Pangolin introduction
Recently we are in the process of the community taking ownership of Pangolin and as part of that process, we need someone to formally join the Pangolin team to lead the next stage of our exciting evolution.
This decision will be up to our community. With that in mind, I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to present some more details about my background and, if appointed, the direction I’d like to take the project.
# Background
I completed a Bachelors in Economics and Business and my first real foray into the business world was as a Management Accountant for [Richemont](https://www.richemont.com/en/home/).
I quickly grew bored with accounting and made the move into [ERP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning). I worked as a Solution Architect for a few years and then formed my own software company. We built an Australian Payroll solution which I then successfully sold off.
At this stage I returned to consulting as a Solution Architect on numerous multimillion dollar implementations, but I had grown frustrated with the lack of innovation in ERP and the legacy codebases of SAP, Oracle and Microsoft and decided I was going to build a competitor on a [modern codebase](https://github.com/kudoo-cloud/kudoo). It was an ambitious venture and one that failed to get Venture Capital funding. So unfortunately after Covid appeared, I had to shut it down.
I learnt a few important lessons from that venture.
1. The real innovation was in crypto
2. Community is more important than capital
# Structure
If the community decides to appoint me, this is the broad outline of the approach we’ll be taking.
The key aspect of the direction is to focus on four value streams:
* Community building
* Finance and Tokenomics
* Research
* Engineering
# **Community building**
Pangolin has a very vibrant community that is incredibly passionate about the project.
One of the factors that I know has concerned a lot of people is the uncertainty around the direction the project is taking. In line with this, the first real milestone I’d like to reach is gaining back some of the trust of the community. I believe we do this with transparency. In line with this, I would like to host the following initiatives:
* Weekly AMA’s on Twitter/Reddit with myself and other core contributors
* Pangolin Academy — This will be a learning initiative that will onboard interested people into our ecosystem. So whether you’d like to learn about Solidity, the Graph, the financial underpinnings of a DEX or you’d like to know more about NFT’s, the Pangolin Academy will be an opportunity for knowledge sharing and creating our next wave of Pango contributors. This is a family and as such we need to provide pathways for people to enter into the community and contribute according to their skills and interests.
* Social media — We need much more content and outreach via our social media channels.
* Global outreach programs — Pangolin is for all of us. We need to make sure Pangolin is accessible to everyone without the barriers of borders or language. As part of this initiative, we’ll be translating all our documentation to Chinese, Spanish, Arabic and French and other languages.
Partnerships will also be a key component of this. This is where we’ll leverage our healthy relationship with the Avalanche community to pursue strategic initiatives.
# **Finance and Tokenomics**
I’d like us to run the finance value stream just like any off chain organization would. We focus on income earned versus expenditure to determine net profit. The net profit we make then can either be used for further investment in the platform or else paid out to the community in terms of dividends. Meanwhile the community treasury is used to fund major capital expenditures and also used to earn interest income.
Let’s look at how this may work in practice:
Let’s first talk about budgeting. We want to get an approved budget from the community. We want the community to approve two major pieces
1. Operating expenses
2. Capital expenditure
In line with this there are two current sources of PNG:
* Treasury
* Swap fee’s (0.05%)
Currently the Treasury holds 18,473,371.25 PNG, I’m proposing to start off we withdraw 20,000 PNG in order to start working on Bounties to build some important features. This can be expanded further in the future, but this will allow us to start building up momentum.
The second source of Revenue is the 0.05% of Swap fees generated by the platform. Currently this goes to the Liquidity Providers and provides approximately $10,000 USD in Revenue per day. I’d like to start the discussions with the community on how best to utilize these swap fees to best further Pangolin’s growth.
Then we have to look at how we use our Treasury long term. There are two main components to the treasury:
* Funding new projects
* Earning income
Funding new projects will need a business case with a Return on Investment (ROI). So for example, if we wanted to build a Bridge to BSC, we’d need to determine the cost of building the bridge versus the expected revenue we’d be bringing in to determine how much extra revenue we’d make against how much we spent.
Then the other thing we need to take into consideration is that we don’t want the Treasury funds sitting idly by when we could be earning interest. So do we then invest the Treasury funds in BenQi, BZX or other investment options to ensure we’re maximising returns on our funds.
If I’m appointed, I will compile a detailed budget for both the Income Statement and Balance sheet that will then be submitted to the community to determine our financial direction.
Then in terms of Tokenomics, there are a lot of ongoing developments occurring in the background that once we have more official news, we’ll be able to share with the community. Having a healthy PNG price is critical to everyone involved in the project and this will be a huge priority for us moving forward.
# **Research**
I’m a firm believer in the Abraham Lincoln quote:
# “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
I believe research leads engineering effort and for us to be competitive we’ll need to out think and outmaneuver our competition. I propose that we setup a think tank called “Pangolin Research” and open up an intern programme.
The key area’s of research will be around:
* Tokenomics
* Competitor analysis
* Financial services and instruments
* PysOps
* Game theory
Anyone can become an intern for “Pangolin Research” for 3 months, with the only requirement that you submit publicly the research paper you will be working on. This is to ensure we don’t have too many duplication’s. As part of being on the intern programme, you’ll get access to the core team to mentor you and guide you on your journey.
After the first programme, the best researcher will be chosen to join the Pangolin core team as our in house researcher.
**Engineering**
While I understand the community is desperate for new features, I’d argue that the first engineering focus should be on establishing healthy foundations and identifying the best talent in our community.
We are incredibly fortunate to have Connor from Ava labs helping us out and the first thing I’d like to propose is that, we as a Community, give him a donation to say thanks for the incredible work he’s done. I’m not going to suggest an amount, but I do think we need to show Connor some love ❤️
Then another standout Pangolin Guardian is Xavier. His work on the Pangolin Telegram has been outstanding. Always willing to help, always available. He’s a real credit to our community and I’d like us to also donate an amount to him for all the time he’s spent helping our community grow.
We also can’t expect Connor to perform his Ava Labs tasks while juggling Pangolin forever. At some point we’re going to need to hire a Solidity dev. I have some ideas around who this should be, and I think we should start interviewing as soon as possible.
There then needs to be two parallel tasks going on:
* Building the foundational pieces
* Defining V2 Roadmap
So let’s talk about the foundational pieces:
Multisignature — I propose that we set aside some funds for bounties to ensure we can continue moving forward while we setup some of the foundational elements in the background.
Branding — Currently it’s very obvious Pangolin is a fork of Uniswap V2. Although traditionally branding could be considered a marketing exercise, I believe it sits within the realms of User Experience and include it in engineering. I propose that we setup a bounty for the branding, UI and UX of Pangolin. Currently Uniswap is very simplistic, professional. Sushiswap is awful in my mind. Not sure what they’re going for, it’s busy, messy and has no clear direction. PancakeSwap I’m a fan of, it’s playful, gamer orientated. What is our unique branding? I love [Eduardo Risso](https://www.facebook.com/EduardoRissoOriginalArt/photos/?ref=page_internal) but let’s open up a bounty and then let the community decide!
Bridge — The community seems to [unanimously](https://snapshot.org/#/pangolindex.eth/proposal/QmNnzJPHYgWoMkx2rL29hwhjLRmTPev4LUKbheXRUJLNee) want the Bridge,the AEB bridge is built on Chainsafe’s ChainBridge. While it works, it still relies on trusted relayers. I have opened discussions with numerous parties from Beefy, Snowball, Complus, Elk and Pangolin to talk about being hosted relayers. So this would be fairly standard to implement. There has been a lot of background work going on for this, and implementing a bridge for BSC, Polkadot and Kusama would begin pretty much on day 1 of me starting.
Bounties — Inline with agreement from the other multisig holders, we’d start introducing bounties on Github issues that we need help with.
Technical cleanup — This would involve getting all of Pangolin’s codebase ready for mass adoption.
While all the engineering work was ongoing, we’d be looking at defining the roadmap for V2. This would consist of regularly engaging the community for feedback on our progress with heavy emphasis on the research programme.
# Summing up
To engage more fully in the community, I will host a Youtube livestream. That way everyone can ask whatever questions they have and would have an opportunity to get to know me and have your voices heard.
I look forward to hearing from all of you and understanding how we can build the best community that serves all of us.
