Strategy Design

If we want to WIN, before all else, we need to set out how we will WIN

I am writing this today to encourage further strategic discussion, and answer a question that has been bugging me for the past 9 months; how might we, in a decentralised community, effectively discuss and design a strategy that gives us the best chance of Winning?

I am of the opinion that Lunc needs a strategy to recover and compete in the wider crypto market. Fixing tech debt, improving the product, changing the burn amount, Binance burning, re-pegging USTC or any other product ideas that the community comes up with are highly unlikely to succeed without an actionable strategy, that delivers a lasting competitive advantage.

What is a strategy?

There are various definitions, but at its heart, a strategy is a set of choices that creates a lasting competitive advantage for a business/organisation. This is described well, by Roger Martin/AG Lafley, as a system in their book “Playing to Win” (plenty of other books/systems are available):

  • What is our winning aspiration; What winning looks like for us, what is our ultimate purpose
  • Choosing and explicitly setting out where we will and will not play; which customer/market segments we will target.
  • For our chosen market/customer segment, how we intend to win; how will we be better than everyone else in the market.
  • What the resources and competencies required to implement our “how to win choices”
  • Management Systems; what measurements will be used to asses the success of the strategic choices, allowing objective, fact based discussion to take place on whether to persevere or pivot.

What strategy isn’t:

  • A plan. Simply creating a plan to do something without first considering how it will deliver leverage/a competitive advantage is not strategy
  • Product Ideas. Creating/Improving our product without explicitly setting out how the changes will help deliver on the protocols strategy
  • Hope
  • Plus many other things that are confused with strategy

I am absolutely not the best/most knowledgeable business strategist in our community, nor am I a finance/crypto expert, however I do hope that people who have studied/practiced strategy design can come together to start a wider discussion on how we might effectively discuss strategy design or thoughts on how we can incentivize competent strategists to assist with this task.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts

1 Like

Well, the fact is that, without a proper strategy and marketing team, the price of LUNC will never be stable. I am not even talking about losing one zero - that is a distant dream currently.

I had previously pursued a proposal which deals with the aspects that you have mentioned here, and maybe a few other unrelated aspects as well. Right after I wrote it and got it checked, there was significant infighting among the members of the development teams. DAO teams also tried to swerve LUNC towards Do Kwon and TFL. People were still unaware about who is supporting the infrastructure and now, there are legalities to handle, whenever and whoever takes up the responsibility of marketing LUNC. If by chance there is even one litigation on LUNC, most people are gonna pack their bags and leave. I am waiting for that cleansing/cleanup, after which, I will move with my proposal.

Coming to current price of LUNC - well, if you search my comments you will find one in which it is stated that LUNC will never cross 0.0002 like this. And it won’t. With this attitude towards it’s development, it can’t. Instead of pursuing, questioning and making an example out of the people who have taken money of the community funds, we are being lenient with them. We are being easy. This attitude doesn’t make a successful business - currently, our business being LUNC. The current price fall is not the issue, the issue is the fall in volume of trade. That has significantly reduced indicating less confidence in the coin. When people make choices to invest in the bear market, they would not make the choice of investing in LUNC because it is not backed either by a proper development team without an attitude problem, or a marketing team or even a solo representative who represents the entire community.

Most people are not replying to this because a strategy would mean that you would not be able to scam the community. It also means following schedules and delivery patterns, having proper security measures and financial and legal implications of everything that you do. None of which has been done by the DAOs and development teams handling affairs till now. Currently, people are paid thousands of dollars for giving 2 hours in a day to this work, so if everything is running smoothly, what’s the requirement of this strategy and restrictions that would hinder their comfortable lifestyle?

Thanks for your comment.

I’m not sure any of the constraints you mention are a barrier to strategic discussion/design. In fact, I would argue that a lot of the “controversies” you mention would be resolved by a strategy that has been approved by the majority of validators (lets be honest most lunc holders don’t vote).

If you have a proposal laid out, that has a compelling suggestion of how we will win, would you be willing to share it?

Hmm, for that to be true, everyone involved in discussions on these forms would have to be bad actors, that seems highly unlikely. More likely is my post is too abstract/poorly worded/people don’t see value in my points to contribute to a discussion e.t.c.

Maybe I should have included the word “burn” in the title :wink:

The quality of the development/marketing/operations teams is of very little relevance if the protocol has no strategy that sets out how we will win. Development and Marketing are obviously competencies that the protocol would need to be discussed once a “where we will play” and “how we will win” questions have been answered. I mean, until that is figured out, how can you staff correctly?

In terms of investment, if you saw a compelling strategy that clearly set out what we plan to do with lunc, how it would establish a strategic position, what resources were needed and how we would get them, but it has no dev team; wouldn’t that make for a better investment opportunity than a proposal that said “we have a shit hot dev and marketing team, but we can’t tell you how these teams will deliver a ROI” ?

So the question remains open to you and the rest of the lunc community… how might we, in a decentralised community, effectively discuss and design a strategy that gives us the best chance of Winning?

I would suggest that what’s wrong with lunc and past events are largely ignored, and we focus on the future

1 Like

I would be happy to share my proposal (or rather plan) with the community. Actually I did get it checked by Prof. Edward Kim and he asked me to rework it since it has some problematic parts, but I’ll still share it and get some opinions from the community as well, since I haven’t moved with it yet.

In fact, I am writing a proposal for an AMM that should bring some profits back into the LUNC ecosystem. Without ROI, any plan is a bad plan, unless absolutely required.

The issue is that the L1 team will require some investment and so will Duncan’s arb module. But I am quite sure an AMM will make up for any investment required into making this. I will share both of my plans very soon with the community. Thanks.

Absolutely. Without working roadmap and repeg actions LUNC ends within 1,5 years.

1 Like

Having a development and action strategy is absolutely necessary. We must remember that cryptocurrencies are a tool for an end, cryptocurrencies are not the end. The LUNC community is vast and yet still quite active but it is not possible to understand the direction taken, what is being worked on, where one wants to go. I agree with the decentralization but this is not going anywhere … there is a need for convergence.

1 Like

As promised, I have shared my plan with the community:

Please do review and leave your valuable comments there.