DAOs: DAOhaus introduces CCO, Aave launches Aave Arc, Compound considers migrating contributor streams to Sablier, ‘Curve Wars’ intensify, Yearn’s YIP-65 approved, Shiba Inu launches beta version of DAO, and more!
Biweekly report on decentralized autonomous organizations vol.16, 26th December — 7th January
TL;DR
- DAOhaus introduces a Community Contribution Opportunity (CCO) — a new mechanism for capital coordination within decentralized communities
- Compound is considering migrating community contributor COMP streams to Sablier. Proposal 079 is live, proposal 078 failed
- The Aave community votes on the parameter updates seeks to maintain the overall risk tolerance of the protocol while making risk trade-offs between specific assets. While Aave launches permissioned DeFi platform Aave Arc
- More and more protocols are building off of Curve, and an entire ecosystem is emerging, engaged in the so-called ‘Curve Wars’
- BadgerDAO’s BIP 81&82 passed, BIP 80 is live, BIP 84 is up on the forum for feedback and signal voting. Furthermore, following the successful passing of BIP 73, NFT Boost v1 has been implemented
- Index Coop & Bankless DAO introduce the DeFi Innovation Index (GMI)
- The Uniswap community is still discussing the possibility of deploying on Polygon
- Idle DAO considers the proposal to improve the treasury’s efficiency. Furthermore, the proposal to update the governance framework to Compound passed
- Yearn’s YIP-65 approved: The proposal seeks to evolve the role YFI plays in Yearn over four distinct phases
- PieDAO’s PIP-68 & the partnership proposal with OlympusDAO have passed
- The token swap between mStable and Balancer DAO is complete. mStable introduces Dashboard
- MakerDAO’s 5 Greenlight polls, 9 MIPs ratification polls, 2 Signal request polls are scheduled for Jan 10
- Gnosis’s GIP-20: Karpatkey DAO treasury management is live for voting
- DAO treasuries surged 40X in 2021: DeepDAO ranks Uniswap, BitDAO and Lido as top three
- Shiba Inu launches beta version of DAO to give users more authority over crypto projects
- LinksDAO NFT sale books first 10M toward buying an actual golf course
- MolochDAO grantee interview series
- PoolTogether’s community podcasts
- Gitcoin 2022 roadmap & goals
- The first Bancor community call
- Active proposals: Aave, BadgerDAO, GnosisDAO, Compound, Curve, Gitcoin, Index Coop, LidoDAO
- New & ongoing discussions: Balancer, Synthetix, PieDAO, Uniswap, mStable, MakerDAO, Yam Finance, Yearn Finance, Nexus Mutual, BancorDAO, Akropolis, PoolTogether, API3, Idle, KyberDAO, Kleros
- DAO trends and achievements of the past year, and some predictions for 2022
- Podcasts on DAOs
- And more!
Overview
Blockchain technology is already radically transforming the financial system. However, properties such as trustlessness and immutability aren’t only useful in monetary applications. Another potential application is governance. Blockchains could enable entirely new types of organizations that can run autonomously without the need for coordination by a central entity.
“Instead of a hierarchical structure managed by a set of humans interacting in person and controlling property via the legal system, a decentralized organization involves a set of humans interacting with each other according to a protocol specified in code, and enforced on the blockchain.” — Vitalik Buterin
DAO stands for “decentralized autonomous organization” and can be described as an open-source blockchain protocol governed by a set of rules, created by its elected members, that automatically execute certain actions without the need for intermediaries.
In simple terms, a DAO is an organization that is governed by computer code and programs. As such, it has the ability to function autonomously, without the need for a central authority.
Like how DeFi is programmable money and how NFTs are programmable media, DAOs are programmable organizations of people.
DAOs Ecosystem Statistics
- Top active organizations this week sorted by decisions:
- Top active organizations this week sorted by discussions:
Frameworks
Aragon
There were no essential news and updates these weeks.
Colony
There were no essential news and updates these weeks.
Daohaus
- A Community Contribution Opportunity (CCO) is a new mechanism for capital coordination that increases the amount of capital available to fund projects by strengthening protections and lowering risks for capital contributors.
- A CCO uses DAO tooling to orchestrate capital contributions to projects in a non-custodial fashion. Capital contributors maintain custody over their capital and have governance power over how it is spent, embedding them as active participants in the project’s community and protecting them from risks without the need for trusted relationships.
- These reduced risks make contributing capital significantly more attractive, making more capital available to fund projects, especially for decentralized communities and DAOs looking to amplify the positive impact they can have on the world.
- Decentralized communities and DAOs can conduct a CCO today using the DAOhaus platform.
The Ins and Outs of DAOs | TheDeFiScoop with Spencer Graham:
OpenLaw
There were no essential news and updates these weeks.
Governance
Aave
Active proposals
- Risk Parameter Updates 2021–12–29 [end Jan 9]
Closed proposals
New and ongoing discussions
- ARC: Adding Multi-Collateral DAI to the Aave ARC Market
- Add support for Terra USD (UST)
- ARC: Deploying Aave on StarkNet
- The Centrifuge RWA Market launches today, the first Aave permissioned market
- ARC: Add UST as a borrowable asset
- ARC — Consolidate Aave V1, V2 & AMM Reserve Factors, Purchase CVX and Deploy to Earn Yield
- ARC: Aave Deployment to L2 Optimism
Latest governance topics on governance forum.
Akropolis
Highlights of the Year:
There were no active proposals these weeks.
Latest governance topics on governance forum.
API3 DAO
Recent blog posts
API3 DAO Tracker: API3 DAO currently involves 4,496 members participated in 19 votings.
New and ongoing discussions (Sentiment Check)
Latest governance topics on governance forum.
Badger DAO
Recent blog posts and news
Active proposals
- BIP 80 (a). BADGER Allocation to Restitution Program [end Jan 8]
- BIP 80 (b). Yearly Reassessment [end Jan 8]
- BIP 80 ©. Full proposal agreement [end Jan 8]
Closed proposals
- BIP 83: Update bCVXCRV to lock CVX
- BIP 82 (b). Emissions: Q1 2022 (mStable)
- BIP 82 (a). Emissions: Q1 2022
New and ongoing discussions
- BIP 80 Restitution of non-recoverable assets via remBadger Sett
- BIP 84: DIGG Boost Restoration
- BIP 83. Update bCvxCRV to lock CVX
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
Balancer
There were no active proposals these weeks.
New and ongoing discussions
- [DRAFT] Proposal: Balancer subDAOs Formation
- [DRAFT] Proposal: Co-Incentivized Metastable Pool with FEI and RAI
- [Proposal] Activation of the protocol fee to grow the Balancer DAO
- [Proposal] Increasing flexibility of Liquidity Mining program
Latest governance topics on governance forum.
Bancor
Closed proposals
- Add HAL plugin to Snapshot
- https://gov.bancor.network/t/urgent-temporarily-disable-deposits-for-tribe-and-permanently-disable-deposits-for-rgt/3305
- Activate Proof of Attendance Protocol for all future Snapshot proposals
- Change the fee in the BAT pool from 0.2% to 0.5%
- Whitelist Vitadao (VITA) with 100,000 BNT Trading Liquidity
- Increase Trading Liquidity Limit to 250K BNT on the IDLE-BNT Pool
- Change the fee in the LINK pool from 0.2% to 0.5%
- Change the fee in the PSP pool from 0.2% to 0.5% ###
- Change the fee in the AMP pool from 0.5% to 1%
- Whitelist DAO Maker (DAO) with 100,000 BNT Trading Liquidity
- Increase trading liquidity to 2.5M BNT on the ROOK-BNT pool
- Proposal: Stablecoin pools fee experiment and analysis
- Extend LM rewards in the Stablepools (USDC, USDT, DAI) for 6 weeks
- Increase the trading liquidity limit in the PSP-BNT pool to 300K BNT
- Onboard New RocketPool (RPL) token with 1M BNT trading liquidity
- Set trading fees to .2% on CEL-BNT pool
- Urgent: Permanently Disable Deposits on the Old Reserve Rights (RSR) Token
- Whitelist DerivaDAO token (DDX) Plus 100K BNT Trading Liquidity
- Whitelist BBS Token with External IL Protection
- Increase trading liquidity on wNXM-BNT pool to 2M BNT
- Set trading fees to 1% on LPL-BNT pool from current .1%
New and ongoing discussions
- Proposal to whitelist Sheesha with 50,000 BNT trading liquidity limit
- Proposal to Whitelist Cartesi (CTSI) with 50,000 BNT trading liquidity limit
- Proposal: Stablecoin pools fee experiment and analysis
- Proposal: Incentivize users to migrate to V3 by matching token side LM rewards with up to 50,000 BNT per pool
- Proposal: Increase trading liquidity on CEL-BNT pool to 1M BNT
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the forum.
Bancor Community Call — January 2, 2022:
Compound
Active proposals
- Migrate Contributor Streams to Sablier [end Jan 9]
Closed proposals
- Risk Parameter Updates for ETH [end Jan 4]
New and ongoing discussions
- Migrate GFX Labs and Gauntlet COMP streams over to Sablier
- COMP Distribution Speeds — The End of CompSpeeds?
- Proposal Discussion — Crypto’s S&P500, a Decentralized Benchmark
- Gauntlet Quarterly ContributorCompSpeed Update
- Who all received this letter re: patents and infringement please?
- Risk Parameter Updates 2021–12–23 and Risk Dashboard Bug Fix
Latest governance topics on governance forum.
Curve
Active snapshot proposals
- Add HAL plugin to Snapshot
- 你是否将你的CRV锁定4年？
- Avez-vous verrouillé CRV pendant 4 ans?
- Did you lock CRV for 4 years?
New and ongoing discussions
- CIP#12 — Which tokens should be included in a gold pool?
- sCIP #47 — add a [RAI, FRAX] Base Pool
- CIP#142 Update fee burners
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the forum.
Gitcoin
Recent blog posts
Active proposals
New and ongoing discussions
- Gitcoin Mission & Vision
- Proposal: Partnership & Mutual Grant with Developer DAO
- [Proposal] DAO Operations Workstream Budget — Q1 2022
- [Proposal] Retroactive GTC Allocation to Lead Engineer of Gitcoin Grants V1
- A Vision for A Pluralistic Civilizational Scale Infrastructure for funding Public Goods
- Introducing Steward Report Cards
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
Gnosis
Active proposals
- GIP-20: Karpatkey DAO Treasury Management [end Jan 13]
Closed proposals
- GIP-18: TickDAO Investment [end Dec 31]
New and ongoing discussions
- GIP-20: Karpatkey DAO Treasury Management
- GIP-13 (Phase 2): CowDAO and COW Token
- GNO Utility and Value Proposition
- GIP-19: Should Gnosis DAO burn 715k GNO?
- GIP-21: Amendment to GIP-17. Send additional funds to daughter Safe
Find out the latest GnosisDAO proposals here.
Idle
Closed proposals
- IIP-18: [Temperature Check] — Governor Bravo Upgrade [end Dec 31]:
New and ongoing discussions
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
Index Coop
Recent blog posts
- Are You $GMI? Introducing the Bankless DeFi Innovation Index
- DeFi 101: What is DeFi?
- BitGo Now Supports Index Coop’s Full Thematic Product Suite
Active proposals
- [COMPOUND-80] Update cSUSHI cToken Implementation [end Jan 10]
- [AAVE-54] Risk Parameter Updates 2021–12–29 [end Jan 8]
Closed proposals
- BIP 80 (c). Full proposal agreement [end Jan 7]
- BIP 80 (b). Yearly Reassessment [end Jan 7]
- BIP 80 (a). BADGER Allocation to Restitution Program [end Jan 7]
- [COMPOUND-79] [end Jan 7]
- IIP-119 DG1: Launch iMATIC, iETH, BTC2X, iBTC FLIs on Polygon [end Jan 6]
- [COMPOUND-78] Risk Parameter Updates for ETH [end Jan 2]
- BIP 82 (b). Emissions: Q1 2022 (mStable) [end Dec 29]
New and ongoing discussions
- IIP XY: Delegate FLI launch decisions to PWG & DFP on a per-chain basis
- IIP-##: DG1 Launch the Total Crypto Market Cap Index (MCAP)
- IIP-60: DG2 — Llama Diversified Index $LDI
- IIP-114: Transfer USDC from Treasury to the Investment Account and Deploy Productively
- IIP-54: BED:ETH liquidity — Direct provision by Index Coop
Find latest Index Coop proposals here.
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
Kleros
There were no active KIPs these weeks.
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
Mishcon Academy Digital Session: Dispute Resolution in the Metaverse:
Lido
Recent blog posts
- Bringing The Lido Referral Program to Solana
- Presenting stSOL Options Strategy Vault with Tap Finance
Active proposals
- Proposal: Join the Flashbots Eth2 Working Group [end Jan 7]
Closed proposals
- Lido Referral Program on Solana [end Dec 28]
New and ongoing discussions
- LEGO: Integration Lido <> Stakeall Finance
- Lido Referral Program on Solana
- Rewards distribution after The Merge: architecture decision record
- Referral Program Whitelisting [Ethereum]
- Proposal to form reWARDS Committee
- reWARDS January 22’ Budget
- Increase the DAO voting duration
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
MakerDAO
Polls
- 5 Greenlight polls are scheduled for Monday 10th January.
- 9 MIPs Ratification polls are scheduled for Monday 10th January.
- 2 Signal Request polls are scheduled for Monday 10th January.
Executive
- No Executive Proposal these weeks. Executive’s will resume on Jan 14th.
New and ongoing discussions
- MIP64 — Bug Bounty Program for MakerDAO Critical Infrastructure
- MIP55c3-SP2: Create RealDAO SPF to make Moloch-based SPVs
- MIP39c2-SP27: Adding Strategic Finance Core Unit
- MIP41c4-SP27: Facilitator Onboarding (RWF-001)
- [Signal Request] Maker Accessing Pools of Institutional Loans Through Maple Finance
- Improving governance participation rate at MakerDAO
and many more!
Read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision.
Governance Portal, Governance Forum
MakerDAO events calendar here.
mStable
Recent blog posts
There were no proposals these weeks.
New and ongoing discussions
- Recursive Borrowing in mSave on Polygon
- Codifying the mStable DAO’s values
- TDP 33 — Community subDAO Creation and Funding
- MCCP 13: Increase cache for BUSD and GUSD Feeder Pools
- Thoughts on how mStable should move forward in 2022
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
Nexus Mutual
There were no active proposals these weeks.
Discussions
- Operation Wartortle Next Steps: Draft Execution Proposal
- Potential next steps for continuation of Operation TM12
Vote on governance proposals to decide the future of the protocol here.
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
Pie DAO
Recent blog posts
Closed proposals
- Olympus Pro x PieDAO [end Jan 1]
- [PIP-68] KPI Options Redeemable asset [end Jan 1]
New and ongoing discussions
- BasketDAO acquisition proposal
- [PIP-65] Staking rewards compounding to veDOUGH
- [Proposal] PieDAO Owned Pie Liquidity
- [PIP-68] KPI Options Redeemable asset
- MMPie (Money Market Pie)
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
PoolTogether
There were no active proposals these weeks.
New and ongoing discussions
- RFC: Formalizing the Executive Team
- Coordinape, Continuation Q1 2022, Increasing Budget
- [META-VOTE] POOL pool gasless voting setup
- RFC: Enable POOL voting on L2s and non-Ethereum L1s
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
Synthetix
Closed proposals
- SCCP-161: Increase L2 Inflationary Rewards to 100k [end Jan 1]
- SCCP-160: Update LUSD Wrappr Parameters [end Dec 29]
- Pizza [end Dec 31]
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
SIP/SCCP status tracker
- SIP-188 Add sETHBTC synth implemented December 2021
- SIP-184 Dynamic Exchange Fees is the next main focus for developers and has been approved
- SIP-185 Debt Shares code is complete and ready to audit
- SIP-180 Aelin Protocol implemented with SIP-188 December 2021
- SCCP-158 implemented which updated sETH/ETH Wrappr Parameters
- SCCP-160 implemented with SCCP-158 which updated LUSD Wrappr Parameters
Uniswap
There were no active proposals these weeks.
New and ongoing discussions
- Deploy Uniswap V3 to Polygon PoS Chain
- Temperature Check — Deploy Uniswap V3 on AVAX
- Should Uniswap Provide Voltz with v3 Additional Use Grant
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
Yam Finance
Closed proposals
- Contributors Streams Renewal
- Extend Proposal Timelock Period
- Contributors Streams Renewal
- Update Guardian Multisig
- Update Mainnet Multisig
New and ongoing discussions
- Delegate the UMA in our treasury to a contributor
- Extend Proposal Timelock Period
- Update Guardian Multisig
- Update Mainnet Multisig
Check out the latest YIPs discussions here.
Yearn Finance
Closed proposals
- YIP-65: Evolving YFI Tokenomics [end Dec 28]
Discussions
Check out the latest YIPs discussions here.
MISC
Tally’s DAO Highlights
- Treasury management and protocol controlled value
As Defi and NFT DAOs rose to prominence over the past year, they have begun to focus on treasury management and financial longevity. One group of organizations put a primary focus on amassing treasury assets, also known as “protocol controlled value”. This includes OlympusDAO, Fei Protocol, and NounsDAO among many others.
Even many of the original defi DAOs have begun to amass larger warchests, and I expect this trend to continue into 2022 as the inevitable end of the bull market draws closer.
- Internal DAO conflict and minority holder protections
In the past year, we’ve seen some early examples of internal DAO conflicts break into the open. So far, they have primarily centered on contributor offboarding/firing decisions or other personnel conflicts. The most notable examples include Sushiswap’s team issues and resignation of their CTO, along with 2 separate contributor offboarding proposals being considered at MakerDAO.
The public and transparent nature of DAO work requires a new approach to people management to balance performance goals against contributor privacy. Organizations that get this right will have a much easier time attracting and retaining talent.
In addition to managing personnel, DAOs also face significant challenges around minority investor rights and protections as they accumulate larger treasuries. We’ve seen early examples of this in the case of DigixDAO, which was ultimately dissolved after a long period of controlling holders extracting funds through the project’s grants and BD program. More recent examples include Gnosis and Nexus Mutual, who are both trading far below book value of their treasury as small token holders have no way to force payouts.
The Fei-Rari merger’s inclusion of a “rage quit” mechanism, allowing users to redeem their tokens for a share of the project treasury, represents an important precedent in this area. MakerDAO has an alternative minority protection feature in the form of “emergency shutdown”, which allows a quorum of 75,000 MKR (roughly ~8% of supply) to force system shutdown in the event of malicious majority actions. Particularly for well capitalized projects, these sort of safeguards should become common practice to avoid asset stripping and self dealing by majority holders.
- Industry consolidation
While 2020 showed some early examples of consolidation with Yearn’s series of cross project partnerships, the shift towards full mergers only took hold this past year. Top mergers from the past year include: 1) Threshold cryptography projects Keep and Nucypher merging into a combined protocol; 2) Asset rich Gnosis entering the L1 space with acquisition of xDAI STAKE protocol; 3) Fei protocol acquiring Rari Capital’s money market and yield aggregator projects.
The Gnosis-xDAI and Fei-Rari mergers in particular were largely financially driven. xDAI needed vastly more resources to compete in the alt L1 space against well capitalized ecosystem reward programs, and Gnosis provided the financial firepower to back this up. And in addition to natural synergies between Fei’s stablecoin and Rari’s Fuse money markets, Fei also had enough resources to pay off Rari’s earlier hack losses and fund future development without contentious token supply change proposals.
In the coming year, we’ll likely see more opportunities for well capitalized projects to buy up less well resourced competitors. Who are the potential acquirers and targets? Acquisitions will most likely be led in the short term by well capitalized protocols like Uniswap, Fei, Gnosis, and BitDAO. But there’s also a likelihood of mergers being targeted at specific sectors that have high returns to scale and liquidity network effects. This could include liquid staking protocols (eg. Lido, RocketPool, pStake), asset management platforms (see recent PieDAO buyout of BasketDAO), or even stablecoins.
- B2D and D2D collaboration
As DAOs with significant resources increase in operational complexity, there’s a growing potential for external service providers. We’ve seen the first examples of business to DAO (“B2D”) interaction play out with Gauntlet Network’s risk management contracts at Aave and Compound, as well as the Compound auditing contract that was recently awarded to OpenZeppelin in a competitive vote.
DAOs are beginning to enter the space as well, with organizations like VectorDAO and DeveloperDAO providing services directly to other decentralized orgs (DAO to DAO services or “D2D”).
2022 will likely see an increasing number of protocol DAOs outsource operational responsibilities through B2D or D2D contracts. This will bring some significant challenges that are already present in traditional government contracting and vendor management fields; how will organizations award contracts in a fair and transparent manner, and how will they manage providers to ensure quality work?
- Cross chain governance
While several L1 and L2 platforms have exploded with activity over the past year, we’re only beginning to see multichain governance mechanisms take hold. Aave is leading the way here, with plans for cross chain governance messaging to replace trusted admin multisigs on their multichain deployments. Gnosis is also pushing ahead with cross chain multisig execution features.
In 2022, we should see further development of multichain governance control mechanisms, as well as L2 voting and other features to reduce the friction in DAO governance participation. We’ll also likely see more and more apps more towards cross chain deployments to capture users priced out of Ethereum mainnet, following in the footsteps of Sushiswap and Aave.
- Flash DAOs
Over the course of the year, we’ve seen some of the most successful DAOs are not permanent organizations; rather they represent a short term coordination tool to achieve a specific goal. The most notable org in this category was ConstitutionDAO, which despite failing to acquire the constitution managed to raise tens of millions of dollars in under a week and put DAOs firmly on the map. Simple fundraising and coordination tools like Juicebox Money will make these flash DAOs progressively more accessible to the masses in the coming year. By the end of 2022, it’s likely that many of the most well known DAOs will be centered on events, art, or community rather than defi protocol management.
- Shiba Inu Launches Beta Version of DAO to Give Users More Authority Over Crypto Projects: The dogecoin rival is aiming to provide its users with more control over crypto projects and pairs on the ShibaSwap platform.
- LinksDAO NFT Sale Books First $10M Toward Buying an Actual Golf Course: The project sold out a collection of over 9,000 NFTs with a token airdrop for members penciled in for 2022.
- DeepDAO ranks Uniswap DAO, BitDAO and Lido Finance DAO as top three, with treasury value at $2.9 billion, $2.4 billion and $602 million.
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That’s all for today! Your feedback is highly appreciated!👥
