I am all for mutually beneficial partnerships and would be supportive of one with Olympus. However, there are a couple of points that I would like to make as I cannot support the current proposal.
I want to recognize not only the young stage Aura is at, but even more importantly the huge success it has had in one of the toughest environments to launch. I would generally advise against selling/exchanging treasury AURA at this stage given it’s position as one of the most successful high growth projects at the moment. If i was holding most other assets in a treasury swapping for an asset like AURA would make a ton of sense.
The exceptions would be deals where there is a clear benefit to the development/growth of AURA that could not be achived otherwise. Unfortunately, I do not see anything in the proposal where OHM would be actively supporting the growth/development of AURA. The AURA obtained will dilute existing veAURA by ~1% and voting with the veAURA looks like it will go to support OHM and OHM partners. At a minimum some portion of the veAURA should be used to support AURA guages and build out the AURA ecosystem. There are other ways as well i.e. allocating bribes to AURA guages or Olympus supplying the OHM for a AURA/OHM pool and pledging votes/bribes to help support it. It could even be a deal where AURA could match votes/bribes. There are definitely a few different ways to propose something more beneficial.
I have to vote no on this as I don’t see a real partnership and from an asset swap perspective giving up a early successful high growth asset in AURA for an asset looking to be a mature stable asset does not make a ton of sense. If the later is the main driver, stable coins would be a better fit to fulfill this purpose.
I love Olympus and their community and would favor a partnership with them on fair terms that would be mutually beneficial from both our protocols perspectives.
I just did an hour long BadgerDAO office hours that amongst other things, explains why AURA is undervalued today. Give it a listen, this is why I don’t think it’s a good time to be considering selling treasury AURA right now.
I am interested if you have a similar argument for why gOHM is likely to increase significantly in price in the near future.
Here is a link to the real time model used in the talk: Grafana
At the top there is a link to a sheet you can play with.
A treasury swap executed in like 90 days with a 30 day TWAP may make more sense, or something like that, but I think it probably just makes sense to slow down with flogging AURA a little bit. It’s not mature yet, and is maturing quickly, and I am not aware of any immediate needs for capital nor does this really provide fast capital.
Glue from OlympusDAO - I’d like to take a moment to calibrate less around token valuations and pricing to move toward a conversation regarding ideal goals and outcomes.
Our goal with this activity focuses on bringing value to the Aura & Balancer ecosytem. Alongside the aforementioned items with Aura, we plan to:
Migrate substantial liquidity ($50M) for OHM-ETH-DAI to Balancer (as outlined in our OIP-103)
Bolster a new ETH-stable pool (ETH-DAI) with >$20M liquidity to help improve flows (the current largest ETH-USDC is $8M)
Direct new partners to join us in the Balancer ecosystem to benefit from Smart Order Routing (similarly enabling them to pursue activity within Aura as well)
Although this proposal centers on the swap, the activity seeks to express our commitment and alignment upfront with the respective communities. This swap does not preclude Olympus from pursuing further acquisition of AURA or BAL via direct market buy, bonds, bribes, or other mechanisms. We believe gOHM is a valuable treasury asset that can be used greatly (as outlined by the proposal); however, it does not feel like a productive use of time to argue the future valuation of tokens on the forum (admittedly, I am bullish on all three of our token prices, but I do not feel that is the strongest aspect to be discussed here). We strongly believe in working together within the DeFi ecosystem and hope to utilize swaps to strengthen our mutual successes.
We appreciate the spirited conversation and look forward to working together!
Welcome to the Balancer ecosystem! I believe we all share mutual interests and have a bright future. There are definitely benefits to having Olympus as part of the ecosystem and I think a partnership between Olympus and Aura can be mutually beneficial. The point that is missing for me is that the proposal lacks a direct benefit to AURA holders. I also understand your point about not talking about token valuations. However, with no clear support in the proposal for the direct growth/development/benefit of AURA the main basis to analyze the proposal is valuation/transactional based. I hope there can be some common ground / understanding around this point as I think there could be a solution that works for all involved. I only speak for myself, but I would love to see an Olympus/Aura partnership with explicit value going to each party. The current proposal seems one-sided with Olympus getting all of the direct benefits.
First time tuning in here, deal seems to be very much in Olympus favour.
I would say if for whatever reason we want to offload aura (best performing defi token recently) for strategic partners it should only be with those who have shown a vote of confidence in us and built along side us (Olympus has not).
I pick badger and btrfly , they are the only ones I believe can put the aura to good use (what’s stopping ohm from inverse bonding us? Or dumping us like they will with their cvx soon?) and I would be open to holding these 2 tokens in our treasury as they would now become indirectly exposed to our success. Thanks!
Frankly, this deal is incredibly one sided. This proposal easily could have included actions that would tangibly support the Aura ecosystem such as purchasing and staking auraBAL to help restore peg and have exposure to the fee earning potential of Aura. I think any reasonable person can understand how one sided the deal is when looking at the details.
To reiterate what was talked about earlier, even if the price stayed the same over the 14 day twap period, Olympus would still be getting a discount because of how thin Aura liquidity is on chain. In addition, vlAURA holders would be diluted by over 1% instantly if Olympus were to lock their swapped Aura. There is just no reason to do this imo.
If the goal is to diversify the treasury, we can very easily auction off Aura to raise money in stables which we can actually use without allowing projects to pay sub market price. Plus we can actually use the stables raised instead of it being locked for a year.
All discussion about Olympus product offerings are tangental to the asymmetries that remain unaddressed in this proposal. I respectfully ask to projects for treasury swaps to stop being the means of getting initially involved in these systems. Get involved first, then maybe a treasury swap will hold more weight once your role in the ecosystem is more developed.
Hey guys, thanks for all the feedback thus far. Appreciate the lively discussion on what’s best for the future of Aura.
Upon discussion with the Olympus team, the proposal’s authors have decided to listen to stakeholders and put the proposal on pause for now. Of note, this will not stop the discussions pertaining to depositing Balancer Pool Tokens into Aura, to allow Olympus to begin to accumulate AURA voting share. Our teams continue to explore ways to work together, starting with collaborating on analysis in deploying Olympus PCV to Aura. We intend on eventually returning to this forum with a new proposal when the market settles.
Olympus, in my personal view, remains one of the strongest communities in all of crypto, and it would be in our favor to be fully aligned with their contributors.
and btrfly 
, they are the only ones I believe can put the aura to good use (what’s stopping ohm from inverse bonding us? Or dumping us like they will with their cvx soon?) and I would be open to holding these 2 tokens in our treasury as they would now become indirectly exposed to our success. Thanks!