Name: Vertex Protocol

Wallet Address or ENS: vertexdao.eth (0x9D64c41eC3a1f49952dE2E16EBB0723022f75008)

Tally Profile URL: https://www.tally.xyz/profile/0x9d64c41ec3a1f49952de2e16ebb0723022f75008

What area are you most interested in contributing to? choose up to two tags:

• DeFi development on Arbitrum
• Improving Governance participation

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:

We believe that the Arbitrum DAO has two main duties in relation to acting as stewards for the chain:

• The DAO must ensure the integrity of the chain on a technical level. This means engaging experts to help make decisions which maintain the security of the chain and safety of its users while maintaining core values such as decentralization.
• The DAO should facilitate the growth of Arbitrum by attracting and supporting projects who choose to build here. In practice, this can range from calculated liquidity mining programs to efforts cultivating and maintaining a unique sense of Arbitrum culture among users and builders.

These are wide ranging and complex tasks, which makes a healthy governance system all the more important. Through a strong collection of delegates working together, we believe the DAO can guide Arbitrum in maintaining a healthy and ever-growing ecosystem. As Vertex comes close to the end of its first year of operation on Arbitrum it ranks #2 in average daily volume amongst derivatives DEXs in DeFi, positioning itself as a leading protocol whose experience can help shape the path Arbitrum takes into a fruitful one.

Sample Voting Issue 1:

Issue Overview

• Uniswap planned to use Flipside to attract new users to Uniswap through bounties. Although the program outline and funding was fine, the proposal was contentious because it gave Flipside crypto too much control over allocating UNI to bounties and oversight of the entire program.
• For instance, Flipside had 3/7 seats on the allocation committee and 1/3 seats on the Oversight committee. There was also concern since none of the other analytics service providers were involved in the proposal.
• This proposal flew under the radar but at the 11th hour got very heated. Large votes from university clubs supported the proposal since they would get a seat on the allocation committee. However, Dune and Leshner spoke up about the issue because of the centralization of power and favor of one service provider.

Prompts to Answer:

1. How would you vote?

We would vote against this proposal, but would support a revised version or similar efforts.

1. What amendments would you make to the proposal if any?

We support gathering more analytics, we believe that having access to more data in various ways is beneficial to the DAO. We also support the idea of funding grant programs through the yield of managed strategies, as it saves the DAO money.

However, there are several issues that we would want to see addressed before voting yes on this proposal. There are two distinct services being provided in this proposal. The first is the management of a UNI loan to generate yield, the second is what is funded with that yield. We believe that when the DAO engages a service provider, it should be through a process where multiple service providers are evaluated for a task. In this scenario, there is no guarantee that the same entity that can manage yield can also create quality analytics or vice versa. Therefore, we would like to see a process that separates these two tasks and independently selects teams to perform either one. This isn’t to say that a particular team could not do both, but that the community would need to support them in both categories.

Another aspect of the proposal we would want changed is the timeline. The proposal suggests a 3 year term, which we feel is too long for a proposal that includes a yield generating strategy which has not been proven to be sustainable. We would suggest shortening the length of this term to 1 year with quarterly evaluation periods.

1. How would you approach the tradeoff between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done?

In respect to the makeup of the oversight committee, we believe that a standard should be set such that an committee does not contain members of the group it is overseeing. In contrast, we would support the service provider selected to perform management of the funds having a significant, but minority, presence on the allocation committee. This allows for their expertise to be used properly in timely maintenance of any yield producing strategies.

Sample Voting Issue 2:

Issue Overview:

Overview Link 1

Overview Link 2

FEI RARI Hack Reimbursement: In April 2022 Rari was hacked for 80M, a vote was passed to reimburse those affected. Then in May 2022 another vote to refund the Rari hacked was brought forward this time it was not passed.

Prompts to Answer:

Outside the flipping of the vote, how would you choose to handle this situation?

i.e should parties be reimbursed for an exploit or not? (Please choose one of the below options and then elaborate upon your reasoning)

Full Reimbursement

We believe that if a protocol suffers losses through an exploit, it should do its best to make users whole through full or partial reimbursement depending on the situation. While we operate with trustless technologies, trust remains crucial when a user chooses to interact with a protocol at all. If DeFi is to grow, it remains critical that end users are offered reasonable protections that allow them to leave the traditional finance world without fear of a total loss of assets. In this particular scenario, while all procedural and technical measures were followed, we believe that there were several business decisions that resulted in loss of trust from users. It is of course easier in retrospect to see where mistakes were made but we think that stronger communication between all parties could have resulted in a smoother process that would leave users in the best spot possible.

Languages I speak and write: English

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest: None, though Vertex will be active in governance on multiple chains.