Hey all. We’re supportive of this in principal - there are certainly instances of proposals falling through the cracks. As an example, let’s take a quick trip down memory lane. We were vocal proponents of issuing Voltz an additional use grant early last year in exchange for a portion of any future tokens that they might issue. In the conversation around that vote, the topic of meta-governance was front and center. It was generally recognized (I think) that any future Voltz tokens that hit the Uniswap treasury would be valued for their power to govern the Voltz protocol rather than any financial gain they might provide the DAO.
In the lead up to the vote and immediately following, I had a few conversations with @tobyshorin and @bryanlehrer from OI about how the DAO might manage those new votes when Voltz eventually issued a token. We had some initial thinking in place, but since Voltz hasn’t launched an ERC-20, we put any plans to mobilize the community on the back burner.
Fast forward a year and Voltz recently executed a governance vote to deploy on Arbitrum using NFTs. Should Uniswap have had a say in that vote? There was no ERC-20 token distribution, so maybe not. On the other hand the spirit of the conversation around the proposal would lead me to believe that Uniswap’s voice should’ve been heard there. What I can say for sure is that I have a day job and had lost track of what was happening at Voltz, so hadn’t even done any cursory research from which to form a view on the topic.
The above is all to illustrate that I (and Avantgarde) think building out a process to make sure that things we vote on actually get done is a good idea. That said, we are concerned that the structure proposed here could be sub-optimal for a couple of reasons.
- The institutional memory of a body that churns every 6-12 months could be an impediment to effectively executing their tasks. While every proposal that the committee shepherds through the pipeline will be similar in some ways - the vetting process, the proposal prep and presentation, etc - they will be different in many technical and financial considerations, and touch different corners of the Uniswap stakeholder universe. Being able to navigate that social graph adeptly is a requirement for this committee to be effective, but a high expectation to place on a delegate.
- It’s impossible to say whether the proposed compensation will be adequate in retaining qualified committee members, and there’s no way to know whether it is enough until each term is over.
We’d also be concerned about the admin burden on the DAO (e.g. do we fund a multisig that’s responsible for evaluating the committee’s work then paying out every six months?) but that’s secondary.
in conversations with @Getty about this proposal, he pointed out that it falls squarely within the UF’s remit to administer this type of solution. And in thinking about where we (Avantgarde) are concerned about the potential inefficiencies, it seems like there could be a hybrid solution whereby the community elects the committee’s members by Snapshot vote, and the UF manages the committee’s process and is ultimately responsible for their output.
This does a couple of things. First, it provides a central, constant access point for teams looking to make proposals. Want to do something in Uniswap? Go to the Foundation.
Second, it solves for any issues that could present given the planned 6-month terms of the committee members. The UF is positioned at the center of the ecosystem and presumably has the best, most granular understanding of who the stakeholders are. And as committees come and go, the UF will help to hone processes by which proposals go from amoeba in a brain puddle to onchain vote. This continued presence is really the only way process will improve from term to term. The UF can act as a resource, helping each term’s committee members do better than the last term’s. I’d also note that this will help to make committee members better delegates once their term is over; they’ll emerge with a better network and understanding of what goes into a good proposal.
Finally, it holds the accountability committee… accountable. It’s a tighter feedback loop. If a proposal comes in and the UF chooses a committee member to be it’s sherpa and that member has ghosted, the UF can just choose a new committee member (and not pay the ghost when the term’s up).
There’s also the administrative benefits at the margins. I recognize I’m speaking for the UF’s budget here and have no visibility into what that looks like or whether there’s room for this, but paying committee members off of the UF’s balance sheet rather than the DAOs is much easier operationally.
So to sum up, very supportive of this proposal in principal, but think we need to tweak the implementation to make sure that it’s effective. And many apologies to the OI team for not surfacing this concern earlier in the process.