Building a DAO is not an easy endeavor. It requires a robust, engaged community that thoroughly understands the subject matter, one that makes meaningful contributions. For some projects, this only extends to voting on how and where to modify incentives and rules. What Credmark is building goes a step further; a fully composable risk modeling platform that incentivizes not only governance, but also contribution. But there is an elephant in the room: risk management is complex, and not something most DeFi users think a lot about. Sure, it’s absolutely a requirement for the growth of the industry, but how do we get the ball rolling?

To that we answer: THE CREDMARK WIKI.

We are kicking off this initiative by publishing content that applies both qualitative and quantitative assessments to DeFi. The first installment of this series covering Lending Protocols (link) went out Friday and will be expanded to the other core areas of DeFi: Yield Farms, Automated Market Makers, synthetic assets/derivatives, as well as views on legal risks and treasury management strategies. Of course, this alone doesn’t get us to decentralization, but it is critical we build a solid foundation in our community of what risk is and how risk management models can be applied to DeFi.

We must ensure we are conducting and publishing research relevant to market needs, and community engagement is our solution. It will take two basic forms: direct engagement with the core Credmark team in our Discord and partnership programs.

We work with partners (other DAOs, financial firms, and DeFi projects) to identify risks that are relevant to their work, and apply our risk expertise to produce actionable insights. The partnerships are mutually beneficial because we are able to refine the focus of the risk library so that it is relevant to market needs. You can read about our inaugural partnership with CoinShift here.

All of the content generated from these partnerships is published iteratively in our Gitbook as soon as metrics and models have been validated so everyone can benefit from the information.

Developing the Wiki provides the Credmark educational content.

Think:

• how to apply financial metrics to DeFi,
• where they are applicable (as well as where they are not),
• variables,
• and how to use them.

This will act as a durable reference resource for developers and validators as they publish models on our platform. Think of it as a toolkit and roadmap a modeler can pull from.

The Credmark Wiki is an input to our:

• Model Categories (i.e. Lending, Dexes)
• Verification Criteria (does this number mean what people think it means?)
• And Documentation. (where can I find the data on this risk?)

With this foundation, we will open the door for our community to start contributing to the Credmark Wiki. We have a fantastic core team, but it is nothing compared to the brainpower of our community. Of course anything published on our platform will have to pass through an appropriately incentivized validation process (something our fearless leader @RealNeil) is working on developing.

This is the cusp of full decentralization. Of course we will learn a lot along the way, but hope you will join us on Twitter and in Discord to help steer the ship in the right direction!