https://newsletter.tally.xyz/p/plot-twist-tornado-cash-hijackers

Welcome back to the Tally Newsletter, your weekly source for DAO governance insights. I’m coolhorsegirl and I’m so excited to be here. 🟣

This week, prepare for a storyline that could rival any blockbuster movie: a notorious digital pirate, a hijacked governance, a tense standoff, and an unexpected twist that’ll leave you gobsmacked. Decentralized governance never fails to entertain.

We’re also talking proposals from some big dogs in governance—Gitcoin, Hop, and Nouns, all the way from a few run-of-the-mill budget requests to a significant visual design update. Let’s get into it 👇

🤿 Deep Dive: Plot Twist: Tornado Cash Hijacker’s Redemption Arc

It seems our digital pirate who hijacked Tornado Cash governance has had a surprising—to say the least—change of heart. After passing a sneaky proposal, he’s offered up a reversal of sorts. Brace yourself for the latest scoop in yet another episode of decentralized governance drama.

So, just to jog your memory, on May 21st, this rascal seized control over Tornado Cash’s governance with a wily proposal, leaving them in a position to do some serious damage. The hacker took control of 1.2M votes, outgunning the 700k legit votes. Just like that, Tornado Cash governance was put on mute (ouch!). But as the storm was raging, our man on the inside, Mr. Tornadosaurus Hex (Hex, for short), sprang into action, pushing for a proposal requesting folks to withdraw all funds locked in governance.

Things were looking pretty grim, with Hex uncertain whether his heroic efforts could stand up to the attacker’s stranglehold on the governance. But lo and behold, our exploiter had a change of heart (cue the “awwwws”) and reached out with a new proposal, suggesting they might actually hand back the reins of control.

Hex relayed this news, cautioning the community to play along since, let’s face it, they didn’t have much of a choice. There were mixed feelings about this sudden change – hope, suspicion, and speculation that it’s a scheme to boost the TORN token’s price before bowing out. Regardless, the silver lining in this whole kerfuffle is that the overall hacks in the crypto world have seen a decline in Q1 2023.

Anyway, the DAO voted overwhelmingly (literally 0 against) to pass the attacker’s proposal. After a heavy analysis of the safety of the proposal (fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me), it was executed on May 28th. Governance was successfully returned to the protocol. Phew!

Tornado Cash got LUCKY. Let this be a wake-up call to all of us governerds: vet those proposal descriptions and logic like your life (or at least your funds) depend on it! In the unpredictable world of decentralized governance, never get complacent. After all, 2022 was a rollercoaster of hacks following a quiet spell. Stay safe, stay vigilant, and as always, keep your eyes on those governance proposals!

⌛️ On-chain Proposals

On-chain DAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations that operate entirely on the blockchain, using smart contracts and other blockchain-based technologies for its operations and decision-making processes. Tally believes that true DAOs operate on-chain.

💚 Gitcoin

S18 Gitcoin Allo Budget

Summary: This season, Gitcoin Allo is focused on finding product-market fit for web3 grants programs, by facilitating their funding via Grants Stack and enabling new software development on the Allo protocol. Asking for 1.2M GTC.

Voting ends: June 2nd

[GCP-008] S18 Discord Management

Summary: As the DAOops workstream, previously responsible for funding Discord management, concludes operations at the end of Season 17, future funding will be sought through the GCP process. Requesting $23,400 for the upcoming 13-week season, with no severance should the service be discontinued.

Voting ends: June 1st

[S18] Gitcoin Passport Budget (repost)

Summary: The Passport workstream this season aims to amplify its impact by increasing Passport’s adoption via on-chain mechanisms, UX enhancements, and DevRel initiatives, and by conducting strategic revenue experiments to ensure sustainable value capture. Requesting ~390k GTC.

Voting ends: June 1st

🐰 Hop DAO

[HIP-25] Lito Departure

Summary: Authereum Labs and Lito have agreed to part ways, leading to some necessary adjustments in their HOP token distribution. To ensure fairness, the Hop DAO is orchestrating the return of unvested tokens from Lito, while still respecting the terms of any tokens already vested. Passed on Snapshot.

Voting ends: June 2nd

🟡 NounsDAO

Introducing Noun Computers – An Ethereum Node Prototype

Summary: $250k to fund the development of credit card-sized computers that would be ideal for Ethereum staking. This would be part of Nouns’s increased focus on public goods. The prototype is cute, designed from scratch, and would allow for easy individual staking, another Nouns focus.

Voting ends: June 4th

Nouns Display Font

Summary: Did you know Nouns doesn’t have a display font? This proposal asks for 18 ETH to create one, starting from literal scratch. Goal is to be fun, recognizable, and of course, Nounish. Check out the proposal—the artist has some drafts ready to view.

Voting ends: June 5th

📝 10 Things To Read or Listen To

📄 “Don’t overload Ethereum’s consensus” by Vitalik Buterin

📄 “Building Sybil Resistance using Cost of Forgery” by Kyle Weiss

📄 “Governance of Superintelligence” by Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever of OpenAI

📄 ”Announcing the DAO Anthology” by Samantha Marin

🧵 “The importance of translation in the world of Web3 and DAOs” by Bankless Translators

🧵 “Aave Robot’s plans for DAOs” by Dan Wu

🎧 “Building a Borderless Web3 Culture w/ Feems” on Rehash

🎧 “Token bound accounts + ERC-6551 w/ Benny Giang” on On the Other Side

🎧 “Summoning Ether’s Phoenix with Karl Floersch” on the GreenPill

🎧 “Rune Christensen – The MakerDAO Endgame Plan” on I Pledge Allegiance

💫 DAO Talk: patrick @ the arbitrum foundation || DT interview #39

🤭 Meme of the Week

What a week! Delegation Week is over – 10 Spaces in 5 days! We dived deep into DAOs like Arbitrum, Hop DAO, Pool Together, ENS, and Gitcoin, talked about the responsibilities of the token holder, and caught up with university delegate groups. Catch up with all of our Spaces here.

The DAO Research Collective is collecting research for their State of DAO Delegation Report. Fill out the survey here for a USDC reward (it takes about 3 minutes).

Subscribe now

~ coolhorsegirl 🐴

p.s.- Monkey Mountain, ‘nuff said.

https://newsletter.tally.xyz/p/dao-spotlights-arbitrum-dao-and-hop

Welcome back to the Tally Newsletter, your weekly source for DAO governance insights. I’m coolhorsegirl and I’m so stoked to be here. 🟣

In the spirit of Delegation Week, we’re turning the spotlight on two pioneering DAOs: Arbitrum and Hop. We’ll delve into the latest governance developments in each DAO, showcasing some of the most noteworthy proposals. We’ll also highlight key delegates whose efforts and influence are shaping the future of these organizations.

Arbitrum DAO is offering free delegation on Tally during Delegation Week. Wallets that held at least 40 ARB tokens prior to May 1st, 2023 will be eligible for a free delegation transaction. Hop DAO is also working on a delegation incentive program for Delegation Week, so keep your eyes out for that!

We’ve also got a few proposals live, with Gitcoin’s S18 funding for MMM (Merch, Memes, Marketing – I love that) up for voting, a few Optimism proposals (including a symbolic budget), and a revised proposal to bring Nouns to NFT.Brasil. Let’s get into it 👇

🔦 DAO Spotlights: Arbitrum DAO & Hop DAO

This week, we’re diving deep into two DAOs (and their delegates) you must watch.

💙 Arbitrum DAO 🧡

Launched just a couple of months back in March, Arbitrum DAO uses $ARB tokens to allow holders to propose and vote on changes to the organization and the technologies it governs. Built on the Arbitrum One rollup chain, a Layer 2 Ethereum solution, the DAO includes a treasury for development funding and a Security Council for quick response to security issues. In effect, Arbitrum DAO allows token holders to actively shape the future of the Arbitrum and Ethereum ecosystem.

The Latest in Governance

As the first EVM rollup tech to reach Stage 1 decentralization, the ARB token launch was one of the most anticipated events in crypto this year. Over $120M in ARB was airdropped to fellow DAOs in its ecosystem: biggest receivers were Treasure DAO and GMX receiving $8M each followed by Uniswap, Sushiswap, Balancer, Curve, and Dopex, all receiving between 3-5 million ARB tokens. Since launch, AIPs have mostly focused on foundation-building for the DAO: amending the constitution, setting operating budget, and taking the first steps to launch a grants program.

Right now, the forum is hot with a proposal to include liquidity positions in voting. Arbitrum’s delegate program is also hot. To become a delegate, you can create a profile on Tally and build out your delegate platform. Don’t have time or interest in voting? Delegate to one of the DAO’s many delegates also on Tally.

Delegates to Watch

• Ceazor’s Snack Sandwich (ceazor.eth): The most recent contributor to write a proposal (that LP one above), Ceazor is committed to expanding education as the path to adoption.

  • Core issues:

    • DeFi development on Arbitrum

    • Improving governance participation

    • IRL Arbitrum community gathering organization

• DisruptionJoe (disruptionjoe.eth): Frequent in the forum, former Gitcoin Fraud Detection workstream lead DisruptionJoe is focused on creating legitimacy, credible neutrality, and sustainability in DAOs.

  • Core issues:

    • Public goods funding

    • Improving governance participation

    • Tooling, improving protocol decentralization

• Blockworks Research (blockworksres.eth): The author of AIP 1.1 and 1.2, they’ve made significant contributions from Aribtrum DAO from the get-go. They believe the DAO’s main prerogative should be attracting builders into the ecosystem and minimizing the trust assumptions associated with the rollup.

  • Core issues:

    • DeFi development on Arbitrum

    • Improving governance participation

• George Beall (hiringdevs.eth): As former Head of Business and Operations for Commonwealth and an active contributor to the dYdX ecosystem, hiringdevs.eth brings vast experience from across DeFi and is intent on facilitating the development of a complete and robust dapp ecosystem on Arbitrum.

  • Core issues:

    • DeFi development on Arbitrum

    • Tooling, improving protocol decentralization

🐰 Hop DAO 🐰

Hop Protocol serves as a core piece of Ethereum infrastructure and operates as a public good under the governance of Hop DAO (using $HOP) launched in May 2022. The DAO oversees Hop’s continued growth and trajectory, managing functions like supported L2s and non-Ethereum chains, treasury fund management, and grants promoting ecosystem growth. In essence, Hop DAO exercises full control over the protocol’s operation, and those interested in influencing its direction are encouraged to get involved as outlined in subsequent articles.

The Latest in Governance

Lately, we’ve seen a variety of funding proposals and Ambassador nominations. Funds needed to be moved from multi-sig to multi-sig depending on their purpose, with community multi-sig OP going to ambassador multi-sig for use executed by the ambassador (contingent on community vote). Hop DAO elects ambassadors to interface with other communities, namely Rocket Pool, Optimism, and Arbitrum thus far (Hop also received an airdrop from Arbitrum!).

After passing a roadmap 4 months back, the DAO has been focused on executing the specifics of it, like launching Hop on Polygon zkEVM Mainnet and offering bridging support for rETH to/from Optimism, Arbitrum, and Ethereum. More recent debate is around liquidity incentives. You can apply as a delegate here and see who delegates are receiving delegations from here.

Delegates to Watch

• thegreg.eth: A long-time HOP user and early liquidity provider, thegreg.eth is one of the forum’s most prolific participants. As a LP for which Hop provides a percentage of the award, delegators are guaranteed that he will vote for actions that derive fair value to the HOP token. He also takes minutes for the community calls.

• 💩💩💩💩.eth: Frequent flyer on the forums and author of the last 5 proposals to go to temperature check, fourpoops, as they’re known, is committed to maintaining security with a focus on long-term growth and value creation (as opposed to flash marketing and short-termism). They’re a participant in 7 other DAOs and have a 100% voting participation rate on Hop!

• maxandrew.eth: Another one of the forum’s most active contributors, Max is the Optimism Ambassador for Hop DAO and has a 100% participation rate. He’s a long-time user with significant contributions to Hop’s discussion on increasing token liquidity.

• dybsy.sismo.eth: With a 100% voting participation rate, Dybsy is a testament to “Can’t stop the bunny.” A longtime Hop user, he brings experience from across disciplines–blockhain (since 2013), scifi writing, and a commitment to logic above all.

Don’t miss our Twitter Spaces with Aribitrum DAO on May 23 @ 12pm EST and with Hop DAO on May 25th @ 12pm EST.

⌛️ On-chain Proposals

On-chain DAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations that operate entirely on the blockchain, using smart contracts and other blockchain-based technologies for its operations and decision-making processes. Tally believes that true DAOs operate on-chain.

💚 Gitcoin

S18/S19 MMM Workstream Budget Request

Summary: ~$624k to fund the MMM in reaching their S18 and S19 overarching north-star goal: Repositioning Gitcoin as a tech-first organization.

Voting ends: May 24th

S18-S19 Gitcoin Public Goods Funding Workstream Budget

Summary: Successfully passed on Snapshot. ~$599k to fund the PGF through S18. Budget will go towards operating the Gitcoin Grants Program rounds with Core and Featured Rounds, as well as driving 13 Quadratic Funding rounds and supporting. the Passport workstream.

Voting ends: May 27th

🔴 Optimism

Inflation Adjustment Proposal

Summary: Inflation of the OP token is set to 2% per year by default, but can be adjusted by governance. This proposal would reduce inflation in Year 2 to 0%.

Voting ends: May 19th

Treasury Appropriation (Foundation Year 2 Budget Approval)

Summary: Since the Foundation has only spent 5.21% of its Year 1 OP operating budget so far, it does not need to request. budget for Year 2 but is symbolically requesting an additional 1 OP for Year 2.

Voting ends: May 19th

🟡 NounsDAO

🇧🇷 NFT.Brasil – Taking Over São Paulo and Celebrating the Brazilian Community 2

Summary: An adjusted version of last week’s failed proposal. Key changes include downsizing goals based on time feasibility, decreasing budget by turning the lounge into a booth, and lowering metaverse activation.

Voting ends: May 27th

📝 10 Things To Read or Listen To

📄 “DAOs are Dead! Long live DAOs!” by Florian Glatz

📄 “Trust at Scale: Verification Frameworks” by Stefan Deleveaux

📄 “DAOversity Report” by Francisco Díaz

📄 “Onchain” by Jacob Horne

🧵 “Thoughts on the Gitcoin beta round” by Kevin Owocki

🎧 “Do Aragon Association Members Get ‘Fat Salaries’ With ‘Zero Accountability’?” on The Chopping Block

🎧 “Diogo Monica and Nathan McCauley – The Story Behind Anchorage Digital and Crypto’s Leading Custodian” on I Pledge Allegiance

🎧 “The Regenaissance with Gnoman” on GreenPill

🎧 “How Web3 Empowers Independent Artists w/ Ibn Ingor” on Rehash

🎧 “Building a Network City w/ Jon Hillis” on On the Other Side

💫 DAO Talk: the DAOs new groove || DT weekly #40

🤭 Meme of the Week

DELEGATION WEEK IS THIS WEEK. LITERALLY. IT’S ALREADY STARTED. Hear from the big dogs like Arbitrum, Hop Protocol, ENS, Uniswap, Pool Together, and Gitcoin. Find out why you should delegate to delegate to student orgs. Get the state of delegation. And more. Full schedule here and all Spaces are happening on the Tally Twitter.

Subscribe now

~ coolhorsegirl 🐴

p.s.- Speaking of Delegation Week, I’m moderating! Bit of CHG lore for you: my grandfather was a famous tv-radio host of “Polka Parade” in the 50s/60s. An artifact of its time, but I’ll be channeling his “radio voice” this week and we’ll see if it runs in the family. Spaces have gotta be the modern version of tv-radio, right?

https://newsletter.tally.xyz/p/attack-on-aragon

Welcome back to the Tally Newsletter, your weekly source for DAO governance insights. I’m coolhorsegirl and I’m so stoked to be here. 🟣

The governance tea is hot this week. An attempted token gov takeover has not only shaken Aragon’s foundations, but it’s also prompted some serious soul-searching about the essence of a DAO, the relationship between a DAO and its legal wrapper, and how to handle such attacks. Apology threads by protocols are a rarity, and in this case, one was more than warranted. Yet, Aragon’s apology may be a band-aid for a self-inflicted wound, as they try to backtrack from the missteps that landed them in hot water. Trust me, this is a drama you can’t afford to skip.

As for proposals, Gitcoin is heading into Season 18, Uniswap is continuing chain expansion of V3, and Nouns and its offshoots have many a proposal on the table, including some pretty cute action figures. Let’s get into it 👇

🤿 Deep Dive: Attack on Aragon

Draaaaaaama. TL;DR: DAO governance platform Aragon’s new DAO encountered a governance attack and their response may have caused more issues than it solved. Aragon (temporarily) turned its back on the ethos of a DAO – decentralization. They’ve since tried to rectify the situation, but it’s clear they stumbled. Has the damage been done? Let’s unpack this mess.

Rewind to June 2022: ANT (Aragon’s governance token) holders voted for the Aragon Association (AA) to shift their hefty treasury (~$200m) into a delegate-voting DAO. The DAO was launched this February, with the AA planning to start the treasury transfer with an initial 300k USDC last week. That’s where the trouble began.

Just as the process kicked off, the AA noticed some sketchy Discord activity from a group called Risk-Free Value (RFV) Raiders, the same group that pulled a fast one on Rook DAO. A sudden change in wANT supply in the DAO signaled that RFV was attempting to buy up enough governance tokens to repurpose the DAO treasury. Aragon, with more treasury transfers in the pipeline, found itself in a tight spot.

Here’s where it goes from bad to worse. In a blog post, the AA announced, “Aragon DAO has been repurposed. It’s now Aragon Grants DAO.” Repurposed? Really? By shifting the mission of the DAO, the AA found a way to send subsequent funds only for a grants program, while still maintaining a veneer of treasury decentralization. The scheme was simple: RFV wasn’t doing a Grant-deserving activity (like building on the Aragon dApp), so they’d be disqualified from getting funds even if they pulled off their buy-up. Sneaky move, Aragon. So, the Aragon DAO was hastily repackaged as the Aragon Grants DAO.

The quick fix ushered in a storm. The RFV issue was sorted, but anger among the community began boiling (and still is, tbh). Was the Aragon DAO ever really a DAO if the AA could just “repurpose” it with a casual blog post? The Twitterati stormed Aragon with well-deserved accusations of their new DAO being a sham – decentralized in name only (or “DINO,” if you will).

Aragon has since backtracked, saying that repurposing the DAO was a misstep, and that everything in the DAO is governed by ANT holders, not the AA. They assured that in case of another attack, the AA could halt future transfers but wouldn’t meddle with transfers to the DAO that have already been made (as they did this time around)

In an attempt to mend fences, Aragon apologized, stating, “Our communication made it seem like the Aragon DAO is stoppable, that’s not true.” They’ve promised to continue the transfers as planned and are encouraging debate on their forum. Yet, the sense of trust is undoubtedly shaken. The tea, my friends, remains piping hot.

⌛️ On-chain Proposals

On-chain DAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations that operate entirely on the blockchain, using smart contracts and other blockchain-based technologies for its operations and decision-making processes. Tally believes that true DAOs operate on-chain.

💚 Gitcoin

S18 Gitcoin Allo Budget

Summary: Allo is focused on establishing product-market fit for web3 grants programs. This season, they’re focused on 2 things: enabling these programs to run their funding through Grants Stack and improving the composability of Allo Protocol. Asking for $1.6M worth of GTC.

Voting ends: May 20th

S18 Gitcoin Passport Workstream Budget

Summary: Passport workstream is all about increasing adoption this season (by at least 5x), and with that, revenue (at least $1). This will involve market research, testing, and a big marketing push. Asking for $1.3M worth of GTC.

Voting ends: May 20th

🦄 Uniswap

Deploy Uniswap V3 on Moonbeam (2023)

Summary: Following a temperature check with ~100% voting YES, going onchain to confirm GFX Labs’s technical deployment of Uniswap V3 contracts on the Moonbeam using Wormhole.

Voting ends: May 17th

🚊 Public Nouns

Web3 Work: A Study of DAO Labor from Other Internet

Summary: 20 ETH grant to run a 6-month-long initiative of research on DAO labor, including working sessions, governance proposals based on findings, and an open-access report.

Voting ends: May 17th

🟡 NounsDAO

🇧🇷 NFT.Brasil – Taking Over São Paulo and Celebrating the Brazilian Community

Summary: $90k to sponsor NFT.Brasil, lounge and exhibition included. And a whole lotta swag.

Voting ends: May 17th

Nouns Wet Wipes V2 – Vote for your favourite Design!!!

Summary: 31,450k + 2ETH to create the first Nouns-branded Fast Moving Consumer Good (FMCG). Bringing Noun Wet Wipes to the masses, one pocket at a team. Design mock-ups included.

Voting ends: May 18th

NOUNISH FRIENDS mini-figures

Summary: $125k to fund 3”-tall mini-figures meant to be a “fun, stylish, low-cost, and non-crypto-based entry point into the worlds of NOUNs.” From Prop 72 and Prop 141, the project has been funded and communicating updates in Discord.

Voting ends: May 19th

100 Nounish Things: a nounish droposal ⌐◨-◨

Summary: Deploy an open-edition mint of the music video “100 Nounish Things” that highlights some of the biggest people, places, and things funded by Nouns.

Voting ends: May 19th

retain nounish for 6 months ⌐◨-◨

Summary: A hefty one. This proposal will fund nounish’s—a video production agency—continued work for Nouns for 969K USDC. With that money, included content plan would be carried out. Nounish boasts 3M @nounish socials views already.

Voting ends: May 20th

Nouns Chinese Socials: 6 Month Pilot

Summary: ~63 ETH for a 6-month pilot (paid via monthly streaming) of SCG Group, a digital agency, to empower China’s digital communities to learn and contribute to the Nouns ecosystem. Multiple platforms, 5+ posts per week, and travel to China to support the local team.

Voting ends: May 20th

📝 10 Things To Read or Listen To

📄 “Delegate Activity Tracker” by Karma (unveiling)

📄 “Gitcoin: Who makes the decisions anyway?” by shawn16400

📄 “The Many Lives of a Nouns DAO Proposal” by Wilson

📄 “The Opportunities and Limits of Nounish DAOs” by Chris Carella

🧵 “The broader an organization’s scope is, the greater he coordination cost required“ from pet3rpan

🧵 “Modeling Token Networks” from pet3rpan

🎧 “Decentralized Knowledge Sharing w/ Sari Azout” on Rehash

🎧 “‘Micromedia’ is the future | Yana Sosnovskaya, Zora” on Boys Club

🎧 “Stephen Wolfram: ChatGPT and the Nature of Truth, Reality & Computation” on the Lex Fridman Podcast

🎧 “Protocol Guild: 1 Year In with Time Beiko and Cheeky Gorilla” on GreenPill

💫 DAO Talk: DAO to the future || DT weekly #39

🤭 Meme of the Week

Some quickies from Tally: Delegation Week is NEXT WEEK. There’s still time to register as a DAO, delegate, or voter. And hey, this newsletter comes out on Tuesday mornings now instead of Mondays. See ya next week 🙂

Subscribe now

~ coolhorsegirl 🐴

p.s.- Made it to Vietnam! Finally, freed from Malaysia. Enjoying the pool and the heat. And I’m trying a new fruit every day!! My favourite so far has been the dragon mango.

https://newsletter.tally.xyz/p/another-day-another-delegate

Welcome back to the Tally Newsletter, your weekly source for DAO governance insights. I’m coolhorsegirl and I’m so stoked to be here. 🟣

Yet another Tally-powered protocol is launching a full-fledged delegation program! We’re talking Uniswap Delegate Race! On Agora voting portal, Uniswap’s first (intended annual) race has gone live with backing by 8M UNI set aside to be delegated.

Proposals this week are aplenty. Optimism heads into Season 4, backed by 4 Collective Intents, each with its own budget and scope. Rari has a potential partnership on the table and finally, NounsDAO is looking at the usual Nouns-branded fill-in-the-blanks as well as a dynamic quorum change. Let’s hop in 👇

🤿 Deep Dive: Another day, another delegate

Delegation remains HOT. We covered Optimism’s launch of a delegation cohort largely made up of university groups. We also dove into the Butter x Aave professional delegate campaign. Now, Uniswap has launched its first-ever Delegate Race!

The Delegate Race was launched alongside the launch of Uniswap Agora, “a unified and dedicated delegate portal to improve the Uniswap governance experience” funded by the UF Grants Program. Agora, a governance platform, is a governance platform that recently created a similar portal for Optimism.

So, the Delegate Race! It is the intended solution to a source of “major friction”—the difficulty of bootstrapping initial delegation from UNI holders. The race will happen annually, during which the Uniswap community can expect delegators to refresh their delegation based on updated Agora profiles. Race winners will earn massive governance power—UNI whales have pledged 8M UNI to be delegated.

The Race consists of 2 periods: We’re currently in the Profile Creation Period (‘til Friday), to be followed by the Delegation Period. Interested in entering the race? New and existing delegates can make delegate profiles on Agora by May 12th, describing their goals and values for the Uniswap ecosystem.

The profile consists of a number of questions designed for delegators to get a full grasp of what a delegate stands for. Winners of the race are meant to receive delegation for the year ahead, meaning short-term as well as medium-term plans can be enacted. Delegates must plug their past experience, intended plans for Uniswap governance, and the stakeholders they will represent with their votes.

That last one is especially cool. In the delegate landscape, it’s not always clear who everyone aims to represent. Instead of allowing delegates to claim to represent “all holders” (this is impossible), forcing each to identify the stakeholders they represent is forward-thinking. UNI holders should be excited about the increased accountability.

Voting will last from May 13th-26th, and the next race will happen this time next year. (And remember, you can always view delegates and delegate your UNI through Tally too!)

⌛️ On-chain Proposals

On-chain DAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations that operate entirely on the blockchain, using smart contracts and other blockchain-based technologies for its operations and decision-making processes. Tally believes that true DAOs operate on-chain.

🔴 Optimism

Protocol Delegation Program Renewal

Summary: Pretty self-explanatory. Renews the program for 1 season that’s been going on for 2 seasons already now. After this renewal for Season 4, protocols will need to reaffirm their commitment to Optimism governance via their own treasuries.

Voting ends: May 11th

The below are part of Season 4’s Collective Intents, directional goals that allow the Collective to align and focus, or “near-term targets. There may be multiple paths toward the target, proposed at a later date via “Missions.” Voting for each ends May 12th.

Intent #1 Budget Proposal: Progress Towards Technical Decentralization (1M OP)

Intent #2 – Council Intent Budget Proposal: Innovate on Novel Applications (6M OP)

Intent #3 Budget Proposal: Spread Awareness of the Optimistic Vision (1M OP)

Intent #4 Budget Proposal: Governance Accessibility (3M OP)

💛 Rari Foundation

Oamo Partnership Proposal

Summary: $5k of $RARI to fund a Rarible DAO data pool on Oamo. Oamo is a decentralized data broker with an upcoming Beta launch. The funds will be used as incentives to RARI users who share data anonymously with the Rari Foundation.

Voting ends: May 9th

🟡 NounsDAO

Let’s Throw a Global Pizza Party! Nouns x PizzaDAO

Summary: $42K to Nounify (sponsor) PizzaDAO’s 3rd global pizza party for Bitcoin Pizza Day on May 22. All funds will go to pizza purchases around the world (over 75 countries) to be distributed by PizzaDAO. Over 200k slices served already.

Voting ends: May 13th

Clothing, Every Day, Forever

Summary: &5,800 USDC for the development of wears.wtf, a Nounish fashion brand. Made from sustainable materials, some pretty sweet mock-ups available. CC0, meaning clothing will fall under public domain.

Voting ends: May 12th

Dynamic Quorum Updates

Summary: Since maximum quorum is currently too low to have changed the outcome of any recent proposals, proposals aims to reduce max quorum from 20% to 15%. Increases success of “hell yes” initiatives.

Voting ends: May 11th

Introducing Noun Computers

Summary: It’s what it sounds like—a computer with Nounish branding. And how cute—electrical components will be arranged in the shape of Noggles! They’d sponsor ETH hackathons with provided computers for competitions, with 30% of supply donated to developing countries and minority groups. Profits will go back into the product. Asking for $1,100,000.

Voting ends: May 10th

📝 10 Things To Read or Listen To

📄 “Powering the Future of DAOs with AI” by KAF

📄 “Governance Series: The Gold Standard of Decentralization” by Premia Finance

📄 “Elizabeth Warren Has a Lot to Say About Crypto — Try Listening for Once” by Nicole D’Avis

📄 “Snap the scams out!” by Zuza Zuber of Snapshot

🎧 “Oxcart and the Metagovernance Project” on Gitcoin Radio

🎧 “Decentralization as a Design Patter” from octopus

🎧 “Metacrisis Research with Chris Eddy” from Green Pill

🎧 “Coinbase Moving Offshore?! with Tom Duff Gordon VP, International Policy, Coinbase” from Bankless

🎧 “Augmented Reality Social Layer w/ Keiran Sim” from Rehash

🎧 “Christopher Goes – Amona, Namada, and the State of Privacy in Crypto” from I Pledge Allegiance

💫 DAO Talk: david @valory || DT Interview #38

🤭 Meme of the Week

The biggest names in DAO governance are coming to Tally’s Delegation Week, a 5-day event dedicated to exploring the power & potential of voter delegation in the DAO ecosystem. That means Aribtrum, Optimism, Uniswap, ENS, Gitcoin, the list goes on…

Get involved as a DAO, voter, or delegate here! We’ll see you May 22-26.

Subscribe now

~ coolhorsegirl 🐴

p.s.- Welp, I’m stuck in Kuala Lumpur at the moment. After a shocker of a visa situation in Singapore (two letters were swapped in my surname), I got banned from their airport for trying to photoshop a better one. So I bussed to Malaysia and am waiting for a new visa to Vietnam. I feel like a sim—take with that what you will. Manifest CHG’s visa!!

https://newsletter.tally.xyz/p/daos-are-building-a-pro-crypto-army

Welcome back to the Tally Newsletter, your weekly source for DAO governance insights. I’m coolhorsegirl and I’m thrilled to be here.

This week, we’re talking regulation, a topic that is simultaneously everyone’s favorite and least favorite thing to discuss. DAOs are fighting back against ambiguous and unfavorable regulatory policy for trading and DAO legal status itself. And they’re using more than just memes.

We’ll also run through a few proposals, like a subdomain-focused one from Uniswap and a few unique ideas out of NounsDAO and its spin-offs. A Nounish mobile game could be coming very soon. Let’s get into it.

🤿 Deep Dive: DAOs are building a pro-crypto army

You’ve seen the memes. Memecoin $GENSLR was on the rise likely in response to memery regarding Gensler’s recent failure to define securities in U.S. court. Last week, Coinbase sued the SEC for lack of clarification on regulation, specifically in regard to its months-old petition. In a recent tweet, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren announced that she is “building an anti-crypto army.” Meanwhile, DAOs are fighting back.

Led by the SEC, we’ve seen a crypto crackdown in the U.S. since the collapse of FTX in November. Regulation has been plagued by ambiguity, in regard to trading as well as DAO legal status itself. Enter governance advocacy in favor of crypto from DAOs—think of those dime-a-dozen “please call your congressman” with the heat turned UP. DAOs are making moves that matter.

In partnership with Coinbase, Gitcoin is running an advocacy round, where you can mint Stand with Crypto, a commemorative NFT, to show your support for “sensible crypto policy”—not even particularly “favorable” policy, but “sensible.” So far, over 80k NFTs have been minted. You can mint one here.

Until May 9, all mint fees from the NFT will be matched with quadratic funding. Funds will be donated to Coin Center, Fight for the Future, the Blockchain Foundation, Blockchain Association, and DeFi Education Fund.

DAOs have advocacy groups on their side. In their announcement tweet, Gitcoin highlighted Coin Center, 1 of 8 case studies in their impact report. Coin Center joined Gitcoin grants in 2020 and has raised over $1m there from 11k+ contributions and matching funds.

Beyond crypto trading regulations, the regulatory landscape for DAOs specifically has gained governmental attention recently, too. DAOs could get official standing under a proposed California law. Proposer San Francisco Assemblymember Matt Haney is calling Assembly Bill 1229 an effort to “keep up with the times.” Meanwhile across the pond, the first EU-wide crypto regulations have cleared a final parliament vote.

In the words of Gitcoin, “financial freedom and privacy are at risk in Washington D.C.” But this risk does not come without fervent resistance (and counteracting, thanks Coinbase) from DAOs and their contributors.

⌛️ On-chain Proposals

On-chain DAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations that operate entirely on the blockchain, using smart contracts and other blockchain-based technologies for its operations and decision-making processes. Tally believes that true DAOs operate on-chain.

Uniswap

Create v3deployments.uniswap.eth subdomain and populate its text fields

Summary: 9 function calls to create the subdomain and add 8 text records to it. Passed on Snapshot already, canonical deployments of Uniswap v3 will be recorded in this new subdomain. No cost!

Voting ends: May 4th

Public Nouns

Fund Protocol Guild 1-year vesting contract with 10 ETH

Summary: Protocol Guild enables distributed funding for distributed systems. If passed, this proposal donates 10 ETH to a contract that vests over a year. Added bonus is that it contributes to the precedent that projects built on Ethereum should help support the protocol they depend on. Cool idea for sure.

Voting ends: May 2nd

Co-fund CookieJar

Summary: Spending limits meet allow lists in the CookieJar. 2 ETH to co-fund a small safe and a daily allowance (called “cookies”) to anyone on the allow list. Co-funded alongside DAOhaus and RaidGuild.

Voting ends: May 5th

Lil Nouns

Extend Nouns AutoBidder (60E)

Summary: Give AutoBidder 60 more ETH to acquire 2 more Nouns for the DAO. Upping the contract balance but leaving min/max settings as is. And ooh, it recently won Noun 677.

Voting ends: May 3rd

NounsDAO

“The Nominal Hero”: A Nouns Middle Grade Novel

Summary: Can Caden Keller work with Nouns to fight off a threat to the Nouniverse? 25 ETH to fund a Nounish book for kids ages 6-10 and living expenses for the author during the writing period of 6 months.

Voting ends: May 5th

Nounish Playground – The Game

Summary: Initial funding of $90k for the 6-month process to get the mobile platformer game off the ground. 3D, multi-player-optional, monetization-possible, and Nounish.

Voting ends: May 6th

WarpedWorld: Nouns Get Warped ⌐◨-◨

Summary: NounsDAO x WarpedWorld. A series of IRL activations involving and proliferating the NounsDAO community, explained in great detail in the proposal. There’s even a proposal video (a 2-minute watch).

Voting ends: May 5th

Autobidder: Withdraw ETH and set ENS reverse record

Summary: To conclude the trial started in Proposal #268, resolve autobidder.nouns.eth to the contract address and withdraw the remaining contract balance to the Nouns treasury (~0.98 ETH).

Voting ends: May 5th

Oni Residency: Nouns Community Discord & Onboarding

Summary: 31ETH for the 6-month continuation of the Jungle, the intended successor to the official Nouns DAO discord that was closed. Full-stack revamp.

Voting ends: May 5th

📝 10 Things To Read or Listen To

• Article: “Anti-crypto regulators are blocking the pathway to a digital American dream” by Li Jin

• Article: “Tokenology: Moving beyond ‘tokenomics’” by Guy Wuollet

• Article: “Hamas armed wing announces suspension of bitcoin fundraising” by Nidal Al-Mughrabi

• Article: “DAO on-chain voting: Myth or Reality?” by Dexe.network

• Thread: “Blind Delegation” by Outlier Ventures

• Thread: “How to Build a DAO 101” by Connext

• Thread: “Mental models to design governance” by Chase Chapman

• Podcast: “Gary Gensler vs. Crypto: What Will the SEC Attack Next?” from Unchained

• Podcast: “Building for Emerging Nations w/ Cami Ramos” from Rehash

• Podcast: “Critiques and Alternatives from a Former Professional Libertarian” from The Blockchain Socialist

🤭 Meme of the Week

Proto-DAOs, mature DAOs, pseudo-decentralization, auditable onchain governance…not sure what those mean or why you should care? Catch up on last week’s DAO talk: “parks and DAOcreation.”

Subscribe now

~ coolhorsegirl

P.S. – Wee trip to Singapore to visit my prom date from high school whom I haven’t seen since, lol. I’m not sure what was cooler: these cute holders for the bubble tea I picked up or this massive wild lizard (“monitor”)!

https://newsletter.tally.xyz/p/memecoin-mania-are-we-in-a-bear-market

Welcome back to the Tally Newsletter, your weekly source for insights on DeFi and DAO governance. We’re dedicated to keeping you in the loop on pivotal proposals, procedural transformations, newly implemented voting mechanisms, and evolving power structures within the Tally ecosystem. Plus, we’ll curate a selection of must-read articles and must-listen podcasts each week to ensure you remain a well-informed citizen of web3.

I’m coolhorsegirl, a DeFi native thrilled to deliver the latest updates to you every week. With prior experience with Index Coop and a diverse range of DeFi projects, I have a keen interest in DAO governance and cutting-edge DeFi innovations focused on promoting decentralization to its fullest potential.

This week, we’re talking MEMECOINS. If you missed out on DOGE about 2 years ago now, you’ve got another chance to go all-in on a memecoin that shows some promise. And it may indicate more than just some passing hopium (cough, 🐻, cough). We’ll also run through a few proposals, like some straight-from-Snapshot proposals from Gitcoin and the usual Nounish stuff. Did you know 15-25 proposals are submitted every other week for a Nouns grant? Meme lovers, meme advocates, and meme apologists—let’s dive in.

🤿 Deep Dive: Memecoin Mania: Are we in a bear market?

Memecoins have come and meme coins have gone. Last bear market, I remember getting on the $DOGE train before I could even pronounce it correctly (I was saying “dodge”) and not getting off until it was too late. While that memory may haunt me, it seems the rest of Crypto Twitter is all too happy to ride the coattails of these volatile coins now in the form of $PEPE, $GENSLR, $WOJAK, and $RUG.

The numbers are crazy. Someone even turned $250 into over $1m (liquidity issues mean it’ll be tough to sell, though, lol). Does this mean we’re in a bear market again??!

Branded as the memecoin “here to make memecoins great again,” $PEPE boasts some impressive numbers:

• 24-hour trading volume: $40.831M

• Market Cap: $125.349M

• Current price is 436.78% higher than the all-time low of $0.000000055142, recorded on April 18 (only one week ago!)

• All-time high was recorded on April 20, only 2 days apart from the all-time low

Quickly, let’s talk typical memecoin life cycle: A meme coin drops. It blows up within the first few days or weeks of existence. (The strength of meme coins lies in their community and hype-y narrative.) With no governance (meme coin founders, consider Tally) and little to no utility, the price crashes drastically. If a memecoin breaks out of this cycle (as $DOGE did in mid-2021), it’s a good signal we’re in a bear market.

So where is PEPE in this memecoin life cycle? In other words, is this the top or the bottom? Well, short answer is we don’t know. It doesn’t take much analysis, though, to map PEPE onto other memecoins like DOGE. DOGE hit its peak about 5 months after its initial 1% climb, a clear departure from the pump-and-dump timeline of most memecoins. Aside from that, DOGE has been around since 2013, actually. Like PEPE, though, DOGE also hit its all-time high 2 days after its all-time low. Besides that coincidence(?), PEPE seems to be moving much faster than DOGE in the memecoin life cycle.

End of the day, it doesn’t ~look~ like we’re in a bear market just yet. We’ll just have to see $PEPE through, some hopium required. (And don’t blame me if I put in 100 bucks 😩)

⌛️ On-chain Proposals

On-chain DAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations that operate entirely on the blockchain, using smart contracts and other blockchain-based technologies for its operations and decision-making processes. Tally believes that true DAOs operate on-chain.

Gitcoin

[GCP-004] Gitcoin Citizens Round

Summary: Following a successful vote on Snapshot, $80.77k to pilot a series of quadratic funding rounds for rewarding efforts by Gitcoin Citizens 2. Main aims are to the barrier of entry for contributing to the DAO, determine what the community values most, and help test (dogfood) the Allo protocol.

Voting ends: April 26th

[GCP-005] Gitcoin Supporting Zuzalu

Summary: Following a successful vote on Snapshot, $176.89k to fund support for the “pop-up city/network state” being built by Vitalik among others. The vote is to partner with Zuzalu and showcase the Allo protocol via financial provisions for a Zuzalu Public Goods funding round.

Voting ends: April 29th

NounsDAO

Archives.wtf – Extension

Summary: 192.4K USDC to continue maintenance and development of archives.wtf as the main archive center of Nouns DAO over the next 6 months. Pretty interesting archive as is, even to those of us outside of the Nouns ecosystem—definitely worth the check-out.

Voting ends: April 30th

Lil Nouns

Prop House. The Next Episode

Summary: 10.9 ETH & 15 $LIL to fund Lil Prop House rounds for the next three months. Rounds get bigtime engagement—15-25 rounds proposals are submitted each round (which happens every other week). Check out the proposals submitted in the last round.

Voting ends: April 26th

📝 10 Things To Read or Listen To

• Article: “Dashboard: DAO Voting on Ethereum” by Jennifer Tran

• Article: “Taming the Whales | What to Do About Sybil Attacks” by Raphael Spannocchi

• Article: “proto-DAOs, making DAOs fun again” by Stefan Deleveaux

• Article: “Exit Liquidity” by Arthur Hayes

• Article: “Assimilating the BORG: A New Framework for CryptoLaw Entities” by Delphi Labs

• Article: “Spotify psy-op: AI-generated “elevator” music and media layoffs” by Terry Nguyen

• Thread: “Stakeholders & Token Engineering” by TE Academy

• Thread: “Community versus Organisation” by Daniel Ospina

• Podcast: “Regens Unite with Xavier Damman and Leen Schelfhout” from GreenPill

• Podcast: “The Network State: What it gets wrong + alternative models w/ Josh Davila” from On the Other Side

💫 DAO Talk: parks & DAOcreation || DT weekly #38

🤭 Meme of the Week

Tally loves decentralization. That’s why we’re building Tally Zero, a completely decentralized voting application that let’s you vote onchain with IPFS via Third Web. Try it here! Or help us build (grants available)! Either way, get excited. Coming soon.™️

Subscribe now

~ coolhorsegirl

P.S. – In the spirit of bear market….enjoy some koalas I saw this week! Took a trip up to Canberra this week! It’s a fully planned city so feels a bit utopian but also like a deserted movie set. Animals were cool, though, as per.

https://newsletter.tally.xyz/p/wtf-is-the-shapella-upgrade

Welcome back to the Tally Newsletter, your weekly source for insights on DeFi and DAO governance. We’re dedicated to keeping you in the loop on pivotal proposals, procedural transformations, newly implemented voting mechanisms, and evolving power structures within the Tally ecosystem. Plus, we’ll curate a selection of must-read articles and must-listen podcasts each week to ensure you remain a well-informed citizen of web3.

I’m coolhorsegirl, a DeFi native thrilled to deliver the latest updates to you every week. With prior experience with Index Coop and a diverse range of DeFi projects, I have a keen interest in DAO governance and cutting-edge DeFi innovations focused on promoting decentralization to its fullest potential.

This week, we’re talking Shapella upgrade. Don’t you just love a portmaneteau? Well, this one one offers LOWER GAS FEES (LFG) and some huge unlocks (literally) for validators. I’ll break it down for ya so it’s not too confusing. We’ll also run through a few proposals, like Uniswap’s proposed Deployments Accountability Committee and the usual Nounish stuff (wen keyboard?). Let’s get into it.

🤿 Deep Dive: WTF is the Shapella upgrade?

The Merge is complete! Two network upgrades have happened simultaneously: the Shanghai upgrade + the Capella upgrade = “the Shapella upgrade.” The upgrade will mark Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake (PoS) complete and aims to improve the scalability of the network.

Enter: the Shapella upgrade…

Some context: Ok, so we know that the Ethereum network has two layers – the execution layer (a.k.a. Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM) and the consensus layer (a.k.a. Beacon Chain). Shanghai deals with the execution layer and Capella deals with the consensus layer. The Shapella upgrade consists of 5 Ethereum Improvment Proposals (EIPs), with the most important change coming from one: EIP-4895: Beacon chain push withdrawals as operations.

Some more context: The Beacon Chain is secured by PoS. This means that it needs validators to maintain its integrity. For validators, it’s a pricey endeavor: 32 ETH to secure the Beacon chain. As a reward, validators earn interest on their ETH paid via gas fees on network transactions. But there’s a catch: Validators couldn’t unstake their 32 ETH until a later, undetermined date.

The big news: By EIP-4895, Validators can now unstake their ETH. By the Shapella upgrade, approximately $33 billion worth of staked ETH will be able to be withdrawn (and potentially sold or restaked).

What about the other EIPs? They’re focused on lowering gas fees during instances of extreme network congestion and heightened activity, not just for developers but also for the average user.

The Shapella upgrade is one of the most important events in crypto in 2023. While validators celebrate the liberation of their staked ETH, users like you and me may enjoy lower gas fees, improved security, and a more sustainable Ethereum network. I’m especially excited about those lower gas fees, though 😉

⌛️ On-chain Proposals

On-chain DAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations that operate entirely on the blockchain, using smart contracts and other blockchain-based technologies for its operations and decision-making processes. Tally believes that true DAOs operate on-chain.

Uniswap

Uniswap Deployments Accountability Committee

Summary: 14.33k UNI to create an Accountability Committee for Deployments to oversee the operational development of deployments of Uniswap V3 on other chains. 6 months, 5 already-proposed members.

Voting ends: April 20th

Gitcoin

[GCP-006] Infinite Garden Trading Card Game

Summary: A game by Gitcoin! 10.7K GTC to fund 69-150 cards including 5 proposed by the Gitcoin community and 20% of primary sale profits to the Matching Pool. Already passed on Snapshot.

Voting ends: April 22nd

NounsDAO

Nouns Autobidder Trial (by Federation)

Summary: Deploy a Federation AutoBidder to purchase Nouns at auction for use in future proposals. Uses 31 ETH from already-ratified Proposal 229 to do it.

Voting ends: April 22nd

The Nouns Mechanical Keyboard

Summary: Self-explanatory. 118.69 (lol) ETH to make, market, and sell some Nounish keyboards. They’re pretty cute, too.

Voting ends: April 20th

Lil Nouns

The Lil Nouns Show – Third Term ⌐◨-◨

Summary: Just over 17 ETH to fund the Lil Nouns Show, a weekly Twitter Spaces with 4 co-hosts hosted on The Noun Square, for 3 months. Since it launched 6 months ago, the show has reached 3337 listeners over 11 Spaces.

Voting ends: April 20th

Extend Nouns AutoBidder (71 ETH)

Summary: Extends AutoBidder by increasing its balance to 75 ETH to acquire 3 additional Nouns. It’s been actively bidding on Nouns for about two weeks now, most recently acquiring Noun 677 for the DAO.

Voting ends: April 20th

📝 10 Things To Read or Listen To

• Article: “Introducing Web3 Work” by Other Internet

• Article: “2023 State of Crypto Report” by a16z (Q&A Twitter Spaces)

• Article: “Seeing like a protocol” by Barnabe Monnot

• Thread: “Game Theory of Airdrops and Decentralization” by thiccythot

• Thread: “How photography changed art: (will AI do the same to writing?)” by The Cultural Tutor

• Thread: “Twitter updated their algorithm again.” by legen.eth

• Thread: “Just because a protocol is on-chain *does not mean* it is decentralized” by Chase Chapman

• Podcast (video): “Proof of concept for decentralized voting” by Dennison Bertram

• Podcast: “Mapping Digital Tribes w/ Nadia Asparouhova” from GreenPill

• Podcast: “chase @blockchain at USC || DT interview #37” from DAO talk

💫 DAO Talk: i think you should DAO || DT weekly #37

🤭 Meme of the Week

Exciting stuff from Tally: DAO Talk season 2 is here! Frisson and Tommy kick off the season with the latest on Arbitrum DAO, Other Internet’s attempt to tackle social security for DAO workers, and a new bounty for decentralized governance with AI integration.

All that sound a bit too advanced? If you’re still learning the ropes of DAO gov, check out Layer3’s new Introduction to DAOs quest (and earn rewards doing it)!

Subscribe now

~ coolhorsegirl

p.s.- In the last week, I’ve joined my favourite band The 1975 on every single concert on their Australian tour. Honestly, it feels like I’ve been on tour myself, I’m so tired. Anyway, the best concerts were in Melbourne. Camping out at the same arena for days on end actually turned out to be worth it because look how close I got!! I swear we made eye contact at least four times. DM me if you want any videos 😉

https://newsletter.tally.xyz/p/buttern-up-delegates-an-incentive

Welcome back to the Tally Newsletter, your weekly source for insights on DeFi and DAO governance. We’re dedicated to keeping you in the loop on pivotal proposals, procedural transformations, newly implemented voting mechanisms, and evolving power structures within the Tally ecosystem. Plus, we’ll curate a selection of must-read articles and must-listen podcasts each week to ensure you remain a well-informed citizen of web3.

I’m coolhorsegirl, a DeFi native thrilled to deliver the latest updates to you every week. With prior experience with Index Coop and a diverse range of DeFi projects, I have a keen interest in DAO governance and cutting-edge DeFi innovations focused on promoting decentralization to its fullest potential.

This week, we’re exploring another aspect of one of 2023’s most-discussed governance topics: delegation. We’re shifting our focus to professional delegates. Gone are the days of not delegating, choosing delegates haphazardly, or being unsure about whom to delegate to. Butter has introduced an incentive-driven program for Aave DAO that targets professional delegates, a trend we anticipate will become more common as the year unfolds. Additionally, we’ll examine a few proposals, including Uniswap’s chain expansion and the quirky, unique proposals from Nouns and Lil Nouns. Let’s dive right in.

🤿 Deep Dive: Butter’n Up Delegates: An Incentive-Driven Approach to Boosting Governance

Delegation is HOT. A few weeks ago, we covered the rise of university delegate groups and this week, we’re running through professional delegates, the latest of which has been enabled by Butter. Let’s get into it.

Professional delegates are individuals or organizations with a proven track record in DeFi, possessing extensive technical knowledge and experience in decentralized governance. They actively participate in governance discussions, propose changes, and vote on behalf of their delegators. Simply, they participate full-time in governance to act in the best interests of the community to ultimately help protocols succeed. Check out this article for a comprehensive explanation of professional delegates.

On that topic, emerging DAO governance platform Butter has partnered with Aave Grants DAO to launch a 3-month pilot delegate campaign to financially incentivize the best talent and expertise to govern the DAO, which will ultimately lead to the best outcomes for the DAO. Get the full rundown with Butter contributor noturhandle.eth in this podcast, or check out the SparkNotes below:

The 3-month campaign unfolds in three stages:

1. Election Week: Aave holders cast their (weighted) vote for 1 of the 13 (pre-approved) delegate candidates in a 3-day Snapshot. All candidates have written Delegate Initiatives and spoken on Boardroom’s Twitter Spaces. This period has *just* ended: TokenLogic has won.

2. Delegation Week: The winning delegate receives delegated tokens over this 7-day period, ideally from all those who voted on the Snapshot. Delegators receive exclusive NFTs.

3. Campaign (Representation Phase): The chosen delegate represents delegators’ interests in Aave governance while receiving AAVE as compensation (~222 Aave/month funded by the Aave Grants DAO to Butter). During this campaign, Butter provides in-depth performance reviews at the end of each month.

This is exciting stuff—participation in Butter’s campaign proved more than just decent, and this is week 1 of 12. But this system goes beyond Aave and Butter. If all goes well, we could see this in the same system repeated at Aave as well as sprouting up throughout the ecosystem. It seems the next wave of DAO governance lies in professional delegates.

⌛️ On-chain Proposals

On-chain DAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations that operate entirely on the blockchain, using smart contracts and other blockchain-based technologies for its operations and decision-making processes. Tally believes that true DAOs operate on-chain.

Uniswap

Uniswap v3 Gnosis

Summary: Simple: Deploy Uniswap v3 to Gnosis. The proposal has been in discussion since last April with all temperature checks receiving overwhelming support.

Voting ends: April 15th

Uniswap V3 Launch on zkEVM

Summary: Same thing as above but with Polygon’s new zk-rollup. Makes a lot of sense given the massive user uptake Uniswap has seen on Polygon PoS.

Voting ends: April 14th

Lil Nouns

# Perpetual POAP Program

Summary: 3.75 ETH to scale the POAP Program (that already exists), a body that provides custom artwork to event managers. Funds will go towards the continuation of the program PLUS marketing (that has previously gone by the wayside).

Voting ends: April 11th

Nouns DAO

Nouns Esports – CS:GO and Dota2 Rosters 2023

Summary: Esports Pod, which has been running since August, has seen success in marketing/hype and actual competitions. Now they’re asking for $795,000 for ongoing financial support for the teams.

Voting ends: April 12th

📝 10 Things To Read or Listen To

• Article: “Building Psychological Attachment — Not Just Ownership — Into Web3” by Li Jin

• Article: “Enhancing Crypto Data Platforms” by 0xDataWolf

• Tweet: “ChatGPT is better than my therapist” by Kat Woods

• Thread: “How to describe your product in web3” by Kofi

• Thread: “Problems with DAOs and Impact Communities” by ManuAlzuru

• Thread: “Shared sequencers are one of the few great business opportunities in crypto” by David Phelps

• Thread: “Announcing DebtDAO’s Launch” by DebtDAO

• Twitter Spaces: “Discussing on-chain DAOs vs in-name-only governance” by Aavegotchi

• Podcast: “Celo 2.0 with Rene Reinsburg” from GreenPill

• Podcast: “The Evolution of Boys Club: balancing control + scale w/ Parker Jay-Pachirat” from On the Other Side

💫 DAO Talk: DAO Talk Halftime Show || DT Weekly Ep. 36

🤭 Meme of the Week

Get ready for the launch of DAO Talk Season 2 next week! Eagerly anticipate more engaging conversations from Tommy and Frisson as they delve into the most critical (and frequently the most eccentric) topics in the DAOverse. Also, remember that as Delegation Week starts in Butter’s Aave Delegation campaign, you can delegate on Tally!

Subscribe now

~ coolhorsegirl

p.s.- Happy Easter weekend! I’m never quite sure what the protocol in crypto is re public holidays—does anyone really take off work? A few years ago I staged this Easter-themed photoshoot of my (adorable) bunnies. This Easter I was busy grinding Midjourney whilst fighting my crippling addiction to sour gummy worms.

https://newsletter.tally.xyz/p/oh-public-goodie

Welcome back to the Tally Newsletter, a weekly publication focused on DeFi and DAO governance. We’ll keep you updated on key proposals, procedural changes, newly launched voting systems, and shifting power dynamics in the Tally ecosystem. We’ll also recommend the most important reads and listens of the week to ensure you’re an informed citizen of web3.

I’m coolhorsegirl, a DeFi native excited to bring you the latest, weekly. With prior experience at Index Coop and across the DeFi ecosystem, I’m interested in DAO governance and general DeFi innovation aimed at maximizing decentralization.

This week, we’re talking public goods—specifically, those of which Optimism just retroactively funded with 10M OP. Clearly, the free-rider problem that prevents the widespread creation of public goods in TradFi is overcome by decentralization, and that’s something worth analyzing. We’ll also go over a few proposals from some big dogs—Aave, Compound, and ENS. Let’s dive in.

🤿 Deep Dive: Oh, (public) goodie!

And yet another reason why DeFi > TradFi: public goods, shared resources and infrastructure that benefit the entire ecosystem, actually exist, and in plenty. Optimism’s Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) Round 2 results announcement doled out 10M OP. Public goods have overcome the free-rider problem that restricts their widespread creation in TradFi—Let’s talk about ‘em.

First, the news fresh off the press: 10M OP to projects and people who have supported (note: we’re talking in past tense here. This is retroactive, unlike grants) the usage and development of the OP Stack. Recipients were split between education, tooling, and infrastructure initiatives. And of the 195 projects nominated for funding, all 195 got it, with the median OP received at 22,825 and top 10% receiving upwards of 140k each. Keep in mind, the price of OP is around $2.20—each project is getting a fairly fat chunk of cash. Check out the detailed breakdown of recipients.

These projects were built without guaranteed funding from Optimism—that occurred retroactively. So why be the one to build the thing when you could just wait for someone else to do it and save yourself the cost? And why is this so common in crypto?

Well, the free rider problem that plagues TradFi due to its reliance on centralization leaves public goods typically under-provided over there. Individuals have little incentive to contribute to their creation and maintenance, as they can often free-ride on the contributions of others. How does DeFi tackle that problem?

1. Some projects provide economic incentives. These are grants (like the famous public goods grants of Gitcoin and ENS) and funds (like RetroGPF). The psychology is simple: Since you can’t get money for free-riding, you might want to build the good yourself. Interestingly, DeFi is still investigating the retroactive versus seed model. We’ll see where that goes.

2. Projects rely on community-driven efforts that drive a greater sense of ownership and responsibility among contributors. If you think a good is cool, you can actually help build it rather than wait around to free-ride, and that may mean more to you than a payoff.

3. Many public goods in crypto benefit from network effects, where the value of the good increases as more people use it. This creates a natural incentive for you to contribute to the good, as you benefit directly from its growth and success.

4. Contributing to public goods is good for your ‘rep. Whether it is pure virtue signalling (also present in TradFi, notably) or actual hard work that drives a good to launch, you can increase your standing for building a public good (at least on Crypto Twitter).

Exciting stuff, people actually wanting to contribute to the good of the ecosystem. It’s almost like decentralization solves some massive problems 😉

⌛️ On-chain Proposals

On-chain DAOs are decentralized autonomous organizations that operate entirely on the blockchain, using smart contracts and other blockchain-based technologies for its operations and decision-making processes. Tally believes that true DAOs operate on-chain.

Aave

Risk Parameter Updates for Aave V2 AMM Market (2023-03-29)

Summary: Freeze G-UNI DAI/USDC and G-UNI USDC/USDT given low liquidity in each. Recommended by Gauntlet, BGD Labs, Chaos Labs, and Aave Companies.

Voting ends: April 3rd

ENS

[EP3.5] [Executable] Activate new .eth Controller and Reverse Registrar

Summary: So the new name wrapper has launched. A new .eth controller will decrease transactions required for people tryna use it, from 4 to 2 transactions. And updating the reverse registrar which adds support for contract owners to retrospectively claim their reverse node.

Voting ends: April 5th

Compound

Compound V2 -> V3 Migration (Phase 2)

Summary: Proposed by Gauntlet and based on community feedback for strategic preference, this proposes a number of adjustments re supply/borrow of stablecoins versus COMP rewards.

Voting ends: April 4th

OpenZeppelin Security Partnership – 2023 Q2 Compensation

Summary: Pay OpenZeppelin what they’re owed, which happens at the beginning of every quarter (that means we’re officially in the year’s second fiscal quarter – omg).

Voting ends: April 5th

NounsDAO

Nouns Short Shorts – Bonus Pack

Summary: $65k to fund 7 more Short Shorts (little videos) and host an IRL festival event in LA to showcase ‘em.

Voting ends: April 8th

📝 10 Things To Read or Listen To

• Article: “The Double-Edged Sword of Creator Tokens: Empowering or Endangering Artists in web3?” by coolhorsegirl

• Article: “Self-Interest, Self-Sacrifice, and DAOs” by Doo Wan Nam

• Article: “State of DAO Funding” by Ryan Holloway

• Article: “The State of DAOs & Governance” by DAO Governance Collective

• Thread: “Let’s get back to basics” by Aaron Soskin

• Twitter Spaces: “Not Financial Advice w/ @mywebacy” from Opolis

• Twitter Spaces: “Gitcoin Governance: The Case for Change?” from Gitcoin

• Podcast: “Sam Altman: OpenAI CEO on GPT-4, ChatGPT, and the Future of AI” from Lex Fridman Podcast

• Podcast: “Transforming Audiences into Communities with Reka from Guild.xyz” on Mint

• Podcast: “The Future of Independent Work w/ Richie Bonilla” on Rehash

🤭 Meme of the Week

💐Guru 💐 @CoinGurruu

Elizabeth Warrens view on crypto VS crypto people

5:01 PM ∙ Mar 30, 2023

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In Tally news, support for DAOs on Moonbeam is live! Head over to Tally’s Add-a-DAO page to launch your DAO in just a few clicks (it’s literally so easy, it took me 3 minutes topz when I added one). Also, Aribitrum delegation still going strong with 2 proposals live! The largest delegate is Treasury DAO followed by olimpio.eth and PlutusDAO. 3 of the 5 largest delegates are DAOs!

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~ coolhorsegirl

p.s.- Been absolutely ripping games lately and I’m on a win-streak of 4 right now in Catan. My strat is usually to amass sheep. I’m somehow always low on wood, but doesn’t matter if I can trade my hoards of sheep to the bank. Here’s how I went last week, just before I built my sheep farm on that 4-4-9 spot. Let me know if you ever want to play (lose) online—Catan or Majong 😉