Governance on Testnet, Seize the power!
As the Aave team continues its path towards more decentralization, we’re happy to introduce the launch of governance on the Ropsten testnet and invite our community to participate in the first votes on AIPs.
The DeFi Ethos
DeFi has a clear decentralization Ethos — DeFi should not be just “Open Source Finance”. We are building the future of finance, and the objective of our community is not to reproduce traditional finance with “blockchain”, but rather the idea is to create something better and brand new.
In order to kickstart the protocol and deliver the many features of the Aave ecosystem at light speed, the current Aave team was the center of gravity for the development of Aave.
We now have the conviction that after half a year and with the trust of the Aave community depositing around 650M$ into Aave markets, it’s time to activate the transition from the “early days” phase 1 to a more decentralized phase 2 with governance in full control of the protocol. Governance on testnet is the next step on this path.
A safe and free sandbox
Ethereum gas prices are through the roof! Our beloved network is a victim of its own success, and simple actions that used to cost cents are now costing dollars.
In order to give our community a safe and free environment to experiment with our governance module, we decided to pre-launch our governance on the Ropsten test network before the launch on the Ethereum mainnet.
In this context, our community can vote on a proposal without incurring gas costs, try out our module, and provide valuable feedback before the big launch.
All decisions on the testnet will not be considered valid for the long term, and votes with consequences will start with the governance on mainnet. That being said, feel free to vote as you will on the mainnet.
The AIPs
Votes on Aave will be focused on Aave Improvement Proposals, a standardized expression of community consensus around ideas. The process for AIPs can be found in our governance forum. Feel free to have a look.
Being a decentralized project, AIPs are the main tools for the evolution of Aave. The role of the Aave team is now focused on collecting the consensus of the community, expressing it in the form of an AIP, converting the AIP into safe and audited code, and submitting it for Community approval.
The first vote on mainnet
With AIP1, Aave governance is starting with a big task. The LEND community has to decide on approving the transition to the AAVE community.
The LEND asset will be used for the first AIP votes but in the scenario of a token migration approval, the AAVE asset will become the center of gravity of the Aave governance and used for every future vote.
The voting process
LEND holders can vote with LEND that has been deposited on Aave, even if it is being used as collateral. The vote is open to every LEND and aLEND holder with exactly the same voting weight.
You will be able to express your vote even if you have a position ongoing on Aave!
Voting happens directly on the Aave Governance Module in our app
Each vote has a duration in blocks and a deadline, and you’re invited to express your approval or rejection of a proposal with the traditional English parliamentary “Yae” for approval and “Nay” for literal naysayers.
After the voting deadline, a vote is considered final and the AIP goes to the “Approved” or “Rejected” state.
Time to vote!
Feel free to test our voting module now. If you need Ropsten ETH, here’s the official Faucet and you can mint Ropsten LEND for voting.
We have a bug bounty program on the governance contracts, blockchain sleuths are more than welcome to the bug hunt! Governance contracts as every line of code of the Aave protocol have been audited, the governance module smart contract is verified and auditable on Etherscan our audit will be uploaded and auditable by everybody shortly, last but not least, developers are invited to consult our dedicated technical documentation.
Discussions for actual future AIPs are still ongoing on our Governance Forum, and in our Discord server, feel free to express your voice for the future of Aave!
The immediate next step will be to have governance on Mainnet, and AIPs proposal will be defined in our Forum in preparation for a vote that can potentially if accepted, launch the migration process to bring the AAVE asset to the spotlights!
