👨🔬 Governance Lab #058
Lab Report #058 - Aave DAO Frontier Program Expansion, GNO Buyback Program & Delegate Program, Compound Governance Support Working Group, and more
gm frens 👋
welcome back to the Governance Lab, your weekly source for all things StableLab, DeFi, and DAO Governance.
At a Glance 👀
👻 Aave DAO considers expanding ‘Frontier’ program
🦉 GnosisDAO receives 30M GNO buyback program proposal
🦉 GnosisDAO discusses establishing Delegate Program
💊 Compound DAO discusses establishing Governance Support Working Group
Let’s dive in 🏊
Expanding the Frontier (Program)
Aave Chan Initiative submits ARFC to expand Frontier
Following the success of the Frontier Pilot Program, the ACI has submitted an ARFC to expand and further decentralize the protocol’s staking exposure. The Frontier Program was launched earlier this year, making Aave (via the ACI) the first protocol to operate staking nodes and run validator nodes.
With this proposal, the ACI looks to make a myriad of conversions:
Converting 100% of rETH into RocketPool Minipools
Converting 30% of stETH into Stader Validator Pools
Converting 20% of stETH into Stakewise Validators, Minting osETH, Depositing into v3
The proposal seeks to designate Aave Finance (Karpatkey & TokenLogic) as the Service Provider responsible for defining and funding the program. If approved, Frontier will become a permanent, official Aave DAO program.
Buyback and Boost
GnosisDAO discusses 30M GNO Buyback Program
GnosisDAO is considering a proposal to allocate $30M, or about 5% of its estimated $630M treasury, to a 6-month GNO buyback program. Late last week, Thanefield Capital, a GNO investor, submitted GIP-100 to address the significant undervaluation of GNO compared to the book value of the DAO's assets.
The objectives of the proposed buyback are threefold:
Transfer value to long-term holders by acquiring GNO below intrinsic value
Signal a commitment to establishing a price floor above book value
Drive attention to Gnosis DAO's products and fundamentals
If approved, the program would be executed via a combination of CoW-TWAP buying below dynamic book value and discretionary purchases by Karpatkey. The results would be assessed after 6 months to determine next steps.
❲ Links ❳
🚀 Launches & Deployments
📑 Insights & Reports
The DAO Playbook v1
MakerDAO’s Lockstake Engine
Airdrops: An Analysis of Over 2,000,000 Events
Diving into Arbitrum LTIPP
🧗 Milestones & Updates
Wormhole: Call for Delegates
RocketPool Tokenomics Rework
🔒 Security, Risk, & Hacks
The Fight for DeFi Continues
🗞️ Miscellaneous
Redacted: Metamorphosis to Dinero Protocol
Rari DAO: Tokenomics Working Group
Launch Stargate on Core Chain
❲ Proposal Tracker ❳
⚡ SNAPSHOT | Arbitrum - Streamlining the LTIPP Bounties
Summary: This proposal aims to streamline the process for selecting researchers to complete bounties related to the Arbitrum Long-Term Incentive Pilot Program (LTIPP). In the original LTIPP proposal, 200K ARB was earmarked and made available as research bounties that produce meaningful conclusions regarding the incentive program. This proposal gives the LTIPP council more autonomy to choose bounty recipients, creating a faster process with more accountability and encouraging more applications. The proposal outlines a timeline, payment structure, and voting period, with no additional costs beyond the original 200K ARB budget.
💬 DISCUSSION | Lido - Establishing the Community Lifeguards Initiative (CLI) Sub-Committee
Summary: This proposal aims to consolidate and fund the Community Lifeguards Initiative (CLI) as a sub-committee of LEGO. The CLI Pilot has operated for nearly three quarters, engaging and educating the individual stakers community. With this proposal, CLI will begin formalizing and expanding itself by electing three full-time Lifeguards and establishing the CLI community grants program. To fund this initiative, the proposal requests 197K USD per quarter.
💬 DISCUSSION | Optimism - Update Proposal: Fault Proofs
Summary: This upgrade proposal at Optimism enables a permissionless fault proof system for L2 to L1 withdrawals, and reduces trust assumptions while preserving the Guardian role's ability to pause the system if needed. The proposal lists technical specifications, changes to key contracts, security considerations, an impact summary, and an action plan. If approved, OP Labs, authors of the proposal state the upgrade brings Optimism closer to Stage 2 decentralization.
💬 DISCUSSION | Aave - Deploy Aave v3 on Mode
Summary: This proposal aims to deploy v3 on Mode, a modular L2 built on the OP stack and part of the Superchain. By deploying Aave on Mode, the network further positions itself as the DeFi hub of the Superchain with other protocols such as Velodrome and Balancer to follow suit. The proposal outlines the benefits of this deployment including the effects on liquidity, user adoption, overall market growth, and its contributions to Aave's growth.
From the Lab
Establish the Gnosis DAO Delegate Program
In collaboration with Karpatkey, we’ve proposed establishing the GnosisDAO Delegate Program, a 6-month trial initiative designed to improve participation, enhance community engagement, and strengthen the overall governance processes at GnosisDAO.
We’re excited to help invigorate GnosisDAO by formalizing the delegate role, a cornerstone for any serious mature protocol. We aim for these to be the first steps taken toward the overall improvement of the DAO. We look forward to hearing community feedback and suggestions.
▶︎ Read the full proposal HERE.
Establish the Compound Governance Support Working Group
Over at Compound, we’ve teamed up with Arana Digital and PGov to propose establishing the Governance Support Working Group, an initiative designed to strengthen, improve, and safeguard Compound governance.
Due to recent shortcomings and inefficiencies within Compound governance, we’re looking to launch a year-long working group focused on enhancing every facet of the governance process, modernizing, and bringing Compound closer to other DAOs. To achieve our goals, we plan to collaborate closely with the Compound community, launching experimental initiatives only if approved by the DAO.
▶︎ Read the full proposal HERE.
❲ Our Voting ❳
📆 May 17th → May 23rd | 🗳️ Total Votes: 15
See our full vote history and detailed rationale HERE.
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