Hi everyone! My name is Torab and I am Head of Partnerships and Biz Dev here at Marinade.
Brandon’s proposal is a great one and I fully support it. It’s imperative that we rely on the DAO and that we honor governance, however we also need the ability to be agile and make decisions quickly. The reason why I love this proposal is that we get the best of both worlds: transparency and agility.
I have a longer thesis but I will summarize it as such: Competing with MNDE emissions is a war of attrition. Marinade must elevate the brand to be the de facto liquid staking solution on Solana without resorting to yield farming mercenaries. Brands are established via culture and the culture of Solana is being carved in the NFT space. So it follows that Marinade should align itself with Blue-Chip NFT projects, among others. The majority of users on Solana have no idea what liquid staking is. If you are reading this, it’s probably hard to believe but because you are involved in the governance forum of a liquid staking solution…we are very early.
TVL is our Northstar…but the path there will not be linear. Success is not linear, it never is. Marinade’s success has not been linear and it never will be. We must treat this initiative like a tree. We plant it, water it, nurture it, and wait to see if it will bear fruit. We can have metrics to see how much the “tree” is growing every week, but it would be asinine to judge a seed you just planted on how much fruit it provides every week. That’s not how trees work and that’s not how brands work.
If the success of the recent Token Exchange Program is any indication of what we can expect out of this team, I think we will be just fine. In just a few weeks:
The amount of MNDE tokens locked in governance increased significantly to just under 73 million (that’s currently 57% of the circulating supply)
The number of unique wallets that have voted more than doubled from 91 to 201
The concentration of voting power controlled by the Top 10 wallets has decreased from ~ 80% to just over 26%
I appreciate the enthusiasm! We haven’t pushed this given that there were some more pressing issues and, personally, I thought we should view any outlays - whether MNDE or USDC - through the lens of the budget from DAO proposal - Delegation strategy update & fee structure changes. We were asking the DAO to allow for changes so that Marinade was sustainable, so it behooves us to assure the DAO we are good stewards for the treasury.
@btuck will be back this coming week, and we have been discussing some small proposal tweaks to pre-commit to the budget being spent in a way that remain aligned with Marinade’s goals. Let us huddle once he has had time to find his footing and we’ll post an update!
Alright folks, as promised, my suggestions for amending this proposal would be:
Marinade commits to spending the marketing budget in a way that helps further its yearly OKRs (which may include getting commitments from partners);
Marinade’s partnership team will also do a quarterly retrospective about the results it can directly trace back to its marketing expenses, even if it may not go into specific details about which team was offered what;
If this proposal passes an on-chain vote, we will keep the current plan regarding the any open proposals for 4 more weeks - otherwise the Marinade DAO empowers the team to consider it expired.
The tl;dr is: you get to call bullshit if you think we’re squandering the funds; we may not spend the MNDE, but if we do, we need to explain if it moved the needle; and we won’t keep marketing offers open forever.
Disclaimer regarding potential CoI: I hold Apes, Pandas, and various other “Blue-Chip NFTs”
As mentioned in another discussion here, I think maintaining MNDE price stability is paramount (…meaning market cap must go up due to dilution).
I have a hard time understanding what the “marketing & promotion” budget would entail, and what the DAO would miss out if it doesn’t agree to this proposal.
Did the DAO vote on this already? I am not sure if purchasing NFTs is a good use of treasury funds. Have these “bluechip projects” committed themself to anything on their end, such as a token allocation once they have their TGE?
I certainly agree that Marinade must maintain the current position as the de facto liquid staking protocol on Solana. Yet I don’t see the direct connection to this proposal –
What leads you to belief that NFT holders are more virtuous than “yield farming mercenaries”?
How many unique holders do these Blue-Chip-NFT projects even have?
Given the propensity of NFT holders to store their wealth in jpgs (rather than fungible token such as mSOL), I would seriously doubt there is much TVL to be gained. Did you do some rough calc?
I’ll let @Torab handle the questions that you directed at him, but I can take these two.
It has not. This proposal would open the door to doing it if a partnership is within the proposal’s constraints.
I believe some of those discussions have stalled since @btuck initially posted this, and we may end up canceling them altogether - that’s why I added an amendment allowing us to pass on them if they took too long.
Without offering a personal opinion about using the funds for NFTs (currently wearing my neutral “governance” hat), the amendments I posted here commit the team to use the funds only in a manner that pushes the key results forward.
I believe that should take care of ensuring that mDAO gets something in return - it would preclude merely buying a NFT, but would allow if it (say) that’s part of a deal where another DAO sends Marinade TVL, or there is a token swap like the one you mention.
Do you think that the amendments as currently written cover that, or would you phrase them differently?
Agreed that nothing has been committed at this time with regards to NFTs. I do think the Token Exchange Program showed a good partnership framework we should consider for bluechip projects in future discussions. I don’t expect the team to add anything to its treasury it doesn’t see long-term value in.
My bad, didn’t see that. The amendment seems relatively high level, which can be appropriate here
One question regarding:
Marinade’s partnership team will also do a quarterly retrospective about the results it can directly trace back to its marketing expenses, even if it may not go into specific details about which team was offered what;
Yeah, it’s intentionally high-level. We don’t know for sure what shape these partnerships may take, and being too specific could end up on straightjacketing us and having to come back to the DAO for another vote if something falls slightly out of them, which would defeat the purpose of having a framework in place.
If you mean for the quarterly retrospective, then not really - we have never done this before for the DAO. This is one of those things we’ll need to figure out as we go.
I expect we’ll have a similar level of transparency on the numbers as our midyear update (read: direct and transparent), but may eschew some specific details on the partnership terms that could give our competitors a leg up.
It’ll be on DAO members at that point to ask for more details if they feel that what we came up with was too thinly sketched.
I’d like to summarize the recent clarifications, beyond the amendments proposed here, and include some things that have come up on the Discord:
On the original proposal, NFTs were front and center. This has made some community members think that the marketing budget is specifically NFT-focused. That is not the case;
While the original post said that we have a certain amount earmarked for assets for bluechip projects, as Brandon said, we are likely not executing those purchases and saving the MNDE for other endeavors (such as token exchange programs, or incentivizing mSOL usage);
Given that the original plan was to run this for a year, but we are driving this proposal forward in September, the current plan is to have it run from September 2022-August 2023;
We may not spend the full amount, even if we want to have it available in case an interesting partnership arises.
Just chiming in as well. The DeGods team attributes most of their success to trying many marketing tactics, and making adjustments on the go. Try, assess, and try again.
I think it is extremely beneficial to:
Keep an open mind on what marketing tricks will work
Come up with a good set of criteria to assess success or improvements
Adjust and try again.
To achieve this, the marketing team needs to feel empowered, and encouraged to be flexible and try new things. Hard balance to make and I hope the team can execute upon it. This grants/committee will help achieve that goal.
We haven’t pushed this given that there were some more pressing issues and, personally, I thought we should view any outlays - whether MNDE or USDC - through the lens of the budget from 
This is one of those things we’ll need to figure out as we go.