• Recordings
• Meeting Notes
• Development update
• Design update
• Marketing update
• Operations update
• Publius update
• Discussion around governance
• Transcript

Recordings

Meeting Notes

Development update

• The Wells code is currently in team review, looking to get in front of Halborn very shortly
• The Beanstalk repo has been changed to a mono-repo
• Claim and do X is being worked on to be implemented into the UI
• Brean is working on updating the zero withdrawal timer

Design update

• Finishing up additional capabilities for Claim and do X
• Working on documentation for design decisions around the Pod Market v2
• Hoping to work on design items for future BIPs such has the zero withdrawal timer and the Dutch auction

Marketing update

• Working on breaking down some technical developments to share in various forms
• A video is in the works about Beanstalk

Operations update

• BIP-31 and BIP-32 did not pass, Guy would like to highlight that there was not a lot of discussion around these BIPs before they were purposed. They go on to say that it might be worth it to consider extending the budget BIPs to fund Beanstalk Farms for six months
• The plan is to repurpose the budget BIP at the same time as another BIP ie the Sunrise BIP

Publius update

• Publius thinks that it is harder and harder to update the protocol and this is by design and if money changes a lot it is probably not a good store of value
• They go on to mention it is worth looking into how to improve the governance within Beanstalk
• Publius thinks that BIP-32 failing is a bad sign and thinks this BIP was very thoughtful and would be a great addition to Beanstalk
• Publius is going to spend time thinking about how to improve governance

Discussion around governance

• A DAO member says they feel like governance participation feels tied with protocol performance. Mod323 agrees and adds it might be overall market conditions. Publius adds Beanstalk needs to be able to run in all market conditions. They go on to say it does not make sense to shut Beanstalk down, but if things are not getting passed it does not seem likely that Beanstalk will be the issuer of the new money
• Publius thinks if Beanstalk stops upgrading, it will be forked and the forked version of Beanstalk will probably succeed. The assets that give Beans value cannot be forked, so this adds some complexity to forking Beanstalk
• A DAO member thinks that more needs to be shared about what the development team is currently working on and there should be a public roadmap
• Another DAO member asks if the Ethereum gas costs are a barrier to enter Beanstalk, and Publius thinks Ethereum is the best L1 in terms of censorship resistance, but Beanstalk is not tied to Ethereum and if there is a better L1 out there Beanstalk should move over
• A DAO member thinks we need to bring more attention to the protocol and the best way to do that is to have a biz dev department. Publius says that it is unclear what a biz dev department would look like for a protocol like Beanstalk
• Publius adds that biz dev is not what really matters it is the tech that is being developed
• Some DAO members think that there should be more announcements about development work and Publius responds by saying only so much time can be spent on talking and there has to be time spent just doing
• Publius thinks that the protocol needs to have a governance structure so that governance is not the reason why Beanstalk fails. The tech problem is how should the protocol respond when governance participation is low
• JWW thinks selling the use-case for Beanstalk is vital, but Publius does not think this is a good idea within the current regulatory conditions
• The question around Beanstalk is can it survive in any and all market conditions, Publius thinks Beans at .95 cents in a bear market is a really good sign
• Publius thinks if people sell the use-case for Beanstalk it would not be a good data point for Beanstalk in a regulatory sense
• Publius thinks everything needs to be evaluated at the margin and they are pretty happy with how Beanstalk is doing

Transcript

There's there has to be time spent doing. And we spent just on my end, I probably spent one or 200 hours writing those two pieces independent of contribution from the other previous. And that comes at the margin of a lot of other stuff. And so I would push back heavily and say that, you know, if we spend all of our time just writing our thoughts down, nothing will ever get built and then you're just a talker.

And we don't we don't think we're talkers. So I would encourage would encourage everyone to be a little bit more honest with themselves about whether they are informed. And if they're not informed, why they're not informed. But the idea that there isn't the information out there for people to inform themselves in a relatively timely fashion, the recordings of the down meetings or the the weekly updates that talk about the updates that are written versions of the updates, I mean, a more a more reasonable piece of feedback would be that the updates are substantive enough and they need to be longer.

That may be and things can be improved at the margin. But the idea of the statement explain what you were building to me is very disingenuous in the sense that there is no there is no amount of additional communication that we can imagine being worthwhile at the margin. And I do want to just push back on our own point and say that if people do feel that way, that is important for us to know.

And if people feel like they don't know what's going on, please make it known that the resources that are available are not the resources that people need and suggest other resources that you will find helpful. And I'm betting that those resources will still exist if people request them. So there's a lot of there's a lot that can be done to get get the answers people want and get the explanations that people want.

But the the concept of things need to be explained does seem does seem disingenuous because of the many different points that things are being explained. But what what would potentially be a much more constructive and helpful criticism would be saying what what additional or different forms of of content can be created on a regular or non-regular interval such that people do have a sense of what's going on and separately do want to just say that what the blog posts didn't mention bienstock basically at all.

And I guess you could make an argument that the second piece, which is more about its know Bienstock development update that it is related to bienstock at the same by the same token, it's like know those were none of those updates were about the changes to bienstock the protocol itself and more about developments that can potentially create or facilitate real economic activity that uses beams and bienstock.

So I really do want to just make it clear that we are trying our absolute best as publishers. We talk extensively with members of Bienstock Farms about how best to communicate everything that's going on, and if that feels like the the limiting factor that people don't know what's going on, please offer suggestions on how to do that. But the the idea that this isn't being communicated or explained feels feels very disingenuous.

I'm just to give things maybe a lighthearted Sabrina at that being thought and can make a song that you know extends dubbed it. Okay we're almost top of the hour but I see folks still typing so we can we can wait a bit and continue this conversation, even if it goes beyond our So just go through says participation is really a tech issue, usually a marketing issue.

But I disagree that governance is tech issue. I think it's risky to double down on the tech problem and solution. This is like the proverbial hammer on it signals the team is working really hard, but perhaps some of that effort is being misallocated. Perhaps I could better explain what we mean by that in the sense that the protocol needs to have a system of governance in place such that governance cannot be the thing that destroys the protocol at the moment.

If if if the Dow is unable to make any changes to the protocol in perpetuity or unwilling to its the protocol is is unlikely to succeed as the issuer of money. And so the tech issue, as we see it, is the ability for the protocol to implement a system of governance and such that that problem is removed. I don't think that that is particularly related to participation in governance.

Perhaps the tech problem is how the system should respond to a lack of participation, if that makes sense. So Lydian says, Do you think it's fair to say that current Defi has essentially failed when we when we now have censorship free ways to own value, exchange it and earn yields that are in some cases better than fiat alternatives, as in criticizing the current primitives to me also misuses the fact that a lot of value has been brought to the space even if it seems turbulent times from our perspective the probably the only limited to defi and we put money aside where bitcoin and ether are potentially better forms of money than current money, although we

would disagree with that statement. But it's possible that it's correct. When you think about Defi, we would go back to the blog post, we would identify Defi or Finance's rating and loans primarily and don't feel like the ability to trade in a censorship resistant fashion is in any way, shape or form competitive with centralized alternatives. With the potential exception of GM X.

Even there, it's like that's probably closer to a loan. And from that perspective, really the the only thing that is cool in Defi from a comparison to centralized tech is trustless borrowing where you can mint liquidity or mint sorry Mendel USD or mint DAI or take bets on GM X without a counterparty. That is really cool. But that's all that's not even close to enough to facilitate any sort of real economic activity.

It's almost like the ability to take on leverage is is is putting the putting the it's like a chicken and egg problem where you need some sort of real economic activity and you need the ability to borrow in order to facilitate that economic activity. But there still isn't the ability to really have economic activity on chain. It's so don't definitely don't think it's unfair to say that current Defi has essentially failed.

In fact, that was the purpose of the articles that we wrote, which is to say that Defi really sucked. So GW is not questioning what is being built, just saying selling is vital. I mean, candidly, if if there was no question of legality and securities laws, I think it would be much more easy to say, yeah, let's let's figure out how we collectively can go sell this to the to the world.

But I think that that's probably probably not a great solution given the current regulatory environment. And so there is a little bit of a difficulty here in terms of how can we honestly as a community, how can we honestly communicate ourselves and what's going on to the world at large without selling, in fact, feeling like feel like the word selling is is really a problem.

And the maybe the thing that needs to happen is more education and more awareness and these things come in waves. And at the moment there doesn't seem to be much interest in learning about Bienstock. So maybe, maybe the thing that can be done is a stronger educational effort, more content to get out there for people to see and to learn about.

But those blog posts that we published are are along those lines and in line with with that idea for how to best get get bienstock on people's radars. But it's it's hard to to see more more more along the lines of selling being a good good idea at this point probably still not saying that it's okay to have periods of downtime.

You know, we're talking about like one of the few months, maybe maybe maybe two months, like Bitcoin have had years. Is it not okay to have these prolonged periods of, you know, no activity or more activity before things are gone? Is it unrealistic to expect, you know, high activity every month or every week or I don't know what the period is.

This is the whole concept of being stuck, which is cannot exist in any and all market conditions. That's it. Chilling at 95, $0.94 in the middle of this bear market is and not just the way it's chilling. It's slowly, slowly decreasing and there's no we no demand for beings whatsoever at the moment. And nonetheless, the protocol remains relatively in good shape.

And again, you you put it in the context of the seeds per BTV six out of a major issue in terms of peg maintenance that could be fixed in a simple way very quickly if the goal was to repay immediately. But instead, again, from our perspective, goal continues to be to implement things once and then iterate on that further as opposed to implementing short term solutions.

So if the PEG were the problem, we would be in favor of changing the seeds per BTB to some extent, but we don't we don't see it as a problem. And in fact we see this as another data point that the model is actually doing quite well. And over time, particularly if if we fast forward and assume that the system is back at peg and back rolling again, these types of data points, these different types of crashes, if you will, where sometimes it's a fast crash, it's being stuck as experience, sometimes it's a slow bleed.

All of these are good data points for the model and security in the grand scheme of things, create more confidence that the protocol is sustainable from an economics perspective and really just don't I don't don't think it makes sense to get lost in the weeds of the price is off by $0.05. It's like, what's the inflation rate in the US right now?

There's the peg. Maintenance is an imperfect science and beanstalk really does seem to be at the forefront. At the forefront. So yeah, let's not let's not hold Beanstalk to a perfect standard and instead hold it to a standard relative to everything else that's going on. And in that context, things are definitely still moving in the right direction. And you consider the amount of beans that have been minted relative to the bean supply and relative to liquidity in the past and the liquidity to supply ratio at those times, the system continues to be in a dramatically healthier position than it's ever been in before.

So it is important to just contextualize what's going on and not not get lost in the stock. I'll be there. Also was concerned about being stocks, legal and regulatory status. Wouldn't it be better to find out now? Why is it more desirable to march on, go quietly, and then find out the answer to these questions later? I would bifurcate being stock and being stock farms in this case, and it being stocks.

Being stock is a permissionless open source protocol and we went through it what we believed to be the the most honest and fair and transparent process to create the system as possible. And I think that that is really fundamentally different, given that it's a software that runs on Etherium to being stock farms, which is people and people that are working on buying stock.

And as soon as you have people start to sell beans, that's a very different thing than building bean stock. And the other comment is, wouldn't you say wouldn't it be better to find out now the government is in particular not giving any answers. There is no way to get clarity. So aside from going to the FCC and asking for them to approve it, which they never do any talk it out might be one of the only cases where they did approve anything.

But that might have even been through the I think it was through the FCC. The concept is that this is this is not something where the regulatory environment is conducive towards compliance because compliance is totally undefined and frankly, don't think that it's likely that from a regulatory perspective, bean stock remains in the clear, particularly if it's successful, it seems likely that the government will come after either US Publius or Bienstock Farms at some point, who knows?

But as soon as there's a shift to a towards selling beans and the goal is say, this person is supposed to sell beans. Yeah, that's very clearly, at least from our perspective, a data point that is unlikely to help bean stock in the regulatory environment. So yeah, we would love nothing more than to be able to talk freely about how great meme stock is, if you will.

But that's just not the that's just not the world we live out. Okay. We are at the end of the bar in your chat, a sentence here for typing. So maybe give us letters to sort of conclude this meeting makes already nice. Are you currently happy with the way things are going? I think everything needs to be evaluated at the margin.

I think that some things are imperfect. The fact that the surface didn't pass is probably not great, but I think that from a high level we don't think that there's any group or project that is doing anything that would indicate to us that being stock is not still the future and we still we are very excited to continue to work on this and are really encouraged by the quality of development, the quality of the people that to be attracted and work on buying stock and the rate of improvement on both of those fronts.

And therefore this feels like this feels like a bump in the road. But generally this is a true bear market and beans are $0.95. That's pretty good. That is pretty good from our perspective. So things can always be better. It could be a pump, an API right now and the market cap could be a billion beings, but that's not reality.

And therefore putting things in the context of the market at large and the fact that the exploit happened less than a year ago, we know we don't feel like we have much to complain about it coming. Cemil says that he kind of once the the call or the meeting to continue we can continue as much and as long as farmers want to.

Jobs asks if there has been a discussion on extending the budget debt or the budget from being a course of the budget to a six month budget, this has been discussed and taken into consideration. So when Beans are farmers was originally created, the thought was that in order to give the Dow the much control over what was being done, it made sense to have shorter renewals.

But if the if the the funding continues to be such a friction point at one solution is to just get funding approved for longer periods of time but feel like there's probably a better solution where the Dow can continue to have frequent say on what is being funded and how it's being funded and still do it in a way where there perhaps isn't as much friction every time there needs to be something funded.

But but do want want to just say we don't think that the model, at least at this point, don't feel like the model of the Dow minting beans to fund new shit. That's that's something that should exist forever. But given that the stage that bean stock is out right now, it probably does continue to make sense today that's typing.

So we'll wait for that message. All right. So Jobs, I think, was saying that they are probably leaning more towards a six months instead of three months. Okay. Well, that's really the end of this of the buying a chat or this or this meeting. Again, to everyone. We can continue this conversation at any channel on discord. We can have impromptu meetings if needed.

Otherwise, we'll be having this meeting of the week. So we'll see you next week. Thank you all for joining.