🗳 This Week in Governance - Feb 29: Drops, Fees, and Spaces

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

Feb 29, 2024

Uniswap aims for major protocol governance changes (including fee switch)
Gauntlet is leaving Aave
Gnosis considers spinning off Karpatkey DAO with new token
Optimism launches fourth airdrop, for creators
Nouns looks to double down on Farcaster

Voting Activity (L7)
🗳️ 29,455 ballots
👥 11,735 voters
📜 289 proposals
🌐 80 active DAOs
Query more data using the Governance API

Uniswap aims for major protocol governance changes

The Uniswap Foundation proposes significant upgrades to Uniswap protocol governance to reward active, engaged delegation by adjusting the fee mechanism to benefit UNI token holders who delegate and stake their tokens. This initiative aims to enhance Uniswap's governance sustainability and growth, with technical changes involving new smart contracts for fee collection and distribution, and logistics for implementation detailed, including timelines for Snapshot and on-chain votes. Other protocols are considering similar moves.

Gauntlet to leave Aave

Gauntlet, having worked as an independent risk manager for Aave since 2020, announced on February 21st the termination of their collaboration in large part because they “found it difficult to navigate the inconsistent guidelines and unwritten objectives of the largest stakeholders.” Despite their significant contributions to Aave's growth and their desire to continue their mission elsewhere, they express gratitude to their collaborators and hope for future cooperation. Responses to the post express a mix of criticism, regret over Gauntlet's departure from Aave, and appreciation for their contributions — as well as concern about the issues Gauntlet faced.

Gnosis considers spinning off Karpatkey DAO with new token

Gnosis DAO is considering a proposal to spin off karpatkey DAO and introduce a governance token (KPK), following the successful model of sister projects CowDAO and SafeDAO. Karpatkey, recognized for its leadership in active DAO treasury management, aims to extend its services by launching a DAO spinoff and a governance token to enhance its mission in banking DeFi protocols, ensuring efficient financial resource management within the ecosystem. The KPK token, with a total supply of 1 million, will serve as a governance tool for treasury management decisions, with distribution planned among founders, early contributors, the GnosisDAO, team members, strategic investors, and partners, aligning with karpatkey's values of simplicity, focus, altruism, and adaptability.

Optimism’s fourth airdrop, for creators

Optimism on February 20th announced its fourth airdrop, distributing over 10 million OP tokens to nearly 23,000 addresses as a gesture of appreciation to artists and creators who contribute to the cultural landscape of the Superchain and the broader crypto ecosystem. This marks the first airdrop spanning the entire Superchain, acknowledging the collaborative efforts of OP Chains builders and celebrating the creative community that has established over 200,000 NFT collections within the network. Recipients of the airdrop are encouraged to participate in governance, contributing to the future direction of the Optimism Collective, with future airdrops planned to further engage and reward the growing community.

Optimism is meanwhile introducing an experimental approach to voting in Retroactive Public Goods Funding by using impact metrics instead of traditional project-by-project review, aiming to streamline the process and better align with the expertise of badgeholders. The post seeks community input on the development of an impact calculator prototype that leverages data to allow users to prioritize types of impact and adjust token distribution among projects accordingly.

In other news:

The discussion about Lido protocol governance has been taken up again.
Aave is debating empowering underrepresented delegates.
And finally, checkout — and contribute to — the new Collective DAO Catalog, which aggregates and makes searchable high-quality discussions and posts from various DAOs, aiming to create a centralized source of truth for grants, budgets, and governance frameworks.

Looking to implement initiatives for your DAO? Work with the Boardroom Team

📜 Highlighted Proposals

✨ AI-Assisted Summaries ✨

Aave: Funding Update

The proposal focuses on consolidating DAO assets to optimize treasury management in anticipation of upcoming expenses related to the Merit program and service provider renewals. It includes actions like consolidating smaller holdings into GHO, swapping larger stablecoin holdings for GHO, replenishing stablecoin reserves in Aave v3, migrating funds from Aave v2 to v3, and bridging funds from Polygon to Ethereum, along with enabling @karpatkey_TokenLogic to submit future proposals for similar actions directly. Voting ends on February 29th.

Nouns: Double down on Nouns x Farcaster

The proposal suggests increasing the funding for the Nouns x Farcaster development round to $300k, doubling the initial $150k allocation, to better attract top-tier development teams by more accurately reflecting the opportunity cost and potential value of the project. This adjustment aims to ensure the recruitment of the best possible teams for the development of an app that could become central to Nouns' operations, encompassing communication, governance, and other functions, acknowledging that while capital is abundant, talented developers are not. Voting opens on March 1.

Uniswap: Revitalization and Growth

This proposal aims to aggressively expand Uniswap v3's presence on new and emerging EVM chains by introducing an "Onboarding Package" to facilitate faster deployments and incentivize liquidity, aiming to secure early dominance and counteract the competition from forks and other protocols. The package includes deployment support, liquidity incentives ranging from $250k to $1m, and integration with existing infrastructure, targeting 3-5 key pools on each chain with costs covered by partnerships with GFX Labs and Angle Merkl for contract deployment and UNI reward distribution. The initiative seeks to leverage Uniswap's established brand and infrastructure to quickly establish a strong position on new chains, with the Uniswap Accountability Committee managing the escrowed funds for the project. Voting ended on February 24th with nearly 95% voting “for.”