[ARFC] Dolce Vita Extension

Governance
1

Updated 2024-10-25

Title: [ARFC] Dolce Vita Extension
Author: @ACI
Date: 2024-10-16

Summary

This ARFC seeks community consensus to extend Dolce Vita services to include Snapshot and Discourse management. The proposal aims to formalize and expand ACI’s role in overseeing these governance platforms, ensuring streamlined and consistent management across Aave DAO’s communication channels.

Motivation

Dolce Vita is a core component of ACI’s commitment to enhancing the Aave Protocol by managing essential, yet often unnoticed, tasks that are vital to governance success. As most of Dolce Vita’s services have been delivered ahead of schedule, ACI seeks governance approval to extend its scope to include additional responsibilities.

Snapshot Spaces:

  • ACI is currently the only active administrator of the Aave Snapshot space. It has verified the Aave DAO Snapshot spaces, funded enhanced support, and elevated Aave’s visibility by placing it at the top of the space list, thereby increasing engagement.
  • Through the Skyward service, ACI has been responsible for posting the vast majority of proposals on Snapshot over the past two years. This consistency ensures that governance processes remain organized and accessible.
  • The existing Snapshot space is currently managed by a diverse set of administrators, many of whom are no longer actively involved in the Aave ecosystem.
  • Formalizing ACI’s role would streamline the management of the Snapshot platform, ensuring that governance is handled consistently, enhancing both engagement and trust within the Aave community.

Discourse Forum:

  • ACI has played a pivotal role in establishing and maintaining the current governance framework within the Discourse forum, facilitating structured and coherent discussions that drive decision-making.
  • At present, both @ACI and @EzR3aL are the only active administrators of the forum, maintaining the day-to-day operations to keep the community informed and engaged.
  • Recognizing ACI as the official administrator and @EzR3aL as the lead moderator would solidify these roles, acknowledging the ongoing contributions of ACI and allowing the team to focus on maintaining high-quality services.
  • This extension ensures continuity and efficiency in governance discussions, supporting the continued success of Aave DAO by formalizing the management of these key platforms.

Specification

  1. Snapshot Management:

    • Transfer the management of Snapshot spaces to the AaveDAO.eth ENS domain owned by a multisig with @EzR3aL, @Kene_StableLab and @ACI as signers.
    • Appoint ACI as the primary administrator responsible for moderation, management, and implementation of voting policies.
    • Enable all service providers and Orbit-recognized delegates to post proposals without needing proposition power by giving author status upon request

  2. Discourse Forum Management:

    • Recognize @ACI as the official administrator and manager of the Discourse forum on behalf of Aave DAO.
    • Appoint @EzR3aL as the lead moderator for the forum.
    • Formalize the inclusion of these responsibilities under the Dolce Vita service, allowing ACI to maintain focus and service quality.

Budget Consideration

This extension of Dolce Vita services is proposed to be integrated within the current scope of ACI, and no additional budget is requested.

Disclaimer

ACI is not presenting this ARFC on behalf of any third party and is not compensated for creating this ARFC.

Next Steps

  1. If consensus is reached on this ARFC, proceed to the Snapshot stage.
  2. Should the ARFC receive a favorable Snapshot outcome, proceed to implementation.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

9 Likes
2

Im supportive of removing old, inactive admins from the snapshot space but would also suggest to add additional, active admins as a backup solution. These could be active delegates, SP or other trusted entities/person.

It has been a pleasure to keep governance forum clean from spam & scam but also helping people to follow guidelines. This helps a lot in terms of coordination and efficiency. I can confirm this after being also active in other DAOs as a delegate.
If the DAO approves I would love to continue doing this job under same conditions as of now, free of charge.

  1. I like the idea of having the management at AaveDAO.eth. Who will be in control of this ENS? A multisig?
  2. Similiar as above, implement a backup from the DAO.
  3. Seems like a good idea to be fast and give this power only to trusted member.
  4. absolutely necessary to avoid spam snapshots

I think in general no big changes are happening here, its more an addition to Dolce Vita which helps the DAO because it does not have to think about these things.

4 Likes
3

Some feedback from my side:

  • Is this Dolce Vita? For me the Snapshot component seems more related with Skywards, while Discourse (this forum) changes are more a proposal to structure/formalise a bit more the forum permissions.
  • Snapshot is centralised software and so its “soft” nature as governance mechanism. Because of that, it requires certain operational “stewardship”, usually manifesting in spam control policies, or keeping format of proposals correct. For my understanding, in practise this is already done by ACI as part of the services to the DAO, so seems natural it continue to be so; not even sure why any proposal is required. However some feedback:
    • I don’t really agree with strict 80k AAVE proposition power as requirement, as probably doesn’t give too much value. If should be high enough to disincentivise spam proposals, but exact same as on-chain governance probably only creates issues for entities that want to create by themselves proposals, without Skywards (a totally legitimate approach). I’m more in favour of a lower threshold, probably <5k AAVE, but observed spam behaviour from entities monitoring them (e.g. ACI) is the main consideration here.
    • It should also be very clear that the status-quo doesn’t really change in terms of submitting proposals on Snapshot: people can use Skywards, or if having enough proposition delegation, just create the proposals by themselves. Of course respecting procedures and guidelines.
    • Does Snapshot have any mechanism for delegated control? In my opinion, the most correct approach would be similar as how the Aave DAO manages delegation: “superadmin” (ENS) is kept into the governance contract (e.g. Executor LvL1) and some management roles are given to whoever is elected as admin.
      The most natural ENS to represent the Aave DAO would be aave.eth (with subdomains), but the current holder should transfer it to the Executor address. aavedao.eth seems legit too.
  • In terms of forum moderation, @EzR3aL helping on moderation is just the governance confirmation on something already de-factor happening. But formalising it seems good value added, as ACI has both a delegate platform and the SP engagement, which could potentially create public perception issues: moderation on this forum should be totally neutral no matter the topic (even if at least from my perspective ACI has always been professional on it historically).
5 Likes
4

Formalising administrative tasks for the forum and snapshot is valuable. We would be glad to help with these admin tasks.
@EzR3aL raises a good point about having additional active admins as a backup.

4 Likes
5

Hello @EzR3aL, @eboado, and @Kene_StableLab, thanks for your feedback.

For the past two years, we’ve been the sole active admin for Snapshot, ensuring proposals follow the governance framework and implementing key decisions like quorum, the shielded voting experiment, new voting power, and covering costs such as space verification.

It’s been a simple, glitter-less, and thankless task, but one we’re proud to do for the DAO’s benefit. This proposal aims to formalize that status quo.

Regarding the quorum for posting proposals: every service provider and recognized delegate, will have the author role, ensuring multiple paths for posting proposals in addition to Skywards. We proposed a quorum in line with the on-chain one because, over the past two years, we’ve dealt with malicious actors buying AAVE, posting scam proposals, and then dumping the tokens. At times, these actors did this repeatedly within hours, and I had to manually censor their phishing attempts.

As bad actors never rest, this proposal actually increases the number of trusted actors who can post proposals on Snapshot, improving both decentralization and security.

As for the ENS (aavedao.eth), it should, like any key resource, belong to the DAO. ACI is happy to transfer the ENS rights to a multisig controlled by service providers and delegates.

Regarding delegated control on Snapshot, as @eboado asked:
We propose initially setting things up in a “centralized” way, with the plan to later transfer ENS ownership to DAO-operated control.

  • Owner: DAO multisig
  • Admin: ACI
  • Authors: Service Providers & Delegates
4 Likes
6

Having two of the largest delegates with de-facto control over forum speech is a centralization vector and potential conflict of interest. The current status quo seems a bit too close to “We trust that ACI/EzR3aL has acted neutrally and will continue to do so”. While this may in fact be the case, one of the main reasons that our industry prizes decentralization is to reduce the need to trust any party.

I will also add that, it is currently entirely opaque as to what posts get deleted. Certain actions such as locking topics at a certain cadense also seem somewhat counterproductive to having healthy discourse on topics. At the moment, it seems like quite a lot of the key decisions about the DAO are deliberated in private instead of public. This creates information silos and makes it more difficult for new contributors to participate in Aave governance.

This is a clear chance to involve other delegates in moderation roles (thank you @Kene_StableLab for volunteering). @0xlide could be another suitable candidate (if they are willing) given their forum engagement.

4 Likes
7

My feedback on the topic:

On Snapshot

I personally don’t believe this should fall under Dolce Vita (a service provider initiative). Instead, we should follow the same approach as we have with the Community Guardians, prioritizing neutrality, resilience, and avoiding potential conflicts of interest.

Snapshot AAVE Requirement: The creation of a Snapshot should not require a significant amount of AAVE. We should aim as close to permissionless as possible. While I think the tools available to community members (like Skyward) from service providers are valuable, we should make the process of creating a Snapshot as easy as possible. Even though Skyward might be seen as a neutral tool, third parties may prefer to submit their proposals directly themselves (which is fine). Therefore, a moderate but attainable requirement—such as 1k AAVE—could be a good starting point, with the flexibility to adjust this over time.

Ownership of the Snapshot Space: There isn’t much added value in Aave Labs retaining control of the Snapshot space for the community when the custody could be made more resilient. For example, ownership could be transferred to a DAO multi-sig. Approach similar to Community Guardians should be followed. Community members interested in safeguarding the Snapshot could express their interest, with the decision being ratified through a Snapshot vote. Handing control to another centralized entity or custody would not be beneficial and would introduce unnecessary risk.

Admin: There should be multiple members responsible for administrative tasks such as community moderation. A structure similar to the Community Guardians could work here as well, where dedicated members, as well as anyone from the community interested in joining, could flag their interest. These individuals could then be ratified via a Snapshot vote.

On the Governance Forum

Given that there is no straightforward way to transfer forum ownership, and considering it is entirely offchain, we recommend keeping the current setup to maintain the forum’s security. However, we do recommend adding additional moderators (following a process similar to the one outlined for Snapshot above) to ensure higher quality and better moderation of the forum. Like with Snapshot, we believe this responsibility should not fall under Dolce Vita, but rather follow the same path as Community Guardians. Community members should be given the opportunity to express their interest, and then formalize their involvement through a Snapshot vote.

I believe these procedures would ensure there is enough stakeholders involved in these functions to strengthen the neutrality and resiliency.

6 Likes
8

After community feedback, proposal was escalated to ARFC Snapshot where it recently ended, reaching both Quorum and YAE as winning option, with 451K votes.

Therefore, the ARFC has passed. New changes on Dolce Vita will be implemented in the future.

9

A quick bit of feedback on the process here. First, I’d like to thank everyone who contributed to the discussion. However, the snapshot process felt somewhat rushed, and it appears feedback was only partially considered.

To start, there was feedback questioning whether this mandate should, in any form, be part of Dolce Vita or if it might be better as a general role formalization. Additionally, I personally even suggested electing a sufficient number of participants to the multi-sig to ensure resilience and impartiality. Unfortunately, only one additional entity was added. A more effective outcome would have been to expand the multi-sig to resemble the structure of the Community Guardian multi-sigs.

Overall, a more appropriate path might have been to amend the proposal (given that it’s already an ARFC) to include a more resilient multi-sig structure and to discuss whether this mandate should even fall under Dolce Vita and based on that conversation and feedback proceed to Snapshot.

As there is expectation that the vote is going onchain as the next stage, would be good to amend the proposal.

5 Likes