🗳 This Week in Governance - November 3
A weekly resource covering Web3 governance, politics, and power.
📣 Key Points
Cosmos votes on ATOM 2.0, ConsenSys launches a grant DAO, Zora announces Nouns Builder & Builder DAO, PieDAO plans token buyback program, ENS searches for an endowment manager, and much more.
Activity:
🗳️ 32,615 ballots (-9%)
👥 18,824 voters (+2%)
📜 197 proposals (-2%)
🌐 55 active DAOs (-8%)
Let’s get into it 🔥
🔮 Shape The Future of the Protocols You Own
The new Boardroom Portal is a web3 portfolio governance manager, your key into the new ownership economy:
Track proposals based on your portfolio and ownership
Research decisions with summaries and notes all in one place
Govern across hundreds of protocols directly from a single dashboard
Showcase activity and information aggregated in your voter profile
📡 Coverage
📖 READ our latest brief on ENS, their proposal to find an endowment fund manager, and why it matters.
🗞 DAO News in Brief
Cosmos Votes on New White Paper
The Cosmos community is currently voting on a proposal that looks to fundamentally reshape the protocol. ATOM 2.0 is a revamped white paper outlining updates to the ecosystem’s functionality, security, and tokenomics. The paper looks to update the original Cosmos 2017 white paper to align the protocol with current conditions. Following a handful of revisions and delays to incorporate community feedback, onchain voting for Proposal 82 is now underway. Proposal 82 requests the adoption of ATOM 2.0 as the protocol’s vision and direction. In the newly revised document, issuance of ATOM has been reduced from the original 40M per year to only 4M, satisfying a large number of tokenholders. Quorum on this proposal has been lowered from 50% to 40%. Voting is live now through November 14th.
Following the release of ATOM 2.0, tensions have arisen within the Cosmos community. Jae Kwon, the co-founder of Cosmos who left the project, has returned to introduce Proposal 83. In this proposal, a so-called ‘Atom One Constitution’ is adopted as the protocol’s constitution and mandate. The proposed constitution outlines a significant change to the governance procedure, a potential roadblock for ATOM 2.0. In the document, a 2/3rds supermajority is introduced to the governance process. This change potentially hurts the feasibility of the ideas introduced within ATOM 2.0. Proposal 83, is being rejected at the moment with an 85% ‘No’ vote. Voting ends on November 14th.
ConsenSys Launches MetaMask Grants DAO
ConsenSys, creators of popular web3 wallet Metamask, have announced plans to launch a grants DAO. MetaMask Grants DAO is an employee-led DAO formed to fund developers building “impactful experiences within the Metamask ecosystem.” The DAO will initially be funded with $2.4M per year ($600K per quarter). Proposals looking to receive funding will fall under one of two categories: Leadership Committee Grants or DAO Grants. Leadership Committee Grants will be allocated funds from a special grant committee comprised of ConsenSys employees. DAO grants will receive funding directly from the DAO through traditional governance. Governance proposals for the DAO will be voted on through the Codefi Activate platform. Over the last few months, the centralized company has increased its presence and activity within the DAO space. ConesnSys plans to trial the DAO experiment for 12 months before it is reevaluated.
Zora Launches Nouns Builder and Builder DAO
Zora, a platform providing web3 creators & operator solutions, has announced a new project called Nouns Builder. Nouns Builder is a no-code tool that enables anyone to quickly launch a Noun-like DAO on-chain. The project had been incubated internally for the last four months. Zora plans to decentralize the project as a self-sustained protocol called Builder DAO. This new DAO would be created as a Noun-like DAO to help steward the protocol. On November 1st, Jacob Horne founder of Zora, submitted a proposal to Nouns DAO to help kickstart the protocol. In the proposal, he requests 1000 ETH from NounsDAO to be placed in an escrow smart contract. This allocation looks to fund the initial development of Builder DAO and help bootstrap the initial phases. Builder DAO will hold daily auctions for NFTs that enable users to govern the protocol. The DAO plans to launch on November 15th should the proposal pass. Voting on Proposal 167 ends on November 6th.
PieDAO Plans Token Buyback Program Amid Token Freefall
Following the deprecation of their liquidity program in October, PieDAO is proposing launching a token buyback program to prevent further token decline. The DeFi project has seen its governance token DOUGH decline by 98% ($2.14 to $0.04) during the course of its liquidity program. The 18-month-long program was intended to incentivize liquidity providers on the platform and reward them with DOUGH. On Monday, a proposal was posted outlining the creation of a buyback program. This program intends to mitigate token sell pressure and further token decline as a result of the incentives ending. A community vote is expected shortly that will buy back tokens through the DAO treasury.
📚 Good Reads
“Rousseau's breadcrumbs and the blockchain leviathan” by Jonathan Hillis
“What to expect from Professional Delegates” from StableNode
“The Buildooooooor - Marc Zeller of AAVE” from alpha please
“New Rules for a New Thing: A Petition for CFTC Rulemaking on DAO Participant Liability” from Haun Ventures
“DCCPA Update; Haun Ventures' Petition for DAO Rulemaking; a16z's Amicus Brief in Ooki DAO Case” by DeFi Education Fund
“Escaping the Gossip Trap: DAOs vs. the Mob” by Alex Stein
“New Serum Governance System Proposal” by TDM Blockchain
“Why DAO Treasuries Should Be Put to Work” from Blockworks
“Web3 Credentials → A Primer” from Chapter One
🧵 Threads
“Pre-DAO and Post-DAO Legal Risk Assessment” from DAO Research Collective
“My take on Maker’s ‘Real-World Finance Unit’ Offboarding“ by Sébastien Derivaux
“Do DeFi protocols really need a token to work?” by DefiIgnas
🎧 Listens
“Ownership as Citizenship w/ Nathan Schneider” on Building at the Edges
“Building the Digital City of Cities w/ Julia Rosenberg & Chase Chapman” on Rehash
“Impact Networks w/ David Ehrlichman” on Green Pill
“DAO Governance with Frameworks & Delegation Models w/ Gustav Arentoft” at The DAOist Bogota
“2022 Statistics on DAO Governance w/ Emilie Raffo” at The DAOist Bogota
“DAO Legal Governance: Processes to Source Legal Work w/ Layer0” at The DAOist Bogota
“Reimagining DAO Governance w/ David Phelps” on Crypto Sapiens Podcast
“100% of DeFi Could Become Illegal w/ Gabriel Shapiro” on The Defiant Podcast
📜 Proposal Roundup
GSC Compensation
This proposal looks to create an incentive structure for the newly created GSC role at Element DAO. The Governance Steering Council is a mechanism that will enable the Element community to govern the protocol as it progressively decentralizes. Separately, a GSC roles and responsibilities proposal is being worked on in conjunction with this proposal. This compensation proposal details the minimum contribution requirements a member must meet in order to be compensated 100 ELFI per month. Community feedback is being incorporated into this proposal and details are likely to change before it is pushed to a vote.
👥 Type: Forum Discussion
✍️ Author: Bobby Bola
Grants Committee Election for S6 and S7
This proposal is to elect five community members to the Bankless Grants Committee for Seasons 6 and 7. This committee serves to fund projects and initiatives that align with Bankless's mission & values and fall outside of the normal seasonal funding cadence. A ten-day nomination period was previously held for community members to apply for consideration. A total of seven candidates have come forward and are now being voted on. This proposal will implement weighted voting to allow voters to distribute their votes across candidates. The top 4 candidates will be elected for the next two seasons. The 5th highest-voted candidate will be elected for S6 only.
✅ 25% Voting ‘senad.eth’
⏰ Voting Ends: Nov 4th
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍️ Author: jameswmontgomery.eth
Security and Agility of Aave Smart Contracts via Continuous Formal Verification
This proposal is a 12-month work agreement between security firm Certora and Aave. Certora is a smart contract security firm enabling and securing blockchain protocols and projects. The firm was previously granted a six-month grant to continue its work on Aave. This proposal looks to extend their work agreement to a full year and compensate them accordingly. Terms of the deal include a possible 30-day termination via governance vote and payment of $2.7M ($1.89M USDC & 810K AAVE).
✅ 99% voting ‘Yes’
⏰ Voting Ends: Nov 3rd
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍️ Author: Shelly
Should the Hop community fund a grants program?
This proposal looks to fund a community grant program at Hop Protocol. This grant program hopes to fund and attract developers to build on top of Hop, increasing general interest. The proposal outlines an initial allocation of 750K HOP (~$75K) to reward builders. After a 6 month trial period, the program will be revisited and voted on. To be funded, grants larger than $15K will have to go through Hop’s governance process. The program hopes to emulate other successful grant programs within the space such as Uniswap and MakerDAO. The committee will initially consist of five members: Lito, Getty Hill, FourPoops, Jack, and Chris Winfrey.
✅ 100% voting ‘Yes’
⏰ Voting Ends: Nov 6th
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍️ Author: Jack Clancy & Benji Cohen
💭 Ecosystem Takes
🎈 Have a Meme
📮 Stay Up to Date
Follow us: Twitter | Discord
Subscribe to: Newsletter | Mirror | Apple | Spotify
For a deeper dive into DAO governance data, browse our Governance API - 🚀 This link can be used to make requests against the API and is an excellent way to start exploring our governance data!