[Withdrawn] Sushi Phantom Troupe - Strategic Raise

Sushinomics
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I think we’re talking past each other, and that won’t be productive, especially on this thread.

So I’ll give one final response on this sub-topic, and I am happy to continue the convo offline or in the Smaug thread if you want.

You are right that there is a long list of legal and security considerations with that proposal - as there is with anything we build in this space.

I think your concerns come down to the payout of appreciation, which is actually a very fair point, because that has some pass through concerns as far as the US is concerned and can be seen as making money on the future price of the underlying asset. Since we’ve seen even ‘fantasy investment’ apps have issues for rewarding users for their predictions of a future asset price, I can see that the appreciation likely has US complexities and you may need to structure only with a fixed interest.

But, if someone issued convertible debt in a fashion where:

  • They borrowed $1M and were willing to pay back that $1M + X% interest
  • The debt was collateralized by 850 EUR ($1M USD) that was sitting in a bank account gaining yield.
  • If the debt was repaid the startup claims back the EUR. If not, the investor gets the EUR and the debt is cleared.

We wouldn’t say the Euro is a security in this model regardless of what the X% interest is.

Now if the Euro rapidly gained against the USD, there is more interest on the part of the startup trying to pay back the likely high interest rate they set, but that still wouldn’t make the EUR the security, just the instrument of the sale.

So I think its fair that the asset appreciation component needs reworking.

But, there are models to:

  • Get institutional scale investors involved for sake of portfolio access and support.
  • Get Sushi access to cash for scaling.
  • Do that in a manner that keeps tokens out of liquid circulation preventing advanced dilution.
  • Do that in a manner that does not change the risk model for Sushi regulatorily at all.
  • Productize that so Sushi (et al) can benefit from the large number of DAOs who have the same problem and lack the resources to solve it.

Any path forward is likely to be ill-advised in the US. Which means you need to do it in a restrictive manner anyway, which means it isn’t blatantly open market and will have a walled-garden of KYC and residency anyway.

If you want to chat more about the specifics of the SBond model I had proposed (separate even from the specific conversation about if Sushi should use it for the current raise or not) I’d more than welcome some constructive feedback on how you think it can be improved. It’s an initial concept and iterations are key to solving what is a recurring challenge for many startups in this space: Smaug: Debt Based Treasury Management

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TL;DR. I think you are right that we are speaking past each other. The bottom line is that US securities law is complex, often unclear and probably not easily workable for any of the options the Sushi team, community, me or you believe makes sense for the project.

I will most likely soon leave for a three martini lunch and not return for a long time, but I do wish you luck with the convertible bond product.

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From a strictly quantitative perspective?? Like what. What strictly quantitative perspective are you thinking of?

I also think you are jumping the gun here. There are other ways to incentivize raising capital, I have faith in that.

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focused response. This is what we need right now.

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Taylor from Mask network here, been watching the thread for a few days. Want to make a quick case for us here.

Mask is a portal that bridges web 2.0 and web 3.0. We help Dapps render directly on top of Twitter. We’ve done integration for more than
20 dapps including Sushi, Snapshot, Opensea, Arweave. We‘ve been a partner with Sushi since last October when we integrated Sushi in the trading widget. See screenshots below. On a side note, We’ve just been listed on Coinbase less than a week ago.

Picture1
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We are also starting a Social Defi Aliance that aim to help Defi get mass adoption from regular social network users. From the Wall Street Bet Revolution to Tik Tok investors to the ultra addictive Crypto Twitter, social and finance has proven to be more than a natural fit as we’ve seen from numerous examples. We hope we can do this along with Sushi and rest of the Defi community.

In terms of investment terms, we are quite flexible in that we can do stablecoins or token swap and are willing to do longer lockups. Nevertheless we will comply with the terms that this discussion is aim to set.

In short, we have been a unique and long term partner with Sushi and hope we can together introduce Defi to the regular social network mass.

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Run multiple Dutch auction on MISO, every 3-6 months.

Conditions:
Show demonstrable benefit to Sushi ecosystem. (like the legends at Future Fund)
Must have held X amount of SUSHI/xSUSHI for 3 months. (Time weighted avg, Could be any anyone)
Dutch auction price starts at 5x and finishes at 30% discount. (The market will determine the discount)
SushiOps finalises and unlocks the tokens, could be instant, or later.

Actions:
No change to MISO
MISO Auction and tokens could be committed today, with the auction scheduled in the future.
Add a whitelist to the auction with the user allowances calculated closer to the date based on the conditions above.

I think it solves a number of issues, it will encourage investors to have sushi exposure before the Dutch auction, natural rolling lockups as they have to continue to hold for subsequent auctions, and they must show us what they can contribute to Sushi to maintain being on the list. This can be formalised in any number of ways described above, except with 3 months of effort to be judged by, and transparent token commitments.

Talk is cheap otherwise

I suspect a dark horse VC, given the opportunity to shine, will grow the community to make a name for themselves, or even better, give someone who has enough capital to become a VC by out performing the rest, and earn their spot on the whitelist.

Let the VC games begin!

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Incredibly constructive discussions from this forum and the discord session (The Sushi Forum Episode 38 - YouTube) and to start I feel incredibly privileged to be able to sit in, listen, reflect, and learn from such an active dynamic community. There is literally nowhere else where this happens and I feel extremely motivated that I’m working with a community that actually gives a shit about the future of Sushi.

To preface, the initiating proposal lacked organization and communication. Full stop. The subsequent discussion that has given direction and structure is a testament to the Sushi community and new participants, but highlights a failure of the required facilitation to see resolution. This week is a big week for Sushi for current, upcoming feature releases, EthCC, including these discussions around strategic raise, however we’re committed to increasing availability required to see this to resolution, however long it takes. Here’s what will happen:

  • Any participant in this discussion can schedule a call or group call with me and others here for enhanced accessibility: Calendly - Omakase Have a question? Schedule a call. Feel there’s not enough clarity? Schedule a call. Want feedback in a smaller setting? Schedule a call. Straight up pissed off? Schedule a call. My time is your time. On discord? Hit @omakasebar (average response time during waking hours (CET timezone) is 10min). Communication and transparency for key proposals should never be a blocker.

  • SushiForum will be hosted by @Tangle and @magicturtle every day this week at 9pm UTC. Be there, don’t be afraid to ask questions, learn, and challenge. All sessions will be recorded and posted to youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7Mm_8m8C2sxbgxbQIDJJdQ

  • With the help of @pegbit, every outstanding proposal from participating parties and this forum will be organized and consolidated since this thread is becoming quite long. An upvote system will be applied as a general temperature check for all outstanding proposals along with some bullet point summaries. For now you can view a running list of all proposals here: Strategic Raise Proposals - Google Docs

  • Every participating firm involved in the raise will submit 2-3 sentences on the strategic value they bring to Sushi and our community. This will be a basic requirement. Highly engaged firms will be participating in the forum and on the daily AMAs we have scheduled this week. Want to engage on an AMA? Reach out to @Tangle, @magicturtle, @rsk

  • With the help of Sushi Samurais, all tweets, threads, discussions will be consolidated on this post only discord channel to help everyone stay up with the latest: Discord (to be opened)

Additionally to give some clarity to timelines going forward:
Participating parities in the AMAs to be confirmed as schedules align

Monday - July 19th

Tuesday - July 20th

  • Core response [Amendment] - General revised deal structure based on consolidated discussions and feedback from the community
  • AMA (2AM UTC to accommodate Asia times): Interested parties - insights into providing strategic value, questions on Core response

Wednesday - July 21st

  • Discussion on revised terms, alignment meetings to provide execution and pricing details
  • Exploring Miso details to achieve equality of access
  • AMA: Discussions regarding new protocols and future use cases

Thursday - July 22nd

  • Cross partner and community alignment
  • AMA: Participating firm discussion on Core Response and value they bring to the Sushi community

Friday - July 23rd

  • Discussion on revised terms, amendments
  • AMA: Final review and discussions, preparation for voting on Monday
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Immediate logistics aside, there seem to be a few major themes that can be summarized, expanded, and compromised into a milestone for these discussions.

@0x_chu and I dive into some of these topics during the kickoff AMA: Sushi Phantom Troupe Episode 1 - YouTube

Firstly, why VCs and are there alternatives? What is the definition of strategic? Why now?

Originally the definition of strategic was somewhat vague and I offered up some preliminary definitions here: Sushi Phantom Troupe - Strategic Raise - #37 by OmakaseBar

@amywu from Lightspeed took the first leap to start to address some of those definitions here: Sushi Phantom Troupe - Strategic Raise - #50 by amywu

The discussions in both this forum and sushiForum call have given more precision that can align with the growth and direction of Sushi as a whole. But to really understand what will be strategic for Sushi, we need to first consider where Sushi is going and the vision.

Welcome home to DeFi, start your home here

Having such an expansive community has driven both a vertical and horizontal expansion on both protocol and product development. Sushi has evolved from specifically an AMM to an ecosystem. Some thoughts and former discussions regarding this movement can be found in previous AMAs here: Onsen AMA Series - YouTube

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Sushi is at an inflection point. Having built up a vast array of primitives we must now consolidate those efforts into comprehensive, streamlined product offerings. Sushi must rapidly consolidate to become the best place for 100% projects to launch, maintain and grow. This will continuously capture the 1% of high volume producing projects. We will continue to integrate every available feature of traditional finance on decentralized infrastructure to empower projects. As projects grow, we grow, xSUSHI holders grow. An example of this mission are upcoming token pages that consolidate these features:

Boris Wertz, founding partner of Version One Ventures, was derided on CT for alluding Uniswap to Ebay: “It’s like eBay. If you want to sell something, you can list it.” He wasn’t off the mark, tokenized marketplaces are key to enabling economic growth, rather his vision was too narrow. Why stop at selling - unlocking all every feature of decentralized finance for every token is an entire order of magnitude more impactful and Sushi is much better positioned today to become the lead marketplace for tokens through empowerment: swap, lend, borrow, leverage, launch, incentivize, hedge all in one place.

And as Sushi expands and projects continuously choose to launch on the ecosystem - we have the opportunity to set standards in DeFi. Standards are important to give definitions to a largely new and undefined space - legal, infrastructure, product will all be necessary to promote standards that will be used across industry. More detailed thoughts on this during AMA (be there!).

Strategic in the immediate sense will require our partners to not only support continuous deal flow and onboarding of new projects that leverage our ecosystem, but also promote a more comprehensive Sushi to larger audiences outside the immediate DeFi niche. There are incredible and constructive opportunities to bring Sushi to not only traditional finance, but traditional industries as well. Treasury management and operational expansion will also be necessary for heightened sophistication and partners with strong experience in capital markets will be key to offer guidance in this regard. Additionally key partners will work with Sushi to craft and solidify standards along infrastructural, legal, and product dimensions. There are few partners who have had experience in defining industry standards for new technologies and organizations and these insights will be necessary. Therefore current strategic definitions do favor more traditional and more experienced firms - seeking alignment, as this raise is by no means traditional, will be the next step. Notice the use of “firm” as opposed to “venture capital” specifically, the community has raised good points that these skill sets could be found in other organizations or in complementary fashion that should participate in the round.

Secondly, SBF revealed an important insight regarding institutional network effects of fundraising from venture capital firms (The Sushi Forum Episode 38 - YouTube) . Having network effects matter, Sushi is a testament to that in the DeFi space. Establishing network effects amongst the VC space will enable Sushi to compete effectively on an institutional level. Again the strategic firms need not be exclusively venture capitalists - therefore we also feel there is an opportunity for engagement from dedicated angel investors. Many early angels in Sushi’s trajectory have provided clear outsized returns in terms of branding, design, and entering new markets - these participants should also not be discounted.

To summarize:

  1. Diversification provides optionality. Utilizing this strategic raise properly can both onboard strategic partners at the same time that it hedges the risk of having a treasury composed largely of SUSHI. Converting 20m (~16% of the developer’s treasury) to USDC alleviates potential downside risks of market volatility. Treasury management and advisory are key to a growing organization.

  2. Expansion beyond DeFi. We also want to onboard strategic partners who can help us bring Sushi to the “real world,” and bring the real world Sushi. This has to do with our understanding of the role of a strategic partner, which is outlined in the following points.

  3. Advancing the ecosystem: Sushi’s vision has matured since its inception, and we are no longer just an AMM. We have evolved into an entire ecosystem, servicing users in DeFi and beyond, tackling issues at different centers, involving both retail and institutions. The same can be said for our core team and operations, which require diversified resources for continued development. Onboarding strategic parterns will also help us in the following critical areas.

These critical areas include:

  1. Legal and regulatory assistance from the traditional actors
    Hiring a legal department to support us on potential legal challenges is easier said than done. Partnering with strategic investors who have their own legal departments, who are exposed to different niche areas, and who are involved outside of the crypto space would be a tremendous help to us.

  2. Increasing deal flow and partnerships
    Sushi is at inflection point where various features will be consolidate into a comprehensive offering that can effectively compete with the experience of web2. Building up partnerships now to leverage our features as we target larger markets will be key. Strategic partnerships can help us expand a broader audience with a retail-friendly and a user-friendly interface, as well as creating an increase of deal flow and new channels to reach those users.

    • Strategic positioning can help bring in more MCV2 and BentoBox integrations to reduce SUSHI emissions.
    • Other specific areas in need of institutional backers: MISO, protocol integrations that haven’t been released.

  3. Branding and awareness building
    The correct positioning in an emerging market can be incredibly valuable. Strategic partners who share our vision can help us align our brand with new users, and more generally, they can help expand the use-cases for DeFi in the traditional market.

  4. Tokenomics and governance
    The prospect of a facilitated expansion into new markets entails an increase in Sushi’s value, which would lead to outsized returns on emissions.
    Our partners will be actively involved in the governance of the protocol, and active governance leads to more effective development.

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Regardless the solution, IF the community is able to compare the costs of various options being put on the table, it will go a long way to help us weigh in on the best solution moving forward.

For example if the idea is to raise $20M from investors and give a 30% discount on the token price, it should be assumed that the cost of getting these investors are $6M.

On that $6M, what would Sushi community get in return?
If it’s legal help and product evangelism, would it make more sense to retain the services of 3rd parties that would be accountable to the community?

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SushiDAO Lending Pool on Maple
Co-written by Maple Finance and Maven 11 Capital

Executive Summary (TLDR)

Sushi is sitting on a large stockpile of $SUSHI but desires a higher portion of stablecoins for expenses.

Raising stables through a sale of SUSHI at a discount in present market conditions is punitive and dilutionary.

Borrowing a loan through Maple Finance would minimize dilution, and give participants upside to $SUSHI.

  • A Maple lending pool is created solely to lend $25M USDC to SushiDAO
  • SushiDAO provides xSushi as collateral (technical requirements discussed below)
  • SushiDAO provides xSushi is deposited to Maple’s Liquidity Mining rewards contract for the pool. Lenders (community and the 21 VCs) therefore lend USDC to SushiDAO and receive [10-15]% USDC + [XX]% xSushi upside

Maple protocol is already running and proven with two pools and USDC 57M TVL.

Benefits to Sushi

  • Raises $25M USDC with minimal dilution (see below) to $SUSHI supply
  • Liquidations are not triggered automatically by $SUSHI price movement. Only by non-payment of interest.
  • Optional whitelisting on Lending so debt can be raised from community, VCs or mix of both.

Benefits to Sushi Community and VCs

  • Level opportunity for community to participate in supporting Sushi DAO
  • Minimal dilution, no complicated lockups
  • Lenders get USDC interest, and upside from xSushi rewards. Their USDC is returned at the end of the loan.

Note on Liquidations

Maple’s liquidation mechanism currently routes through an AMM in a single sale if interest payments are not made. There isn’t sufficient AMM liquidity for a single sale of $25M+, so what we would propose is the xSushi be held in multisig controlled by Pool Delegate and a trusted party with significant community involvement and skin in the game (Arca perhaps @jdorman81?). This ensures that there is no auto liquidation for price movement and that if default occurs liquidations occur in an efficient manner.

Details and Assumptions

  • Dilution - depends on rewards APY. If 10-20%, then at current $SUSHI price $7.1, the treasury would issue 352k-700k $SUSHI (10x less dilution than the 7.1M $SUSHI in alternative proposals).
  • Fees (1) - 0.5% origination fee paid by SushiDAO at the start
  • Fees (2) - 0.1 * Interest received goes to the Pool Delegate organizing the pool. 0.1 * Interest goes to MPL stakers backstopping the pool
  • Pool Delegate - Creates and manages the lending pool. Subject to Sushi community approval we would recommend Maven 11 Capital, who run a $22M pool on Maple
  • Draft loan terms
    • Amount: [$25M USDC]
    • Collateral: [150-200]% [$37.5M+ equivalent xSushi]
    • Term: [360 days]
    • Payments: [monthly, interest only]
    • Rate: [10-15]% APY
    • xSushi Rewards APY: [TBD]
  • Whitelisting can be toggled on to start with so that strategic partners are guaranteed participation. Then toggled off so everyone could participate.

How fast can it happen?

  • Day 0 - Sushi Lending Pool created with $25M cap (whitelisting optional to balance participation between strategics and community)
  • Days 1-3 - open for Lenders to deposit USDC based on indicative loan terms
  • Day 4 - SushiDAO creates on-chain loan request, funded same day.

Conclusion

  • Loan reduces dilution 10x
  • Community and VCs can participate in supporting Sushi and get upside from rewards.
  • DAO treasuries tap capital markets

Would welcome all thoughts in working towards a solution to help a DeFi bluechip

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That is a very interesting proposal indeed. Completely different approach than “traditional” treasury diversification. I think that the points here are very valid - it is a win-win situation for all of the parties involved - Sushi will achieve their goals with a much smaller dilution, Maple will grow their protocol and open a way for other projects to follow the path of Sushi, VCs will still get their chunk by the liquidity provision.

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Cute proposal, but misses the main point. This round isn’t to raise capital, but to build strategic relationships. Overcollateralized loans don’t help with that. Additionally:

These two statements don’t make sense together.

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Agree with the above. Posts such as these including the one by ARCA seem to me like low-key shills trying to advertise themselves by taking opportunity of the attention the thread is getting or haven’t read/understood the proposal itself (which makes me doubt their intelligence/comprehension capabilities and thus core business itself).

Its been made abundantly clear by Maki that Sushi doesn’t need the money. The proposal primarily intends to generate long-term ‘stakeholder interest’ from VCs incentivized enough to provide non-financial support.

PS. Sorry for being harsh but not sure how after reading a 250+ post thread, one can’t get what the original proposal is still about.

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Is it just coincidence that this account was created 2 hours back simply to post encouragement about the Maple proposal and had its post liked by an account that joined 39 min back with no other activity other than liking the Maple post :slight_smile:

Ban shameless shilling of scams imo.

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So the devs are very keen on fast-tracking this. :thinking: :pensive:

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I didn’t want to say it loud explicitly but given you bring it up, Maple does have a dodgy reputation for having raised public money without KYC/AML checks via a Balancer Liquidty Bootstrapping Pool and having withdrawn almost the entire liquidity to the anguish of the community (each of whom were selectively banned from their Discord leading to an uproar).

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Lol I’m not part of the Sushi community so yeah my account is brand new. Calling Maple a scam is completely false, do your research. You would have done the same if Sushi was creating a proposal on another forum.

It’s just an alternative proposition, Sushi is free to reject it. Don’t get on your high horse for nothing

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Might not have been clear in the first post. The loan is overcollateralized. Liquidations occur if a borrower doesn’t pay interest not if the price of Sushi moves against them.

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The other gentleman/woman very clearly outlines why a lot in the community consider Maple yet another trash born out of the Polkastarter/Balancer LBP money grab era. While some honest projects like HOPR, Hydra, Perp kept the USDC for liquidity bootstrapping, Maple was amongst the shameless moneygrabs to withdraw public funds and ban Discord members (and speak of community eh!)

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Right, and we don’t need overcollateralized loans.