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Beanstalk University Class #55

Date
December 13, 2022
Timestamps
• 0:00 Intro • 0:07 Is there a difference between unique Sower and unique Stalk holders? • 7:06 When will Beanstalk be complete from a development standpoint? • 15:08 Should we focus on building an entirely new business on top of Beanstalk or focus on integrating with current projects? • 15:56 Does Publius have any initial feedback on the performance of Root? • 21:08 Will Beans be used in the future more for its positive carry aspects or permissionless aspects? • 23:52 What is the general sentiment of the team? • 25:28 Why do AMMs currently suck? • 26:22 Will CBDC be in direct competition with Beanstalk? • 27:04 What is the next big improvement to AMMs? • 29:22 What good does a CBDC do on-chain?
Type
Beanstalk University

Recordings

Meeting Notes

Is there a difference between unique Sower and unique Stalk holders?

  • To expand on this, Mod323 says if all of the protocols Stalk is held by one person then the protocol is centralized but does it matter if all of the Pods are held by one person? Publius thinks that when Pods become harvestable, it is expected for someone to sell some of the Beans and put deposit some Beans.
  • Publius adds that the Feild moves very fast in the grand scheme of things, it possibly could be moving too fast. Publius thinks it is worth considering lowering the amount the Temperature can change per season

When will Beanstalk be complete from a development standpoint?

  • Publius is unsure what complete even means. A way you could define the project as being complete is all of the code necessary to implement some core features into Beanstalk. Publius adds that is it unclear how much of Beanstalk tech stack should be paid for by the DAO. Publius cannot think of a project that is “complete” even Bitcoin is not complete. Publius does not think the DAO should put the project into hibernation mode if the general market conditions are good. They add that a bear market is when you should be building.

Should we focus on building an entirely new business on top of Beanstalk or focus on integrating with current projects?

  • Publius is curious about what projects people would want to integrate with because in their opinion the current capabilities for Defi within the EVM are lacking. Publius thinks there has not been a lot of invitation within Defi, and Defi is almost good for nothing and that is why people are stuck with using centralized companies.

Does Publius have any initial feedback on the performance of Root?

  • The Root token has a good amount of liquity, and there is demand for Beans to bet with Roots.

Will Beans be used in the future more for its positive carry aspects or permissionless aspects?

  • Publius thinks it is all in one, the currency that brings in the age of Defi will be just a single currency. The choice of the market to use the best currency is most likely a winner takes most situations in Publius’ opinion. Currently, decentralized currencies do not compete with centralized ones

What is the general sentiment of the team?

  • Publius is not a fan of the term the team because it is unclear who the team is referring to. A lot of people are excited about the work they are doing but also are dishearten about the chatter in the Discord. Publius thinks the chatter in the Discord is depressing.

Why do AMMs currently suck?

  • From a user experience perspective, they really suck. If you are providing liquidity you are guaranteed to experience the worst flow possible, because by definition you are a dumb trader. In addition, in order to update you need to submit a new transaction, so it is very expensive

Will CBDC be in direct competition with Beanstalk?

  • Publius says it is hard to define direct competition but since Beanstalk is already competing with USD it would be safe to say they will compete

What is the next big improvement to AMMs?

  • A big solution for AMMs would be some sort of order book that can update positions without having to send a translation. Wells are being implemented in a way such that the curves that are being provided is a result of functions that take in some input

What good does a CBDC do on-chain?

  • Publius said now the government can prevent you from spending your money at Starbucks. They add it is one step up from USDC, but there are a lot of downsides. It is unclear why they need a blockchain.

Transcript

how are you Publius doing well mod how are you I'm doing well here thank you Publius maybe I can start um this class with a question um and and that is is that a difference uh do you think between unique solvers and unique uh stockholders um and if yes how does that let's say impact you know maybe the the how the protocol functions and what what the protocol is maybe from you know a decentralized point of view let's say so you know very quickly we can say that if if we only have one stockholder that owns all of the protocol then that is you know make it makes the protocol to an extent centralized but does it matter all of the protocols that it probably just from the nature of the system it's on the one hand it's possible that when the pods become harvestable they're all sold such that there's a true bifurcation between sewers and Silo members but in reality it's much more likely that people lend beans to Beanstalk and when they harvest they sell some of them but also deposit some portion of those harvestable pods Into The Silo and therefore there's there's some high expected correlation between the distribution of lenders in the field and the distribution of Silo members over time so I feel like a wide distribution of sewers and Silo members are both important to the success of being stuck but it's more that the low concentration of ownership of The Silo is important uh and if there's only one or a few lenders to the in the field in general then it's unlikely that over time The Silo will remain uh significantly uh low in concentration of ownership okay so I think what you're saying is that not let's say not say the risk but the downside of having um very few um solvers is that it may impact um the the side of distribution in the future once those you know pods Harvest okay my follow-up question is on also in the field do you think um what if the field is too slow in in adjusting the temperature so if it's too fast we understand you know what what the risk that may come with that with you know the temperature rising you know too quickly if it's too slow and it takes you know a lot a long time and if we take it to the extreme and maybe you know it may never attract anyone in our lifetime but it would attract you know the next the next generation or so is there a real risk in in the field being too slow moves pretty quick in the grand scheme of things right three percent or even one percent an hour we're talking about every month it's changing the interest rate hundreds of percent and therefore over a couple of months the interest rate is going to change very significantly uh so don't think that it's realistic that under the current implementation it moves to flow I think it's much more possible that it moves too fast such that when there's nothing substantively changing from an economics perspective the protocol starts to bid at a crazy high interest rate like for example right now the price is at 97 cents uh or about there and there's a question as to whether or not it's worth being stuck paying any additional premium uh in temperature over what it currently pays as opposed to just having it wait right now until the stock gauge system is implemented because clearly that will also have some effect on Peg maintenance and so there's a question as to whether or not the what the the temperature can change too fast uh just as much as whether it can change too slow and think that it's much harder for it to move too slow in practice than it is for it to move too fast yeah I think what I meant is by too slow is not that it's too slow now I agree with you that it's it's me you can argue that it's fast what if we reduce it so instead of one and three maybe let's say it's half and one or or something like that you're talking about the the stock system or the payment no the temperature so we would we make the temperature increase even slower or the change is even slower than what it is now yeah I think that's worth considering ultimately it probably makes sense to have as as has been discussed recently in other I think maybe it was the most recent class there's some question as to how much time spent away from Peg as well as the the price differences from Peg or the also the debt level uh and and the time and magnitude of the deviations of price and debt level from tag those should be considered in or probably be considered in some capacity in the ultimate Peg maintenance model that Beanstalk employs but for the time being there's still some architectural work that needs to be implemented in order to facilitate uh the changing of stock and seeds based on some gauge system okay do you think if it's too slow in increasing so you know let's say it increases at 0.01 instead of three and that makes it look really slow is there a risk if it's too slow in increasing the temperature that you know maybe silo or or Bean holders would give up and certain things in the system okay at both extremes if you make the field worthless or uh effectively wordless then yes you'd expect paint stock to suffer as a result of that given that the field really is the the core of the peg maintenance model as much as uh converts within the silo have started to have an impact the core of Beanstalk stability to maintain the peg really does derive from its its ability to borrow in the field so if the field is rendered useless through changes to the temperature changes uh it's unlikely that Beanstalk will be unharmed okay all right that's that's a question that I had um we can we can stop here to give it a minute and and see what questions we have from from the audience all right Jesse or Jesu asks when can the project be considered complete code wise they worry that all the costs will deplete the remaining liquidity before the crypto Market revive and I think what by the cost they mean the cost of development of the protocol well there are two separate questions in theory or maybe one is a question one is a comment when can the project be considered complete code wise well there's a a question as to what it even means for the project to be complete on the one hand Beanstalk could reach a point where the tag maintenance model is implemented uh to a point where it's it's upgrades are permissionless uh or or the governance system that supports them don't require bips so it can be somewhat passive and all of the the solidity code that supports that system has been implemented uh that's one way to consider the project being completed another is that there are related uh pieces of solidity code like Wells like pipeline uh there there are probably a couple other pieces to the to the financial stack that without without being stuck it's unlikely to create real utility or fulfill it through potential and so another way to define the project being complete is the all of the solidity code necessary to implement some sort of core D5 stack that integrates Beanstalk uh that that's another way to consider the project complete code wise now there's all sorts of other work in terms of indexing the on-chain data and and and creating for example an SDK to to build on top of the the on-chain information uh that also probably needs to exist in order to make it really easy for businesses to start to build on top of the Beanstalk Tech and financial stack if you will uh but it's unclear how much of that development needs to be paid for by the Dow uh it's also unclear how much of that should be paid for by the Dow versus through other funding means or what what is potentially available to those people that want to build some of the pieces of this stack uh it's not exactly clear to us what the Finish Line looks like but it's at least the path towards the Finish Line appears to be being more and more defined but you know it's it's worth it's worth taking a taking a step back here and realizing that when we originally deployed Beanstalk we thought the work was done and that was it and both in terms of improving and working on Beanstalk which now we're in year two or year year three even since we originally started working on Beanstalk in any capacity and there's still a lot of work to be done uh or that can be done and there's also lots of other related work across the D5 stack that originally was not at all on our rate but now it seems highly pertinent to ultimately completing so yeah unclear what this project really refers to uh if it's just Beanstalk then it's probably the first thing that we mentioned if it's the things that are necessary for being stuck to to succeed economically it might be a a larger definition of that uh with regards to the comment that you worry about the cost depleting the remaining liquidity before the crypto Market revives to some extent it's a very reasonable concern and there is an infinite liquidity uh would would just from our what would comment that if you look at the history of of the Dow and the minting of beings by the doubt to fund certain projects uh it seems like at the moment the minting is lower than previously relative to liquidity uh and at the returns from the minting seem to be much higher on a being per being basis if you will so a lot uh a lot to look at from a a value perspective at least uh if you're trying to understand what what the beans are being spent on and how much value is being returned for them feel like now more than ever there's a lot of evidence of that as a as a member of the Dow I've been very pleased with the way all of that's been going on and uh yeah it's unclear what it's unclear what the what the Finish Line looks like and and to some extent there may not be enough uh liquidity to fund everything and that's perfectly okay and that's one of the nice things about the Dow only approving quarterly budgets historically is that it's a very short leash uh and there's not some sort of infinite uh printer and perpetuity or tax in perpetuity on the system to fund development forever these are things that we've advocated strongly against in the past and therefore this is a very healthy question to be asking on a recurring basis Publix can you think of another another project or a protocol or anything in general that you think can be an example of what we can say is you know complete or or this is this is it the job is done of another protocol shoot uh well it's like Bitcoin one of one of the things that you can consider even though you know there's still work being done on bitcoin so it's not really fair I guess the real point is the level of changes that can be expected right what is the socially acceptable uh like what's in the Overton window of things to change if that makes sense uh uh I think that's something that is more of a social thing than anything so yeah interesting interesting question okay and um and Jesse um follows up and says that they hope that there is a goal somewhere after which the project will be put into hibernation mode to see if the remaining liquidity and I think the answer to that purpose is is what you mentioned or said and is that the bips or the budgets are approved every quarter so the Dow has the opportunity to reassess every quarter and you know make a decision from there on this end would think it would be incredibly foolish for hibernation mode to happen whereas there's a certainly a point at which there's a lot less development that needs to happen uh but the idea that the market is going to dictate how much development is happening it's really foolish from our perspective the goal is to build during the bear Market not try to build during a bull market that's that doesn't make any sense you build all the time and the market does whatever it does they're independent okay I see um okay Backus asks I've been questioning whether we should focus so much on entirely new business and products being built on top of Beanstalk Tech stack it seems like there's a lot of existing projects that could partner with and integrate that already have users in traffic might it be a good idea to step up Dev efforts rather than counting on bean sprout to incubate businesses that drives growth would be curious what what are the projects that you're talking about Bacchus that's from our perspective the the current capabilities in the evm for D fire lacking to put it lightly and the projects that have some liquidity and features are not interested in integrating beans uh in our experience terrible asks is there any initial feedback on the performance of root from us while the root token has I think a couple hundred thousand dollars of liquidity uh there's been a decent amount of demand for beans to bet with roots in the Paradox pools that's been pretty cool to see some sort of demand for beans because of the utility of beans as opposed to fairly speculative demand even if the utility is to speculate on Sports outcomes uh it's not speculating on the future demand for being so that's pretty cool and otherwise there's a lot of work that still needs to get done ultimately for the real utility of being stuck to be realized so hopefully uh the fact that the root token was deployed and immediately a another protocol decided they wanted to use it that's an indication that the economics here are are pretty strong uh but beyond that don't don't think there's too much to read into it at this point and the bean pod has um one of one of the episodes is with the founder of of paradox and in it there's a discussion or they talk about how the root token which of course is is a silo deposit rapid um enables and facilitates uh bets that you would otherwise expect them to be too expensive or unrealistic uh to happen so if you're betting on something that would happen six months down the road it's too expensive to lock you know um um on Capital waiting for those six months and then and then figuring out what is what is the outcome so something like root enables enables that and and that is pretty exciting to see okay we have a few comments um or thoughts on you know spending let's say resources and capital on Business Development or not but otherwise we are at the end of the of the tunnel chat well Jesse comments that Beanstalk can't revive the D5 space single-handedly save the resource in life for the next bull market fundamentally disagree if you look at the structure if you're really paying attention to what's unwinding right now and put ftx's fraud aside there's been over the past five years basically an immense amount of Leverage built up in the crypto ecosystem largely deriving from the gbtc trade and there's basically been no real innovation in D5 whatsoever so to some extent if we go back to when we originally were working on Beanstalk we thought the only thing D5 was missing was the currency uh at this point in time I feel like that's not the case at all and D5 is missing basically everything and apparently D5 is good for almost nothing and that's why people are stuck using FTX and binance and other centralized exchanges so just strongly strongly disagree with that and feel like being stock facilitates for really the first time any sort of real economic activity on top of ethereum and in order for that to actually be realized there's a lot of other Tech that does need to get built for Beanstalk to actually work and therefore again this goes back to the the question about what does it mean for the project to be completed even if Beanstalk has a great Peg maintenance model if there's no Tech that facilitates people to use Beanstalk because D5 doesn't support deposits and pods and beyond that the the current amms suck uh there's there's just there's no real reason to expect that beans will actually get adopted for any reason other than speculation and if you start building once people are speculating that's too late so the goal is to create real utility and have people using beans because there's utility created by Beanstalk and this is very much a chicken and egg and there are people that are currently working on laying eggs even though they're not tickets and that's easier said than done but that does cost some money feel like the amount of development work that's coming out of the Beanstalk ecosystem is amazing and beyond that uh it's this is not going to happen overnight but it's also not going to take 10 years so there's just a question as to optimizing for time and money and I agree this is a very healthy conversation to be having but don't think that the goal is to just not build the tech that needs to get built the goal is to build it as efficiently and quickly as possible those are two different things probably some this is maybe more of um like like a philosophical question I guess where do you think the use of um or or maybe it is both it's not one or the other um do you do you think the the majority of the use case of beans would come from its positive care in nature or from it being let's say um censorship resistant or permissionless I think it's all in one ultimately the currency the cryptocurrency that will bring in the the the age of D5 is is it's probably going to be a single currency there's people working to build a Bitcoin based economy I guess in theory there's people building an ethereum-based economy we would argue that the tech that would support a beanstalk-based economy is the exact same Tech as detective would support an ethereum-based economy and therefore really just an economics question that the market will sort out but the the concept is that the choice of the market of the best currency to use is probably going to be a winner take all or certainly a winner take most situation and there's no real economic activity happening on top of Bitcoin and or ether at the moment and we would pose the question why and we have a thesis which is that the original thesis was that there was a too high carrying costs on on low volatility block finative assets but apparently the thesis is that basically none of the financial Primitives that are needed to facilitate real economic activity are competitive with centralized Alternatives so the censorship resistance and the positive carry both don't even really get get included until the the currency can actually be used for the same things that that off-chain currencies can be used for so there's a lot of there's a I mean you're asking more of a theoretical economics question as to what's more important we don't even know and won't have a chance to find out until beans can be used for everything you can use dollars for yeah I think the other differentiated as well as is it for the cons to be stable um when when we were comparing comparing it to bitcoin and ether but the the market will decide that as the point yes okay I see some folks typing let's give them a minute and see the questions so Wendy has a comment uh followed with a question it says the whole team is doing an amazing job congrats on all the progress so far what's the genital sentiment of the team do you have do you have a comment publish what do you think again I'm a fan of the concept of the team uh even though uh as a Michigan fan both champ Bachelor the team the team the team so counter-intuitively love the team but again the team is a little bit too vague uh the I think a lot of people are very excited about the work that they're doing but a lot of people are also very very disappointed and disheartened by the the chatter and the Discord which is really the only place that the community interacts with the people that are actually doing lots of the work and I mean at least on this and feel like the chatter and the Discord is just really demoralizing and depressing and feel like that sentiment is shared by almost everyone so the on the one hand people love the work and on the other hand it's really really painful frankly uh to spend any time in the Discord and a lot of people are paid to spend time in the Discord and and answer people's questions and therefore that's you know that can be quite painful otherwise would add that um dropped a new song today um that's in the announcements maybe I can drop it in the town hall chat as well and that's that's a light-hearted song quasimat asks can you say more about why amms suck currently and what improvements should be made so the real the real issue is from a user experience perspective if you're providing liquidity on the one hand you're basically guaranteed to be experiencing the worst flow possible uh because you're you're by definition like a dumb Trader if you're providing liquidity the amm is just there independent of the market movement so you're you're always getting traded against based on what the actual market price is and separately in order to update your positions you need to update it and send it send a transaction so it's very expensive to maintain provide liquidity and providing liquidity is not profitable so therefore it's it's really not it doesn't make sense to do farmer then asks saw something today about Brazil creating a cbdc in 2024. do you think cbdc's will be in direct competition with Beanstalk direct competition hard to Define what that means but I feel like given that being stuck is already basically competing with the US dollar that applies to any cbdc John you shared a comment saying that you know he generally comes to the Discord for Good Vibes and a good conversation and he agrees that when you know when it's below peg people are or say some people are pissed off so populist going back to the amm bit and you said the user experience where you know currently the way they are today is that you know you're just trading against a curve let's say do you think this is um the next let's say like like Improvement to an emm or do you see something else that could be um you know tick tick mm to the next level let's say well the the basic thing that the amms were originally solving was the need to frequently update your positions but that creates the toxic flow problem so the question is whether you can create some sort of order book that is updating without the need to send transactions so Wells are in theory being implemented in such a way where the liquidity curves that are being provided uh are the the result of functions that take in some input and those inputs can be some Oracle price so you can actually bid a pricing curve or some order that is a function of the price itself and uh therefore you can basically prevent yourself from having any uh toxic flow when providing liquidity and and provide liquidity in a truly customizable fashion so that's the hope of Wells it's still uh unclear how long the fully fledged version is away but hoping it hoping uh you know hoping that's uh within the next couple of uh months that'll be ready to go and I feel like that'll be a major major Improvement in in dexes in general thank you for the answer and join your followed up by saying that is encouraging or you know it's great seeing that the Dow votes uh together um and you know I I agree with that that sometimes it may be a few members who have loud voices but the the real voice at the end of the day is you know can be measured let's say in voting or voting governance okay um we we are at the end of the Town Hall chat again let's give it a minute and see if others have other questions in the meanwhile a problem maybe we can talk a little bit more about cbdc's what value will a cbdc add if it's on chain is it just that now you can use it on chain now the the now the Federal Reserve can prevent you from spending money at Starbucks because they don't have a good ESP score I meant as like you as someone who you know is is on chain why would you uh buy a cbdc the the point of you know let's say that I could I I mean if I if you want me to steal me in the argument it's because it's one step better than usdc where you still have exposure to censorship by a centralized party you prefer to be censored by the government than some company and there's no risk of default in the cbdc because it's issued by the issuer of the money itself as opposed to issued by some centralized company so there's some benefit over current Solutions but there's a lot of a lot of potential downsides associated with cbdc as well and what and why you as the blockchain then can't you like can't you just like send money over you know I'm unclear why you would need a blockchain in that case but if you're using a blockchain it may be helpful to have dollars on chain or some you know currency own chain it should buy the central bank but unclear if there's a a Venn diagram intersection there for what would actually benefit users of blockchain technology and what the governments would allow the cbdc to be useful unclear all right let's let's give it let's give it a minute okay I think we may have run out of questions today Publius I guess it is you know if all questions and are answered them that is a good thing any any closing comments on your end what are your thoughts what are you thinking in general there's there's really no way to know if the stuff that is being built is the right stuff and if it's not even if the core Peg maintenance model of Beanstalk works it's unclear what Beanstalk is good for at this point and it may just be that it's too early but there is a you know going back to a question about the temperature moving too far it's like well if it takes three years for Beanstalk to have real utility what's the temperature at which Beanstalk will have in three years if there's no real utility for beans yeah unclear what's the what's the size of Beanstalk at that point if it's all speculative demand there's going to be a lot of volatility there whereas uh if it's all utility-based demand there's probably going to be a lot less volatility by comparison even if it's still a lot of volatility so from our perspective it's clear that defy isn't ready for Beanstalk yet and therefore this Plata Works within D5 in general that needs to get done and we're encouraged by root and there are a couple other projects that are hopefully uh gonna get going soon or get announced soon or don't really know what what the right thing to comment on is but are quite encouraged by the Beanstalk ecosystem or the Beanstalk Brain Trust and people stepping up and trying to build cool and we're excited to be surrounded by people doing that and happy to just be a part of it thank you Publius and I believe many of the farmers or most most of the farmers if not all share share the same sentiment thank you all for joining us in today's class thank you Publius for taking the time to answer all questions and we'll see you guys next week take care Matt