I scatter my opinions everywhere but will try to maintain an ongoing record in a single place.
Current votes are on the Grants Council, the Protocol Delegation Program, and Badgeholder votes.
I voted for the grants council and the protocol delegation program – I’ve been an advocate for movement in these directions, and these are really thoroughly thought out. Feedback sessions on these have been fun and constructive.
Re badgeholders: everyone on the list is fantastic; choosing between them seems futile. The only real alternative I could imagine to voting for the individuals I nominated, which I’m doing, is voting for everyone, which felt unhelpful.
The one exception I’m granting myself is voting for Juanbug because he went an extra step and asked for my support. We also go back – he’d been following veDao and volunteered to be on our multisig (didn’t happen), and that’s always stuck with me as an example of enthusiastic, proactive citizenship.
10 Likes
Going to go back and outline previous votes in anticipation of a self-nomination for grants council.
~ Aug 1 votes:
Proposals in this cycle (4) were, as in previous cycles, heavily weighted toward liquidity mining, which at that time seemed well timed to bring a wave of users from other ecosystems. In mid July, activity on OP started to heat up, and the thinking was that good liq mining would have gotten us the ‘Rush’ moment people missed in early June. It was in the aftermath of this (and some of the more egregious proposals) that I started to take a harder line on liquidity mining and suggesting alternatives.
Byte Mason - For. Background aside (and anyone who’s followed knows I have some personal experience in what occurred with Solidly), they laid out a decent case for bringing on Fantom users. Standards for grants at the time were abysmally low, and they more than cleared them. In hindsight, I’d have worked with them to refine the ask, but turning them down was a miss.
xToken Terminal et al - Abstained despite arguing against its passing. I can’t remember why I did instead of voting against.
Beefy Finance - For. I reasoned it was a massive player that promised to add utility to other projects and bring people. It has.
dHedge - Voted For, though the revised proposal later on was stronger.
Rocket Pool - For. The calculus was simple: liquid staking was guaranteed use, and better rates would migrate these core, sticky Eth derivatives over.
Committee Votes
Voted for all committees except DeFi Committee C.
2 Likes
Cycle 6
Reasoning behind DeFi proposals can be found here: DeFi Shadow Committee: Season 2 Recommendations
Tarot For.
Kromatika Against.
Interest Protocol For.
dHEDGE For.
Revert For.
Others.
Across Protocol For.
OptiChads For, though this was a tough one. I was deeply skeptical about the likely success of the approach, but it seemed like a fine enough proposal to get some data on.
Others:
Socket, Abstain. Just didn’t get enough information on it.
Bankless, Abstain. This seemed like something better for an RFP but I wasn’t read up enough.
Otterspace. Against based on recommendations.
Cycle 7
Reasoning behind DeFi is here.
Yearn Against.
Overnight.fi For.
Overtime For.
Tarot For.
Alchemix Abstain.
Sushi Abstain.
Abracadabra Against.
Other
Li.Fi For, following rec.
Dope Wars Abstain. Couldn’t get the info i needed in time.
Karma - For, following rec.
Otterspace - Abstain, couldn’t get to DD in time, probably could have just moved to follow recommendation.
Cycle 8
Alchemix - Got improved more or less up to standard.
Arrakis - This lacked the necessary detail.
Curve - This, on the other hand, had footnotes.
Symphony - Against. I laid out my thinking pretty exhaustively in the proposal thread.
Homora - Against. This was a poorly done proposal with limited likely positive impact.
PoolTogether - For. You pour gas on the things that are working.
Angle - Abstain. It didn’t seem great, but I couldn’t articulate a good reason to say no, when the core primitive is so useful. I think I could have stuck my neck out more on this one.
InsureDAO - Against. Let’s see the model work first.
Overnight - For, following logic from earlier.
Socket - For, following recs.
EthernautDAO - For. @Gonna.eth even offered to return unused OP!
Tally Ho - Against, following rec.
Messari - Abstain, following rec.
Ambire Against. By this point I’d gotten skeptical of wallet solutions without a clear view of winners.
Mochi For, following rec.
Velodrome - For. I’m proud of the work our team put into this one.
4 Likes
special cycle 9b
protocol delegation
I voted revert, qidao, thales, beethoven, polynomial, kwenta, lyra, ens, dhedge, agora, and li fi because they’d all shown promise in engaging governance. For the rest, I either didn’t know them well or hadn’t seen any meaningful engagement in governance up to now.
grant council, growth experiments
i voted gfx labs, matt, michael, doug, fig, solarcurve, and katie. these are individuals and orgs i think would be thoughtful in moving governance from a reactive to a proactive positioning when it comes to making growth grants. we’ve correctly taken a few lumps for underperforming on a number of these grants, and i’m glad these ppl were in the running to shape things up
grant council, builder grants
voted for dhannte, krzysztof, juanbug, and myself. these are the people in the running who i think would have the subject matter expertise and good judgment to foster the kind of building that will set Optimism apart from other ecosystems and move it toward its broader, loftier goals
excited for this next step.
3 Likes
voted for bedrock and code of conduct enforcement
1 Like
Protocol Delegation Renewal
Summary: This poll seeks to renew the OP Foundation program of delegating voting power to the most gas-intensive protocols on Optimism.
Recommendation: Vote Yes. This is something I’ve been a pretty strong advocate for throughout - we want a broader set of voices in governance, and the people behind the protocols have some of the best perspective on how best to direct resources to meet Optimism’s goals. Delegating them tokens is only one piece of this; for the experiment to work we also must increase the impact of voting on outcomes for OP>
Intent #1 Budget Proposal
Summary: This poll seeks to affirm governance support for Intent 1: Progress Towards Technical Decentralization and a 1,000,000 OP budget for grants related to it.
Recommendation: Vote Yes. This is part of Optimism’s key reason for being and competitive advantage. We should absolutely get buyin around this.
Intent #2 Council Budget Proposal
Summary: This proposal seeks to renew the Grants Council. It largely expands on the previous Season’s budget and scope, with some additional operational costs that are required for ongoing work.
Recommendation: Vote Yes. I was on Grant Council and will likely run again for next season. I’ve seen how voting and research have worked both pre grant council and in last season, and this budget would help us capitalize on the work we’ve been doing for the Collective.
Intent #3 Budget Proposal
Summary: This poll seeks to affirm governance support for Intent 3: Spread Awareness of the Optimistic Vision and a 1,000,000 OP budget for grants related to it.
Recommendation: Vote Abstain. I just think this suffered from a lack of planning or scoping. There’s going to have ot be a lot of work to prevent useless grant application, and now as far as I can tell, it’ll be up to governance to determine what works best for us. It’ll be an uphill climb.
I registered onchain as “For” but am unable to change the vote. In any case, this is one where we’ll have to be careful to make sure we’re funding the right stuff.
Intent #4 Budget Proposal
Recommendation: Vote For
Not sure what’s going to get funded as a result of this, but it’s worth the experiment for sure.
