🗳 This Week in Governance - May 25
A weekly resource covering crypto governance, politics, and power.
📣 Key Stories
Tornado Cash suffers governance attack
BitDAO to re-brand as Mantle
Cabin launches network city of 20 co-living and working properties
Delegation Week continues through Friday, May 26th
Voting Activity (L7)
🗳️ 59,841 ballots
👥 25,126 voters
📜 275 proposals
🌐 70 active DAOs
Let’s get into it 🔥
🔴 Featured: Optimism Season 4
The Delegate Podcast features a triple interview on Optimism’s Season 4. The guests include Justine (Governance Lead at the Optimism Foundation) and delegates Krys (L2Beats) and Fig (Flipside). Dive into the history of Optimism’s governance, the changes in S4, and the reasons why Optimism’s governance process is seen as a trailblazer in the ecosystem.
Subscribe to the Delegate Podcast → Apple | Spotify | Google | Amazon
🗞 News Brief
Tornado Cash suffers governance attack
A hacker last week included malicious code in a Tornado Cash governance proposal that allowed the hacker to grant themselves 1.2m votes — far exceeding the number held by other TORN holders. In effect this allowed the hacker to control the governance of the Ethereum-based mixer. The hacker then stole about $1m in crypto from the protocol and used the mixer to disguise the origins of the coins. Since that time the hacker has posted a new proposal that — somewhat surprisingly — sets their voting power to zero.
BitDAO to re-brand as Mantle
On May 19 BitDAO governance passed a proposal that aims to rebrand the DAO into a Layer 2 called Mantle. Noting the “fragmentation of communities” in the DAO, which controls a massive ~$4b treasury, the proposal aims to apply the “one brand, one token” principle by committing to Mantle and focusing on its product. While the BIT token will be converted to a new Mantle token and naming conventions will be changed, the proposal “will not result in material changes to the existing governance process.”
Cabin launches network city of 20 co-living and working properties
Cabin on May 23rd officially launched its planned network city, “a set of globally-distributed properties designed for remote workers and creators who love nature.” Each neighborhood shares at least three characteristics: “access to beautiful nature,” a strong community, and fast internet. Cabin Citizenship is enabled by subscription membership, which allows access to co-living and working opportunities in the network of properties (listed in the Directory). Members will be listed in a Census, where they can “build identity and reputation,” while a Discord server will function as the town hall.
Delegation Week continues through Friday, May 26th
Delegation Week — which seeks to increase DAO governance engagement — is in full swing and runs through Friday, May 26th. Review your delegate profile, consider your delegations, or (if you’re a DAO) activate your tokenholders. Tally in partnership with several protocols is offering gasless (re)delegation. Check out the related Twitter spaces and take the DAO Research Collective’s short survey.
📚 Good Reads
After Hyperindividualism, by Scott Moore
DAO’s Are Dead! Long Live DAOs! by Florian Glatz
Going Lunarpunk, by Rachel Rose O’Leary
Don’t Overload Ethereum’s Consensus, by Vitalik Buterin
MakerDAO members set to approve controversial ‘whistleblower bounty’ to enforce anonymity, by Aleks Gilbert for DLNews
Building Sybil Resistance Using Cost of Forgery, by Kyle Weiss
The efficiencies of validity proofs, by polynya
Governance of Superintelligence, from OpenAI
The DAO Anthology, buy Quorum
Bancor DAO Faces Legal Action Over Impermanent Loss Protection Controversy, in DAO Times
🧵 Threads
Let's talk about the importance of translation in the world of Web3 and DAOs, from Bankless Translators
DAOs can be worth more dead than alive, by Ignas
🎧 Listens
Building a Borderless Web3 Culture w/Feems, on Rehash
State of Delegation Report, from DAO Research Collective
Rune Christensen - The MakerDAO Endgame Plan, on I Pledge Allegiance
Optimism Season 4 - DAO Governance Highlight, on the Delegate Pod
💬 Forums
Aave: Introducing “Skyward” - A Free Service for Aave DAO
The Aave-Chan Initiative (ACI) introduces "Skyward," a free service dedicated to assisting Aave DAO members in streamlining the proposal process from inception to final vote, making it more accessible and encouraging community participation in Aave's governance.
Aura: Implement Weighted Voting for Aura
This proposal aims to transition Aura to a Weighted Voting system, allowing proportional representation and introducing an "abstain" voting option, thus making the voting process more democratic and representative.
Bankless: Proposed Revision to BanklessDAO Constitution
The proposal introduces a revised version of the BanklessDAO Constitution, aiming to improve clarity and completeness without altering governance. The proposed revision simplifies the language, introduces sections for easier discussion in future bDIPs, and includes adjustments to certain sections for better clarity and accuracy.
CityDAO: Adjust Quorums & Voter Approval Ratings
The proposal suggests amending the CityDAO Charter to address the issue of disproportionate voting power caused by individuals owning multiple NFTs. The current system allows a small number of people with a significant number of votes to pass a proposal that could potentially bankrupt the DAO.
dYdX: Reduce the Proposal Threshold for Short Timelock Executor Changes
This proposal suggests reducing the proposal power thresholds for on-chain proposals in the DYDX governance system, allowing for more community members to sponsor and participate in proposals, ultimately promoting a more decentralized DAO.
Euler: Euler DAO Input on EUL
This forum thread is dedicated to gathering community feedback on additional utility and functionality for the EUL token, aiming to identify what DAO members want to see from the token and encouraging innovative ideas to enhance its utility for holders.
Lido: Introducing $LDO Staking
This proposal aims to catalyze a discussion and propose a solution to the utility and value-accrual issues facing LDO by introducing an LDO staking module and buyback program to address utility and value-accrual issues for LDO token holders, allowing them to stake LDO in exchange for a share of Lido DAO revenue and serve as insurance providers of last resort.
Moonwell: Grants Program Framework
This proposal outlines a framework and guidelines for receiving grant funding for projects contributing to the Moonwell protocol and ecosystem, emphasizing the importance of clear goals and measurable outcomes. It also provides a grant proposal template and a three-stage process involving discussion, voting, and on-chain approval.
PoolTogether: Governance Contracts Upgrade/ScopeLift
ScopeLift, a 7-person team of expert EVM developers, is requesting a budget of $40,000 to fund 125-200 engineering hours for an upgrade to the PoolTogether DAO's onchain governance contracts. The upgrade aims to address various risks and limitations associated with the current governance contracts and enable the DAO to adopt best practices.
Rocket Pool: Roadmap Prioritisation
The post invites the Rocket Pool community to co-create and prioritize the Rocket Pool roadmap, outlining that collaboration is key to building the best decentralized staking protocol for Ethereum, following the successful deployment of the Atlas update. The core team has gathered ideas and conducted workshops, identifying overlapping themes and conducting a SWOT analysis to guide their strategy.
📜 Highlighted Proposals
Paladin: Allocating PAL to incentivize delegates
This proposal requests an allocation of 100k PAL for delegate incentives, which will follow a formula presented in the description. Delegates are eligible for rewards if they demonstrate a participation rate of at least 80%; meet the minimum delegation threshold of 10k PAL (from at least two delegators other than themselves); are registered members of the Paladin Association; and operate with transparency.
⏰ Voting ends: May 27 ⚡Type: Snapshot ✍ Author: Figue 💬 Read the discussion
Gitcoin: S18 Discord Management
This proposal, which passed through Snapshot in April, requests $23.4k in funding through a new process to pay for the continuing work of managing the Gitcoin Discord. The work, which is detailed in the forum discussion, is expected to require 30 hours per week for 13 weeks at a rate of $60 per hour.
✅ Voting starts: May 26 ⏰ Voting ends: June 1 ⛓️ Type: Onchain ✍ Author: Kyle Jensen 💬 Read the discussion
Aave: Delegate Code of Conduct
Flipside Crypto here specifies a code of conduct for Aave delegates to adopt. “If implemented,” they argue, “it encourages more professionalism and accountability within the role.” The eight categories of values detailed in the proposal include integrity, communication, availability, professional knowledge, due care and attention, and conflicts of interest.
⏰ Voting ends: May 25 ⚡Type: Snapshot ✍ Author: Flipside Crypto 💬 Read the discussion
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