Proposal for Hasu to join Lido as Strategic Advisor

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Summary

A proposal to engage Hasu as a Strategic Advisor to Lido, incl. proposed duties and compensation.

Motivation

A business strategy is a high-level plan for a business to achieve its mission. In the context of Lido, that mission is to make staking accessible to everyone and unlock liquidity on their stake by issuing a liquid staking tokens, allowing stakers to yearn yield from PoS and Defi at the same time.

Research by Hasu and Georgios Konstantopoulos suggests that the market for liquid staking will be winner-take-all: Users want the most liquid staking tokens, which drives further business to the current market leader, creating a virtuous cycle. As a result, Lido will have a binary outcome on most blockchains it competes on.

To raise the stakes even further, new research by Flashbots and Vitalik Buterin suggests that a validator who controls several blockchains is uniquely positioned to capture cross-chain MEV. As a result, Lido‘s outcome on Ethereum may directly influence its outcome on Solana, Avalanche, Polygon, etc., and vice versa.

Win or lose, the specific outcome depends on Lido‘s ability to juggle and execute on several business goals:

  1. Improve user demand to stake with Lido and receive a staking token
  2. Improve liquidity and network effect of the domain-specific staking token in both Defi and Cefi
  3. Provide stakers the best yield, incl. capturing the maximum possible MEV. Especially on chains without a Flashbots equivalent, this is a very difficult challenge
  4. Improve the quality and diversity of node operators
  5. Improve the trustlessness of the system

We believe engaging Hasu as Strategic Advisor will increase the odds of reaching these objectives.

On Hasu: He currently leads Strategy at Flashbots, is a research collaborator at Paradigm, hosts the Uncommon Core podcast, and participates as a delegate in MakerDAO. For more information, see https://hasu.blog/.

Objectives and responsibilities

Hasu’s goals & responsibilities as a strategic advisor would be

  1. Assist the Lido leadership team with advice on strategic decisions whenever requested
  2. Help with communication, such as The Road to Trustless Ethereum Staking - which Hasu wrote in collaboration with Georgios Konstantopoulos and the Lido team
  3. Represent Lido in podcasts and the media
  4. Help Lido identify potential investments and strategic partnerships, and execute on them
  5. Participate as a delegate and help decentralize Lido’s governance

For the past year, Hasu has already been advising Lido on an informal basis. We believe that his knowledge about PoS and MEV market structure can be a valuable asset over the next years, which will be decisive for Lido’s success or failure.

The average time investment will be 4-8 hours per month.

Compensation

The proposed compensation for this strategic advisory is 600,000 LDO vesting over 3 years, through a yet-to-be-formed Lido Foundation.

That represents 0.06% of the token supply, a fairly standard market rate for a strategic advisor in a Series B+ startup.

If Hasu is not delivering on the above objectives and responsibilities, the Lido DAO can decide to terminate this engagement at any time.

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Hasu’s input, when we have it, is right on point, clean, concise and insightful.

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We’re supportive of this.

I have collaborated with Hasu on multiple comms pieces incl. The Road to Trustless Ethereum Staking and the(On Staking Pools and Staking Derivatives - Paradigm. He’s a clear thinker with valuable insights.

Would be very excited to have him on board to provide strategic value to Lido moving forward.

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.06% of a Series B startup is meaningfully lower than .06% of Lido. We believe Series B companies are valued lower. We are estimating between $100M - $300M, so .06% would be between $60K-180K, while .06% of Lido at current prices is ~$2.3 million ($780K per year over three years or $8,125 per hour based on 8 hour expectation). The advisor of a startup also has to work towards a liquidity event, thus effectively “earning” their compensation and upside, with illiquid equity also serving as a retentive vehicle.

To provide context, a median full-time Chief Strategy Officer at a post-series B startup makes about $285K in cash. Median equity ownership is also about 1% (lets assume $500K at series B valuation). Total compensation is about $785K (or $1.35 million over three years).

We are not in a position to advise on whether or not this should be pursued - that is a decision the community ultimately has to make. We simply want to ensure a fair process and we are providing data so the community is informed of the expected cost relative to market.

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

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I think that for Lido the expert strategic input is both highly valuable and really hard to find. The amount of context it takes to provide insight is overwhelming, and those insights have asymmetric leverage for the projects of Lido’s size. I would be looking forward for this proposal & would be really happy in case it passes & Hasu joins Lido as Strategic Advisor.

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Thank you for the analysis. I think $8,125 per hour is much too high, specially since I expect LIDO’s price to be much higher in the near future, never mind in 3 years. LIDO is not a start up, in the crypto world LIDO is as bluechip as it gets. While I have great respect for HASU and welcome his advice on LIDO’s future, I think a more reasonable rate should be negotiated.

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I am YJ from DeFiance Capital and we support this proposal. Hasu is a respected thought leader in this industry, having him onboard as a Strategic Advisor of Lido will be extremely beneficial.

I think that Hasu (with his reach and influence) can help add value to Lido by improving user demand, work on Lido’s liquidity & TVL, and the quality of node operators. Hasu has actually been helping the Lido closely prior to this proposal. (before $LDO went up 100% the past month) and we think that 0.06% of the token supply is a fair compensation.

Happy to discuss with other community members on this matter!

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I think Hasu is a great person to have more involved in Lido. He’s got a deep understanding of how incentives work in this space as well as a willingness to explicitly call out when they lead to parasitic behaviour.

With Lido being in a position where it needs to ensure its continued growth, but also address concern about rapid growth leading to negative consequences, Hasu is exactly the type of person you want as a strategic advisor.

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I like the idea to have Hasu as an advisor for Lido. He already contributed to Lido during several strategic session that was very insightful for the team.

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Appreciate and welcome all of these kinds of insights and strongly urge C3 Group to continue to contribute more of this on an increasing basis. We are working on building better compensation schemes organization-wide as we scale out our contributor base and further advice of this sort would be welcomed.

What is special about Hasu and this particular role is how Hasu has proven himself as a good-faith actor within the ecosystem over time. With Lido playing such an important role in the Ethereum sphere, bringing on strategic advisors like Hasu who are aligned with the mission and the ethics of the organization is critical. Hasu is not just any advisor that is for sale on the market - he is very selective of the kinds of projects he engages with.

The compensation figures may be unusual for outside of crypto where many candidates are qualified for the job, though in this space, there are simply a select few that are qualified, aligned, and also interested in engaging in such a way.

Strongly in favor of this proposal.

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In favor of the proposal, can’t comment if compensation is appropriate or not.

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I’m confident that Hasu will bring a lot of expertise, he has already provided very insightful feedback that was clearly useful for the protocol and has made a number of extremely valuable contributions. Will be excited to see him joining the DAO as an advisor.

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It’s nice to see people like Hasu as an advisor and spokesperson for the Lido.
I am categorically in favor of this proposal.
Hope Hasu has enough time to accomplish the tasks that have been voiced!

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The snapshot poll for Hasu to join Lido as a Strategic Advisor has passed: Snapshot

We are honored and excited to have Hasu begin contributing to Lido in a more formal capacity. Hasu’s tenure as an advisor to Lido shall officially begin as of the end of the Snapshot poll, as of Apr 13, 2022, 10:00 AM CEST.

Lido’s legal structuring work to interface with real-world persons via formalized contracts is currently still underway, and thus a formal contract in writing cannot be ratified between Hasu and an incorporated entity (“Lido Legal Entity”) at this time. We expect incorporation to be completed within the next 3-5 weeks at which point a formal contract shall be ratified between said legal entity (“Lido Legal Entity”) and Hasu. This contract shall recognize Hasu’s start date as a Strategic Advisor as of Apr 13, 2022, 10:00 AM CEST as his contribution.

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love @Hasu i think this already passed and am very excited

in the alternative, is it possible to vote to kick entities and people out of the DAO?

for example, jump capital / jump crypto -

(1) facilitators of the LUNA ponzi, likely engaged in racketeering (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act - Wikipedia) with the LFG, do kwon, etc.

(2) clearly have no business managing this type of capital and resources

(3) they have a fiduciary duty to their share holders which is inopposite of the crypto ethos of the sovereign individual - hence they are regular dumpooooors of the LDO token

(4) Hasu, our fearless advisor states there is a special place in hell for people that promoted the LUNA ponzi (which this also applies to 3ac as well)

Luna worse than bitconnect

1 Like