Bye folks. Spent atleast hours here hoping for a positive outcome. But sad to see this outcome. Anyway one positive side is we are done and dusted 
. Just need to move on . Thanks everyone.
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A16z opened this thread patently opting in favour of an non-0 allocation(he even mentionned a significant allocation) toward early users, wrote here and there articles promoting that, now that so much work has been done, and we succeeded to go toward an onchain proposal, he is abstaining from voting. Few days ago the temp check started, asking if early users should get an allocation of the comp governance token of « any amount of comp, in any way », yet a16z did not participate, by respect to all the work that was done following his proposal, thank allthecolors et al. We could have hoped a16z to at least participate to this governance process.
Getty(the main official account which voted against any allocation toward historical users), and it is the main if not the only argument I could read by trying to find the ideas of the voters who voted against this proposal, justifies his vote on twitter by saying the protocol should keep enough capital to be able to pay for future development, and expenses.
However, as I recalled, the temperature check do not refer to any amount : « in at least some amount and/or way »
Assuming any allocation toward early users would bankrupt the protocol limiting itself from funding further developments would be very short sighted, mostly when the numbers we are talking about here are only a small fraction of the 2,4 millions COMP allocation toward Vcs airdrop.A fake reason, its how I would call it. I recall that until now the allocation toward early users is 0.
If you are so scared about the depleting treasury, why not opening now a grant where Vcs could give a part of their 2,4 millions Comp (worth close to a billion dollar)allocation or reallocating farmed comp toward historical organic users.
For these Vcs, despite of the beautiful talks we could read at the start of this thread, it seemed today that you (the historical user) are the product, not the community, the community is them, despite they certainly invested in Comp initially because of you, early historical users who commited time and capital throught the crypto winter. Gauntlet talked several times about the « cost of acquisition of users » which should be minimal when Gauntlet passed the 20% comp distribution speed cut proposal.
I was sick lately but have been trying to follow the voting process on this temp. check, you can see that not many Vcs dared to vote against aka saying according to the Temp. Check paper : « You believe no amount of COMP tokens should be distributed to early users. », thus the record low quorum.
I tried to follow, in live how the votes were broadcasted, and you could see anytime the temperature check was leading toward the FOR, a few minuts/hours later, one large voter has been added his vote AGAINST, including in the last half of the proposal live period.
Also, this proposal, despite its importance, has one of the lowest historical participation, I agree it can be explained by the process ManTheWheelz explained:
-The compound DAO is not decentralized, there are a few Vcs and entities which rule the protocol and want at all cost to keep their priviledge, they can easily coordinate their strength and love to party together « I literally canât believe that our D&D party full of VCs » Rleshner, twitter, they own shares of each others (a16z hold significant amount of shares of polychain capital)
-The community, early users which did not get any allocation until now do not have much way to leverage their votes
-Vcs, founder, are, in fact, voting against it by abstaining, but yet votes are being broadcasted whenever the FOR was winning and their position is threatened.
It is looking like they want this proposal to fail, aka not any allocation to early users, while, at the same time, tarnishing and sacrificing as little as possible their reputation score and remain able to promote their «decentralization washing » marketing outward show, as a16z has done in his initial post. They would vote for the «dirty against » only if they have to, to maintain their dominance over the protocol, just enough to block the early users initiative but not more. Thus the record low quorum reached against this proposal.
So, I wanna apologize, for believing in the honesty of a16z and rleshner in my previous posts.
Rleshner who said before we succeeded to go to onchain proposal without help, « -The addresses that receive COMP should be early users that risked their time and capital to establish the protocol. »
says «Iâm excited about the effort occurring here »
says « When the COMP Distribution began, it was expected that Governance would alter, improve, and rethink the programâits fantastic to see the community organizing, and doing the research to distribute COMP to early users » (later in an interview he would say its too late to change it, and in fact we are seeing how this distribution is flexible today)
-mention the first change he would have made to the distribution is an allocation toward historical users
-make polls on twitter, which was widely in favor of an non-0 allocation toward early users
-propose to reallocate the 20% comp speed cut toward early users last year when the Gauntlet cut took place last year throught a suggestion from blck
Yet, now that the community of early users which started from nothing arrived there, Credits allthecolors et al., since we succeeded to reach onchain proposal submission and the temps check started : he liked a twitter thread which mention we shouldnât reward an early user according to capital allocation criterias, written by the now infamous Blockchain at Berkeley.Rleshner is now liking posts on discord which want to « put this [early users initiative] to bed », he was « very excited about the effort » but only up to a point, Rleshner is liking the tweet of Betty (the biggest voters against) against a non-0 allocation toward early users to keep enough for development, despite the temp check do not mention any amount, and is there only to ask if further developments around this distribution should be done. Rleshner also rushed to like and push any single tweet against this allocation but still did not vote, dodging ?.
The strange use (and timing ?) of the compound official account to play this was also not a very courageous move, check the message from devchain.
So, you guessed it, today is a bad day, a bad day for the smart early users who committed time and capital on this amazing protocol which was compound, for this organic community of pioneers which came before any incentive, and which hoped to take part in the governance process.
But above all a bad day for compound itself, which is showing itself as a highly centralized protocol where most of the voting power (due to the coordination abilities and the initial vcs airdrop) belongs to a few Vcs and entities which through this vote are refusing any allocation toward historical users, to maintain their dominance and avoid any dilution of their governance (and financial?) power. Treating itâs historical users this way is not a positiv thing on the long term for compound.
A bad day for the reputation of a16z and Rleshner, and cie who like to promote the importance of an allocation toward these pioneers early users, and decentralisation, yet at the last moment, after these early users succeeded to bring up all the datas required, and the comp required to pass on chain vote without their help, when decision time comes they refuse to take any action which would dilute the current voting power monopoly.
A bad day for Comp token, which seems to have behave more as a certificate of monopolistic voting power concentration with a perfect coordination between airdropped Vcs and entities, than a governance token, at the expense of historical users who until now had a 0 allocation. You will see that if itâs needed they would fund a research telling you how bad it is to airdrop early users, using their huge financial means.
I understand the anger of tgmed, and of the historical users and community members against what just happened. Betrayed is a word probably not strong enough to characterize what the historicals users and community can feel.
However I would like to finish this on a very positiv note, and from all that I studied last days, there is a still a solution, or maybe several solutions.
Firstly, note please the ridiculously small quorum which make in appearance this governance vote not significant at all, among the last 20 proposal this vote won with the least number of comp commited against, for the winning side.
Secondly, and itâs surprising, an idea for us seems to emerge from the biggest voters who blocked this proposal, Getty, in fact, is suggesting to airdrop votes to early historical users : https://twitter.com/getty_hill/status/1456727340260671500 âGood points, so maybe instead of an airdrop, we should airdrop votes w/out the coins?â
If we succeed to rebalance the voting system by weighting it toward historical users, who are an actually organic community of users as Pooltogether says that (which should be valued and not treated the way we saw today), it might repair the broken governance process and balance it, by permitting early users to participate in the governance process for which they have until now been allocated 0 governance power. It would also remove the main and only argument (which we know is only a mere outward show) the voters against used ( aka the « need to keep money for development » and suddenly need to reward others) as it wouldnât distribute any financial value to early users, only weighting governance power toward them. It would become more complicated from a reputational point of view for Vcs/entities/founders to vote against that or abstain, as I recall this is being suggested by the biggest voter which blocked this proposal himself.
Despite that I donât wanna give too much optimism, as we know they can be full of creativity and means when itâs about serving their current interests, and itâs very possible they change of arguments and ideas, if it serves their interests at that moment, that they will throw you some random surveys telling you that their statistics show that itâs a bad idea, funded by their huge financial means, or propose more profitable ways for them of distribution (maybe the datas obtained by allthecolors did not satisfy ?).
To Blockchain at Berkeley, (could you disclose whose comp was used for the vote, who delegated you the comps, same question for the two other university which voted) and to these participants who seem not to have understood the basics : historical users have NOT received ANY COMP allocation, ever, since its birth, how can you say on twitter that they are already too much in profit from the price appreciation of COMP ? This doesnât make sense and is almost disrespectful to this community of people who made of compound what it is now and in this time frame. Firstly we are talking here about a governance token, not a tool for paying services as âprotocol cashâ or a speculativ tool for making profits. I am sure most of the early users, including myself planned to hold this token and use it to participate in the governance. Of course a few would sell it, but do we have the numbers on how many tokens have been sold among the token which have been airdropped to Vcs since launch date and asked to reimburse that ? And why are you ignoring the vesting possiblities and using your creativity toward that ? A several years vesting period for example, adding conditions to remain activ on the governance process would align incentives and participation. (all this that was not required to any Vc who show us their involvement today in the governance process), the temperature check writeup was very open about this for these who read it carefullyâŠ
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can you define me âsenzible wayâ? since a memberâs contribution to the community in the case of the Compound protocol is undefined perhaps it should be standardized at all levels. Currently, community standards are set by a small group of people by tailoring it to their interests.
The notion of value in decentralized systems that the user brings to the protocol is not just capital and directly funded grants (high value).
even if it were possible to do so (and it is not), what would be the difference between a protocol and an average joint stock company?
great post.
Pretty pathetic by @rleshner and a16z by using cheap marketing tricks to gain control on community. In order to build a more decentralized and transparent system than the one we already have and which we have started to change, it is necessary to change the value system. Unfortunately, in this protocol, the initial capital allowed a small group of people to control every aspect of the protocol in their favor.
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Post Mortem and next steps
I know majority of the community is sad at the outcome, and there is a lot of frustration brewing against non-responsive VCs/Leshner for failing to act in the core interests of protocol by voting yes/no. Instead of delving in negativity, I want to channel all our frustration into 2 productive areas.
- Address VC problem
I really want to meet (and discuss) with our VCs/Leshner on the following topics
- How they can use their vote effectively for future proposals.
- If they do not plan to vote on a contentious topic, what is mechanism to abstain from voting and effectively communicate to community at an early stage
- If they are busy, how can they effectively delegate their vote to responsible individuals (on their behalf)
- How do we fix credibility issue of university groups with voting power. In addition to all criticism they got on this forum, important industry figures like preston von loom (and others) also posted on twitter on how this group did similar stuff on uniswap governance. So truly understand if this group is malicious (in intent) or if they need education, awareness and better communication to voice their rightful opinions
How do we do this: We form a small core community (with me and interested/active community members) to work with VCs/Leshner and find a suitable middle-ground on above topics. This will improve perception of compound and everyone invested in long term success.
Funding: Ideally hours put towards this will come out a grant budget. The actual compensation does not matter (could be minimum wage - $10 per hour worth of COMP) for core team spearheading this effort
Desired outcome: Clear expectations on governance expectations from Top 30 VCs/holders.
- Rewarding early community members
While i personally do not agree, the main point of opposition to airdrop to early users was the fact that we could have a better use of funds for active community contributions. I plan to work with a few active community members (@getty @allthecolors) and do a better job at documenting set of activities technical and non-technical people can contribute to protocol in next few months. I plan to propose that if individual is an early user and contributes to an activity - he/she gets paid a multiplier (say 2x) of his proposed COMP rewards than a non-early user for certain tasks.
What will this achieve - We get new faces interested in contributing, they know that they are getting a slight multiplier (say 2x) rewards for contributing to protocol, and grants committee is confident COMP rewards they are giving away is for a worthy cause.
Desired outcome: I want to identify atleast 50 (new) early community members who contribute to protocol in next 6 months and get rewarded for their activity.
Funding: I am happy to shape this effort (as well) and would request funding from grant committee (same as above - even if it is $10 per hour worth of COMP for my time)
Note: After 3- 6 months, if these 2 initiatives fail, I will personally encourage all of you to stay away from participating in compound governance and do better things with your life.
Happy to hear thoughts (especially from active and passionate community members like @getty @allthecolors @Andre1 @dabar90 @TylerEther etc).
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great idea, maybe this proposal deserve new thread? For the reason that the word âairdropâ in the title of thread associates people with paying early users with COMP.
Also the intention created by this thread is pretty bad for the Compound community. I appreciate and support your move and intention to tackle with protocol governance problem.
I think it is not because of the outcome, I will rather say because already mentioned group of people which initiated âairdrop questionâ possesses control over the final decision. It is unclear to me personally what they wanted to achieve with that.
Sure. Let me create a new thread on this topic
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Good grief!! I get a GM position at a Poker Bar and Restaurant and a vote on the most important topic happens while Iâm working 70 hours a week! Geez! This really upsets me that there is no way to message the community. Life happens and you miss out on something going on in the metaverse that is very important to you.
Iâm sorry guys⊠I donât think we should have taken this to voting stage until after we have a way to get a hold of everyone. I mean, my vote wouldnât have done much, but that doesnât matter, I still would have voted and probably would have purchased more COMP as I have just recently migrated $12k worth of assets from the Ethereum blockchain. I would have gladly purchased a chunk of COMP just to vote/delegate to an address in support of this allocation.
I am on Discord, the COMP dev calls (except the last 2 or 3 since Iâve been working 70+ hrs a week), this forum, yet somehow I missed this vote! There are probably a lot of community members in the same boat as I am. Is there any way we can get an address that is aligned with an early distribution and once we get âxâ number of COMP delegated to that address, we try to vote on this again?
This will allow us to be more prepared, so we can advertise on our social media accounts, talk to industry leaders who might be able to throw COMP a mention (like VoskCoin YouTube/Telegram/Discord/etc) and basically be able to advertise to get people to understand that COMP is more than just a token with an attached value. That COMPâs value is/should be only derived from its ability to govern a DeFi protocol.
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So, your vote should have been âFORâ?!?
Cointelegraph, The Block, Coindesk, CNBC, Bloomberg, Forbes (Maybe):
THE ARTICLE:
Compound Community Enraged as POLYCHAIN, other VCs, âAbstainâ
Has been submitted.
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As compound is now in momentum to move beyond ethereum it would be a great moment to stand still with the initial founders, students, pioniers and all the early users that saw compound as a game to try out and test out the protocol.As compound is now in momentum to move beyond ethereum it would be a great moment to stand still with the initial founders, students, pioniers and all the early users that saw compound as a game to try out and test out the protocol.
Can we say we are done fighting? Or any hope left. Thanks
Hi, it took you much faster to vote against this proposal than puting âclear & well-defined thoughts on our ideas soonâ and answer here, did you already forget this thread ?
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Man I was using this compounding in the dapps before it broke up into all these far out extra exchanges and things way way back in 2015 2016 into now so yeah I think you should airdrop me 100 plus comp and governance tokensâ:eyes:
I think the lack of decentralization is going to pose a problem for protocol security long term. Especially looking at US regulations and the statements of high ranking officials. It will be interesting to see if the SEC will go after the major token holders. I think the only reason why compound is not on their radar is that they have bigger fish to go after. The Ripple case outcome is going to directly influence my decision whether to divest my assets and sell my comp or not.
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Just want to give my 2 cents as a new user:
This seems like an absolutely terrible idea, for the simple fact that the main thing holding COMP back is that it is generally seen (among the layman community) as a centralized, venture-based scam.
Rewarding early adopters is a terrible take, and is a huge red flag to newcomers like myself.
I just want to say Itâs not a decentralized finance
It was about allocating COMP to early users, as much as current users (substancially including whale recursiv farmers) got an allocation, as I recall early users who dedicated time and capital (first two years of the protocol development and life) had none allocation. This would have had a positiv effect on decentralisation, by granting voting power to a wide network of core pioneers early users, improving the current governance system which is only a mere outward show of governance, but in fact is fully centralized between the hands of a few Vcs, while early users have not their word. This thread and how this has been complicated to go throught proposal for a non-0 governance power allocation to early users, the refusal of Vcs to participate despite trying to praise early users governed protocol and decentralisation, to avoid any change on the status-quo and their domination of the Comp governance, being scared of dilution.
The initial distribution was 100% VC, 0% early users, (excluding the team distribution, neither talking about the ongoing distribution), it was about rebalancing this, we are still waiting for the comments of the so called âUniversityâ which voted there for now two months, and hopefully of A16z which did not participate, these universities more or less disappeared and it would be nice if we could know who delegated these 50k Voting power to them, we could have a better idea if they did not behave as a sole proxy to hide the Vcs vote.
The reason why its so centralized is because compound unlike dozends of other protocols did not airdrop a governance token to early users but instead just dropped them to mostly whales after compound already got big.
Basically a handful of people have all the power now which makes compound centralized. The problem is not an aidrop its the fact that there was no airdrop. Mistakes were made and not corrected later. Compound is basically a centralized company in the hands of very few. Its more like coinbase than uniswap or maker.
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as a newcommer you should first study the initial distribution of COMP tokens when you already catch âred flagsâ around. No one here supported âfree money airdrop,â but long-term users and community members wanted some governance power.
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One possible middle ground here is giving some form of non-transferrable voting rights to early users. We distribute power over the protocol to early users without reducing the amount of money in the treasury. It could also be done without changing the COMP token contract as well, by creating a separate token to account for these new voting rights, where this token is non-transferrable.
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This could have been done much earlier, but it is obvious that community expansion is not exactly a priority for the protocol. I have mentioned several times that it is not about monetary value and that early users at least deserved the right to participate in the governance process. In the end it turned out that Coinbase promotion is more important than community but maybe we are wrong and that is the right way