Hello everyone,
I already made a vague rent on the fact that strategist rewards are the Achilles eel of the yearn DAO at the moment but I think that it is also fair to say that yearn deserves better from it contributors than vague rents.
Hence here is a more detailed proposal on how improve the current situation and align rewards better with the DAO.
Disclaimer: There are probably imprecision in my evaluation of the current situation because I do not have all the information at hand. I would appreciate if this does not become a reason for hand-waving the problem away.
Farming at large scale requires two very different skill-sets, a financial skill-set to determine the best yield generating strategies and a CS skill-set to make sure that the platform on which the strategies are implemented is safe. Those skill-sets are rather independent of each other.
When it comes to the CS aspect: IMO everything that has to do with ensuring code safety should be evaluated by full-time yearn contributors paid on a monthly salary.
When it comes to the strategy itself: I believe that Yearn should implement at least two tiers, say Vanilla and Exotic, and reward the strategist accordingly. Vanilla would for example be:
-Put asset in a pool and auto farm (i.e convex)
-Use asset as collateral to borrow another one and put it in a pool.
-Recursive borrowing and lending on one or two lending platform.
If the strategy is vanilla, the DAO does to need to pay a strategist or at least very little. Those are now extremely well known, and there are countless protocols adding those strategies on a daily basis.
Exotic would be more advanced strategies and can be rewarded at a pro-rata of the amount farmed with a cap above which it does not make sense to incentivize.
In a spirit of transparency and to better inform the discussion, I would greatly appreciate if core members of the DAO could provide us with:
-An annualized rate of how much the DAO is paying strategists at the moment:
-How much top strategists are making (no need to name them)
-How much Yearn is paying for curve and convex strategies.
Thanks in advance to all Yearn contributors for their consideration.