L2BEAT - Delegate Communication Thread

Hey!

In the previous voting seasons, we were one of the most prominent governance delegators, engaging in various discussions and leading Tooling Governance Committee.

Today I would like to announce that we are shifting gears with the onboarding of Krzysztof Urbanski. Krzysztof has been assisting me during the last few weeks and, from now will replace me in the role of L2BEAT Governance Delegate.

Personally, I am very excited about this change because @kaereste is a perfect candidate for this role, with extensive knowledge of both the crypto landscape and various grant programs.

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First of all, I’m super excited to be involved in the Optimism Governance as L2BEAT Governance Delegate. Some of you already know me, those that don’t might want to check my official commitment.

I’m happy that as L2BEAT we are able to dedicate time and resources to make sure that our involvement in governance activities is more meaningful. I hope that we will be able to help ensure that the core values that brought us here will be reflected in future discussions and decision-making.

In the near future, we will be publishing our policy on what exactly we want to achieve as governance participants. I will be also reporting regularly on our involvement in public debates and governance processes.

If anybody is interested in talking to me, my DMs are open here, on discord (krst#6650), on telegram (@kaereste) or on Twitter (@kaereste).

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We have recently voted in three governance issues, below we present what have we voted for with some explanation.

https://snapshot.org/#/opcollective.eth/proposal/0x37fc8a6ae60cff2e4e72fe9c0567f739bb9a78262c2ada236892fcbc7af2c32d

Special Voting Cycle #9a: Grants Council

We have voted for this proposal. Being involved in the grants processes in previous seasons, we see a big need for a better structured processes both for grantees and for delegates. We do have some comments that we shared during the Delegate Call (and we summarize them below), yet we still think that this proposal should be accepted and the details may be clarified during the upcoming Season 3.

Below are some of our comments on the proposal:

  • the budget for Growth Experiments Sub-Committee is ~5x bigger than the budget for Builders Sub-Committee. Even though we understand the rationale behind this, and we agree that having more users in the ecosystem benefits the builders in the first place, still we think in the future rounds it should be more balanced
  • we would like to see a broader OP strategy towards grants distribution programme so that most of the grants funded act together for the growth of OP ecosystem. In previous seasons we saw many proposals that were made by great teams and made a lot of sense individually, but we were not sure how they composed altogether into something bigger. That’s not necessarily bad, and it was probably the best way to bootstrap the whole programme, but as we already have some insights and experience, we might want to think about the bigger picture already. We’re seeing a good start with the planned RFPs created by sub-committees.
  • with the grants council limited to very few people and no token holders voting we are afraid that there might be less public discussion regarding the proposals and their goals, we feel that sub committees should be encouraged to spark public discussion and to gather feedback from the community regarding the proposals (for example by organising AMA sessions with proposers, or public calls where each proposal is being discussed). We will be encouraging for such activities anyway.
  • we feel that additional resources should be allocated towards preparing better framework for grants applications and monitoring already funded projects’ progress. We should have more resources towards how potential grantees should prepare their proposals and report on them later on.

However, we think that the Grants Council is a good step forward towards achieving better grants distribution, thus we are voting for this proposal and we will plan to be involved in the future works, we are also planning to self-nominate ourselves to the grants council…

https://snapshot.org/#/opcollective.eth/proposal/0x3a1f9a30c47d6060f3b732404f3a6b2ceba3da07be0505ef0f93b6dab7fa3185

Special Voting Cycle #9a: Protocol Delegation Program

We have voted for. We agree with the goals of the proposal and the proposed approach. We believe that having protocols with a lot of stake in Optimism more involved in the governance processes can only benefit those processes. We do share some concerns (that were already stated in the thread and during the Delegate Call by others) regarding the bonus for OP native protocols and those that already have an active delegate. But the reasoning behind those two bonues seems fair and it’s worth trying it out in the field and potentially adapting those parameters after first season. We’re looking forward to seeing PDP in action!

and finally:

https://snapshot.org/#/opcollective.eth/proposal/0x22d4c3ab56832de58c1774d1a0aeb61ba6dde8b16c0f8382f85d8935f3ee1f11

Badgeholder Nomination Voting

We have voted for Katie Garcia, Linda Xie, Bobbay, Lefteris, Polynya, Scott Moore and Joxes from DeFi LATAM. We have very good experience working with them previously and we are confident that they will make perfect Citizen House members.

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To promote transparency and communication as delegates, we’ll be regularly updating the below thread with our actions in the governance of Optimism. Our updates will include how we voted for different proposals and our rationale.

Update #1

Voting

Intent 2 Budget Proposal 2 - Voted Abstain

As L2Beat, we had to abstain from voting as @kaereste is a member of the Grants Council.

L2Beat’s Optimism Office Hours

To further our communication with our constituents and any interested party in the community, we’ll be hosting recurring Office Hours on Google Meets.

The office hours will be held every Teusday at 3pm UTC/ 11am EST

During the Office Hours, you will be able to reach L2Beat’s governance team, which consists of kaereste (Krzysztof Urbanski) and Sinkas (Anastassis Oikonomopoulos) and discuss our activity as delegates.

The purpose of the office hours is to gather feedback from the people who have delegated to us, answer any questions in regards to our voting activities and rationale, and collect input on things you’d like us engage in discussions about.

You can add the L2Beat Governance Calendar in your Google Calendar to find the respective Google Meets links for every call and to easily keep track of the Office Hours, as well as other important calls and events (e.g. voting deadlines) relevant to Optimism that L2Beat governance team will be attending or hosting.

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Update #2

Voting

Anticapture Commission - Voted FOR

After having our concerns addressed, we voted in favour of the proposal and we committed ourselves to actively participate in the commission given it’s approved.

Code of Conduct Violation - Voted AGAINST

Given we did not have enough information to make a fully informed decision, we decided to vote against.

Code of Conduct Council Budget - Voted FOR

Even though we are a bit sceptical about the effectiveness of the proposes code of conduct council, the recent CoC violation vote (see above) made it clear that mobilising the entire DAO for such cases isn’t a sustainable approach. Given that, we decided to vote in favour of the CoC Council.

We also voted in the subsequent CoC Council’s member elections

Security Council Vote #1 - Voted FOR

The implementation of a security council is one of the most important steps towards decentralisation and therefore we voted in favour of its establishment.

Developer Advisory Board - Voted FOR

We voted in favour of the proposal as we’re fully onboard with the idea of having a board with the necessary knowledge to assess proposals for their technical merit and assist delegates with their decision-making in the process.

Ratify Developer Advisory Board Members

Since we voted in favour of the developer advisory board, we also voted to ratify its initial members who were appointed by the Foundation. Although we’re not familiar with all the appointed members, we have confidence in the Foundation’s choices.

Grants Council Operating Budget - Voted FOR

We believe the grants council proved to be effective in Season 4 and we are in favour of its continuation. We subsequently voted to elect reviewers for each of the 3 categories.

Season 5 Intent Budgets - Voted FOR

After seeing the reasoning behind S5 intent budgets and how the data from the respective S4 budgets were taken into account when determining the amounts, we voted in favour of the proposal.

Ratification of Law of Chains - Voted FOR

After participating in the discussion around Law of Chains and having our questions addressed, we voted in favour of ratifying it.

Chain Delegation Program - Voted FOR

Although we have some reservations about chains being delegated tokens rather than obtaining them directly, we believe this program to be a good step forward to getting these chains involved in governance. As a result of this thinking, we voted in favour of the program.

Ratify Security Council Members - Voted ABSTAIN

L2BEAT is appointed as a member of the security council for the second cohort and as such we had to abstain from voting.

Upgrade #2: Canyon Protocol Upgrade - Voted FOR

We voted in favour of the proposed upgrade since we didn’t see anything wrong with it.

Discussions

Law of Chains v0.1: Full Draft

When the Foundation introduced the first draft of the Law of Chains, we had some questions/concerns regarding some points that were rather vague. We raised those points in the forums and also invited members of the collective to our office hours to discuss the Law of Chains further.

Welcoming Base to Optimism Governance

Onboarding Base is a great step towards the vision of the Superchain and it was definitely exciting to see the announcement. However, we also understand that since it’s the first chain to be onboarded, we must be careful about the precedent we set. To that end, we raised some questions under the original post.

How Base will participate in Optimism Governance

Extending on the topic ahead, we also directed some questions to Base about how they’ll participate in Optimism’s governance.

Anticapture Commission

We participated in the discussion around the Anticapture Commission after it was first introduced and before the relevant voting cycle.

Collecting RFP Input

In Season 5, top 100 delegates will be able to submit RFPs which anyone can apply to. As L2BEAT, we have some ideas in terms of things we’d like to see accomplished, but we’d like to involve the community as much as possible. To that end, we’ve invited the community to our office hours (every Tuesday at 4pm UTC / 11am EST - call link) to collect input on the RFPs

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Season 5 Mission Request Voting Rationale

The below response reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking and ideation of the two.

Contrary to Season 4 Mission Proposals, a Mission Request passing the vote doesn’t immediately equal the proposer ‘receiving’ the grant requested. Instead, it opens up the opportunity for anyone to apply to fulfill the Mission, and it’s up to the Grants Council to decide which application will receive the grant.

With that structure in mind, our approach to voting was different than it was in Season 4 - instead of going through the process of which Mission Request to vote for, we went through the process of elimination, deciding which mission requests (if any) we don’t want to vote for. Working through the 4 different Intents, we asked ourselves the 3 following questions:

  1. Is there a Mission Request we do not want to fund for some specific ****reason?

2a) Is the Intent’s budget enough to fund all the Mission Requests under it?

2b) If not, which Mission Request will we not vote for?

Intent #1

The available budget for Intent 1 is 1,330,000 OP while the total amount requested through the 6 mission requests is 1,050,000 OP. With enough budget to go around, and no Mission Request with which we don’t feel comfortable supporting, we’ll be voting in favor of all 6 of them.

Intent #2

The available budget for Intent 2 is 4,000,000 OP while the total amount requested through the 14 Mission Requests is ~5,050,000 OP. Since the budget is not enough to fund all Mission Requests, we had to think through which ones we will not vote for.

For intent #2, we decided to not vote for the following missions:

Facilitate Capital Migration to the Superchain

Layerwide New Project Support

Additional Revenue Sources to fund RPGF Rounds

OptiHack

Intent #3

The available budget for Intent 3 is 1,330,000 OP while the total amount requested through the 13 Mission Requests is ~2,326,000 OP. Since the budget is not enough to fund all Mission Requests, we had to think through which ones we will not vote for.

For intent #3 we decided not to vote for the following missions:

Deliver a Best-in-Class Perp Dex

Crowdsourcing Useful Verifiable Data

Intent #4

The available budget for Intent 4 is 1,330,000 OP while the total amount requested through the 10 Mission Requests is 508,000 OP. With enough budget to go around, an no Mission Request with which we don’t feel comfortable supporting, we’ll be voting in favor of all of them.

Disclaimers:

We will be abstaining from voting for Mission Requests which we have sponsored or proposed.

Furthermore, given the fact that we did not vote for some Mission Requests simply because there wasn’t enough budget under their respective intents (but we still think they’re valuable initiatives that should be funded by the Collective), we’ll be supportive of any initiative to move surplus budgets (e.g. ~0.5M from Intent 4) from other intents around to ensure we fund as many successful Mission Requests as possible.

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