If you had a board of management you would have been sacked by now.
You can’t keep dangling the carrot of a token and decentralised protocol indefinitely. You are pissing off everyone, including your team.
Decentralisation doesn’t have to be perfect out of the gate. Like a product, it can grow into the governance mechanism you want. But there are many great examples of starting small, delegating stake, voting on minor issues. You seem to want to overcomplicate it. Meanwhile your users are out of patience. These aren’t greedy farmers. They left ages ago when things blew up. These are rusted on supporters who have locked significant liquidity. Who want to be part of Margin for life! But you have given them no avenue to be part of Margins future. Great work but empty promises is your calling card.
I have 90% of my net worth in Margin, because i like the platform. But it only takes a good experience and an incentive for margin to lose that goodwill forever.
Please find the bandwidth to do a token, governance lite, and let people grow with the platform.
100% on this. I have no qualms with the protocol, and I still have some liquidity there. But after many months on there I removed most of that liquidity due to repeated breaches of what I perceived as trust.
They should've shipped faster than this. And taken on way less in parallel.
It's a classic management failure. I see it all the time in technical heavy leadership. Balance is always key to a high functioning team.
Still, it's easily recoverable. Just stop doing lots of things, start doing the most important thing and don't stop that until it's done.
Issue is: Time is running out. K-Lend is great. And that Kamino team ship consistently.
Their TVL and community just keeps growing stronger.
Should they decide to run an LST they might even become the highest TVL in all Solana and completely dominate the space.
- Indefinitely pushing back the stablecoin that was supposed to launch in March
- New product BUT we can't tell you what it is or when it's launching
These are three clear examples of mrgn's poor comms execution, which I believe is the reason Kamino took all your market share. I'll go through them in order and then sum up what you're doing wrong
1. No token
It's normal to hold off on your TGE. There will always be voices, even from day one, calling for "wen token", and part of your job is to ignore them. However, for your users, there's a reasonable expectation when a points program is underway that the TGE will take place at some point in the near-ish future. It's now June. Points have been accumulating for almost a year. Telling users that you "strongly believe in tokens" while they watch every other protocol on Solana ACTUALLY drop a token erodes trust and casts doubt on everything else you say.
2. YBX
I can't say anything about the product itself or whether there is demand for a new stablecoin. I can say that your post from Feb 28 stating that the product would be live "mid-March" and thanking/congratulating your team (including yourself 😂)for "bringing YBX to the finish line" doesn't communicate trustworthiness. Overpromising and underdelivering is one thing, but after you whiff on the launch at least go back and take down or edit the post. (Don't you want it to reflect the actual launch date of the product? This is marketing 101)
3. New product
I assume that you're teasing the new project to generate anticipation before the launch. This is like texting your wife at work and telling her there's a big surprise when she gets home. She'll be thinking about it the rest of the day, so if she gets home to find a bag of peanut M&Ms instead of an Hermes scarf, you've just played yourself. She would've been happier if you never texted at all. So, unless there's something seriously impressive coming, I wouldn't stoke user hype after already failing to deliver on YBX and the TGE that never came.
To conclude. Margin's comms have always favored confidence over transparency. That worked last year when the product was fresh and people thought their points mattered. You guys were the biggest chads with the most user and TVL growth. Now, users have stopped trusting you guys after a disappointing points season and the founder drama. Posts like this which:
- Promise a lot but are light on the details
- Project a level of confidence that doesn't align with the protocol's recent performance
- Announce multiple new products (mrgnloop, YBX, new trading platform, new onboarding flow, new mystery product) with no timeframe or even a demo
... are why users are fading your protocol. Finally, you wrote:
"Iconic products aren’t built in a year. Iconic products are more typically built across 10 years"
You're right. For instance, the Ethereum ICO was ten years ago, and today Ethereum is an iconic product. Marginfi should just focus on being a good product.
Maybe my mind is already biased from previous posts, tweets, etc but I can’t avoid reading some parts of this article with an almost arrogant connotation. Saying for example that the day ppl withdrew $300m everything worked out, “txs going through even tho swaps were failing”… it took me around 3h to withdraw, for some ppl it was way longer. It was kinda infuriating reading that claim.
Also saying smth like “don’t trust, verify”, sure but at the same time, wouldn’t u like users that trust that ur gonna deliver on ur promises? Like, I have zero excitement for the “products” teased bc I have no trust on this team. Simple as that.
boolish on accessibility maxxing
Love the platform Mac. But.
If you had a board of management you would have been sacked by now.
You can’t keep dangling the carrot of a token and decentralised protocol indefinitely. You are pissing off everyone, including your team.
Decentralisation doesn’t have to be perfect out of the gate. Like a product, it can grow into the governance mechanism you want. But there are many great examples of starting small, delegating stake, voting on minor issues. You seem to want to overcomplicate it. Meanwhile your users are out of patience. These aren’t greedy farmers. They left ages ago when things blew up. These are rusted on supporters who have locked significant liquidity. Who want to be part of Margin for life! But you have given them no avenue to be part of Margins future. Great work but empty promises is your calling card.
I have 90% of my net worth in Margin, because i like the platform. But it only takes a good experience and an incentive for margin to lose that goodwill forever.
Please find the bandwidth to do a token, governance lite, and let people grow with the platform.
This really is your last chance. Sincerely.
100% on this. I have no qualms with the protocol, and I still have some liquidity there. But after many months on there I removed most of that liquidity due to repeated breaches of what I perceived as trust.
They should've shipped faster than this. And taken on way less in parallel.
It's a classic management failure. I see it all the time in technical heavy leadership. Balance is always key to a high functioning team.
Still, it's easily recoverable. Just stop doing lots of things, start doing the most important thing and don't stop that until it's done.
Issue is: Time is running out. K-Lend is great. And that Kamino team ship consistently.
Their TVL and community just keeps growing stronger.
Should they decide to run an LST they might even become the highest TVL in all Solana and completely dominate the space.
In summary:
- No token yet
- Indefinitely pushing back the stablecoin that was supposed to launch in March
- New product BUT we can't tell you what it is or when it's launching
These are three clear examples of mrgn's poor comms execution, which I believe is the reason Kamino took all your market share. I'll go through them in order and then sum up what you're doing wrong
1. No token
It's normal to hold off on your TGE. There will always be voices, even from day one, calling for "wen token", and part of your job is to ignore them. However, for your users, there's a reasonable expectation when a points program is underway that the TGE will take place at some point in the near-ish future. It's now June. Points have been accumulating for almost a year. Telling users that you "strongly believe in tokens" while they watch every other protocol on Solana ACTUALLY drop a token erodes trust and casts doubt on everything else you say.
2. YBX
I can't say anything about the product itself or whether there is demand for a new stablecoin. I can say that your post from Feb 28 stating that the product would be live "mid-March" and thanking/congratulating your team (including yourself 😂)for "bringing YBX to the finish line" doesn't communicate trustworthiness. Overpromising and underdelivering is one thing, but after you whiff on the launch at least go back and take down or edit the post. (Don't you want it to reflect the actual launch date of the product? This is marketing 101)
3. New product
I assume that you're teasing the new project to generate anticipation before the launch. This is like texting your wife at work and telling her there's a big surprise when she gets home. She'll be thinking about it the rest of the day, so if she gets home to find a bag of peanut M&Ms instead of an Hermes scarf, you've just played yourself. She would've been happier if you never texted at all. So, unless there's something seriously impressive coming, I wouldn't stoke user hype after already failing to deliver on YBX and the TGE that never came.
To conclude. Margin's comms have always favored confidence over transparency. That worked last year when the product was fresh and people thought their points mattered. You guys were the biggest chads with the most user and TVL growth. Now, users have stopped trusting you guys after a disappointing points season and the founder drama. Posts like this which:
- Promise a lot but are light on the details
- Project a level of confidence that doesn't align with the protocol's recent performance
- Announce multiple new products (mrgnloop, YBX, new trading platform, new onboarding flow, new mystery product) with no timeframe or even a demo
... are why users are fading your protocol. Finally, you wrote:
"Iconic products aren’t built in a year. Iconic products are more typically built across 10 years"
You're right. For instance, the Ethereum ICO was ten years ago, and today Ethereum is an iconic product. Marginfi should just focus on being a good product.
I align heavily with ur thoughts.
Maybe my mind is already biased from previous posts, tweets, etc but I can’t avoid reading some parts of this article with an almost arrogant connotation. Saying for example that the day ppl withdrew $300m everything worked out, “txs going through even tho swaps were failing”… it took me around 3h to withdraw, for some ppl it was way longer. It was kinda infuriating reading that claim.
Also saying smth like “don’t trust, verify”, sure but at the same time, wouldn’t u like users that trust that ur gonna deliver on ur promises? Like, I have zero excitement for the “products” teased bc I have no trust on this team. Simple as that.
Stop saying mrgn mamas