🗳 This Week in Governance - Dec 22
A weekly resource covering Web3 governance, politics, and power.
📣 Key Points
Hop DAO Discusses the Future of the Bridge Protocol
Element DAO Publishes a Draft of its Governance Process
Chaos Labs Proposes Expanding its Coverage at Aave
Optimism Awards Badges to Ten Delegates
… and much more
Voting Activity (L7)
🗳️ 82,596 ballots (-18%)
👥 36,962 voters (7%)
📜 252 proposals (3%)
🌐 64 active DAOs (-3%)
Let’s get into it 🔥
🗞 News in Brief
Hop DAO Discusses the Future of the Bridge Protocol
This week, Chris Winfrey, the founder of Hop Protocol, published three proposals on the Hop forums to discuss the future of the bridge protocol. In his first post, Winfrey proposes a new product roadmap that introduces Modules, which are applications that offer cross-chain functionality such as messaging, token transfers, NFT transfers, Omnichain tokens, and more. Authereum Labs, the centralized company building the protocol, aims to complete all four initial primitives by the end of Q3 2023. In the second proposal, Winfrey suggests that Authereum Labs enter into a formal service provider agreement with the DAO. This would further decentralize the protocol and reduce its reliance on centralized entities. The proposal requests a budget of $115K per month to cover the costs of providing R&D services for the protocol, running day-to-day operations & development of the frontend, and conducting open-ended research on trustless cross-chain infrastructure. The third proposal calls for introducing a protocol fee switch, which would be turned on in each Hop module to help cover some of the DAOs costs. In addition, a fraction of the generated fees would be diverted to fund public goods outside the Hop Ecosystem. The proposals are expected to be updated based on community feedback before being put to a vote.
Element DAO Publishes a Draft of its Governance Process
Element DAO, the community responsible for governing the Element protocol, has published an initial draft of its governance process. The draft document, co-authored by multiple contributors, provides a comprehensive guide to the different roles, rules, values, and processes the DAO will use to govern the protocol. At Element DAO there are four key roles: GSC member, Delegate, Delegators, and Contributors. These roles are expected to follow the Code of Conduct and contribute to the shared values and vision of the DAO. The governance process at Element DAO involves discussions in the forums and on Discord, as well as the implementation and voting on proposals. There are three initial types of proposals at the DAO: Social, Protocol, and Asset Onboarding. These proposal types distinguish the changes that may be made to the DAO, including the requirements for ratifying each proposal.
To support this process, Metropolis Pods will be implemented as an optional governance building block available to the DAO that gives community members the ability to form units with a specific purpose. ELFI tokenholders can participate directly in voting or delegate away their voting power to the GSC or a delegate. Proposals will occur both on-chain and off-chain depending on the proposal type. Snapshot votes last 5 days, while on-chain votes last 3 days. A proposal must reach a minimum quorum of 1.1M ELFI to be successful. This initial draft serves as the foundation for the governance process of Element DAO and is expected to be periodically refined and improved based on feedback and changes.
Chaos Labs Proposes Expanding its Engagement with Aave
The Aave community is currently voting on whether to expand the scope of Chaos Labs’s engagement with the DeFi protocol. In October, the risk analysis and management provider entered into a 12-month agreement with the protocol to service all Aave v3 markets. As a result of recent market volatility and exploit attempts on the Aave protocol, Chaos Labs has introduced a new proposal to extend their coverage to include risk management for v2 markets. This coverage involves updating parameters, protecting user funds, and mitigating potential risk factors on v2. An additional $250K is requested to cover the increased scope and responsibilities. Chaos Labs aims to support Aave's transition to its new and improved protocol version, Aave v3. Voting on the proposal concludes on December 24th.
📚 Good Reads
“Experiments in DAO Governance” by Linda Xie & Derek Hsue
“The power tools for DAOs” from StableNode
“Are DAOs Helping Governance to Become More Transparent and Decentralized?” by Peyman Khosravani
“Composable Expansion Packs for Decentralized Organizations” by Marvin Lin, Kei Krutler, and Auryn Macmillan
“Gauntlet's Proposal for Aave Protocol Risk Management: Failure and Future” by Elem Oghenekaro
“The Problem with DAO Voting and How to Fix It” from Crypto Good
“Emerging Consensus | A Way to Accelerate Decision Making in DAOs” by Raphael Spannocchi
“An In-depth Analysis of How AAVE’s $1.6 Million Bad Debt Was Created” from EigenPhi
“Optimism 2022: Year in Review” from Optimism Collective
“Seatbelt for Governance: Support OpenZeppelin Governors” from Scopelift
“Uniswap Foundation Grants: Wave 2“ from Uniswap Foundation
“What we learned about DAOs in 2022” by Samantha Marin
“How to Review a Governance Action” from Hackernoon
“veALCX Update” from Alchemix Finance
ApeCoin DAO: “Immediate Further Decentralization of Administrative Functions via Working Groups”
🧵 Threads
“What does 2023 hold for DAOs?” by Daniel Ospina
“We don’t talk enough about community health in DAOs” from MetaGame
🎧 Listens
“The Secret Behind ENS DAO’s Success w/ Nick Johnson” on Bell Curve
“Open Decentralized Voter Committee | 12.14.22 | Endgame Constitution” from MakerDAO
📜 Proposals
Badgeholder Nomination Voting
This proposal is to distribute voting badges to ten Token House delegates through a nomination process. Any previous delegate with over 0.5% of voting power was eligible to nominate two Token House delegates to be considered for this proposal. The 10 delegates who receive the most votes will be rewarded with voting badges. These voting badges are a new governance mechanism introduced within Optimism Citizens’ House to identify individuals responsible for RetroPGF2.
✅ 1) Linda Xie, 2) Bobbay, 3) Katie Garcia, 4) Lefteris, 5) Polynya, 6) Joxes, 7) Mastermojo, 8) Fig, 9) MinimalGravita, 10) Scott Moore
⏰ Voting Concluded
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
💬 Read the discussion
Launch Aave v3 on Celo
This proposal aims to integrate Aave v3 on the Celo blockchain network. Celo is a “mobile-first, carbon-negative, EVM-compatible blockchain.” The proposal states its motivation is to bring the borrowing and lending protocol to the Celo platform to compliments its growing DeFi ecosystem with a blue-chip capital-efficient liquidity protocol. To incentivize the growth of Aave on the Celo network, a rewards program will be established using 0.5% of CELO's circulating supply of tokens. Celo has also recently integrated Curve and Uniswap v3 onto its platform.
👥 Type: Forum Discussion
✍ Author: GCao
Towards Clarity on Milestones Before Voting on Enabling Transferability Again
This proposal looks to establish a set of key milestones the SafeDAO community must achieve before allowing the transfer of its native token. The proposed milestones include the completion of the claim period, the ratification of SEPs on a constitution, governance framework, resource allocation framework, and token utility. The SAFE community will vote on the combination of milestones that is most suitable for signaling that the necessary level of readiness has been reached to enable the transferability of SAFE.
✅ 64% voting ‘Option 3’
⏰ Voting Ends: Dec 27th
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: Theo Beutel
HIP 9: Hop Community Grants
This proposal outlines the creation of a Community Grants program at Hop Protocol. The program will run for a six-month trial period, during which 750K HOP tokens will be used to encourage development on top of the Hop protocol. A committee of five individuals, including Lito Coen, Getty Hill, 4Poops, Jack Clancy, and Chris Winfrey, will be responsible for distributing the HOP tokens. This is an on-chain proposal to ratify a previously passed Snapshot proposal from November.
✅ 100% voting ‘For’
⏰ Voting Ends: Dec 26th
⛓ Type: On-chain Vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: GFX Labs
Sushi Vesting Merkle Tree Clawback
This proposal aims to signal alignment on whether to claw back 8M SUSHI tokens from an old Sushi smart contract. These tokens represent unclaimed funds from a previous Sushi LP campaign that have been available to claim for an extended period of time but have not been claimed by anyone. Should the proposal pass, a detailed plan for the retrieval process will be developed to return them to the Sushi treasury.
✅ 100% voting ‘Yay’
⏰ Voting Ends: Dec 26th
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
💬 Read the discussion
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