DAOs: Uniswap adopts accountability committee for deployments, Optimism’s Token House completes first on-chain voting cycle, Arbitrum DAO debates symbolic return of 700m ARB to the treasury, Maker Governance to vote on Coinbase’s new real-world asset vault, Aave Forest, and more!
Biweekly report on decentralized autonomous organizations vol.39, 3rd April — 21st April
TL;DR
- Uniswap adopts accountability committee for deployments. Temp-check Post-BSL cross-chain deployment process and creation of new uniswap.eth subdomain proposal passed
- Optimism’s Token House completes first on-chain voting cycle. OP Collective launches S4 to align and achieve collective intents
- A set of parameter changes for ETH, wstETH, rETH, Curve stETH-ETH LP, and WBTC vault types has been approved by Maker Governance
- Aave’s [ARFC] Private Voting for Aave Governance proposal suggests implementing private voting through shielded voting on the Snapshot for a 2-month trial period. BGD Labs proposes to integrate a monitoring and prevention framework called Aave Forest. Butter runs a governance experiment with Aave DAO delegates
- Lido DAO Treasury Management Principles & authorize formation of a Treasury Management Committee proposal is live
- Gitcoin and ScopeLift working on developing and implementing new on-chain governance contracts for the Gitcoin DAO, using Governor Bravo functionality and the Flexible Voting extension
- Gnosis GIP-77 and GIP-83 are live on the Snapshot
- Compound’s proposals 157 executed, 158 is active
- Arbitrum DAO debates symbolic return of 700m ARB to the treasury. Grants Funding Framework Discussion aims to avoid the cascading pattern of reactivity seen in DAOs
- Metropolis’s Podarchy Explorer addresses permissions “epidemic”
- Radicle’s [RGP-14] suggests establishing the Radicle Org to develop a fully-sovereign code collaboration stack called “Radicle”
- ENS’s Public Goods working group is offering a new retroactive grant opportunity
- Rari’s RRC-8: Retroactive Governance Airdrop proposal suggests a retroactive $RARI airdrop to community members who actively participated in RARI Foundation governance
- BanklessDAO Governance Department Instantiation
- Voting System Choice for Hop DAO Elections proposal suggests that the Hop DAO needs a specific voting system for the election of nominees to various positions
- 0x Reactivate Inactive Voting Power proposal aims to engage new community members
- Purple DAO’s Purple Grant proposal asks BuilderDAO for a grant of 50 ETH in order to “continue to proliferate Nouns Builder through media and by example”
- ScopeLift moves closer to implementing Flexible Voting
- Due to technical issues, Hidden Hand Protocol was unable to participate in a recent incentive-round vote
- Decentralized app Sweat Economy introduces 1-person, 1-vote governance system
- Members of Pfizer Ventures-backed VitaDAO have voted to create VitaTech, a for-profit company that will secure and distribute government funding for longevity research
- Active proposals: Aave, Compound, GnosisDAO, LidoDAO, MakerDAO
- 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 DAOs
The rating is headed by Optimism Collective and Arbitrum One. Earlier the rating was headed by Uniswap and BitDAO.
Read & Listen
- Let 1,000 DAOs Bloom, by Jess Sloss
- Assimilating the BORG: A New Framework for CryptoLaw Entities, Delphi Labs
- proto-DAOs, making DAOs fun again, by Stefen Deleveaux
- The difference between Public Goods Problems and Coordination Problems… and whether it matters by Scott Moore
- Preliminary analysis and scoring of Uniswap, by Charles Adjovu
- How DAOs can leverage the power of zero-knowledge proofs, Jyotirmoy Barman
- 2023 State of Crypto Report (and Crypto Index), from a16z crypto
- Introducing Fortune’s Crypto 40: Blockchain businesses built to last (paywall)
- Introducing Web3 Work, from Other Internet
- The Three Kinds of DAO-to-DAO Partnerships, by Raphael Spannocchi
- Decentralization and Protocol Interaction: Navigating the Layers, by Marc Zeller
- Seeing like a protocol, by Barnabé Monnot
- Architecting network success, by Diana Biggs of 1kx
- DAOs and the Future of Education, by Bruvton
- Introducing ETH Earned, from RabbitHole
- Governance Theater: Lessons from AIP-1, by Juan Esquivel
- UNICEF hatches plan for a prototype DAO, following its crypto fund, on The Block
- UF Update to Community — 7 Months In, from the Uniswap Foundation
- Building Psychological Attachment — Not Just Ownership — Into Web3, by Li Jin
- Objective-Based Liquidity Design for stETH, by Elem Oghenekaro
- Introducing Astria: The Shared Sequencer Network, from Astria
- Introducing Governatooorr: An Autonomous AI-powered Delegate for DAO Governance, from Valory
Listen
- Are DAOs Strong Enough to Survive the Regulators? on Unchained
- chase @ blockchain at USC, on DAO Talk
- Decentralized voting proof of concept, from Denison Bertram
- Upcoming: What the Golden Age Pirates Can Teach Us About the Future of DAOs with Jon Alexander, from RnDAO
- Upcoming: Decentralized Governance and Digital Asset Prices with Jill Grennan, from RnDAO
- Legal Liability for DAO Members, from Law of Code
- Democracy & Republic, by Mel on MetaGov Short Talks
- Discussing on-chain DAOs vs in-name-only governance, with Aragon on Aavegotchi
- Privacy Preserving Web3 Identity with Daniel Kelleher, on Green Pill
- The Strategy Behind Crypto’s Leading Decentralized Marketplace, on I Pledge Allegiance
Governance
Aave
Aave: Aave Forest: BGD Labs proposes to integrate a monitoring and prevention framework called Aave Forest on behalf of Aave to protect the protocol against potential exploits. Aave has been continuously improving its security procedures, including testing and independent security reviews. However, it is still technically impossible to have 100% security assurance. Aave Forest is a framework that combines existing native features of Aave with external platforms to provide additional security assurance. It includes external platforms which are smart contracts or entities trusted by the community to execute protective actions over the protocol. Owls monitor Aave for potential incidents, and Rangers can take protective action over the protocol if an Owl detects an upcoming exploit.
Aave: [ARFC] Private Voting for Aave Governance: This proposal suggests implementing private voting through shielded voting on the Snapshot platform for a two-month trial period in order to enhance Aave’s governance and voters, leading to fairer and more accurate results. The current voting process may not reflect the true wishes of the community, and shielding individual votes will encourage voters of different sizes and opinions to participate and feel empowered, ultimately leading to a more fair outcome. Shielded voting has four key benefits, including preventing voter intimidation or coercion and protecting participants’ privacy. The proposal includes steps for upgrading a Snapshot space to shielded voting, with the option for the community to disable the feature at any time.
Butter runs a governance experiment with Aave DAO delegates: Butter, a newish protocol focused on DAO governance, is in the process of running a governance pilot program with the Aave DAO. Butter has proposed a three-month incentivized delegate campaign to the DAO: Aave delegates are invited to present their cases as representatives of Aave tokenholders (which they have done in writing as well as in Spaces); a weighted Snapshot vote is being held to select the delegate; and the selected delegate will receive compensation derived from the $15k in AAVE that Butter received from the Aave Grants DAO. Thirteen delegates have put themselves forward. After the vote, AAVE holders can delegate to the winning delegate using the normal process or by depositing into Butter’s Enzyme Vault (the latter will gain the tokenholder an NFT). During the three-month campaign that follows, Butter will “monitor the elected delegate based on the commitments and KPIs detailed in their Delegate Initiatives.” The intention here is to increase and widen delegate and tokenholder engagement through incentives. Check out the Delegate podcast above for a deep dive with Butter’s noturhandle.eth.
👻 Aave Improvement Proposals
- Increase wMATIC Supply Cap & BAL Borrow Cap (199).
- Isolation Mode Changes for Aave V3 Avalanche, Polygon, and Arbitrum (198).
- Add UNI, MKR, SNX & BAL to Ethereum v3 (197).
- Add DeFi Saver to Aave V3 FlashBorrowers (196).
- Risk Parameter Updates for Aave V2 AMM Market (2023–03–31) (195).
- Configure Isolation Mode Borrowable Assets on V3 Ethereum (194).
Active proposals
- [ARFC] Add MAI to Optimism Aave V3 pool
- [Temp Check] — Community Preference for Supply Cap Limits for LSTs
Closed proposals
- [TEMP CHECK] — Whitelist Stargate for V3 Portals
- [ARFC] Aave V1 Offboarding Plan
- [TEMP CHECK] — GHO Facilitator Onboarding Process and Application.
- [ARC] E-Mode Parameter Changes for V3 Avalanche, Optimism, Polygon, and Arbitrum.
- [TEMP CHECK] — Launch Aave V3 on Starknet.
- [TEMP CHECK] Incentivized Delegate Campaign (3-month).
Discussions
- [ARFC] Aave V3 Deployment on BNB Chain
- [ARFC] Aave V3 Deployment on zkEVM L2
- [ARFC] Gauntlet E-Mode Methodology: Aave V3 Liquid Staking Tokens
- [ARFC] Network deployment ARFC template
- [ARFC] Chaos Labs Supply and Borrow Cap Updates — 03.30.2023
- [ARFC] MaticX Supply Cap Increase Polygon v3
Latest governance topics on governance forum.
Compound
Active proposals
Closed proposals
Discussions
- Governance Facilitation and Proxy Advisory for Compound Governance
- Initialize Compound III (USDC on Polygon PoS)
- Deploy Compound v3 on Arbitrum
Latest governance topics on governance forum.
Gitcoin
Gitcoin: [GCP-00X] — Upgrading Gitcoin’s Governance Contracts: Gitcoin and ScopeLift have been working on developing and implementing new on-chain governance contracts for the Gitcoin DAO, using Governor Bravo functionality and the Flexible Voting extension. The goal is for the DAO to approve the upgrade to these new contracts and migrate governor contracts, offering ongoing customization of key voting criteria, introducing Flexible Voting for new use cases, and exploring additional customizations in delegation. While the Alpha contracts are reliable, they are restrictive in terms of governance capabilities, and the new contracts would offer more options for voter participation. The contracts have been audited and extensively tested to minimize execution risk, but the largest drawback would be the treasury becoming inaccessible if there were a serious bug.
Closed proposals
Discussions
- [GCP-004] — PASSED — Gitcoin Citizens Round
- [Discussion & Feedback Request] Gitcoin Program Beta Round Eligibility
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
Gnosis
Active proposals
- GnosisDAO & Polygon zkEVM Mystery Box Campaign
- GIP-77 (part 1): Should the GnosisDAO add moderators to reduce spam
- GIP-83: GnosisDAO & Polygon zkEVM Official Partnership
Discussions
- GIP-104: GnosisDAO to support Covalent as initially mentioned in GIP 16
- GIP-82: Should GnosisDAO co-fund a community owned forest / land art project (terra0)?
- GIP-84: Introducing GIP-Guards: On-chain financial controllers for GIPs
Find out the latest GnosisDAO proposals here.
Lido
Recent blog posts
Active proposals
- RockLogic Slashing Incident Staker Compensation
- Proposal to approve Lido DAO Treasury Management Principles and authorize the formation of a Treasury Management Committee
Discussions
- Sushi RouteProcessor2 Post-Exploit Request For Comment
- Proposal to approve Lido DAO Treasury Managem
- [reWARDS] April ’23 Budget
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
MakerDAO
Maker Governance to Vote on Coinbase’s New Real-World Asset Vault: Maker Governance votes to approve or reject a new real-world asset vault that seeks to connect the Maker Protocol’s USDC reserves with the Coinbase USDC Institutional Rewards program. This new real-world asset vault is called RWA014 and, if approved, will be deployed to the Maker Protocol with a debt ceiling of 500 million DAI. In September 2022, Coinbase Inst. submitted MIP81: Coinbase USDC Institutional Rewards, a proposal to onboard a portion of the PSM’s USDC to Coinbase Prime in order to participate in Coinbase’s USDC Institutional Rewards program. As noted by the Strategic Finance Coure Unit’s Legal Assessment on MIP81, the Coinbase USDC Institutional Rewards rate stands at 2.60% annually and the USDC rewards will be calculated on a monthly basis.
Active Polls (1 Poll — ending Apr 24)
Executive
Discussions
- MIP113: The Arbitration Scope Framework
- MIP55c3-SP17: Continue to Fund the Ambassador Program
- MIP109: The Physical Resilience Scope Framework
Read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision.
Uniswap
Uniswap Gov Adopts Accountability Committee for Deployments: Uniswap governance has approved the creation of an Accountability Committee for Deployments, which will oversee the operational development of deployments of Uniswap V3 on other chains. The need for this committee was identified during the first Uniswap Delegate Forum held in October 2022, which led to the creation of an Accountability Working Group. The committee will be responsible for evaluating proposals and ensuring that they comply with the Uniswap DAO Proposal Template 1, as well as implementing an on-chain commitment mechanism for Uniswap DAO. To be part of the Uniswap ecosystem, some projects will seek the “official” blessing and management of Uniswap Governance. The initial Committee will have five members and a duration of six months. The members will be compensated with a retainer of $3,500 per 6-month term and a fee of $6,500 for each evaluated project. The committee will be subjected to review by the community at the end of the term to discuss areas of improvement and potential expansion of its scope to other kinds of partnerships beyond deployments.
Post-BSL cross-chain deployment process and creation of new uniswap.eth subdomain: This temp-check proposal, posted by the new Uniswap governance lead, hopes to gauge community sentiment around the idea of creating a new subdomain, v3-deployments.uniswap.eth, that would identify all official Uniswap v3 deployments on other chains. This action is suggested as necessary given the expiration of Uniswap’s Business Source License this past April 1. Such a subdomain would “provide safety & security for users, focused support to ecosystem participants, and clarity to Uniswap governance.” The proposal also describes in detail a proposed process for future deployments of v3.
Closed proposals
Discussions
- Phase 3 — Optimism-Uniswap Protocol Liquidity Mining Program Update
- Deploy Uniswap v3 on Moonbeam (2023)
To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.
MISC
OP Collective Launches S4 to Align and Achieve Collective Intents: The Collective has announced the launch of Season 4, which aims to align the community around Collective Intents and other foundational concepts. Collective Intents are directional goals that enable the community to align and focus its efforts, and each Intent is equipped with its own budget for Season 4. Token House Missions are proposals for specific initiatives that achieve an Intent, and they are executed by Alliances, or groups of contributors that temporarily work together to accomplish a Mission start-to-finish. Missions are divided into two types: Proposed Missions and Foundation Missions, and they must work towards the Collective’s Intents. Collective Trust Tiers are introduced as the first step towards a more robust reputation system based on positive impact within the ecosystem. In Season 4, the Foundation will take several steps towards increased transparency and further decentralization by voting on two additional proposal types for the first time: Treasury Appropriations and Inflation Adjustment. The Collective draws inspiration from governance experiments run at several other DAOs, primarily Gitcoin, ENS, and CabinDAO.
Optimism’s Token House completes first on-chain voting cycle: Optimism’s Token House, which together with the Citizens’ House forms Optimism’s bi-cameral governance, recently completed its first on-chain voting cycle. Although active in governance since June of 2022, Token House voting had taken place offchain prior to the recent move to the portal created by Agora. The two proposals before the Token House were of a very different nature, and both were the first of their kind: The first proposal, which passed with almost 100% of over 43k wallets voting in favor, was to upgrade Optimism mainnet to the Bedrock release — a proposal of vital importance to the protocol. The second proposal, however, asked the Token House to consider the suspension of a delegate due to an infraction of the Delegate Code of Conduct. Although this latter proposal also passed, with over 80% of over 17k wallets voting “for,” a number of people have noted the complexity of such proposals.
Radicle: [Formal Review][RGP — 14] — Start the Radicle Org: Proposal [RGP-14] suggests establishing the Radicle Org to develop a fully-sovereign code collaboration stack called “Radicle”. Radicle aims to be a secure, decentralized, and powerful alternative to GitHub and GitLab while preserving user sovereignty and freedom. The proposal suggests that Radicle can solve several problems like platform risk, open access, privacy, data ownership, security, and availability by providing solutions such as users’ ability to run their nodes without reliance on any third party, social artifacts (e.g., comments, issues, etc.) are stored in git, and users own their data, and Radicle is always available since it is local-first, uses public-key cryptography throughout the product and protocol, and is open source and permissibly licensed. The proposal suggests quarterly objectives to get closer to GitHub core feature parity, stabilize the technology stack, relaunch media presence, and work on identities, CI/CD, and secure artifacts. The proposal suggests a legal structure, contributors, and communication channels for the Radicle Org.
ENS: Public Goods Growth Grants: The Public Goods working group is offering a new retroactive grant opportunity. They are awarding 10k USDC to five established projects that have positively impacted the Ethereum or Web3 ecosystems. The goal is to support these projects while helping them grow into additional Public Goods funding opportunities from the ENS. The submission phase will run from April 14th to May 4th, with winners announced on May 18th. Projects must be retroactive, have a clear roadmap, and fall under the categories of infrastructure, tools, or education.
Rari: RRC-8: Retroactive Governance Airdrop: This proposal suggests a retroactive $RARI airdrop to community members who actively participated in RARI Foundation governance from Q4 2022-Q1 2023. The motivation for the airdrop is to express acknowledgment and gratitude to those who have been consistently active and to act as the first small step in a larger governance incentivization program. Eligibility for the airdrop is based on meeting certain conditions, such as locking or delegating $RARI between 1 October 2022–1 March 2023, and locked and voted, or delegated and that delegate voted, among others. The eligibility formula used to determine the total amount of $RARI received is based on on-chain actions of the Foundation members. The proposal outlines the steps to implement the airdrop, including taking a snapshot to determine eligibility, running the eligibility formula, and transferring appropriate funds from the treasury to corresponding wallets.
Arbitrum: Grants Funding Framework Discussion: The proposed solution aims to avoid the cascading pattern of reactivity seen in DAOs, where initial overspending leads to accountability requests and centralization, followed by voter apathy, leading to no innovation. The proposal outlines four goals and corresponding signals, including creating a pluralistic funding framework, establishing the most innovative grant program, and considering mechanisms to ensure the longevity of the Arbitrum DAO. It discusses the importance of pluralistic funding and the use of different mechanisms including Quadratic Voting, retroactive funding, and partnerships with organizations like Otterspace and Token Engineering Academy. Finally, it suggests diversifying the treasury to 10% stablecoins and guarantees to create 10 years of budget availability to ensure the longevity of the DAO.
Arbitrum DAO debates symbolic return of 700m ARB to the treasury: Only a day after Arbitrum posted two proposals in the forums meant to address the failure of AIP-1, user thiccyhot posted their own proposal, AIP-1.05, arguing that “what happened with AIP-1 was a clear overreach of the DAO’s power of treasury resources.” The proposal calls for the Arbitrum Foundation to return 700m of their 750m ARB to the DAO Treasury. “This is a symbolic gesture,” thiccyhot writes, “to demonstrate that the governance holders ultimately control the DAO, not the Arbitrum service provider nor the Foundation.” Among other things, the proposal also asks for disclosure of the terms of service with market maker Wintermute, who had been given $40m in ARB. While many in the Arbitrum forum agree with the proposal’s intention, many also feel that it is, at this point, impractical, unnecessary, and could hinder the L2’s progress. One commenter wrote that “the proposal is both invalid and bad governance,” while another pointed out that it is unenforceable. All three proposals are currently live.
Metropolis’s Podarchy Explorer addresses permissions “epidemic”: In a post on April 11 introducing Podarchy Explorer, Metropolis says that it has identified a quiet epidemic: “faulty smart contract permissions” — which pose a “massive threat” to the ecosystem by inadvertently allowing unauthorized access. This can lead not only to the loss of assets — which is what we hear about most often — but to the facilitation of “centralization and censorship avenues.” The Podarchy Explorer pierces the obscurity generated by layers of code and creates a “spatial explorer” that allows the user to examine any on-chain entity and “easily view its connections to and permissions over smart contracts.” Using the tool requires no technical knowledge. Metropolis has so far indexed two “vectors”: Safe membership, and smart contract access control patterns — revealing up to three layers of “relationality.” “We have a responsibility to make known the unknowns of our protocols and core systems,” the team writes.
Voting System Choice for Hop DAO Elections: This proposal suggests that the Hop DAO needs a specific voting system for the election of nominees to various positions. It establishes a weighted voting strategy for upcoming and future Hop DAO elections including community multi-sig elections and the Hop DAO ambassador program, with the reasoning that weighted voting allows voters to choose multiple candidates and quantifies their support in percentages. The proposal includes a disclosure stating that it cannot create a legally binding contract or enforceable obligation. [Read the discussion]
Reactivate Inactive Voting Power: 0x has seen a drop in governance participation over the last 18 months and puts forward this proposal as an effort to engage new community members. There is “inactive voting power” left from the Bootstrap Delegate initiative that can now be reallocated evenly to a group of seven self-nominated community members (nomination pitches are linked in the proposal). [Read the discussion]
A Purple Grant: This proposal on behalf of Purple DAO, which aims to “proliferate and expand the Farcaster protocol and ecosystem,” asks BuilderDAO for a grant of 50 ETH in order to “continue to proliferate Nouns Builder through media and by example.” Purple was created using Nouns Builder, and the proposal provides many examples of how Purple (and those associated) have promoted Nouns Builder. The proposal also describes what Purple plans to do with the grant.
BanklessDAO Governance Department Instantiation: BanklessDAO recently approved a Governance Department, which has the goal of “facilitating and stewarding the development of governance processes and procedures” at the DAO. Upcoming work for the department includes updating the DAO’s constitution and governance documentation, initiating governance incentives, and conducting “micro experiments in guilds and projects.” The proposal requested 800k BANK to fund the department for the season. Over 75% voted in favor of this proposal [Read the discussion]
Include Missing Hidden Hand Votes: Due to technical issues, Hidden Hand Protocol was unable to participate in a recent incentive-round vote. “In order to achieve fairness and regularity for both voters and projects placing voting incentives,” the proposal states, “it is proposed to include Hidden Hand’s delegated votes retroactively as intended.” The proposal includes a simulated vote for Hidden Hand, and says that the previous vote will be replaced with the outcome of the simulation. Over 72% voted in favor of this proposal. [Read the discussion]
ScopeLift moves closer to implementing Flexible Voting: Software engineering consultancy ScopeLift recently announced that OpenZeppelin has completed an audit of its Flexible Voting extension for Governor contracts (common in many DAOs). Flexible Voting “allows delegates to split their voting weight across For/Against/Abstain options for a given proposal” and can “unlock all kinds of new use cases,” including: voting with tokens while earning yield, voting on L2s with bridged tokens, and shielded voting. Since the successful audit, ScopeLift is moving on to testing out use cases. With a grant from Compound, one feature of Flexible Voting will be integrated with Compound Comet contracts; and with a grant from the Ethereum Foundation, ScopeLift will research “participating in mainnet Governance with tokens that have been bridged to Layer 2, paying only Layer 2 gas fees.” The firm notes that later this month Gitcoin will vote on whether to implement Flexible Voting.
Decentralized App Sweat Economy Introduces 1-Person, 1-Vote Governance System: The project aims to introduce what it says is a fairer system ahead of a vote to guide the protocol’s spending of 100 million SWEAT tokens.
Pfizer-Backed VitaDAO Votes on Creating For-Profit Company to Fund Longevity Research: The DAOs native token, VITA, rose 3% on news the community was considering the proposal.
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Main Sources
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