Thanks for being open about the process and seeking feedback, that’s really cool!
I think there is a risk of Algorand becoming a “Potemkin ecosystem” where the foundation tries to do everything.
Take Gard as an example, all it does is provide a special way of taking governance funded by the foundation. If it were given relief pool funds all the foundation is doing is perpetuating a project who’s only goal is to take funds from the foundation.
Imo the thing that should be encouraged (given relief funds and defi support) is projects that bring in money from outside the ecosystem and give it to Algo holders. One of the only examples is Lofty which is actually bringing money in from renters, most other projects just exist to shuffle tokens around which ultimately end up coming from the foundation.
Imo one approach would be to change governance so it requires a 3 month hard lock and then to take that capital and lend it to a bank to actually get some return and start giving those real returns to the community. If it were insured the risk would be low and it could provide a ~5% return or something.
We have a lot of capital here, it needs to be deployed in actual, useful, economic activity to earn a return that can be used to grow the ecosystem.
Too much of what we have now is just fake projects which just shuffle nonsense tokens around and don’t actually do anything valuable for anyone.
Governance is covering how little real economic activity there is here. What returns can you get in the Algo ecosystem if governance didn’t exist? The vast majority of lending and borrowing on Algofi and Folks is just going right back into governance anyway.
Imo the foundation needs to use governance to get the capital here to do actual useful work.
That’s what is sustainable, without that it will all just wither away in the end.