[TEMP CHECK] Update Aave Snapshot Space

Governance
1

title: [TEMP CHECK] Update Aave Snapshot Space
author: TokenLogic with support from Snapshot Team
created: 2023-08-07

Summary

This publication seeks to update the Aave Snapshot Admin, Author and Controller addresses.

Motivation

The current Snapshot configuration is outdated and require a refresh. Whilst refreshing the assigned roles, there is an opportunity to migrate the Snapshot Space to one controlled indirectly by the short_Executor.

A brief recap of the roles:

Controller

  • Controller of space has a full control over the space settings including managing the list of admins.

Admin

  • Admin can edit space settings with the exception of the list of admin users and archive proposals.

Author

  • Author can create proposals regardless of their voting power and the proposal validation strategy.

In summary, this publication seeks to achieve the following:

  • Replace inactive admins with active contributors as admins
  • Replace and update Authors
  • Migrate the Snapshot Space to a Space where Short_Executor is indirectly the Controller via an intermediate contract

The current Admin list consists of mostly inactive contributors which creates a reliance of the remaining active contributor (ACI). Whilst ACI has been doing a great service to the DAO, this publication seeks to refresh the admin list to include active contributors. It would be ideal to have coverage spanning several time zones in providing robust coverage for the DAO.

With respect to the Author role, this role enables those with it to submit Snapshots for voting without needing to meet the minimum balance requirements. Outside of this benefit, there is no advantage to being an Author.

In recent history, there have been issues with Snapshot votes being posted that have not followed the governance process. As a result, the minimum balance requirements were increased. If several Authors are added, then the minimum balance can be increased further making it less likely that spam like posts will be generated. The current minimum balance requirement is 1.6K units of voting rights, which is equivalent to $102,400 USD at $64/AAVE.

Currently, the controller of the Aave Space is the aave.eth ENS address.

There exists two options granting varying levels of responsibility to the short_Exectutor.

  • Delegate responsibility to the short_Executor
  • Migrated to a new Aave space that is controlled by short_Executor

Delegating responsibility grants the functionality of being the Controller of the space. However, it can be removed anytime.

As the short_Executor is not EIP-1271 compatible, the space can not be migrated from aave.eth to the short_Executor. It is possible to deploy a new contract which is EIP-1271 that can host the Aave Space. This new contract would be controlled by the short_Executor.

Please do comment in the comment section below, as feedback will be incorporated into the publication.

Specification

The below table details the current Snapshot Admins.

Current Admin List Address
MonetSupply 0x8d07D225a769b7Af3A923481E1FdF49180e6A265
Statelayer 0xc8E0345596D7196941E61D3aB607E57Fe61F85E7
… 0x2357df661D0E56140dF30c3ad0b2B426fB4666e6
… 0x60C8dC4762b217b4A00FF1824111077f331B1FbF
Marc Zeller 0x329c54289Ff5D6B7b7daE13592C6B1EDA1543eD4
Kartojal 0x2D0D6A8553993a3E9eD1D86415358D1EDEfa82F1

The below table details the proposed Snapshot Admins.

Proposed Admin List Address
Marc Zeller (ACI) 0x329c54289Ff5D6B7b7daE13592C6B1EDA1543eD4
Paul (Gauntlet) 0x683a4F9915D6216f73d6Df50151725036bD26C02
more to be added reach out in the comments

The below table details the current Snapshot Authors.

Current Authors List Address
testsnap.eth 0x3901D0fDe202aF1427216b79f5243f8A022d68cf

The below table details the proposed Snapshot Authors.

Proposed Authors List Address
Marc Zeller (ACI) 0x329c54289Ff5D6B7b7daE13592C6B1EDA1543eD4
Paul (Gauntlet) 0x683a4F9915D6216f73d6Df50151725036bD26C02
Representative (Chaos Labs)
Representative (BGD)
Representative (Flipside) Pending

Pending feedback in the comments, migrate the Controller role to a new contract that is EIP-1271 compatible controlled by the short_executor.

The below details the increase in minimum balance requirement:

Description Now Proposed
Minimum Balance Requirement 1,600 80,000

Was 20,000 which can also be presented for voting.

Disclosure

This proposal is the work of @TokenLogic. TokenLogic is a voting delegate within the Aave Ecosystem. TokenLogic receives no payment for this work.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

3 Likes
2

Hey @TokenLogic,

Thanks for the proposal.

I think snapshot admins should only be active contributors with ongoing contracts with the Aave DAO (BGD, Chaos, Gauntlet, ACI, Flipside (soon)) if they wish to be on there.

With regards to Snapshot Authors, I feel that active contributors (without an ongoing contract) can be added, only after being voted for via the DAO process.

Happy to hear the rest of the community’s thoughts.

1 Like
3

Hello here’s a few feedback:

  1. As pointed out, the Snapshot space is the property of the ENS Aave.eth owner, this is @AaveLabs as this ENS name is extremely valuable and strategic It’s up to the AaveCo to decide what they do with it.

  2. Factually I’m the last active admin of this space, but not the owner, only AaveCo can appoint/remove admins. this role was attributed to me as part of AaveCo employees and not as ACI representative.

  3. The Snapshot Admin job reality is playing wack-a-mole with scammers doing phishing proposals, I’m not sure there’s been an issue with my handling of the job in the past.

  4. I’m supportive of all voted service providers being added as author, this will allow them to publish snapshot proposals without the need for proposition power that needs to be sourced and might hurt independence.
    If the DAO agreed to put them on payroll, they should be able to do their job regardless of proposition power.

  5. I do agree admin role should be reset and inactive members should be cleared out, but why fix something that is not really broken at the moment?

  6. If every service providers are upgraded to author role, the ACI is supportive to increase minimum score to 80k AAVE to make nearly impossible for scammers to publish a phising proposal, at the same time, the ACI will make Skyward evolve to start the service as early as first snapshot proposal if the TEMP CHECK post is compliant with governance guidelines.

  7. in every scenario, @TokenLogic is not a service provider of the Aave DAO and is unfit as a candidate for both Admin & Authors roles.

if in the future TokenLogic becomes a service provider to the Aave DAO, the ACI will be supportive of their addition to the author role

2 Likes
4

Thank you for this proposal, @TokenLogic. We support updating the snapshot space admins and authors but do not support moving to a new snapshot space.

We believe Discourse also requires some updates to further decentralize it. As we recently mentioned, we should establish an Admin committee or have at least multiple delegates/service providers and community members for both Snapshot & Discourse.

Regarding the minimum balance, we believe that all service providers, and we would also recommend delegates, should have the author role. While Skyward is a commendable initiative and theoretically enables decentralization, it still relies on a single entity to perform the task. This is why we believe community members should be able to prepare proposals with multiple contributors and not be limited to going through only with the ACI.

Another valuable piece of information for the DAO is that @Flipside had this on their list of tasks to do since two months ago when they first proposed their service provider temp check. After discussing with multiple delegates, they planned to post about it within the last 2-3 days, but you proceeded to “front-run” them (even after @fig was asking you to wait).

We don’t see a significant problem with putting proposals forward faster than another community member, as this is, of course, a free space to express ideas and improve the community. However, we question how this might seem like “hijacking” it from Flipside, especially when it’s not such an urgent matter. We also question the motives here when looking at the broader context of what has happened in the DAO over the last month. The proposal of initially canceling the Llama service provider stream ,before editing, had a direct suggestion from the biggest delegate of Aave to eventually make @TokenLogic a service provider within Aave. All of this was happening while an ARFC vote was in progress for @Flipside to become a service provider.

We have noticed increased tensions among extremely active contributors to the DAO recently. This is not something we want to witness or portray as one of the largest DAOs in the space.

If we aim to achieve decentralization, embrace diversity, and encourage activity within the DAO, then our current behavior is not conducive to attracting new contributors.

Let’s move forward with this in mind!

5 Likes
5

Hi @G-Blockchain, @MarcZeller

Thank you for the feedback. We have updated the post such that Authors are active Service Providers and left the Admin role for community members to request being added. At this point in time, we are looking for contributors to express a interest to be added.

Our main goal was to become an Author so we could publish votes without any potential operational challenges. We have since removed this and will monitor how the conversation progresses.

Regarding the 80,000 proposal power. This does align snapshot with the AIP framework and overall simplifies things by removing any differences. In lieu of an alternative suggestion, we have amended the proposal to reflect this.

Hi @0xkeyrock.eth,

Collaboration between contributors can definitely improve. Contributors sometimes do work on the same thing in isolation and then post it on the forum. The duplicates of effort is more common with risk parameters and asset listings.

We publicly commented on the status of this proposal on the Flipside proposal here stating we already had a drafted proposal. We also shared a message with Service Providers via a group Telegram chat on the 27th/28th July seeking Expression of Interest for Admins. We reached out to Flipside to see if they wanted to be included as admin/author etc… It was communicated that Flipside would publish there proposal by end of weekend. We waited to 11:23pm Sunday BST and published the proposal.

Moving forward, if Flipside would like to collaborate on this proposal, we are very open to this and it would be great to work more closely together. This is our view independent of the AIP outcome. Flipside has been contributing to Aave DAO and Aave Grants DAO for a long time now.

We currently are not receiving any grants and have declined the Orbit program funding. We did not know that TokenLogic would be referenced in the Cancel Llama proposal and further context was provided here.

On a more positive note, we do share this view regarding delegates being authors and those that are interested should express this in the comments. If Flipside or Keyrock want to do a Discourse proposal that would be nice. ACI is doing great job and improving the robustness is also a good thing.

2 Likes
6

This seems like two-proposals in one:

  1. Refreshing the Snapshot admins and authors
  2. Raising the Snapshot proposal threshold

On the first, we’ve been supportive of a general refresh of the Admins (in our scope) but the rest seems superfluous. The goal is to build resiliency and minimize key man risk – not a migrated space.

Why dismiss important recognition in the current Space?

Authors is a good idea and may reflect contracted service providers a la @G-Blockchain’s and @MarcZeller’s suggestion. Seems worth exploring.

For a Snapshot proposal threshold update:

We do not agree with this significant change.

If you cite having issues to publish TEMP CHECKS or ARFCs why raise the proposal threshold by ~20x, making it more difficult for yourself and others? It’s best to create more inclusive outcomes.

We used to be believers of having “sponsors” (like ACI, Flipside, etc) to be able to publish a Snapshot on one’s behalf but I am not sure this is most sustainable or healthy future.

Instead, community members should feel empowered to individually post a Snapshot. An attainable level promotes the benefits of Aave’s governance token - and a greater diversity of participants.

While there are benefits to “nearly eliminating” spam, this may be combatted with active admins.

Lastly for collaboration, it’s not worth our time to play he said / she said or speculate.

Nor do we feel the need to rush after further discussion. The result is a haphazard proposal.

5 Likes
7

Josh here, executive director at Metagov. Wanted to add a brief observation: the current threshold ALREADY prevents a lot of stereotypically “good actors” from participating without a sponsor, e.g. nonprofits, analysts, academics, etc. When it was 50 AAVE I could post a Snapshot on my own, but now it is pretty much impossible.

From my perspective, this means two options: either (1) the proposal limit doesn’t matter at all because it’s too high anyways, and if you care about governance & greater diversity you should focus on making the sponsorship flow more accessible and well-defined, or (2) drop the proposal to something reasonable (with the tradeoffs that come with that, e.g. spam). In the future, perhaps you could imagine a more widespread reputation measure taking off in this ecosystem that would allow you to define better Snapshot strategies / lower thresholds conditioned on reputation.

Participating in DAO governance is already hard. Trying to pass anything, even something completely anodyne and trivial like publishing some already-published information in a standard way, in a major DAO already requires either a bunch of resources, a bunch of delegate connections, or a person on it full-time—often all of the above. Let’s try to make it easier!

1 Like
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Thank you for the proposal. We support handing over the responsibility of the Snapshot Space to the Aave DAO via the Short Executor and then revising its configuration.

We are in favour of appointing individuals with a well-established history of accomplishments and dedicated involvement within the Aave DAO as Admins of the Snapshot Space. In this context, we would like to propose the inclusion of Miguel Martinez (@miguelmtz) from the Aave Companies to assume the role of one of the Admins.

We wanted to point out that a lower threshold for the initiation of Snapshot proposals promotes engagement and bolsters the principle of decentralization and that is why we are opposed to its increase.

We also wanted to welcome the discussion about the current strategies. Right now, proposals are evaluated and the distribution of voting power in the Snapshot depend on four different strategies:

  • Balance of AAVE (0x7fc66500c84a76ad7e9c93437bfc5ac33e2ddae9) and stkAAVE (0x4da27a545c0c5b758a6ba100e3a049001de870f5) on Ethereum Mainnet
  • Balance of stkABPT (0xa1116930326d21fb917d5a27f1e9943a9595fb47) on Ethereum Mainnet
  • Balance of aAave (V2) (0xffc97d72e13e01096502cb8eb52dee56f74dad7b) on Ethereum Mainnet
  • Balance of AAVE (0xD6DF932A45C0f255f85145f286eA0b292B21C90B) and amAave (V2) (0x1d2a0E5EC8E5bBDCA5CB219e649B565d8e5c3360) on Polygon

It’s a good time to evaluate whether these strategies still make sense or if they need adjustments. However, it’s important to note that including V2 aTokens in these strategies doesn’t align with the DAO V3 migration plan.

4 Likes
11

Would love to see Aave Grants DAO fund a team creating an Snapshot API Strategy including stkAave, stkABPT + Aave, aAave (v2 & v3) on all chains. This would allow further voter inclusion than what we have today, allow for logic in excess of snapshots strategy limit, and future proof as Aave expands to more chains. cc: @0xbilll

1 Like