Since before the launch of Nexus Mutual, we have been reluctant to plan and release a detailed roadmap for several reasons:
- The technical challenges of establishing Nexus Mutual from ‘smart contract cover’ to ‘V2’ have been extremely difficult to predict timelines for.
- Our cover products and protocol are built on the fundamentals of insurance theory with the application of blockchain technology—there is tension here between the typical decades-long timeframes of insurance and the quick, sometimes volatile, cycles of DeFi.
- Priorities can quickly change as we develop the protocol, build a skilled and reliable team, adapt our cover products to the ever-changing needs of our members.
We launched on Ethereum main-net four years ago and since then have been consciously building our products, team, and brand to represent the expertise and steadiness required to build a secure protocol, which can serve as an insurance-alternative for the long-term. During this time, our team has grown from 2 to 15 full-time people, we’ve established a DAO with 4 teams, launched a scalable staking-pool system with V2, sold over $4billion of cover and paid over $17million in claims. We’re doing what we came here to do—we’re on a mission to build an ecosystem in which anyone can protect anyone else by sharing risk.
Until recently the whole team was focused solely on one thing: launching V2. Anything else that we wanted to do from the “important-but-not-urgent” through to the “nice to have” had to be put on hold through ruthless prioritizing. This enabled our Engineering team to focus on building V2 in the most secure and user-focused way possible.
After the launch of V2, we held our biannual team onsite to decide our priorities, next steps, and goals, as well as how each team will contribute to the mission. As a result, we have a roadmap to share with you, after 6 months we will review and share.
Nexus Mutual Priorities
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Growth
Growing the mutual, cover products, staking pools and, ultimately, protection for our members is our number one priority. To do this we will test a number of different ways to find out what works and then scale the successful ones to drive sales.
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Tokenomics
Updating tokenomics is critical to growing our Capital Pool, which is essential to scale the mutual as a whole and enabling members to enter and exit the pool to drive capital growth. Hugh and our Head of Research and Development is working closely with the Engineering Team to implement this upgrade as safely and quickly as possible, while retaining our goal of being focused on building for the long-term.
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Progressive Decentralization
Our goal has always been to decentralize as the mutual matures. Over time, we plan to further decentralize the protocol and the teams contributing to the protocol. Steadily, we aim to slide more along the scale towards decentralization.
How each team will contribute to the priorities
| Team | How each team will contribute to the roadmap |
|---|---|
| Products and Risk | Create a standard claims process and claims tracker. Create cover wording templates and guidelines. Optimize listings management. Launch Sherlock staking pool. |
| Engineering | Protocol Features: Tokenomics. Enable cover edits. Security: Infra strengthening. Tech debt. Bug and hack detection. Docs: Improve internal docs. Write technical docs. UI Features: Support Business Development with new listings. Launch Unity staking pool user interface. Improve staking UX. Developer Experience: Modernise the user interface and improve developer experience. Develop design system. Productionize SDK. Docs: Improve internal docs. SDK docs for external use. |
| Business Development | Drive Protocol Cover sales with new teams. Execute 4 Slashing Cover (ETH staking cover) sales. Develop new LSD cover product. Engage 2 partnerships with custodians for ETH staking cover. Establish underwriting process for D&O cover. |
| Marketing | Create marketing content to support Business Development sales. Hire Marketing Manager to support Marketing initiatives and social media presence. Provide monthly analytics review to team and community. Support tokenomics project with launch content. Ongoing brand and website maintenance. Support creation of DAO website landing page. |
| Community | Increase transparency between staking pool managers and community. Create Discord bot to communicate capacity updates, remind members ahead of covers expiring. Own and drive engagement on community forum. Increase transparency between tokenomics project and community. Create visual how-to guides to support community interacting with protocol. |
| Research and Development | Ensure system design maintains pace with growth. Own tokenomics project update (capital). Own MCR refresh project (risk). Act as liaison between investment committee, Nexus Mutual teams, and community. |
| Operations | Create DAO website landing page. Write DAO operations manual for anyone contributing to the DAO. Consider the DAO operating model, identify gaps, and propose new ways of growing the scope of the DAO team within budget and with our current skills. Operationally support DAO-funded teams with payments and processes. Ensure sufficient cover in place for Head of Ops maternity leave (next quarter). |
| Legal | Establish Legal infrastructure. Review historical legal documentation and processes. Review legal aspect of cover wording. |
Review
The next whole-team roadmap review will take place in October ‘23 at which time we will consider the success of these goals and what the priorities are for the following six-month period.
The DAO-funded teams (Community, Marketing, Research and Development, Operations) will review and request funding in July 2023.
Our approach to scale and growth is to experiment with a variety of methods, review them quickly, and drop whatever isn’t working so that we can focus on what is. With that in mind the six-month review process is for overarching big-picture goals and the exact ways in which each team will contribute to those goals should adapt accordingly during that period. Therefore each review point for all teams will have some discrepancies between what is planned and what actually worked/happened.
Team and transparency
Our team is made up of DAO-funded and foundation-funded people who work full-time to contribute to our mission to build an ecosystem in which anyone can protect anyone else by sharing risk.
Over the past four years we have grown from 2 to 15. We’ve attracted skilled and dedicated folks to contribute to the protocol, who bring their knowledge and expertise to create safe, secure, and member-focused smart contracts, cover products, and community spaces.
| Team | Contributors | Funding |
|---|---|---|
| Products and risk | 1 | Foundation |
| Engineering | 6 | Foundation |
| Business Development | 2 | Foundation |
| Marketing | 1 | DAO |
| Community | 2 | DAO |
| Research and development | 1 | DAO |
| Operations | 1 | DAO |
| Legal | 1 | Foundation |
| Total | 15 |
One of the goals for the DAO Operations team has been to improve transparency between the Nexus Mutual Foundation team and the community. It is sometimes difficult to quantify some of the work that is being done but I hope that this goes some way to helping our members understand what we’re planning and how we’re aiming to achieve the goals and grow the mutual for everyone.
If you have any questions, comments, or feedback we would love to hear and answer them. We hope this roadmap helps to increase the transparency between our teams and community.