The Future is Hydrated

I’m interested to hear pros/cons of repurposing LBP POL vs outside funding. My thoughts:

1. LBP funds seems the most desirable. $5mil to the omnipool is peanuts compared to what could be generated with dynamic fees, bonds, etc.
2. Outside funding, If done correctly, could act as a net positive in terms of marketing - CMS or another big time firm could lend more eyes just by participating than any marketing proposal ever could.

We strongly support this proposal for the following reasons :

• 22M DAI of POL is not that much in the grand scheme of things (it's a nice help to kickstart things but won't be what makes the project what it is), so taking 5M from this allocation won't change the chances of success of the project
• We would 100 times rather see these funds being properly reallocated than hard-committed to something it was designed to be used for, 2 years ago, in a very different market. Especially if not reallocating mean that the project dies. Again the difference between 17M and 22M to kickstart liquidity won't matter when the Jydra start getting some traction.
• trying to raise funds with any other instrument is dumb in this market and will demand an absurd amount of time, better focused on the development of the killer features described in the post.
  Cheers!

Requesting 22% of 22M DAI on the 22nd day of the 2nd month? I don't know how much more you could ask for, it's clearly meant to happen.

This makes the most sense. I'd vote yes to this.

My questions.....have you kept track of your expenses over the years? To show how 6 million was used. What is the calculation of the figure of 5 million? Why do you want to get everything in 6 months, and not break it down quarterly? And for the community to draw conclusions based on what they see as a result of the quarter. Do you want 5 million for 2 years, but receive all the funds in 6 months? I don't see the logic. I would also like to see activity from funds on the project, unfortunately I haven't seen a single tweet. We also really need marketing, judging by the number of active wallets, few people know and use the protocol.

@ValorHDX The 5M would be the total amount authorised through governance to be allocated for funding development. The HydraDX Council would then distribute these funds in batches of no more than ~6 months worth of runway in order to provide some assurance for community that funds would be going towards constant delivery. We considered alternative sized batches (i.e. full 2 years, every 3 months, etc) but settled on 6 months as long enough to provide space to operate but regular enough to ensure regular delivery.

I will note here that 5M requested is somewhat of a "survival" budget - it is by no means lucrative, especially if you compare to much larger raises in other projects delivering far less. We have recently significantly reduced burn rate to allow for ~ 2 years' funding for $5mm.

I'm not sure what you mean re: tweet - this post has been tweeted by the official account here.

@7KTh...83UE It's worth mentioning that outside funding would come at a discount to current market prices - it would also be a "down round" which I don't believe is seen in the best light.

will be team allocations (HDX ) reduced by 5 mil equivalent ?

Unfortunately even though I was an early believer and investor in this project the scope of this discussion is a little beyond my tech understanding I will support the majority in their decision with the hopeful confidence that this community has the longterm project success in mind and not short term profits or savings.
That said wondering if one of you more astute members might guide me off discussion regarding my actual hydra tokens. I currently see 50,000 xHDX still sitting in my metamask account even though i have a claiming account and a hydra snakenet account neither of which am i able to access other than seeing the address for both Obviously missing some steps to both claim my hydra and make them useful with the coming staking and voting measures If someone could kindly guide me as to what steps i need to follow to ensure my hydra is in the right account and i am benefitting from all the activity to come
thanks much
mjg

@GoldsHydra

Hey sir, please feel free to join to us in Discord or Telegram so we can guide you in a better way

https://t.me/hydradx

https://discord.gg/gRpZ6Hhwae

If the price of HDX is ten or 100 times the final price of LBP, then the development of funds is obviously not worth mentioning. The key is the current situation. It seems that the 5 million of the funds raised by LBP are the only options for optional. Even if you look for institutions financing, this will further reduce the cost of the institution, the premise is that some institutions are willing to invest further (I don't know if DFG has plans).
If there are no other choices, use it.
I recommend that we have a marketing plan and hope to see more CEX list HDX.

I feel the team has done an amazing job with this project and I want to see it continue and flourish. It makes sense to me using LBP funds is the best way to go.
While the amount of funds spent on this project, and the requested 5 million, are low for a project of this scope, like @ValorHDX I would like to see accounting of how funds have been spent so far. Nothing personal, this is business.

I will be supporting this proposal with an aye, looking at where the team has come from and what they have delivered on two (BSX & HDX) networks. Furthermore a strong community, great products, great UX and good vibes.

What I would like see in proposal when this discussion forms a referendum, a simplistic roadmap how the roll-out of features will take place. The article doesn't mention feature/timeline. This is most likely not what the team wants to do, but in the public eye it will be appreciated and what is logical development flow of these features.

The article has mentioned 8 main new features and in two years things do change. Such as new products/innovations, new narratives, new hypes. How will the team deal with these? Is there room for further experimenting on these or more budgeting will be needed?

@ValorHDX No

@Polkatheta Yes you will see the marketing strategy coming into full effect in the coming weeks/ months as more project integrations and token additions to the Omnipool are announced - bringing swathes of new Hydraheads (or Hydratooooors) to the Omnipool. Establishing HydraDX Omnipool as the go-to DEX for swaps in the ecosystem requires us to have deeper liquidity (leading to lower slippage on trades) than competitors, more assets for users to swap, and better UX than others. We are almost there on the deeper liquidity for some assets - with execution of the Q1 POL diversification strategy going swimmingly, we expect to see multiple new assets in the coming weeks, and personally I believe (also based on feedback) that our UX is by far the best in this ecosystem.
Expect new forms of content and regular updates to help build on this base :)

@Staker Space Thank you for the kind words!

Re: timeline - yes, it is hard to put dates on things... but what we can do is give an indication of prioritisation of the features, as well as what "stage" of development they're in. Starting with February, we will be providing monthly updates on progress on all fronts (development, partnerships, events, misc, etc) where we will highlight as an example:

• Stableswap subpools: Implementation complete, pending audit
• Liquidity Mining: Implementation complete, pending audit
• Dynamic Fees: Implementation phase, under review
• Money Market: Research priority #2
  ...etc

I think that this will play into your final question also - if new narratives/ focuses crop up we should regularly review these priorities (and agree them with community) so that we are all in agreement on how the protocol evolves.

@lolmcshizz What about 'unvested' allocations/grants to the team members that were let go? Generally any unvested stock or options are forfeit when employees are fired/laid off/ downsized. If those are forfeit what happens to them - back to the general treasury for use to future hires? Or maybe nothing vests but is just granted on an ongoing basis while employed which then implies a larger allocation for anyone still working on the team?

I'm not against the proposal but I do think you are seeing people starting to ask questions about a better view as to how funds have been / will be spent. Of all the projects I have followed the past few years this one has probably an order of magnitude **LESS **communication from the team than any other project. I also know you guys don't feel that way but many others disagree. And now you are asking for $5M of the protocol's funds while everyone else sits here in the red. We just want to see more details on the ask.

So all of this said... it makes a lot of sense to me to provide a known and stable runway of available funds so the team can focus on developing the protocol. And the LBP funds are likely the cheapest source of capital at this point.

I would likely be voting "yes".

But I would also like to see some of that $5M put into better communication going forward. More detailed and more frequent updates of what $200k/mo is being used for. And as you hint at (but not a lot of detail) what the plan is going forward to build awareness of the project and grow its user base.

The team's ultimate pursuit of function and safety is impressive! Of course, product is the foundation and should be encouraged! However, the team's laziness in marketing is baffling. Maybe you did a lot of work, like organizing a few ground meetings, but I don't think it was enough. The reality is that after HDX went live, very few new investors entered. I may agree to set aside 5m dollor funds for operating expenses in the next two years, but I would like to see the marketing plan and the allocation of marketing expenses: staffing, expense use plan, marketing methods, etc. Behind closed doors, the result is definitely not good. I hope the team will strengthen marketing and not always feel good about themselves.

@7KNt...gRJd Thanks for your feedback. Re: unallocated team tokens due to leavers, there aren't a large amount of those, but any remaining unallocated team tokens will be reserved for future hires.

Message received on greater communication - I can agree that we've not always been the best at communicating, but as I alluded to above we will be starting monthly updates that will give everyone a better understanding of progress of development. We will also be doing regular AMAs/ office hours/ maybe some text-based AMAs - whatever format is most useful for our community.
You can expect to see some new forms of content coming up too - e.g. how-to guides and explainer videos, as these forms have been neglected in the past (despite this being a favoured medium by many over long-form written).

Outside of this, as partnerships with other projects come to fruition there will be coordinated marketing efforts around these and engagement with their respective communities - we are also working with other ecosystem projects on a huge campaign that we think will bring a lot of energy.

I will finish with a rebuttal of the response after yours from 7Jqf...HRbt - the marketing isn't "lazy" as you put it, it's about matching the relevant stage of the project. You generally only get one opportunity in this space to "shoot your shot" - it was important to launch the Omnipool, and begin to follow the diversification strategy approved by HDX holders. It is critical that the foundations are laid and we have something to "shout about" before we really crank things up.

Put it this way, if we'd have done some huge push in recent weeks - visitors would be met with relatively shallow pools and a generally poor bridging experience from Ethereum <> Acala <> HydraDX. If they left disappointed it would be extremely difficult to win them over. Step by step, piece by piece, the vision is coming together.

@7KNt...gRJd @lolm...hizz addressed very nicely most of your points but also I have to stand behind team wrt ideas about slashing part of team allocation which is on low end of crypto projects spectrum.

Please understand that:

1. team tokens are not even liquid now and after end of cliff sometimes in May, they are vested next 24 months
2. This narrative is pretty sad in the light of quality, output and mostly integrity of whole team like - Colin which is w/o any doubts 1 of the best and most productive researchers in whole crypto being able to do better and more than whole teams researchers at other companies which I had chance to see quite deeply, Jakub CTO having super deep understanding of whole Substrate & parachain stack by contributing to its development from 2019, runtime lead Mrq who was Solidity beast and contributor to Docker ecosystem, Martin who wrote multiple high quality AMMs, Jgreen making nft marketplace (as he was learning Substrate development) adopted by RMRK as their own :))) and helping other teams to plug into Hydra, cl0w leading content production but also writing new features in Rust,lol, Lolmcshizz being on top of absolutely everything not just in case of Hydra but whole Polkadot ecosystem, Alex being core Parity dev authoring oracle and other important existing or upcoming primitives and pretty much rest of the team who almost all of them will get 2-3 times higher cash compensation w 2-3 times or bigger token allocation (or even bigger if they would start new projects) in every well known crypto projects and I can tell you that most of them were getting such offers all the time and they sticked to Hydra bc of common culture & vision. Believe me or not everybody would be way better off working anywhere else with much less stress as we are taking everything death serious (maybe even more than we should sometimes?) and with much more free time which could be spend with their families or friends or just chilling. That's not complaining but facts as I want to keep them as motivated as possible and with upside (potentially still smaller than in success scenario elsewhere) which they will absolutely deserve every one of them bc those who not, are not here anymore.
3. Our proposal is actually little bit more optimistic than worst case scenarios in which bear market would last longer or protocol would be critically exploited and as soon things will get better, treasury needs to find best way how to increase cash balance (either by treasury deal, or DCAing HDX into uptrend, or getting stablecoins via bonds, or combination of some or all) to be able cover other costs like so much discussed marketing, but also important costly integrations into custody and hw wallet services, more audits and more other needed suppliers which project will have to absolutely need to even think about competing with best which was always our goal and by best, we don't really mean best in Polkadot.

Jakub, co-founder of HydraDX, CEO of Intergalactic