The beauty of the DAO is that the community can always vote us out if they’re not happy.
Under the current proposal, the DAO would not have the ability to “vote out” Alpha Growth for an entire year, nor would there be any mechanism to claw back the $7M budget once allocated. If the funding were structured through the Aera-powered Vendor Payment Streaming system—like those used by OpenZeppelin and Gauntlet—the DAO would retain more control.
As it stands, Alpha Growth is set to receive the largest budget in Compound DAO’s history with no built-in oversight. Additionally, multiple line items in the proposal overlap with existing program/vendor responsibilities. If this proposal is effectively granting Alpha Growth control over Compound’s direction, then let’s be explicit about it. The DAO may still vote on market deployments, asset listings, and treasury expenditures, but the $7M allocation is locked in regardless.
This is why I say Alpha Growth is effectively being given control of the protocol’s direction without openly stating it. If both Alpha Growth and the DAO community agree that Alpha Growth will be leading Compound’s strategic decisions, we should be upfront about it. That also means being clear on how this impacts existing DAO vendors and programs—defining their roles under Alpha Growth’s leadership rather than leaving it ambiguous. In this way, Alpha Growth and the protocol as a whole will be in a better position to succeed with a clear mandate.
Gauntlet’s sitting on 370k votes now. This should be also considered as implicit centralization without clear mandates.
The majority of Gauntlet’s voting power appears to come from its own holdings (~$15M in COMP), aligning its incentives with Compound’s success. While any major delegate holding significant voting power should be scrutinized (I’m certainly no fan of whales undermining community governance), Gauntlet’s Morpho proposal passed with over 1M COMP votes—meaning it would have succeeded even without their support.
At the core of this discussion, the takeaway from the Morpho <> Polygon proposal is simple: Compound, in its current form, is struggling to compete. The DAO must now decide whether to invest in further iteration of the protocol or pivot towards deeper collaboration with Morpho. That decision also affects the role Alpha Growth plays and whether its current budget allocation remains justified.
We pitched something similar here ([AlphaGrowth] Growth Program Organizational Structure), but the DAO voted it down.
Yes, and the model I’m proposing is different. Creating subDAOs simply fragments responsibility further and was voted down for good reason. What Compound truly needs is a core development team—a highly capable group that fills the long-standing gap left by Compound Labs, with the vision and execution capability to iterate on the protocol.
This is the missing piece. Without it, we find ourselves discussing partnerships with Morpho instead of strengthening and expanding the Compound protocol itself.
If Compound wishes to remain competitive on its own protocol stack, the DAO needs a small but highly competent team with direct ownership over protocol development and strategic direction. This team should not only drive innovation but also provide some oversight of the vendors and contributors that serve the DAO, ensuring a more structured and effective approach to Compound’s long-term growth.