hb Index Coop 🎂 🎈

October 6th, 2021

Index Cooperative Turns One

The Index Coop is celebrating an important milestone this week. October 6th marks the one year anniversary of the Index Coop’s founding. During Index Coop’s first year, the decentralized organization has gone from a nascent organization to a fully-fledged DAO. We have achieved significant growth in both the adoption of our products and the size and capability of our community.

A few highlights include:

Index Coop has Launched market-leading index products:
- DeFi Pulse Index, DPI
- Coinshares Gold and Cryptoasset Index, CGI
- Flexible Leverage Index Series, FLI
- Metaverse Index, MVI
- Bankless BED Index, BED
- Data Economy Index, DATA
Loyal customers have purchased $327 million worth of those products.
Index Coop has earned $1.7 million in revenue.
The Coop has experienced massive organizational growth: 6,000+ Discord members, including hundreds of part and full-time contributors.

In honor of this auspicious occasion, let’s take a look back at the key moments from the past year.

🎃 October 2020

Index Coop Launched

October 6th marked the birth of the Index Cooperative. Leaders at Set Protocol and DeFi Pulse formed the community around the INDEX token.

The mission was to make cryptocurrency and DeFi investing simple, accessible, and safe for everyone. Our flagship product was the DeFi Pulse Index (DPI).

DPI Liquidity Mining

Within days of launching the Index Cooperative, the team formulated a plan to jumpstart DEX liquidity with a liquidity mining program. Sufficient liquidity for users to comfortably on and off-board was a critical component of the product’s potential for success.

The Index Coop gave 9% of INDEX supply to an early community of supporters who provided liquidity on Uniswap. That liquidity—and the notional value of DPI’s assets under management—quickly exceeded $20 million.

The Index Cooperative Secret Master Plan

Once we had a product that had captured the attention of the market, we needed to map out the Index Coop vision. In the prescient words of Set Labs’ CEO Felix Feng:

Step 1: Focus on getting a single index to scale (1% of the DeFi market and majority held by sustainable holders).

Step 2: With the connections, brand, and marketing from the first success, launch additional indices that achieve scale and are leaders in their respective verticals. If we get one index listed on a centralized exchange and adopted by distribution partners, it will be significantly easier to sell the rest.

Step 3: After achieving high market share in each category, focus on long-term Index Coop sustainability - enjoying the benefits of market leadership.

🦃 November 2020

First Contributor Rewards Paid

The initial remuneration for contributors became a landmark moment, as early members of the Coop were granted an ownership interest in the protocol. This fluid exchange of ownership for labor represents an exciting new convention for Web3 communities.

An Expanded Vision of Index Coop

As the Index Coop began to grow into a market leadership position for crypto indices, the opportunity became more clear. As Felix wrote in his expanded vision of the Coop:

If one takes a magnifying glass and looks at the ETP landscape in terms of volume, the landscape of products is much broader than indices. In fact, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

☃️ December 2020

Liquidity Mining Program Shrinks

A critical early juncture in the Index Cooperative community was the heavy reduction in rewards for providing liquidity to our sole product, DPI. The untested prospect of lowering incentives to support DPI liquidity produced as much anxiety as the prospect of continuing to allocate so much of the total supply of INDEX to the reward program.

However, led by OverAnalyser, the Index Coop struck a compromise and agreed to continue incentives, but with a significantly reduced reward program. The arrangement worked, as DPI was able to maintain category-leading liquidity while paying much less for it.

Creative Challenge

The Index Coop creative challenge prompted makers of all types to submit a smorgasbord of Index Coop-related content and art (with a shot at winning $15k in prizes!). Among the winners: an NFT, a cake, and several videos. The grand prize went to Thomas Hepner for his memo on investing in Index Coop and IC products.

⛷️ January 2021

First Working Group Established

In early January, the first bottom-up organizational structure emerged from the Index Coop community in the form of Working Groups. This structure was developed to allow for more nimble resource allocation to growth experiments and incubated some of the most impactful functions in today’s organization.

Milestone: $100m AUM

A Proposed Product Philosophy

As we began to develop the infrastructure for launching products more rapidly, Punia—a contributor to Index Coop’s product group—sought to define a more structured philosophy for product development, positing that we should:

...consider deeply the eventual end users: a middle aged factory worker saving for retirement, a father investing in a college fund, and the young woman daring to make a bet against the status quo. If we do our jobs right, we will greatly accelerate the pace at which DeFi is adopted and make a dent in the financial future of our world.

🌺 February 2021

First Core Contributors

Several months after the launch of Index Cooperative, the first nominations for core contributors were put forward. This group would earn a vested stake in the protocol for their continued efforts and dedication. That cohort, subsequently elected by the community, included: Verto, BigSky, DarkForestCapital, and myself.

CGI Launched

The next product produced by Index Coop was a collaboration with Coinshares aimed at combining hard money primitives such as gold, bitcoin, and ethereum in the pursuit of a volatility-optimized product to combat inflation.

🎎 March 2021

ETH2x-FLI Launched

The launch of the Flexible Leverage Index series in March marked the second collaboration between Index Coop and Pulse Inc. (behind DeFi Pulse). The product, lauded for its simplicity and safety for 2x leveraged exposure, became a quick hit with the Ethereum community.

Index Coop’s Exchange Traded Product Business

In late March, Set Protocol CEO, Felix Feng, published another foundational essay to the governance forums—this time aiding to categorize the personas and customers we serve and how to best do so going forward. The standout quote:

Index Coop is the First Mover in DeFi ETPs

🌳 April 2021

MVI Launched

The Metaverse Index (MVI) was born to capture the secular trend of entertainment and work moving to the digital world. This product launch unlocked another achievement as, for the first time, community members (DarkForestCapital & Verto) brought a methodology through the Index Coop product onboarding process.

[Bonus: Check out the MetaPortal for more content from these two!]

Milestone: $200m AUM

🌧️ May 2021

Milestone: $300m AUM

Milestone: $100m+ in Monthly Net Sales

BTC-2xFLI Launched

The next product launch was an extension of the hit FLI series with a 2x BTC version. This product launched during a turbulent time as we experienced an interruption in user experience as a result of safety constraints placed on the product.

The Index Coop community had to react quickly to educate our customers and put guard rails in place to prevent future interruptions.

⛅ June + July 2021

Treasury Diversification Sale

Another landmark moment for the Index Coop was completing a $10m Treasury Diversification fundraising round with leading DeFi and crypto investors including: 1kx, Galaxy Digital, Laconia Capital, 1Confirmation, Sequoia India & more.

This effort was led by Regan Bozman and Simon “Big Sky”. The Coop diversified a portion of the INDEX in its treasury into USDC so that we can reliably fund continuing operations.

BED Launched

The next product launch featured a dao-to-dao collaboration with BanklessDAO. The ⅓ Bitcoin, Ethereum, and DeFi (DPI) construction is aimed at giving beginner investors 1-click cryptocurrency and DeFI exposure.

Bankless BED was originated by Bankless hosts Ryan Adams and David Hoffman and subsequently gifted to the BanklessDAO community to manage and support.

🌞 August 2021

DPI on Aave

DPI’s listing on the Aave money market protocol marked the accomplishment of one of our largest 2021 priorities, with many thanks to Matt Graham for driving the effort.

More than $50m of DPI deposits have flowed into Aave since the listing.

$10m Treasury Purchase by Fei Protocol

Another milestone accomplishment was facilitating a sale of DPI to Fei Protocol’s treasury. This effort, again led by Matt Graham, marked the first major purchase of an Index Cooperative product by a fellow DAO.

Index Coop Internship Program

Index Coop made waves again with the 1st ever DAO internship program. Led by Pepperoni Joe Mckenzie, the Coop added 6 interns across several working groups who have driven significant impact during their program tenure and beyond.

Uniswap v3 Liquidity Mining Program

Another first! Index Coop launched the first-ever Uniswap v3 rewards program. These short-lived incentives facilitated the migration of DPI liquidity from Uni v2 to v3.

🍂 September 2021

Index 2.0

In September, a cross-entity group of Index Cooperative contributors kicked off conversations to plan out the next phase of IC organization.

Over two months, the Coop will look to formulate new operating principles with sessions to debate topics such as leadership, governance, compensation, partnerships, and much more.

DATA Launched

Index Cooperative’s most recent product launch is another thematic index tracking the data economy (DATA). Composed by community members Kiba Gateaux and Thomas Hepner; who collectively make up Titans of Data; the DATA index seeks to capture the upside of the disintermediation of web2 giants.

Milestone: $400m AUM