Dear community,
The AlphaTicks validator will vote "NO" for the upcoming Assistance Fund token burn decision.
The exact role of the Assistance Fund has never been made clear, only that its holding could be used in special occasion through a validator quorum.
It is however clear its use is to "Assist" the protocol, in case of hack, technical bug, bridge exploit,... But its usage isn't set in stone.
Earlier this year, a proposal was made to allow the assistance fund to finance through buybacks projects building on the Hyperliquid ecosystem, this is for example one of the possible use case.
This being said, our reasoning for the "NO" vote is the following:
1) With the current "YES" majority, we want to offer a way for stakers to weight in their "NO" vote.
2) We believe burning is capital inefficient. We believe the HL Team / HL Foundation / HL Protocol is an incredible capital allocator and that this capital is better off in their hands than not. Burning is a one-off payment to token holders and doesn't support the protocol in any way.
3) We believe that with the introduction of new complex primitives, and the current integration of the Hyperliquid chain with different bridges, the risk of a loss of fund is non-negligible and that the assistance fund still has a role in acting as a last resort safety mechanism for the chain.
4) We agree and understand the argument that using the network token as a safety collateral isn't the best but different models are possible such as a diversification of the holdings, or posting the HYPE as collateral against a stable asset to prevent sell pressure linked to an event that would force the use of those funds, then redirecting the fees toward repayment of the loan.