Synthetix Ambassadors Phase 0 Delegation - 2M OP tokens

  1. I think this is a great summary, and it would be great if someone from Synthetix could confirm this is what it boils down to.
  2. On a personal note, the @MinimalGravitas answer is much more conciliatory than my own, and also doesnā€™t have the attitude mine did. So (a) thanks for taking the higher ground, and (b) their response is how I would have preferred to answer if I had more time & was less reactionary.

In regards to the summarised issues, my opinion is:

  • I have no issue with the 1.4m OP, the case is quite clear and very hard to argue against.
  • Iā€™m hoping Iā€™m wrong with the 3.5m OP. This isnā€™t going to happen in 3-18 months time when the technical issue is resolved? Yes/no?
  • Iā€™m less inclined to give another ā€˜benefit of the doubtā€™ approval or another ā€˜this one last timeā€™ approval in regards to the 2.1m OP. I think at some point there needs to be a line in the sand and an end to the exceptions. The ultimate question, if disclosure allows self-delegation, is whether this self-delegation was disclosed to the community voters prior to the original allocation decision. This should be a pretty simple Yes or No answer (for example, pointing to a public, timestamped source), and if the answer requires a great deal of qualification or justification, then that points to the answer simply being ā€˜Noā€™, it wasnā€™t disclosed ā€¦and thatā€™s where the line needs to be drawn.

In conclusion:

  • Iā€™m not that active here, so Iā€™m willing to defer to those who commit more time to Optimism Governance.
  • 1.4m OP is still a great deal of voting power, and should remedy a lot of the frustrations the SNX team is having in getting their voice heard.
  • I just hope that this decision can be made by the community (or even a dedicated Snapshot vote) and not arbitrarily by whoever at the end holds the keys.

Thanks for your time, and apologies for my combative style in my earlier reply.

5 Likes

Thanks for the summary.
My concern is three folded:

  1. Not properly disclosed at the time of the proposal on optimism discourse governance.

Not an issue at the time, bad precedent to have.
Want to delegate those because the timeline for distribution is long?
Amend your original proposal and vote it on snapshot, this thread was posted and the discussion is still ongoing, but the delegation is already a fact

  1. Using the same tokens to mirror the inaccessible delegated voting power onto snxambassadors.eth

This is the actual proposal I would have liked to discuss and I am fine with this until their issues are resolved. Not being able to vote has underrepresented all the voting power the Synthetix community entrusted to their Ambassadors.

  1. What happens if the issue on snxambassadors.eth is resolved?

Will they relinquish the voting power if the issue with snxambassadors.eth is resolved?
Will the ambassadors control 3.4M voting power (at the time of writing this)?
Will they enact both votes becoming the biggest delegate by far?
This questions need definitive answers.

Edit: it was three folded, not two folded

5 Likes

@MattL tagging you so we get an answer to my questions. Next voting cycle is coming up and we need to have an answer to know where we stand

Edits: spelling

5 Likes

Hi @MattL (or @mastermojo),

Just bumping this to see if you had an answer on your intentions with this one yet? A few of us (e.g. @Axel_T and @Netrim) have raised the query so it would be great to get your clarification.

3 Likes

Hey there Minimal,

Apologies for the delay. I answered this earlier in the thread, but I am more than happy to clarify.

The Synthetix Ambassadors will be using both wallets and will not be removing the self-delegation once the other wallet is accessible. This was laid out in the original SIP and will be depleted as the Synthetix Treasury uses these for rewards.

Thanks guys!

1 Like

Hi,

Since no other discussion participants were tagged in this reply, I will do so now:
@ScaleWeb3 @katie @OPUser @OPGovWatch @states_of_nature1651 @Jadmat @Netrim @MinimalGravitas

And since there were no other replies, I will add mine here:
Based on the full discussion above, I believe that this is nothing short of an arbitrary, non-disclosed, self-serving governance attack on Optimism by the Synthetix Ambassadors.

If Iā€™m not mistaken, from Snapshot you can see that they are starting to vote with this 2.1m OP, and this is yet another reason for community apathy and disempowerment, why OP holders donā€™t want to get involved in its Governance (or leave quickly), and why a large majority of token holders donā€™t want to get informed and routinely vote. Why bother when the community is controlled by a few? And the few make up their own rules, to benefit themselves, as they go along?

Bearish for the Optimism Collective and OP ā€¦or should the Collective be renamed, the Synthetix Ambassadors Affiliate Grants Program?! Sorry, thatā€™s rude, but this action is shady, and from a group/bundled vote Phase 0 allocation as well :rage:

5 Likes

Hi Axel,

I am spending some time away from Keyboard, so apologies if i missing latest development around this topic.

I am silent on this as there is nothing new to say, I did my best by bringing this topic up for discussion when Perp did it and later with SNX. But as I am tagged, few thoughts.

Those following this conversation from starting are either against it or at least find their approach unethical.

Overriding their Phaso 0 proposal commitment by their internal proposal is wrong and against open governance. Can I, as a protocol, take fund from gov for protocol development and later use it for other reason because I have a written document mentioning the same somewhere in my Discord ?

They are one of the biggest and trusted ecosystem on Optimism and it makes perfect sense that their voice is heard in our governance but the guidelines should come from OF so that it applies equally to all protocol, big or small. What is better and more sustainable, a decision made by a multisig of 3-5 people or a framework and set of rules applicable to everyone equally and fairly. They are already using and voting with their extra 2M, why should a protocol gets a head start compare to others ?

Katie, Minimal, Axlvaz, Netrim and our Latam members raised their voice on this forum as well as on Discord but all we got in Response was ā€œgreater good narativeā€ shielded with word ā€˜communityā€™.

Thank you doing the follow-up and happy holidays.

20 Dec 2022, 06:33 by notifications@bc41dd.discoursemail.com:

4 Likes

Thanks for the reply, OPUser.

Good summary. I agree with your thoughts, and itā€™s good to know that you and others feel similar uneasiness about this, and have been discussing it more thoroughly when I was absent. Thanks for stating your position.

If there is nothing new, and nothing else to say or can be done, then at least this forum is transparent and may help shape rest-of-community views moving forward. At least I can hold onto that.

Thanks for your ongoing involvement with Optimism. Have a great holiday season, enjoy the time off, and see you in 2023. All the best!

2 Likes

Honestly, Iā€™m really disappointed by this as well, but yea, not sure what more there is to say. In the latest voting round for Citizen House Badgeholder nominations they have used their 2.2M to vote for themselves, and only themselves.

This has means they have simply given themselves a position in the top 10 and therefore a citizenship badge. Again, there were no rules against doing this, but it just seems to continue the pattern of self-serving descisions, which presumably we should expect to continue whenever the opportunity arises.

Like you said above, Synthetix should have a large role in Optimism, they are one of the key protocols around which so much is builtā€¦ but that power should be allocated by the community as it is for everything else, not just taken by them every time there is no explicit rule preventing it. Iā€™m sure they think it is for the ā€˜Greater Goodā€™ for them to have as much control as they can, but I fundementally believe it is never a sensible idea to let the powerful decide how much power they should have, even if they really are good actors (which I do think they probably are).

8 Likes

Thanks for the reply, Minimal. Well put.

To change the topic to something more positive: Congratulations on winning your Badge for being in the top 10! Iā€™m only a small token holder but I was happy to vote for you a few days ago, and thus Iā€™m happy to see you and few others I voted for make the Top 10.

So, congrats! I hope you give yourself a good thumbs up, and then go on to enjoy the role & carry it out well.

Happy holidays :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I continue to be disappointed Matt. 3.5 million votes from wallets you control to give yourselves a position in the Grants Councilā€¦ after voting yourselves into a position in the Citizen House.

Is there any other interpretation of this than as a governance attack?

5 Likes

Gonna echo this. Using their 2M $OP self-delegate wallet to vote on proposal is a governance attack.

I wonder how long this ā€˜we are doing this for greater good of Optimismā€™ will continue. If we look back, they use their wallet to vote on couple of proposal in season 2, then with Citizenship and now Grant Council.

Its even sad when you think its implication on citizen house, they literally gave a citizenship to themselves, now their candidate could, possibly, nominate one additional person willing to rubber stamp in their approval. And the chain evolves, now could this binary tree of aligned entities vote to fund public good without any bias ??

I, with few other delegates I know, joined our gov because we saw a glimpse of moving away from plutocracy system with Citizens house but I dont think we are making progress in the right direction. I hope we can abolish this method or put a mechanism of penalty similar of Ethereum POS. In long run we should have a process in place to prune not only the child branch but root too.

6 Likes

Depending on how ā€˜friendlyā€™ the nominees are in the Builders & Growth Councils, theyā€™ve effectively taken control of both sub-committees of the Grants Councils, and thus taken control of the Governance Fund allocations in their current state.

  • Their Builders council sub-committee votes occupy the current Top 3 positions.
  • Their Growth Experiments council sub-committee votes occupy a controlling 4 of the Top 5 positions.

A real shame.
I know there are other projects that limit the maximum voting power of their delegates. Perhaps this is an option we could have a one-person, one-vote election on?

5 Likes

Another round, another abuse of dominant position enabled by misleading arguments and going against the written word on this very forum.

Synthetix should dissolve the ambassadors as a source of shame.

5 Likes

Iā€™m a bit confused about all this. I have @MinimalGravitas and @OPUser in high regard and also @Matt.

Can we list all addresses we think are controlled by Matt? I think itā€™s something like:

  • SNX users represented by an SNX delegate (self-delegation because they canā€™t vote with the original delegated multisig address)
  • Ambassador delegate address
  • Protocol self-delegation address

am I correct?

If so:

  1. There isnā€™t any rule for all these different addresses to be managed by the same person. If they are elected on their own DAO
  2. there isnā€™t any rule where different addresses should be considered part of the same delegate, all the tokens delegated to these addresses come from different entities.
  3. There is a rule that considered self-voting approved if you vote for 5 or 3 candidates depending on the council

I understand the ā€œgovernance attackā€ argument because one single persona has the power to vote someone in or out by itself. And I agree we should call these problems out in the open. But I think these mistakes should be acknowledged and corrected by future proposals without engaging in a PVP match. We must consider everyone here is thinking about Optimism benefits. Everyone does it as they think itā€™s best and we self-regulate with each other.

This PVP nonsense is just making the coop game more difficult. Because now Matt has 2 options either he says ā€œI am rightā€ or he says ā€œsorryā€. You donā€™t give any other chance to say ā€œHey you know what we should think about how to frame this on the OP governanceā€

We are mostly 20 delegates trying to figure these out. How can we bring more people in if they see each other pvping.

So back to the questions:

  • Are these 3 addresses correct
  • Do we have any idea how to rule this and help the Op foundation?

btw I donā€™t work for SNX, Iā€™m not part of their community and I donā€™t hold any SNX.

3 Likes

yeah i think this is a helpful way to frame this. iā€™d been planning to write here on this subject but you said much of what i was going to say but better.

i think calling this a governance attack and for synthetix to disband the ambassadorship is hyperbolic and misses the far larger concerns around voter concentration and lack of active delegation activity. frankly, this reads more as frustration at an adverse voting outcome due to a large player, something iā€™ve been on the wrong side of myself.

weā€™ve gone through this enough times now, and i really donā€™t think anyone seriously sees the synthetix community as nefarious actors. instead letā€™s try to actually make community power work better.

last clarifying point on this, iā€™m sure @Gonna.eth didnā€™t mean to imply this, but mattā€™s not the sole decision maker among the ambassadors. itā€™s a group of people who themselves are elected to this position by SNX tokenholders through a competitive process. this isnā€™t an individual or even a monolithic entity.

Thank you Jack for clarifying Matt itā€™s not a single entity and your words.

Next time can we avoid indirect PVP too? It takes us nowhere and diverts the discussion. :pray:

As always trying to focus on solutions and not why things happened. I do agree I was angry when I was not elected badgeholder and I wanted to shoot everyone around, so I understand the feeling as you do and we should be more empathic about it.

Appreciate the follow up @Gonna.eth , I dont have any concern with amount of $OP delegated to anyone as long as its coming from community or passed through a process and framework so that it applies to everyone, equally and fairly.

They choose to self-delegate, again number of OP is irrelevant, and using that wallet to vote from past couple of proposals which is, in my opinion, an attack to governance. It was not mentioned in their proposal and they should have followed the same approach like other protocol, now that protocol self-delegation is in place.

Others will try to derail the conversation by connecting this to how voting is impacted, either in council or during citizenship, but that the outcome of the problem.

I want to bring the attention back to the problem, which is misuse of grant token by not following the proposal. If Perp was prohibited from participation for not following the proposal, shouldnt it apply to Synth as well. To me both are misuse, Perp sold the grant to fiat and they choose to use it for voting. Why to play favorite ?

3 Likes

I can agree on the topic of misuse of OP tokens.

I think thereā€™s a clear distinction between selling tokens and self delegate them. Yes, they are both misuse of grant tokens because they are not on their proposal.

But if we look at laws in general everything is considered a gray area and not just black and white. Example: Getting into a private house with a gun to steal something has different consequences if there are people in it or if itā€™s empty.

So perp sold and itā€™s prohibited from participation, although I donā€™t agree and did not vote on this. (which brings another great discussion)

SNX self-delegated, something they told in a SIP on their own governance. Do you think they should be prohibited from participation? If so are they entitled to sell all their OPs the moment they are out? Will this be beneficial for OP as a whole?

I mean you are asking one of the most used protocols with one of the strongest liquidity and fee creators in optimism to be prohibited from governance because someone forgot to add this to the proposal?

Iā€™ve read a SIP where these tokens will be used btw and will leave SNX governance, will that suffice?

BTW Iā€™m asking all this because itā€™ll shape future proposals template. Iā€™m not trying to PVP here. sorry if any of this sounds like an accusation.

1 Like

Itā€™s not a binary decision because I know from day 1 that the Ambassadors have had issues with their voting power.
I posted this back in October:

  1. Using the same tokens to mirror the inaccessible delegated voting power onto snxambassadors.eth

This is the actual proposal I would have liked to discuss and I am fine with this until their issues are resolved. Not being able to vote has underrepresented all the voting power the Synthetix community entrusted to their Ambassadors.

The ambassadors are not prohibited from participating, but they should be held accountable on what is a misuse of a Grant.