put on-chain.

Mission list

Maker the CryptoBank corporation

Be the biggest bank amongst DeFi and CeFi thanks to a first-class workforce and governance.

Banks being defined as what a bank means in the future. Expanding the competitive landscape to CeFi (Square is next on the list, then HSBC and BoA). Put an emphasis on the importance of the workforce (paying our teams with the protocol money, being the best place to work) and the governance community.

Maker Autonomous Protocol

Be the leader in stablecoin lending and provide a good return to MKR holders

This is a narrower mission and it avoids pushing the scope too far and over-investing to remunerate the MKR token holders. One target is to have the least human interaction in the day to day activity. So most likely a small or no dedicated workforce and low governance overhead.

Maker The Money Lego

Be the key building block in DeFi and change the world

Support all the DeFi by having the best permissionless, trustless system. Be at the bottom on the Protocol Sink Thesis . Put an emphasis on the protocol versus front-end for instance. Also, need a lot of interaction with other protocols to collectively create the best possible version of DeFi.

Maker Making the World a better Place

Banking the Unbanked

Put an emphasis on the retail market, marketing, and the front-end. Leverage the work done by the Foundation in Latam and elsewhere.

Single choice poll

• Maker the CryptoBank corporation
• Maker Autonomous Protocol
• Maker The Money Lego
• Maker Making the World a better Place
• Abstain

Multiple choice poll

• Maker the CryptoBank corporation
• Maker Autonomous Protocol
• Maker The Money Lego
• Maker Making the World a better Place
• Abstain

Polls open until January, 20th.

[juanjuan]

@SebVentures, what’s the objective of this vote?

It’s not clear to me.

Unless it’s for the T-shirts, then I have some good ideas.

[SebVentures]

@juanjuan

what’s the objective of this vote?

To be aligned toward the same goal? Each mission statement can also be something akin to a political party.

There is a bit of PR as well, so the T-Shirts will be needed

In the other thread, some people highlighted their mission statement choice, but I don’t want the more vocals to give a wrong impression on what is the community sentiment. hence the poll.

[Planet_X]

I voted “Abstain” as I think we need to be fully independent of the Foundation first. But I appreciate the initiative.

[MakerMan]

I voted abstain as well for a few reasons. The visions as single statements don’t work for me as a ‘vision’ and two of them seem to overlap Maker the CryptoBank corporation, Maker The Money Lego.

Maker making the world a better place is far too ambitious, or really ambiguous.

Given that the key element of Maker is DAI I personally think that being a capital vendor (ala a Decentralized Bank that manages its own currency) is probably the key point to focus on for vision.
Being a bank means doing bank like things, managing liquidity, return on assets deposited in a fully transparent fashion. A focus predominantly on return and asset securitization (doing everything possible to offer options to users to help them NOT get liquidated, or if liquidated getting the highest return on assets). Maker needs to be the strongest peg in the DeFI protocol space and DAI has to be one of the most secure and open stablecoins that is permissionless, fully decentralized, and as antifragile as possible.

This is my own view though. I think when it comes to vision writing up a realistic statement of what each vision means both for owners, users, defi and crypto in general is critical. I had an idea to write my own vision - simply to offer up ‘a vision’ but would be happy to see what others can come up with. How about a vision for maker contest. 50MKR, 20 to runner up, 10 to third.

Anyway. Moving on.

[LongForWisdom]

I think this is one of those things that would work more effectively as a Declaration of Intent, rather than as a signal request.

In terms of governance process I think I’d like to see a good number of people providing input on a DoI (potentially with informal polls to help determine support for various clauses). I’d also direct attention to MIP1, which includes a vague list along the same lines of what you are going for here. One might consider making an amendment to that MIP rather than a DoI.

The issue with doing something like this as a signal request is that the contents of signals are very easy to ‘lose’ after the signal finishes and disappear in the forum. At least with the MIPs process there is a ratified record of what had token holder and community support.

I’d also argue that this is a fairly critical decision that probably deserves more input, and perhaps some face to face meetings to discuss the various merits of different goals.

On a personal note, I’d like to see a more concrete set of goals alongside more general mission or objective statements.

[SebVentures]

I agree. I wanted to keep things simple and iterative. The informal poll was my first intention but it doesn’t get feedback from MKR holders. Presenting a DoI or a MIP is leaving MKR holders outside of the debate until the end.

The idea is to get, in early 2021, what is the opinion of the community and MKR token holders regarding this question.

It’s more opening the discussion than defining the answer.

[LongForWisdom]

@SebVentures

I agree. I wanted to keep things simple and iterative. The informal poll was my first intention but it doesn’t get feedback from MKR holders. Presenting a DoI or a MIP is leaving MKR holders outside of the debate until the end.

Yeah, this is something I’ve noticed as well. We are perhaps missing an easy way to poll MKR Holders informally. Maybe this is something we can look into using Snapshot for.

[Parasockss]

Instead of a choice between these things, isn’t the beauty that it can be all of these things, or none, or some, to different people?

Maybe the mud is for building houses, or making “useless” art, or utilitarian pottery.

Or all of those things? Or some of those things? Or none of those things!

Maybe it’s better thought of as groups of people who want to push the boundaries of mud art while not having a care in the world for the idiots over there making houses.

Or maybe better said, that it’s both groups of people just doing their things separately, and coming together when it’s needed to resolve some kind of issue.

[SebVentures]

@Parasockss

Or maybe better said, that it’s both groups of people just doing their things separately, and coming together when it’s needed to resolve some kind of issue.

This seems more like having a hobby than building a successful business to me.

I don’t know how to attack this problem, but, as always, I prefer to try something and fail than doing nothing and be most likely to fail.

I might say it’s already interesting because I don’t get the same feeling reading here and in the brainstorm.

PS : Moving to an informal poll for now.

[FourthStreet]

Let’s keep the mud slinging to a minimum here!

[kwadrax]

I’ve always interpreted the core mission to be

Maker Autonomous Protocol & Maker Money Lego

I don’t think I can see these 2 as separate missions or being too broad together.

[SebVentures]

Thanks everyone for your answers.

We can probably say that we are a diverse community and that we aim to change the world on so many fronts The two “winner” propositions are still DeFi focused. While MakerDAO is already the flagship of DeFi in my head, there is still some work to be done on that front.

@kwadrax I had this feeling as well, but @ElProgreso saw a big difference. It is also interesting that the Autonomous Protocol got a little more votes than the Money Lego.