🗳 This Week in Governance - Jan 25: Elections, Innovations, and Strategic Transformations

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

Jan 25, 2024

Optimism's 'optimistic approval' process takes a real-life spin, blending trust with democracy in a governance test drive.
Gitcoin and Uniswap play with lowering proposal thresholds, potentially turning governance into a wider open field.
Election fever hits Bankless, Rare, and Arbitrum DAOs, turning the digital realm into a buzzing democratic hotspot.
Nouns DAO sets its sights on funding CC0 artists, sparking a renaissance of open creativity and shared artistic ventures.

Voting Activity (L7)
🗳️ 123,561 ballots
👥 51,277 voters
📜 295 proposals
🌐 73 active DAOs
Query more data using the Governance API

New Thresholds, New Opportunities

Optimism’s Token House just yesterday finished voting on a proposal that used “optimistic approval” for the Code of Conduct Council’s recent decisions: the Council’s decisions are “assumed to be approved unless 12% of the votable supply in the Token House votes to veto an enforcement action” — and if it does, the actions “will go to a full Token House vote.” In the end, 2.31% voted against it, but it wasn’t without commentary critical of the process.

Meanwhile, there’s a proposal to adjust Gitcoin's proposal threshold from 1M GTC to 150K GTC, “making it easier for a wider range of stakeholders to actively participate in governance.” The original version of the proposal also aimed to lower the quorum threshold from 2.5M GTC to 1M GTC, but this was considered inadvisable due to technical constraints. Gitcoin is also voting on whether to use oSnap for treasury distributions — a tool that would “allow for automatic onchain execution of token transfers and grant funding after successful Snapshot votes.”

Uniswap, too, has a live proposal to lower the proposal threshold from 2.5M UNI to 1M UNI. The aim is to broaden the delegate base capable of submitting onchain proposals and increase delegate engagement — ultimately decentralizing decision-making, it is hoped.

Adding to the governance threshold saga, Rarible's RRC-18 proposes hiking the quorum from 10% to 15% of veRARI's total supply to fortify the DAO against malicious proposals amidst growing participation and delegate power. This proactive step ensures a broader consensus is needed for decision-making, reflecting a maturing governance landscape that balances increased activity with protocol safety.

Steering the DAO: A Wave of Influential Elections

BanklessDAO is holding elections for its Season 10 Grants Committee.
RareDAO is holding its Council election.
Aribitrum is holding elections for its Procurement Committee.
Arbitrum is also accepting applications for its Research & Development Collective, with elections in late February.
VitaDAO is again picking up the discussion of the election of Working Group Stewards for 2024.

Blueprints for Progress: Strategies for Expansion

Getty Hill has shared ideas for “revitalization and growth” in Uniswap. He highlights the need to establish early dominance on new chains such as Monad, Linea, Scroll, Polygon zkEVM, Bera, Taiko, and others while also strengthening its position on existing ones. The proposed action plan includes developing a Uniswap v3 onboarding package, featuring $250k in UNI for liquidity incentives, partnering with protocols for reward program execution, and ensuring a Uniswap v3 frontend is available from day one.
A mission request for creating infrastructure that supports municipal public goods funding has been posted in the Optimism forums. This would create a basis for “cities to run municipal specific public goods funding initiatives (QF, RPGF, etc.) on Optimism.”
Lido is considering its “Ethereum node operator EL diversity improvement commitments.”
A long-term strategy is being discussed for Cosmos Hub.
Aave Labs posits its cross-chain strategy for GHO.
Paladin is discussing the renewal of its delegate incentive program.
There’s talk of how to “make Euler great again.”

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

📜 Proposals

✨ AI-Assisted Summaries ✨

Radworks: RGP-20 Grants Org Proposal 2024

The RGP-20 Grants Org Proposal 2024 aims to allocate substantial funds from the Radworks Treasury to the Radworks Grant Program's multi-signature wallet. This allocation includes 250,000 USDC and 100,000 RAD tokens. The essence of the proposal is to execute two transfers, enhancing the financial capacity of the Radworks Grants Program. Details surrounding this proposal have been actively discussed within the Radworks community forums, and additional information about the Grants Program is accessible through their GitHub repository, which is also scheduled for mirroring on Radicle shortly.

Arbitrum: Security Council Improvement Proposal

The proposal suggests modifications to the structure of Arbitrum's security council to maintain its "Stage 1" status as defined by L2BEAT, preventing a fallback to "Stage 0." It identifies issues with the current multisig setup, notably the identical membership in both the higher and lower threshold multisigs and the inadequacy of the current two-day exit window. The proposal offers three solutions: removing the lower threshold multisig, increasing the lower threshold multisig to match the higher, or extending the exit window to seven days. This change aims to enhance the system's security and align with updated requirements for maintaining a "Stage 1" designation. The implementation steps include a week of discussion and a Snapshot vote with multiple options, followed by an onchain vote if required, with no additional cost to the DAO. Voting ends on January 25th.

ShapeShift: A Decentralized Process for Hiring Workstream Leaders

This proposal introduces a formal eight-step process for hiring workstream leaders at the ShapeShift DAO, designed to ensure transparency, democratic election, and community involvement. It includes steps such as forming an application review committee, defining job descriptions, conducting interviews, and organizing community AMA sessions for candidates. The process aims to allow the DAO community to make well-informed decisions about leadership roles, accommodating the privacy concerns of candidates while ensuring the community's ability to participate in the selection process through voting.

Nouns: Artist Program: For Artists, by Artists

This proposal outlines establishing an art program that funds approximately 100 artists to create and mint CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) artwork for Nouns, with selected artists becoming voters for future grant rounds. The program includes small grants of 0.3 ETH for each artist, distributed across five Prop.House rounds, totaling 30 ETH. Additionally, the program plans to develop ArtistProgram.org to showcase the artwork and provide resources. The proposal emphasizes educating artists about CC0 and the public domain while requiring them to mint their artwork on an Ethereum-compatible blockchain. The overall budget for the program is 40 ETH, which includes operational costs for managing the program. Voting opens on January 26th.