🗳 This Week in Governance - Jan 19
A weekly resource covering Web3 governance, politics, and power.
📣 Key Points
MakerDAO Keeps GUSD Partnership
Optimism’s Token House Concludes Final Vote Ahead of Season 3
Bankless DAO Proposes a Department of Governance
Aave DAO Looks to Onboard rETH
… and much more
Voting Activity (L7)
🗳️ 84,013 ballots
👥 27,652 voters
📜 216 proposals
🌐 62 active DAOs
Let’s get into it 🔥
🗞 DAO News in Brief
🆕 MakerDAO Keeps GUSD Partnership
Earlier today, MakerDAO concluded a controversial vote that would have rotated the protocol out of its partnership with Gemini, the regulated centralized exchange. In October, Gemini entered into an agreement with Maker to pay a 1.25% “marketing incentive” as long as the average balance in the Peg Stability Module exceeded $100m GUSD. This led to raising the DAI debt limit in the GUSD PSM to $500m. However, the poll that concluded today was to lower or entirely eliminate that debt ceiling -- effectively reducing or eliminating the marketing incentive. The motivation for the poll stemmed from worries among the MakerDAO community that Gemini may be affected (by way of Genesis, which Gemini worked with on their Earn program) with the contagion still spreading from the FTX / Alameda meltdowns. In the end, the vote came down to the wire. A number of strategic redelegations occurred, and MakerDAO voted to keep the GUSD parameters as is. Read our coverage here.
Optimism’s Token House Concludes Final Vote Ahead of Season 3
The third season of Optimism's Token House is set to begin on January 26th. Ahead of their Season launch, Optimism held ‘Special Voting Cycle 9b’, where three proposals were considered. The first proposal was for Protocol Delegation Elections, which gave eight protocol nominees the right to participate in the upcoming protocol delegation program. Winners of this proposal include ENS, Thales, BeethovenX & Balancer, Kwenta, Lyra, and more. The next two proposals were to elect committee members for the upcoming Grants Council, which has two subcommittees: Growth Experiments & Builders. A total of 8 reviewers (5 for Growth & 3 for Builders) were elected from the pool of delegates at Optimism. Some notable winners include Katie Garcia, GFX Labs, Synthetix Ambassadors, and more. However, some controversy has arisen regarding the nature of some of the votes and the ability to vote for yourself in the elections.
BanklessDAO Proposes a Department of Governance
Community members at BanklessDAO have proposed the creation of a Department of Governance, responsible for “stewarding the governance conversation.” According to the proposal, the department would be created to ensure that all governance operations are abided by, to ensure operations follow the constitution, and to keep a pulse on the processes to improve and identify bottlenecks. Also included in the proposal is a budget breakdown, KPIs, and a list of required roles. In total, the proposal requests 249K BANK plus an undetermined amount for a governance rewards program. Creators of this proposal include members of the DAOStewards, BDAO members who are highly engaged in governance discussions at the DAO and across the ecosystem. The group hopes this initiative incentivizes greater governance engagement at the DAO.
Aave DAO Looks to Onboard rETH
With the Ethereum merge in the rearview and withdrawals of staked ETH nearing, protocols have ramped up strategic onboarding of liquid staking derivatives (LSD). Aave, a leading DeFi lending protocol, is among these. On Monday, Marc Zeller of the Aave Chan Initiative proposed adding Rocket Pool's liquid staking derivative, known as rETH, to the Aave V3 platform. To add new assets to Aave, a proposal must go through the Aave Request for Comment (ARC) process, which includes a template for asset onboarding. Included in this template are specifications such as project overview, history of the project, market data, and more. rETH is the second most liquid LSD token in the ecosystem, second only to LDO. By adding this LSD, Aave will benefit from additional revenue generated for the protocol and position itself as one of the first lending markets to list the derivative token. Next, the proposal will be subject to a thorough risk analysis by Aave's service providers, Gauntlet and Chaos Labs.
📚 Good Reads
“Decentralized Autonomous Organization Toolkit” from WEF & WhartonBDAP
“Encouraging informed participation in decentralized governance: the problem with slashing or majority rewards” by Ethan Bueno de Mesquita and Andrew Hall
“Multiple Voting Systems in Decentralized Governance” by Bobby Bola
“A Policy Platform for DAOs” by Nathan Schneider
“What is Contribution-Based Governance?” by Stefen Deleveaux
“The Ethnography of a ‘Decentralized Autonomous Organization’ (DAO): De-mystifying Algorithmic Systems” by Kelsie Nabben and Michael Zargham
“Sushi Revitalized” by Jared Grey
“Delegation Markets” by Jacob
“Stop Gating Your DAO” by Bobby Bola
🧵 Threads
“DAO governance token delegation is a form of abdication” by mel.eth
“One of the greatest strengths of @cosmos is its governance activity” from Flipside
🎧 Listens
“Other Internet w/ Toby Shorin” on Green Pill Podcast
“Building Public Goods in Down Cycles w/ Scott Moore” on Building At The Edges
“DAOs Inspiring Optimism” on DAO or Never
📜 Proposals
Interest Rate Curve Changes for Aave V2 ETH
This proposal seeks to change the interest rate parameters for USDT and TUSD, two stablecoins on Aave V2 Ethereum. Here, Gauntlet authors this proposal to reduce the risk of a pool reaching 100% utilization and to establish reserves through protocol revenue for covering insolvencies or other expenses. Interest rate curve changes seldom occur in the lending protocol, however, due to recent market changes, the Gauntlet risk team believes these changes are necessary “for the benefit of the protocol.”
✅ 0% voting ‘YAE’
⏰ Voting Ends: Jan 20th
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: Paul Lei
Delegating SAFE Airdrop
This proposal will determine which delegate team is delegated all of Euler’s SAFE tokens. In December, Euler received 3,010 tokens (7,972 total claimed) from the SAFE token airdrop. To increase their participation in the governance of the Safe ecosystem, the Euler community will decide between StableLab, DAOStewards, or to retain the voting power. StableLab is a professional delegate team and advisory firm that helps DAOs grow. DAOStewards is a delegate team formed at BanklessDAO with the goal of promoting the Bankless movement. The team that wins delegation must maintain a minimum voting participation rate of 70% at Safe DAO or face the threat of re-delegation by another delegate team.
👥 Type: Forum Discussion
✍ Author: StableLab
Kanpai 2.0 [Implementation]
This proposal aims to increase the Kanpai payout ratio from 10% to 100% of fees directed toward the Sushi treasury. Sushiswap uses Kanpai, a governance-controlled payout ratio that directs a portion of protocol-generated fees to the treasury. In order to secure further protocol runway, Kanpai will be increased for a year or until new tokenomics are implemented. Should the proposal pass, it projects to generate $6M for the Sushi Treasury. In addition, the proposal looks to create a governance dashboard to provide further transparency and insights into the DAO’s treasury and assets. In December, the Sushi community approved the proposal through a Signal vote. The current Implementation vote will finalize the proposed changes.
✅ 100% voting ‘Yay’
⏰ Voting Ends: Jan 23rd
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: Jared Grey
Governance Process Improvements
This proposal looks to reduce the amount of time it takes to implement change via governance at 1inch. Currently, the governance process at the DeFi protocol takes at least 12 days, “hindering the DAOs ability to move quickly.” Governance at 1inch is divided into five phases and this proposal aims to reduce the duration of Phase 3 (Temperature Check) and Phase 4 (Snapshot Vote) to a total of 8 days. This significantly reduces the time required to enact changes and brings the timeframe of these phase types more in line with what’s common at other DAOs. Look for possible amendments and changes to the proposal as it is still in the forum discussion phase.
👥 Type: Forum Discussion
✍ Author: Bobby Bola
💭 Ecosystem Takes
🎈 Have a Meme
📮 Stay Up to Date
Follow us: Twitter | Discord
Subscribe to: Newsletter | Mirror | Apple | Spotify
📣 Boardroom API access update 📣 - get your API key!
The Boardroom API will be moving to enforce the use of API keys starting Thursday, January 26th.
If you do not already have a key use this form to request one here. Once you have submitted we will email you shortly with a key. You can always reach out on discord with any questions or concerns.