Governance Review #01

Optimism

Grant Misuse Reporting Process

Vonnie, the community manager of Optimism Foundation, shared a post that goes over the process of reporting grant misuse. This Reporting Process only covers grants made, and corresponding tokens allocated, by the Optimism Token House. For example, RetroPGF recipients are currently outside the scope of this process.

The reports are supposed to be anonymous but must also be published in the forum. It’s up to the reporter to use an account not associated with their real identity in order to protect their anonymity.

How Base will Participate in Optimism Governance

Base came back to the forum and published a manifesto on how they’ll participate in Optimism’s governance.They will selectively and deliberately vote for proposals that materially impact the Optimism Collective and Base. Each proposal will be considered case-by-case by a panel of Base contributors - by default, Product, Engineering, Ecosystem, and Legal teams will be looped in.

They have committed to exercise at most 9% of the total votable supply. This 9% includes any delegations to third parties. This commitment is just on the social layer and not enforced by code.

Lastly, they’re planning on a pilot delegation program in which they’ll delegate 500,000 $OP to 2 delegates for 6 months. They’ll release more info on the program when they’re ready.

Mission Request Approvals

Mission requests are in full-swing. The mission request submission has finished and now delegates will be approving missions.

The Role of VC Funding in RetroPGF

Optimism Foundation published a post discussing the role of VC funding in RPGF. Within the post, one can read the opinions of different members of the collective on key questions such as:

1. Is the amount of venture funding received by a project relevant to evaluating impact = profit?
2. Should RetroPGF rewards only go to projects which are in need of funding?
3. Should RetroPGF consider the resources that were used to create impact?

It also includes the Foundation’s perspective which is based on the Optimistic Vision and Ether’s Phoenix. The TL;DR of the Foundation’s perspective is that they do not think whether a project has received funding or not plays any role in assessing impact=profit and therefore it shouldn’t ‘disqualify’ them from or in any way affect their RPGF allocation.

Discuss with L2BEAT

If you’re looking for delegates to approve your mission requests, we’d be happy to hear your pitch. As Season 5 starts getting momentum, we expect a lot of the attention to be driven towards Mission Requests and the applications to fulfill those so we want to stay in touch with what’s happening.

Furthermore, we’re looking for the community’s opinion on the manifesto Base published regarding their participation in governance. Given it’s the first member-chain of the Superchain, it’ll set a precedent for how other chains will tackle participating in governance. Lastly, with RPGF3 results behind us, and with an ongoing discussion around them, as well as with the discussion around the role of VC funding in RPGF, we’re curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.

We’re especially keen to discuss with RPGF recipients who both have and do not have VC funding and understand their perspectives.

When/where to catch us:

We’re happy to discuss all of the above and more during our Optimism Office Hours every Tuesday at 4 pm UTC.

Arbitrum

[On-chain Vote] Experimental Delegate Incentive System

The experimental delegate incentive system has gone to an on-chain vote, following a successful temp-check.

Context for the proposal can be found here.

[On-chain Vote] Establish the Arbitrum Research and Development Collective

The ARDC has gone to an on-chain vote following a successful temp-check.

Context for the proposal can be found here. We’d like to remind everyone that the proposal was spawned out of the ‘Arbitrum Coalition’ proposal which failed to pass a temp-check.

[Temp-Check] Constitutional AIP - Security Council Improvement Proposal

We (L2BEAT) submitted a proposal that seeks to propose changes to the structure of the security council so Arbitrum can maintain the “Stage 1” designation as per our website (l2beat.com) and not fall back to “Stage 0” designation.

The proposal is in temp-check which will end on January 25th.

Questbook Grant Program ARB Conversion Request

Jojo published a request on behalf of the Questbook domain allocators to convert around 30% of ARB in the grant program’s multisig into stables to ensure long-term stability. They’re looking to get a feeling of the community’s thoughts on it before moving forward with a more official proposal, or with the conversion itself and how it would happen.

[RFC] Thank ARB by Plurality Labs - Milestone 2: Scaling Value Creation in the DAO

6 months ago, the DAO voted to fund the first of three Milestones to build a grants framework. Plurality Labs published a proposal regarding the second Milestone. They’ve included several different funding requests, ranging from 10M ARB to 30M ARB.

Arbitrum Treasury And Sustainability Research

Karpatkey published their research on treasury sustainability which focused on 3 main areas:

1. Assessment of ARB Price Impact: Understanding how ARB sales might influence current market dynamics and recommendations to reduce the price impact on ARB.
2. Sequencer Revenue Utilization: Exploring the use of sequencer revenues, evaluating their prospective allocation and efficiency in advancing the organization’s objectives.
3. Developing Guidelines for Effective Treasury Management: Set of principles and strategies for efficient and sustainable treasury management, ensuring the organization’s long-term financial health.

You can find the full report here.

Discuss with L2BEAT:

We’ve been following the discussions and the developments around all currently-being-voted-on proposals and we’re generally supportive of them. We’re always happy to hear the community’s opinion on them as well as consider information that we might have missed during our assessment. If you have anything to discuss regarding the LTIPP, the Delegate Incentives, ARDC, or the Security Council Improvement proposals, please reach out to us.

Regarding Questbook’s request, guarding against price fluctuations is a prudent thing to do. The amount makes sense, and it seems a logical time to do so given the recent price increase. We’re curious if anyone more financially savvy has any recommendations on the amount to be converted (should it be more or less?) or the process in which it should happen.

Lastly, Plurality Labs has been doing a lot of things since AIP-3 passed. Prior to putting out their proposal for Milestone #2, they published a report on what they’ve been working on for the past 6 months. Going through the report and individual initiatives of Plurality Labs and assessing their performance and impact on the DAO is a very important step before trying to decide whether or not to vote for their second milestone.

We’re dedicating the appropriate amount of time to do that, and we suggest all delegates do that too. In that regard, we invite other delegates to discuss and exchange our views on our understanding of what Milestone 1 has achieved.

When/where to catch us:

We’re happy to discuss all of the above and more during our Arbitrum Office Hours every Thursday at 4 pm UTC.

Uniswap

[Discussion] 100K+ USD Grantees to Introduce Themselves on the Forum

Doo from StableLabs started a discussion that suggests that grantees that receive 100,000 USD or more worth of grant from Uniswap Foundation or relevant Committees should be required to make a forum post to introduce their works and ideally milestones as well.

Gauntlet’s Uniswap Protocol Fee Report - TLDR Version

Gauntlet published a report, which was requested by the Uniswap Foundation, on the effects of a protocol-level fee on revenue, liquidity, and trading volume for certain deployments of the Uniswap protocol.

An abstract of the report that summarizes the learnings:

“The community choice of whether or not to institute a protocol fee comes down to whether or not the long-term revenue gained outweighs the losses in volume and liquidity. Our analysis shows that the losses to TVL and toxic MEV volume may be significant with even a conservative fee switch. Still, we expect the impact on core, non-MEV volume to be very minor under all but the most extreme fees.”

Discuss with L2BEAT

Requiring grantees to have some sort of presence in the forum would help increase the transparency and accountability of projects receiving grants. It’s typical of grants frameworks across many DAOs to require grantees to maintain a communication thread regarding the use of the grant and it makes sense to incorporate something like this for Uniswap DAO as well. Although this isn’t a proposal to be voted on, we’d be keen to discuss it further with the community.

When/where to catch us:

We’re happy to discuss all of the above and more during our Uniswap Office Hours every Friday at 4 pm UTC.

Hop

[RFC] Hop Community Moderator Compensation

Chris Whinfrey of Hop Foundation submitted an RFC that seeks to retroactively compensate Rxpwnz and the rest of the Discourse/Discord moderator team, as well as establish a Lead Community Moderator Role.

The proposed compensation for Rxpwnz is $3,000/month, both for his active contributions and in retrospective recognition starting June 9th, 2022, payable 50% in USDC and 50% in $HOP with the latter being linearly vested over 1 year. That brings the total proposed compensation to

$3,000 x 18 months = $54,000

There are also one-time bonuses proposed for other moderators as follows:

Nauzystan: $4,000

Cai: $2,000

Hossein: $1,000

Abruzy: $1,000

The Lead Community Moderator role will be assumed by Rxpwnz, but there could also be elections if there are multiple interested individuals.

Meeting Minutes [10/1/2024]

Thegreg.eth shared the notes from the community call that took place on January 10, 2024.

[RFC] Head of DAO Governance and Operations Role

Francom put together an RFC that seeks to establish a Head of DAO Governance and Operations role. The role would come with responsibilities such as:

• Run the HOP community call
• Maintain the forums
• Assisting the grants committee, ambassador program and multi sig signers
• Evaluating and defining compensations for existing and new committees
• Verifying data provided by delegates for their delegate compensation
• Handle general administrative, operational, and administrative work for the DAO

The proposed compensation for the role is at $3k/month (payable in HOP) with a 1-year vesting period and the proposed term is 6 months to act as a pilot.

Discuss with L2BEAT

We’re very much in favor of retroactively rewarding contributors and we’re happy to see such a proposal hit the forums. Given the wide range of activities Rxpwnz took up over the course of 1,5 years without any compensation or promise (at least to our knowledge), the proposed retroactive compensation seems reasonable. The same goes for the one-time bonuses proposed for other moderators. However, given that we’re not as familiar with their contributions, we invite them (or any member of the HOP DAO who’s familiar with the moderator program) to provide us with more information.

With the proposal to establish the role of Head of DAO Governance and Operations being discussed at the same time (for which we’re not sure what to think yet, happy to discuss it with the community), which proposes the same compensation ($3k/mo) for a much wider and more difficult mandate, there will be a discrepancy between the compensation of the two roles if both proposals pass as they are. We’re not sure whether the compensation for the Lead Moderator is too high, or the compensation for the Head of DAO Governance is too low. However, we do know it should be something to keep in mind when assessing either proposal.

When/where to catch us:

We’re happy to discuss all of the above and more during our Hop Office Hours every Friday at 4 pm UTC.

Connext

[RFC] Extend and Optimize NEXT Liquidity Program on Velodrome

Connext DAO’s pilot program on Velodrome is ending on January 25th and Methodic submitted an RFC which seeks to extend NEXT’s liquidity program on Velodrome.

Specifications:

Through its current incentive program, Connext has directed ~$2 in $VELO for every $1 they deployed. By approving this proposal, Connext will extend its initial program by 26 weeks while switching the source of incentives from $5K of worth $NEXT to $6K worth of $OP. These will be deposited weekly to attract votes for NEXT/USDC.

The proposal also suggests the deployment of $750k of protocol-owned liquidity in the NEXT/USDC pair – which would mean the DAO would have to convert $NEXT and/or $ETH from the treasury into $USDC since there currently is none.

Overall cost:

$6K worth of OP tokens x 26 weeks, representing about 13% of Connext’s 300K OP tokens at today’s prices.

[RFC] Metis Network Expansion

Nadjana from the Connext Foundation submitted an RFC that seeks to add Connext support for Metis chain. This follows a discussion that took place during one of the community calls about creating a framework for adding support for different chains quicker and without procedural overhead for the DAO. However, since the framework isn’t in place yet, the decision has to be made through a DAO vote.

Discuss with L2BEAT:

As already pointed out in the forum by MinistroDolar,

1. The $OP tokens that Connext DAO has is meant to bootstrap AMM pools and subsidize the gas fees for bridging to Optimism, not to be used as liquidity incentives.
2. There’s still 1,24M $NEXT (minus the amount to be distributed until the program ends) available. So far, 251,450 $NEXT has been spent and we saw an increase of $183,000 in TVL. This implies a cost of 24.5% for every dollar raised.

We’d like to hear Velodrome’s response as well as get the community’s thoughts on the proposal.

Where to catch us:

We’re happy to discuss all of the above and more during our Connext Office Hours every Friday at 4 pm UTC.