Anticapture Commission - Season 6 Retrospective

Elected Representatives 💼 Council Communication Threads
1

Hello Collective, here is the Anticapture Commission’s Retrospective for Season 6.
Reference: Season 6 - Anticapture Commission Amendment

1. What is your assessment of the impact KPIs that were set in your Budget Proposal at the start of the Season?
Have you made progress towards, or achieved, these milestones or KPIs?
If not, why?

  • Goal: Vote on all proposals that are subject to a Citizens’ House veto.
    Assessment: During the season, the ACC utilized the 10 million OP tokens delegated to the Commission’s multisig, and voted on all proposals that were subject to a Citizens’ House veto. While casting the vote, the members of the ACC did not flag any instances of capture as a result of these governance proposals, that would put the governance at risk of capture to the benefit of any one individual or group.

  • Goal: Provide alerts to the Citizens’ House when capture occurs in the token house or during any proposal.
    Assessment: During the Season, the ACC did not receive any concern flagged by any member of the community indicating that a capture is likely to occur in the Token House governance. During the governance proposals of the Season, there were no instances where a risk was identified of any entity or group capturing governance.
    Apart from any flagged concerns, the ACC was active in discussing governance proposals that would eventually require the Citizen’s House inputs. One such proposal was the Accelerated Decentralization Proposal For Optimism, and the ACC initiated a discussion on this proposal with member Delegates, as well as the Foundation and the author of the proposal GFX labs.

Additional and Aligned Goals:

  1. Goal: Increase votable supply - The ACC does not have a budget proposal, however one of the identified goals of the ACC was to increase the votable supply.
    Assessment: Since the Start of S6, the votable supply has increased by 18.5%, from 89.4m OP to 106m OP. This represents that the ACC has been able to achieve its KPI goal in terms of increased votable supply.

  2. Goal: Advocate for the continued decentralization
    Assessment: The ACC initiated calls and discussions on furthering decentralization of various elements of Optimism. One suggestion was to have have additional voting UI/portals, so that the voting interface isn’t entirely dependent on Agora.

2. Impact assessment - how well did your team’s outputs support the Intent they were authorized under?

The ACC’s charter is to identify points of capture across the ecosystem, and utilize the OP delegated to the ACC to prevent the capture of Token Housetoken house by any one entity or group. To this extent, the output of the ACC’s members was able to support the overriding goals and charter of the ACC.

Utilizing the OP tokens delegated to the ACC’s Multisig, the ACC voted on the Granite Network Upgrade Proposal and the Governor Update Proposal #3: Enable Onchain Treasury Execution, as these were the proposals in this Season of governance that were Subject to a Citizen’s House Veto, involving protocol and governance contract upgrades.

3. What are the major problems you ran into over the course of the Season?

During the Granite Network Upgrade, the members of ACC had flagged technical concerns with the way the proposal had been initiated, with the fallback mechanism being activated to disable fraud proofs. The Delegate members of ACC provided a suggestion to minimize such risks during network upgrade proposals. Although this did not involve a capture of the Token House, it was felt that the sudden introduction of the fall back mechanism could potentially lead to an attack or an incident, resulting in a compromise to the integrity of the network and requiring emergency remedial actions by the Security Council.

During the season, ACC members also reported issues with the Agora voting portal, which were then outlined to the Agora team and subsequently resolved. Among the suggestions made to Agora was to allow voting delegates a brief period to change their cast votes if they notice an error, thereby providing an option for Delegates to revise or override their vote in cases of erroneous vote or UI malfunction.

4. What are possible solutions that could be explored next Season?

Some of the solutions that could be explored next season are:

  1. Apart from the current goals, the ACC could additionally help with the Milestone based Decentralization Model proposed by Foundation by being responsible to evaluate progress of decentralization across the layer and ensuring the various decentralization objectives are met. Also, the ACC can play a role in shepherding Phase II & Phase III, as outlined in the Accelerating Decentralization Proposal.
  2. Since the ACC serves as a system of checks and balances during critical situations that require Delegates to act on an emergency basis, if ACC members repeatedly abstain from voting on multiple proposals, a reprimand could be considered.
  3. If governance bandwidth permits, a dry-run for a capture situation could be experimented with.

5. What improvements to the team’s mandate would you suggest for next Season?If you don’t believe the team’s operations should continue next Season, please explain why here.

I recommend continuing the ACC for the next Season, with the similar identified goals of preventing capture in governance. The ACC given its limited scope, will likely continue to be a minimized governance meta-structure that can step in during emergency situations where there is a risk of capture in the Token House.

Thank you to all Delegate Members of the ACC for their contributions, Members of the Foundation, and especially to Brichis and Max for their guidance throughout the Season.

  • Web3magnetic.eth, ACC Season 6 Lead.
10 Likes
2

Thanks for sharing this retrospective with the community, it’s really helpful to get an overview of everything the ACC has been working on over the Season and to understand how you’re thinking about the evolution of the ACC in the future!

  1. Goal: Increase votable supply - The ACC does not have a budget proposal, however one of the identified goals of the ACC was to increase the votable supply.
    2.Assessment*: Since the Start of S6, the votable supply has increased by 18.5%, from 89.4m OP to 106m OP. This represents that the ACC has been able to achieve its KPI goal in terms of increased votable supply.

One thing to be careful of in all retrospectives is claiming casuality. While the votable supply increased over the Season, it doesn’t seem that increase is a direct result of specific initiatives to drive votable supply by the ACC (at least none are mentioned in this retrospective) and so is likely the result of unrelated factors such as airdrops, grant delegations, etc.

If extended into Season 7, I like the suggestions made in the retrospective but would add that I would also like to see the ACC facilitate /establish more cross-house conversations between delegates and Citizens.

8 Likes
3

Hello ACC! As part of my role as a member of the Collective Feedback Commission, I’ve been asked to provide feedback on this retrospective.

Note that I have not followed the ACC’s activities in depth, though I have reviewed the charter and the Season 6 amendment in addition to this retrospective.

My feedback will following the structure of the retrospective, going section by section where I have feedback.

1. Feedback on Impact KPI reporting and 2. Impact assessment

Primary Goal 1: The KPI of voting on every proposal is simple and objective, and the communicated result here is clear. It would also be beneficial to include a breakdown in this section of how often the members voted. This could be as simple as proportion of ACC members meeting the 70% voting participation requirement, or perhaps the ACC membership participation rate for each vote.

The second paragraph of the assessment is more relevant to Goal 2.

While casting the vote, the members of the ACC did not flag any instances of capture as a result of these governance proposals, that would put the governance at risk of capture to the benefit of any one individual or group.

Primary Goal 2: This KPI of alerting the Citizen’s House when capture occurs is fuzzier and more subjective, but the communicated result is still clear (especially when including the second paragraph from the Goal 1 assessment section).

While its not unhelpful, the second paragraph of the assessment section is not fully relevant to the assessment the present KPI. In future retrospectives, I’d consider moving such content into its own section to keep the KPI assessment as crisp and focused as possible.

Apart from any flagged concerns, the ACC was active in discussing governance proposals that would eventually require the Citizen’s House inputs. One such proposal was the Accelerated Decentralization Proposal For Optimism, and the ACC initiated a discussion on this proposal with member Delegates, as well as the Foundation and the author of the proposal GFX labs.

Additional Goal 1: I think I am missing context here. I did not find mention elsewhere that one of the goals of the ACC was to increase the votable supply. I see that the ACC may “Research, analyze, and advocate for transparency related to the distribution of voting power,” but in my interpretation that does not necessarily mean increasing votable supply. It would be helpful to include a reference or link to where the votable supply goal has been established.

Similar to @lavande’s point about causality, the assessment lacks clear evidence that the ACC’s efforts contributed to the advancement of this KPI. What activities did the ACC or its members engage in that helped increase votable supply?

Additional Goal 2: I think the goal description here got cut off: “Advocate for the continued decentralization” of…? The assessment content is a good overview but in my opinion too high level to be actionable. What were those specific calls and discussions initiated by the ACC? Beyond the one suggestion listed, what were the specific takeaways or outcomes of those calls and discussions?

3. Feedback on problem statements

The first paragraph describing the ACC’s response to the fallback mechanism is a great example of potential impact (probably a good fit for the Impact Assessment section). It would be nice to see the result (impact) of the flags the ACC raised. What was the outcome?

Similarly, I would love to see a description of the result of the ACC’s feedback provided to Agora. Did those suggestions get implemented? If not, what was the blocker?

More broadly, I would like to see problem statements in this section that correspond with the solutions from the next section. What are the problems you faced or observed this season that have lead to the suggested possible solutions?

4. Feedback on solution statements

Nice work on these solutions! (1) and (3) are particularly valuable, in my opinion, and worth exploring further. Given its role in consistently observing and watching out for capture, the ACC likely has a unique perspective on decentralization progress and things to watch out for. And dry runs or scenario planning / practice is a great idea that I’d recommend strongly considering adding to the responsibilities next season.

As a balancing note for (1), however, I would want to be careful to not overload the ACC’s capacity/attention and in any way diminish its ability to respond to capture scenarios.

2 Likes
4

GM and thank you for your valuable feedback.

One thing to be careful of in all retrospectives is claiming casuality. While the votable supply increased over the Season, it doesn’t seem that increase is a direct result of specific initiatives to drive votable supply by the ACC (at least none are mentioned in this retrospective) and so is likely the result of unrelated factors such as airdrops, grant delegations, etc.

We had discussed this feedback and going forward will, structure the KPIs more closely with the measurable work done by the ACC so as to not create a situation of claiming casuality.

would add that I would also like to see the ACC facilitate /establish more cross-house conversations between delegates and Citizens.

With regards to this feedback, in the proposed Season 7 ACC Charter we have introduced additional mandates to the ACC for facilitating cross-house conversations, such as being a part of Citizens House discussions in instances where the Citizens House considers a veto, and also discussed potentially hosting a cross-house call between the Citizens House and the ACC (high context Token House Delegates).

5

GM and thank you for sharing your feedback!

While amending the Charter of the ACC for Season 7, we have discussed your feedback in depth and have incorporated some of these aspects directly in the amended charter, and have introduced some of these as responsibilities of the Season 7 ACC.

I will address some of the other feedback:

Additional Goal 1: I think I am missing context here. I did not find mention elsewhere that one of the goals of the ACC was to increase the votable supply. I see that the ACC may “Research, analyze, and advocate for transparency related to the distribution of voting power,” but in my interpretation that does not necessarily mean increasing votable supply. It would be helpful to include a reference or link to where the votable supply goal has been established.

You are right that the KPI’s of Season 6 ACC did not specifically include increasing votable supply. It was a goal of Season 5 of the ACC, which was later removed for Season 6 ACC, and hence marked as “Aligned Goals” in the Retrospective, however going forward the ACC will be setting its KPI’s in the ACC’s Internal Operating Procedures directly to the measurable impact derived from the work done by the ACC.

It would be nice to see the result (impact) of the flags the ACC raised. What was the outcome? Similarly, I would love to see a description of the result of the ACC’s feedback provided to Agora. Did those suggestions get implemented? If not, what was the blocker?

With regards to these, the outcome are as follows:

  • For the Granite Network Upgrade issues, the feedback was conveyed to the OPLabs developers, however the OPLabs deactivating fraud proofs was as per the Security policy adopted by OPLabs. There are both pro’s and con’s to this approach. So while it is justified and in accordance with the Security Policy, it could still result in a situation that could cause severe harm to the network if exploited by a nefarious party, while fraud proofs are in a disabled state. To conclusively address this would entail OPLabs making changes to their Security Policy.

  • For the feedback to Agora, Agora had informed the ACC that they had made changes to their UI/UX that would present the voting options in a more clear and concise manner for the Delegates to vote on, and the error faced by Delegates would not arise once these changes go live. The UI changes was demonstrated to the ACC Members during a discussion with the Agora team. After these changes were implemented on the Optimism Agora Voting Portal, none of the Delegates had reported experiencing the same issues again in the season. While the ACC had also suggested exploring a re-vote mechanism for delegates, this would have entailed additional costs to Agora. At that point of time we felt would not completely justify the effort spent towards this, unless Delegates reported further instances of the same issue arising.

Nice work on these solutions! (1) and (3) are particularly valuable, in my opinion, and worth exploring further. Given its role in consistently observing and watching out for capture, the ACC likely has a unique perspective on decentralization progress and things to watch out for. And dry runs or scenario planning / practice is a great idea that I’d recommend strongly considering adding to the responsibilities next season.

On these points, the S7 ACC Charter has included exploring dry-run scenario, brainstorming potential capture situations, and also assisting with the decentralization roadmap as part of its Charter.

As a balancing note for (1), however, I would want to be careful to not overload the ACC’s capacity/attention and in any way diminish its ability to respond to capture scenarios.

This is definitely a consideration in the ACC Charter, and a fine needle to thread. The ACC does benefit immensely from high context delegates sharing their inputs across several domains in which they have expertise in.

Thank you once again for your valuable feedback! Looking forward to your feedback on the Season 7 ACC Charter.

2 Likes