Introducing "Orbit" - A Delegate Platform Funding Initiative by ACI

Governance
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Introducing “Orbit” - A Delegate Platform Funding Initiative by Aave-Chan Initiative

Hello Aave Community,

We are thrilled to announce the launch of “Orbit”, a new initiative by the Aave-Chan Initiative (ACI). Orbit is a delegate platform funding initiative that aims to professionalize the Aave DAO governance and reward top current contributors who are not currently compensated for this role.

The Spirit of Orbit

In the spirit of aviation and space exploration, and in line with our Skyward service, we chose the name “Orbit” to symbolize the challenging journey to become a successful participant in the Aave DAO. Just as reaching orbit is the most challenging part of a space mission, securing the minimum funding necessary to sustain involvement is often the hardest part of participating in a DAO.

Orbit Pilot Program

Orbit is a pilot program funded by ACI’s own budget. For the next quarter, starting on June 1st and ending on September 1st, we will be allocating a budget of $15,000 per month. This budget will be distributed to three delegate platforms - StableLab, Flipside, and @lbsblockchain - at a rate of $5,000 per month each. The funds will be streamed to their wallets via a llamaPay integration.

Selection of Delegate Platforms

In selecting the delegate platforms for this pilot program, the ACI was guided by several key factors:

  • Active participation in governance voting
  • Creation of meaningful and impactful proposals
  • Engaged participation in DAO proposal discussions
  • Overall alignment with the ethos of DeFi

We would like to note that many other contributors could have qualified to be part of this pilot program, but the ACI doesn’t have an unlimited budget. We also wanted to highlight that TokenLogic contributions were considered a perfect fit for the pilot program but TokenLogic being funded by a separate initiative, it was decided that their inclusion was not necessary for this pilot.

Purpose of Orbit

The purpose of this pilot program is to lay the foundations & set precedence for a potential Aave DAO’s supported program for delegate platforms and to incentivize delegate platform participation. We would also like to state that a DAO’s supported program for delegate platforms should include only delegate platforms that have ratified the Delegate Code of Conduct and are Recognized Delegate Platforms.

Orbit and Skyward

With the Orbit pilot, in addition to the Skyward program, any delegate should be motivated to participate in Aave DAO governance and propose TEMP CHECKs, ARFCs & AIPs regardless of their current voting, proposal power & technical abilities and be potentially fairly compensated for it if the DAO recognizes their value add.

Funding and Approval

As the ACI’s own budget finances the Orbit program, it does not require governance approval and will be enforced from June 1st. This pilot program has been financed as the ACI is currently onboarding three new talents to join the team to create a lean and efficient ACI team. However, due to their availability, their effective onboarding will only be in a few weeks. The dedicated budget for these roles has been attributed to the Orbit program and will fund other upcoming initiatives.

Conclusion

We believe that by providing financial support to delegate platforms, we can encourage more community members to participate in Aave’s governance, fostering a more vibrant and diverse DAO.

We look forward to seeing the effect of the Orbit initiative on the Aave DAO governance.

Best,
The Aave-Chan Initiative Team

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We are glad to have been selected by the ACI to participate in the Orbit Pilot Program, we commit to keep up our contributions to Aave Governance.

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Awesome initiative @MarcZeller and congrats to the successful delegate platforms, well deserved!

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This is a great initiative by the ACI and fully deserved for StableLab, Flipside & @lbsblockchain!

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Thanks Marc for thinking of us and the innovative implementation using LlamaPay.

As expressed privately, Flipside believes this initiative is better suited for a delegate who is newer to the DAO and Aave; it acts as a stronger incentive and is most impactful.

For that reason, we will defer the funding for another qualified candidate.

We are supportive of this initiative – and glad to see the creative use of contributor budgets.

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Orbit Update:

For the third month of this program, and with the approval of recipients, we will switch payment from xDAI on gnosisChain to GHO on ethereum mainnet.

While xDAI had the benefit of deeper liquidity and gnosis chain of low tx fees, everyone involved in the Orbit program shared the common interest to see GHO success & adoption.

New streams will be initialized early next week.

This is the last month of the Orbit program. While the initial plan on the ACI side was to leverage this experiment as leverage to create a DAO-controlled Orbit program that will ensure independent funding of delegate platforms, recent upcoming governance decisions to allocate DAO funds towards other venues make this project less realistic in the immediate term as the DAO operate on a tight budget.

The ACI will reaccess and consider the following steps before September.

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Update:

Orbit is now using GHO as the payment currency for the Orbit program.

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