Funding for CVX5 Group - Business Development Growth

Governance Proposals
1

Summary

Since its inception in 2020, Frax has been a frontrunner in the DeFi space. As we approach the much-anticipated launch of Fraxtal, forging strategic partnerships to bolster liquidity and Total Value Locked (TVL) is more crucial than ever.

Background

Established in late November 2023, CVX5 is a coalition of five dedicated individuals united by a singular vision: to propel the growth of Frax Finance and Convex Finance ecosystems. Our team members - Boz Menzalji, Cryptovestor, Jason Hitchcock, K Khan, and Solace - bring diverse yet complementary expertise to the table.

Business Development Case Study: Trident Digital Group (“TriDig”):

  • Educated TriDig on the governance layout of Convex & Curve, including the nuanced intricacies associated with onboarding their proposals

  • We coordinated these proposals with the CVX Group that consolidated protocol leads and large holders for effective and communication for maximum awareness and visibility

  • We streamlined TriDig’s technical efforts and their contracts with Michael on Curve, acting as a technical advisory and support team

  • We advised TriDigs group on their go to market strategies, and highlighted other effective means for a longer incentive runway using complimentary protocols of Convex, such as Aladdin’s CLever

  • CryptoVestor/Boz managed the relationship, including calls, introductions to several protocols (that cannot be shared at the moment given sensitive nature of the conversations)

  • Solace deployed the Frax/USDC “PayPool” on Convex, and got it ready for Votium

  • Cryptovestor/Solace/Boz: Ongoing strategies with key ecosystem partners with the key goal of optimizing incentives, maximizing TVL, driving volume, and utility of those pools for users

Our recent accomplishment with Trident Digital, guiding them to infuse pyUSD liquidity into DeFi, stands as a testament to our capabilities. CVX5 ensured that Trident’s proposals not only met quorum but also facilitated strategic partnerships with major DeFi players. Our collective experience spans across startup development, DeFi fund advisory, private equity investment, and digital marketing, all driven by our shared passion and values in the DeFi sector.

The primary motivation for CVX5 is achieving a sense of accomplishment through positive sum interactions.

Proposal

We outlined some of the responsibilities we undertook as part of the community as we believe this positively impacts the ecosystem overall. Our efforts will continue with the following:

  • Act as one of the key ecosystem business development leads entrusted by Frax’s team and community to manage relationships, assisting with educating, onboarding, and strategizing opportunities that benefit the Frax ecosystem at large
  • Leverage our network of partners to evangelize Frax’s development and efforts to a diversified audience base
  • Qualify inbound prospects that align on values and mutually benefit the ecosystem to increase liquidity, TVL and overall chain utility
  • Recruit protocols in the DeFi ecosystem at large to expand to Fractal
  • Be an advisory resource to Fractal ecosystem projects

CVX5, leveraging our extensive hands-on experience and strong community ties, proposes the following:

  • An allocation of $25,000 Frax to integrate CVX5 as an integral part of Frax Finance’s Business Development core initiatives. These initiatives are outlined in the key part above in the case study portion.

  • These funds will be staked for 1-year on our Fraxtal validator and will only be used to pay for overhead costs: operational, security and cloud costs. Although we do not have the details at the time of this proposal, we reserve the right to revisit these costs once testnet is live.

  • Fraxtal Validator: We propose the Frax team to delegate to a future validator such that we are in the top 25% by weight. That ensures Frax has complete custody of assets, and the earnings to CVX5 are in line with community infrastructure providers and contributors, further extending our value-add to secure the network. The earnings will be derived from the fee structure that will allow us to continue funding operations. This can be revisited with the Frax team once more details, such as hardware and architecture requirements are officially public. It’s a risk-free bet by Frax to incentivize delegations contribution efforts from its community partners, like CVX5.

  • In the event Fraxtal requires a validator delegation program, we also volunteer to help advise on the structure for delegation to the team. Boz has helped create Akash Network’s delegation program, and managed its community’s contribution for the past four years. You can learn more about it here.

Our track record, especially in rallying key CVX groups, has significantly improved communication, visibility, and feedback mechanisms for governance proposals. All growth and opportunities stemming from CVX5 initiatives will be attributed to our concerted efforts.

CVX5 Team Background

Crypovestor:
Brings two decades of private equity management experience, coupled with a 10-year tenure in the crypto space, and a strong background in IT and server management. Cryptovestor has recently been promoted from Aladdin’s community to be on CLever’s team given his evangelism, educational efforts, and overall contribution.
Twitter: Cryptovestor77) | TG: ACT777

Boz Menzalji:

Was the Former COO of Overclock Labs (creators of Akash Network $AKT, one the leading DePin decentralized cloud infrastructure projects in the market, most notably supporting decentralized AI initiatives). During my time at Overclock, I co-founded a friends & family defi fund shortly after defi summer. Two (of three) of the cofounders are [Twitter [at] jasonhitchcock and [at]Ace_da_Book. We currently manage Twitter: [at]fourmoonsllc, a DeFi Advisory Firm for hedge funds, defi projects, and currently run validators on a few networks: Canto, Berachain.

The four-moons team is currently sub-advising a digital asset hedge fund and the goal is to take that to 100m aum. Background: 15+ years of startups, experienced to acquisitions - started in web mmo gaming, went to ag-tech (acquired), recruited to a fintech startup (acquired), launched a startup (fundraised but ultimately shutdown after 2.5 yrs), was a GM of a gaming web3 project and left shortly thereafter.

Twitter: boz_menzalji) | TG: boz_m

Jason Hitchcock:
12 years of startup experience leading BD teams, invested in 20+ deals, ran a liquid token fund, sub-advisor to a crypto hedge fund, and leads Ecosystem BD @Thirdweb, the most widely adopted web3 development toolkit.

Twitter: JasonHitchcock) | TG: jasonhitch

Solace:
DeFi veteran, an integral part of the team, contributing their technical expertise, governance operations, and community building.

Discord Handle: .s0l4c3

K Khan: DeFi full time, and professional background is in Digital Marketing Field (retired).

Governance Proposal

For: Onboard CVX5 as an official Business Development Group of Frax Finance, leveraging our expertise and network to drive strategic growth and community engagement.

Against: Do nothing

8 Likes
2

Editing for some clarity

The $25K worth to subsidize validator operations can be removed as part of a core delegation by Frax to ensure we are in the top 25% of validators.

We need to ensure that overhead is covered by the amount of delegations, and we dont have enough information to assess whether $25K is low or high than the anticipated amount for operational overhead, cloud costs and server management overall. Furthermore, we dont have information on the cost of testnet initiatives either, but that can be revisited. Historically speaking for running Akash Network testnet initiatives, the costs are relatively minimal; it’s time & cloud costs associated with this, and we’d appreciate the consideration by Frax’s team if approved.

For these reasons, we will remove the $25k ask for now and only ask for validator delegation commitment to be considered for Fractal

Secondly, we also believe that Frax having whitelisted community-sourced business development teams would be a value add to further augment their core team, and ensure a safe and secure way for institutional teams, as well as projects from the market at large, to work with trusted sources for onboarding, education, support, strategy and awareness.

We believe CVX5’s team has demonstrated commitment to these initiatives to grow the ecosystem at large, and will remain doing so.

5 Likes
3

The whole team at CVX5 has been incredibly helpful to Trident in navigation of incentive and vote bounty markets. They are not only hyper bullish on FRAX, and more generally voting equity platforms, but also work incredibly well to find knowledge, information, and connections to get over any hurdle.

We have no doubt that they would be good stewards of the FRAX ecosystem as a Fraxtal validator, and would look forward to the opportunities CVX5’s further work with FRAX would bring for deeper on-chain liquidity

Best,

5 Likes
4

I dont think there’s enough information regarding validators at this point for vefxs holders to make a proper decision on something like this.

2 Likes
5

Absolutely, the flaw in V1 was prematurely assumptive. We dont have any information yet on validators, so we’re going to skip it completely and update the proposal to what we believe may be a viable possibility for Frax’s consideration

It also may be a unique framework for the ecosystem at large for consideration

4 Likes
6

After discussing V1’s proposals with the community, and as C2 highlighted here in the forum, it is prematurely assumptive to ask for a validator spot when there is no information: nothing in regards to architecture, security, hardware requirements, active set limits (if any), etc.

That being said, we also noticed the positive feedback from community at large that a community-based business development team is beneficial for the ecosystem. At the same time, there are motivated teams with a diverse set of skills that also want to contribute.

The following takes our learnings into consideration for your feedback:

CVX5’s V2 proposal.

We are removing all language as it relates to the Fractal validator, and maintain the rest of the original proposal highlighting the background, who we are, what we do, and responsibilities.

We believe that business development is a communal effort and that Frax should consider augmenting it’s team by ‘whitelisting’ official communal partners to a set of initiatives, both tactical and strategic. An initial list for consideration:

  • Business Development
  • Developer Relations
  • Marketing
  • Community

While we do realize this is opens the scope, the proposal focuses on setting a framework (1), and initiative leads (2). We realized the proposal should be more open to invite the community’s to contribute and help accelerate growth initiatives for Frax.

How It Works

Frax should dedicate a “community partners” section on their website. Within that page, there are distributed dedicated teams focusing on key responsibilities listed under the initiatives mentioned above. An example of this:

  • Business Development: CVX5 Group
  • Marketing: Leviathan News, Flywheel Defi

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Each community partners logo, brief background, link should be positioned such that as new users and/or new opportunities arise in wanting to collaborate with Frax or learn more about Fractal, they know where to go and who to trust, which saves time, and removes some friction from researching. Moreover, this list is flexible to grow or shrink based on the needs of Fractal.

This does not limit any of team-applicant from requesting funding. Developer Relations may require funding for DevCons travels, Hackathons, etc, whereas Flywheel may ask for an operational budget.

The web-page on Frax should not contribute to Frax’s overhead either as it’ll be aligned with its brand assets, pallet, design, etc. tldr; it’s a very low lift, high impact and doesn’t distract Frax’s web-dev team - they should be able to set it and forget it and update it reasonably (ie once a quarter?)

Business Development: CVX5 Group
As it relates to us, the CVX5 Group will forego request for grants as we believe our time, effort, and trust we will build over time will organically lead to ancillary benefits, such as angel seed opportunities, advisory with projects, etc. However, we do not want to close the door either on future opportunities for funding as Fractals needs evolve. We will revisit this a later date for the community’s consideration.

We would be excited to be the genesis business development communal lead for Fractal, on Frax’s ‘partners’ page.

We invite you to share your feedback to ensure community alignment with Frax’s initiatives.

3 Likes
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Edit to add: V2.1

The preferred partners/partnerships web section for Frax is an idea for consideration to consolidate official partners of Frax

It is not a requirement, but would be professional in nature if done right so.

2 Likes