Governance House

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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I understand it may not mean much coming from me @Matthew_Graham but I am really proud of you for making this decision, this is what leadership looks like at times.

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@Matthew_Graham I’m sorry too; I believe we handled a good thing roughly sir, and as the dust is settling I find myself wishing we spoke more frequently about the things we’re passionate about; namely the best use of metagovernance power here at IC. You’re a Herculean centralizing force for change, and I react to that from a place that is core. I’ll always protect the value of what I consider to be our most precious resource; the untapped utility that comes with the assets our users provide.

The novelty of offloading the appearance of impropriety around monetization intentionality to a subDAO, servicing a broader user base and coordinating interested delegators, is only appealing so long as there’s ever any question around IC intentionality. In my opinion the guiding principle in using our meta governance powers should be maximizing value for our users, not anything else, ever, as they would not park their hard earned value with us otherwise.

As I see it, there’s a world where our DAOs both become expert coordinators and operators in the ecosystem, leveraging strengths and yours becoming one of the largest influencers in ICs metagovernace agenda broadly, and likely ICs agenda as there would be no COI should we remain separate entities. ICs stance could be forever known; “value expeditiously returned to users.”

In that envisioned world, IC would work with GH just like any other DAO seeking ops assistance, and delegate out our massive and ever increasing influence as needed. In a proposal sense IC would execute in service of pumping value into our products though integrations and increasing composability, GHs and ICs agenda may clash at times, but given the outsize holdings of investment parties, capture in any real sense is unlikely.

In my conception the best way to express the full value of anything is in the most open market, and the best way to do that is to automate it. Now I know what you’re thinking, blasphemy we need to get along and make proposals together etc. Hear me out.

If we coordinate, as Index Coop, with the DAOs that drive the tokens in our products, to any means other than technical integrations that improve the value of the indexing product, well imo that’s picking winners and that’s the methodologies job. So I’ll drive every available token with governance power fast and hard toward hands-off product utility improvement; absent that monetization, and if that’s via your maas dao so be it. If it’s Paladin so be it. Personally I don’t believe IC as a DAO should be coordinating metagovernance proposals in-house, but only because I don’t think IC DAO should be in the business of proposing broadly as that’s unique to Aave, presently.

In effect, I think we’re still having the same conversation through time . . .

. . . and dragging this poor dao along roughly has been our legacy to date. I’m ashamed of where we stand given how I feel about you and the power of governance. We’ve been communicating badly, I want to take the most effective steps to correct that; please let me know your thoughts on what a good regular touchpoint for IC and GH would look like while we’re in the formation phase for GH.

I’ll commit to doing the diligence required to understand your venture, and make the best recommendations I can to IC about how safe and effective a partnership will be. If GH still wishes to become a subDAO, I’ll work with you in scoping out some ongoing but not unbound delegations such as Aave; again if there’s a better way to express the value of that delegation in the future I’m going to advocate for it and need to be able to pull it back to IC cleanly, so please don’t make any representations around GH access to IC product voting power delegations until we can get an agreement in place.

I’ll try and keep comms high, but Matt, we’ve served together here for some time and you know this could easily be construed as an attack on the Governance Nest given the actions taken, and while I’m assuming positive intent there’s just no reason why someone as high context in metagov operational strategy as yourself would feel the need to get quite far down the path of planning, including recruiting a dao contributor base that’s over half IC active overlap, and then simultaneously propose and request delegations without once dropping into any if the very public meetings we’ve had to discuss governance since September of ‘21 if the intention is/was to work in a positive-sum manner with this DAO as it’s currently formed. If this is a matter of personalities, let’s address it, but when I have finance things to address I address them with you; if I accumulate influence and run an IIP that massively impacts DAO operations, well then we’re having a different/disruptive conversation.

I’ll try as hard as possible to make sure you’re afforded the best platform to interface with IC in this way to scope out GH; either way we’re going to be working together for a very long time and I want that to be as positive as possible; I’ll continue to ensure it is for our users and community as long as I’m here.

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