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13 min read • Published on 26 Jan 2024

Governance Review #02

Anastassis Oikonomopoulos

Governance Representative

L2BEAT provides weekly updates on governance in concise articles.

Governance Review #02 publication thumbnail

Optimism

Joint House Community Call

The next community call will be on January 30th at 6pm UTC and it will be a joint house call which means both Token and Citizen House members will be there. You can visit the linked forum post and drop a comment of the items you’d like to see discussed.

Mission Requests

The main focus for this week remains on mission requests. At the time of writing, of the 69 RFPs submitted (2 of which were withdrawn), only 9 have received the 4 delegate approvals needed to move to vote.

Request for Information - Recent Upgrades to Governor Contract

Brichis, the lead of the Anticapture Commission posted a request for information on behalf of the commission, based on the discussion held during their inaugural office hours.

Following Agora’s upgrade, the data around voting power are not accurate in several places, including Optimism Foundation’s official dashboard. Also, voting now requires signing twice.

A question was set forward asking what are the steps needed to turn over ownership of the governor contract to OP governance.

Upgrade Proposal #4

Maurelian, an engineer at OP Labs shared a proposal for a protocol upgrade which focuses on security (upgrade #4). The proposed upgrade takes the current incident response mechanism a step further, introducing a Superchain-wide pause mechanism that can enhance protection across multiple fronts, including the L1CrossDomainMessenger and withdrawals for ERC-20 and ERC-721 tokens, which are additional security critical code paths that protect user assets.

Season 5 Feedback Thread

The Foundation has started a thread to collect feedback on Season 5.

Discuss with L2BEAT

On occasion of a lot of mission requests also somewhat doubling as the application of the party proposing the RFP, a discussion has started on whether it is appropriate for contributors to apply to a mission request they’ve proposed. We’re curious to hear the community’s thoughts on the matter as we have not yet decided whether that poses an issue or not.

We’re also interested in discussing the implications of the upgrade of the governor contract by Agora, and whether working on a plan to transfer ownership to the DAO makes sense at this time from an operational perspective.

When/where to catch us:

You can reach us to seek approval for your mission request as well as to discuss the topics mentioned above and more during our Optimism Office Hours every Tuesday at 4pm UTC.

Arbitrum

[Snapshot] Election of Procurement Committee Members (ADPC)

The elections for the Arbitrum DAO Procurement Committee (original proposal) are taking place on Snapshot.

The applicants are:

There will be a pitching session on Monday 29th of January at 4pm UTC (event link). Make sure to cast your vote before January 30th, 4:32 pm UTC.

[RFC] Funding for Into the Dungeons: Machinata - a PvP Digital Miniature Game

Thechaingamer.eth submitted an RFC which seeks funding, in tranches, to help them offset development costs as well as speed up development of their game ‘Into the Dungeons’.

Their request is for 30,000 $ARB, to be released in tranches as they make progress towards certain milestones:

While the proposal itself is legitimately looking for funding, Thechaingamer.eth also claims that the proposal serves as a test to see whether or not the DAO can fund things without going through a framework-building process first, and if so, how quickly a proposal can go through the governance process. There’s already been community feedback, both on the forums and on Telegram, about using a grants framework like Questbook and its gaming domain, or waiting for (or better yet, participating in) the creation of a gaming onboarding framework which is actively being discussed.

[RFC] Arbitrum Stable Treasury Endowment Program (STEP)

Devansh shared the final version of the STEP proposal on behalf of the relevant working group and they’re planning to move the proposal to temp-check on Monday 29th of January, contingent on feedback received.

The TL;DR of the proposal is that it’s a framework which aims to support the RWA ecosystem on Arbitrum by diversifying 10, 22.5 or 35 million ARB from the DAO’s treasury into stable & liquid US t-bills or money market instruments earning a rate of return roughly equivalent to US Treasuries (hereby called ‘stable RWAs’). The program is supposed to be a trial run for an even larger program down the road. The proposal contains a lot of specific details around operations, legal implications and cost breakdown which is best to look into directly.

A Builder’s Dilemma in Arbitrum

Karel, the co-founder of TreasureDAO, started a discussion by expressing his thoughts that builders start off highly incentivized to participate in ecosystems and their governance systems (Arbitrum, Optimism, etc.) but over time see their ability to do so diminish over time. In short, a builder has to decide to allocate their time building for an ecosystem, or participating in its governance.

Arbitrum Research and Development Collective Elections

Following a successful on-chain vote, the following steps for the ARDC proposal will be electing the members that will compose the collective.

The application period will start on the 26th of January and last for 7 days. On 6th of February, applicants will have to go through KYC/KYB until the 14th. Then, the elections will take place on Snapshot, starting on the 20th of February and lasting a week.

[RFC]The Defiant #1 Ranked Crypto 101 Education & Onboarding Series

Crypto publication ‘The Defiant’ submitted an RFC which seeks funding from the DAO to sponsor a crypto education series that will be published through two distinct mediums—video and written content—spanning ~10 months. The requested amount is $40,000 and it will cover a bundle of 5 Crypto 101 topics for $40,000.

Security Council Improvement Suggestions

The temp-check for the proposal we (L2BEAT) put forward regarding improving the structure of the security council has concluded and the most voted option was to increase the small security council threshold from 7/12 to 9/12.

Following the successful temp-check, the target date to move the proposal to on-chain vote is January 30th, given that the executable code is ready by that time. We’ll comment on the proposal if the timeline is changed.

LTIP Election Results

The elections for the Council and Application Advisors of the Long Term Incentives Program have concluded and the results are as follows:

Council

Application Advisors

[RFC] Changes to the Constitution and the Security Council Election Process

The Arbitrum Foundation published an RFC for a Constitutional AIP which proposes improvements to the ArbitrumDAO Constitution and the Security Council election process, which include:

A New Thesis for Network-Level Incentives Programs

Tnorm shared his thoughts on incentives by exploring alternative distribution methods to existing frameworks (including both STIP and LTIP). The post is an interesting read for those seeking to understand the pros and cons of different incentive distribution programs, including:

[RFC] Permissionless Orderbook Exchange

ElixExo submitted an RFC which proposes a new form of spot orderbook exchange where token creators can freely list their assets and benefit from not needing to provide fixed liquidity pools, instead using the token’s volume; connecting buyers and sellers at a price supplied by an oracle or based on the token’s demand. For development, ElixExo is expecting the cost to be in the realm of 50,000 ARB.

The way they want to go about acquiring the money is to create an NFT contract which will have 1000 items, each with an initial mint cost of 5 ARB, once fully minted this comes out at 5000 ARB, which will cover the first phase of development, after which we will collect royalty fees on the collection at 10% per trade, once the project is sufficiently funded the royalties will be turned off and the contract renounced.

Treasury and Sustainability Working Group - Season 1 Conclusion

Devansh from the Treasury and Sustainability working group announced the conclusion of season 1 and shared the insights that the group has gathered.

Discuss with L2BEAT

The discussion started by Karel and Thechaingamer (through their proposal) is a broader discussion that’s about the overall approach the DAO has when experimenting with things.

In an attempt to capture the essence of the debate, the two theoretical camps right now are:

  1. Those who think the DAO should be more agile, move fast and break things, and not be so uptight when it comes to using the treasury, and
  2. Those who believe in a more holistic approach and think establishing frameworks is a more appropriate and sustainable approach.

We understand both ways of thinking but we have a hard time deciding which one is the most beneficial to the DAO. We’d love to invite more delegates and Arbitrum builders to discuss this further and potentially find a balance.

Regarding the STEP proposal, we have a lot of questions and concerns which we’ll share in the forums, mainly regarding the amounts discussed (can investing a few million out of a 4 billion treasury be considered diversification?) as well as the overall strategy (why t-bills instead of tokenized t-bills in the form of RWAs which is more crypto native?), but we’re not experts in these matters and we’d like to discuss with and learn by people who are.

Lastly, we’ll be looking into all applications for the ARDC, but we urge applicants to also join our Office Hours and directly talk to us about why they’d be a good fit.

When/where to catch us:

You can catch us to discuss all the above and more during our Arbitrum Office Hours which take place every Thursday at 4pm UTC.

Uniswap

Uniswap Revitalization and Growth

Getty started a discussion on how Uniswap can increase its market share, especially on newer chains. He suggests creating a Uniswap V3 Onboarding Package with some $UNI (initial proposed amount is $250k, but still being discussed) to be used to kick off liquidity incentivization for new chains, and even chains in which v3 is already deployed.

Discuss with L2BEAT

Actively working to increase Uniswap’s market share and not solely relying on brand recognition is definitely needed, especially for newer chains where other, native dexes are solidifying their market share every day. It would also make the governance process for the deployment of Uniswap v3 on new chains more meaningful, as right now it’s more of a rubber-stamping process.

The only concerns are whether or not the liquidity incentives will attract sticky capital which will remain after the incentives are done, and whether the cost of the incentives will ever be recouped - which relies on the fee switch being turned.

Lastly, if this discussion evolves into a proposal, the specifics (amounts, timeline, pools to kickstart, etc) would have to be ironed out.

When/where to catch us:

We’re happy to dive into the above discussion and more during our Uniswap Office Hours every Friday at 4pm UTC.

Hop

[RFC] V2 Open Questions (Financial Perspective)

0xLev1 published an RFC which raises some questions in regards to the financial aspects of the upcoming Hop V2 launch.

Discuss with L2BEAT

We’re interested to discuss the upcoming Hop V2 launch and get some extra context from contributors who are close to the development. We’d also been keen to discuss other DAO matters which we might have missed.

When/where to catch us:

You can discuss all things related to HOP with us during our Hop Office Hours every Friday at 5pm UTC

Polygon

Public Goods Funding RFC

Justice from Polygon’s governance team started a discussion asking for the community’s perspective on public goods funding. The post includes 10 polls and 6 open-ended questions for people to provide their views on.

Discuss with L2BEAT

We’d love to be more involved in Polygon’s governance and we’re happy to discuss with delegates and other contributors to learn more about areas we can do so.

When/where to catch us:

You can catch us and chat about Polygon during our Polygon Office Hours every Friday at 3pm UTC.

Starknet

There wasn't any noteworthy news in the past week that we are aware of. If you think we missed something that should be here, please let us know.

Discuss with L2BEAT

In our understanding, Starknet’s governance is still nascent. As such, we’d love to connect with active contributors and discuss ways in which we can provide value.

When/where to catch us:

We invite active contributors to discuss with us during our Starknet Office Hours every Friday at 3pm UTC.

Connext

[RFC] Community Leadership Incentivization

Tommy from Connext submitted an RFC which describes the scope, engagement, and compensation of Community Leaders who are tasked with providing necessary support functions for the Connext community in an effort to keep community operations running and to monitor the completion of projects and tasks.

This proposal requests a quarterly budget of 295,000 NEXT tokens and a one time retroactive compensation of 147,522 NEXT, totaling 442,522 NEXT

Discuss with L2BEAT

Overall, we find the community leadership incentivization proposal and the requested amounts reasonable. We’re happy to discuss with other delegates and hear their perspectives so we can make a more informed decision when the RFC goes to vote.

When/where to catch us:

You can catch us during our Hop Office Hours every Friday at 4pm UTC.