The Foundation would like to thank FranklinDAO for taking the time to offer feedback and for their governance engagement over the last few years.
In large measure, this is a fair assessment of Compound’s current market position, especially when it comes to the state of governance and the need for an imminent bold move. From the moment the Foundation was formed, it was clear that Compound faced a substantial set of challenges—but our team rose to meet them. Thanks to the dedicated hours, nights, and weekends of a passionate group of contributors, our governance affairs are now on a stronger and steadily improving path. Alongside the time-intensive tasks of building a new organization and strategically addressing our technical and legal debt, this has positioned us for meaningful, long-term success.
Those who have been following our progress may actually feel we have surpassed our initial OKRs. We have made significant progress in areas such as improved financials, product roadmap (including the announced staking build), and more effectively aligning key Compound stakeholders. As originally communicated in June, the Foundation intends to provide a transparency report by yearend. We have also announced we will release a detailed product roadmap with our vision on how to stage a successful comeback that aims to not only catapult Compound’s market share, but also help recapture our brand sentiment as a trusted and innovative DeFi pioneer.
In terms of FranklinDAO’s notes on communication, we’d like to respectfully suggest this is a two-way street. The Foundation posts on the Forum, hosts community calls, and runs dedicated Slack channels with delegates and vendors (including one with FranklinDAO, though we unfortunately haven’t seen traction there recently). We are keen to engage and listen to suggestions and perspectives, and will often do so proactively. We strongly encourage the new members of FranklinDAO to leverage these opportunities going forward to maintain an ongoing two-way dialogue.
The nature of innovating in a bleeding edge tech segment such as DeFi warrants certain matters to only be discussed in an appropriate—often private—setting due to confidentiality, legal aspects, governance sensibilities, and competitive positioning considerations. Fully addressing such matters over the Forum could be doing Compound a disservice, and we have therefore erred on the side of sharing information responsibly. For example, we kept certain commercial terms private while audit vendors got comfortable with our RFP process, thereby attracting 45 bids on audits services, and saving the Compound DAO 50% in fees.
The Foundation welcomes continued discussion and will keep contributing where it can add stability, clarity, and forward momentum. We look forward to sharing more details—especially on our product strategy to grow Compound’s market share—later this month.