Ultimately Iqlusion votes yes on the merger.
We feel that both sides have flaws in their argument.
The main flaw in the against camp argument:
I don’t really think there are good opportunities that will have community support for the non-native assets in community pool. This merger augments the 1 million in USDC already in the pull with 5 million in non native assets from osmosis. This provides a lot of defi optionality that current community pool lacks.
The Osmosis team argues that the osmosis code base provides a value accrual mechanism aligned with the work Cosmos Labs is doing. I find this highly implausible. Old school AMM designs are foundational technology but are just not competitive in the modern defi landscape. If we successfully bring substantial assets into Cosmos, the main liquidity rails are not going to be Osmosis. Generally the Osmosis team made a lot of product decisions over the last two years that haven’t worked out and that’s largely how we got here. I don’t think the merger is going to change much.
To me the value in the merger comes down to
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Karmic debt owed to osmosis for doing the IBC go to market, saving the network during Dragonberry, and providing foundational defi infrastructure to Cosmos.
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Stability: AMM’s are not the winning dex design and they aren’t going to be a huge factor as trade and defi integrate more tightly. But AMMs are the first place new assets, new asset categories trade . Even if they might only be relevant for a few days. Starting from scratch with a new Cosmos AMM infrastructure is just going to be a disaster. It’s possible but the risks are high. Osmosis has a lot of integrators.