Incubating BabelFish

BabelFish’s mission is of fundamental importance to the development of a sound financial system and to the Sovryn ecosystem that is building sound finance. However, BabelFish’s current lack of organisational capacity and focused technical roadmap is delaying product delivery and not matching its tremendous potential on the DeFi ecosystem. This is a DAO coordination problem which should urgently be addressed by its stakeholders.

The Sovryn community and core team have demonstrated an exemplary ability to execute. In the space of little over a year, they have delivered complex infrastructure projects like FastBTC, secure cross-chain bridging and load balancing node infrastructure. They have delivered possibly the most secure DAO governance structure in the world, Bitocracy — which has been adopted by BabelFish. They have delivered and continue to ship product after product while maintaining and improving an ever growing suite of existing products. Any one of these things alone, would typically require the full force of a well funded team. Sovryn has been executing against all of these in parallel. There is perhaps no other team in crypto that has managed to do so much, with so little, in such a short space of time.

The BabelFish team recognizes that there is much to admire and to learn from the Sovryn team, and have turned to them for assistance at this critical juncture. The fruit of this conversation has been that Sovryn have offered to invite BabelFish into the Sovryn core structure. The BabelFish team will be ramped up to the Sovryn way of doing things, integrated into their work streams and processes to benefit from their product management and design expertise. BabelFish will remain an independent project, governed by and for the benefit of FISH stakeholders. However, it will be incubated by Sovryn for a period of time to deliver a new roadmap, worthy of its potential, and execute on it.

The immediate priorities to ensure the protocol can flourish are the following:

1. Preserve the DAO’s treasury and ensure two years of runway.
2. Restructure the team, reduce headcount and improve execution.
3. Present a well-vetted technical roadmap to achieve product goals.
4. Prepare and look to raise additional funds for significant future growth.

To do the above, the following steps need to be taken immediately:

1. Accept Sovryn’s unusually creative and generous offer to join their process while remaining an independent team.
2. Reduce headcount and non-critical expenses to preserve runway and present a new budget. This includes withdrawing liquidity from the FISH/BTC AMM until a new budget can be approved.
3. Reduce to a minimum any further FISH emissions, to avoid dilution until a clear and confident new plan is presented.

Throughout this process, BabelFish will continue maintaining the functionality, integrity and safety of the XUSD system. A new roadmap and budget for success will be submitted and vetted by both the Sovryn team (as outside advisors) and the FISH community. And we will execute, ship, build and grow BabelFish into the system it should be. The BabelFish team has the humility to admit it has not yet delivered on the vision, and the wisdom to understand that this is not the end, but simply the beginning of book one. Our next chapter will take us to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe and beyond, don’t panic!