iâm more than sympathetic to the desire not to concentrate power
i think itâs important to understand what the implication of what youâre outlining is, though, because whatever these protocols are getting, itâs not the same thing as what i have when i do get to vote. either that or my OP is not what i thought it was.
But youâre not obtaining your tokens through a governance proposal, thatâs the difference. Every proposal is conditional based on what they are actually proposing, thatâs the nature of a DAO. I appreciate the discussion 
the method of obtaining the tokens seems completely arbitrary? If Optimism wants to control how grant tokens are delegated, this is something that would need to be solved at the token/contract level - right?
its underhanded to want to use tokens that have been freely granted to a project, to participate in governance? While I can see the potential for a negative impact from grants being delegated, would you feel the same way if teams delegated to existing delegates?
How will new delegates be introduced - at size - if grant tokens are not delegated?
Letâs say a team does this, would you exclude them from future grants? While it is true, proposals have not addressed delegation - neither has OP foundation or delegates themselves prior to this, recent discussion which is coming after funds have already been distributed.
it is ridiculous to accuse some one of âlyingâ for using a token for its intended purpose, even if those tokens are also being used for other purposes! $OP is a governance token, simple as. Any holder should, and ideally WILL, be participating in governance.
My suggestion would not be to accuse an existing partner - who is making a good faith effort to discuss this issue, and seems well aware of the thorny nature of this - but rather to develop a standard that can be applied proactively, in the future:
Any new grant must articulate plans for delegation.
Again, the proposal had no mention of delegation. And yes I would not in favor of them delegating 9M tokens, since their proposal never indicated directly or indirectly they were going to use the tokens for delegation.
How will new delegates be introduced? same as it happened the first time around with the added benefit that protocols CAN select to have a reserve for such case, they just need to be upfront about it.
Which is why some of us have created this nice thread that now includes updates to the template Update of the PHASE 1 protocol nomination template
As for the accusation of lying, I will paste the merriam-webster link and let you take your own conclusions of a very straightforward definition. Lie Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Note verb (2), second entry: to create a false or misleading impression
Ultimately i think the responsibility rests on the Collective to recognize that it has limited means to enforce limits on delegation. The most it can do is restrict further grants to these organizations, and frankly it should begin to budget the diffusion of voting rights to grantees into its decision-making.
As an asideâitâs not necessarily a bad thing; member protocols are legitimate stakeholders! Though concentration in general can naturally be problematic for its own reasons, and of course thatâs why we have a bicameral governance structure in the first place, to mitigate many of these concerns.
Letâs say that Perp said, you know what, a governance token is just that â it is our right to exercise our governance power, and it was our presumption that we get it (not a lie if you take the right as given; i.e., it was not a thing you felt you had to disclose). They get 9mm votes in a governance structure where the average passing proposal gets 15-20mm yes votes.
What do you do now? Do you fork Optimism? Blacklist the wallet? Print more tokens? Who do you deal them to? If you do any of these things, I now know that my governance token isnât quite that, that there are conditions. And that has long-lasting effects.
Please everyone stay in topic, this is about projects giving an unstipulated use for received tokens (acording to a Token Plan/Distribution proposed by themselves), in this case, self-delegation and obviously talking about possible negative impact.
Is OP a governance token? Yes.
Can protocols or any organization participate? Yes.
Can a protocol take OP tokens and give it a different use than thoses detailed in its proposal (by example, arbitrarily a self delegation >this topic<? No. Obviously anyone can say that they have ownership (objectively) but they shouldnât, and weâre here to discuss and point this out.
Suggestions to minimize this risk? itâs welcome, properly in a new thread.
If youâre directing this at me and others, we have been sharing our concerns precisely because you have no grounds on which to pronounce conclusively that protocols canât self delegate tokens.
Nowhere in the rules prior to these applications or disbursements was there any mention of concerns regarding self-delegation. Governance hasnât definitively ruled one way or another. OPUser raised the legitimate issue a few days ago, a handful of people stated that protocols shouldnât self-delegate, and now a handful of people are disagreeing. When if not now would we come to consensus on this?
You can personally believe that people shouldnât make claims to ownership, but you certainly canât close the book on the matter or dismiss our concerns as not relevant to the issue.
Because the assumption is that projects use their tokens for precisely what they said they would (if they donât mention governance then we assume they will not use it for governance).
Thereâs no basis for this assumption, though.
I read and catalogued every single governance proposal through cycle 2 of phase 1. In my recollection there wasnât a single request to use tokens for governance.
So either this assumption wasnât shared by any of the applicants, or projects are sending a strong signal regarding the value of governance power on Optimism.
Thatâs not completely true, see the first draft of Marker Proposal where they pointed (see date also):
As the incentives to scale Ethereum are aligned between MakerDAO and Optimism, itâll be a great deal for both communities to save a % (up to Optimismâs governance) so that the Maker governance gains voting power in the governance decisions.
And this topic was duly discussed (authors removed it after an initial feedback but perfectly if it had been maintained and approved by others there would be no problem).
Hey there, appreciate the context. Hope you can understand how I would have missed this, as it was no longer in the proposal.
Their assumptions werenât really clear here.
I actually read this as them asking OP to delegate some of their held tokens (i.e., not granted tokens in addition to their own) to Maker as a good steward of governance. This doesnât presume that they wouldnât have self-delegated their granted OP. If they were in fact asking to self-delegate, that would be the one case where someone had considered the possibility that the granted OP had conditions attached.
They respectfully backed off entirely when you individually made the claim above â which, Iâd add, would appear to make this the first mention of such a standard. Their response suggests to me that these standards are conditional (i.e., specifically defined by each community) and not universally given.
Although Iâd certainly invite @Facundo to weigh in here.
And this topic was duly discussed (authors removed it after an initial feedback but perfectly if it had been maintained and approved by others there would be no problem).
Sorry, what do you mean by âif it had been maintained and approved by othersâ?
Yes, this was part of this section âHow will the OP tokens be distributed?â.
Yes, each community gives its point of view, but again, the first step to be correctly executed is to announce it in the proposal as part of the token plan.
Yes I mean, if this draft would have been kept as it is and any member of the community with 0.005% of the voting power would approve its pass to ready.
Ok donât hate me but your position is inconsistent then.
In that post above, you say that itâs impossible for Maker to ask for governance rights because then others would do the same, and this distribution (again, your words, nobody else has said this) is solely to incentivize layer and protocol use. You tell Maker theyâre not even allowed to ask.
And now here youâre saying if only theyâd asked for it and gotten approval itâd be fine?
This strikes me as unilateral rule making.
Sorry, not sure where I (Joxes) said that.
on the contrary:
Before you ask, Iâm obviously concerned that the plans will not be carried out as proposed.
An then the reasons given later by others I agree with them (about this case particulary).
Apologies, on phone, but this says it pretty clearly
OP only for funding usage. This not for funding usage. We canât approve this because then other people would ask for it.
No mention of this being an actual possibility, more stating authoritatively that it just canât be done. âWe canât have protocols asking for governance power.â
I think you misrepresented the standards to Maker. Iâm sure that wasnât your intention, but your position was inconsistent with what youâre saying now.
This sort of confusion is why these standards needed to be spelled out in advance if people now are going to presume they exist.
I see now, this is from @Defi_LATAM_axlvaz (we as a community encourage our members and collaborators to participate, there may be different points of view)
Crap. Apologies. I just read the prefixes.
In any case, this was a unilateral misreprentation, and the overall point holds; calls to prevent granted tokens from exercising governance rights have been arbitrary and not rooted in any universally held assumptions or precedent
After reading the entire thread on this topic, I will try to answer some questions and points of view:
1- First of all I clarify that I am not a delegate, nor a member of the Optimism Foundation. I am an active member of this government and of the DefiLatam and OptimismESP community (no - official).
2- As any member of this government as a participant in it, I give my personal opinion on the proposals of PHASE 0,1 âŚ
Any other member may agree or disagree with my opinions, which does not mean that mine are law. Any member can give his opinion.
3- The proposals receive the feedback from the delegates and the government members. So anyone can defend any particular point, the final decision is always taken in Snapshot.
Having clarified these points, I will go to what we are discussing:
1- In the case we have been discussing, to my understanding it is simple, the protocol receives 9M OP voted by this government with the promise it made during its postulation, says one thing (proposal) and does another. I think at this point almost all of us agree that it is not ethically correct.
This particular case may lead to all winning proposals doing the same thing with OP tokens, this ends up hurting governance and the ecosystem. This may even incite protocols to make of the tokens whatever they want and not respect their original plan published in this governance.
2- Can protocols include in their proposals to allocate a % of the OP tokens received to governance? Yes they can and surely more protocols will do so. Now, from my point of view it is not correct because if they want to have participation in the governance they should acquire tokens in the secondary market and delegate them to a candidate of theirs.
If it is implicit to assign part of the PO token to their delegate and the reasons are approved by the governance in voting it seems to me appropriate since that is what governance is for, just as you can not approve and reject any proposal that has this kind of objective.
3- The protocols can have delegates in the governance, even there are already delegates that represent some protocols. I donât see it bad at all, they can even ask to be delegated or have their treasuries buy OP tokens and delegate the taken ones to them to have more participation in this governance.
In conclusion, these are my opinions and I will always want the best for this governance. In the future I may change my mind if there is a better proposal regarding self-delegated tokens received by the governance. At the end of the day these proposals may be approved in a vote, but that is a decision made by the collective as a whole.
