DAOs: Uniswap debates bridging solutions, Aave votes to deploy V3 on Ethereum, MakerDAO starts crafting its constitution, Lido presents Lido V2, Cosmos Hub considers its first grant program, ENS funds name-buying, Turkey Earthquake Relief DAO is facilitating donations, Talking DAO governance with ChatGPT, and more!

Paradigm
Paradigm
22 min readFeb 10, 2023

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Biweekly report on decentralized autonomous organizations vol.38, 25th January — 10th February

TL;DR

  • MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen introduced a draft of the Maker Constitution, a follow-on of the “Endgame” plan. Furthermore, Maker integrates Chainlink for DAI stablecoin
  • Uniswap debates cross-chain bridge solutions for BNB deployment. Accountability Committee proposal is under discussion. The DAO approves Boba Network deployment
  • Aave DAO votes to deploy V3 on Ethereum. An experiment in social coordination with dYdX is announced. Extend Aave DAO with EIP-4824 is under discussion
  • Lido contributors present Lido V2 — Lido’s largest upgrade to date. Lido plans for staked withdrawals. Lido LIP-20: Staking Router
  • Curve’s proposal to reduce the dynamic fees in cbETH pool passed
  • Gnosis introduces more accountability to the GnosisDAO. The community considers adding delegation & spam reduction. The zodiac roles mod and the pilot Google Chrome extension announced
  • Compound’s proposals 145–147 executed, 148 is live. Risk parameter updates for 1 collateral asset on the Comet USDC market passed. Compound III ETH market is live
  • The Synthetix’s Eltanin release has begun. SNX is adding 22 new markets to Synthetix Perps soon
  • ENS DAO discusses bypassing premium expiry. While ENS exchanges 25% of treasury from ETH to USDC
  • Cosmos Hub considering its first grant program
  • The Turkey Earthquake Relief DAO is facilitating donations and support from the web3 community to the country’s earthquake victims
  • NounsDAO is creating an NFT comic book series
  • Optimism Upgrade Proposal: Bedrock
  • Balancer: Restructure governance process — disband governance council
  • ShapeShift: An operative definition of privacy, an addendum to [SCP-80]
  • Decentraland DAO: Set duration period for DAO Committee members
  • Federation creates a way to bid on Nouns DAO votes
  • Euler Finance formalizes governance processes
  • 1inch DAO considers governance improvements
  • Developer DAO governance structure upgrade
  • Talking DAO governance with ChatGPT
  • Active proposals: Aave, Compound, Synthetix, PoolTogether
  • New & ongoing discussions: Balancer, GitcoinDAO, Index Coop, PieDAO, Uniswap, mStable, MakerDAO, Yam Finance, Curve, Yearn Finance, Nexus Mutual, LidoDAO, BancorDAO, Akropolis, GnosisDAO, API3, Idle, KyberDAO, Kleros, Badger DAO
  • 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

Deepdao.io

Top DAOs

Like two weeks ago, the rating is headed by Uniswap and BitDAO.

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Read & Listen

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Aave

Deepdao.io

Aave deploys V3 on Ethereum: The Aave DAO concluded an on-chain vote on January 25th to activate the Aave V3 Ethereum pool. V3’s functionality is much improved over V2, particularly in the area of risk management, offering features such as isolation mode and “risk admins.” First introduced in late 2021, Aave V3 has been deployed on several chains (Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon among them) for some time; but moving onto Ethereum itself was a much more complicated endeavor.

The DAO first debated whether to upgrade V2 Ethereum to V3, but decided instead to deploy a fresh instance of V3 Ethereum and urged its users to move capital to the new version (read our brief on the topic). The DAO then debated — and voted on — which assets should first be live on V3 Ethereum, and with what risk parameters. It was decided that WBTC, WETH, wstETH, USDC, DAI, LINK, and AAVE will be the first to be listed.

Recent blog posts and news

Boardroom.io

👻 Aave Improvement Proposals

  • Aave V3 Ethereum (147)
  • Repay Excess CRV Debt on Ethereum v2 (146)
  • Renew Aave Grants DAO (145)

Active proposals

Closed proposals

Discussions

Latest governance topics on governance forum.

Gnosis

Deepdao.io

Should the GnosisDAO add delegation & spam reduction? This proposal aims to introduce several improvements to GnosisDAO governance. First, in order to reduce “spam” proposals on Snapshot, a moderator would be designated to remove “low-quality” proposals. Also, proposals with “less than < 1,000 GNO of vote-weight cast for or abstain [would be] filtered from the main view.” Second, the proposal seeks to improve delegation in the DAO. To begin with, the delegation UI in Snapshot would be able to show delegated vote-weight distribution. Additionally, delegates would be held to two-year term limits to avoid “stagnation”, delegates would be able to decline being delegated to (or set a cap on the amount), GNO holders would be able to delegate to multiple delegates, and delegation would allow for the “transitive” property (”if A delegates to B and B delegates to C, C inherits A’s vote weight”).

Boardroom.io

There were no active proposals these weeks.

Discussions

Find out the latest GnosisDAO proposals here.

Lido

Deepdao.io

Recent blog posts

Boardroom.io

Lido shares plan for staked withdrawals: One of the features of the Shanghai upgrade to Ethereum, set to be released in March or April of this year, is that it will allow ETH to be unstaked for the first time. Liquid staking protocol Lido has accrued a massive amount of staked ETH (stETH) — the largest share by a wide margin. While it isn’t known exactly how many users will want to un-stake their ETH or at what pace (it could turn out that more people will feel comfortable staking after Shanghai), Lido needs to prepare for a potentially wide range of significant protocol activity. As Eugene Pshenichnyy says in his post introducing the Lido on Ethereum protocol team’s extensive design plans, “designing the withdrawal feature for the Lido liquid staking protocol is a complex task due to the difficulty of interfacing data between the Consensus and Execution Layers, as well as the async nature of the Consensus Layer validator exit and slashing mechanics.” The team is looking for community feedback in the forums, as the plans will eventually need to go before the DAO for a vote.

Lido LIP-20: Staking Router: This proposal, which is in preliminary discussion, describes the Lido registry’s “existing monolithic architecture,” which “makes it difficult for Lido to onboard different validator subsets” — limiting the diversity of the validator set. The author proposes transitioning to a modular architecture via the Staking Router, a control contract that would allow “various validator subsets [to] join Lido as separate registries, or modules.” Every module would be responsible for its own operators, keys, and rewards.

There were no active poposals these weeks.

Discussions

To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.

MakerDAO

MakerDAO begins drafting its Constitution: MakerDAO founder Rune Christensen last week introduced a draft of the Maker Constitution, a follow-on of the DAO’s pursuit of the “Endgame” plan. Maker Protocol requires the support of a DAO, Christensen argues, which “means it relies on governance decisions by humans and institutions holding MKR tokens” — and this human input means vulnerabilities. The Constitution provides a “strategic tool” for building resilience into Maker governance.

“Robust grassroots community participation, by people who participate in alignment with the purpose of the DAO, is the essential tool to defend the protocol against these risks.”

The Constitution describes the purpose of DAI, which is to provide “access to an Unbiased World Currency”; the public goods commitment, which will “share financial success with the world through charity”; and the principle of “clean money,” which recognizes the interdependence of financial infrastructure and “the global environmental risks of climate change,” setting up a Clean Money Fund to that end.

Maker grows and diversifies with Olympus, Yearn: On the heels of the controversial vote to continue Maker’s partnership with Gemini — which would see the DAO earn a 1.5% incentive on the GUSD in the DAI Price Stability Module, OlympusDAO approved $77M in DAI to be moved into Maker’s DAI Savings Rate strategy (DSR), earning the depositors 1%. Then, on January 23rd, MakerDAO ratified a proposal to “onboard $100M of PSM USDC into a bespoke non-custodial Yearn Vault,” potentially earning the DAO $2M per year. Meanwhile, on the day the Gemini proposal closed Paxos proposed a very similar partnership to MakerDAO: to increase the amount of USDP in the PSM in exchange for monthly marketing fees (”the full USDP PSM would be able to generate up to $29M in annual revenue for MakerDAO”).

Ended Polls (2 Polls — ended Feb 09)

Executive

Discussions

Read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision.

Governance and Risk | Ep. 224:

Uniswap

Deepdao.io
Tally
Boardroom.io

Uniswap debates cross-chain bridge solutions for BNB deployment: In late December of 2022, Ilia of 0xPlasma Labs proposed that Uniswap v3 be deployed on Binance’s BNB Chain, “the second-largest blockchain infrastructure by volume and user base.” Ilia listed 17 reasons in support of the move, which received broad support in the Uniswap forums. A temp-check for the deployment recently passed with Celer as the selected bridge provider for cross-chain governance. But the discussion concerning bridges — which can be a major vulnerability — continued in the forums. Representatives from other bridge protocols, such as deBridge, LayerZero, and Wormhole, joined the conversation. Since Uniswap’s Business License expires in early April — after which others can freely fork Uniswap — pressure to make the decision and implement the BNB deployment is high.

The Uniswap Foundation’s Devin Walsh commented to say that a new temp-check had been posted to Snapshot for the community to select among four bridge providers. This was described as an exception, and a full description of future cross-chain bridge assessments was presented for feedback the following day. Celer posted a “sub-proposal” making the case for a “vendor-lock-in-free Universal Governance Mechanism (UGM) for Uniswap that utilizes multiple cross-chain protocols simultaneously.” This approach was generally supported by deBridge as well as several other prominent voices, some of whom believe the process to have been rushed and not comprehensive. The temp-check went forward and Wormhole received the most support, although some large token holders either could not participate or chose to abstain. An on-chain proposal will be forthcoming. Stay tuned and subscribe for a full brief on new developments.

Closed proposals

Discussions

To read more about the different proposals and take part in the decision, check out the governance forum.

MISC

ENS Fairy and “Bypassing Premium Expiry”: When ENS names expire they enter into a 21-day period in which a premium must be paid by any new registrant — and the premium goes to the ENS DAO. The DAO has set up ENS Fairy to purchase names during this premium period, with the intent of increasing ENS adoption through the buying (and gifting) of celebrity and brand names. Nick.eth believes “the point of ENS was always to get names into the hands of people who will use them, over those who will speculate with them or attempt to resell them at a profit. This is particularly true when it comes to names with one natural owner” — supporting the initial purpose of setting up the ENS Fairy. The funds used both come from and revert to the DAO — a feature that DAO member sat believes is problematic because it allows the DAO to effectively “bypass the premium fee” and so work against “the fair distribution of expired names.” But it could also potentially allow the ENS Fairy to “remove names that are unsavory from circulation when in expiry” — and raises the question of who decides which names are to be removed, potentially setting up a “policing” mechanism. The ENS Fairy is currently overseen by the ENS Ecosystem Working Group, which has 50k USDC allocated to ENS Fairy in its latest funding request. There is debate on the forum and commentary on CT, with some calling for further conversation.

ENS exchanges 25% of treasury from ETH to USDC: ENS was discussing a proposal to sell 10,000 ETH for the equivalent in USDC — in order to “ensure that the ENS DAO has enough money to cover operating expenses” for the next two years or so. Protocol revenue is generated in ETH, and 100% of the spendable treasury is denominated in the asset. Maintaining such a high percentage in a single, volatile asset is risky, the proposal argued. 10k ETH is about a quarter of the treasury. That proposal was executed on the morning (EST) of February 9th: 10k ETH for 16,226,542 USDC.

Cosmos Hub Considers Grant Program: On January 12, Youssef Amrani posted in the Cosmos forum to propose the creation of a grants program to support “the funding of small to medium size projects that aim to improve Cosmos Hub’s core technology, products and ecosystem.” Funding would be made possible by the recent increase in the Cosmos community pool tax, which is projected to yield an additional several million ATOM per year. The proposal outlines a reviewer committee of seven people, a program coordinator, and an oversight committee of three people, almost all of whom are identified. Salaries are specified, and the nine-month grants budget is broken down: $5.2M in grants would be allocated, ranging from $10k-$1M per grant. While there was general positive support expressed for the idea of a Hub-specific grants program, concerns were immediately raised about self-appointments to the committees as well as the centralizing decision-making with regard to grants — which otherwise are put directly before the community. Further, there was pushback on the idea of one “canonical grant program,” which the proposing team immediately addressed by changing their name to ATOM Accelerator DAO and making clear their intentions. Compensation for team members was also an issue. The team made a number of changes to the proposal, including reducing compensation by 10% and creating a vesting period for received ATOM.

dYdX debates grants program renewal: The dYdX grants program (DGP) was first started just over a year ago and was renewed for a six-month period as v1.5 in August. The grants program lead, Reverie, recently posted another request for renewal, but this time with no request for funding (outside of operations) as funds remain from the previous grants cycle ($2.7M). The post describes the aim to continue funding community-led initiatives ahead of a dYdX v4 launch, at which point the DGP will go through a complete overhaul to “onboard the next generation of dYdX protocol builders.” The operational budget for the DGP was reduced to $372k for the upcoming six-month period. What seemed a standard renewal request soon became an intense exchange on the forum (and elsewhere) as complaints about the DGP surfaced. Some accused the DGP of a “severe lack of accountability and transparency,” red tape, haggling, and so forth. One endorsed delegate claimed to be issuing criticism collected from at least ten others and suggested a formal, third-party audit of the program. Some asked about KPIs and wondered who actually makes the decisions about grants, based on what criteria. As the DGP team responded, some commenters began to argue with each other with courtier-like flourishes of sardonic politeness amidst accusations of extortion. Eventually, a Foundation representative stepped in to ask all to adhere to forum guidelines. The grant-renewal request has since been posted for a vote.

Optimism Upgrade Proposal: Bedrock: This is the first protocol upgrade presented to Optimism’s Token House, part of their governance Collective. It follows the protocol upgrade proposal guidelines recently established by the community. The Bedrock release of the OP Stack “offers a new level of modularity, simplicity, and Ethereum equivalence for Layer 2 solutions, providing unprecedented performance and functionality,” says proposal author Ben Jones, setting “the stage for a Cambrian explosion of aligned L2s.” Protocol specs are provided, as well as developer docs. Voting will begin on February 16th.

Balancer: Restructure Governance Process — Disband Governance Council: The stated motivation of this Balancer proposal is twofold: to increase decentralization, and to “create more separation of concern between the governance decision-making process and the risk-aware implementation of decided proposals.” In particular, the proposer argues that Balancer governance has evolved to the point that the functions that the Governance Council provides are no longer needed. More than this, the proposal lays out a clarified and further refined governance process from beginning to end.

Developer DAO Governance Structure Upgrade: Stating that there are “several challenges to our current [governance] model,” the proposal authors make the case for structures that will help contributors “more freely create value for the DAO, its Members and the ecosystem” and establish “a more equitable and fair distribution of resources and value.” The proposal defines Member, Contributor, and Steward roles, and describes the intent of the Developer DAO Foundation, and establishes a new process for forming sub-DAOs while describing their purpose. [74.11% voting “for”/ discussion]

ShapeShift: An Operative Definition of Privacy, an addendum to [SCP-80]: This proposal seeks to build community consensus around the DAO’s definition of privacy. A proposal passed in the summer of 2022 made the case for “data analytics to inform our path to product market fit,” and soon after data began to be tracked for users who have opted in while using the ShapeShift app. The proposer believes it is important to define the parameters of these data, and also sees the need to define privacy in this context.

Decentraland DAO: Set duration period for DAO Committee members: This poll before the Decentraland DAO asks the community to consider a twelve-month term limit for members of the DAO Committee. As it stands, Committee members serve indefinitely, which can, the proposer argues, lead to a lack of accountability, fresh perspectives, and trust — and could eventually create a reduction in democratic participation as the community comes to rely on the “institutional knowledge” embodied by the DAO Committee. As the proposal states, “it is important to balance the need for stability and consistency with the need for accountability, fresh perspectives, and democratic participation.”

Federation creates a platform to bid on Nouns votes: Federation, whose aim is to “provide all communities in the Nouns ecosystem with the ability to coordinate efficiently around Nouns token utility,” this week launched a tool that allows users to bid on Nouns votes. Described as an experiment, the tool allows any Noun holder to put their Noun up for auction on any given active Nouns governance proposal. Bids are made in ETH, and can be designated “for,” “against,” and even “abstain”; the bidder can also provide a reason. While this mechanism can be described as putting votes for sale, it could also widen participation in Nouns governance.

  • Web3 Community NounsDAO Is Creating an NFT Comic Book Series: The comic book series will build a narrative around the Nouns NFTs, further expanding the project’s intellectual property.
  • Euler Finance Formalizes Governance Processes: DAO seeks to provide more clarity and structure to its developing governance systems:
  • 1inch DAO Considers Governance Improvements: The 1inch DAO voted to reduce the length of its (pre-implementation) governance process from a minimum of 12 days to a minimum of 8 days:
  • OpenAI’s viral AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, was recently asked a few questions about DAO governance:

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Main Sources

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Research articles

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That’s all for today! Your feedback is highly appreciated!👥

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