🗳 This Week in Governance - August 11
A weekly resource covering DAO news and governance
📣 What You Need to Know
Governance Activity This Week:
🗳️ 20,711 ballots | 📜 176 proposals | 👥 8,256 voters | 🌐 56 active DAOs
For a deeper dive into DAO governance data, browse our Governance API 🚀
Today We’re Covering:
Recent bridge hacks spook DeFi protocols, DAOs form foundations and fundraise, the Optimism governance experiment continues, and much more.
Let’s get into it 👇
🗞️ DAO News in Brief
Uniswap looks to form a foundation
The largest decentralized exchange just proposed the creation of a fully independent foundation. Community members, Devin Walsh and Ken Ng published a proposal where they outline the creation of the Uniswap Foundation. The foundation would be set up as an independent Delaware C Corp to help steward the development of the protocol. UF looks to address the DEX’s lack of a clear unified vision, high operational overhead, and general governance sluggishness. Walsh and Ng would comprise the initial leadership team alongside advisors. The proposal requests a budget of $74M for operations and 2.5M UNI for governance participation. A temperature check vote has passed with overwhelming support. There is now a consensus check vote currently underway with an on-chain vote to follow if successful.
Optimism’s Token House Concludes Season 1
Season 1 at Optimism’s Token House has come to a close. The Optimism Foundation has shared updates and reflections on the past 3 months of its governance experiment. A handful of updates and proposals are now up for discussion that looks to improve the governance process. Governance Committees have been introduced for Season 2 to help segment the large inbound of proposals by areas of expertise. Operating Manual v0.2 has also been drafted that changes the voting cadence from two weeks to three weeks, the need for two delegate approvals to move to a vote instead of one, and other operational improvements. The community will now enter a reflection period that lasts from August 4th through August 24th, with Season 2 kicking off on September 8th.
Aave Companies Requests Retroactive Funding
Aave Companies seeks retroactive payment from Aave DAO. Aave Companies, developers of Aave Protocol V3, have drafted a proposal where they outline a $16M payment to themselves for previous V3 work. Aave V3 was a significant update to the DeFi protocol that introduced new increased capital efficiency modes, risk management improvements, UX improvements on L2s, and more. The post breaks down the exact compensation model, full-time personnel costs, and operational costs attributed to the creation of V3. The post has had positive support and feedback thus far.
Bridge Hacks Spook DeFi Protocols
Recent bridge hacks have prompted new proposals at both Aave and Frax. The two DeFi protocols have introduced proposals that look to limit their exposure to other chains and bridges. Large bridge exploits at both Nomad and Harmony have spooked the protocols. Harmony Bridge was exploited for $100M in June. Nomad was exploited for $190M in August. Aave's proposal outlines a plan to freeze all reserves of Aave V3 on Fantom. Frax’s proposal calls for the removal of all swaps on all chains and their respective bridges.
CreatorDAO Raises $20M from a16z
CreatorDAO emerges out of stealth and announces a seed round led by a16z and Initialized Capital. The DAO looks to invest in creators and provide them with capital, technology, and community support. Creators can now apply to join CreatorDAO to help further grow their audience and also share a percentage of future earnings with the community treasury.
📚 Good Reads & Listens
“Nouns: Treasury Allocation and its Effectiveness” from Llama
Meiji DAO: SushiSwap Meiji Restoration
“What DAOs can learn from Corporate Governance” by Crypto Kailash
“Evolutionary DAOs w/ Chase Chapman” on The Green Pill Podcast
“DAO Governance: A Game of Offense and Defense” by Francis Gowen
“The Great Maker Debate” w/ Hasu and Rune on The Unchained Podcast
Optimism: “Governance Fund Observations” by Ryan and Traver
“Permissionless Governance Layering” by Darcy Allen
“Top 9 Challenges of DAO Unit Success” from RnDAO
PoolTogether begins drafting its ‘Protocol Constitution’
MakerDAO announces Governance Dashboard v2
Developer DAO looks to form a foundation
📜 Highlighted Proposals
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🛡 Paladin: Treasury Management #1
Paladin describes itself as a “decentralized, non-custodial governance lending protocol” in which “users can either loan the voting power in their governance token or borrow some voting power.” While the TLDR for this proposal is stated as “deposit CRV in lockers, lock BAL in Aura and sell CVX for treasury expenditure,” the context provided is critical to understanding it. In order to stabilize itself and remain a sustainable enterprise, Paladin needs to reinvest in “scaling business lines,” accumulate stablecoins to combat market volatility, and begin to decentralize by “empowering high-value contributors” (e.g. a treasury manager). Those three goals can be effectively pursued by managing the treasury in the way the proposal suggests.
✅ 100% voting yes
💬 See the discussion
🟢 BitDAO x AfricaDAO: Accelerating Web3 Adoption Across The Fastest Growing Continent
With this proposal, AfricaDAO seeks a partnership with BitDAO, which supports “builders of the decentralized economy” in part by allocating funds from its $1.58 billion treasury, to help move Africa, “one of the largest, fastest-growing, and most promising markets” into becoming “a hub for web3 innovation.” With $20m from BitDAO and more funding yet to be raised, AfricaDAO hopes to unfold its ambitious plan, detailed in full in their 23-page proposal.
✅ 100% voted yes
💬 See the discussion
🌱 Radicle: Radicle // Gitcoin Public Goods Alliance
A month ago we wrote here about the off-chain vote in favor of initiating this proposal for a public-goods alliance between Radicle and Gitcoin. The proposal is now on-chain; voting ends on August 13. A quick refresher: By exchanging a significant amount of tokens (500K GTC and an equivalent amount of RAD, vested for two years), each organization takes on an influential meta-governance role in the other DAO. Among other things, this will allow the DAOs to more formally “collaborate on shared visions” and “develop synergistic features and products” while modeling how such an alliance could work for other DAOs. The proposal itself comes from Llama, which will facilitate the process of carrying it out.
✅ 100% voting for
💬 See the discussion
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