🗳 This Week in Governance - June 6: Resistance, Redesign, and Relaunch

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

Jun 06, 2024

Uniswap postpones fee-switch vote
Near, Gauntlet partner to redesign governance
Arbitrum’s effort to catalyze gaming encounters resistance
Euler DAO funds Foundation ahead of July relaunch
Gnosis Considers $30m GNO buyback

Voting Activity (L7)
🗳️ 39,313 ballots
👥 11,069 voters
📜 204 proposals
🌐 68 active DAOs
Query more data using the Governance API

📰 Updates

Uniswap postpones fee-switch vote

We wrote last week about the impending (and long-awaited) fee-switch proposal at Uniswap, which was supposed to go on chain on May 31st. However, the deployment of the proposal was postponed due to a newly raised issue by an unidentified stakeholder. The announcement notes that the problem requires further diligence to ensure the proposed upgrade, which is immutable and sensitive, is fully vetted. The decision to postpone the vote was described as “difficult” and “unexpected,” and the team apologized for the delay. They commit to informing the community of material changes and providing updates once they have more certainty regarding future timeframes. However, some observers were critical of the secretive seeming nature of the decision.

Near, Gauntlet partner to redesign governance

The NEAR Foundation (NF) has partnered with Gauntlet to redesign the NEAR ecosystem's governance structure and drive long-term growth. Gauntlet will utilize its ecosystem optimization, incentive modeling, and community engagement expertise to propose a new stake-weighted governance framework that prioritizes transparency, accountability, and efficiency. This will involve analyzing historical capital allocations, coordinating with delegates and participants, and generating interest from significant crypto governance actors. Additionally, Gauntlet will assess and implement initiatives to encourage meaningful onchain economic activity by actively contributing to the ecosystem governance framework, developing and implementing dynamic incentive programs, and evaluating the effectiveness of liquidity mining and incentive programs. The partnership aims to ensure the NF successfully reaches its goals of building a resilient and transparent blockchain ecosystem controlled by the decentralized community.

📚 Reads

Blockchains as Sovereign Communities: A Manifesto, by Mustafa Al-Bassam
The Ethereum Government: How Code Changes Are Made to the World’s Most Sprawling Blockchain, by Christine Kim
Bankless Perpetuity - A Possible Pause Resolution (BanklessDAO)

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📜 Highlighted Proposals

✨ AI-Assisted Summaries ✨

Arbitrum: Catalyze Gaming Ecosystem Growth on Arbitrum

The Gaming Catalyst Program (GCP) proposal seeks to allocate 200 million ARB over three years to expand the gaming ecosystem on Arbitrum. The program aims to attract and support game developers through grants, investments, and infrastructure bounties. The proposal outlines a dedicated GCP Team and a GCP Council to ensure transparency and alignment with the DAO's values. Key performance indicators include the number of daily active users, Orbit launches, and studio deals. The funding will be allocated towards builder onboarding and growth (160m ARB) and infrastructure bounties (40m ARB). The proposal also details the GCP's organizational structure, team roles and responsibilities, and a phased approach to kickstarting the program. The total cost is estimated at 200 million ARB, with an additional $25 million for program administration and operations. There has been some controversy and discussion concerning a $25m change in requested amount between the Snapshot proposal and this latest on-chain proposal. Voting ends on June 7th.

Euler: Ecosystems Initiatives Proposal

The Euler Foundation requests approval from the Euler DAO to distribute up to 1,000,000 EUL and 300,000 USDC to strengthen the Euler ecosystem. These funds will be used at the Foundation's discretion to support initiatives that cultivate a more engaged and diverse community of stakeholders, focusing on the protocol's upcoming relaunch in July 2024. The discretionary fund will enable the Foundation to respond quickly to opportunities that bolster the protocol and its ecosystem, promoting the continued development and success of the Euler protocol. The funds will not be distributed to Foundation members but will be dedicated solely to initiatives directly supporting the ecosystem's advancement and the protocol's broader objectives. The proposal specifies funding a multisig address with the requested EUL and USDC amounts. Voting ended on June 5th with 100% voting “for.”

Gnosis: Should Gnosis DAO conduct a $30 million buyback program?

The proposal suggests allocating 5% of Gnosis DAO's assets, primarily SAFE, ETH, and stablecoins, to fund a $30 million GNO buyback program. The goals are to transfer value to long-term holders, establish a valuation floor above the book value, and attract attention to the DAO's products and community. The execution plan involves dividing the $30 million into two equal parts: $15 million for a CoW-TWAP order executed below the dynamically-calculated book value over six months, and $15 million at the discretion of Karpatkey to capitalize on advantageous opportunities. The exact details of asset composition, trading venues, and methods of financing buybacks will be managed by Karpatkey to minimize value leakage and ensure optimal execution. Voting ends on June 10th.