Governance House

Governance Meta-Governance
1

title: Governance House
status: Discussion
author: @Matthew_Graham
Created: 28-02-2022

Simple Summary

The proposal presents an opportunity for INDEX holders to support the creation of Governance House, a new type of DeFi primitive that provides Metagovernance as a Service across the ecosystem. Governance House intends to unlock an entirely new phase of community and voter participation by leveraging existing skills within the Index Coop community and enhancing the reach of metagovernance by including members of other DAOs to support the implementation of welcomed improvement proposals across DeFi.

Governance House is to become a DeFi focal point for providing Metagovernance as a Service (MaaS). The MaaS offering ranges from improving voter participation, all the way through to writing, coordinating and submitting improvement proposals on various protocols of varying degrees of difficulty.

Abstract

Index Coop’s metagovernance is a strength and with the creation of Governance House subDAO the Metagovernance value becomes clear. The vision for Governance House is to become a collaboration hub, an industry leader that supports the growth of the ecosystem. Governance House will expand the network and reach of Index Coop by welcoming trusted members from other communities into Governance House and attracting delegate votes from other communities.

Today, there are many DeFi communities that struggle with voter apathy, optics around decentralization and having to choose between working on large system upgrades or more operational day to day changes. Governance House intends to help communities to become more decentralized by supporting smaller operational upgrades needed to maintain existing DApps. This helps free up the core teams to focus on leveling up from V1 to V2 to V3 etc…

Governance House intends to optimize for voting, coordinating, writing and submitting governance proposals to implement welcome change within DeFi. Governance House will become a trusted partner with defi that will be known for acting in the best long term interest of the community/ecosystem.

Discussion

Introduction

Governance House provides MaaS across DeFi through collaboration with some of the largest names in the ecosystem. Governance House will have sufficient INDEX voting right to meet quorum, whilst also having additional delegated voting rights to other protocols which enhances the metagovernance reach beyond just Index Coop’s influence.

The metagovernance influence is enhanced by the delegation of outside votes to Governance House with the goal of coordinating, preparing the payload, submitting payload and voting on welcomed improvement proposals across DeFi. The vision is to work closely with the participating communities to attain sufficient governance support to streamline on-chain governance processes.

As noted earlier, only improvements welcomed by the receiving community will be supported by Governance House. There is no means of bribing or manipulating Governance House into supporting something not welcomed by the receiving community. Each respective community will be involved in the review process of the payload prior to it being submitted on-chain. This is in line with how Index Coop currently prepares AIPs within the Aave community.

In time, the intent is to use Smart Contracts wherever possible. However, during the initial phase Governance House seeks to define what is the minimum viable product and find a strong sense product market fit. The metagovernance influence will be coordinated by a relatively small and well connected team that is Governance House before moving more on-chain in later iterations.

Governance House will work with Index Coop to maximize the use of its metagovernance voting rights and in the near term, would like to expand beyond on-chain votes to become more active in community snapshot votes used to gauge sentiment for upcoming proposals.

How it works

Token holders can delegate their vote to a wallet address that is then used to vote and deploy various improvement proposals across DeFi.

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Members of Governance House shall always collectively exceed the INDEX quorum threshold which grants passage to using the underlying metagovernance influence. Governance House proposes replacing the MGC by performing all the on-chain coordination and voting. Index Coop is expected to continue to operate Snapshot as it currently does with Engineering having automated metagovernance votes.

With respect to internal Index Coop votes, Governance House as a collective group shall abstain from Index Coop’s IIP voting that is not specific to Governance House and each individual participant is free to express their own view. Do note, this means each respective INDEX holder’s votes are still implemented via the delegate address and the decision to vote and how to vote falls solely on the owner of the INDEX tokens. Non INDEX holding voting rights are pooled and INDEX voting rights will remain delegated to separate wallets. For larger INDEX holders who delegate INDEX voting rights to Governance House, a wallet is set up whereby the delegator can participate in IIPs and Governance House can participate in Metagovernance votes.

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All metagovernance votes are still intended to run through the Index Coop snapshot as per normal process and all INDEX holders can vote. Should a metagovernance vote reach quorum, Governance House will execute the vote accordingly (same process as with MGC today). Index Coop’s metagovernance votes will be delegated to an EOA as determined by Governance House. This enables Governance House to utilize the proposal power to submit improvement changes on various protocols and participate in snapshot proposals of other communities.

The creation of Governance House enables any good actor across DeFi to propose an improvement to a protocol. Governance House can provide everything from a full turn key solution to simply providing proposal power to implement an improvement proposal. This type of service does not exist in DeFi today.

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Governance House intends to provide the following as a part of the MaaS offering.

  1. Active voter participation.
  2. Provider a focal point for entities seeking to propose a change.
  3. Liaison between core community members and entities seeking to propose a change.
  4. Prepare governance forum posts.
  5. Conduct Snapshot votes.
  6. Submit on-chain proposals to implement improvement proposals.

In return, Governance House is to receive payment for performing MaaS. This payment is to be distributed to Contributors during the initial phase and then also the Delegates during a later phase. The Payment is variable and shall reflect the complexity and extent of the work required to fulfill the request. During initial phases, payment is expected to cover the operating costs and reinvestment costs in growing Governance House. Governance House is actively seeking funding from various grants across DeFi, with its first application pending.

The longer term intention is to distribute rewards to delegates. However, the initial iteration will focus on rewarding contributors and saving funds to support the development of Smart Contracts that enable Governance House to transition towards becoming a more on-chain operation. The below graphic communicates the rewards flow within the model. In time, Governance House intends to reward delegates and the current thinking involves accepting INDEX as payment and distributing INDEX to delegates (later phase) and contributors (initial phase) alike.

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For external Participants providing non INDEX, the token is to be swapped for INDEX. Ideally partners acquire INDEX and pay Governance House in INDEX for providing Metagovernance as a Service (MaaS). The below graphic shows the combined model highlighting all the interactions detailed in the above graphics.

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The above graphics show the later phases when Governance House finds product market fit for MaaS. There are already promising signs emerging showing strong support for the concept expressed above.

The astute reader may realize that this mechanism is using INDEX as the life blood of the system, which in turn creates a steady flow of buy side demand for INDEX. This is a positive flywheel for INDEX holders and helps distribute INDEX to those who contribute to Governance House.

What is Governance House

Governance House is a subDAO of Index Coop consisting of like minded delegates and contributors who are all working to improve DeFi, through coordinating and implementing welcomed change on existing protocols. Governance House solves the complexities of coordinating and implementing change across DAOs. External protocol Core Teams, Investors, Contributors alike can all approach Governance House seeking to implement change on their preferred protocol or seek voting support to prevent any bad actor from taking advantage of a protocol. As metagovernance delegation influence grows, Governance House becomes an enabler to implement welcomed change and provide a level of protection from bad actors across an increasing number of protocols.

Governance House members are very well connected across DeFi, have deep understanding of the protocol, are active on the protocol’s forum and trusted by the community. This enables Governance House to build trust and obtain additional voting influence over time. On-chain voting records will demonstrate reliability and will serve as a testament to the character of Governance House. Individuals within Governance House are expected to perform the following:

  • Specialize in governance matters.
  • Share knowledge with each other collaboratively for the benefit of DeFi.
  • Active governance participants.
  • Onboard delegates.
  • Support the structuring of deals for Governance House.
  • Write / Coordinate submission of forum posts, snapshot and improvement proposals.
  • Provide a link between Index Coop and the broader DeFi ecosystem.

Achievements to Date

Below is a list of proposals which can be implemented by the Governance House with the Aave community:

  • AVAX risk parameter update, [4].
  • Add DPI to mainnet Arc market, [5].
  • Liquidity mining on mainnet Arc market, [6].
  • Update risk parameters mainent Arc market, [7].
  • Add DAI to mainnet Arc market, [8].

To accompany some of the above work a grant application has been submitted to Aave Grants DAO, [9]. We have active members of the Aave community contributing to Governance House in coordinating the above scopes. AIPs for the first few proposals to be implemented are already being worked on.

At the time of writing, Governance House has commits for 41.2K of INDEX from Galaxy Digital, 20.6K from WhiteStar Capital, 17K from 3SE Holdings and expects a further 60.2K from another large investor. We also expect several smaller holders to participate which takes Governance House near and over quorum. There are several other entities that have expressed interest and we hope they will join Governance House in time.

One of the key things here is for Governance House to always meet Index Coop’s quorum requirements.

Governance House Minimum Viable Product

:white_check_mark: EOA for voting on snapshot and ease of improvement proposal implementation.
:white_check_mark: Multisig - manager / distributor of funds via Parcel integration.
:white_check_mark: Established internal governance framework
:white_check_mark: Word of mouth / Notion Board

Index Coop currently provides all of the above either directly, like the EOA delegation in IIP–133 and through existing BD outreach.

Minimum Viable Team

:white_check_mark: Access to developers with experience on necessary protocols.
:white_check_mark: People who can foster/maintain strong relationships with the core teams of the largest names in defi.
:white_check_mark: Proposal power on at least one major protocol.
:white_check_mark: Early stage funding from Index Coop and various Grants DAOs.

For the initial phase, Governance House will support protocols where Index Coop is already active or pursuing metagovernance integrations (AAVE, Compound, Maker, etc…) and communities that have delegated voting rights to Governance House. For example, Tribe DAO has delegated AAVE and COMP voting rights to Index Coop and 2M TRIBE to members of Governance House, [11,12,13,14 ]. We expect others to follow in time and there are currently proposals being discussed that expand the reach of Governance House.

At the time of writing there are four developers, potentially a four soon, who are actively engaged in supporting Governance House initiatives. The developers are Austin (Llama), Noah Citron (Index Coop), Defi Jesus and Rajath (Llama). There are other developers that can be called upon as/if needed. Most of these developers have existing working relationships with Aave developers which is a great benefit.

Several meetings have been held with other DAOs and members from other communities are already contributing to Governance House. There has been an expression of interest from funds that hold INDEX partaking in Governance House activities. We have submitted our first ARC on the Aave governance forum, [1].

As Governance House becomes established more proposals like the one on Aave’s forum will be submitted. We intend to replicate this model across other DeFi communities whereby someone from that Community joins Governance House and brings with them a deep network and rich pipeline of opportunities to collaborate.

Ideally, members of Governance House are already active in other DeFi communities with established networks. To this end, there are members of Governance House who are actively involved in Aave, Tribe and Maker communities.

Future Phase

Governance House will seek to become a go-to place for metagovernance support within DeFi. To do that, there are a few goals Governance House needs to accomplish:

  1. Build a strong presence in the governance activities of the underlying protocols and earn/build trust.
  2. Becoming a financially viable MaaS provider.
  3. Build and maintain a secure meta-governance infrastructure.
  4. Pro-ecosystem and have no bias between competitors.

After proving the concept, Governance House will progress towards using Smart Contract wherever possible to facilitate the following via a MaaS User Interface:

  • Smart Contract that facilitates the following:
    • Depositing funds
    • Whitelist for who can accept offers for providing MaaS
    • Uploading addresses for payment
    • Approval for distribution of funds
  • MaaS Marketplace User Interface
    • Annualized APR for delegates
    • Metagovernance track record

Upside

  • Pathway to proposal power at a fourth major protocol, (Aave, Compound, Uniswap, ??).
  • Pathway to meeting voting threshold at a major protocol.
  • Deep integration with several leading DAOs across DeFi.

Organizational Structure - Governance House subDAO

After meeting with several INDEX investors, it was viewed that growing the metagovernance value proposition was best implemented outside of the Nest model. As a result, Governance House is a new subDAO which provides a degree of independence.

To enable access to Index Coop’s metagovernance, Governance House intends to have access to more INDEX voting rights than quorum. In many ways, Governance House is a collaboration of INDEX holders and their delegated representatives which collectively have sufficient votes to meet INDEX’s quorum requirements.

Governance House is a service provider subDAO that replaces the functionality of the MGC within the Metagovernance Pod and in time may adopt some of the other functionality of Metagovernance Pod. Governance House will communicate directly with the Index Council / Leadership Team of the day and will reside outside of the existing nest structure thus creating a degree of independence.

The Index Coop ambassador program has a very strong overlap with Governance House. The ambassador program is at its core and outreach program that helps build networks and identify opportunities to work together. This type of program will pivot to include the goal of trying to solve the voter apathy problem across defi. Governance House can boost voter turnout by being an active voter in Index Coop’s metagovernance votes and also directly in other communities votes. We intend to combine the benefits of the ambassador program with Governance House.

There are several examples of other communities that have created something similar but more tailored to their own community, [2,3,10].

Remuneration

All contributors receive a flexible reward based on output and impact. However, those that are Core Hires from Index Coop, and likely other DAOs, will be primarily funded through their existing remuneration agreements. Core Hires from Index Coop will receive a percentage of the flexible rewards they would have received if there were not a Core Hire. For Developers it is 25% and for everyone else 15%. This exists to prevent double dipping on rewards whilst providing motivation to grow Governance House’s operations whilst fulfilling their Core Hire responsibilities much like the logic applied to Core Hire within Product Pod [15].

For example if a grant is submitted with a cost input of $1,000 for Project Management and this is performed by an Index Coop Core Hire, that Core Hire receives 15% of the $1,000, $150. The remaining funds are to be retained by Governance House and reinvested into growing Governance House. Payments are made to contributors in line with the milestones linked to the terms laid out by grant application. Ie: 30% upon award, 30% milestone and 40% upon delivery.

Funding Request

During the initial phase, Governance House will be reaching out to various DAOs via existing grant programs to explore various funding options. An application has already been submitted to Aave Grants DAO and others are being discussed.

As Governance House will absorb the role of the MGC and requests Governance Nest to reallocate the three fifths of MGC’s budget during Season 1 to support growing Governance House. This is a total of $22.5K over Season 1 and is to be used for growing Governance House. The remaining two fifths of the MGC budget, $15K, is to be retained by Governance Nest. Payment distribution will be from Governance House Central utilizing Parcel in line with the normal process.

Governance House Central: 0x82cD339Fa7d6f22242B31d5f7ea37c1B721dB9C3

After Season 1 has concluded, any additional funding will be attained via a grant submission through Index Coop’s Growth Grants Program. It is highly probable that grant proposals will be submitted to other communities for providing MaaS.

Reference

[1] ARC - Update Risk Parameters Mainnet Arc Market - General - Aave
[2] Aave <> Bored Ghosts Developing (BGD) - Governance - Aave
[3] GFX Labs' Proposal To Become Contributors - Compound Community Forum
[4] ARC: Avalanche Market - AVAX Risk Parameters Update - General - Aave
[5] ARC - Add DPI as Collateral on the Aave Arc Market - Governance - Aave
[6] ARC - Continue Liquidity Mining Program on Aave V2 Ethereum market and Introduce Liquidity Mining on Aave ARC market - General - Aave
[7] ARC - Update Risk Parameters Mainnet Arc Market - General - Aave
[8] ARC: Adding Multi-Collateral DAI to the Aave ARC Market - New Asset - Aave
[9] https://twitter.com/AaveGrants
[10] Proposal: Onboard Fire Eyes DAO as Strategic Partner - Ecosystem Fund - Balancer
[11] FIP-78c: Meta-governance - stkAAVE (Aave) - Proposals - Tribe
[12] FIP-78b: Meta-governance - COMP (Compound) - Proposals - Tribe
[13] Tally | 4PXDG1
[14] Tally | YJOE34
[15] Moving methodologist fee splits in-house

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

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Excellent work @Matthew_Graham! Looking very forward to seeing Governance House become an important part of the DeFi Ecosystem. This will grow Index Coop’s influence in the industry as well as allowing Index Coop to focus on shipping more products.

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This is great. Three other opportunities come to mind.

  1. Extracting more governance value from our products. JPG and SOCIAL will have governance rights at the product level and I suspect more of our future products will as well. I can foresee working with GH to leverage those rights more effectively, for example, by pooling voting across indices with overlapping underlyings. Also, I can imagine that some product designers and branding partners do not have the capacity or interest to manage governance and would gladly delegate it to GH. We currently have a lot of governance value in our products that is sitting dormant.

  2. Metagovernance index as a product. DPI was not designed for metagovernance value; rather it was a fortunate aftereffect. I can imagine an index product that is designed from the ground-up for maximal metagovernance power, eg, CVX, TOKE, etc. It would require further market validation, but if we believe metagovernance is undervalued in the marketplace then there may be an opportunity.

  3. Raider insurance. I’m glad to hear GH is committed to acting benevolently but I think it’s only a matter of time before activist raider governance DAOs gain prominence. I could foresee protocols engaging GH as protection against activist raiders.

I’m looking forward to this new venture.

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Amazing proposal @Matthew_Graham. Meta-governance is highly undervalued and underutilized within DeFi, Index and the Governance house has a strong competitive advantage as a first mover with deep governance pockets.

One question I do have is that if outside delegation tokens are swapped for INDEX, does that not limit the the scope of Governance House and Index Coop and their ability to create proposals on platforms not currently supported by Index products?

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gm @Matthew_Graham

There’s a lot here, so I have a lot of questions:

Would this be in the form of operational actions taken by GH, or would GH provide services that would seek to increase individual voter participation?

Currently only DPI is unlocked for metagovernance and DeFi is heavily referenced here; is this for DeFi protocols and app upgrades specifically? I’m curious where, say, ENS would fall in this scheme?

How does GH propose that it be held accountable for execution of metagov voting (failure to execute)?

If there is an IIP specific to GH, GH can vote? Reading the negative here, but I’d prefer to see this say, “GH will abstain from all IIP voting”. I fail to see why a MaaS subDAO (effectively the MGC v2) would get involved otherwise.

Related to the above concern, would there be visibility into who is voting in the 1of2 delegate multisigs?

On its face I don’t see how this objective will be achieved through the spec outlined. I do see how this will improve active INDEX participation and perhaps participation more broadly, but this would be a coordination function for proposals and execution of same, not a wallet-address growth function. If you can expand here I’d appreciate it.

Expanding on all of these bullets will be critical as this will form your operational spec, then it’s a matter of sorting IC<>GH communication standards, decision flow , value flow, and accountability (and you’re off to the races).

There are two things that GH is providing and it’s helpful to discuss separately:

  • Vanilla metagovernance vote execution that is currently run through snapshot voting
  • White-glove proposal service (still subject to the above)

To be clear fee generation can only come from the white-glove service as vote-execution needs to happen on behalf of Index Coop no matter what - so you can never charge for this. These processes would sit next to each-other for convenience but I’d prefer to keep these streams as independent as possible given that one is more akin to consulting and the other is ops living under one roof. The real value here is that they live under one roof, but absent automated (failing that, credibly neutral) operational process execution this subDAO would be of no practical use to IC.

I’ll have more comments and try and chip away at this monster proposal in the coming days; feel free to hit the comments ad-hoc as you’re refining this. Great initiative and I hope something comes of this; as always, just want to make sure everything is bolted down tight as IC wields an unholy amount of voting power that we’d be entrusting to this subDAO.

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Exciting proposal @Matthew_Graham, I’m in full support of Governance House

As an active member of the Aave DAO, I have witnessed the stickiness of decentralised governance. This proposal seems of great value as Governance House can be a partner to:

  1. Implement improvement ideas stuck in limbo. In the case of Aave, the community has been requesting voting power for aAAVE and StkBPT. If Gov House implements this change it should increase voter turnout which would be of immense value
  2. Extend changes through the protocol, in the case of Aave among markets for example (as Gauntlet only focuses on the Ethereum V2)
  3. Work for teams to implement their proposals leveraging Gov House experience to minimise the risk of error in an on-chain proposals. In the case of Aave, as Gov House is familiar with the governance process; it could help projects get their assets listed following the right process and implementing the code changes with all the appropriate testing
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Hi All,

On Wednesday 13th April we will be allocating the second part of the community call to discuss Governance House and how it is so beneficial to the broader Index Coop community. Thank you @coolhorsegirl for organising the call at short notice.

Hopefully everyone can make it and I look forward to providing more insight into how Governance House is the way forward for unlocking Metagovernance as a Service across defi.

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Hi all,

Andrea from BalancerDAO here!
Read through the proposal and I find it extremely interesting!

Great job @Matthew_Graham for the hard work you put into this.

Governance is the next big thing and this idea could set the example and inspire future collective governance ideas.

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This is a little akin to a government voting in its own election on the basis of representative power. GH should specifically ABSTAIN from voting in regards to Governance House, if the intention here is to operate as a SubDAO subject to the will of INDEX token hodlers

And GH retains the voting power of all holders that do not vote,correct?

Do you have a threshold for large already in mind?
Why is this set up different for large index holders/delegates?
What is the purpose (advantage) of differentiating between delegates?
Or to ask the question a different way.
Why is the set up different for delegates not considered large.?

Can you explain the purpose (advantages) of an Externally Operated Account ?
Sans smart contracts right?
How is the decision to select the EOA undertake?

Sounds great! but tbh something (everything?) about this feel s like M&A territory

So basically the small group of well connected, active and trusted individuals seek to accrue immense power first, and then get paid to wield it? Just wondering if anyone else is questioning the motivations for this proposal at about this point…

Great upside, tangential to the Index Coop mission. Having clarified the benefits can you please discuss the limitations and risks associated with this proposal?

Can you clarify how delegate voting moves towards “the goal of trying to solve the voter apathy problem across defi.” Doesn’t delegation somewhat rely on voter apathy or at least ambivalence?

This is certainly innovative, I’m just not seeing how this helps us focus on achieving our mission. Keen to see how the conversation evolves

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Matthew,
As I said before, you are focusing on the power of Metagovernance like no one has to date. I applaud your initiative, it’s apparent you have dedicated a lot of time and thinking to this effort going above and beyond the scope of IC Finance.

But the approach is starting to worry me. I understand Web3 is a culture of asking for forgiveness vs permission, but I am not sure this is ok.

First, In this FEI proposal, in the name of Index Coop, you are asking FEI to delegate their 100K INDEX tokens to the Governance House. This would make GH one of the top Index Coop voters. [1]

For the IC community to negate a GH vote, IC would have to 1) rally investors to vote against a proposal or 2) find GH delegees, propose the removal of their delegation to GH - and in FEI’s case, via tokenholder vote. Could it be done, yes. But most of this would be likely post-vote - which means a lot of work that no one has time for.

In principle - anyone can make a proposal - but I think letting IC know the sum of your GH activities - in the name of Index - is necessary. I may have missed it, but I don’t think this was included in your prior links. Are there other proposals not listed?

Second, I think you are misrepresenting GH as an Index subDAO to FEI [1] Like you did here with FIP78c [2] and you have done with AAVE ARC - Adding Multi-Collateral DAI [3]

I love initiative, but I am thinking I love transparency even more. So I don’t have to trust. This is not the way.

I have posted on FEIs discussion form outlining the that GH is not a done deal. Their vote to delegate 100K index to Matthew closes on 4.09 [4] For those who support the proposal, I encourage you to voice your opinion to FEI. For those of you who have reservations, I encourage you to do the same. FEI should have a balanced perspective from Index Coop in relation to delegating INDEX to GovHouse.

[1] Snapshot

[2] FIP-78c: Meta-governance - stkAAVE (Aave) - #4 by Matthew_Graham - Proposals - Tribe

[3] ARC: Adding Multi-Collateral DAI to the Aave ARC Market - #4 by MatthewGraham - New Asset - Aave

[4] Governance House - Delegate INDEX for Metagovernance Voting - Tribe

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If there’s one point we can all probably agree on it’s that the forum (while very important) is not the best platform to debate these important issues. I’ve taken the initiative to create a Governance House Deliberation page on Notion where people can list their points and counterpoints. For example, Point = there’s no COI policy; Counterpoint = the COI policy will be circulated by such and such date. The aim is not to replace the forum discussion but rather to make the deliberation more effective and transparent.

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I don’t agree here; it’s pretty clear this is a half-baked idea at best and the proposer hasn’t meaningfully engaged in this forum after 11-days. If the proposer is looking to utilize our established governance process to effect change I recommend they engage here in the governance forum.

I appreciate novel attempts to work through issues, but there’s no issue here and there’s been no attempt by the proposer here to garner support. It’s incumbent upon a proposer to support their idea, not a whole DAO to work through it for them or give them a stage in a DAO leadership forum to do so, especially when they are lying on other governance forums about their new DAO’s standing in relation to Index Coop.

I’ve called on The Index Council to address.

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Appreciate the option @JosephKnecht Notion discussion method has been brilliant for the council agenda/delegation process. Thank you for driving that on behalf of the community

However this is a major Governance proposal and this is our governance forum which I believe is intended for transparency, community feedback and challenges to proposals.

I do expect my questions - all questions and concerns - to be addressed here for the public record in some form of statement.

Given the information @shawn16400 surfaced above we are at a point where full transparency is the neccessary path to ensuring responsibility and accountability to our community and key stakeholders.

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I’m biased as I’m a big fan of @Matthew_Graham’s work and his proposals across different DAOs in DeFi, but this all looks really well thought out and the Balancer community will most likely welcome the Governance House with arms wide open.

As Matt points out, governance apathy and coordination challenges are a big pain point today for DAOs. Balancer is lucky enough to have an awesome group of passionate community members (of which @Andrea81 is part) but a subDAO like Governance House bringing the broader perspective from across many different DAOs to create symbiotic proposals is a major value add to the whole ecosystem.

Composability is one of the most exciting aspects of Ethereum and DeFi, Governance House can help bring it to the next level through governance coordination/promotion.

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I got bought with this idea. Great Complimentary Initiative but i think we should have a seperate guiding principles which should be clear to whomsover who opt for this service or intend to contribute in this endeavour. Something like this should have a constitution of its own. Since this entity would be having great powers in its armory. Any Conflict of Interest with the IC or its partners and the larger constituents of the DEFI ecosystem should have well - thought out check and balances. Thankyou for bringing this up and initiating the much needed discussion.

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Hi All,

I think the confusion stems from the fact that the definition of a subDAO can vary widely. I think most nests are going down a subDAO model and looking back, by giving this idea a name and referring to it as a subDAO, without conferring with the community is an overstep. Please see this as a reflection of my commitment and passion to the role. I failed to communicate, I should have discussed it and gotten consensus from the community on the forum first. We have highlighted there are no processes for such things, nests, pods and subDAOs are different conceptually. Similar proposals are not referred to as subDAO, that was a mistake as it has shown to be triggering for members of the community. I’m working on being a better communicator. It won’t happen again. Please accept my apology.

There is a community call this Wednesday and I am working on a Q&A slide pack to be uploaded here which addresses the comments and provides further insight.

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Respectfully @Matthew_Graham, this is not a nomenclature issue. This is an issue of:

  • You not respecting the org structure in place at the DAO (Nests, Seasons). We moved to nests and pods and this directly breaks the model you just helped launch, effectively preventing execution on my remit this season due to this disruption. You and @oneski22 recruited @ncitron @Lavi and @puncar ahead of informing me that this initiative was going to be proposed. We have a coordination touchpoint that you were well-aware of and instead you chose to form a vampiric DAO with a remit that is well established within the Governance Nest at IC and started soliciting delegations under false-pretenses. This is not positive-sum and this move was considered, not communication negligence on your part, so I don’t accept the hollow apology.
  • You lying in another governance forum about your DAOs (GHs) affiliation to IC. I have asked that the council address this matter as it breaks the foundation of trust that DAOs require to work together and we’re only as strong as the agreements we can make and deliver on. Imo, your having caused a governance failure at Fei through deceit is grounds to have you removed from your roles at IC that require trust (Finance Nest Lead, multisig access, Index Council). I hope the remaining council and contributors see how dangerous this action is given the positions of trust you hold and acts swiftly and accordingly; if an elected representative Owl can misrepresent IC without reprisal then we devolve to chaos and distrust from our partners very quickly, and ultimately fail as a DAO.
  • You forcing this DAO to consider a subDAO at this time given there are already procedures in place to execute the operational aspects of your proposal is not optimal; we spent a good deal of energy getting to the structure we have and this type of forced reconsideration around a reorganization in-season and outside of your remit is disruptive at best; at worst, it’s blatantly extractive.
  • This is not a good deal for IC regardless of the above, but especially given the above. To be clear you’re asking IC to adopt your existing DAO as a subDAO. Both the skills you require to execute and the power you need to do so are derived from Index Coop and our product holders. GH DAO as it stands is comprised of GovNest resources you’ve reconfigured so that you can charge a fee that will never make it back to IC. The metagovernance influence IC has is derived from our product holders/users and you propose extracting from both product holders and this community. I will not support delegating our governance power to extractive service providers, and end of day GH would be a service provider and potentially utilized as such on a spot-basis, not an unbound delegation of all metagovernance power. This shouldn’t be a subDAO to IC, but I wish you success with the endeavors generally.

I will not be supporting this proposal and do not care to engage further on this matter with a proposer that is engaging with IC DAO and The Fei Tribe in this way, and refusing to engage with the people that took the time to provide meaningful and considered feedback in the comments to this post above. There is no need for speed here and this is simply an early-stage proposal in our forum. Imo, this is a wasteful use of DAO resources to accommodate consideration of your misguided side-hustle. I’m increasingly of the opinion that Index Coop holistically and repeatedly has been lead astray by your actions and the commensurate response and cultural reset needs to be greater than current leadership is equipped or prepared to effect.

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I agree, to remain in positions of leadership at this point is to effectively condone misrepresenting the truth to partner communities. People have suggested they feel deceit is too strong a word but euphemisms aside here deceit is simply

deceit

/dɪˈsiːt/
noun

  1. the action or practice of deceiving someone by concealing or misrepresenting the truth.

For those that claim there was no policy to say a subDAO can’t just spin up - therefore Matt was not misrepresenting “truth” it is not our position on policy that matters here.

Although this is only one comment - this member felt the truth was misrepresented and it is the tip of an iceberg. FEI has spoken and ultimately voted 90% NO CONFIDENCE to delegate to GH. Regardless of our position on “degrees” of truth or the need for policy, we have been found wanting.

Leadership should be above reproach and set an exemplary standard of conduct. Regardless of whether policy exists or not Matt you knowingly and repeatedly misrepresented the truth and imo so long as you remain a member of Council, the entire coop is seen to condone misleading behaviour

You’ve got some ground to make up here but what astounds me is that you would claim community oversight for GH on all decisions while proactively subverting the community governance process here.

What recent changes?
Wen creation of Governance House?
Why a new delgate address?
Why present an early stage discussion as a done deal?

I can think of only one good reason - you were hoping to accrue voting power prior to the GH IIP in order to vote GH into existence because you are aware that it is a distraction to our mission. It is a brilliant innovative idea, but the timing here was wrong and you’ve effectively undermined your own reputation, the reputation of Coop and our industry standing.

Our continued silence in respect to affected stakeholders is to effectively condone the deceit which I finding absolutely unacceptable. Decisive action should already have been taken to apologise and begin to repair the damage done. People lose jobs for this kind of misconduct, presidents would face impeachment.

PROBLEM: I’m seeing here a crisis of governance legitimacy, coop reputation and industry trust, which will impact us in the long term.

QUESTION: How do we repair the relationship of trust that has been undermined, knowing that the way we are perceived throughout DeFi is critical to our success

SOULTION: We need to 1) own the mistake 2) prove accountability (Matt) 3) apologise and make ourselves available to receive feedback from those the felt mislead and in this way mend the burning bridges.

@Matthew_Graham you need to stand down from Council. Council are then in a position to clearly signal (internally & externally) and communicate on the forums of all affected stakeholders that we do not condone the misleading of partner communities and as such the person responsible has elected to stand down leadership positions pending clarification of the situation.

I know this will not go down well with many people but it needed to be said in public because pleading this case via DM has proved disappointing

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Hi All,

Due to events associated with this proposal, I have decided to step down from the Index Council and MGC.

I acknowledge that how I have managed events relating to Governance House has not been appropriate and despite the best intentions, I made several mistakes and errors in judgement.

I am owning those mistakes, committing to improving and hope to remain a contributor at Index Coop. I apologise for my mistakes and please let this be the last point in time when people personally attack each other at Index Coop.

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Thank you for doing the right thing!
And also can you please reaffirm (Our Guiding Principles - Index Coop Community Handbook)

Here

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