BUILD Finance 2021/22 Roadmap

Join us for a root-and-branch review of the BUILD ecosystem with an emphasis on short term action and medium term strategy.

Welcome to the autumn review of the BUILD Finance ecosystem. In this strategic review we hope to take a critical look at the various elements of the DAO and its interests, and to propose means by which the DAO can improve the management of its assets for the benefit of all holders. This article is by necessity long and none of the proposals contained within are to be considered a fait accompli — it is essential that the ideas and methods stated below are discussed in the round. We will be reorganizing the Discord to enable open discussion and to ensure all voices are heard. Similarly all proposals that seek to affect economic policy or utilization of assets must, at a minimum, be subject to formal consensus via Snapshot or Governor Bravo.

1. TREASURY — Budget Proposal for Q4 2021 Operational Expenditure

This budget proposal seeks formal off-chain consensus by means of a Snapshot vote to enact funding for Q4 2021 operational expenses. The expenses will be funded from assets currently in the BUILD multisig wallet. On successful conclusion of Snapshot votes for BUILD Funding Applications BFA1–01 to BFA1–06 these funds will be disbursed to the wallets outlined in each BFA. The member in charge of the application will be expected to use these funds for the purposed outlined in the BFA (excepting reasonable operating expenses) and will be expected to account for use and return unused funds at the end of the period (end 2021 in this instance).

Please await a follow up article that will give a detailed treasury update and a detailed schedule of BFA votes and timings.

2. TREASURY — Budget Strategy for 2022 Operational Expenses

Moving forward into 2022 this model of funding will be adopted subject to a review of its fitness for purpose. The year will be split into four quarterly epochs and an on-chain governance vote will be undertaken at the start of the epoch to release the overall funding budget for that epoch to the multisig wallet. The size of the budget will be determined prior to the on-chain vote by means of informal discord consensus and Snapshot voting for each constituent element. In this way the activities and funding of the DAO can be legitimized through simple, fast and free voting, and the formal on-chain application should not face adverse headwinds in terms of achieving required voting quorum and approval levels.

Once the on-chain vote is passed the quarterly budget is transferred to the multisig wallet. Individuals who had submitted successful BFAs for that epoch can then apply to the DAO multisig signatories for disbursement of the appropriate funds for operational activities. In this way the complex and costly interaction with the on-chain governance module can be reduced to once per epoch in order to formally ratify both the activities and the funding of the DAO, and the funds can then be disbursed through the simpler and more cost effective Snapshot/multisig combination.

Associated funding application BFA1–06 of 1,000 DAI for coding and deployment expenses for Governor Bravo voting and workflow; applicant Urbane Grandier.

3. TREASURY — Liquidity Provision Evaluation

Q1 2022 on-chain governance vote will include a provision to remove a proportion of BUILD Finance liquidity provision, currently spread across two Balancer pools. The funds removed will be used to strengthen the DAO treasury position and to provide liquidity provision incentives (see item 7). The aim of the proposal is to ensure the DAO can fund operational activities during a wide range of forecast market conditions, and to enhance liquidity provision across a range of trading platforms. The exact quantity and balance of this liquidity reduction is to be arrived at by common consensus within the Discord and put to an informal Snapshot vote prior to the Q1 2022 on-chain governance vote.

4. MARKETING — BUILD Finance, METRIC, and the wider ecosystem

The new BUILD DAO marketing team seek to create awareness of the Build DAO brand and its flagship product METRIC Exchange. Q4 2021 promotion will focus on METRIC as the spearhead of our marketing efforts, targeting DeFi users and the DEX/multi-chain aggregator space as a whole. This will bring awareness of Metric to the crypto community and in turn draw further eyes on the DAO.

The marketing approach is to utilize strategies as follows (not an exhaustive list):

• AMAs in popular crypto-personality newsletters and Telegram groups;

• Promotional spotlight videos on YouTube (e.g. DeFi Dad, Chico Crypto);

• Promotional tweets;

• Community engagement by incentivising artistic input (meme contests, Telegram sticker-pack contests);

• Animation videos/infographics and other social media promotional banners and labels;

• Fast-tracking/paying logistics and administration fees needed for noteworthy partnerships (such as KeeperDAO, Bankless, The Defiant, etc.);

• Fast-tracking listings on DeFi Pulse, dapp.com, Lunar Crush, and integration with other leading DeFi analytics platforms;

• Trade incentives for users of the Metric dApp.

Not all of the above will cost money, and the DAO shall strive to be as cost-effective as we can. Other work that requires time but not funds will also be undertaken, such as leveraging contacts in the DeFi space to bring additional partnerships, technical improvements and economic enhancements.

Associated funding application BFA1–01 of 10,000 DAI for marketing and promotional expenses relating to BUILD Finance, the BUILD DAO and METRIC exchange aggregator; applicant Crypto Green Ranger.

5. MARKETING — Rebrand & Website

At this stage the DAO considers it would be useful to refresh the branding of BUILD and upgrade the website as it is rather basic and some of the information on it is outdated. We think it is important to create a powerful graphic identity for BUILD in the same way that METRIC has a strong identity, which will help promote brand awareness in a busy and competitive field. Over the next few weeks we will be working with a graphic design agency to put forward a new brand identity for BUILD and an enhanced online presence.

Associated funding application BFA1–02 of 2,000 DAI for design, coding and deployment expenses for new branding and website update; applicant Urbane Grandier.

6. COMMUNITY INCENTIVES:

It is hoped that the revisions outlined in this wider ecosystem roadmap will reignite the BUILD Finance community and it is proposed that bCRED incentives are once again reintroduced as payment-in-kind for ad hoc expenses, contributions, viral marketing incentives, product testing and market feedback, and a wide range of other activities. It is hoped we can port bCRED to a L2 in the near future to enable near-free transactions and promote its use for tipping and other smaller transactions.

7. BUILD Finance — Staking Platform

A BUILD staking platform is to be developed during Q4 2021 to enable the following actions:

a. BUILD single sided staking (xBUILD) at a nominal yield (~10% of epoch emissions);

b. BUILD-METRIC-DAI Balancer Pool Token staking at a higher yield (~30%);

c. BUILD-ETH Uniswap V2 Pool Token at a higher yield (~30%);

d. xBUILD-xMETRIC-xWILD Balancer Pool Token at a higher yield (~30%).

All emissions rates subject to discussion and setting of a suitable emissions strategy for BUILD moving forward. Initially it is proposed that BUILD tokens from the treasury are used for this purpose, and that in the medium term BUILD finance adopts a low-inflation economic policy in order to stimulate growth. It is proposed that the staking platform uses a fork of the Sushi contracts for xBUILD, and that we implement a custom staking dApp as part of the website overhaul.

Associated funding application BFA1–03 of 3,000 DAI for design, coding and deployment expenses for staking contracts and prototype staking platform dapp; applicant Urbane Grandier.

8. BUILD Finance — Inflation Policy

It is recognized that the potential for runaway inflation is worrying to many BUILD holders, and that the topic of inflation is generally considered in a negative light. However there can be no doubt that the lack of any meaningful inflation policy is currently harmful to the continued growth of the DAO, and therefore harmful to wider interest in the DAO. It also increases the likelihood of speculative hoarding of tokens which can lead to a reduction of activity to the point of stagnation. It’s worth noting that what is right for Bitcoin — given its current styling as hard money, or digital gold — is not necessarily right for something like the BUILD DAO. In any case, even Bitcoin’s current inflation rate is effectively infinite compared to BUILD’s zero rate.

It is therefore proposed that BUILD should adopt a low-inflation policy as of some point in 2022. The inflation rate shall be low — somewhere in the region of 3, 5 or 10% per annum, with additional tokens being minted on a quarterly basis for activities approved in the corresponding on-chain governance vote (principally staking and LP rewards, at least initially). All elements of this inflation policy are up for discussion pending economic modelling of token supply and platform runway during Q4 2021.

9. GENERAL HOUSEKEEPING

There are a number of items of housekeeping that need attending to in the short to medium term. In no particular order of priority:

- BSG needs to be retired, DAO assets withdrawn from the liquidity pool, Website & Discord closed;

- The BUILD Discord needs to be cleaned up, a refresh of the channel setup might help to make things a bit more organised and allow clearer access to the information users need;

- Website needs to be updated to reflect current status, hopefully as part of branding refresh as per item 6;

- Handover of other critical assets to new project team need to be completed and procurement of certain elements of key infrastructure completed.

Associated funding application BFA1–04 of 2,000 DAI for expenses associated with general housekeeping and project handover/asset management; applicant Urbane Grandier.

10. METRIC — General Update

Main activities proposed for METRIC in Q4 2021 are:

- mirror 0x deployments and prepare the app (coding) for supporting new chains and functionality;

- monitoring fee collection and distribution, plus introduction of further trading and liquidity provision incentives;

The longer term roadmap for METRIC includes the following:

- improvements to UI reactivity (especially on mobile);

- add explainer message pop-ups to help basic users;

- add NFT support through utilizing SDKs currently under development;

- implement a METRIC arbitrage bot for executing trades, particularly on non-ETH chains where there is little-to-no bot activity;

- improve fee conversion contract to handle non-standard token conversions and use DEX-aggregation instead of selling to Uniswap.

Associated funding application BFA1–05 of 3,000 DAI for development expenses and 500 METRIC for enhanced LP incentives; applicant 0xSHA2.

11. APOPHIS — General Update

@SonofIshtar will carry on managing Apophis for another 6 months (until mid April) as per original agreement. Closer to that time I will make a call whether to carry on (the initial plan was to have it for 12 months, so we are half way there). Bi-monthly update to follow in due course.

Son of Ishtar is due a rebate from the DAO for gas spend (currently at 3.0871635691595 ETH), this will be incorporated in the next on-chain application to the DAO treasury for operations expenditure.

12. UPDOWN — General Update

It is proposed that the DAO carries out a feasibility study to see whether UpDown could be revised to improve upon some of the issues the original version faced. If the study suggests it can be improved to the point that it can generate outside interest beyond the purely academic then it is proposed that the DAO forms a small team to try to revise and relaunch UpDown in Q1 or Q2 of 2022. The following items could be usefully re-examined or improved:

- Layer 2: Relaunch on Polygon or using Arbitrum/Optimism to reduce fees to a negligible level;

- Asset Types: provide a wider variety of asset pairs & timeframes;

- Incentives: Provide a liquidity mining program;

- Cashflow: Implement a rake and potentially later fee staking or alternative approach to disbursement;

- Further development: Potential to use alternative APIs to allow binary options on any type of data point over any sort of timeframe; Possible token swap and rebrand to improve tokenomics.

SUMMARY

Everyone at BUILD Finance is excited about the future of the DAO, and all believe we are in a strong position to build upon our existing products, partnerships and treasury assets to the benefit of all members. We look forward to welcoming you all to the Discord where members of the team will be on hand to discuss any and all of the above items. Finally, we would like to reinforce our position that the DAO members as a whole are our strongest asset, and we would encourage anybody who would like to get involved — in whatever capacity they desire — to make contact and help us to BUILD.

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