mando
0xe03eBe341e70Fd86522c29fB478CA6cDCe18A0f6
Areas of interest:
-Gaming development on Arbitrum
-IRL Arbitrum community gatherings
Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:
The DAO should serve as the primary support and shepherd to the Arbitrum network and community. The DAO, as the largest stakeholder in the Arbitrum network, should be monitoring the constellation of dapps for endogenous risk building up in the system, protect the decentralization of Arbitrum governance, and manage the DAO treasury as to benefit Arbitrum’s growth and community. As we’ve seen across a multitude of examples these past few years alone, the adversarial nature of blockchains can lead to worst case outcomes for entire chains and communities. Everything from algorithmic death spirals, and large hacks, to traditional banking partner counter-party risk, and toxic assets in DAO treasuries has led to existential risk recently for both blockchains and the applications built on top of them. The DAO, as the largest Arbitrum community member, should serve as the main defense and, if necessary, support of the Arbitrum network and community as a whole. For example, we’ve seen in the cases of Lido and Convex (both of which I support for their contributions) protocols being able to amass enough governance power as to threaten the decentralization initially intended. Something like this could be, and has been, done as an attack against a blockchain, protocol, community; and Offchain Labs can’t be expected to be constantly monitoring for edge risks or expected to threaten the future viability of the Arbitrum project by dipping into team funds. It is my hope to grow the DAO into a proactive community member feeding off of the collective intelligence of all those value-aligned.
I believe the DAO should incentivize liquidity mining but be measured in further distributing control of governance away from the DAO while the network is young and growing rapidly. Since the current distribution requires that a small majority of community members vote alongside the DAO to pass a vote, the DAO should maintain this ratio and only allocate to liquidity mining tokens such that only a small majority of community members voting alongside the DAO are required to pass a vote.
Sample Voting Issue 1:
-
How would you vote?
Against
Almost forty three percent of the decision as to where UNI would be allocated would not be in the hands of anyone provably aligned with the UNI community. One of three seats on the oversight committee means they’d only have to corrupt one individual to gain out-sized power over UNI holders.
-
I would amend the proposal to only allocate them 1/7 seats on the allocation committee and no seats on the oversight committee. The reasoning being: the other six members of the allocation committee are presumably aligned with the best interests of UNI holders, and, in the event of an even split, Flipside (as an entity aiming to make profit generating a service) can be trusted err on the side of caution with their limited power and vote in a manner that benefits their customer and helps them continue to generate revenue.
-
I would approach tradeoffs between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done by always deferring to the principles of community and decentralization. Existential threats should warrant extreme measures. I can imagine an event where the DAO is asked to give up a significant percentage of voting power to a centralized actor. In my opinion, such an action might be warranted if not doing so would cause irreparable harm to a large portion of the community and Arbitrum by extension. In this extreme example, the belief in decentralization and community ownership would need to be weighed against the proportional impact of not acting.
I also view centralization through different frameworks dependent on the actors involved, and I believe the centralization of the Offchain Labs serves as a positively aligned balance to the decentralization of on-chain governance. For example, the inability to push emergency upgrades has been lethal in certain settings. I think the community, through a vote, can choose to display their trust in the team and delegate that privilege to them. This introduces centralization but mitigates an existential threat.
Sample Voting Issue 2:
Outside the flipping of the vote, how would you choose to handle this situation?
- Full Reimbursement
Once the initial vote passed it should have been executed. Another vote can always be raised to negate the last. Such actions would likely reduce the subsequent number of participants in each proceeding vote, further skewing the outcome. The initial vote itself should be enough to display the community’s will. Assuming the protocol is actually able to produce the necessary payout without endangering the future of the project, it should make users whole in order to restore confidence. Not doing so can kill a project. If it is unable to reimburse the whole amount, the next best option is a split reimbursement where the protocol either uses a combination of cash and treasury assets or promissory tokens. Where the promissory tokens can represent some claim on future profits generated by the protocol. Given the initial vote, I don’t believe there would be any instances where it would be right not to reimburse users in some way or even attempt to do so. Creative solutions can be found.
Languages I speak and write:
-English
-Spanish
Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:
I have no conflicts of interest.
