Boardroom
Boardroom
Boardroom is a web3 newsletter aiming to interpret the complex world of DAO and protocol governance, politics, and power.
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BanklessDAO Explores Implementing Shielded Voting
6 hours ago
Over the last few months, BanklessDAO has introduced a number of key updates to its governance process. Among these updates were new processes that addressed longstanding issues such as the implementation of a bDIP process and a Consitution. The bDIP process formalized a structure to enact change to the governance process itself while the Constitution serves as “the canonical source for organizational structure”. BanklessDAO has not shied away from experimentation and making improvements to its structure whenever possible. Included in these processes is the ever-important off-chain voting tool Snapshot.
Aave DAO Considers Changing Its Asset Listing Policy
December 5th, 2022
The design for Aave v3 was first introduced in November of 2021. Among its most appealing features is that it presents more and better levers for controlling risk than previous versions of Aave’s DeFi platform. “Isolation mode,” for example, allows newly listed assets to be isolated with a specific debt ceiling and only permits the borrowing of certain assets. And v3 includes the possibility of adding “risk admins,” which are designated entities granted “the ability to alter certain risk parameters without requiring a governance vote.” This allows DAO risk managers such as Gauntlet and Chaos Labs to be both swiftly proactive and responsive to market conditions. Aave v3 is currently deployed on several chains, including Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, and Polygon; however, it is not yet deployed on Ethereum itself — while Aave v2 is, which means that many users remain on v2. The “total market size” of Aave v2 on Ethereum mainnet is ~$4.7 billion at the time of writing.
Compound Votes to Revive its Grants Program
December 1st, 2022
Grants programs are a common tool used by crypto projects to help incentivize and bootstrap building within their respective ecosystems. Some of these notable programs include Aave Grants DAO, the Uniswap Grants Program, and the Balancer Grants Program. Compound, the blue-chip DeFi protocol has notably been missing such a community-led program. The protocol used to have a similar structure: the Compound Grants Program (CGP1.0) and it ran from March through September of 2021. Within this first version, notable contributors included Larry Sukernik, Getty Hill, Monetsupply, Leighton Cusack, and others. This team successfully rewarded thirty grantees with over $1M USD over the course of six months. Following its conclusion in Sep 2021, the program remained dormant for many months as no willing contributor stepped up to pick it back up. Among the things holding it back was the lack of viable organizers, the legal costs, and the general overhead needed to run such a program.
Redacted DAO Extends its Operational Budget
November 23rd, 2022
Redacted Cartel launched in November of 2021 as a fork of Olympus DAO to expand it into the CRV ecosystem and provide liquidity within the now infamous Curve Wars. This community is in charge of stewarding the development of the Redacted ecosystem which includes products like Redacted Protocol, Hidden Hand, Pirex, Dinero, and more. These products focus on empowering on-chain liquidity, governance, and cash flow for DeFi protocols. The DAO counts on a budget within its DAO reserves to pay for its contributors building these protocols and its various products.
Optimism Introduces a Grants Council for Season 3
November 17th, 2022
Optimism is a leading Ethereum Layer 2 protocol, known as much for the success of its rollup design as for its public-goods-oriented ethos. Also notable is that governance in Optimism explicitly posits itself as an experiment. The Optimism Foundation regularly underscores the provisionality of its documents, rules, and procedures; the structure and approach of governance is emergent, and the assumption is that given appropriate participation by the community, governance will iterate and improve over time.
Gauntlet Proposes Extending their Risk Management Work at Aave
November 10th, 2022
Aave is a leading DeFi liquidity protocol celebrated not only for its dynamic features but also for its robust ecosystem of contributors, service providers, and developers. Current providers working with Aave include Llama, Certora, BGD Labs, Chaos Labs, Sigma Prime, Aave Companies — and Gauntlet, which has been working with Aave in some capacity since the early days. Gauntlet describes itself as a “financial modeling platform that uses battle-tested techniques from the algorithmic trading industry to inform on-chain protocol management”; its current list of clients includes Synthetix, Compound, and Maker, among others.
ENS DAO Begins Search for an Endowment Manager
November 3rd, 2022
ENS DAO, a key web3 protocol, has passed a proposal requesting applications for an endowment fund manager. The popular web3 naming service had been actively discussing creating an endowment fund for over six months. The new fund aims to ensure the long-term stability for the protocol.
Compound Introduces an Improvement Proposal Process
October 27th, 2022
Compound is one of the leading and most established DeFi protocols, with a track record of stability, security, and innovation — a rare combination. Among Compound’s several industry-leading developments was the introduction in 2020 of Compound Governor, an on-chain mechanism to provide “increasing decentralization” by shifting protocol governance from a central team to the wider community of COMP holders.
Nansen Proposes SushiDAO Migrate to their Web3 Platform
October 20th, 2022
On October 6th, centralized data provider Nansen posted to the SushiSwap forums a proposal to integrate Sushi’s community into their new product offering called ‘Nansen Connect’. The firm claims Connect enables a token-gated experience that filters out noise and provides real value to existing web3 communities.