[ARFC] Orbit Program Renewal - Q1 and Q2 2026

Governance General
1

[ARFC] Orbit Program Renewal - Q1 and Q2 2026

Author: ACI (Aave Chan Initiative)

Date: 2025-12-20

Summary

Proposing the latest renewal of the Orbit program for recognized delegates, compensating them with GHO, associated with their future governance activity during Q1 and Q2 2026( From 2026-01-01 new date when [ARFC] Orbit Program Renewal - Q3 and Q4 2025 ends, until 2025-06-30).

The reason as mentioned previously is because extending period coverage will bring more reliance and predictability for delegates plaform.

Motivation

Orbit recognizes the added value of the Delegates in the decentralization & diversity of the Aave DAO.

This compensation allows them to focus on Aave and keep their contribution efforts to our governance.

The ACI proposes the extension of Orbit for a both Q1 and Q2 2026, from 2026-01-01 to 2026-06-30, as mentioned previously on [ARFC] Orbit Program Renewal - Q3 and Q4 2025.

As a reminder from previous Orbit rounds, a new cutoff had been set, starting at AIP 224, to apply again previous rules of a minimum of 20k voting power and 85% vote ratio on all Snapshots and AIP to be considered elegible to Orbit.

As a reminder again,for transparency purposes, Orbit periode coverage will be 2 times per year (Q1 and Q2 together, and Q3 and Q4 together), with the aim of reducing governance bloat.

Additional Compensation

@EzR3al has been actively moderating Discourse and contributing to several DAO-oriented initiatives, including implementing forum add-ons and, most recently, the vote-tracking widget. These contributions have added tangible value to the ecosystem.

Creating an ad hoc service provider stream would be disproportionate, but we do want to recognize and reward specific community members who consistently contribute for the benefit of the Aave ecosystem.

We would like to submit for governance approval a 100% increase in @EzR3alā€™s Orbit compensation to reflect the additional involvement and work delivered.

Specification

Additional considerations:

As a reminder, Service Providers will not be considered elegible to Orbit Program.

Funds are distributed based on 180 days, as seen on budget and as specificied on motivation section.

Next Steps

  1. Gather community feedback on this ARFC.
  2. If consensus is achieved, escalate this proposal to the ARFC snapshot stage.
  3. If the ARFC snapshot outcome is YAE, proceed to the AIP stage for implementation and funding allocation in cooperation with Aave Finance service providers via an ad-hoc AIP vote or bundled in one of their treasury management AIPs.

Disclosure

The ACI is independent and has not received any form of compensation from related parties for the drafting of this proposal.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived under Creative Commons Zero (CC0)

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Again I would like to thank @ACI for creating this proposal and recognizing delegate work.
Additionally I would like to mention that I do hope all the work and initiatives, which on my side mainly happen in the background, are considered valuable.
As I did, I do intend to make these efforts public in their specific threads.

If at any point problems, questions or anything else comes up, do not hesitate to get in touch with me.

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Hey everyone,

Iā€™ve been a tokenholder since 2019 and have been actively contributing to the Aave community since April 2021, well before I joined Aave Labs in 2024. Over the years, Iā€™ve helped thousands of community members with everything from protocol questions to forum issues. For the past six months, Iā€™ve also been helping moderate this forum under the Aave account.

Iā€™m writing to raise serious concerns about recent forum moderation practices that appear to be suppressing dissenting opinions.

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We have been contacted by a community member who reports that their account has been ā€œput on holdā€ immediately after posting in favor of Aave Labs on the brand ownership proposal thread. According to this user, they were the first to speak out against the proposal, and their account was disabled within days. They have requested that we bring this to light and ask for their account to be reinstated.

It has also come to our attention that the Aave admin account has had its admin privileges removed. As the primary administrators, those managing the forum may have the right to make such decisions. However, the timing is worth discussing.

This change occurred during an active governance debate in which the current proposal is critical of Aave Labs, and one of the service providers most vocal in that criticism also controls forum administration. While this may be coincidental, the optics are unusual.

Simultaneously, ACI has proposed a 100% compensation increase for EzR3aL, citing his forum moderation work, in the same week that Aave Labsā€™ admin privileges were removed and the censorship issues were brought up. While these may be coincidental, the timing and pattern raise questions about whether this move makes sense or is an attempt to align interested parties.

I would also like to get clarification on EzR3aLā€™s work. In this proposal you mention forum add-ons and a vote tracking widget, but can you disclose what those things are? And explain how they bring value to the DAO such that the DAO needs to pay for them by doubling his compensation?

Iā€™m raising this in a personal capacity as someone who cares deeply about the Aave community. And Iā€™m particularly concerned about censorship and its impact on open discussion going forward.

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So Iā€™m just gonna answer on these accusations.

  1. The user has not been silenced or anything by me for example because of sharing his opinion. It was simply due to the fact that discourse Ai detected a pattern of potential spam and then silenced a user so I can review it. (btw anyone can always see the reason of a silence, when clicking on the user profile, itā€™s not hidden)
    Screenshot_20251221_193150_com_android_chrome_SameTaskWebApkActivity
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See the screenshot from the logs.

The reason I implemented more stricter rules are simply because of huge traffic coming in within the last 10 days. We had a peak of 37k user on the 18th December.
To avoid spam I implemented the following rule:

You are a spam detection bot for a cryptocurrency and DeFi technical community.
Classify posts as SPAM if they contain:

  1. ā€œWallet Drainerā€ or ā€œAirdropā€ scams: Promises of free tokens, ā€œclaim nowā€ links, or urgent requests to connect a wallet to an external site.
  2. Support Impersonation: Users claiming to be ā€œSupport,ā€ ā€œAdmin,ā€ or ā€œHelp Deskā€ asking others to DM them or fill out a form for ā€œmanual validationā€ or ā€œsynchronization.ā€
  3. Platform Diversion: Requests to move conversation immediately to WhatsApp, Telegram, or Instagram (e.g., ā€œContact this trader on WhatsAppā€).
  4. Recovery Scams: Claims to recover lost funds, hacked wallets, or forgotten private keys using a specific service or ā€œhacker.ā€
  5. Low-effort Shilling: Posts that only contain ā€œTo the moon,ā€ ā€œGreat project,ā€ or emoji strings without adding technical substance.
  6. Copy-Paste AI Slop: Generic AI-generated paragraphs that restate the OP without adding new info, often used to farm trust levels.

Context: Technical discussion of smart contracts, yields, and tokenomics is ALLOWED. Mentioning a specific token is not spam unless it is accompanied by ā€œ100x guaranteedā€ or ā€œbuy nowā€ rhetoric.

On top of that any profile being created and then posting without adding some information to its profile or reading a post is getting silenced, not banned.
Traffic has been lower and rules can be softer again.

  1. There was a proposal a long time ago (I think it was included in Dolce Vita) where I was announced to be leading moderator/admin and the DAO approved it, without any compensation.

  2. My work includes within the Aave DAO in total:

  • Orbit delegate
  • Multisig member for emergency steward
  • APE member
  • forum moderator and admin
  • Onboarding support for teams
  • contact person for HNI

  1. All my work is documented in the forum updates proposal I created roughly half a year ago.

  2. The new voting addon is currently in work and testing phase and is likely to be released till EOY. This widget will allow anyone to see all active votes directly in discourse via a widget. This makes it easy to follow any proposal and see what the TEMP CHECK outcome for example was within that post.
    It is being paid by ACI, as ACI said itā€™s not much that it needs a proposal and approval by the DAO to cover the expenses.

Any user is always free to contact me on TG, Discord or X.

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To address concerns and misinformation, here is the full list of users who were silenced over the past week.

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No moderator manually silenced any of them. Quite the opposite: in nearly every case, moderators removed the flag and restored the post.

Another relevant data point: @Narrator is responsible for many of the flags raised on the forum this week, including flags targeting users taking legitimate stances that are neither spam nor rule-breaking. Here is one (of many) examples:

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The @Aave account appears to have been inactive for nearly two years, and only logged in again very recently.

Both @ACI and @EzR3aL are the elected moderators and administrators of this Discourse forum, have been active here every day for years, and their administrative rights follow governance decisions (see ARFC below):

It is surprising to us that the proposal to compensate @EzR3aL fairly, after more than a year of unpaid strategic contributions that have increased in both scope and allocated bandwidth, is met with anything other than broad consensus. Even more so when parts of this are being amplified on social media in a way that further harms the Aave brand.

I believe the situation will eventually converge toward consensus and a constructive solution will be found. However, the conduct displayed by @kberg and @simo over the past week has caused lasting reputational damage with a large portion of the community.

Aave Labs has an important role to play in Aaveā€™s future. But not every individual behavior we have seen recently should be normalized or rewarded in the future we build together.

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Increasing @EzR3aLā€™s compensation to reflect the extra work he has done and will presumably continue to do for our community is something that I believe nobody wouldā€™ve taken any issue with at all if there were not a divisive proposal ongoing. The timing of this request for additional compensation is ā€˜unluckyā€™ when itā€™s coming at the same time as that proposal, butā€¦end of year is when something like this logically would be put forward, for the increase in compensation to begin in the new year. So the timing is unfortunate, but again, given all @EzR3aL does for the Aave community, absent of the current divisive cowswap saga, I donā€™t believe anyone would be putting up much if any resistance to his compensation increasing.

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Thanks for addressing this @MarcZeller and @EzR3aL

I flagged the post as spam because it did not follow the temp check framework established by the DAO. It seems to be an apparent theme that ACI aligned narratives are given a free pass when it comes to the rules.

I am still curious as to why the Aave account had its admin permissions revoked, at a time when it was actively moderating the forums. In the Dolce Vita Expansion back in 2024, it was stated that ACI would be the official Admin, and that EzR3al would be the lead moderator. Yet, the Aave account did not have its Admin permissions revoked until now.

And why should the DAO be funding trivial additions that donā€™t benefit active token holders? In EzR3alā€™s own words in the ASC thread, where it is proposed to pay two people $100k each, ā€œImho this is a huge amount to what I know from my job in a company that is the 4th biggest retailer in the world. Our support is being paid good, but 200k is way more than anyone here gets. If thats the web3 salary for support, I need to change my profession. (jokes aside)ā€

And now, you are proposing to pay him $120k a year from the DAO.

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How do you get to $120k a year ?

150k for 4 people for half a year ā†’ isnā€™t it a 75k/yr per person in this case?

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Please feel free to check again the above mentioned section no3 for all tasks, which include much more than support only activities as mentioned in the ASC proposal. Additionally this proposal is for 6 months not 12. Happy to answer any other question related to that.
I can share the amount of tasks Iā€™ve done on the forum and compare it to other accounts if relevant.
Just leave a message.
Wishing you all happy holidays.

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The current proposal has been escalated to ARFC Snapshot.

Vote will start tomorrow in 24h, we encourage everyone to participate.

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I think the Orbit program has been helpful and valuable overall.

My concern is with the additional compensation component. When work is undertaken voluntarily, any compensation should be proposed separately with clear details about what was done, what value it created, and what the DAO is paying for. This is particularly important when thereā€™s alignment (like delegation) between the proposer and recipient. This allows the DAO to properly assess and vote on it.

For example, the proposal mentions ā€œimplementing forum add-ons and the vote-tracking widget,ā€ but thereā€™s limited detail about scope, cost, or outcomes.

Iā€™d recommend splitting this into two proposals: one for the general Orbit program, and a separate one for additional compensation with full transparency about the work involved.

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Hello,
maybe it slipped through but I have been documenting everything regarding the forum here:
[TEMP CHECK] Update forum features.
Regarding its value, I think everyone has to decide on their own. Implementations happened based on my own research but also from feedback via TG from SP or simple user of the forum.

Regarding the plugin mentioned here:

Im am currently in private chats with @DavidLen as we are fine tuning this widget for the needs of the DAO. This is the original post and widget im referring to Governance Widget Integration ā€“ Whoā€™s the Right Contact?.
This version is not fixed and if there is great feedback, I will make sure it will be incorporated.
Costs have been mentioned in the post and will be covered by @ACI as the amount is not too big and reduces governance bloat.

Then a few replies above I mentioned this.

Im trying to break it down where I can.
Orbit Delegate: is pretty clear, creating meaningful comments and posts and do research for the DAO and its Tokenholder.
[Multisig Member of the protocol emergency Guardian]([ARFC] Renewal of Aave Guardian - 2024) (sorry for saying steward): Being available more or less 24/7 in case an asset or market needs to be shutdown. For example in case of the zksync activation last year or this year for multiple assets.
APE: Aave protocol embassy member, where we actively participate and represent the Aave DAO in other DAOs like Arbitrum.
Forum moderation has been mentioned above already with its dedicated post.
Onboarding support: Its not really easy quantifiying the amount, but I have been actively talking and engaging with teams like Stake.Link, PufferETH, Bitget (for the integration) and several more.
As some of these discussions happened under NDA I cannot share explicit information, if relevant here. Main work was finding out what is needed and who they need to get connected with within the DAO, as it was not always clear for those teams.
contact person for HNI: Basically informing and helping VCs or liquid funds finding their way into Aave and the DAO with regular calls, updates and also more or less 24/7 availability.

I hope this help everyone reading this to understand the work done here. If someone thinks this can be made better and more transparent, feel free to comment and I will find a way to do so. But please note, that some ā€œBDā€ work cannot be shared immediately, sometimes for strategic reasons, sometimes because of NDA or simply because it takes time.

If you are still reading this, then im wishing you a happy new year!

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Thanks for the breakdown. I appreciate the detail on the various roles.

However, my concern is more about the structure. When additional compensation is proposed beyond the standard Orbit program then a separate proposal allows the DAO to evaluate the scope, value, and compensation level independently.

The work may be documented in various posts, but consolidating it into a single proposal with clear justification would provide better context for the DAO to assess.

If we establish that additional compensation can be added without separate proposals, it becomes harder to maintain clear standards for what the Orbit program covers versus what requires additional justification.

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For Orbit its pretty clear what the focus is on, as outlined in the original proposal for Orbit:

And over time rules have been added:

So basically everything outside of my Orbit/delegate profile can be considered extra work.

If there are more questions, im happy to answer those to anyone. And if there are more people thinking it should be split into two proposals feel free to answer here.

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Iā€™d like to weigh in from the development side to provide clarity on the governance widget. Iā€™ve been working closely with @EzR3aL , and his role has been essential in moving this from a concept to a functional tool for the DAO.

I can confirm the engagement has been high-level and professional. We are currently moving the project toward a better Lookup architecture to ensure the widget is 100% accurate by syncing directly with on-chain metadata eliminating false positives and ensuring the data is reliable for delegates. We expect to complete this transition within the next couple of days.

Itā€™s also worth noting that the ACI has been kind enough to offer to cover the development costs of this widget, so does not require additional funding from the DAO.

Without Ezrealā€™s direction on how the DAO actually uses the forum, the widget wouldnā€™t be nearly as tailored to this community. He has been incredibly responsive, even assisting us with getting technical details to ensure the final product meets high standards. We would not be able to maintain our current pace without his coordination, and Iā€™m looking forward to the value this adds to how the DAO engages with proposals daily.

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The increase of @EzR3aLā€™s remuneration seems to me aligned with additional contribution, moderation and global gestion of the forum he does.
If I want to be picky, I will prefer separate Q1 and Q2 to give more possibilities for new delegates to match criteria.

1 Like