Great job putting this together @cylon. The proposed structure of CIP is very well defined, appreciate the efforts. I’d also suggest an optional section on Legal Compliances to be added to the CIP, that might come along with the proposed CIP. This way, we would have a comprehensive CIP.
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Hi @harsha - Thanks for the suggestion.
Legal Compliance is a tricky topic depending on the subject-matter of a CIP. It’s also important to note that CIPs don’t represent binding decisions beyond a consensus that is left to the community to self-enforce. However, if legal compliance is an important topic for a specific CIP, it could fall under the existing Rationale section as a factor considered in the design/process decisions.
For example, in CIP-1 I explicitly state that CIPs are strictly separate from Compound Governance Proposals in the Rationale section. While not my primary intent, this statement could also help address any legal concerns that a CIP contributor might have about the legal responsibilities behind drafting a CIP as opposed to making a DAO governance proposal.
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Michael, this is a fantastic idea and the details you’ve laid out here are very promising from my perspective. Thank you for taking initiative on this! I have a question and a comment.
What is a Signal vote? Can you give more details on that?
My comment is that I want to remind you and everyone in the community that the name of the game for the protocol and DeFi generally is decentralization. Getting as many helping hands as we can and as many opinions on how to proceed is best!
Here is a link to the discord event of the working group kick off: Compound
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@adam Thanks for the support and setting up the Discord call!
The Signal Vote would be a process that allows COMP tokenholders to signal their support or opposition to a CIP through off-chain voting such as Snapshot. CIP-1 specifically states that Meta Process CIPs go through a Signal Vote to indicate that there is support from DAO stakeholders to uphold those processes for certain types of governance proposals. This would also include the adoption of CIP-1 itself.
My reasoning for using Signal Voting is:
- Compound Governor Proposals cost voters gas and would add friction to the process of passing Meta CIPs
- Meta CIPs represent non-binding governance processes so the on-chain execution of proposals is not necessary
- Reaching quorum threshold for Compound Governor requires 400K which I personally feel is excessive for Meta CIPs. CIP-1 recommends no quorum threshold be necessary for a Signal vote to pass although I’m open to feedback here.
- Most importantly, CIPs should remain strictly separate from Compound Governor Proposals to avoid confusion.
In short, the Approval of a CIP by CIP Editors vs its Implementation by Compound Governor and the community should always remain separate processes. Signal Voting through Snapshot helps to emphasize that separation while still giving COMP token holders a voice in the adoption of Meta CIPs for governance processes.
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thanks for opening this topic.
About CIP structure, it looks good for me but I think that it is also important to mention its impact as separated section. and how was merging motivation and rationale section instead of making motivation as the optional?
lt would be this structure:
Motivation
- what is the problem?
Proposed Solution(or Proposal Details)
- proposal details including tech spec, steps to achieve this goal.
Alternatives considered
Expected impact
-
expected results: modeling result
-
users should take actions before this proposals get activated
(Ex: Liquidation, deposit stop for the current market, the current market will be closed)
Security Considerations (optional)
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Hi @dakeshi - Thanks for the feedback.
I made the Motivation section optional just because it was an extension of the structure I adopted from EIP-1. I agree that there are good reasons to make it required.
I think Proposal Details is also a better way to represent the Specification/Process section. We could make Alternatives considered a required sub-section of Rationale. I also like the idea of including Expected impact.
One thing to note is that I do hope to make CIPs as accessible as possible to new submitters so I’m hoping to keep proposal requirements minimal. I still think your suggestions make sense but that’s the only reason I hesitated to add more initially. In general, I would hope that its easier for folks to submit and get a CIP approved than an EIP but there will still need to be a minimal level of detail to provide.
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Hi everyone - Reminder that we have a Working Group Call in the Compound Discord to discuss CIP-1 tomorrow at 9:30am PT
If you’d like to suggest changes, ask questions or become involved in the CIP process, please be there! If there are no further objections or feedback to CIP-1 in this first call, I’ll submit a finalized version of the CIP-1 to be reviewed in the Community Call next week before placing it in Final Call stage and announcing a list of CIP Editors.
Also, if you’d like to be a CIP Editor, please attend tomorrow or message me to let me know.
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Thanks for your feedback. I totally agree that CIP should be easy to access for everyone with the minimal requirement + some optional parts(as a template) to accept various types of opinions.
To make slim structure, I’m still considering which is the best candidate for the section title among Motivation, Rationale and Description based on research results.
In addition to references you mentioned(EIP, MIP, AIP), I did take research about these kinds of template formats including swift language, gatsby, react js and rust
If we choose Rationale, I think that it doesn’t need to be separate Motivation section because it is possible to mention its background and motivation in Rationale section.
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Really helpful to hear you go through the proposal and potential changes on the call today.
I do wonder whether it’s worth specifying in any way what criteria the editors and working group will use to assess whether proposals can pass on to a vote (if a vote is called for) – since the group will serve in a kind of gatekeeping capacity. Perhaps also whether editor/working group approval indicates an endorsement of the proposal, or whether it indicates only that it has met xyz criteria and is presented to the community neutrally.
I raise this in part because of what I’ve been seeing with Optimism governance: the Governance Committees (which are experimental) are under a great deal of scrutiny, and it’s been contentious. Very different situation, I know. But it may be worth thinking through some of these issues at some point during the initial phases of this new process (if you haven’t already).
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Hi @duncand - Great question. I appreciate you bringing it up and sharing your perspective from similar initiatives.
At its core, I think CIP Editors should give approval based on similar criteria as EIP Editors
- Read the CIP to check if it is ready: sound and complete. The ideas must make technical sense, even if they don’t seem likely to get to final status.
- The title should accurately describe the content.
- Check the CIP for language (spelling, grammar, sentence structure, etc.), markup (GitHub flavored Markdown), code style
Overall, the Editors are there not to pass judgment on CIPs but merely do the administrative & editorial part. They may still voice either support or opposition to the CIP’s claims of improving Compound but that should not factor into their descion-making criteria to approve a CIP. That will come down to the implementation phase where a CIP is left up to a Snapshot, Governance or Grant decision.
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Hi everyone,
Thanks for attending the CIP-1 Working Group Call this Wednesday. You can find the recording here.
I’ve finished incorporating all of the latest feedback into CIP-1 here. I’ve added several new sections outlining CIP Editor responsibilities, History, Copyright, touched up the template structure and addressed some minor wording changes.
Next steps are to review it in the community call next week and form a founding team of CIP Editors. Once a group of CIP Editors has been chosen, I intend to push for CIP-1’s approval followed by a Snapshot to be conducted two weeks after.
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Ahead of the community call today, I’ve established the following list of community members who have graciously volunteered to act as the founding group of CIP Editors. They have also been added to CIP-1 here.
- Michael Lewellen (@cylon)
- Sriharsha Karamchati (@harsha)
- @Arr00
- Jared Flatow (@jared)
- Geoffery Hayes (@hayesgm)
- Kevin Cheng (@kevin)
- Duncan Dobbelmann (@duncand)
- @Dakeshi
While these members may still change with additional members that wish to join in the following weeks, this group will act as the final approvers to move CIP-1 into the Final Call stage during the community call.
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After reviewing in yesterday’s community call, we’ve got no objections to moving CIP-1 into the Final Call stage. You can see the finalized draft here.
Per the CIP Lifecycle process, CIP-1 will be in the Final Call stage for the next 14 days before going through a Snapshot vote of COMP token holders, which would start on November 16th. If the vote passes with a simple majority, CIP-1 will be adopted!
During this time, I’ll continue to solicit feedback and coordinate with the current CIP Editors. I also intend to start work on a GitHub repository for managing the CIP content ahead of the vote so we will be ready to accept new CIP submissions in anticipation of CIP-1’s adoption.
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Thanks so much for kicking this off. A two questions come to mind:
- The process behind the off chain voting is very vague. Is there a recommended quorum, duration, and venue (https://snapshot.comp.vote for example)?
- How should the shared repository be managed? Possibly have a compound dao org with CIP editors as members?
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Hi @arr00 - Great questions and something good to address now that we’re in Final Call.
I’m intending the process of voting to be:
- Use Snapshot through this existing Compound page
- Setup the vote with no quorum per the CIP-1 process and use single choice voting with a simple majority.
- Set the duration of the vote for one week to start Nov 16th and end on Nov 23rd.
We can see an example of another Snapshot vote conducted by Gauntlet here. I can take the lead in setting up the Snapshot vote and over the voting process in the next Community Call.
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@arr00 - Regarding the repository, I think we should do it under the existing Compound Finance GitHub Org but have the repo itself be managed by the CIP Editors.
@adam What do you think about this approach?
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Sounds good, I like that approach.
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Hi everyone,
Today is the day we start the Snapshot vote for the adoption of CIP-1. The only change the document has received since going into Final Call status was the welcome addition of @CL_Michael to the CIP Editors list.
The vote will be conducted on Snapshot here and is scheduled to end in one week. There is no quorum threshold but I would still kindly ask that all Compound contributors vote in support to send a strong signal for CIP-1’s adoption. After all, there are no gas fees 
Please note that you do need to have your COMP delegated to your wallet before you can vote on Snapshot. If anyone has any issues with using Snapshot for voting, please reach out to me or @arr00. I’ll also be available to answer any final questions on today’s community call.
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Hi everyone,
I’m happy to share that CIP-1 has passed with 201K votes in support and <1 against. Starting next week, I’ll begin the process of setting up a new CIP repo and begin working to prepare additional CIP proposals alongside other community contributions.
Thank you to everyone that contributed and supported this initiative!
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Hi everyone - An initial setup of the CIP GitHub repository is now live here: GitHub - compound-finance/cip-pm: Compound Improvement Proposal PM Repository
I’ll review the current status of this repo in our upcoming community call.
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