[DRAFT][SO2 Committee Proposal: DeFi: Group C]

Governance Design šŸ“ Metagovernance
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Committee Proposal

Committee Category:

DeFi Committee

Our focus is on making the proposal process straightforward for DeFi projects by providing a clear framework and support along the way. Our approach of engaging with proposers, performing solid due diligence & sharing qualified assessments, should help proposers make stronger proposals, facilitate decision-making for other delegates and strengthen the Op ecosystem.

We consider all kinds of DeFi applications and liquidity mining schemes to fall under this category.

Example proposals that would fall under this category:

We are interested in making the proposal flow straightforward and offer to be the go-to committee for DeFi proposals. We look forward to collaborating closely with the 2nd DeFi committee to share a similar assessment framework & offer proposers a similar experience.

So far, most proposals do not differ fundamentally as they include liquidity mining, builder and ecosystem incentives. Hence, we could split proposals in the following 3 simple ways

  • Alphabetical: (A-M, N-Z; tbd)
  • In alternating order (A, B, A, B; tbd)
  • Small-size vs. large-size ( A < 450K Op < B; tbd)

In the future, we look forward to more active proposal guidance to achieve lasting Op ecosystem growth. This could benefit from committee expertise in different DeFi areas. tbd

  • Committee 1: Derivatives, Trading, Liquidity & Asset management
  • Committee 2: Lending, Stables, DEXs, Aggreagtors

Proposed number of committee members

5

Who will be the committee lead?

@OPUser:- Bio

    Summary - 449 comments / 4 days read time on

    I from a Tradi-fi background, started as a developer and now working as a PM mostly focusing on consulting and slowly moving into web3 space, mostly active on this gov forum and our gov-general channel on our Discord.

    Apart from this, I have contributed to two projects on Optimism, I was alpha tester of Lyra platform and the second project is Layer2DAO where I participated at the initial step of their Phase 0 proposal.

    Finally, I like my cute bunny pfp. Optimistic Bunnies are the very first NFT project on the OP chain and I do hangout in their discord from time to time.

Who will be the committee reviewers?(please link to bio and explain their involvement in Optimism to date)

  1. @Joxes:- Bio

      Summary - 69 comments made / 1 day read time on governance forum

      My background is engineering and materials but interested in cryptocurrencies and Ethereum in 2017 since hyperinflation came to my country. Since then I have been active in various blockchain communities as a user.

      Since 2021 Iā€™m part of DeFi LATAM (first as a member, then as part of the team), a top latam community focused on Web3 for education and adoption purposes, providing a platform with high quality content and research on blockchains, DeFi, scalability. Since months ago I have also led a new community called ā€˜L2 en EspaƱolā€™ to study and educate everything that has to do with Ethereum scaling solutions. I also help the initiative called Optimism EspaƱol to push the adoption of this solution to the region and I have a role as part of the Polygon Advocate Program.

      Last but not least as delegate Iā€™m not working alone, we are currently exploring the sum of contributors in shared representation of the DeFi LATAM community and others in the region alongside honorable contributors with dedicated channels, governance calls and more, so you can also see how we work collectively for decision-making and participation in different instances.

  1. @MinimalGravitas:- Bio

      Summary - 103 comments made / 1 day read time on governance forum

      I come from a background in physics but have been interested and active in the Ethereum ecosystem since 2016, though as a user not a builder.

      Iā€™ve been an active participant in the online Ethereum community r/ethfinance, which gave me the confidence in my knowledge of the space to become a delegate for Optimism.

      Over the first season, each of us in this committee have been among the most active participants in the governance discussions and proposal reviews. This is shown in the forum data, for example with two of us having reached Trust Level 3 (Regular badge on Optimism Collective).

  1. @Dhannte:- Bio

      Summary - 37 comments made / 12h read time on governance forum

      I come from game design and architecture (construction and real state) with the pandemics I switched into crypto and since then I coordinate EthernautDAO where we bridge web2 senior devs to web3. My background in game design helps me understand tokenomics, usability, design, narrative and some code while construction taught me how to coordinate big projects with lots of people.

      Iā€™ve been an active user and preacher of Optimism as it is the only L2 using ETH as their gas token which is in my opinion the best way to provide value to the mainnet. We deployed all our smart contracts from EthernautDAO in optimism since we started and I have good relations with some of their devs (they are all good mentors).

  1. @ScaleWeb3: Bio

      Summary - 56 comments / 19h read time on gov forum

      I, Julian Richter, have an academic background in finance & entrepreneurship. After studies & working for tech startups such as Hellofresh & Flixbus, I founded my first company and went full-time into Web3 in early 2018. Since then, Iā€™ve led partnerships for NEM blockchain in the EU (2018), engaged in blockchain consulting (2019), launched blockchain-comparison.com (2020) to make crypto more accessible.

      In 2022, Iā€™ve founded ScaleWeb3 to elevate the top crypto ecosystems (l1s, l2s, Web3 & DeFi projects) more hands-on with ecosystem building, governance, product input - leveraging existing crypto & DeFi knowhow and quality distribution channels - and building new apps & tools for users, investors & projects.

      Optimism is a top l2, weā€™ve been very active throughout the first governance phase, joined the workshop in Paris, and we look forward to support the ecosystem a lot more going forward.

Couple of proposals and ideas (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ) were submitted by the committee members during season 1, many of them received good feedback from the community and few of our recommendations were accepted by the Optimism Foundation which we really appreciate.

Please provide the voting participation rate and % of votable supply held by each committee member:

  1. @OPUser -Boardroom profile - 100% participation - 0.53% of votable supply

  2. @Joxes - Boardroom Profile- 100% participation - 0.60% of votable supply

  3. @MinimalGravitas - Boardroom Profile 100% participation - 0.62% of votable supply

  4. @Dhannte - Boardroom Profile 100% participation - 0.41% of votable supply

  5. @ScaleWeb3 - Delegate Thread feedback on all 4 voting cycles, voting participation only in first 2 cycles due to l1 multisig issue some delegates experienced. Redelegate scaleweb3.eth ā†’ superdelegate.eth! - 0.3% of votable supply still in scaleweb3.eth

Please disclose any and all conflicts of interest committee members may have:

  1. @MinimalGravitas - RocketPool Node Operator, abstained from RocketPool proposal (both discussion and voting), will abstain from any future proposals regarding RocketPool.

  2. @Dhannte - EthernautDAO, Iā€™ll abstain from any future proposals regarding EthernautDAO

  3. @ScaleWeb3 - Weā€™ll abstain from any future proposals regarding ScaleWeb3.

If additional conflicts of interest occur in the future we will abstain from votes and declare the potential bias in any relevant discussion.

Please link to the voting history (with rationale) of each committee member:

Voting history can be verified for each committee member on Snapshot and voting rationale is mentioned in either their communication thread or on cycle closing thread.

Itā€™s important to note that our voting power is relatively low, which far from being a disadvantage represents a valuable attribute as genuine contributing members of governance while maintaining neutrality or de-risk of centralization of opinion or influence. In our position, our expected performance and commitment are backed by our past actions and activity and our commitment to continue over time.

Please outline the decision making framework the committee plans to use to make recommendations:

Our decision-making framework can be seen in the following table. Some of the categories slightly overlap and decisions will likely never be fully quantifiable but we look forward to utilising the framework, making fair recommendations and offering other delegates good insights when making their own decision whether to follow our recommendation or not

1600Ɨ807 327 KB

Any other points not specified in the table that are circumstantially relevant will be duly addressed and noted in the report. This will depend on the particularities of each proposal.

As the committee accompanies proposers through the proposal process, proposal quality should rise. It should be clear when proposals are ready to get committee approval. Nonetheless, projects decide whenever they wish to move from ā€œDraftā€ to ā€œReadyā€ and we offer our recommendation in the forum.

Please describe how the committee will operate:

The committee will pick one lead reviewer per proposal but all committee members should engage in each proposal. The committee will collaboratively assess the proposal and give one recommendation in the forum. Currently planned workflow, communication channels and expected outputs are detailed below:

  1. For us, open communication and transparency is important as can be seen in our season 1 voting. Our committee will continue this approach as we believe that itā€™s one of the important pillars of sustainable DAO Gov.
  2. We will have one ā€œprivateā€ Discord channel for this committee to discuss internal processes, organisational improvements and launch of new proposal reviews.
  3. Our committee will offer proposers a point of contact and open a Discord channel on the Optimism Discord Server that is readable for other users to give continuous feedback to the team responsible for the proposal.
  4. Once the project wants to go from ā€œDraftā€ to ā€œReadyā€, we will offer an official feedback within 3 days and share our formal recommendation according to our framework on the gov forum below the proposal and in our Committee thread.
  5. At the end of each cycle, we will share our learning on the gov forum and at the end of season 2, we will share a report which will include season feedback and recommendation for next season.

This offers extensive support to proposers, insights to committee-proposal discussions as well as a public track record for accountability of committee and members.

18 Likes
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The voting power of this committee is 2.46%, congratulations very good team!

9 Likes
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Excellent Team and nice proposal! Thank you all for your dedication and commitment.

(Random side note) - OPUser has such a strong presence in this community and on this forum, I thought he was an admin, moderator or OP Foundation member. lol. Well done sir.

6 Likes
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Excited to work with the most active, contributing members in the OP ecosystem - if not all crypto! :slight_smile:

7 Likes
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truly a powerhouse team ā€“ but why defi and not one of the many other categories, considering there have already been another two committees formed for defi?

I donā€™t see any particular defi expertise represented here but many other kinds of knowhow and ways to contribute.

2 Likes
6

I think weā€™re all anticipating DeFi proposals to continue to be the largest category and therefore the most time consuming committee. It surely makes sense for the group of delegates with the highest demonstrated participation in assessment of proposals for season one to take responsibility for a largest section of proposals for season two!

The other way to look at that is that we donā€™t have as many potential conflicts of interest as may arise from teams with members that work for their own DeFi projects. If you consider assessing competitors proposals as well as dApps that interact with a delegatesā€™ projects as possible conflicts of interest then I would have thought for the most credible neutrality we want delegates who are experienced DeFi users more than those who work in DeFi themselves.

4 Likes
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the stated purpose of organizing committees in the first place is to ensure that the most qualified, specialized people look at the proposals that best suit their expertise. of course that would entail people who currently work on defi protocols, as they are the ones who would best assess the likely value-add an incoming protocol would offer in terms of growth, composability, etc. questions of conflicts of interests simply are not relevant in this case; they are addressed by other means.

the fact that this group has chosen defi as its committee not because of its expertise but because itā€™s ā€˜time-consumingā€™ is telling. in fact, because specialized groups will now be paid for their time, the question of whatā€™s more time-consuming is less relevant now

as an aside, one thing iā€™ve encountered a lot in daos is the conflation of activity and value contribution. itā€™s true that you want to ensure that responsibility falls to the most engaged people. i would argue that activity is necessary but not sufficient to be an effective delegate. lucky for us, the people in this group are committed delegates and clearly mean the best for the Collective.

I recommend refocusing on what this group has shown expertise at and considering another specialization. judging from your backgrounds i could see, for instance, metagovernance tools or broader community-oriented public goods, such as data providers or engagement programs, some of which I know firsthand are planning to submit for proposals.

1 Like
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I donā€™t agree so much and many debates in this very governance has shown that there is conflict of interest. Even some members have been able to separate it well.

9

could you cite some examples?

10

in any case there simply isnā€™t an argument for taking on defi on the presumption that anyone with work expertise is too conflicted to weigh in. that logic would exclude key stakeholders from the entire delegation, not just committees, and it would leave committees bereft of expertise

11

At the time we started working on forming a committee the compensation was going to be equal across the three suggested areas.

I understand that you are part of a different group trying to form a DeFi committee but I donā€™t appreciate you trying to imply weā€™ve decided to focus on this area because of potential financial reward.

3 Likes
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to be clear, iā€™ve said nothing of the sort. my point is that the argument that active people ought to take on the most ā€˜time-consumingā€™ vertical is made irrelevant by the cash contributions, which would incentivize any committed delegate to spend the necessary time

13

On this we agree, but it is not right to say that they do not infer. It is also wrong to say who is qualified or not.
In my opinion the committee has to be as neutral as possible and transparent.

1 Like
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you canā€™t assign people to the best committees without making a judgment about expertise and qualifications. of course you can make claims about qualifications. thatā€™s why the template requires people to outline their backgrounds - to substantiate their claims of relevant expertise

again, the point here is that from where i stand there is no clear reason why this group needs to be the defi committee and not one of the other committees if its primary claim of qualification is that it currently spends a lot of time in governance. thatā€™s not what these committees are for.

1 Like
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Our focus in the past 2-3 years has been 90% on DeFi incl. research, proposals, personal investment strategies from optimizing for different launch options, to liquidity mining, leveraged stablecoin farming, lending pool optimization or the future of DEX-DEX aggregator (AMM-Clob-limit orderā€¦).

From DeFi, Tooling, and NFTs - we vouched for Defi as we could add most value.
Iā€™m positive this committee will offer a great mix of expertise, neutrality & committment.

Fair initial question about qualification (which seems to turn into a full book now; pls dm for more :smile:)

3 Likes
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that seems well and good, but your individual background to me speaks more to community building and evangelization rather than actual original building and strategizing around defi. of course thereā€™s also the rest of the group to account for as well.

if this groupā€™s collective identity is that it is the set of the ā€˜most engagedā€™ governance participants, there are clearly other better verticals. all of these groups are important.

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as an example, take a look at the tooling committee proposal just now. theirs is the kind of relevant background you need for a committee to be effective. these are people whose protocols likely touch some proposals coming through their committee. and thatā€™s very much a good thing.

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i looked through the committee members and i see a few who do not have backgrounds in much defi work? i also see @Joxes is in two committees already which seems like a bad idea

19

Iā€™m inclined to agree with Jack in that it would make sense to have some folks on the committee with experience building or managing protocols in DeFi. Even doing proactive outreach to the major DeFi protocols on Optimism and soliciting their involvement could potentially make sense.

1 Like
20

I see you have shared this on both proposals, could you please explain why this is a bad idea ? Feel free to answer in any thread.