🗳 This Week in Governance - September 22
A weekly resource covering DAO news and governance
📣 What You Need to Know
The TribeDAO wind down enters its late stage, SafeDAO looks to create a Grants Program, BendDAO considers launching an investment fund, Helium moves to Solana, and Metaplex airdrops governance tokens.
Activity:
🗳️ 18,135 ballots (-5%)
👥 8,182 voters (-2%)
📜 188 proposals (-5%)
🌐 65 active DAOs (+2%)
Let’s get into it ✨
🗞️ DAO News in Brief
TribeDAO’s Final Redemption
The controversial TribeDAO wind-down saga enters its late stage. A snapshot proposal was posted on September 20th to build community consensus on the final steps of TIP-121. Three major components are outlined in the Final Redemption proposal. The first is to ensure FEI is backed 1:1 by DAI. Second, ensure TRIBE redeems pro rata of the remaining PCV. Third, to revoke Governance powers for immutability. This new snapshot vote looks to address the first two components before the third component is possible. An important blocker to continuing the process is the unknown execution time on the OTC sale of veBAL with Aave Companies. The proposal asks the community whether to continue and start redemptions or wait an unknown period of time. The multi-step and multi-proposal chain of events is a great representation of the complexity and controversy at TribeDAO. This story offers a great case study on how or more importantly how not to dismantle a DAO using governance proposals. Expect a few more governance steps to complete the shutdown.
SafeDAO Considers a Grants Program
A proposal to form a Grants Program at SafeDAO has been posted to the protocol’s forums. The proposal describes the grant program's purpose as providing valuable resources to help grow the Safe brand, grow its ecosystem, and further provide SAFE token utility. The budget for the program would initially be $100K SAFE or USDC per month for 6 months for a total of $600K. Grants will be vetted and approved by a committee of five community members who are elected every 6 months. Committee members would be compensated an undisclosed stipend for their work reviewing grant applications. At the end of the 6 months, a new proposal process would be initiated to consider the renewal of the program. The newly formed DAO is in the middle of token airdrop preparations and also now looks to form a grant program to further its growth. Grant programs are a common practice at protocols to further align incentives, drive protocol growth, and get people building within their respective ecosystems. Comments in the forums ask for further clarity on goals, KPIs, and accountability measures at the DAO before handing out money. Expect amendments before a snapshot vote occurs as the SafeDAO community chimes in.
BendDAO Proposes Launching an Investment Fund
BendDAO, the NFT lending protocol, is considering creating an investment fund to help stabilize its protocol. The proposal details a plan for the DAO that would create a subtreasury of funds with the sole purpose of investment. The proposal would be implemented in two phases. Phase 1 would be centered around financing with Phase 2 focused on the actual implementation. In Phase 1, one billion tokens would be sold to VCs, blue-chip projects, and community members. A special financing facilitation team would be formed to spearhead the financing phase. BendDAO looks to invest half of the fund in non-performing assets. The move would further diversify the DAOs treasury and provide stability amid its recent liquidity struggles.
Helium Network Migrates to Solana
The largest decentralized wireless communication network has voted to migrate from its own purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain to Solana. On September 21st, the Helium community voted to approve the migration to the new Layer 1. Helium Improvement Proposal 70 closed with an 81% ‘For’ vote. Helium explains the move as enabling “Helium’s core developers to leverage Solana’s established blockchain and allow HNT to be more compatible with other innovative projects and crypto applications in DeFi, NFT, and other consumer web3 applications yet to come.” The migration to Solana is scheduled for Q4 2022.
Metaplex Foundation Announces Airdrop
On September 19th, Metaplex Foundation announced plans for a token airdrop. The MPLX governance token will be airdropped to eligible developers, creators, and artists through their claim site. Metaplex is an ecosystem of tools and libraries for NFT developers and creators on Solana. MPLX will serve as the governance token granting the community decision-making powers at the DAO. The Solana-based DAO is currently voting on additional airdrop distributions to further expand its community. In January, Metaplex Foundation raised $46M from investors such as Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto.
✨ Coverage
Business-to-DAO Deals Gain Traction
Business-to-DAO activity is growing substantially as it’s becoming an increasingly valuable business development strategy.
Read our exploration and coverage on Business-to-DAO or B2D. We’ve recently seen an influx in Business-to-DAO deals which is reflected in the increased number of proposals pushing these initiatives.
📚 Good Reads
“DAOs are not corporations: where decentralization in autonomous organizations matters” by Vitalik Buterin
“State of Optimism Governance” from Messari
“Why decentralization matters — A legal perspective” by Raphael Spannocchi
“Treasury Management” from DAO Research Collective
“Analyzing DAO Treasuries” from BanklessDAO
“Nouns is a Tokenized Community” by Jihad Esmail
“Paul’s Commandments on Protocol Design” by Joshua Baker
“The Pragmatists Guide to DAOing aka Reasonable Ways to Govern a DAO” from Sobol
“How DAOs can leverage their community to get stuff done” from Dework
“DAOs aren’t Pyramids, they’re Oceans” from Avenue
“Let’s talk about subDAO” by Shawn Grubb
“Grants Program Playbook” by Aditi Sriram
“GSE Deliverables” from BanklessDAO
“Zero Knowledge Canon, part 1 & 2” from a16z’
“What kind of Layer3s make sense” by Vitalik Buterin
“State of Ethereum Q3 2022” from Messari
Pentagon introduces Hyperapps a new primitive for a new internet
🧵 Threads
“5 Lessons from Scaling Krause House Governance” by Commodore
“A breakdown of the White House Executive Order on Digital Assets” from ThreeOh DAO
“The Community Ownership Paradox” by Joey DeBruin
Web3 Listens: Listen to the top articles in web3 narrated by Chase Chapman
🎧 Listens
“Rune Christensen — MakerDAO’s Past, Present, and Future” on Reverie Podcast
“Media as the Fourth Estate w/ Steph Alinsung” on On the Other Side Podcast
“Life of a Full-Time DAO Contributor w/ Kairon” on DAOn the Rabbit Hole Podcast
“The State of Professional Delegates w/ Kohei” on Governance Education Sessions
“A Framework For Understanding Power in DAOs w/ Dr. Nick” at Metafest2
“DAO Tooling w/ Nichana Kesonpat” at Metafest2
“Deep Dive into Curve Finance” on DeTalks Podcast
📜 Proposal Briefs
Ribbon Lend First Borrower Cohort
This proposal aims to decide on two institutional borrowers to make up the first borrower cohort onboarded to Lend, Ribbon’s new lending platform. Ribbon Lend is a new product offering from the protocol that allows depositors to lend unsecured uncollateralized loans to institutional market makers. The four institutional borrowers in the proposal include Folkvang, Wintermute, Auros, and Amber Group. The vote’s primary purpose is to gather consensus and community buy-in on the program and the borrowers. The top two votes will be onboarded as borrowers at product launch.
✅ 89% voting ‘Folkvang’
✅ 44% voting ‘Amber Group’
💬 Read the discussion
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
BanklessDAO Constitution & bDIP Standard
This proposal looks to ratify the adoption of a BanklessDAO constitution as the main source of truth alongside a new governance proposal template standard. The constitution defines the DAOs values, mission, structure, process, and governance agreed upon by the community. The ‘BanklessDAO Improvement Proposal’ (bDIP) process is also outlined as the new standard for making any changes to the DAO Constitution.
✅ 99% voting ‘Approve’
💬 Read the discussion
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
Gauntlet <> Compound Renewal
This proposal looks to renew Gaunlet’s work agreement with Compound for an additional 12 months. Gauntlet specializes in risk management and optimization for protocols. The centralized service provider has worked with Compound for the past 3 years and looks to renew their previous work agreement. Gauntlet’s protocol work focuses on “continuous market risk management and to maximize capital efficiency while minimizing risk of insolvency and liquidations to create long-term sustainable growth”. The compensation structure will remain the same as the previous agreement as a quarterly performance fee. Gauntlet will refund a portion of its payment should the protocol incur losses during its engagement.
✅ 100% voting ‘For’
💬 Read the discussion
⛓ Type: On-chain Vote
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