Becoming an External Solver & Contributing to DAO Grants - Mariia | CoW DAO (CoW Swap)

good morning everyone dut that's the way how you say in seran right uh how was uh the opening party yesterday well done for making it today for coming for the first talk um let's kick it off what if I tell you that you can start contributing to cow very soon if not today my name is Maria and I'm space Enthusiast as well as a core contributor to c da where I oversee people operations and and recruitment uh today I will be talking about cow grants and solver competitions and possibly motivate you to contribute to cow or even become a solver yourself so let's dive what is on our agenda today uh I'll give you a short introduction to c da and after we'll dive into cow grants what's that what's actually purpose behind the Cowal grants and after we will finish our talk with a juicy topic which is solver how to become a solver and I will um dive deeper into the solver competition and I will explain you how uh sorry the batch option works so something fell down just give a [Music] second yeah can you hear me well perfect okay so but first what is cow actually so cow is decentralized organization uh and uh is dedicated to creating the most user protective products in defi so it it gather developers community members um market makers and and so on c da has U couple of projects one of them is a very famous leading training protocol which is cow uh protocol H which is intern based protocol with a famous UI on top uh cow swap once you trade on cow swap it say mo and uh I hope you had experience of that already the second one is Mu blocker which is uh cow cow protocol actually M uh protected so once you trade on cow swap you don't have uh hidden uh M uh fees it's protected but Plus on top of that for those who are not trading on C protocol we have mu blocker who solves this problem for the space and the third product which we which has been launched this year uh in febuary is C amm which is the first M capturing amm on ethereum cool contributing to Cal grants let's dive so what is actually purpose of Cal grants so uh Cal grants are designed to support projects and initiatives that align with DA's Mission and contribute to the ecosystem growth and Innovation so um to support this Mission we raised um funds through capap 8 and cap1 18 in the end of this uh talk you will have a cure code where you will be able to check all the information yourself and you will be able to dive into the specification of both caps the primary areas of growth outl as I mentioned in cp8 and let's dive more what exactly we are covering there so first is community growth we want to involve more and more um members to contribute we we want to grow the product um through in in the space and so on the next one is uxui which is crucial for uh for this for the protocol so um anyone can contribute um to that as well and make it better taking to the to the next level and uh so on decentralization so as I mentioned already we want to involve uh we want to make the space you know truly um decentralized truly uh involved like more contributors to that to build the community and through the cow Dow grants that's actually the one of the way how we want to do that and how we want to build the community and involve more people who are interested in the space who are interesting in the protocol who are interesting in the organization and who can contribute to that de develop new solvers that's also I will be talking more uh about that today and Integrations and protocol order for flow and the list just continues it can be legal uh we recently had um another um Pro product Pro uh project who RS through grants which is twap and there are more and more um uh grants who are uh you know just uh uh the sky just limit anything you think is needed to the Dow can go through the cow do grunts let's have a look uh on some successful grunts the first one which I would like to share with you is Milkman which uh actually streamlining smart contast uh contract roting so if you ever trade on cow swap once you put your trade you also put minimum out you would like to get out of the trade and actually it's where the Milkman steps in and help you to um to to find the to to do that and uh of course our solvers always uh try to do their best and also to get even Surplus on top of that but actually uh to reach out this uh minium out price that's Milkman um where where helps you and it's basically a hook which can be also used used widely by other Dows it's super easy to implement that deploy that especially if you use kubernetes and if you would like to know about that more uh feel free to uh check the information on our Forum there are more information how can you actually easily deploy Milkman uh for for your product maybe so the grant was for 45,000 uh and it was successfully implemented and successfully funded in the end the second one is uh privacy the preserving cow swap Trader LED ledger board which was also uh pretty successful and the third one which already mentioned today is twap order with the grant of 10K and uh it was also uh successfully funded and our users can use top order and uh trade especially the bigger amount of of assets they would like to place and get better price for that and uh yeah as I mentioned mu protect production uh of course from important to mention that from June 2022 uh over 70 grants were funded and some of them they currently going so the gr system is pretty uh young I would say it's um again like only two years old but we already have many grants in the ecosystem so we have more and more contributors who are reaching us who wants to contribute to the uh to the ecosystem to ca which is in my opinion it's huge success because it's meaning that we're building Community around that and we can do that uh together with you what are actually incentives of contributing to cow grants you you might ask right so the first one is actually you're contributing to the community you are building the community together you are building the space you are resolving the needs which are uh in the space and which uh which again like can be sold by you so you are the one who are contributing directly and uh no matter if it's long-term or short-term grants second one is getting rewarded so once you sign your application for the ca grants you receive uh you sign also with the amount you would like to receive for um once it will be uh you know accomplished once your Milestones will be accomplished is some of the grants they quite uh not nicely rewarded it trly depends on your miles Milestones you want to accomplish on the project you have in mind and so on and the third one which is actually my favorite one because as I mentioned I'm responsible for uh the people operations and recruitment account is actually once you start contributing to K do grants uh short term you can become a CO contributor and me as a as a person who responsible for the recruitment I really love this idea because I believe believe in truly decentralized Recruitment and you don't only need you know to go through the formal recruiting process interviews and so on but actually you can do this on practice you can first contribute you can actually show your motivation you can show what can you do for the space and potentially become a core contributor luckily we have a couple of core contributors who went through this structure and I'm super proud and I would like to see more and more people who are doing that uh becoming a core contributor to cow uh application process you might ask it's uh super straightforward once you go to c.y and also in the end of the call I will um share all the links with you and the QR code where you can see the application process too you find the template of the application which you need to fill once you submitted uh to to The Forum the grants committee might say hey there's should be some improvements or they might also ask you more details on your Grant or they can just go directly with final improve approval and uh placing your application uh as as approved to approve uh we have um eight committee members and to have uh approved application successful we need at least five Vols how can can you start contributing today so uh we always recommend you to research right what do you think your strengths are what do you think how is follow the space follow the the again like the organization the protocol to see actually what the needs are we are quite uh we we try to be as visible as possible as transparent as possible that's why uh lots of our Communications is happening on forums on Discord so you actually can see work can you add the value right so make your research yourself of course there another side you can reach out and ask hey do you need any help on this this this directly right um both ways the second one reach out through on the score we have dedicated channel for that it's grants uh program you will also have access to that where you can reach um and uh also ask any questions to that so it doesn't mean once you reach out you need to you know submit an application but you also can have a look and overview on um what uh um what what grants we already have in place you can just observe yourself and the third one is apply for the grant uh once the grant is approved you start contributing how does it sound good okay so now let's dive to the solvers how can you actually become a solver but before that let me explain you a bit more about the solver competition and badge auctions and uh how it works yeah so let's have a closer look here how many people we have actually who have seen this interface oh wow I'm proud how many people uh you basically how how many people actually um try to deploy solver on cow swap do we have anyone how many people would like to do that potentially wow that's great that's great guys um and do we have anyone from liquidity providers okay thank you so much so this is um UI of interface of cow swap which looks pretty straightforward and uh if you haven't tried on cow swap I recommend you and there is a reason why recently we received a comment from uh uh from one of our user who is unknown and he said um it's enough to trade on cop even for receiving a moo sound in the end of the of the transaction so once you place the order and it's uh successfully uh completed you hear the mo sound which is super nice uh yeah just for that you can try out and see how it works um so the interface looks pretty straightforward but there are lots of things are happening um around that and uh let let me explain you why um how so this is actually the the batch auction and uh you remember that in the beginning of the call I said that cow protocol is intent based right why it's intent based because once you go to this interface you choose what you want to swap let's say e to die or any other currency you uh send so we don't uh made the transaction directly but we are gathering your intent intent is a specific goal the user wants to accomplish in this um on in the space so basically we are gathering your intents and we are putting them together in the order book that's actually where the juicy fart starts the solvers are um entering and starting a game so what game exactly they doing there so once we get the intense we say hey now you have a couple of seconds you need to provide with the best possible solutions for our users and once you provide it you will get uh also rewarded and about that I will talk a bit uh later and uh solvers they have a couple of seconds to provide with the possible solution and there are a couple different uh ways how they can provide different solutions so they can just do a single order uh and use some let's say any am for that it can be balancer it can be unisab 1 in you name it or they can do it more advanced and they can do actually cow peer-to-peer um or ring trades where they can you know uh have different transactions and combine them and provide the best possible solution for for the users so they decide how they want to how how I want to how they want to do it and uh because we having the solver competition meaning they they are competing and they have to provide with the best solution uh as I mentioned before about the Milkman and about the minimum price out uh how the way how the solers getting rewarded it's also by not only providing with the minimum price for the US users but also provided a surplus let's say you want to trade one is and you want to get $2,000 let's say right and uh so our key point is do not uh sell you less than 2,000 right so you have to get 2,000 but if you get 2020 $20 is already a surplus right so the solvers are motivated to get you not only the minimum you're requesting but also at a certain Surplus because uh they also getting more reward for that and of course they are satisfied satisfying the user request and providing with the best possible solution for them does make sense and uh wor sming mentioning that uh solver competition happening off chain but the Ving batch executes all intents in a single transaction on chain okay let's move on so all the details about the solver competition which I just explained you can um see in cap 38 you can check more details about that and uh let's um talk more about the solving batching batching auctions so as I said uh it can be single orders when you can just use some amm pool or it can be multiple orders when you have different uh users with uh different intents and you can actually match them you can uh add make ring trades and so on here actually it's a real example uh it's a super straightforward transaction of two users who are uh trying to who are actually executing stf FX to gear and gear to USC and here we can see that it's a very good example of the Ring trade and uh the first user getting um fully satisfied with this order from the second user and the second for the for satisfying the transaction of the second user we are using um Unis pools purpose of the solver competition so uh the centralization and rehability that's the main purpose right so we don't want to have centralized authorities at cow who actually execute the trades and say okay this one gets this amount this one gets uh the second amount and so on so we want to make it decentralized you want to involve more more uh solvers who can participate in this and we really want to provide our users with the best Solutions possible and the second one is solving complex challenges there are more and more assets coins uh coming on the market right and some solutions are extremely complex and it's really not easy to solve them right so and by having uh different solvers who are you know maybe some of them they focused on the single transaction some of them they focused on the multiple transaction they always um searching for new and new solution they are highly motivated in do that so that's the second reason why we want to have it and um yeah but the main one is the centralization and relability becoming a Soler yourself so uh incentives for becoming a soer so the first of all uh you will you will be contributing to to the space right sounds cool and you will be providing the best prices to the users the second one is receiving rewards from Dao uh cow da allocates cow tokens annually to encourage participation in the competition and let's say for in for instance last year uh we allocated 20 million cows and uh for for the current year we allocated 16 million cows and you might say but the price is going down it's not because the cow token is going up so uh 16 million 16 million cows worth um more for for the current year and uh the third one is making the protocol more robust and decentralized we are flying to the Moon right have to become a solver so first um you need to contact the core team and I will share the link of telegram group where again like there are more and more solvers and also also and also people who are interested to become a solver but they're not solvers yet you also can overview and have a better understanding what's happening and the second one you have to create a bonding pool and here I would like to talk more about that so what is bonding pool it's like a security pool which you need to uh which you which should which would be locked for and once you let's say um uh like not solver anymore so this those funds are unlocked and for for this bondy pool you need to add 500 um K usdc and 1.5 million cow we understand that uh not everyone can do that especially uh the single solvers who are not you know a team of solvers and who probably not always having those funds that's why we uh created cow bonding pool which you can join and which you can request uh instead of allocated your own money as you might see the biggest barrier is the bonding pool so cp7 describes the requirements for solver to join the competition in more detail you can check it out and why let's say let's first answer so why are they needed those bonding pools right so uh the first reason is um users security we always saying first about the users solvers get direct access to the settlement contract which we've been testing for for years uh which accumulates fees and a malici solver could drain These funds right so this is a security for us and the second one is to ensure users get the highest possible price Improvement and malicious solver could match them at uh limit price let's say so those are those two are the main reasons why we want to have those U bonding uh pool if you would like to join a c bonding pool is of course possible Dow manage a solution for the smaller solver to join a competition and then boarding process includes includes testing in Shadow uh competing showing contribution to the competition and requires also keeping 25% of cow rewards locked until ex exiting the pool but uh there is another thing and if I'm not mistaken CP 44 need to check it out where we are discussing actually to lower the regional where is that the regional bonding pool to 1K and 1 million on uh cow so please follow that and uh see what would be the outcomes of that as well yeah and currently we have uh 21 solver so um this is a story of solvers this is story of C runs this is the QR code which I would like you to scan with all the links I would like you to get into that you feel free even today tomorrow to write into the C grants to see how can you actually contribute and if there are any questions we are more than than happy to provide you with more information with more resources and see how can uh you contribute to to cow and uh yeah and how can you support the the ecosystem how can you uh support the users and um so on so uh yeah we highly value all your efforts and uh happy to review your application and would be yeah and uh let's stay in touch uh uh you can also scan this C code and um since today is my birthday I created I created a channel which I would like uh to um to to share with you and there actually will be more information information about the recruitment at cow recruitment uh open rolls people Ops and so on and for those who sign today you will receive some nice presents for me too since uh yeah I like to give presents cow stay protected with c da uh we are hiring uh right now we are hiring for the marketing roles and there are more open roles are uh will be soon so please stay tuned and thank you it was a pleasure to be with you here today we have a couple of more minutes if you guys have any questions I'm happy to answer okay so thank you and enjoy the day uh the second day see you bye