🗳 This Week in Governance - October 12: Grants, Loans, and Longevity

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

Oct 12, 2023

VitaDAO launches biotech company
Real-world asset loan trouble at Goldfinch
Nouns votes to burn treasury ETH
Gitcoin outlines next grant round
Lido Discusses DAO goals

Voting Activity (L7)
🗳️ 864,024 ballots
👥 31,507 voters
📜 304 proposals
🌐 56 active DAOs
Query more data using the Governance API

Let’s get into it 🔥

📰 News

VitaDAO launches biotech company

According to Blockworks, VitaDAO has launched a biotech company called Matrix Biosciences with initial financing of $300,000 and additional funding expected in early 2024. Matrix Biosciences will build on Vera Gorbunova's research on the long life spans and cancer resistance of naked mole rats to investigate the potential of a compound found in these rats to enhance human lifespan. VitaDAO, which funds longevity research, closed a $4 million funding round earlier this year, including an investment from Pfizer Ventures.

Real-world asset loan trouble at Goldfinch

Warbler Labs, working on behalf of the Goldfinch DAO, has acknowledged performance issues within the Stratos pool's loans — which uses tokenized real-world assets. Stratos has a $20 million loan from Goldfinch, with $13 million allocated to Threecolts, $5 million to REZI, and $2 million to POKT. REZI is “a real-estate tech firm focusing on apartment rentals in major U.S. cities” according to Coindesk; its position is anticipated to be written down to $0 due to the real-estate tech company's failure to make interest payments. For POKT, its loss was not originally part of the loan agreement but was disclosed by Stratos about a year ago. Warbler Labs was unaware of this investment and ultimately incurred a substantial loss. To ensure recovery, Warbler Labs will backstop all losses, excluding their own and Stratos' positions. In response to the forum post revealing the loan status, one person notes that “this is the second occurrence of a lack of transparency from a borrower or a lack of auditing capability from Goldfinch….. [I]t is increasingly worrying to discover a complete lack of control from the loan underwriter, especially in the context of Stratos being an equity investor in Goldfinch.”

📜 Proposals

Recently Closed

Nouns: The Burn: Audit Funding

The proposal outlines plans for an upgrade to implement "The Burn," which aims to reduce excess ETH held in the treasury. The proposed mechanism calculates excess ETH as the difference between the treasury value in ETH and a specific value based on the total supply and the mean price from past auctions. The burn will occur at predictable intervals based on specific parameters. The proposal seeks funding for audits to ensure the system's security and will separate the deployment of the burn mechanism from defining its parameters, leaving that to future governance decisions. The proposal passed on October 11th with 54% voting “for.”

Ending Soon

Index: Modify the Organization Structure & Pod Representatives

This proposal aims to modify the organization structure and pod representatives of Index Coop. It seeks to streamline the structure by removing the Engineering and Treasury Pods and establishing a single Operations Pod with three representatives elected by token holders. The Operations Pod will oversee Engineering Operations and Treasury. The proposal includes changes to the Delegate Safe and defines the new representatives for the Operations Pod. The voting period closes on October 13th.

Upcoming

Uniswap: Complete Initial Funding of the Uniswap Foundation

This governance proposal seeks $46.2 million in UNI tokens to support the Uniswap Foundation's operations and grants for the next two years. The proposal also outlines their commitment to follow the governance process and retain the need for off-chain governance approval for grants larger than $2 million. It emphasizes the importance of strengthening the Uniswap ecosystem, growing core protocol metrics, fostering innovation, and aligning incentives for long-term protocol interests. The proposal goes onchain on October 12th.

📚 Reads

The Community of the DAO, editorial in Nature Biotechnology
A List of Open Problems in Crypto - II, by Emperor
Are blockchain systems legal or illegal? from BlockchainGov
Introducing the Celestia Improvement Proposal Process, by Yaz Khoury

🎧 Listens

Clifton @ The Arbitrum DAO, on DAO Talk
Communicating in Crypto, and Beyond, on Web3 with a16z
Summer of Protocols: Past, Present & Future with Venkatesh Rao & Tim Beiko, on Green Pill

👀 Boardroom in Action

Dawn Wallet: Governance on the Go

Discover how Dawn Vote, the ultimate wallet voting companion, makes DAO participation effortless. Dive into the case study to learn how Dawn Wallet and Boardroom have made governance accessible anywhere, powered by the Boardroom Governance API. Explore Dawn’s features and power your decentralized decisions.

👉 Check out our Dawn Wallet Case Study

💬 Forums

Gitcoin: GG19 - Outline and Strategy

Sov outlines the plan for Gitcoin Grants 19, which aims to refine and enhance the process while emphasizing its role in fostering innovation in the crypto space. The plan focuses on realigning core values, improving program quality and user experience, ensuring transparency, and advancing decentralization. It introduces changes in various program rounds, such as transitioning ETH Infra to a curated format, introducing AI/LLM tooling for grantee evaluations in the OSS round, emphasizing inclusivity in the Web3 Community & Education round, and transitioning the Climate Solutions round into an independent entity.

Lido: Proposed Goals for Lido DAO to Consider

This post from Hasu is a response to the Guided Open Objective Setting Exercise ("GOOSE") and outlines proposed three-year and one-year goals for Lido. The goals primarily focus on decentralizing governance, expanding the node operator set, and increasing the utility of stETH as a token. The author emphasizes the importance of security and alignment with Ethereum's mission of decentralization and accessibility. In related news, there has been a good deal of writing and conversation recently about the proportion of staked ETH (stETH) controlled by Lido (~32%).

Maker: Maker AI Chatbot - Governance AI Tools

A chatbot for Maker, developed as part of the Governance AI Tools project, has been trained on governance forums and documentation. While it has access to data, its contextual understanding is limited, and it may not consistently provide accurate responses. By refining data and adding metadata, the bot can be significantly improved, with the goal of increasing Maker members' productivity by one to two hours per day.

Olympus: Introducing Parthenon: Olympus On Chain Governance

This post discusses issues with the existing Olympus governance framework, which relies on multisig or DAO members to execute actions and lacks quorum thresholds. It proposes a new Parthenon Governance System with mechanisms to address these problems, including proposal collateral, an activation timelock, consensus mechanisms, and an execution process. It emphasizes the importance of simplicity, participation, and transparency in governance, and introduces Parthenon Loans as a means to enhance voting power. The post also seeks input on various parameters and safety measures for the new governance system.

Optimism: Proposed Grants Council Charter - Season 5

Dane Lund here outlines a draft Charter for the Grants Council, detailing its structure and responsibilities. The Grants Council consists of a Lead, an Ops team, and 13 Reviewers across three sub-committees, each with specific goals and responsibilities. The Charter emphasizes transparency, accountability, and adherence to a Code of Conduct. If adopted, this Charter will replace the Season 3 and 4 Charters and govern the distribution of Governance Fund grants.

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