VC engagement and inducting new members into governance

This came out of post-mortem thread for airdropping tokens to early supporters. I think this deserves a new thread of its own.

Background context
There was intense discussion on whether early supporters deserve to be airdropped COMP tokens. While the actual proposal failed, 2 key issues came to light - VC contribution to governance, and need to plan inclusion of early supporters in ongoing community development. Instead of delving in negativity for failed proposal, we want to channel our frustration into 2 productive areas.

  1. Address VC problem

I (tgmed) really want to meet/discuss/engage 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.

  1. 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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This is a great conversation, and should be a topic at the next community call.

I can’t speak for VCs or anyone else in the community (and everybody whether an institution or an individual thinks and acts on their own), but happy to discuss any of these points here, in Discord (where I hang out basically 24/7), or at a community call.

A few things to note:

  • Anyone can gather votes, either as a voter, or for a proposal.
  • Most proposals have come from members of the community, and most proposals have gathered the support to pass.
  • So far, a total of 1.7M COMP have been distributed to the community (with 3.3M COMP left to allocate & distribute).
  • If you want voting power, being an active community member that contributes in some way, and participates effectively in governance, is a great way to get it.
  • Not everyone will participate in every vote, or every discussion – which is why delegation exists, and should absolutely be encouraged more.
  • Having a clearly defined proposal (that will go to a vote) that can be analyzed, debated, and discussed before it enters the formal governance process will give participants more time to prepare, either to vote or to delegate. As important as Compound governance is, everyone (whether an institution or an individual) has other priorities and distractions–the more runway to prepare the better.

In terms of my personal voting, I abstain from voting on any proposal which:

  • Changes the quantity or speed of COMP distributed (except to patch a bug).
  • Presents unknown technical risk (if known technical risk, or unsafe practices, I will vote Against).
  • Proposals that I am generally neutral towards (or slightly to one side of), where my participation For or Against would have an outsized impact on the outcome.

This is an absolutely fantastic idea, and I think everyone would be very supportive of welcoming in new contributors to the community.

4 Likes