Leo Finance as an ecosystem (LFE for future mentions) has been around for 3 years now. In my rookie opinion the LFE is doing great so far - after all, I've only been active on Leo for less than a year so I'm not familiar with the past, neither the good or the bad stuff.
The amount of monthly active users is growing, the percentage of locked native tokens is healthy, community driven initiatives in the social side of the ecosystem are thriving, the minnows and whales are working together showing what community synergy can achieve, and there are even some individual initiatives or accounts working towards the betterment and the healthy organic growth of the platform. In general, the Leo Finance Team (LFT for future mentions) is delivering on everything they've promised, slowly but surely, fixing mistakes and improving everything they can as fast as they can.
By the way, in case you're not aware, I run the @leogrowth account, which is used to push LFT initiatives. I'm writing this post from my personal account because this is an idea coming from a community member (me) and not an official initiative. This fact is important because of the topics I want to approach below.
The way I've seen how things unfold in the LFE is as follows:
1 - LFT steers the ship. The development of the ecosystem falls on their shoulders and it is their responsibility and burden to develop the tools and pieces of the whole ecosystem. As someone in the discord general channel mentioned, the ecosystem depends solely on the team's development, commitment and deliverance.
2 - Once an update, launch, or even an idea is created, the community responds to it and if it's well received, the LFT develops it and is in charge of spreading it within and outside of the LFE. The community depends on a correct approach on the marketing, promotion and adoption plan from LFT for it to thrive and thus, for the community to thrive.
3 - Either the project, launch, or idea works or not, the community is lightly involved with the development, the investors are in the sidelines watching the team play. If the team wins the game, everyone is happy, if the team is struggling at half time, everyone is mad - this understandable by the way, I'm not judging.
I get it, the LFE is steered and empowered by a centralized LFT, which allows development on the ecosystem to roll faster and deliver on things in a bigger and better way than it would when you compare how development works in a decentralized environment. We all know the pros and cons of decentralization, and we all understand the benefits and disadvantages of a centralized steering wheel.
But here's a take that might be controversial or stir the pot:
The situation stated above enables apathy from the community because there is no way for us to get involved in any part of the development, and there is no form for us to influence how a launch or project on the LFE performs, except by taking part, investing, participating and pushing it from an individual standpoint. The above scenario also sets the ground for sentiments of entitlement from its investors without any accountability or responsibility - we are just investors without any say in what gets done, and it is our right to expect deliverance. Now don't get your pot stirred please, I am not attacking anyone specific and this is not a bad thing, I'm just stating how things are and what can be done to fix this.
All of the development in the LFE, whether it is in the social side of things as well as tech side, falls on the LFT and is privately funded by your the LFT.
It is what it is.
But does it really have to be like that?
The Potential for a Lion Foundation
Or a Lion's Den, or a Leo Labs, or a Pride Foundation, actually scratch that name because it could be taken as if we are made of rainbows... you get the point, the name is not important.
For those who don't get the idea, a foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the decentralization, growth and development of a crypto ecosystem with values of transparency, openness and fairness.
Basically and put into LFE terms, a Lion Foundation would work in theory towards the betterment of the ecosystem by getting involved and active in the growth efforts they consider vital. It would be decentralized, made of community members, driving community initiatives and empowering the same community to achieve the goals the foundation sets.
The way I see it, a foundation would be a huge chance for those who want to do more, make things happen, and overall get more involved with the ecosystem, to participate and do their part towards the ecosystem's growth.
This Foundation would have several advantages against other ecosystems:
- It would be part of an ecosystem with a centralized team handling the development, so it can piggyback ride that development to achieve its goals.
- The community is small but its members are solid and committed, they believe in the project and are vested in it. Many Lions have a huge sense of belonging and part ownership. They understand that if Leo thrives, they thrive, we all thrive.
- The mindset of most members is long term, they don't consider Leo tokens as short term gains but as a long term investment.
- Our whales are not individualistic nor selfish, LPUD has proven that the ecosystem whales actually care about the little guy and understand that there's no point in stacking their bags in a dead ecosystem.
- The LFE is inflationary, so we actually have funds that we can allocate for the long-term betterment of the ecosystem towards long-term projects and thinkers. And the whales have proven they care more about this than their own interests (this one is huge if you are familiar with other projects).
- We have minnows who are incredibly committed and are more than willing to grow their long-term stack (not a salary that will add sell pressure) in exchange of doing tasks and gigs.
- Users do not need to put their own money into the development of the foundation, that's why we have a reward allocation and inflation for.
- The Foundation would have the full support from the LFT and all the oracle accounts. In other words, Khal is fully on board with this idea (I checked). This bullet point is huge in my opinion, because the foundation can allocate the votes and voting vests (for things like governance votes) of these accounts as the foundation deems necessary.
Note: I understand that the current $LEO price makes it hard to allocate resources into efforts or initiatives, but one idea could be to allocate those resources into long-term thinking ideas driven by long-term thinkers, who wouldn't sell Leo today aiming for the development and price growth while stacking Leo. Just a counter argument to what could possibly be "Allocating 1k dollars to a marketing campaign wouldn't work because we'd need to sell 20k Leo to achieve that, and there's no volume etc". Just an idea.
A Lion Foundation would kickstart a snowball effect of efforts and campaigns that are community driven, community organized, community funded, and for the betterment of the community. A foundation would also give the community more influence in what happens in the ecosystem, giving us (I'm a community member, remember?) a sense of responsibility, involvement, belonging and ultimately, accountability for what happens and what doesn't in the ecosystem.
It would no longer be a well Khal didn't promote on Twitter this idea, that's why it failed. It's a two way street, having a Foundation apart from giving power to the community, also gives responsibilities and makes the foundation accountable. This idea comes from the basis of working together with the LFT to make their development a bigger success, to empower each other while focusing in different aspects of the ecosystem - one side handles development, the other brings eyes and users to the projects and ideas developed.
How can it work in practice?
I have no idea, I am just putting the idea out there for the community to give their own ideas, approach, and give as much feedback as possible.
All I know is that we'd need to organize, coordinate, and make conjoint efforts to make this happen.
Who knows, perhaps this is the first step towards shifting from an already heavily vested community into a heavily invested community.
Any Thoughts?
Disclaimer: This idea came to me from reading several posts of how Leo Finance is unfolding and from speaking one on one with several community members, both whales and minnows. I am putting this idea out as a community member and how it develops depends on the community, so give some feedback, share your ideas, counter other people (or mine) arguments, let's shape this Lion Foundation idea.