It’s generally not a good idea to publicly drag out off-boarding someone. It’s bad for morale and people are not incentivized to work hard when they are dealing with a prolonged, uncertain firing.
That can make managing people and contractors difficult for DAOs, who generally want to build consensus on decisions through public discussion.
While not being the most educated on the subject both parties offer fair stances.(ACI offers geat points while Llama does aswell.)The thought of collusion imo is absurd(Tokenlogic/ACI); However if work has been done and is soon for ratification; I would not be apposed to vote for a reduced payout (reduced rate for Llama)for work to be released; Only if Tokenlogic and ACI sign off on work.(The steadfastness of tokenlogic/ACI wanting to do the work probono speakes volumes). The ACI framework to fix this could not come sooner. As inter DAO quarrels without vast full disclosure lead to speculation.
As a community member, I believe that discussions such as these are not only healthy but also illustrate the vibrant, engaged community that Aave has cultivated.
In my opinion, this proposal should not be interpreted as discouraging or antagonistic towards service providers in general and should not deter any entity considering a partnership with the DAO. Rather, service providers should be aware that upon entering into a collaboration with the Aave DAO, their work will be consistently assessed, and the highest level of quality will be anticipated and upheld. Ultimately, the community will decide the appropriate course of action in this specific case, but introducing the option of terminating an existing engagement sets a significant precedent that should only serve to raise our standards even higher.
A quick note on communication: In the context of a DAO and a public written forum, effective communication can be quite challenging. I firmly believe in the importance of conveying messages in a clear and straightforward manner, as we see in this thread, provided they are respectful, deliberate, and professional – which, I am confident, is the case with all participants in this discussion.
Disclaimer: These opinions are my personal views and represent my perspective as an individual Aave community member.
As a community member and Aave holder, I think this proposal is healthy. We are talking about a significant amount of budget, and we need to be sure that everything is going well and that the work offered by this budget is fair.
Transparency and going directly to the issue are critical to growing this community and valuable to grow Aave. Because of that, I don’t think this proposal is aggressive or bad, in my opinion, we need to do more often and ensure that all the providers are doing their work correctly.
Would be up help creating a framework.
Hi @John_TV_Locke,
Sure thing. Over the last 6 months, or so, Llama has transitioned its longer term strategy focus from Services towards Product development. This has been a gradual shift which led to the decision by Llama to not try renew the Aave contract. Naturally, those working on the Aave scope are affected by this, with the only exception being the frontend developer and solidity developer supporting the day to day Aave related work stream transitioning to the product team.
TokenLogic primary focus is as a service provider and can therefore be thought of as a spin off of the Llama service team. To this end, several of the current Llama contributors intend to transition across from Llama to TokenLogic at the end of the Llama <> Aave contract. Namely @Dydymoon and @scottincrypto. The relationship between Llama <> TokenLogic teams is strong and the members are as close as ever.
This is probably a good opportunity to clarify that the current topic being discussed has zero bearing on if TokenLogic is to become a service provider for Aave DAO or not. These are separate topics and should be viewed as such.
There came a point where my focus was increasingly towards TokenLogic and it made sense to transition to 100% TokenLogic. Given the allocation of solidity resources at Llama for the Aave scope, there is minimal capacity to take on new scopes of work between now and the end of the contract, I feel that I can not add a lot of value to Aave whilst remaining at Llama. With this in mind, I am leaving Llama, end of this month, to focus on building TokenLogic where I believe I can make more of an impact. It is also not right for me to continue drawing a salary from Llama when my focus is pivoting more and more towards TokenLogic. Now is the right time from me to transition to TokenLogic and focus on building/supporting this team.
I will be completing all my outstanding tasks at Llama and will continue to support any queries relating to initiatives that I was involved with. I have a great relationship with @HelloShreyas and I want Llama to be successful. Which ever way this discussion goes, I will remain impartial, abstain from voting and keep my focus on building and advancing GHO/Aave.
Our core values at TokenLogic include Openness and Trust and the above reflects this.
As a community member and stkAAVE holder, I think the sooner we rationalize spending, the better
Llama is an excellent DAO contributor, but as Marc pointed out, that’s all about sustainability and has nothing to do with politics
As @EzR3aL suggested, we might need to create a special framework for the future onboarding of service providers to make sure such concerns do not arise again
@Llamaxyz has done some fair work in the past. I understand the discussion is for the remaining time. The payment amount for the remaining 2 months (and initial engagement) do appear to be bloated for the services being provided. AAVE DAO should be concerned about this.
I am in agreement for a pricing negotitation/discount on services left for 8 weeks.
A point was mentioned earlier that DAO has allocated this budget and service contract, however, the same DAO can also cancel it before expiry. Thats the beauty of DAOs.
Moving forward a framework is essential to ensure the service provider, community, DAO and token holders are getting a fair agreement in place in terms of $ value as well as tasks (for bear and bull markets).
Finally, are there any other service providers that need to be reviewed in terms of pricing and contribution value?
I am sure that If we get more conscious about the DAO spending, we will have some conclusions on a short term that will probably end in some proposals. However let’s keep that on standby for now until this vote happens and then we can discuss about it on a forum thread.
Thanks everyone for your feedback. It seems like many community members are open to a reduced pricing for the last two months, which we are willing to do. We request that a Snapshot on this subject has three options for the community to choose from: cancel, reduce pricing, and no change.
Here are a few high priority tasks we have for the last two months:
These contracts have taken months of technical research, development, and testing, along with coordination with external technical teams like Yearn, Balancer, and Cowswap. It is difficult to hand over contracts like this so late in the development process. They will be useful open-source tooling for Aave that can be used by many contributors for the years to come.
We are also working on the following tasks:
We hope to arrive at a reduced pricing that is favorable for the DAO.
Let’s strive to maintain the quality of our discussions by avoiding one-sentence or low-value replies and staying focused on the main topic. This approach will enhance the clarity of the proposal and empower the wider community to make an informed decision when this ARFC is escalated to the snapshot stage.
Our community is known for its clear and accessible debates. Divergence in opinions is not only welcome but also a strong indicator of decentralization.
We believe that all parties involved, as well as the wider community, have had ample opportunity to express their views on this topic. Let’s continue to uphold these standards as we move forward.
It’s important to note that a stream cannot be modified once it’s started - it can only be cut and then a new one re-initiated. It’s quite revealing that an entity, which has cost millions for its “engineering” efforts, lacks a basic understanding of how Aave DAO’s smart contracts operate.
Those who are in favor of a “reduced” stream are encouraged to vote YAE on the upcoming snapshot to cut the current stream. Subsequently, they can create another ARFC to establish a new, ad-hoc stream that better aligns with their preferences.
This proposal will be escalated to the snapshot stage on Sunday, July 30th, and voting will commence on Monday, July 31st. We look forward to your active participation in this important decision-making process.
The Snapshot temp check is an offchain vote for the DAO to voice its opinion on whether it wants to cancel the stream, reduce the stream, or keep the same stream. All three are distinct options. If the Snapshot is passed to reduce the stream, a single proposal payload can be created to both cancel the current stream and initiate a new, reduced stream.
If the option is to reduce the stream, how much will it be reduced to? This will help us make a more informed decision.
We would propose doing 50% of our original contract price for the next two months. While this is a significant and unexpected reduction for us, we would like the opportunity to complete the work we have outstanding for Aave.
For the sake of absolute clarity, we have updated the Motivation section of this ARFC.
The primary aim of this ARFC is to terminate the stream of a service provider that has consistently underperformed and overcharged. There have been numerous instances where the actions of this service provider have justified termination.
These actions form the core motivation for the publication of this termination ARFC.
Discussions regarding the future scope of this service provider role, the associated budget, and potential candidates fall outside the purview of this ARFC and should be addressed separately in an appropriate forum post.
Marc continues to state factual errors that we have politely corrected but he’s yet to respond to a single correction. Now, he has completely updated the original forum post and people cannot see it. Making false accusations, being corrected, and then deleting the original accusations is against the spirit of a good faith discourse.
The original forum post read that the reason for ending Llama’s stream was:
As most members of TokenLogic are no longer working at Llama and were responsible for most, if not all, contributions to Aave
As we pointed out, this is factually incorrect as only one member has left and everyone else is still an important part of Llama; our 35+ proposal payloads have been written by engineers who are still full-time at Llama. Marc has not responded to this and has since changed the narrative to something else.
If the issue was truly about performance, why did Marc not inform us about this before in the first 10 months of our contract? This is the first we are hearing directly about a desire to cancel our stream. There was a lot of time to initiate a discussion about cancellation, especially after our detailed 6 month update. We post updates every month (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). We host Twitter Spaces every month for community members to join (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). Marc could have responded to one of the forum post updates (he hasn’t responded to a single one) or joined one of the Twitter spaces and let us know of this desire to cancel the stream. He has also never expressed this via private message. Why is it being done when there are 8 weeks left?
The post said that we don’t have much to do over the next two months, which is also untrue.
As we responded previously, we are developing the Curator and Strategic Asset Manager, which are complex contracts. These contracts have taken months of technical research, development, and testing, along with coordination with external technical teams like Yearn, Balancer, and Cowswap. It is difficult to hand over contracts like this so late in the development process. We are also working on a treasury management payload, three data analytics dashboards, and Aave financial reports for July, August, and September.
He said:
It’s important to note that a stream cannot be modified once it’s started - it can only be cut and then a new one re-initiated.
We pointed out that this is factually incorrect as a stream can both be stopped with a smaller, new stream initiated in a single transaction, i.e. using the same proposal payload. He did not respond to this.
He criticized Llama for its engineering efforts in this post, but he has privately complimented our engineering work as high quality and has said that he often re-uses variations of our payloads for his own AIPs given how good they are.
We have been receiving messages in private from current and former Aave contributors and community members expressing a similar sentiment, but who are scared to communicate it on the forum because Marc is the largest delegate. He currently has 247k AAVE delegated - nearly 80% of the quorum requirement - so it is challenging for people to speak against him when he almost entirely drives a vote. This is in addition to being a paid service provider to Aave. He was the largest voter for his own proposal in April for Aave DAO to fund ACI.
Given that ACI’s 6-month contract ends soon and partly overlaps with Llama’s work, there is a clear conflict of interest in this discussion. It would be as if Gauntlet put up a proposal to cancel Chaos Labs’ stream.
Llama’s contract with Aave ends in 2 months and we do not intend to ask for a renewal, so we’re one of the few groups that feels comfortable voicing what’s on a lot of people’s minds.
We have been willing to compromise and request to work at a reduced price though it is a significant and unexpected reduction. We hope the DAO should at least discuss a reduced price as several community members have brought it up as a viable option.
In the short time since we posted this, we have already received a number of messages of private support. People have told us that Marc is also a forum admin and Snapshot admin. Being the largest delegate by far, a paid service provider, a forum admin, and Snapshot admin is a lot of power for one person in a decentralized organization to have.
We would like to clarify that the Aave Chan Initiative votes with exactly zero of our own AAVE tokens - they are all delegated to third-parties. Furthermore, we receive zero delegations from companies, protocols, or entities. Our independence is paramount to us, and it is this independence that allows us to call out actors like Llama and ensure the DAO is free from excess.
Our voice represents hundreds in the community. When we vote, their voice speaks. We are ushering in a new era for the Aave DAO, an era of maturity, sustainability, and professionalism. The termination of your engagement is a significant step forward in our journey toward becoming a mature DAO.
We are committed to fostering diversity and professionalism within the delegate community. To this end, we have undertaken several initiatives:
Can you name another entity that invests substantial resources to support its own “competitors”? We do this because we represent many voices within this community, and our primary duty is to the DAO.
We believe the discussion is getting a bit out of subject here arguing about powers. We do believe there is a conversation to be had on a different forum post about the ACI or ANY entity having so much admin power even if the delegations received are pretty well decentralised.
Correct us if we’re wrong but isn’t it possible to have multiple admins on Snapshot and the Forum? Good chance to create an “Admin Committee”.
We recommend that we focus for now on the actual ARFC which is the cancelling of the service provider stream for @Llamaxyz.
Agreed that the ARFC* has changed intention, but prob a good idea from @0xkeyrock.eth and others to just focus on the remaining Llama stream for now.
My 2c:
Unfortunately, the DAO probably agreed to a bad deal with Llama and overpaid, and maybe Llama under-delivered. There was a clause that after 6 months the DAO could revisit the deal and cancel it. No one said anything. I also am not aware of any feedback or communication with Llama that they were underperforming or not keeping up their end of the contract. So again that’s on us - Llama communicates well and gives plenty of avenues for feedback.
Imo, to rug them with 2 months left without any prior communication of poor performance or gross negligence is wrong. The DAO made a bad deal, then didn’t fix it when we had the chance. I think the right thing to do here is honor the contract and learn from our mistakes, not screw a partner bc we screwed up. Does it hurt the bottom line? Yes. Is it the high integrity, right thing to do? I think so.
Just one dead philosopher’s opinion tho, I respect the views of others if they feel differently.
Disclaimer: These are personal views and do not represent those of my employer, yadda yadda etc etc.
