The Mission and Values of Phezzan Protocol, v0.1
Last updated
Last updated
The Phezzan team came across this thread by Midas a few days ago.
For those of you who are not familiar with Terra or Cosmos, Midas is one of the best marketing/community building minds in crypto. After reading through the above thread and asking a few questions, the Phezzan team realized that we have never written any formal document on the missions and values of Phezzan Protocol. So here it is.
By the way, as Phezzan grows, our mission and values may change. The Phezzan team and community will update this document when appropriate.
The mission of Phezzan Protocol is to Democratize Perpetual Trading for All. That could be separated into 4 different categories.
Before Phezzan, a regular crypto user cannot provide liquidity to orderbook style DEXs. They can do that in AMM style or Oracle style DEXs, but they face potential Impermanent Loss or counterparty risk.
At Phezzan, we believe everyone should be able to provide liquidity for an orderbook DEX and earn some nice profit. That should not be the privilege of a few legacy professional market makers.
Bringing retail liquidity to orderbook DEX is the single most important feature of Phezzan and how we differentiate ourselves from the other perpetual DEXs.
You can read more about this in our pinned Tweet or this Medium article.
That's Democratize Liquidity Providing for All.
Before Phezzan, only professional market makers could make markets in orderbooks. It’s much more complicated compared to market making in AMM/Oracle style DEXs and requires lots of capital.
But what if a talented individual who has knowledge in making markets but does not have much capital? Say someone who just graduated from MIT with a PHD in Computer Science and lots of experiences in crypto? Or someone who just quit their job at a top market maker and doesn't want to work for others any more? Or just some genius high school kids who really know how to make markets?
In the past, there was nothing they could do. If they go to crypto Twitter and ask people for money to make markets with, they would be seen as scammers. Unlike the hedge fund industry, where you hear stories about people starting a great hedge fund from their apartments all the time.
Now with Phezzan’ permissionless market making strategy listing, anyone can upload their strategies, put in a few thousand dollars as initial capital, maybe get a grant from Phezzan to get code audited, and show the world that they really know how to make markets in orderbooks.
Then retail LPs will come, put in some capital, and strategy developers can earn commission if profitable.
Phezzan provides a fair playground for those who know how to make markets but do not have much initial capital.
That’s Democratize Market Making for All
Alongside permissionless market making strategy listing, there will be permissionless trading pair listing.
For BUIDLers, they can list their own token as a new trading pair, find some market making strategy developers to make markets for their token trading pair, and have their own perpetual trading pair, all permissionless.
That’s Democratize Trading Pair Listing for All.
Phezzan Protocol also has some nice features for traders. Trading terminal integration, privacy trading, multi-collateral support, yield bearing assets as collateral, MEV mitigation on L3, and copy trading just to name a few.
The goal of those features is to create a fair DEX for all traders. Whales can trade with privacy and trade on their favorite trading terminals, while a regular guy can trade in Phezzan without worrying about getting frontrunned while earning some nice yield from collaterals.
That's Democratize Perpetual Trading for All.
When all the things above add up, and if the Phezzan team can execute nicely, Phezzan will become a permissionless perpetual DEX that democratizes every aspect of perpetual trading, whether it’s market making, liquidity providing, listing, or trading.
And that is the mission of Phezzan.
Now let’s go to the values of Phezzan Protocol. At this point, it’s mostly the values of the Phezzan founding team when building Phezzan.
Now let’s dive in and take a look at all the different DEXs and their problems. Since Phezzan is a perpetual DEX, we will mostly talk about perp DEXs.
As DHH pointed out in this post: “That's because these mission statements – that never contain neither a real mission nor any interesting statements – involve no trade-offs, and thus offer no guidance.”
Then we will first list what Phezzan Protocol is not for.
3.1.1 No hype
We don’t do hypes at Phezzan Protocol. The Phezzan team does not know how and does not want to learn.
That means no Twitter raids, no FOMO, and no shilling.
3.1.2 No paid marketing, no token, and no decentralization till Product-Market Fit
It makes no sense to do paid marketing before PMF. When there is no good product, paid advertising is just a waste of money.
It makes no sense to launch Phezzan token before PMF. A token without a good product will inevitably have 0 value in the end.
It makes no sense to decentralize before PMF. Most users come for the product, not the ideal. Decentralization early makes innovation and execution slower, which are crucial components for an early project.
3.1.3 No meaningless airdrop
There are much better ways to raise awareness of a project than airdrops.
3.1.4 No crazy emission schedule or staking APY
The emission schedule should reflect the best interest of Phezzan Protocol, not based on the needs of investors, the Phezzan team, or any other existing token holders.
The narrative of “Real Yield” is just sad. If Phezzan Protocol were fortunate enough to launch its token, there would be no crazy staking APY.
3.1.5 No prediction about the future
The Phezzan team and Phezzan community are not prophets. We will not predict the future for things such as Phezzan token price, emission schedule in a few years, and crypto market movements.
3.1.6 No obsession on quantity
At Phezzan, we do not pursue big numbers. That includes the number of members in our community, Twitter followers, trading volume, ratio of Phezzan token being staked, and many others.
A number itself does not mean anything. At Phezzan we look deep behind numbers to figure out whether we have built a product that people want.
3.1.7 Never half-ass two things
The Phezzan team and Phezzan community are small and have limited resources. We do one thing at one time only. For now, the thing is to build the best perpetual DEX on zkSync 2.0.
Other things, which are important, such as expanding to other chains, spot/option markets, and decentralization can wait. There are millions of thing the Phezzan team can do, and we evaluate everything by how much it helps Phezzan to reach the goal of “the best perpetual DEX on zkSync 2.0”.
3.1.8 No sugar coating over failures
It is easy to blame external factors for failure. We reflect internally and take responsibility for what we have done wrong in case of failure.
3.1.9 No self-flattery
When Phezzan Protocol achieves something, we do not over advertise or make it look like something bigger. We would rather describe what we have done as it is and let people make their own judgements.
3.2.1 Product First
Nothing is more important than the product itself. Without a good product, all else is thin air. Thus Phezzan Protocol will put speed and execution over decentralization before Product-Market Fit.
3.2.2 Fair playground for all
The Phezzan team would like Phezzan Protocol to be a fair trading platform for all traders, market makers and liquidity providers. That means MEV mitigation, Phezzan Liquidity Marketplace, and no favors either towards whales nor retail traders.
3.2.3 Doing the right thing even if it’s unfair
Sometimes we make mistakes, then we try our best to fix them. For those who are affected by our mistakes it might be unfair. We are sorry about that but it’s more important to do the right thing.
3.2.4 Pay attention to every customer
This is not a marketing phrase. The Phezzan team pays attention to every single user. That means we answer every single question, reply to every bug report, record every suggestion, and read every message in our Discord server & Telegram group.
3.2.5 Question commonly held beliefs
Just because every other protocol is doing something doesn’t mean that thing is correct. We aim to think from first principles instead of copying others.
3.2.6 Question our own beliefs and adapt if we are wrong
The Phezzan team is not perfect. Our community members often raise opinions different from our team. We evaluate these ideas objectively. If we are wrong, we openly admit our mistakes.
3.2.8 Launch shitty product over building whole thing in house
We would rather have a shitty product tested by real users than building the whole thing inhouse. Real users, like you, give the best feedback and guide the Phezzan team through the next stages of product development.
We are not Steve Jobs. Launch first and iterate fast gives us the best chance to deliver something our users want.
