Why Shut Down Tribe?
The departure of Fei Labs and related core team members does not need to mean the Tribe DAO needs to wind down.
It is understandable the Tribe core team proposes to wind down the Tribe DAO, given the difficult position they are in and the pressure they are under from the numerous stakeholders, however the continuation of Tribe DAO and the involvement of the existing core team do not necessarily need to be conflated.
There are some hard decisions to be made here, but I believe that Tribe DAO can continue operating and come out strong on the other side of this.
At current price, $TRIBE has a FDV of ~$230m, has “bad debt”, but is solvent, has a healthy treasury, and has a respectable user base.
If $TRIBE was an equity company, it would be considered to be in a position of strength and the board of directors would be finding new management and demanding a turnaround plan, not arguing over wind down details.
So… why shut it all down?
tl;dr
- Put new team and operating procedures in place
- Make ALL Tribe and Rari users whole, resolve past issues and put them to rest
- Focus on new roadmap for TRIBE to grow the ecosystem of products
Read on for more in depth rationale, and the beginning of a plan.
What’s so great about Tribe?
Tribe (and Rari) have a lot going for them! Many protocols wish they could be in such a position:
FEI: ~143m current circulating FEI, ~2.4b ATH circulating, 4,117 current holders, ~6300 ATH holders, ~$1,7m 24h trade volume (in the $100m’s in the past), many blue chip defi integrations
TRIBE: ~$230m current FDV, ~$800m ATH FDV, 13,407 current holders (ATH!), active DAO participation
Fuse: $46.7m current TVL, $1.1b ATH TVL, many DeFi partnerships
RGT: $60m current FDV, ~$569m ATH FDV, 6,413 current holders, ~10k ATH holders, previously active DAO participation
*sources include coingecko, etherscan, token terminal, dune. New accounts limited on links per post
Non-tangibles
The brands of Tribe, Fei, Rari, and Fuse are highly recognizable, and despite the unpleasantness of this situation, the community generally looks up to these brands as leaders in the space.
The mission of Tribe to be “a decentralized, scalable, and DeFi-native stablecoin protocol” is widely supported and Tribe has made massive strides on the road to achieving this mission. In fact, in many ways, Tribe has already made it. While this is a lot of work remaining to fully realize the potential of the mission, it has fantastic momentum to be able to do so.
The brand affinity of Tribe can still be repaired by resolving the ongoing situation gracefully.
Resolving the situation
I disagree with FEI Labs assertion that Tribe DAO bears no responsibility in the Fuse situation. The legal side of this seems murky, and I won’t attempt to take an opinion there, but I’m sure anyone who feels like they’ve lost, will hire lawyers to form those opinions.
From an ethical and social contract perspective, the merger/acquisition of Tribe DAO and Rari DAO and respective core teams creates an implicit expectation that Tribe DAO in some sense is responsible for the Rari products.
While it is probably incorrect to hold DAOs or developers responsible for technical errors (caveat emptor to the user), there is also no clear designation of the risks that the DAO is in fact underwriting, or not. As well the DAO has created precedent that it is willing to underwrite such risk, thus creating a social expectation of the DAO bearing responsibility.
For this DAO and suite of products to continue, and given that the financial situation allows for it, my opinion is that the Tribe DAO must cover the losses of the hack victims entirely. Not doing this destroys all trust in the brand and also opens up DAO holders and core team to legal action (frivolous or otherwise).
In order to make the hack victims whole, I agree with the proposal to consolidate all assets, convert them to USD tokens, and make FEI redeemable for a USD token, as a short term measure.
The Future of Tribe DAO
The FEI experiment has been highly interesting and educational for the ecosystem, as has the governance activities and Rari merger.
That being said, I think there are a lot of learnings to process on the FEI stability mechanism, and as well on the Fuse products.
Products
After FEI becomes fully backed by a USD token, the mechanism should be revisited, revamped, and re-launched with an aim of remaining a fully decentralized stablecoin, not relying on permissioned assets.
The Fuse products have a role to play with the FEI product, and integrations should be thoughtfully considered. However the long tail lending markets are highly risky and any integration should be approached with caution.
Risk
As of now, the risks being undertaken by various participants in the Tribe ecosystem is unclear. What does Tribe underwrite, what does it not? How is risk isolated when the DAO is producing a stablecoin (meant to be low risk) and lending markets for long tail assets (inherently extremely high risk).
These risks need to be delineated and communicated properly to users.
Governance
Related to the above, there seems to be a broken governance process, as the community is unclear on the difference between a poll and a vote, lack of clarity on important details in some proposals, and lack of clarity on what the DAO is responsible for. Governance operations needs an overhaul.
Additionally, the DAO should move towards governance minimization such that the products are truly trustless and permissionless and questions of the DAO’s responsibilities become moot because they are unambiguous.
As a note: I caution strongly against the hierarchal model that Maker is pursuing for both legal and operational efficiency reasons. Instead the more effective route seems to be operating in a “rough consensus, trustless code” manner.
Vision
In the long term Tribe should remain true to the vision of being a decentralized, scalable, and DeFi-native stablecoin protocol.
Where MakerDAO has opted to move towards real world assets, thus locking their fate to the systems which control those assets - Tribe’s FEI can be the fully decentralized stablecoin that DAI originally promised to be.
Nothing, besides Moloch, is holding back the realization of this vision.
Team
The Fei Labs team is effectively resigning, as the “core team”, leaving no one left to lead or work on protocol improvements.
For Tribe to continue, a new core team needs to step up and drive this forward.
I am volunteering to lead this, though others could step up if they are so inclined.
If there is interest in this from Tribe holders, we would need to restructure the team, work with any existing contributors that wish to continue, and source new contributors who might want to join the mission.
Wait who are you?
I’m a relative outsider to the Tribe ecosystem, I participated in the Genesis event in small size, cut my losses, and have been a passive outside observer since then. As such I don’t have the full context that the core team and highly involved stakeholders have, but this also makes me somewhat impartial and excited for the potential of Tribe.
I’ve been involved with stablecoins for awhile, starting with observing Bitshares, being very involved with Single Collateral MakerDAO, supporting Reflexer (RAI) in reaction to the addition of permissioned assets in Maker, and participating in almost all the various stable and not-so-stable experiments in recent years.
I am also working on new (unannounced) decentralized stablecoin at the moment. This could be a potential conflict of interest, however I would discontinue that project if working on Tribe and perhaps bring some fresh ideas for the growth of Tribe.
I’m choosing to remain anonymous because I ultimately want to see a fully decentralized and governance minimized stablecoin ecosystem. I do not think it is healthy for DAO holders to put their trust in anyone, including me or my previous experience, but should instead judge my ideas based on their merit and keep the execution of them completely trustless. I share my experience only as it helps with the context of the ideas proposed.
Previous Team
From the rumors I’ve heard, any notable DeFi or crypto team which has operations in the US has been likely subpoenaed by the SEC and is potentially undergoing investigation. It would be illegal for anyone under investigation to reveal that an investigation is in fact underway, so asking the teams if this is the case is fruitless and pressing the issue could cause them more undue troubles.
However I would expect that in one way or another, the Fei Labs and Rari teams have many personal legal considerations when making the decisions they make.
As such, I would propose that a continuation proposal include an independent legal fund be setup to support the team in resolving issues that pertain to the protocol, which I would expect to be overseen by a 3rd party attorney to ensure that any legal needs are the ethical responsibility of the DAO.
Note: Due to the potential legal risks above, a continuation proposal may be an entirely bad idea, however as I am not a US resident I’m not so sure that potential risks apply to me.
The Road Ahead
This is posted as an idea, not a proposal, as it is ultimately up to the Tribe holders to decide their fate.
If the general plan here resonates with Tribe holders, I suggest that someone create a soft poll to gauge interest in this, and start to coordinate on a more fleshed out proposal.
If the plan resonates with a minority of Tribe holders and some non-Tribe holders, perhaps a buyout DAO could be formed.
For anyone who wishes to contact me, I am available on Twitter and Telegram.
Any direction this takes, I hope this idea can help lead to happy outcome for the hack victims, a graceful exit for the core team, and a bright future for the Tribe DAO.