The Founder Fireside Chat series hosted by DeFi Pulse interviews DeFi founders in the hopes of offering readers an opportunity to better understand their perspective and what drives them to build their vision.
This week we speak with Zeus, anonymous founder of Olympus. Zeus highlights the importance of not remaining fixated on “the plan” and instead enabling the community to shape a project.
What are you building and what sets it apart from similar offerings in the space?
We at Olympus are building a decentralized monetary authority. Until algorithmic stablecoins, OHM is its own currency. It trades at its own floating price while deriving value from underlying assets. The Olympus treasury has the ability to influence the market for OHM, primarily through bonds, to target certain behaviors through incentives and direct market operations.
Right now we prioritize growth above all, and feature high yields through both staking and bonds in alignment with those goals. In the future, the DAO may choose to target policies that seek to stabilize OHM by utilizing the assets the treasury already holds, unlike today where it accepts volatility as a means for growth.
Which quality of the Scalability Trilemma do you find to be the most important?
Scalability is the most important quality for Olympus. In order for this to be truly successful, we must build up to a size competitive with other traditional currencies.
This requires a structure in which incentives can be long lasting, risk can be consistently falling, and growth is cumulative and lasting (as opposed to transient and fleeting).
What is the most critical part of forming a lasting community?
Ensuring a common vision, and a feeling of inclusion and importance within that vision. Community members need to feel and be heard and valued within the community. Decentralized organizations should belong to the members of the organization.
While overarching vision and goals are important, they should merely set the stage; contributors should have autonomy to shape and growth the project in line with their own values. This is an important and powerful force for growing and retaining a dedicated community of value-add contributors.
What is something in DeFi that you think more people should be paying attention to?
Sustainable yield solutions. DeFi has a problem right now; many mechanisms rely on incentives to function well. Those incentives are generally rewards paid in the native token of a protocol. This is an incredibly effective and innovative bootstrapping mechanism, but at a certain point it is long-term unsustainable.
Projects that create new, more sustainable models of incentivization and capital attraction or, better yet, offer new solutions to existing projects, are likely to survive and thrive in the coming years.
What is a critical lesson you have learned on your journey?
Not to focus too hard on “the plan.” I still strongly believe its good to forecast and plan for the future, however we work in an incredibly nascent and fast moving industry.
Focusing too hard on what is “supposed to” happen can distract from what IS happening, and at the end of the day the latter is the only one that matters. It is far more important and beneficial to scope out potential outcomes into the future, determine how to act in each scenario, and then roll with the punches and navigate as best you can as time passes.
What is your favorite meme from the DeFi community?
The (3,3) meme which encompasses the game theory approach to Olympus!
Thank you for reading! Also, thank you Zeus for speaking with us. It’s clear you gave the questions a lot of thought.
