[ARFC] ACI Phase II

[MarcZeller]

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title: [ARFC] ACI Phase II

author: @marczeller - Aave-chan Initiative
date: 2023-10-17

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Summary

This ARFC proposes the continuation of the collaboration with the Aave-chan Initiative (ACI) for an additional period of 180 days, with a proposed budget of 375k GHO.

Motivation

The ACI has demonstrated significant value to the Aave ecosystem across multiple fronts. This proposal seeks to extend our collaboration, focusing on three primary axes: Skyward, Growth, and Representation.

Skyward:

Skyward has emerged as a cornerstone of Aave’s governance, producing 90 AIPs in 180 days. This averages out to one AIP every other day, a testament to the relentless dedication and efficiency of the ACI. Beyond numbers, the ACI has fostered a spirit of collaboration within the Aave ecosystem.

We’ve co-authored proposals with the vast majority of active DAO service providers, recognized delegates and some active community members. Moreover, our doors have always been open to third-party protocols. By actively welcoming and collaborating with them, we’ve streamlined the governance process, ensuring that Aave remains inclusive and cohesive in its approach.

What to expect for phase II?

Continuation & extension of the Skyward services.

Growth:

The ACI operates under a guiding principle of “Continuous incremental improvement.”

While we acknowledge that we might not be the driving force behind tech breakthroughs like a potential Aave V4 or, recently, the Governance V3 AIP, our daily commitment is unwavering. We aim to make the protocol 1% better every single day, one AIP at a time. It’s through these consistent, small steps that we believe Aave can maintain its leadership in the DeFi space.

Our efforts have already borne fruit. The implementation of offboarding plans for assets like BUSD & TUSD stands out. These initiatives not only enhanced protocol safety but also turned a profit, generating close to 1M$ for the DAO. This revenue, in itself, has multiple times repaid the investment made in the ACI. Furthermore, our vigilant oversight of the DAO’s finances has ensured efficiency. We’ve curbed overspending, optimized budgets, and deterred proposals that didn’t align with Aave’s best interests, saving the DAO a 7-figure amount & ensuring every GHO & DAO $ is well spent.

What to expect for phase II?

The ACI will continue to focus on our continuous incremental improvement doctrine, being a driving force in Aave protocol growth and BD.

For Phase II the main focal points will be on Liquid Staking Tokens diversity with the support of onboarding new assets, GHO growth and adoption with support of synergies and the integration of GHO in both onchain protocols, ramps & L2s.

Representation:

The ACI has actively engaged in both internal and external representation for the Aave DAO.

Internal Representation:

Prior to the ACI’s involvement, the DAO too often encountered challenges, such as proposals not reaching the required quorum. Governance activity was subdued, and the operations were notably insular. The ACI introduced several key initiatives:

• Orbit Program: The ACI allocated ~20% of its budget to the Orbit program, focusing on diversity. This program compensates recognized delegates for their contributions, leading to increased participation rates and improved diversity metrics. The frequency of proposals failing due to a lack of quorum has decreased. With the now DAO-funded Orbit program, the DAO has enshrined these benefits
• Governance Guidelines: The ACI contributed to the establishment of the Aave DAO governance guidelines. This effort aimed to bring clarity, predictability, and efficiency to DAO governance. The “Minimal Viable Bureaucracy” ACI Doctrine, ensures a balance between structured governance and accessibility.
• Support for New Delegates: The ACI has extended support to emerging delegate platforms, co-authoring proposals and providing guidance. This collaborative approach has enriched the DAO’s ecosystem.

What to Expect from Phase II?

We will continue contributing to the Aave DAO frameworks and supporting DAO active participants seeking a balance between organization & accessibility.

We will also delegate engineering resources for service providers via mini-dapps such as the recent acistreamcollector.com, which allows no code claims of DAO streams.

External Representation:

Externally, the ACI has been a voice for the Aave DAO in various capacities.

• Event Participation: The ACI has participated in and sponsored several global events to share insights and collaborate with industry peers. In 2023, our engagements included:

  • Web3DNA (Paris)
  • EthDubai 2023
  • Prague DeFi Summit/EthPrague
  • Stable Summit (Paris)
  • EthCC[6] (Paris)
  • Dappcon Berlin 2023
  • LëtzStake (Luxembourg)
  • EthLisbon
  • Devconnect Istanbul

  A detailed list of our engagements can be found here.

• Regulatory Engagement: The ACI’s founder holds the position of president of the DeFi committee of the French Lobby ADAN. This role involves dialogues with regulators, institutions, and governments in France and Europe regarding the DeFi sector. The ACI has been involved in discussions related to the “Mica 2” regulation, which addresses DeFi services.

The ACI, as one of the voices for the Aave DAO, has consistently worked towards enhancing the DAO’s presence and reputation in the broader ecosystem.

What to Expect from Phase II?

The ACI will continue to be one of the voices of Aave across the globe, supporting devs in hackathons, being one of the DAO voices during events and supporting our brand quality.

Proposal Details

• Duration: 180 days
• Budget: 375k GHO
• Scope: Continuation of the ACI’s work across Skyward, Growth, and Representation.

Next Steps

1. Gather community feedback on this ARFC.
2. If consensus is reached, escalate this proposal to ARFC snapshot stage.
3. If ARFC snapshot outcome is YAE, escalate to AIP stage.

Disclaimer

The Aave-chan Initiative is presenting this ARFC independently and is not compensated by any third party for creating this ARFC.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

[Hazbobo]

The ACI has clearly had a positive impact on the DAO as a service provider and I am glad to see this proposal to extend their service provision. I have no issue with the timeframe or budget and am excited to see the focus on GHO growth and LST diversification moving forward!

I support.

[EzR3aL]

The ACI has proved themselves to be beneficial to the DAO and other delegates or member, especially with the Skyward program. LST profits are growing and overall activity got better in here.

The scope of the budget and timeframe are fine for me.
Gonna support this ARFC.

[Kene_StableLab]

The ACI has provided immense value to Aave through its services, on the StableLab side we have full confidence in the ACI’s ability to continue contributing to the success of the Aave DAO.

[0xkeyrock.eth]

We’re supportive of the ACI Phase II. The value ACI has brought in the Aave DAO is evident and something worth continuing.

[maxax]

Kyberswap used ACI to publish and create ARFC & AIP for KNC listing on Aave V3 recently.

We are satisfied and grateful about the work provided by the team.
We support this proposal.

[G-Blockchain]

ACI has only had a positive impact on the DAO, very much in support of ACI’s continued work within the DAO and I look forward to the continued growth they will bring.

[Jedi]

I wholeheartedly appreciate the ACI’s contributions to Aave’s growth, and I’m eager to gain a deeper understanding of the ARFC. Could you please provide more details on how these funds will be allocated?

[ChaosLabs]

Chaos Labs has worked very closely with the ACI over an extended period of months. ACI is responsible for the incredible progress and advancement of the Aave DAO. The ACI is proactive in its work and assertive and independent in execution. ACI’s pace has created DAO momentum and created a bar for all service providers.

ACI are experts in Aave architecture, the protocol, and the wider ecosystem. ACI’s participation ensures a continued level of high discourse and function for Aave. Having the ACI as a contributor is undoubtedly a competitive advantage, enabling Aave to stay ahead of the curve.

LST diversification and GHO growth will have a high impact on Aave, and we are excited to see these prioritized in the ACI roadmap.

Chaos Labs supports the proposed budget, focus, and terms and welcomes continued collaboration with the ACI.

[WintermuteGovernance]

The ACI has played a key part in Aave’s growth and more importantly its governance efficiency. We appreciate all the hard work that goes into the numerous proposals put forward and ACI’s contribution towards governance efforts such as Skyward, Orbit, and Gas Rebates.

[0xlide]

ACI’s contributions have greatly contributed to the further growth of the Aave Ecosystem.I recommend changing the additional $125,000 to be paid as a success reward. We look forward to ACI’s activities in the next six months.

[kakagri]

ACI and its contributors have had a long stand and continued positive impact on Aave.

I support

[sogipec]

Supporting as well!
The ACI has been super proactive in the listing of new assets and made onboarding so much easier, so obviously in favor of this one!

[Karpatkey]

Like the sentiment expressed above, we also stand behind the continued contribution and involvement of the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI).

The value that ACI has presented to the DAO is mainly self-evident. ACI has a track record of impressively steadfast commitment to growing the Aave DAO over the past six months and has fulfilled the expectations established in its Delegate Platform. ACI has, without question, demonstrated a high level of activity, vision, and a laser focus on the AAVE protocol and DAO.

We look forward to continued growth initiatives from the ACI—We support.

[mintalex]

It appears that everyone is quite content with ACI’s performance, as no one has mentioned the recent oversight on their part that resulted in the failure of Aave’s incentive application on Arbitrum. This oversight led to Aave missing out on potentially millions of dollars’ worth of ARB tokens, surpassing Aave’s total earnings on Arbitrum for the past year. However, disappointingly, both ACI and other governing bodies within the community have chosen to remain silent regarding this matter. The Aave community should not be complacent and turn a blind eye to such issues, but instead address them.
What are the perspectives of the participants in the community governance regarding this issue?

[eboado]

I want to focus my feedback and opinion on 2 separate parts: the finishing Phase I and this proposed Phase II.

Phase I

The ACI initiative founded by @MarcZeller appeared in a pretty critical lifetime of the Aave DAO: multiple service providers were already engaged but in quite localized fields: development, risk, security, and treasury.
However, DAOs are really complex bodies, and there is an underlying (and sometimes hidden) massive amount of heterogeneous “tasks” that don’t really belong to almost any field, as they are not so technical in character, or not part of a precise scope.
I believe the presence of so heterogeneous tasks is far from ideal, and over time they should be compartmentalized into precise scopes, but the work @MarcZeller and ACI have done to holistically tackle them and put in place frameworks to define them better, has been high-quality.
This reflects on items like Skyward, or multiple governance proposals coming directly from ACI and touching on aspects like growth via caps modification, interest rate updates, deprecation efforts on pools, compensation of delegate platforms, etc.

In summary, Phase I has been clearly a success from my perspective.

Phase II

Even if generally I don’t really have complaints about Phase I, I think Phase II is in the right direction by trying (or so I understand) to put more focus on the BD and growth side of Aave, which at the moment requires more support compared with the operational side.

Items I think will be valuable are:

• Focus on the external representation of Aave. Especially important, as ACI is uniquely positioned (and well known) to act as a point of contact for Aave-related topics, for any type of external entities: teams looking to use Skyward, relations with other DAOs, or even relations with teams behind networks where Aave lives in non-technical matters.
• Work more on the delegation side of the Aave governance, following what has been started with Orbit, but also creating new initiatives that, apart from increasing participation, will improve the role of contributors like the delegate platforms.
  Let’s not forget, governance is core “business” of the Aave ecosystem.
• I would also like ACI to get more involved in holistic documentation of the Aave ecosystem. At the current moment, Aave and its governance have a lot of moving pieces that, even if not so bureaucratic, can be overwhelming for newcomers.
  It is true that almost everything is documented, but sometimes the information is too scattered.

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In summary, I think ACI has shown its commitment these last months, and given the expertise, the price is fair. Additionally, I can also say that @MarcZeller is probably one of the most compromised people regarding Aave on the whole ecosystem, which even if difficult to measure, has big value.

Support from my side.

[mintalex]

There might be arguments suggesting that Arbitrum’s incentives are primarily targeted towards its native applications, making it difficult for applications like Aave, Lido, and Curve to receive rewards even if they were to apply.

The reality is that many non-native Arbitrum projects were also included, such as Pendle, Frax, Silo, Abracadabra, Angle, and Balancer. Similar to Aave, their primary business operations are on Ethereum. Moreover, both their funding and user base on Arbitrum are significantly lower than Aave’s. The fact is that Aave was severely unprepared for this application, resulting in missing out on a budget worth at least several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of ARB.

The failure of Lido and Curve’s applications was not due to them not being native applications on Arbitrum but rather the arrogance and inadequacy of their proposal. We are not disallowing ACI from making mistakes, but the lack of accountability and failure to evaluate the reasons for this significant error by all governing representatives is a dangerous signal for an open community like Aave.

[NathanVDH]

Thoroughly in favor. ACI is creating the blueprint of how professional delegate organizations should operate, and Skyward is a very important building block for truly decentralized governance.

[TokenLogic]

Hi @MarcZeller,

We are in support of ACI Phase II. Similar to earlier comments before ours, we would like to recognise the ACI’s unwavering dedication to supporting the Aave DAO. The sheer volume of AIPs is reflective of a team that is deeply plugged in and proactiveness.

We work closely with ACI on a daily basis and have completed several joint initiatives. The ACI team is easy to work with and Phase I has been a great success. Skyward and Orbit are both great initiatives and the high cadence of proposals has been very effective in dealing with day to day operations. We are in favour of the expanded budget and we look forward to continuing to work together with the ACI team.