Blockchain at Berkeley Delegate Platform

Delegate Platforms
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Key Info

Introduction

Blockchain at Berkeley is a student-run organization at UC Berkeley founded in 2014 and focused on blockchain innovation.

The major departments in Blockchain at Berkeley are as follows:

  • Consulting: Building software and performing research to support companies, protocols, and other organizations. Previous clients include Arbitrum, Algorand, LayerZero, Avalanche, PayPal, UNICEF, etc.
  • Education: Providing blockchain education through student-run courses at UC Berkeley, to over 300,000 students worldwide through our EdX course, DeCal’s (student-taught courses at UC Berkeley), and within the org through white paper reviews and developer bootcamps.
  • Xcelerator: Launched what’s now the #1 university blockchain accelerator in the US, since 2019. 100+ alumni companies, 450M+ total of follow-on funding secured.
  • Governance: Voting and building proposals for delegated protocols including Aave, Compound, Uniswap, dYdX, and Optimism.

Though we have been a delegate and voter on Aave for some time, we have never formally created a delegation platform nor explained our voting decisions. Through this delegation, we aim to provide a unified position and justification for our voting decisions on Aave.

Governance Voting Methodology:

  • The governance department meets weekly to discuss the latest updates and presents analysis on proposals while ensuring voices of all members are considered before making a decision. The voting process within the department is democratic to balance knowledge from seasoned members and thoughts from younger members.

Voting Priorities:

  • Risk Mitigation: As an open-source liquidity protocol, it is vital to keep and build trust with our users. In order to do this, we believe in risk-mitigation through changes in IR curves and other parameters in order to limit risk in lending pools as well as minimize bad debt.
  • Protocol Growth: Since users and transactions are the backbone of lending protocols, we believe in building features that increase usefulness, allowing for long-term sustainable growth.
  • Data-backed: As a lending protocol, it is vital that all proposals are data-backed (through simulations or other data-analysis techniques) with a solid understanding of risks and opportunities.
  • Diversity in Thought: At Blockchain at Berkeley, our views are not monolithic, which allows for healthy discussion and debate. We believe successful protocols must also not be monolithic in perspective and voting intentions in order to foster innovation and creativity.

Waiver of Liability

By delegating to Blockchain at Berkeley, you acknowledge that we are not liable for any potential losses or adverse outcomes resulting from our involvement in the governance process.

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