Really, what a coincidence.
The same author has on the same day also published that early on Tuesday the World Economic Forum published a “white paper [which] is meant to act as a toolkit for regulators looking to understand the decentralized finance sector.” Article here
This same author noting that “The WEF does not intend to recommend specific policy actions for regulators, however. The document said it is more focused on describing what issues DeFi may address, as well as draw attention to certain areas on which regulators may need to catch up.”
According to yesterday’s WEF’s announcement, it is “The result of an international collaboration among academics, legal practitioners, DeFi entrepreneurs, technologists and regulatory experts, the report provides a solid foundation for understanding the major factors that should drive policy-making decisions.” and, although DeFi may, “according to its proponents”, be promising, nevertheless
“DeFi raises considerations related to consumer protection, loss of funds, governance complexities, technical risk and systemic risk. Significant incidents involving technical failures and attacks on DeFi services have already occurred. Moreover, questions remain about the actual extent of decentralization of some protocols – and associated risks, e.g. for manipulation – and whether DeFi is more than a risky new vehicle for speculation that may open the door to fraud and illicit activity.”
According to the proposal we are discussing here, the 7th member of the non profit’s Committee is " 1. Sheila Warren , World Economic Forum, Executive Committee (Cryptocurrency Lead). Sheila is trained as a lawyer who used to represent 501(c)(4) nonprofits such as Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. She now convenes experts on cryptocurrency regulatory issues at WEF."
Her picture is one of three figuring at the onset of the report. One can say she has had a pivoting role in it. But taking a closer look, one sees that the majority of the proposed BD members are somehow related to the WEF’s relevant report(s).
Specifically:
Jake Chervinsky, General Counsel of Compound, is a content contributor. of the just publicized WEF’s report.
Other Content Contributors are:
Nic Carter, Partner, Castle Island Ventures, USA
Tarun Chitra, Chief Executive Officer, Gauntlet, USA
Ann Sofie Cloots, Slaughter & May Lecturer in Company Law, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Jacek Czarnecki, Global Legal Counsel, Maker Foundation, Poland
Brendan Forster, Chief Operating Officer, Dharma Labs, USA
Katharina Gehra, Chief Executive Officer, Immutable Insight, Germany
Andreas Glarner, Partner, MME Legal Tax Compliance, Switzerland
Jordan Lazaro Gustave, Chief Operating Officer, Aave, United Kingdom
Siân Jones, Senior Partner, XReg Consulting, Gibraltar
Daniel Kochis, Global Head of Business Development, Chainlink Labs, USA
Joyce Lai, Member, New York Angels; Founder, NewTerritories.io, USA
Urszula McCormack, Partner, King & Wood Mallesons, Hong Kong SAR
Fabian Schär, Professor for Distributed Ledger Technology/Fintech, University of Basel, Switzerland
Lex Sokolin, Head Economist and Global Fintech Co-Head, ConsenSys, United Kingdom
Teana Baker Taylor, General Manager, UK, Crypto.com, United Kingdom
Content Reviewers of the WEF report include another 2 of the proposed Committee members (Marvin Ammori, Chief Legal Officer of Uniswap Labs and Sheila Warren, “Deputy Head, Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, World Economic Forum, USA”).
Others are:
Marcos Allende Lopez, Technical Leader, LACChain, Inter-American Development Bank, USA
Sebastian Banescu, Senior Research Engineer, Quantstamp, Germany
Matthias Bauer-Langgartner, Technical Specialist, FCA Innovate, United Kingdom
Nicolas Brügger, Senior Policy Adviser, State Secretariat for International Finance, Switzerland
Jehudi Castro Sierra, Digital Transformation Adviser, Office of the Presidency, Colombia
Charles Dalton, Software Engineer, Blockchain, Crypto, and Digital Currencies, PayPal, USA
Maxim Galash, Chief Executive Officer, Coinchange, Canada
Oli Harris, Vice-President, Goldman Sachs, USA
Kibae Kim, Principal Researcher, Korea Policy Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, KAIST, South Korea
Netta Korin, Co-Founder, Orbs; Founder, Hexa Foundation, Israel
Ashley Lannquist, Project Lead, Blockchain and Digital Currency, World Economic Forum, USA
Caroline Malcolm, Head, Global Blockchain Policy Centre, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, France
Rob Massey, Tax Blockchain, Crypto and Digital Assets Leader, Deloitte, USA
Paul Maley, Global Head of Securities Services, Deutsche Bank, United Kingdom
Xavier Meegan, Blockchain Intern, ING, Netherlands
Michael Mosier, Acting Director, FinCEN, USA
Michael Oh, Director, Office of Financial Innovation, FINRA, USA
Sam Proctor, Chief Executive Officer, Genesis Block, USA
Lane Rettig, Core Team, Spacemesh, USA
Richard Rosenthal, Risk and Financial Advisory, Banking Regulatory Specialist, Deloitte, USA
Lukas Staub, Senior Legal Adviser, State Secretariat for International Finance, Switzerland
Christoph Simmchen, Legal Counsel, Gnosis, Germany
A closer look reveals that this report was not created by the WEF alone, but "in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, an initiative of it which crowdfunded a billion.
There is also a so-called companion report (called: DeFi Beyond the Hype) just published in May, with Lead Author being David Gogel of dYdX. The BD of the proposed non profit includes the attorney "Marc Boiron , General Counsel of dYdX Trading. That WEF -UniPenn ‘companion report’ was also reviewed by, among others, proposed BD member Sheila Warren (World Economic Forum).
Maybe the proposed members of the Committee, who contributed to these DeFi global regulation inspirations, might wish to share their views about the relevance of the WEF’s papers with the present proposal.
In my view, as long as it is even conceivable that millions would just flow out of Uniswap, “to start with”, also inspiring thoughts about getting extra sums from other DAOs, we’re going to see a much more “relevant” journalistic coverage, especially as the time approaches for voting the proposal. The latter, as I understand, is already considered as voted for. Which would make a great case study.
This bulk of information might also answer some concerns about what could be expected to go wrong.
Urging Governments and regulators to take measures (or participating in such efforts) and then proposing oneself as the 40M solution to “defend” the space from regulation is, to put it lightly, of concern.