Thanks to the proponent for putting together this detailed pilot proposal, I appreciate the focus on productive use cases and the emphasis on onboarding community-driven groups without requiring them to sell their BTC holdings. I also appreciate the potential for boosting liquidity in lending/borrowing protocols on Rootstock such as Tropykus.
The small ask ($8,500) and clear milestones make it easy to evaluate, and the real-world examples shared (with press links) are encouraging.
That said, I have some concerns about the overall impact and alignment with the Collective’s goals of boosting broad Rootstock usage and adoption.
I feel lending/borrowing are a mature and well established application of Web3/DeFi. People are well aware of Aave and what it’s used for, and Bitcoiners have been looking at possibilities for lending their “hardest asset” and borrowing “weak currency”, comparing protocol risks, centralization, custody rehypothecation, etc. I feel like lending/borrowing functionality on Rootstock itself is also known, as Sovryn and Tropykus have been around for five years.
Case in point is the profusion of good quality Bitcoin lending comparison websites, like this one
https://www.zone21.com/ and so many others. a Google search for “Bitcoin lending comparison” or “Top Bitcoin lending” yields about 3 pages of results.
My concern is subsidizing interest costs risks primarily benefiting participants who are already positioned to borrow (or would do so at slightly higher rates), rather than driving meaningful net-new user growth at scale. I fear we might just be subsidizing traditional ongoing DeFi costs for Web3 citizens.
How will the participating communities be chosen? What safeguards ensure they are genuinely new to Rootstock DeFi (vs. existing users or groups that would borrow anyway)?