Key Info
Name: Arana Digital
Delegate Address: 0x0579A616689f7ed748dC07692A3F150D44b0CA09 (aranadigital.eth)
Aave Protocol Leads: @0xjchen, @GuangyeCao
Email: arana.governance@gmail.com
Telegram: cryptojchen, Guangye_Cao
Current Voting History: Boardroom (start March 6, 2024)
Legacy Voting History: Boardroom (last Aave vote for our team under Michigan was Feb 27, 2024)
About Us
We are a governance group composed of ex-Michigan Blockchain members. Our team is currently made up of five individuals, all of which are deeply steeped in the crypto space and have multiple years of participation in protocol governance. With delegation history for DEXs, money markets, L2s, liquid staking protocols, and stablecoins, we’re acclimated with a breadth of sectors. We bring a diversity of experience to DAOs–our members have consulted for companies like Immutable and dYdX, worked at crypto investment and trading firms, set up various validator nodes, and run educational events for university students.
Delegate Statement (Why You Should Delegate to Us)
History with Aave DAO
Our team members, while they were a part of Michigan Blockchain, have served as prominent Aave delegates for the past 1.5 years. We’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with various service providers, like Gauntlet, Chaos Labs, Llama, Karpatkey, Flipside, etc during our tenure. We’ve also been able to converse with numerous teams who’ve approached Aave for a diversity of reasons. Prominent examples include–
- Working closely with Centrifuge to ensure the DAO most effectively made an entrance into the RWA space
- Back-and-forth with the risk assessors around events like the Curve fiasco in Q3 2023 and the bad debt debacle with Avi Eisen in December 2022
- Aiding Celo through the Aave deployment process (underway) by co-authoring the proposal and responding to feedback from BGD labs and the risk assessment teams
- Collaborating with Pyth to potentially introduce a backstop oracle–which we ended up stepping back from after a handful of conversations with Chainlink
- Co-proposing Aave private voting as well as delegate gas rebates
Focus Areas:
1. Governance Development
Governance works best when we strike a balance between efficiency and decentralization, with mechanisms in place to align the incentives of many stakeholders. That’s why we initiated the private-voting experiment to reduce herding and bot participation on Snapshot, and we will continue to look for ways to encourage optimal stakeholder behavior, and to improve agility without compromising decentralization. Our experience with various other DAOs, combined with familairy with the Aave ecosystem, enables us to effectively take on this task.
2. GHO Adoption
Given GHO’s importance in the Aave Ecosystem, we will support proposals that increase the use cases of GHO, as that is the only sustainable way to maintain the peg. GHO also strengthens Aave’s bottom line. The interest payments from GHO borrows, for instance, can generate fees for Aave. These fees can contribute to the protocol’s revenue, benefiting AAVE token holders and stakers through potential buybacks, burns, or distribution as rewards. Aave can also diversify its offerings and mitigate risks associated with reliance on external stablecoins via GHO. The continual integration and growth of GHO into DeFi requires strong community-based stewardship, and we are committed to aid in that effort.
3. Aave Expansion
We believe that Aave needs to, with an optimistic yet tactical lens, approach expanding to new markets. Our team is intimately familiar with the process behind collaborating with the necessary stakeholders, like BGD Labs and DAO risk assessors, prior to deploying Aave on another chain. Such considerations take proper assessment of the drawbacks and potential benefits associated with the destination chain’s technical architecture and market dynamics.
4. Treasury Management
On a similar note, we are heavy proponents of treating DAOs as sustainable businesses, which means properly considering Aave’s runway as well as the composition and diversity of the treasury. We are grateful to have groups like Karpatkey and TokenLogic present to help facilitate this process. Our team is also excited to see creative votes, like the Centrifuge RWA adoption proposal, surrounding treasury management.
Delegation
If you would like to delegate your AAVE to us, please reference the below address:
0x0579A616689f7ed748dC07692A3F150D44b0CA09 (aranadigital.eth)
Conflict of Interest
We are actively sourcing delegation for various protocols–an official list will be disclosed soon.
Arana Digital’s (AD) sister company, Arana Ventures (AV), is an investment group managed by two out of the five current members of AD–AV invests in small cap tokens in the public market, hence $AAVE doesn’t fall under AV’s investment mandate. The two firms are legally separate and operationally siloed.
Waiver of Liability
By delegating to Arana Digital, you acknowledge and agree that Arana Digital participates on a best efforts basis and will not be liable for any form of damages related to its involvement in Aave governance.
