This Week in DAOs - July 29, 2021
MakerDAO Delegation Soft Launch, Element's Governance Framework, the Volatility DAOracle, and Columbia Blockchain's LionDAO
Another week in DAOs in the books. Keep scrolling to get caught up on what you need to know this week about DAOs and decentralized governance.
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📊 This Week’s Stats
Source: Boardroom Screener
Ecosystem Overview - July 29, 2021:
💰 $6.98 billion in DAO treasuries 💰
🗳️ 205,034 ballots ever 🗳️
👥 56,683 unique voters ever 👥
✍️ 5,949 proposals ever ✍️
Governance Activity - Last 7 Days
🗳️ 4845 ballots cast on 71 different proposals 🗳️
👥 2233 unique voters 👥
🌐 21 projects with active voters 🌐
✍️ 40 new proposals created this week ✍️
📰 This Week’s News
MakerDAO Adding Delegation
In October 2020, a MakerDAO forum post entitled “MIP26: DssGov - Governance Contract Redesign” proposed an upgrade that would add delegation to MakerDAO’s governance contracts.
After a several months in which “the governance process [became] less consistent and less secure than is ideal for MakerDAO and the Maker Protocol,” the MakerDAO community began, in April 2021, to implement delegation as a “near-term solution to the recent issues.”
This past week, it was announced that the upgrade is officially set to “soft launch” on August 2nd.
For a good summary on how it’s going to work, including detail on the difference between Recognized and Shadow Delegates, check out the below Twitter thread from MakerDAO’s Growth Unit:
Element Finance Reveals Governance Framework
At ETHcc, Element Finance developer Paul Vienhage presented their new governance framework, which includes an executive council decided on by liquid delegation, a new concept called “voting vaults,” and an interesting approach to treasury management.
Check out Paul’s full presentation here:
The Volatility DAOracle
A few months ago, Vitalik Buterin pitched the Uniswap community on a $UNI-based oracle system. He argued that Uniswap was well-suited to fill this crucial role because it has a large market cap (and is thus harder to attack) and is a Layer 2 application, meaning that it helps push the messy governance associated with oracles away from crucial Layer 1 systems.
Effective oracles are fundamental to a functioning DeFi ecosystem. This week, Volatility Protocol - “DeFi's home for composable volatility” - released a “DAOracle” to solve the oracle problems specific to their use-case, namely the “lack of clarity and reliability” of existing oracle solutions.
Based on UMA’s Optimistic Oracle, the DAOracle leverages the $VOL token to “create additional economic incentives and governance mechanisms that allow for collective control of key parts of the optimistic oracle.”
For an explanation on the solution presented by Volatility Protocol, check out the blog below:
Certainly, the crypto ecosystem - and the DeFi ecosystem in particular - will continue to search for an oracle solution (or, more likely, solutions); where DAOs and decentralize governance fit in will be something to keep an eye on.
Columbia Blockchain’s LionDAO
In these early days of cryptonetwork governance, student groups - usually blockchain clubs at top US-based colleges - have proven to be a formidable force. Look no further than the DeFi Education Fund effort, led by Harvard Law Blockchain and Fintech Initiative, for a prime example. Indeed, other student groups like Penn Blockchain and UCLA Blockchain were active participants in that process, which, of course, ended up leading to the largest DAO treasury distribution ever (excluding liquidity mining initiatives).
Never before have we seen student groups hold so much “real world” power over money and resources. Which, in turn, leads to their primary goals - often to teach students about cryptonetworks and blockchain technology - becoming easier to accomplish and more attractive: the crypto club is a lot more exciting than the consulting club.
So, the fact that Columbia Blockchain - a student-run organization centered around blockchain technology at Columbia University in New York City - formed “LionDAO” this past week to govern themselves is significant. If these student groups continue to amass governance power in DAOs and cryptonetworks, then that they are becoming a DAO themselves means they’ll be a primary onboarder of young people to the world of DAOs and crypto.
Kudos to Columbia Blockchain for pioneering this model.
Also, read their first article on Mirror:
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