Posting for Discord user “Dmitry” as in conversation I have no reason to believe they were not legitimately affected, so I offered to get their voice heard if their account was not verified in a timely manner. I have my own thoughts, which I will post at a later date.
" I cannot write in the forum as immediately after the registration my account has been placed on hold (automated message from Compound Community Forum to let you know that your account has been temporarily placed on hold as a precautionary measure.). That’s why I will leave this message in Discord, and then, once my account is reactivated, will post it in the forum thread.
[ 3:46 PM ]
I, being one of the impacted users, would like to answer Initial Questions, despite the fact that my answers will be biased. I hope that everybody understands that Compound is used by people with different education and knowledge and not everybody thoroughly studies the technical details of the protocol. That’s the way things are, you cannot be an expert in every field and people just trust, otherwise there would not be such a thing as a reputation. Most customers use the functionality of the protocol based on its reputation and many years of history. Since the protocol was working for many years without any issues and was entrusted with more than 1 billion USD, I have also entrusted it with my money. Of course, you can say that if you do not understand all details then you should not be here. But I would like to know who we build the DEFI infrastructure for. For software developers and technical specialists or for ordinary people after all? When you buy a car you usually look at the ease of operation and you choose a brand you Trust. You do not dive into technical details. And if a manufacturer finds a critical defect, the manufacturer recalls cars and pays compensation to owners. That’s why compensation is very important for the Trust. In the world of cryptocurrencies, where everything is anonymous, Trust is most probably the most important success indicator of any project.(edited)
[ 3:47 PM ]
1. Was the market price of DAI on Coinbase Pro fair? Was it intentional manipulation, or a market dislocation? I think the market price of DAI was not fair.
Being a user and not a technical specialist I would like to refer to the original source. Main page of https://makerdao.com/ The world’s first unbiased currency. Dai is a stable, decentralized currency that does not discriminate. Any individual or business can realize the advantages of digital money. Financial freedom with no volatility A price-stable currency that you control. Generate Dai on your terms, instantly. 1 Dai=1$ When during a short period of time a price of the token that should be equal to 1$, changes by 30% on one source (while at the same time other sources do not confirm such price change) and this leads to positions liquidation, which under normal circumstances should not have been liquidated, then there should be an issue with the Compound protocol. How can I consider the liquidation of positions at this price to be fair?(edited)
[ 3:47 PM ]
Was it intentional manipulation, or a market dislocation? I think that this question is not essential. It could be a hacker attack, Coinsbase failure or any other reason. The fact is that this happened and led to an incident. Other sources did not confirm such a sharp price deviation. If we accept that DAI price was not fair, then anything else is not that important and just helps us to understand what happened but should not be taken into consideration when deciding whether the compensation should be paid or not. Compound team shall focus on fixing the issue and quickly find the solution that will protect people from similar situations. Solving this problem will increase the trust. If nothing will be changed, a competitor, who will fix this problem, will appear and customers will go there since it is safer.
Were impacted users aware of the risk? I think impacted users were aware of the risk according to the knowledge about the token and Compound protocol, but nobody could foresee the risk of 30% DAI price change.(edited)
[ 3:48 PM ]
Do impacted users deserve compensation? I think that impacted users do deserve the compensation. Why? Impacted users were severely affected by an exploit in the protocol, then the protocol MUST… However, I do not agree with this. No one can guarantee anything and we know it. Compound worked as it was programmed. Condition for liquidation appeared and liquidation took place. Some users lost money, liquidators made money, everything is according to the market rules. But Compound is not just an immutable set of code on a blockchain, it is a community: people who use and trust the protocol. The most important point is that people, who trusted Compound and were part of its community, suffered. They suffered by entrusting their money to Compound. Compound gave the opportunity to liquidate their positions at a non-market price. This is result of force majeure caused by an error at the quotes provider, hacker attack, or just a glitch. This happened and part of the community suffered. Users, who suffered, hope that the community will admit that the liquidation was a mistake. Positions should not have been liquidated.
[ 3:49 PM ]
And the community can evaluate this situation and take a decision based not only on commercial interests, but also on the ideas and spirit of DEFI. The global idea of DEFI is to create financial products for people, and Compound is one of the biggest players on this market that builds this infrastructure for the community and is a benchmark for many. I believe that the community should take a positive decision about the compensation because this happened to the part of Compound community. There is no need to look for somebody to blame or the reasons why Compound OWES to somebody, but simply help out. If Compound is not willing to help users, who it builds infrastructure for, then that is wrong. There will be less trust and confidence in such a project. Next time other users might suffer, but they will know that nobody will help them. If there is no trust and confidence in the project, users will start looking for an alternative and leave DEFI, since even market leaders cannot provide safety to its users. If Compound does not support its users, then other projects will adopt the same practice, thinking that why should they if top players do not. Eventually DEFI will become a pyramid where you cannot trust anybody, and everybody wants to grab somebody’s else. I believe that here we have to discuss whether the Compound community is ready to help users in difficult and force majeure situations. I will not give names, but one of the impacted users wrote that it was his last money and I see no reason not to believe him.
[ 3:49 PM ]
If so, how should compensation be calculated? That’s a technical question and calculation of losses for each user is a difficult task that requires a lot of time for analysis. Maybe some basic conditions for estimating losses, for example based on several major liquidations. And then approximate this estimate to other users, for example by linking to the column “DAI Repaid”. Maybe it will not be fair towards someone, but I think that many users do not even hope to get anything and will be happy to accept any positive decision. This will also take less time than to analyze every user out of 142 impacted users. Time in this case is very crucial. How fast the community will be able to mobilize and solve this issue? If so, should compensation come from reserves, or by distributing COMP? In my opinion by distributing COMP, but same has to be discussed with the Board."