Proposal: Pause Phase 1 and start a discussion round to improve the governance process

Delegates 🏛
1

UPDATE: Optimism Foundation has provided an important update for the next steps of governance, with an approach similar to that proposed in this proposal but with a broader scope for the next iteration. We’ll move on to this soon.

Author Name: @AxlVaz @NicoProducto @Joxes (DeFi Latam & Optimism Español [non-official])

Summary

The idea of this proposal is to improve the voting process step by step, and to align more and more the community, delegates and protocols with the vision of Optimism. If this process has good results, it can be repeated every several cycles to continuously improve until we have an optimal system for all parties.

This proposal intends to let cycle #2 finish and then establish a discussion period to improve the governance process related to Phase 1 before continuing with next cycles.

In these terms, we can discuss timing and procedures or come up with another proposal that tries to improve the phased voting processes. Our ideas, formally below.

Introduction

Phase 0 has ended and Phase 1 is about to come to an end. Approximately 50 days have passed since the proposals for the different protocols in this governance were initiated. During this period of time 55 proposals have been analyzed and corrected, 25 from Phase 0 and 30 from Phase 1, which demands a great deal of time for the participants and delegates of this governance. During this process we have surely all (@OPUser) thought about how to improve the process for the next phase and better filter the proposals from the assigned protocols.Even this kind of topics are discussed in the discord channel, check out @linda’s comment.

Surely some of you must have been exhausted after spending hours analyzing each proposal and debating them in this forum.

A pause for phase 1

From the DeFi Latam community and OptimismESP we propose to pause the voting process to make an analysis of Phases 0 and 1 among all the delegate representatives, and after that propose the necessary changes to improve the following voting.

Objectives:

  • To enable delegates and token holders to improve the phase 1 process.
  • Increase order and efficiency among the different actors: proposers, delegates and community.
  • Increase the number of proposals encouraged on quality and not just quantity, allowing governance to accumulate experience and adjust development times accordingly.

Development:

  1. Once Phase 1 cycle #2 has been voted and finalized. Stop the following voting cycles.

  2. Within 15 days the delegates or any collaborator together with the community, has the possibility to submit to the forum a [DRAFT] with a maximum of 5 detailed and justified changes with the proposed improvements for the following votes.

  3. Debate each [DRAFT] in the forum and pass to [READY] the proposals with the approval of at least 3 delegates randomly chose. Deadline 3 days.

  4. Vote in Snapshot the [READY] proposals, in this case the voting time should be much shorter, we believe that with 1 week to vote these proposals is fine.

  5. Apply the rule changes for the next Voting Cycle.

  6. If this process is successful, apply it every 2 Voting Cycles until it is no longer necessary to propose changes.

Clarifications and recommendations:

  • Changes can be less than 5 but cannot exceed this amount. This is to be concise and more precise in the proposals.
  • The changes have to be applicable in the next round of voting so they have to be simple changes and not so radical (these should have another treatment). Examples of changes: have a quota of maximum 20 protocols per phase, put a ceiling of OP token to the grants (maximum 5M), that the protocols that have to approve the proposal previously in their governance have it approved in their governance to avoid changes in case the Optimism governance approves them, etc.
  • Surely some delegates or collaborators would have or share the same ideas during this process. It would be a good practice to combine one or more similar proposals so that when we get to the Snapshot there are not so many similar proposals.
  • In case there are two or more opposing modification proposals on the same topic, we can move to contrast them in a new instance in the forum (new post for example) to finalize the discussion. We hope that delegates will collaborate in improving the draft proposals and reduce the work through decision via Snapshot.

We hope that our proposal will bring a positive discussion with new ideas and feedback in order to improve the governance process related to Phase 1 and leaving a precedent for future implementations. Stay Optimistic.

18 Likes
2

Like this idea.

Given the cap on number of proposed changes, I assume you intend that individuals wouldn’t be allowed to submit multiple proposals. If so, I think your suggested process will force proposers to amalgamate their different proposed changes into a single vote. This may weigh down the most popular changes with others that are less favourable or less well understood, or shoot down strong ideas because of what they’re bundled with. You may also end up with significant overlap, where two proposals take different and incompatible views on the same topic, but both are voted through.

An approach I prefer would be to limit the proposals to one per topic, with multiple individuals feeding into each proposal’s approach and available options (and being involved with multiple proposals). This would require some more stewardship in readying the proposals for voting, but would lead to much clearer and fairer decision-making on the changes, and less potential for conflicting or irrational outcomes.

3 Likes
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The limit of changes is so that the proposals are not so extensive. We intend to make them consistent and executable in the short term and repeat this process every 2 rounds of voting to reapply the same process. This way it is a constant and fast feedback.

The idea of the “simple” proposal is not to get into endless debates and have the delegates and the community interact to coordinate the same ideas. In this way we want to avoid everyone trying to push their own proposal forward, instead we want groups of people/delegates who agree on several points to come together to bring a single proposal to a vote.

1 Like
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Thanks for the swift and clear clarifications. Feels to me that keeping things simple, consistent and short term may do away with some of my concerns, though it might also be easier said than done. Proof will be in the pudding I guess, and I hope we get to find out! Thanks again

1 Like
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Can we add a rule to avoid comments in proposals like

“I like this project” “I support this” “I love this team” etc. I love to read proposals and feedback but keeping track of every proposal on every comment when you get these answers is really time-consuming.

It also feels like a way to get into the ranking. Clipper is #1 with 360 comments and only 10 feedbacks

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It is part of the objective of our proposal XD. With what we learned in phases 0 and 1, improve the following ones. I certainly share your opinion regarding this type of Spam comments.

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Thank you for your initiative here. I am fully supportive of taking a pause before the next cycle to reconsider how we can improve the governance process and make it more efficient.

5 Likes
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So if I understand this correctly we are planning to pause governance fund phase 1 to allow anyone to propose changes to the way we process applications?

Isn’t it highly likely this would create a too-many-chefs-in-the-kitchen situation where we’ll end up debating back and forth for weeks on how to proceed, or am I missing something?

2 Likes
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I think we should at least pause it in between cycles to focus on those projects who got in and give good feedback aligned with Optimism’s vision. While proposals are active for 6 days on Snapchat we stop new proposals to be posted maybe?

At this rate, I’m nearly keeping it up and made my own filters on what to say yes and what to say no.

I got this from Exosphere in the discord and made it my own rule

OK usage : *
Protocol usage incentives
Grants and other forms of 3rd party developer incentives
Small (<10%) retroactive allocations (early adopters, etc)

Unacceptable usage :
Bridging incentives
Paying for full project development. It’s good to support projects with already some skin In the game but supporting Ideas with nothing to show is a nono for me.

1 Like
10

I am not in favor of this, we should focus on more agile approach, start and stop will add extra work and make us slow, I would rather suggest creating a thread under idea/suggestion section, discuss on that, once approved, active it. This obliviously needs more thought.

  1. sound good
  2. this one also make sense

Vote in Snapshot the [READY] proposals, in this case the voting time should be much shorter, we believe that with 1 week to vote these proposals is fine.

I see why you are focusing on 1 week but my side, I would like to change this to 2 week. You see, for my fiat mining job, I travel a lot and if the voting duration is just 1 week there are chances that I might miss the vote.

Overall, I would like to discuss this more but I dont like start/stop approach.

3 Likes
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In the proposals we clarified with the number of days may change, we only made a suggestion.

It should be noted that this is only an initiative.

Currently the process is a bit messy, if we observe there are still projects that are applying to phase 1, it is a mess that in our opinion makes the work less efficient. Also the protocols receive feedback in the forum and in the discord we believe that we should maintain a single channel of communication. The idea of the pause is only to order and have a clear communication between all participants whether they are proponents, delegates or participants.

The pause should be short so we propose short times. We believe that the OP of the governance fund should be well allocated, which in the current disorder makes it difficult to maintain good criteria.

4 Likes
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Good idea to improve the ecosystem

1 Like
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Yes please, let’s keep feedback here. It’s almost impossible to follow feedback on discord unless you are tagged or you have a channel for each proposal. A macro debate on how this works is good for discord but specific feedback should be kept in here.

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I’m generally in favour of this idea, I think something needs to change to get the best our of our decision making process as at the moment it does just feel a bit too rushed. I still haven’t finished evaluating and voting on all of the Phase 1 proposals, and by the time I do there will likely be very little time for discussion/comment on the next round’s proposals before they are locked into the next voting cycle.

A brief pause in the cycle to get caught up, would meant that by the time the next batch of proposals go to vote most delegates have already had a good look at the protocols and had time to discuss thoughts with the proposers etc. Then we could quickly vote and use the time while phase 2 is on Snapshot to focus on the phase 3 proposals, so when they come to vote we are already familiar with them and can be reading though phase 4 etc etc.

Looking back, this could have been how it was working from the start, and for some delegates I’m sure this is how they are operating, but I don’t think I’m the only one working about 1/2 a cycle behind. I don’t know if anything about the overall process would need to be changed to be honest, in my opinion just a reset to get us all to the same point, so we have done some digging into the next phase’s proposals before they go live, would probably be enough, now that we can all see how the cycles flow.

3 Likes
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No, just a simple idea to implement as detailed in the example. Ideas that need to be discussed should have another process. Our idea is to come up with a maximum of 5 tips that are easy to implement and do not require radical change.

1 Like
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Now I understood the reason for pause, I do agree with you on this one. Submitting proposal in Phase 1 does not make sense anymore, OP team should give them guidance to either change the pending/draft proposal to change them as Phase 2 or put them into different bucket.

Also, yet to putting feedback at once place.

5 Likes
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Hello all, thanks for reply this thread and @AxlVaz by reply with comments about our vision.

Here my response about some of your feedbacks :grin:

Yes we’re thinking about it (risk of infinite loops) but I believe we’re in a early stage to improve quickly various aspects and we as delegates have had enough coincidence. By example the objective of Phase 1 must be preserved, and the Optimism Foundation can help moderate the discussions quickly.

Just a little clarification, take into account that there is no Phase 2/3/4, Phase 1 will be extended until the funds are exhausted (196,128,233 OP) according to its docs. That’s why we propose to anticipate in order to smoothly reorganize different points sooner rather than later. I expect that the Optimism Foundation will also propose some changes but surely if we start this discussion early we can provide a really positive improvement by establishing a formal timeframe for it first.

Also, good to know that the team received our feedback and implemented an improvement in the Phase 1 templates (@bobby confirmation here) proposed by DeFi LATAM in this post; surely we can do more positive things.

6 Likes
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IMO, the focus should be on decentralizing Optimism first, starting with Bedrock, then contracts, followed by sequencer. It’s pragmatic to streamline ecosystem funding while the platform is centralized and till we’re closer to economic sustainability. Bit of a tangent, but those are my personal priorities.

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Edit: agree with this, in fact, we can move to discuss those threads focused on this aspect and share good ideas, personally I will review later, very interested on it (don’t know how I missed it). In the meantime, we believe that if we set a time frame to improve phase 1, it will also be a long-term benefit.

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Contract hyperlink is linked to sequencer page, here is direct link to his contracts page

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