Sidestream Auction Services (SAS)

With SAS we are building a dedicated business unit inside of our company that forms part of the MakerDAO - the most ahead of the curve decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO).

Learn more about MakerDAO
SIDESTREAM and Maker Logo

SAS Motivation

To form part of a DAO goes beyond the scope of our usual software agency work. However, we believe that a dedicated business unit of a private company acting publicly as a core unit inside a DAO can become a mutually beneficial form of collaboration for the future. As the core value proposition of a DAO is to aggregate, organise and reward talent, we may well experience the frontier of new work with this collaboration. We want to leverage our experiences and practices as a service company and ultimately contribute to MakerDAO's future success.

Maker Logo with eight circles around it

SAS Mission

Improve security, transparency and accessibility of the Maker Protocol by providing and maintaining auction services through open-source development.

SAS Vision

We want to provide and maintain systems on top of the auction mechanisms that contribute to growth and security of the Maker Protocol.
These systems cover the following three areas:
Transparency Icon

Transparency

Visualize auction data to increase transparency and generate insights.


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Accessibility

Provide intuitive UIs and well-maintained APIs for interaction with the auction mechanism

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Security

Ensure that there is always sufficient auction participation, even in critical circumstances

Anticipated Challenges

Fail Safety

  • Ensuring that our solutions work in emergency situations
  • Creating trust that our solutions are fail-safe
  • Understanding consequences of not fail-safe auction mechanisms

Informed Decision Making

  • Is participation healthy?
  • How many people are using the UIs/ How is usage changing over time?
  • How healthy is the keeper ecosystem?

Prioritization

  • Building the right things in the right order
  • Balancing our long-term roadmap vs. new requirements in a fast-changing environment

Automation & Standardization

  • Maximize the likelihood that fire escapes work in case of a real fire
  • Consistently keeping the quality high
  • Ensuring that the auctions infrastructure scales with the rest of the protocol

Building For A Heterogeneous User Base

  • Ensuring that the auction mechanism is is accessible for new users
  • Ensuring that the auction mechanism stays relevant for existing users
  • Measuring the accessibility of the auctions mechanism

Challenges and solutions

Strategy Diagram

Our Solutions

Simulation Of Failure Modes

  • Modeling the risks
  • Conducting regular fire drills
  • Providing transparency on emergency prevention

Emphasis On Product Management

  • Leverage our learning curve
  • Involve a wide range of stakeholders for requirements gathering
  • Agile practices

Review & Metric-Driven Development Process

  • Functional reviews
  • Code reviews
  • Quality metrics

Shorten Time-To-Market through Automation & Standardization

  • Development Automation - CI / CD
  • Modularity - Re-usability
  • Standard Operating Procedures, Guides & Checklists

Transparency & Reporting

  • Open-source software → More trust,
    easier contribution & better accessibility
  • Technical Reporting → Web presence,
    Core Unit Twitter account, Public Notion space,
    and our GitHub repositories
  • Monitoring systems → Derive conclusion on the
    system's performance and health

Unified Auctions UI Demo