This Week in Governance - April 21

A weekly resource covering developments in DAO governance

Apr 21, 2022

And we're back! After a brief hiatus, your weekly dose of governance news has returned. The newsletter will continue to evolve as the space does.

Let us know what you’d like to hear more about!

📊 This Week’s Stats

Ecosystem Overview:

💰 $13.02 billion in treasuries 💰
✍️ 6,111 proposals ✍️
👥 92,115 unique voters 👥
🗳️ 622,006 ballots 🗳️

Governance Activity - Last 7 Days:

🗳️ 7,128 ballots were cast on 117 different proposals 🗳️
👥 4,050 unique voters 👥
🌐 40 DAOs with active voters 🌐
✍️ 59 new proposals created ✍️

For a deeper dive into DAO governance data, check out the Dashboard.

🗞️ Governance News in Brief

$76M Theft of Beanstalk Farms Exploits Governance Process
RabbitHole Shuts Down Metagovernance Pod
Reverie Launches Osmosis Grants Program [proposal; discussion]
Moonsama holds a metaverse town hall to conduct voting process
Anchor redirects Airdrops to Community Pool [full discussion]
Referendum to register USDT from Statemine as xcUSDT (cross-chain stablecoin) on Moonriver [full discussion]

📝 Highlighted Proposals

Each week we select noteworthy proposals to draw your attention to. See all proposals on your Boardroom Dashboard.

1) COMP Rewards Adjustments - Kickstart Rewards

🔤 ELI5: Rewards for farming COMP should be eliminated to make room for a re-designed rewards program that better supports the protocol and its users.

This proposal is the second in a series of four updates to the protocol to cut the current COMP rewards and replace them with something new. The proposer points out that COMP farming leads to the sale of the COMP awarded, with the result that, for users and holders of the token, "the protocol is being diluted for nothing other than farming COMP for profit." This proposal aimed to continue the process of removing COMP rewards initiated with a previously passed proposal (see "Step One"). Step three would involve R&D of interest rate models, while step four would introduce the new program, dubbed “kickstart rewards.”

“Incentives need to be used to grow the protocol to the benefit of the protocol itself and its users and token holders.”

Although "Step One" and "Step Two" initially saw little engagement or discussion among the participating communities, this changed over the course of the last few days as the debate became lively. Here are some of the arguments: Teddy Woodward from Notional, Kirill Naumov from Penn Blockchain, Jeff Amico from a16z, Larry Sukernik from Reverie.

View the discussion
50.36% voted against

View the proposal

2) GnosisDAO: Spin-off SafeDAO and Launch Safe Token

🔤 ELI5: Gnosis creates SAFE governance token to strengthen community ownership.

This proposal spins off Gnosis Safe from Gnosis Ltd. and creates a SAFE token to enable a newly established, independent safeDAO to govern Gnosis Safe. SAFE tokens are to be issued by the (also independent) Safe Foundation, which is to be set up in Switzerland and is charged with "foster[ing] the Gnosis Safe ecosystem" as well as protecting certain off-chain assets.

“In order to enshrine Gnosis Safe as a community-owned project, we should launch the SAFE governance token. Introducing the SAFE Token establishes Gnosis Safe as a public good and community-owned account standard.”

View the Discussion
99.65% voted for

View the Proposal

3) OlympusDAO: Olympus Governance Council

🔤 ELI5: Olympus creates a council to manage and guide operations.

This proposal sought (and gained) approval to create a governance council to organize, coordinate, and drive the work of various sub DAOs and working groups. The governance council is also meant to "establish a strategic vision," "oversee the broader econOHMy," and ensure increasing decentralization. Importantly, the proposal notes that "the ultimate authority of the protocol and its functions are Olympus token holders."

The proposal goes into some depth about how the council would be established, structured, and maintained, and what its regular duties are to be -- which include detailed quarterly reports to the community.

View the Discussion
97.26% voted for

View the Proposal

🚢 Product Updates

We’re very excited to share Boardroom’s new email notification service. Stay in the know with an email digest of active and ending proposals from projects you’re interested in. (Just three or fewer emails per week, we promise):