when we engaged back at the start of the year we would be engaging in regular market making activities once the LBP had concluded and we set up the liquidity pool for you. Some time has passed and we have not billed the DAO for any of the interim tasks we have executed. That is both a sign of goodwill to help out however we can as well as that we did not find ourselves in a position to effectively market make on chain. We now come to the point where we are active liquidity providers on a CEX and, therefore, bill accordingly. We will use this as the starting point of our 6 month term. All the reports and tasks that have been executed and shared have been pro bono.
We will send these invoices at the end of every month and serves as payment for the month to come. Hence this payment serves as the payment for September.
Title
Proposal to pay for Artis’ market making
Proposal
Transfer 5,000 USDT/C to Artis Global LTD.
Purpose: On-chain and CEX market making for the month of September
Amount: 5,000 USDT/C (five thousand)
Chain: Ethereum Mainnet / Arbitrum
Artis Global LTD. Receiving Address (Ethereum Mainnet - Arbitrum): 0x420B7A32ae9294372786ed5120AD9FeB6bd99128
No link to this discussion in the on-chain proposal.
No link to previous discussions about market making, nor of any discussion of price linked in this post.
To me, this is extremely poor communication from day zero. Transparency and accountability are a must. I’m not seeing any from you guys, and I haven’t even started reviewing anything you might or might have been doing on market making because there is no possible information we are getting from you, the risk you’re taking, the impact you’re making…
To add to what @Lanski has said, it seems like we are in a position that is not currently covered by any agreements. The initial agreement was from 1st March - 31 August which we have obviously gone past (and the forum discussion related to that proposal was not conclusive with the last comment being a request for a revised proposal.)
Whilst I do appreciate the goodwill of not charging us until now, we should formalise the relationship going forward so that at the very least we know when the term will end and can arrange new votes as appropriate.
Before re-raising the payment proposal for the next 6 months, it would be great to see the details @Lanski has requested above.
I am not sure if this is covered, but I would also be interested on where we are with a coinmmarketcap listing and also the telegram group where you answer questions.
I saw in the TG chat that Hendo felt 0x36 already voted for this and that Artis is owed this payment. However, I’m not sure it’s as clear as Artis is asserting it is.
I might not be reading everything correctly, but I think 0x36 voted to use Artis for an initial period only, and you add this in your post above:
However, Hendo’s comments in the TG group today seem to contradict this where he stated:
“This proposal is simply a ‘Hey, the DAO voted us in previously, we’re here to collect payment for what was voted on’” (it didn’t feel appropriate to provide the screenshot)
I can’t tell if you’re saying 0x36 owes you funds for previous services, or if Artis is asking for 0x36 to renew the service agreement for the next 6 months.
I don’t believe the DAO has explicitly confirmed it would like to continue the relationship with Artis beyond the initial period, although the current vote might be serving as a sort of proxy referendum on that question.
For context, Artis was paid 5,000 USDC and 300,000 SHU in Proposal #12.
The 300,000 SHU was for pre-LBP advisory
The 5,000 USDC was for the first month of post-LBP service
If Artis doesn’t feel that they are owed more for services to date (as implied in your post), then perhaps the conversation should be about what terms you’re proposing for future services.
Apologies if I’m conflating things or not understanding, but in my defense it’s really tough to untangle this, and I’ve paid pretty close attention.
Perhaps we should start from a clean point of reference at this moment by gathering the data together here.
Could you clarify the following:
What were the exact terms of the original agreement, including duration and compensation structure?
What specific services has Artis provided since the initial agreement?
What do you feel you are owed, and for what time period?
What assets of 0x36 does Artis currently hold?
What are the proposed next steps, including any terms for future services if applicable?
For starters, apologies for not getting back here directly. I have been really under the weather.
I appreciate the concerns raised and coming to this post for actual discourse. I invite you all to think along about the situation we find ourselves in and how we got here in the first place.
We would like to start by clarifying the situation and apologize for the limited amount of information provided in the Decent proposal. The proposal covers payments for work that was already voted on, approved, and most of it completed, but out of courtesy, no payments were requested earlier as the impact was still being assessed. Now, we are simply seeking the payment for that work as originally planned.
We recommend proceeding with this proposal as the economic parameters and transactions remain the same. However, if the community feels strongly about it, a new proposal can be raised, though it would result in the same economic terms and outcomes.
I will attempt to link through to as many of the relevant materials as possible. I have left the pre-LBP advisory out of it, but know that we have been awarded a SHU allocation and haven’t touched that since.
Artis as a market maker
This was the discourse post to tackle the intricacies of the initial agreement between 0x36 and Artis:
TLDR: 6 months of initial term at $5,000.00 a month.
the following is a quote from the proposal:
‘A post-LBP market maker will help Shutter DAO 0x36 transition from the LBP to market liquidity by creating DEX pools, securing listing on CEXs, provide liquidity for efficient trading and minimal price impact, and other related services.’
From that perspective, we have never held back in helping out with providing any of these services except for active back-and-forth trading of the liquidity pool. The premise was to cover the liquidity pool until we could swiftly get on a centralized exchange to fully focus efforts there and keep arbitrage between the different venues to a minimum.
on-chain activity
We executed a shielded deployment of the liquidity pool right after the LBP concluded:
We deviated to a ‘cheaper’ alternative pool from the main V2 Uni pool in active discourse with the DAO
We have made ourselves available for the following premise that is still ongoing: Decent
Ongoing attempts to connect with a reputable CEX for SHU listing
The current CEXs that feature SHU for trading are all free listings and not something the DAO has ever paid a penny for (or really had a say in preventing it from being listed).
We leveraged our contacts at CEXs in order to come to the stage of a proposal for a listing but we ran into the recurring issue that no CEX (that’s worth pursuing) is willing to openly commit to a pre listing announcement on a forum such as this and put a price next to it.
This limited the options we had to get SHU listed in decent time after the LBPs conclusion. We have been helped by someone closely connected to the DAO to start with activity on BingX, which actually yielded some results and we were happy to continue this route until we can get a party like Gate to commit to getting a proposal on a forum. This is still very difficult because they don’t have a publicly known amount of cash that it would take to list on the platform. Gate serving as an example of how this generally works for their tier of CEX and up.
Let’s call this miscellaneous:
I am seeing comments about a lack of transparency where instead we have always been available for input and our general help (we spun up a Telegram for that, and no one has ever gone unanswered). Our commitment to being above board should be reflected in the fact that we organised a call with literally anyone who cared to listen in to make sure everything is clear from the start.
the advisory surrounding general token health and sustainability through the slow periods and general best practices on market has all been readily available to folks such as Brainbot employees
Coingecko applications and more importantly maintenance thereof has gone through us
we have chipped in on the parameters and suggested paths for both liquidity pools as well as the ongoing conversations there were around the treasury management for 0x36.
Reports
We have attempted to keep the DAO up to speed by providing weekly updates here:
That also covered the balance from week to week which we have in our custody both on chain as well as eventually on CEX.
For perfect clarity, Artis currently holds:
on chain: 80,000.00 USDC and 399,978.00 SHU (in the wallet we doxed to the DAO: 0x108769199a98c65e68d2b9b5edc8d9464853a729)
formerly on BingX: 21,712.44 USDT and 306,382.00 SHU →
this has been withdrawn to JLH’s custody in light of the hack that took place on BingX
Current Situation
The Decent proposal served as a continuation of our service, which had once been greenlit already. We just did not want to assume payment of that yet as we felt there was no significant upside to adding high-frequency trading to the mix. That is to say, not just Artis but any market-making effort that would be focused on trading would have been a waste of time and funds.
We did not feel comfortable cashing a check for that as we are also in this for the long run. There is no point in us draining funds from the DAO and leave with a bad taste after 6 months of initial term. That is the only reason we have not charged beyond the first month.
As we have entered the final quarter of the year in a market where everyone is at least optimistic about what this sprint has to bring (especially after BTC’s record-breaking September), we want to dive into the proper trading side of things as it will be to the DAOs benefit.
This means that we are also going to be receiving payment (under the exact same constraints and parameters as the initial agreement). Absolutely nothing has changed except for moving the date of engagement for Artis to September.
At the end of everything that was said and done both on Telegram as well as here, it looks as if payment has now become optional instead of mandatory. Artis simply wants to continue what we have been doing and adding the trading on top for the pre-determined monthly retainer distributed to us each 30-day servicing period.
If the DAO is firmly against this then we part ways here and the 5 months that went without payment should then be straightened out between us. That is not because I firmly believe this is the right way to go about it, but that is under the premise of enforcing a previously approved contract we engaged in.