Governance House - Delegate INDEX for Metagovernance Voting

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title: Governance House - Delegate INDEX for Metagovernance Voting
status: Discussion
author: @Matthew_Graham
Created: 28-02-2022

Simple Summary

Tribe DAO holds 100K of INDEX and to date, has participated in two Index Coop snapshot votes. The INDEX metagovernance voting influence is significantly underutilized by so many INDEX holders. This proposal presents the community with a fresh approach for how Tribe DAO can boost participation in Index Coop’s metagovernance votes.

Please do read the Index Coop forum post describing Governance HOuse as it will provide the much needed context to support the below proposal, [1].

Abstract

Governance House is a newly created subDAO of Index Coop and has been created to offer Metagovernance as a Service (MaaS) across DeFi, [1]. The vision for Governance House is to help solve the voter apathy problem by becoming a pro-ecosystem, trusted vote in DeFi that also works with communities to help implement improvement proposals. MaaS enables everyone the ability to progress an idea from ideology to on-chain implementation. With one caveat, the improvement proposal is welcomed by the receiving communities core team.

Governance House kindly asks the Tribe DAO community if they would like to be apart of Governance House and to show support for Governance House, by granting Governance House the ability to utilize the 100K of INDEX to participate in INDEX holders metagovernance votes plus IIPs that are specifically related to Governance House. All metagovernance votes relating to FEI or TRIBE, plus non Governance House related IIPs will be run through a snapshot for TRIBE holders to vote on. For any votes that fail to meet quorum, Governance House will vote on the communities behalf.

Motivation

To date, Tribe has participated in two Index Coop votes, [2]. The first vote related to listing FRAX on Aave V2 (AIP-29) which is a great testament to the character of Tribe DAO. The second vote was to ensure that Set Labs continues paying for the rebalancing costs of DPI which the Index Coop community greatly appreciates.

For many large governance token holders across DeFi, this is fairly typical behavior whereby voters only participate in votes that resonate within the community. Governance House is trying to solve voter apathy by providing an independent voice who will vote to support the ecosystem in an unbiased manner. To date, Index Coop’s Metagovernance Committee has largely performed this function and going forward it will be replaced by Governance House.

With the emergence of Governance House, the proposal power from within the DPI sett will be more widely used to support the implementation of change across DeFi. To date we have had strong traction with Aave and hopefully others follow suit soon. Previously Index Coop has done some of this, but now Governance House intends to enhance the reach and influence by making it a service with the ecosystem. The vision for Governance House is to become a collaboration hub, an industry leader that supports the growth of the ecosystem.

Governance House intends to enable those who delegate large holdings to Governance House to retain the ability to vote on key decisions with the holding. For Tribe DAO, all metagovernance votes relating to FEI and/or TRIBE will be processed via Tribe DAO’s snapshot. Whatever TRIBE holders choose, will be how the Governance House votes. For any votes that fail to meet quorum, Governance House will vote on the communities behalf. This is the change between how TRIBE holders currently vote and how Governance House proposes to operate going forward with the community’s blessing.

The request here is to enable Matthew Graham who is a part of Governance House to vote in line with the above proposal as presented above, [3]. Do note Matthew Graham is also a TRIBE delegate and his voting history can be found on Tally, [4]. The INDEX delegation will need to be re-delegated to a Governance House wallet address, with a supporting ENS name of course, as they are currently delegated to a signer wallet that is on multiple multisigs. Pending feedback in the comments, I will update this post with a wallet address in due course.

In order to successfully utilize the metagovernance influence of Index Coop, Governance House must exceed the INDEX voting quorum. To date, several large INDEX holders have either delegated their INDEX or are in the process of delegating their INDEX to Governance House. By Tribe DAO endorsing the above proposal this will go a long way to ensuring Governance House will always meet quorum on the Index Coop metagovernance process which will continue as is uninterrupted by the Governance House proposal.

If Tribe DAO would like to delegate TRIBE votes to Governance House, please do mention this in the comments as Governance House would love to be a delegate within the Tribe community more so than what it already is when Index Coop enables voting on Tribe’s on and off chain votes.

It goes without saying, if there are any opportunities that arise for Governance House to help support the growth of the Tribe DAO community please do let us know. If a core member from Tribe DAO wants to join Governance House with the intent of helping out and facilitating Governance House helping Tribe DAO, please do reach out. At the time of writing there are two members/delegates of the Tribe community at Governance House, Matthew Graham and Austin Green, [5]. At the moment we have members from Aave, Llama, Index Coop and hopefully a few more big names soon. We would love to see TRIBE listed on Aave mainnet V2 market :slight_smile:

Delegate

If Tribe DAO would like to delegate TRIBE votes to Governance House, with great appreciation, please delegate to the below address.

0xE8e98fBbE83428aa087b29E003858F69855B50AE

Reference

[1] Governance House - Meta-Governance - The Index Coop
[2] Boardroom
[3] https://twitter.com/Matthew_Graham_
[4] Tally | 0xc290...7E68
[5] Tally | 0x530c...a912

Vote

FOR

Approve Governance House the ability to utilize the 100K of INDEX as outlined above.

AGAINST

Do not change anything and let’s keep things as is.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

6 Likes
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I strongly support this initiative as Governance House can help to spread the Tribe’s governance influence, as well as providing a good fallback mechanism for when the community is too occupied to participate in the wide array of governance activities across DeFi.

3 Likes
3

I will also support this proposal as the proposed ‘Governance House’ organization will be able to be focused on utilizing the Tribe’s substantial INDEX holdings to vote on topics beneficial to the Tribe ecosystem as well as the larger DeFi sphere.

3 Likes
4

In favor of both INDEX and TRIBE if it makes sense to others in the community :slight_smile: @Matthew_Graham are you worried about concentration of INDEX voting power? It could make sense to do a smaller delegation

4 Likes
5

I like your initiative and what you guys are doing, but the whole 100K INDEX delegation could be like losing an arm for TribeDAO governance power. Even though you’re aligned with tribe DAO, there could be a conflict of interest later down the lane. We should start with a smaller amount like 10K INDEX. I would not agree with the whole 100K INDEX Delegation at the movement.

2 Likes
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Hi @joey,

With respect to metagovernance votes, I am not as concerned because 1Kx has 187K votes and another whale has over 237K votes looking at Snapshot. Tribe’s delegate wallet would be one of the larger wallets which also means it is of great assistance in enabling Governance House to quorum.

How about we do 60K INDEX now to a new wallet address that is Governance House and then leave the other 40K INDEX as is with no change. Why 60K INDEX, that is the same size as the next largest investor we hope to onboard to Governance House.

Hi @nikhil,

With respect to the conflict of interest, the natural approach here is to run a snapshot vote where TRIBE holders can vote and determine the outcome. It is a large net negative to be viewed as acting with risk of conflict of interest and best approach is to abstain which here means ensuring TRIBE holders determine the outcome and there is no quorum, then Governance House should abstain. For Governance House to be successful, it needs to be true to its objective of being pro the ecosystem, professional and remain unbiased. The downside is one bad move and risk all the delegates withdrawing support.

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Upcoming xTribe changes will increase participation in governance within the community, and the community needs exposure to meta governance. We’re in the early stages of hyper-growth with Turbo and Launch are nearby. The community should have direct exposure to meta governance. It will be one of the selling points of how Tribe governance can influence other DAOs by delegating community will lose the opportunity to participate.

Coming to the point of conflict abstaining from the vote is a waste of governance votes IMO and also working on proposals across multiples dao index, governance house, and tribe is kind of complicating and consumes a lot of time.

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In my opinion, the best way to run this would be a system in which Governance House is the default controller of the Tribe’s INDEX, but the Tribe DAO has superior metagovernance power so that when an important vote appears the DAO votes on it directly. Then, the Tribe community has full access to voting rights across all our governance tokens, when we want them. In order to ensure this, Governance House should pledge to vote with all of the Tribe’s INDEX in a way dictated by a direct snapshot vote, when the Tribe community calls for it.

1 Like
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This is exactly what we expect to happen. Independent of if it is Governance House or myself executing the votes, if there is a Tribe snapshot for anything on how to used the INDEX holding, what TRIBE holders vote for is what will be implemented. Governance House can proactively create snapshots, TRIBE holders can create and also request them as well. With myself and Austin, plus someone from Tribe DAO being at Governance house, we intend to ensure this is what happens.

An alternative way is we create a bot that takes all the metagovernance votes and IIPs and run them via the TRIBE snapshot. There will be >5 votes most weeks, and voter apathy will kick in. This proposal intends to utilise the INDEX holding as best as possible for the community. The intention here is to compliment the communities efforts and utilise the INDEX when TRIBE holders are not, thus maximising the use of the INDEX holding. A snapshot can be called by anyone, so Governance House or a Tribe community member can create a snapshot vote and Governance House will execute the outcome. This means Governance House is like a default user of the voting rights and TRIBE holders are the primary rights holder.

Governance House can become like a Business Development extension of the community. With people from across DeFi at Governance House, the networking and opportunities to collaborate should flow.

MaaS can also be used to support the community as well. I am sure there would be plenty of low hanging fruit that could be worked on but the developers are working on the heavy hitters. If that is the case, then Governance House can provide MaaS :slight_smile:

The votes can always be un-delegated at a later date as well, so there is that to consider as well.

1 Like
10

This structure makes sense to me.

If this is the case, Tribe DAO loses nothing but it benefits the Index Coop community.

1 Like
11

Hi All,

I am looking to prepare a Snapshot for this and I am thinking of presenting the following options:

  1. Delegate 100K INDEX to Governance House
  2. Delegate 60K INDEX to Governance House
  3. Delegate 0K INDEX to Governance House

Something to note, if Governance House was to vote on Snapshot and a request came through to run a snapshot and TRIBE holders voted to reverse the vote - this can be done :slight_smile:. Whilst the vote is active, votes can be flipped, only catch is Index Coop only offers FOR and AGAINST, with no ABSTAIN option.

Regarding delegation of TRIBE, I am happy to proceed however the community wishes. I can run two snapshots and present a series of options and let votes decide. Would anyone like to put forward suggestions ?

1 Like
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I don’t think you need to split into two snapshots, just add more options (with highest approval winning each). Would it be possible for Gov. House to propose a mandatory abstain voting option on Index Coop governance proposals? I imagine this would be a non-controversial proposal.

1 Like
13

Just a minute guys…
A scenario I don’t see addressed in this thread is what happens when there is a conflict in the preferred outcome of your delegating members? How do you decide how to vote? If the answer is to abstain, then I will have to agree with @nikhil that the TRIBEDAO retains direct voting power.

1 Like
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Each major delegate has a unique wallet and this enables each notable investor’s votes to be used independently relative to other investors. The votes are not pooled, so when Tribe’s vote are cast they are cast separately to others. This is what enables us to reverse the vote and if there is a chance TRIBE holders would like to hold a snapshot, then with open lines of communication we can definitely do this.

When there is no Snapshot vote, then it is the people within Governance House that make the decision how to vote. Currently, Index Coop has a committee, so if quorum is not met this committee votes on behalf of INDEX holders.

This is very reasonable and I will follow up within Index Coop to see if we can enable this option on Snapshot for Metagovernance votes.

I am thinking of using “Approval Voting” and then each voter may select (“approve”) any number of choices, each selected choice will receive equal voting power. It is worth keeping in mind Austin and I both are already TRIBE delegates and Index Coop is working to enable TRIBE holdings to vote in DPI (when RGT is swapped with TRIBE) and GMI.

My suggestion would be:

  1. 2M TRIBE delegation to Governance House
  2. 1M TRIBE delegation to Governance House
  3. 0M TRIBE delegation to Governance House
1 Like
15

Hi All,

A snaphot has been created. Voting starts thursday and finishes saturday.

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Hey folks - first time posting here - but I FEI is not new to me. I have written a couple pieces digging into the “leveraged metagovernance” term Joey coined last year, including interviews with Seb, David S. and Matthew in relation to the work. But, transparently, I still get tripped up on the name, seem I always pronounce it wrong.

I am a Governance contributor at Index Coop and I want to add context to the statement:

Governance House is not yet a subDAO of Index Coop. It is a proposal that is still in the discussion phase. You can and should read some of the questions posed before voting for this proposal.

And additionally in a post similar to this one

The creation of a subDAO was brought to the Index Council for consideration yesterday 4.7, however the discussion has been tabled for after a Index community discussion on this subject on 4.13.

In principle, I support the idea behind GovHouse. It has the right elements and Matthew has done more to focus the power of metagovernance than the Index Coop Governance Nest has been able to do outside of creation. But this is a metric-ton of influence gathered in one place and it still has to develop transparency, controls, and operational detail. And I think presenting GovHouse as a “done deal” to you and asking for INDEX /TRIBE delegation is a bit premature.
Thanks
Shawn

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Thanks for taking the time for this post Shawn. I appreciate @Matthew_Graham ambition with GovHouse but it was presented to the TRIBE as an active subDAO of INDEX Coop - so disingenuous. Reading Matt’s post, it never crossed my mind that GovHouse was still under deliberation. Begining my response with “Just a minute guys…”, in retrospect, was my instinct raising a flag I couldn’t quite place my finger on. For this reason, I abstained from the snapshot vote yesterday. Minutes ago, I proceeded to vote 0 INDEX and 0 TRIBE given what I know now - the only one to do so thus far. Further, I ask that the snapshot vote be nullified as the TRIBE wasn’t made aware of the whole story.

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Hi @cryptozen,

In light of the above, I want to reassure everyone that none of the votes should be delegated or used until this issue is resolved. I am confident in the near future that I will be able to post something here that removes any confusion that may exist.

There is a lot already happening within Governance House and more details on this will emerge soon. I apologies for the poor optics here and want to stress there is no risk of these votes being used without the appropriate blessing of the community.

3 Likes