👨‍🔬 Governance Lab #104

Lab Report #104 - Compound's Voting Service Provider, SafeDAO's Funding Pause Proposal, Obol's Association Wind-down, and more

Jul 10, 2025

gm frens 👋

Welcome back to the Governance Lab, your weekly source for all things StableLab, DeFi, and DAO Governance. Apologies for the brief hiatus as we were away for an offsite + ETH CC in Cannes. Enjoy a longer edition to make up for it.

At a Glance 👀
🖥️ Compound DAO evaluates governance interface providers
⏸️ Safe DAO discusses temporary funding pause for strategic transitions
🔗 Obol DAO proposes Association wind-down

Let’s dive in 🏊

Compound

Compound DAO votes on Voting Service Provider

Compound DAO is selecting a Voting Service Provider to enhance its governance interface and user experience through a competitive proposal process. According to the proposal framework, the DAO is evaluating five options ranging from maintaining the status quo to implementing comprehensive enterprise solutions for governance operations.
The selection process includes proposals from established governance infrastructure providers with varying service levels and pricing structures. Aragon Enterprise offers a fully customized governance frontend for $60,000 annually, featuring branded UI integration with their modular DAO operating system and 99.9% uptime guarantees. Tally Enterprise proposes comprehensive governance tooling for $150,000 annually, including enhanced proposal and voting UX, governance resilience features, and real-time analytics. Alternative options include Lighthouse Labs' mobile-native governance interface at $114,000 annually, focused on iOS and Android applications with push notifications and targeted messaging capabilities. Snapshot Labs proposes an $80,000 integration combining off-chain and on-chain governance workflows in a unified interface, with optional annual maintenance at $6,000.
The DAO retains the option to continue with Tally's self-serve tier, which would maintain current functionality while introducing a 0.25% fee on treasury transactions proposed through their platform. This option represents minimal additional costs but limited feature development capabilities.

SafeDAO

SafeDAO seeks to temporarily pause resource allocation

The Safe Ecosystem Foundation has proposed a temporary funding pause on all resource allocation initiatives of SafeDAO. According to the proposal, this measure would create space for Safe to focus on critical structural transitions while the Foundation assesses and redesigns funding mechanisms based on learnings from previous approaches.
The proposal outlines a two-phase implementation structure. During the first 6 months after implementation, only the Council of the Safe Ecosystem Foundation may lift the pause. After 6 months, either the Foundation Council or a SafeDAO governance vote may lift the pause. Additionally, the Foundation Council would have the sole right to propose treasury management proposals going forward.
The proposal identifies several organizational changes currently underway that require focused attention. Safe Labs is being launched as a dedicated commercial entity focused on enterprise-grade self-custody infrastructure, while Safe Research is being established as the Foundation's dedicated R&D arm. These changes coincide with strategic product decisions, including pausing Safenet as a cross-chain product and open-sourcing it for community-driven development. The proposal is currently in the discussion phase with no technical implementation required.

Obol

Obol Collective votes on proposal to liquidate unclaimed tokens and fund governance shutdown

Obol DAO is considering a proposal to liquidate 20M unclaimed OBOL tokens (~4% of total supply) to fund the complete wind-down of the Obol Association and related governance infrastructure. The proposal requests authorization to sell the unclaimed airdrop allocation currently held in the Association Treasury, with proceeds allocated to legal compliance ($350K), security and data retention ($120K), contributor off-boarding ($280K), user communication ($80K), and market-maker execution costs ($130K).
Key deliverables include dissolving Association entities, maintaining 12-month infrastructure archives, settling final payroll and severance obligations, and publishing daily sale progress to public dashboards. The proposal positions Obol's distributed validator technology to continue operating on a fee-for-service model without native token incentives, addressing governance fatigue and investor dissatisfaction while preserving core protocol functionality.

Proposal Tracker™️

⚡ VOTING UNDERWAY | Arbitrum DAO - Entropy Advisors: Exclusively Working with the Arbitrum DAO, Year 2 and Year 3

Summary: This proposal extends Entropy Advisors’ exclusive partnership with the Arbitrum DAO for another two-year term (September 2025 – August 2027) to continue transforming Arbitrum into a highly effective capital-allocating DAO. It requests roughly $6M in funding (paid in ARB tokens, about $3M per year) and an additional 15M ARB token allocation (vesting over three years with a one-year cliff) to fund team expansion and align long-term incentives as Entropy Advisors focuses solely on Arbitrum’s treasury strategy, incentive design, data analytics, and other strategic projects for sustainable ecosystem growth.

💬 DISCUSSION | Spectra DAO - Accept Ownership Transfer of Katana Contracts to Spectra DAO

Summary: This proposal would transfer ownership of Spectra’s deployed smart contracts on the new Katana blockchain from the project’s developer entity (Perspective SAS) to the Spectra DAO, marking the protocol’s formal expansion to Katana in line with Spectra’s multi-chain growth strategy. By moving onto Katana under direct DAO control, Spectra aims to leverage Katana’s increased capital efficiency and capture a share of its liquidity, enabling Spectra users on Katana to tokenize, trade, and fix interest rates on interest-bearing assets through DAO-governed contracts.

💬 DISCUSSION | Scroll DAO - Community Council Formation

Summary: This proposal calls for the creation of a five-member Community Council to guide Scroll’s community growth initiatives and ensure community engagement remains a core pillar of governance. The Council – composed of Scroll Foundation team members and community representatives – would operate for an initial 6-month term with a budget of 2.71M SCR, overseeing programs such as the Local Nodes framework, grassroots events, and mini-grants. The goal is to provide structured oversight and support for these initiatives, keeping participation rewarding, accelerating builder involvement, and strengthening Scroll’s ecosystem development in alignment with the network’s long-term objectives.

From the Lab

StableLab at ETH CC 8

Some of the StableLab team just got back from ETH CC 8 in Cannes, France. Was a pleasure to see so many of our close partners, clients, and new frens in person! Till next year on the French Riviera. 🇫🇷

Mel @ Permissionless IV

Last month, our Governance Researcher Mel joined a panel at Permissionless IV to explore how smart incentive programs can fuel real growth. Catch the full discussion in the recording linked above.

▶︎ WATCH the panel