🗳 This Week in Governance - Dec 8
A weekly resource covering web3 governance, politics, and power.
📣 Key Points
Optimism Reveals Details On Its Citizens House
Sushiswap Debates Fee Redirection
SafeDAO Proposes Key Milestones Before Enabling Token Transferability
ENS Kicks Off Stewards Elections
Aave DAO Considers Changing its Asset Listing Policy
BanklessDAO Explores Implementing Shielded Voting
… and much more
Voting Activity (L7)
🗳️ 34,927 ballots (+10%)
👥 18,334 voters (+23%)
📜 202 proposals (+20%)
🌐 57 active DAOs (+19%)
Let’s get into it 🔥
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📡 Coverage
📖 READ our latest brief on Aave, their proposal to halt new asset listings on v1 & v2 in favor of v3, and the bigger picture.
📖 READ our latest brief on BanklessDAO, their proposal to implement shielded voting on Snapshot proposals, and the bigger picture.
🗞 News in Brief
Optimism Introduces the Citizens’ House and RetroPGF2
The Optimism Foundation has revealed new details surrounding the much-anticipated Citizens’ House. Originally introduced back in April, the Citizens’ House was described as the counterpart to the Token House within Optimism’s bicameral governance structure. Over half a year later, Optimism has now shared additional information regarding the launch of this initiative alongside details on its next round of retroactive public goods funding (RetroPGF). The Citizens’ House will consist of 90 badge-holding community members. Their primary responsibility will be to allocate funding for public good projects during funding rounds. The first set of badges will be distributed to community members at the Token House, pre-existing badge holders from RetroPGF 1, and hand-picked community members by the Foundation. RetroPGF 2 is scheduled to begin in January 2023 and will reward $10M OP across projects developing on the OP stack. Funding will fall into three buckets: Infrastructure & Dependencies, Tooling & Utilities, and Education.
Also this week, Optimism’s Token House is scheduled to commence voting on Special Voting Cycle 9a. In this cycle, two proposals will be voted on that look to make improvements for the upcoming season. These proposals center around creating a Grants Council and introducing the Protocol Delegation Program.
Sushiswap Debates Fee Redirection
On Monday, Head Chef Jared Grey re-submitted a proposal to address existential issues at the decentralized exchange. In his forum post, Grey calls out the inherent problems with Sushi’s tokenomics as well as the need to establish sufficient resources to continue operating the DEX. In October, Grey posted a similar proposal addressing these issues but he ultimately withdrew it to incorporate changes. In his new proposal, Grey proposes changing the Kanpai fee so 100% of the rewards are streamed toward the Treasury for one year. Kanpai is a payout ratio that redirects a portion of the rewards xSUSHI stakers earn back towards the DAO treasury. Under Grey’s new proposal, these token fees would no longer go to stakers but instead be redirected into the Treasury multisig, helping build runway. Grey claims his plan centers on securing the future of Sushi and is simply a temporary solution in the interim while the protocol works to restructure its tokenomics. Opponents of the proposal have rallied against Grey calling out the core teams’ high salaries, the ample runway, and in general, a belief there is a different path forward. Sushiswap finds itself with its back against the wall as it works to fix its broken tokenomics.
SafeDAO Proposes Milestones Before Making its Token Transferrable
Following the fallout of SEP#2, a new proposal has been drafted that would set key milestones in place at SafeDAO before enabling token transferability. SEP#2 was a highly contentious vote at SafeDAO which saw community members push to enable its native token transferability. SafeDAOs initial airdrop was unique because it included this token function along with a built-in vesting schedule. In early November, the DAO voted down a proposal to make this change but debates and discussions continued in the weeks after. On Monday, Theo Beutel DAO Coordination Lead at SafeDAO posted a new proposal that outlines a possible way forward to enable the function. In this proposal, a set of milestones are suggested such as the SAFE token claim period has passed, a constitution has been ratified, a governance framework has been ratified, a resource allocation framework has been ratified, and a token utility has been ratified. Should the proposal move to a Snapshot vote, the DAO will vote on which combination of these milestones should be achieved before enabling the transferability of the SAFE token.
ENS Opens Nominations for its Next Cohort of Stewards
The naming service kicked off elections this week to appoint the next batch of ENS DAO Stewards. ENS Working Group Stewards are elected community members that are in charge of managing operations within the DAO’s three working groups: MetaGovernance, ENS Ecosystem, and Public Goods. A total of 9 Steward positions are up for grabs as each working group is assigned 3 Stewards. Community members are encouraged to self-nominate in the appropriate forum threads. A nomination window is now live until December 9th. Formal elections of the nominees will last from December 10th through the 15th. The three nominees with the highest vote count in each Working Group proposal will be confirmed as the next batch of ENS Stewards for the ‘First Term’ of 2023 (Q1 & Q2).
📚 Good Reads
“Uniswap Protocol Fee Switch Considerations” from Uniswap Foundation
“Voting Systems | Simple Majority, Ranked Choice, & Approval Voting” from Flipside
“2023: The Year of Networked DAOs” from Avenue
“Subsidized On-Chain Public Goods” from Badger
“The Grants Ecosystem” from Questbook
🧵 Threads
“List of all the DAO legal proposals” by Kaito Cunningham
“Over the past several months, Variant has purchased a number of Nouns... here’s why” by Alana Levin
“Being a governance delegate can be a full-time job" from Metropolis
“Nouns model…does not solve all the problems DAOs face today” by Chase Chapman
“Osmosis Grant Update” from Chaos Labs
🎧 Listens
“Experiments in DAO Governance w/ Julz Rosenberg & Charles St. Louis” on Bell Curve Podcast
“A day in the life of a Maker Facilitator w/ Patrick J & Payton Rose” on Delegate: A DAO Governance Podcast
“Cosmos Governance and ATOM 2.0 w/ Sam Hart” on Reverie Podcast
“FireEyes 🔥_🔥 catches up with METADREAMER in the GreenPill Trailer” at MCON 2
“The Difficulties of DAO Governance w/ PaperImperium of GFX Labs” on Drinks with MakerDAO Delegates
🔔 Breakdown: Franklin DAO
🎧 LISTEN back to our conversation with Franklin DAO, a community spun off of Penn Blockchain Club. We discuss Penn Blockchain’s club history, voting proxies, the value proposition of university blockchain clubs, and more
📜 Notable Proposals
OpenZeppelin Security Partnership - Q1 2023 Compensation
This proposal requests the continuation of OpenZeppelin’s partnership with the Compound protocol. The security firm previously held a 1-year engagement at Compound but is now requesting a shift towards renewals on a quarterly basis. Here, $1M worth of COMP tokens is requested to fund the provider for its work in Q1 2023. OpenZeppelin outlines areas of focus going into 2023 as security auditing, advisory, and monitoring. This proposal will go live on-chain starting December 9th to be completed before the holiday break.
👥 Type: Forum Discussion
✍ Author: Michael Lewellen
Reserve USDC to fund operating expenditure
This proposal requests an additional $1.5M USDC be earmarked from the KlimaDAO treasury toward DAO operating expenditures. KlimaDAO, the carbon market protocol, relies on a reserve of assets within its Treasury to fund payroll and related expenses. Back in May, the DAO established its compensation structure to include payments in USDC and KLIMA. Changes in the protocols and market conditions have prompted the protocol to lower costs and discontinue the use of KLIMA as payment. In the last four months, KlimaDAO reduced its operating expenses by 40%, from $257K per month down to $154K per month. The DAO will focus on using the requested funds to support product development, produce revenue growth, and drive business maturity. The funds will provide KlimaDAO with 9 months of additional runway. Should this informal forum poll pass, it will be moved to a Snapshot vote.
👥 Type: Forum Discussion
✍ Author: Hugh
FWB Event Keys V3
This proposal requests the continuation of the Friends With Benefits’ ‘Event Key’ program with revisions and additional funding. Friends With Benefits supports its members in throwing parties worldwide through its ‘Event Key’ program. The program allocates funds (when applicable) from the DAO to aid members in throwing parties. Following the successes of Event Keys v1 & v2, FWB now looks to expand its event initiative into an annual program with improvements and an increased budget. The proposal outlines a number of revisions such as splitting event keys 70/30 between core cities (LA, SF, NY, LDN) and other less dense cities, making it a requirement for Event Key holders to first be a Lite Key holder, introducing Digital Events Key, and more. In addition to these revisions, the proposal requests a total annual budget of $306K. If the proposal passes in the affirmative rewarding of v3 Event Keys is scheduled to take place on Jan 4th.
✅ 100% voting ‘Yes - Fund V3 for $306K’
⏰ Voting Ends: December 9
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
✍ Author: gregbresnitz, izzyb, zoenrogers
V3 Borrow Cap Recommendations (Fast-track)
This proposal looks to make changes to the Borrow Caps of various assets on Aave v3. Assets affected include WBTC, LINK, ETH, BAL, CRV, and more split across four chains (Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon). The proposal incorporates the “Fast-track” proposal process, a process that was introduced to streamline governance changes to V3 asset markets.
✅ 100% voting ‘YAE’
⏰ Voting Ends: December 8
💬 Read the discussion
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
✍ Author: Chaos Labs
Claim SAFE Tokens Allocated to the DAO Multisig
This proposal outlines the claim of SAFE tokens that have been allotted to Balancer in the recent SafeDAO airdrop. Here, the tokens will be claimed, stored in the Balancer treasury, and delegated to Karpatkey.
✅ 100% voting ‘Yes, let’s do it’
⏰ Voting Ends: December 12
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: solarcurve.eth
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