🗳 This Week in Governance - Apr 6

A weekly resource covering crypto governance, politics, and power.

Apr 06, 2023

Arbitrum’s first governance proposal goes sideways
Butter runs a governance experiment with Aave DAO delegates
ScopeLift moves closer to implementing Flexible Voting

Voting Activity (L7)
🗳️ 169,195 ballots
👥 59,296 voters
📜 283 proposals
🌐 74 active DAOs

Let’s get into it 🔥

🎙️ Delegate Episode 7

In this episode, Cameron O'Donnell and Laurence Smith discuss the Aave delegate elections held by Butter and how the pilot can increase participation, align incentives, and encourage delegate transparency.

Delegate Podcast → Apple | Spotify | Google | Amazon

🗞 News Brief

Arbitrum’s first governance proposal goes sideways

Last week we noted that early feedback on Arbitrum’s first governance proposal — meant to launch the DAO after the airdrop — indicated that “it’s not clear exactly which elements of the proposal the DAO is meant to approve.” Since then, a number of ARB holders, led by Blockworks Research, pointed to the part of the proposal describing the 750M ARB allocation to the Foundation. There were questions. Was that allocation up for approval? It turned out, however, that the allocation had already been made prior to the AIP; the Arbitrum team then described the AIP as a “ratification” vote rather than a true governance vote determined by DAO members, which did not assuage many. Unsurprisingly, AIP-1 was voted down. Arbitrum has acknowledged the outcome, the feedback, and taken responsibility for poor communication. A new set of proposals from the Foundation is being discussed in the forums.

Butter runs a governance experiment with Aave DAO delegates

Butter, a newish protocol focused on DAO governance, is in the process of running a governance pilot program with the Aave DAO. Butter has proposed a three-month incentivized delegate campaign to the DAO: Aave delegates are invited to present their cases as representatives of Aave tokenholders (which they have done in writing as well as in Spaces); a weighted Snapshot vote is being held to select the delegate; and the selected delegate will receive compensation derived from the $15k in AAVE that Butter received from the Aave Grants DAO. Thirteen delegates have put themselves forward. After the vote, AAVE holders can delegate to the winning delegate using the normal process or by depositing into Butter’s Enzyme Vault (the latter will gain the tokenholder an NFT). During the three-month campaign that follows, Butter will “monitor the elected delegate based on the commitments and KPIs detailed in their Delegate Initiatives.” The intention here is to increase and widen delegate and tokenholder engagement through incentives. Check out the Delegate podcast above for a deep dive with Butter’s noturhandle.eth.

ScopeLift moves closer to implementing Flexible Voting

Software engineering consultancy ScopeLift recently announced that OpenZeppelin has completed an audit of its Flexible Voting extension for Governor contracts (common in many DAOs). Flexible Voting “allows delegates to split their voting weight across For/Against/Abstain options for a given proposal” and can “unlock all kinds of new use cases,” including: voting with tokens while earning yield, voting on L2s with bridged tokens, and shielded voting. Since the successful audit, ScopeLift is moving on to testing out use cases. With a grant from Compound, one feature of Flexible Voting will be integrated with Compound Comet contracts; and with a grant from the Ethereum Foundation, ScopeLift will research “participating in mainnet Governance with tokens that have been bridged to Layer 2, paying only Layer 2 gas fees.” The firm notes that later this month Gitcoin will vote on whether to implement Flexible Voting.

📚 Good Reads

Introducing ETH Earned, from RabbitHole
Governance Theater: Lessons from AIP-1, by Juan Esquivel
UNICEF hatches plan for a prototype DAO, following its crypto fund, on The Block
UF Update to Community - 7 Months In, from the Uniswap Foundation
Building Psychological Attachment — Not Just Ownership — Into Web3, by Li Jin
Objective-Based Liquidity Design for stETH, by Elem Oghenekaro
Introducing Astria: The Shared Sequencer Network, from Astria
Introducing Governatooorr: An Autonomous AI-powered Delegate for DAO Governance, from Valory

Forums:

Angle: Ideas for Re-launching the Protocol
Cosmos: A Burn Proposal
ENS: Conviction Voting in ENS Small Grants
Euler: Special Announcement
Lido: Proposal to Approve Lido DAO Treasury Management
Maker: Regenerative Finance CVC
Olympus: Treasury Framework
Rook: Implement Rage Quit Process for Incubator DAO
Uniswap: Delegate Code of Conduct

🧵 Threads

✨ Feelgood thread ✨ Optimism RetroPGF Recipient Tweets
Problems with DAOs and impact communities, by ManuAlzuru
The gravest mistake crypto people can make, according to polynya
10M OP was awarded through RetroPGF Round 2, from the Optimism Foundation
Token delegation program, from Ross Shuel of a16z
A new era has begun, says MakerDAO

🎧 Listens

Legal Liability for DAO Members, from Law of Code
Democracy & Republic, by Mel on MetaGov Short Talks
Discussing on-chain DAOs vs in-name-only governance, with Aragon on Aavegotchi
Privacy Preserving Web3 Identity with Daniel Kelleher, on Green Pill
The Strategy Behind Crypto’s Leading Decentralized Marketplace, on I Pledge Allegiance

📜 Highlighted Proposals

BanklessDAO Governance Department Instantiation

View the proposal

BanklessDAO recently approved a Governance Department, which has the goal of “facilitating and stewarding the development of governance processes and procedures” at the DAO. Upcoming work for the department includes updating the DAO’s constitution and governance documentation, initiating governance incentives, and conducting “micro experiments in guilds and projects.” The proposal requested 800k BANK to fund the department for the season. Over 75% voted in favor of this proposal.

✅ Voting started: March 28
⏰ Voting ended: April 4
⚡ Type: Snapshot vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: Jengajojo, Icedcool

Voting System Choice for Hop DAO Elections

View the proposal

This proposal asks the community to consider which voting system the DAO should use for elected positions (such as DAO Ambassadors and the Community Multi-Sig): single-choice, weighted, approval, quadratic, and ranked-choice voting are the options presented. StableLab, who put forward the proposal, advocate for weighted voting for a number of reasons, including that it allows voters to “quantify their support in percentages for various candidates of their choosing.”

✅ Voting started: April 3
⏰ Voting ends: April 8
⚡ Type: Snapshot vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: StableLab

Include Missing Hidden Hand Votes

View the proposal

Due to technical issues, Hidden Hand Protocol was unable to participate in a recent incentive-round vote. “In order to achieve fairness and regularity for both voters and projects placing voting incentives,” the proposal states, “it is proposed to include Hidden Hand’s delegated votes retroactively as intended.” The proposal includes a simulated vote for Hidden Hand, and says that the previous vote will be replaced with the outcome of the simulation. Over 72% voted in favor of this proposal.

✅ Voting started: April 4
⏰ Voting ended: April 5
⚡ Type: Snapshot vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: Aura Finance