My name is Rex Hygate founder of DeFiSafety. I have almost four years of analyzing DeFi documentation full time and in the last six months I've been looking particularly at stable coin documentation. My project is an analysis and set of recommendations for the website documentation.
Documentation should be considered more important by DeFi. More resources should be placed on communication via the website. DeFi is in trouble right now. We're not on boarding new users. Most DeFi money presently in the system is from experienced DeFi users. Your documentation is targeted towards these existing users not towards new users. This is clear from the diction you use and the topics that are at the top of your documents. Saying “GHO is the only decentralized, overcollateralized stablecoin native to the AAVE protocol” Is a sentence only comprehensible to an experienced DeFi user. Is this what you want?
Consider your audiences in documentation. The documentation should say different things if you were talking to traditional finance people rather than retail users. Consider having different pages on your site speaking to each of your audiences.
Have a set of pages dedicated to retail users. Have a set of pages dedicated to traditional finance users. And yes, some pages for degens too.
If the lawyers are limiting what you can say in a significant manner, then this is a serious issue to be addressed internally. Communication is vital and your website is the primary voice you have.
First priority, get control of your site. Your documentation is already out of date. If the DAO is to control GHO, then the DAO must have control of the documentation. Work with AAVE Labs. Cut a deal. It is extremely important for your token to thrive.
If I understand correctly, GHO is functionally updatable through the facilitator capability though interestingly the transfer functions are immutable. This is important for users. It should be written clearly. In addition, the DAO should commit to announcing updates well in advance and in very clear language. Transparency is the DeFi superpower. Use it.
Perhaps after a successful DAO vote on a new facilitator there could be a delay before implementation where the changes are announced and described clearly for all users. This announcement delay and process should become part of the standard facilitator update path.
This section comments on the individual pages on the existing website.
This paragraph was written exclusively for experienced DeFi users. No one else will understand the text. Allow me to propose some content which would be clearer and useful to a larger audience.
The GHO stable coin is different because it cannot be paused and does not have a blacklist. Users own their money! This is a major discriminator of your stable coin over most that are out there. The largest users of the DeFiSafety website are from countries where users find the banks are not on their side (Argentina, China, Russia). Are these users your target market? If Yes, these aspects will resonate.
On the topic of no blacklist, many people from traditional finance see this as a big negative. Enemies of DeFi will use this against you. I address this in more detail below.
You say “native to the AAVE protocol” under the assumption the reader realises the impact. You should clearly say that are they is the third largest protocol with 7 billion in assets and an unmatched level of security and stability. It's true, don't assume your reader already knows that. For retail users AAVE offers security and safety. But it is not where they will deposit their savings. For traditional finance user you are selling Aave as a deposit option. You need different words for each audience.
This page says good things badly. “The Aave Protocol Is Well Positioned” should say that AAVE is huge and stable and therefore an excellent base for a stable coin. In several sections you talk about how the AAVE protocol assist in the strength of GHO. This should be organized in one section about how AAVE facilitates GHO.
“Differentiating Factors” here you say configurable without talking about facilitators. You should be more clear on how the facilitators aspect is superior to other stable coins (like DAI).
For the users that do not intend to change facilitators (which is basically everybody) then the whole facilitator aspect is unimportant. What is important is how does the coin work right now. This aspect should be in front of the facilitator aspect because it is more important to the majority of users. This is on the GHO implementation page (which is perhaps not the best name). This page appears complete but is extremely concise. More examples and diagrams would help.
This section describes potential subjects to add to the website. I do not understand why stable coin websites are tiny three or four page sites. You are introducing new forms of money. It has a particular culture attached to it. You should talk about it. Allowing these topics to only exist in 3rd party documents removes an element of control of the narrative.
Not having a black list will be interpreted as a weakness by certain traditional finance entities. You know how the attacks will come. Being silent on the topic may not be the best strategy. With DAI the impact of no blacklist is very clear and well traveled. A well reasoned article on this topic on the GHO website will help a lot. Consider using real time data to help your case. You could easily have a real time number of the actual amount of GHO on blacklisted addresses. Have your side of this issue clearly described.
Most people do not understand the difference between an over collateralized stable coin and algorithmics stable coin. To those people it is extremely easy to convince them that GHO is another Terra. You need an article that clearly explains why this is not true. It should reference the stability algorithms and the article should be updated when these aspects change.
Many times I have found that DeFi protocols fail to update important articles as their protocol evolves. You mitigate this by having documentation as a priority that is funded for every change.
I am sure that following good risk management procedures that the DAO will run scenarios that simulate situations where the coin may depeg. Developing extremely strong simulation capability is a very good use of DAO funds in quiet times. New technology has evolved the capability of blockchain simulations significantly. The results of these scenarios can be used to justify process improvements. The results should be documented in a language that regular users I can understand. Hopefully the results will prove the strength of the stability mechanisms. The results of the simulations are an excellent technical method to prove the stability of the coin. It is important for the DAO to be ahead of this conversation at all times and document the results in language users can understand.
If any of this resonates with the team at GHO, our team at DeFiSafety would love to continuethe conversation.