🗳 This Week in Governance - Mar. 23
A weekly resource covering crypto governance, politics, and power.
📣 Key Points
SushiDAO, Head Chef Served with Subpoena by SEC
DefiLlama Briefly Forked Amid Token Concerns
StableLab Introduces DAOmeter
Seed Club Ventures Comes out of Stealth to Invest in DAOs
Voting Activity (L7)
🗳️ 63,600 ballots
👥 21,904 voters
📜 201 proposals
🌐 68 active DAOs
Let’s get into it 🔥
🎙️ Delegate Episode 5
In this episode, Cameron O'Donnell and Laurence Smith continue the conversation from their last episode with a contrasting opinion on MakerDAO’s MIP101: The Maker Constitution with MakerDAO facilitators, Juan and Retro.
This episode dives into the structural challenges within the DAO, the need for change and how they are approaching it with the Endgame plan, and the role that the Constitution plays within it. Once again, voting is live and will go on until March 28th - if you’re able to, now is the time to vote. Apple | Spotify.
🗞 News Brief
SushiDAO, Head Chef Served with Subpoena by SEC
Sushi and Head Chef Jared Grey were recently served with a subpoena by the SEC. Details have not been provided, but Grey has requested that the DAO establish a legal defense fund (modeled in part on MakerDAO’s) of $3M USDT for “core contributors and multisig participants” who have been active since Sushi 2.0. The proposal includes provisions to top-up those funds if needed, with community approval. It is not yet clear how the DAO itself was served.
DefiLlama Briefly Forked Amid Token Concerns
Open-source DeFi data aggregator DeFiLlama underwent some internal conflict this week. DefiLlama team member 0xngmi tweeted on Monday (since deleted) that they were forking the protocol due to a “hostile takeover” spurred by other team members. Those team members, 0xngmi argued, wanted to “launch a token that does not represent us.” A separate site was briefly created, but now redirects to DeFiLlama since the team resolved their differences, which were “a result of poor communication and a misunderstanding within the team,” the official Twitter account noted. 0xngmi wrote that “everything has been solved, fork has been canceled.”
StableLab Introduces DAOmeter
StableLab has introduced DAOmeter, the first tool designed to measure the maturity of DAOs. Arguing that “there is a lack of established best practices and guidelines for creating and managing DAOs,” StableLab conducted extensive research before settling on an assessment rubric. The DAOmeter effectively scores the level of maturity of a given DAO by evaluating 30 sub-categories across six foundational categories — which include community, treasury, voting, and documentation. “At the same time,” the team writes, “we provide a new set of best practices that can guide founders and their teams on the journey toward decentralization.” The tool is intended to be a public good and is free to use.
Seed Club Ventures Comes out of Stealth to Invest in DAOs
Seed Club Ventures revealed itself publicly this week as a venture fund comprised of more than 60 funds and angel investors — with the aim of investing in DAOs and founders “at the earliest possible stages.” They’ve accumulated $25M and have been at work for a year already supporting a variety of projects, including Guild and Lens Protocol. Seed Club Ventures was “born out of” the accelerator Seed Club and is itself structured as a DAO. “We see the current growth of internet-native organizations as the next step in the evolution of human coordination,” the team writes.
📚 Good Reads
Hidden Keys, by Chapman, Rosenberg, and Sterlacci
Aave Governance V3, by BGD Labs
Governor Note: The Launch of Arbitrum Governance, by Traver Normandi
100+ DAOs Running on Nouns: Dune dashboard by Panda Jackson (h/t bk)
Thinking about Rage Quit, by punk4156
LinksDAO Wins Bid to Buy Scottish Golf Course, in Decrypt
Introducing GHO and Situating it in the Stablecoin Ecosystem, by Smith and Shuttleworth
DAOs, DACs, and On-chain Org Design: A DAC Manifesto, by 0xJustice.eth
Bailout Brink, by David Phelps
Economic Report of the President (chapters 7 & 8 in particular)
2023 DAO Global Hackathon: Everything You Need to Know to Get Involved, from Aragon
Public Goods and New Ownership Models Will Shape the Internet’s Future, by Azeem Khan
Forums:
Bankless: Formatting change to constitution & community handbook
Compound: V2 to V3 migration (phase 2)
Decentraland: DAO strategy and roadmap
Developer DAO: Retrospective on recent changes to governance
Rook: Dissolution of the DAO
Uniswap: Fee switch follow up
🧵 Threads
Can VC-funded companies create public goods? by Francis Gowen
Maximizing your DAO impact, by Shawn16400
A tale of two layer-2s, by Ryan Holloway
🎧 Listens
Private Voting Research Roundup with the Verbs Team, in The Noun Square
How Gnosis has Endured, Friederike Ernst on gm from DecryptWhat SEC
Commissioner Hester Peirce Thinks About the SEC, on Bankless
The Iterative Nature of Optimism Governance, with Justine Humenansky and OP delegates
0 to 1 Coordination Games with Ameen Soleimani, on GreenPill
📜 Highlighted Proposals
1INCH Fast Track Proposal
This proposal from the StableLab team sought to streamline the governance process for use in case of emergency. The new fast-track process would consist of a 24-hour period for a governance thread and a 48-hour Snapshot vote, and is meant to be used for governance process changes, deployments on new networks, and changes involving the resolver. Due to low participation in the DAO, the proposal also suggests whitelisting certain addresses that would be allowed to initiate fast-track proposals — helping to prevent malicious actors take advantage of the process. The proposal passed with 100% voting in favor.
✅ Voting started: March 13
⏰ Voting ended: March 18
⚡ Type: Snapshot vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: Bobby Bola and Kenechukwu Eze
Delegate Suspension: Fractal Visions
In a first for the protocol, the Optimism Token House will be voting on whether to suspend delegate Fractal Visions (also a “support nerd” in Optimism’s Discord) for violating the delegate code of conduct. This results from a community member report submitted to the Optimism Foundation, with supporting evidence, alleging intentional doxing. If the vote for suspension is approved, the delegate will be suspended from Discourse and Discord for a period of three months.
✅ Voting starts: March 23
⏰ Voting ends: April 5
⛓️ Type: On-chain vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: Optimism Foundation (administrative role)
Olympus Grants Program 1-Year Review & Path Forward
With this proposal, Olympus DAO hopes to make several changes to the grants program that was approved a year ago. While noting the program’s successes, the proposer makes the case for dissolving the existing grants committee and folding the program into Partnerships. The proposal also suggests transferring existing grant funds (~$500K) to the Olympus Association, which will be the entity granting the funds, and not allocating more funds to the grants program at this point. It is believed that the changes could make grant-making more efficient and targeted.
✅ Voting started: March 21
⏰ Voting ended: March 24
⚡ Type: Snapshot vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: Don_G_Lover
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