This Week in Governance - June 10

A weekly resource covering DAO news and governance

Duncan Dobbelmann

Jun 10, 2022

📊 This Week’s Stats

A snapshot of DAO governance activity and global treasury changes.

Ecosystem Overview:

Governance Activity - Last 7 Days:

🗳️ 18,014 ballots were cast on 165 different proposals 🗳️
👥 9,358 unique voters 👥
🌐 43 DAOs with active voters 🌐
✍️ 112 new proposals created ✍️

For a deeper dive into DAO governance data, check out the Dashboard.

🚢 Product Updates

Orca Pods are on-chain working groups that form within a DAO or between DAOs. With this new integration of Orca and Boardroom, you can now view Pod profiles — allowing you to see the voting history of each member, the proposals created, and which DAOs each member belongs to. Read more in the announcement, and check out the ENS Ecosystem Pod profile to get a sense of how it works.

🗞️ News in Brief

Emre (@n4motto) analyzes @SnapshotLabs data for insights into governance
Rune Christensen writes about MakerDAO’s endgame plan
Messari creates a list of HR tools for DAOs

📚 Good Reads & Listens

“Scaling Trust in DAOs: Trustware vs Socialware,” by Orca Protocol
“A Legal Framework for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations Part II: Entity Selection Framework,” by @milesjennings and @Dave_M_Kerr
“Scale and the levers that provide DAOs their power,” by Rowan Yeoman
“Building a DAO is Like Constructing a Burrito w/Spencer Graham,” on rehash with Diana Chen
“Exploring the VectorDAO Vision, with Jon Yan and Yitong Zhang,” on I Pledge Allegiance with Derek Hsue
“Building an Economy Within a DAO (Shreyas Hariharan),” on DAOn the Rabbit Hole with Annay Sim
@k3nnethfrancis writes about DeSci: “Epochs of open science”

📝 Highlighted Proposals

Each week we select noteworthy proposals to draw your attention to. See all proposals on your Boardroom Dashboard.

1) ApeCoin: Keep ApeCoin within the Ethereum ecosystem - Process

🔤 ELI5: Keep ApeCoin on Ethereum.

The Yuga Labs’ Otherdeed sale, which sold plots of land as NFTs in their Otherside metaverse, created so much demand that gas fees on Ethereum swelled massively. It’s estimated that $123 million was spent on transactions alone. Meanwhile, competing transactions on Ethereum were interrupted or slowed down considerably, and Etherscan crashed. At the time Yuga Labs tweeted:

“We're sorry for turning off the lights on Ethereum for a while. It seems abundantly clear that ApeCoin will need to migrate to its own chain in order to properly scale. We'd like to encourage the DAO to start thinking in this direction.”

This proposal calls for the DAO to keep ApeCoin on Ethereum, for a number of reasons: Ethereum is considered to be a seasoned and secure Layer 1 chain; there are a number of promising Layer 2 opportunities that would lower transaction costs while allowing ApeCoin to remain secured by Ethereum; and shifting ApeCoin to another chain is a tricky operation that could — among other things — result in ApeCoin’s separation from the rest of its family (BAYC, MAYC, BAKC, and Otherside NFTs would likely remain on Ethereum). This proposal asks that ApeCoin be kept on Ethereum “for the time being.” Discussions in the forum appear to broadly support the proposal, but the vote reveals significant disagreement. (See exactly how the votes break down — and who voted for what — on the Boardroom proposal page.)

53.2% voted for
See the discussion

View the Proposal

2) SuperRare: SuperRare Labs to select 1x space per month (“I’ll Take the Omakase”)

🔤 ELI5: Allow SuperRare Labs to periodically select curators for “Spaces” in its digital art marketplace.

This proposal allows SuperRare Labs to select one “space operator” per month to curate a Space (think storefront or gallery) on the single-edition, digital artwork marketplace. In a strong move toward decentralization, SuperRare had last year launched the “Space Race,” a public contest among prospective curators looking to set up a Space on SuperRare; the outcomes of those Races are determined entirely by holders of the $RARE token. However, to “benefit the growth, reach, profitability, and prestige of SuperRare Network,” SuperRare Labs sought approval to periodically secure their own Space Operators, who sometimes cannot participate in Space Races:

“SuperRare Labs has…received interest from multiple world-class curatorial teams who’s brand prestige + operational requirements make publishing business plans and uncertainty around a successful public campaign non-starters for the normal Space Race selection process.”

Final approval for each Space Operator selected by SuperRare Labs will be granted by the DAO Governance Council.

100% voted for
See the discussion

View the Proposal

3) Aave: Add Transak fiat on ramp services on Aave

🔤 ELI5: Make it easy to move from fiat to crypto on Aave.

One of the main obstacles to the mainstream adoption of DeFi is the hassle of converting fiat into cryptocurrencies that can then be used in protocols like Aave. This proposal seeks to correct that by linking Aave v3 with Transak. As the proposer diagrams humorously, the typical fiat-to-crypto conversion process involves a number of steps over the course of days, with fees and frustration taking their toll on the user. With Transak, which utilizes its own smart contracts to mint tokens, the complexity of these steps is much reduced; Transak makes it possible

“to deposit more than 100+ cryptocurrencies with credit/debit card, Apple Pay, bank transfer, or the local payment method in more than 100+ countries and get yield-earning tokens in your wallet in 1 step with only 0.5% commission for bank transfer payments.”