Governance Workshop 7.27.22

Proposals & Drafts

• Several proposals are up on the forum. Please provide feedback! [0:44m]
• Treasury Charter Proposal
• Bancor Proposal
• Testing Wallet Proposal
• Non-Core Asset Discretion Proposal
• A KIP draft on KIP format, categories, and templates is ready for feedback. [1:00m]
• Three process KIPs are making their way through the working groups: overall process, Sophon framework, and Sophon onboarding/offboarding. [1:23m]
• An external Optimism proposal is up and ready for comments. [1:48m]

Current Events

• Treasury Tuesdays are moving to a bi-weekly schedule (every other week). [2:12m]
• Jason mentioned some relevant concerns with a controversial Lido governance vote (a treasury diversification proposal) involving last-minute influence of two whales. [2:57m]

Governance Reform

• Jason presented a model of how governance proceeds from Sophons’ recommendations and token-holders’ votes to reconciliation. What is meaningful disagreement, and how do we measure it?  [5:20m]
• A whale voted as an objector to KIP-26. Although they were the only objector, their votes amounted to 10% of the total vote. [6:40m]
• Perhaps Rook could adopt a more rule-based way to handle the reconciliation process, such as requiring a quorum for objections? [7:01m]
• Starfire mentioned that using the number of wallets as a measure can be easily gamed. [8:39m]
• aia made a case for weighting xROOK more heavily than ROOK, including a provision for the amount of time the xROOK has been staked. [10:00 m]
• On the question of one wallet or multiple wallets: if wallets are attached to identities, the quorum approach may be more viable. [14:40m]
• The group discussed voter apathy, with Above Average Joe (AAJ) mentioning the need to use a method that scales with voters. [19:35m]
• Stubbs raised a question as to whether Rook should continue with the current approach of not keeping a record of voters who consent. [20:30-21:30m]
• Jason mentioned that while there has been an increase in the amount of tokens voting, it’s still a small proportion of all tokens. [22:04m]
• The voter sets can now be expanded to Sushiswap, Uniswap, and Bancor v3. [23:20m]
• Thanks to the work of RaiNFall and Pai-Sho, holders of xROOK can now vote (which is relatively new), and levels of weight given to xROOK can be tuned. [23:35m]
• RaiNFall verified that it’s possible to fine-tune the weights for ROOK and xROOK separately on Snapshot. [25:15m]
• Matt mentioned the possibility of forking another kind of staking contract as a possible alternative to incurring the opportunity cost of the dev time that would be needed for fine-tuning. [32:08m]
• AAJ suggested a slider bar for yield payout versus vote parameter. [33:08m]
• Addressing questions on processes for expedited (urgent/time-sensitive) proposals, Wes mentioned that Maker has a position called a facilitator who keeps an eye on what’s happening in governance. In one case, a bad actor used a flash loan vote to influence a governance outcome. [35:18m]
• Matt asks if are there quick ways to capture evidence of a soft consensus? [39:00m]
• Jason suggested the possibility of thinking about use cases and then refining. [40:20m]
• Off-chain governance reduces the potential attack surface. [39:59m]