Hello ATOM Community,
Thank you for the great questions and comments regarding our proposal. We’re actively collecting your feedback and our members will begin engaging shortly to address the key points raised.
As this is a work in progress, we’ll update the change log as we improve our proposal based on your input.
Your engagement is crucial, and we’ve noted some particularly interesting queries that we’re eager to interact with you.
Best regards,
The AADAO Team
(Questions are in bold)
@Youssef @Better_Future can you elaborate on what the “specific goals” of a Guernsey Purpose Trust are?
For example, Swiss foundations are created to marry an endowment to an immutable purpose, for limited or indefinite time duration. Swiss foundations are adopted to accommodate a broad purpose.
But you say, comparatively – Guernsey Purpose Trusts are created to accommodate specific goals.
What are such goals? Please explain.
To be clear, what you’ve created is a non-charitable purpose trust, correct?
To me, professionalism of the attorney and or trustee are immaterial to legal form selected.
The chosen legal form should be wholly informed by the strategic objectives and purpose of AADAO.
I am not seeing a clear rationalization as to why this Purpose Trust is necessary.
You do imply that you selected a Guernsey based form because counsel was relatively affordable and available to help you draft establishment documents. I don’t think these are good reasons.
Having no shareholders is an interesting feature, but we all know well that having “no shareholders” do not make an entity more decentralized in due course (if that is what is being implied). In fact, having no shareholders has been abused as cover for highly centralized decision making.
For example, the ICF abuses “no owner and no shareholder” legal form of its foundation to exercise and preserve centralized control via its primary governing body (foundation council).
How is the Enforcer or Strategy Committee different from what the Foundation Council is to the ICF?
What are the enumerated rights of the Enforcer?
To @zaki_iqlusion’s question, is the Enforcer authorized to hire/fire?
Does the Enforcer have any special rights or privileges pertaining to changes made to charter/bylaws; or dissolution of the Trust?
Most importantly, even if there are no shareholders, for what purpose is the Purpose Trust created?
To whom, is it accountable?
Given the authorities and powers of the Strategy Committee, I suggest a community elected member be given a seat on your Strategy Committee – might you be amenable to this suggestion?
Overall, I commend the work AADAO aims to do.
However, I am concerned about the highly centralized legal form adopted.
Whether this is a risk depends on framework of governance and stipulations defined in your founding documents – risk of centralization exist in the bylaws.
In view of the above, would be remiss not to share the governance documents.
Can you share the charter and bylaws please?
Hello All! Been a while since ive spoken to a few of you. First off I would like to mention AA DAO has done an exceptional job compared to other grant foundations and community pools in the space, a lot of people dont understand that.
I have a few concerns with the ask:
Mirroring Zaki, that this has come to be too institutionalized and I an afraid that it will become like the AiB or the ICF, and what are you doing to actively target or disclose the conflicts of interest of board members or nominees. (Look at Synthetix Governance)
Coming from the world of business the ask is a bit egregious of the scope of work and given people on the board are also heading other projects in the ecosystem, its hard to believe that the time spent on AADAO is more than their validators, or protocols.
The road to self sustainability. What are the active steps in making sure in 2025 if funding is received that the DAO can be self sustained without additional funding from the community pool. My concern as that if the free money pile deprecates how can AADAO still exist and be strict on their sources of revenue and growth
More PR so the community and delegators can give feedback.
Other than that, I am for AADAO existing rather than not. I think the best move forward is to have a well versed DAO that allows for collaboration with other DAOs and foundations that can advance the IBC.
Cheers,
Mike
AADAO recruits should have on-chain vote each term. (term being one year) Candidates from all across the cosmos should have the opportunity to be part of AADAO.
@Krugg3r - great questions. Let me dig in on item one from your list:
First and foremost, there is the ROI on all of the grants given, with the largest category of grant making to build out protocols, tooling, and dApps within the ICS Zone. While ROI is less easy to assess for each grant award as the program is still so new, we believe that if we can get dozens of apps and protocols launched within the ICS Zone, and start to catalyze positive synergies between all of the projects, the growth can start to compound positively.
By funding research to improve tokenomics, AADAO is setting the stage to strengthen the $ATOM price with more sustainable monetary policy.
With innovative grants like Mesh security, the $ATOM community can continue to maintain an edge of technical leadership.
ICS on boarding is technically challenging and AADAO was proud to support @crypto_crew with their Replicated Security KickStart Service, as well as a Hub testnet incentives program. With these grants AADAO is supporting the delivery of the core ICS mission and improving odds of success within this mission.
In the first 9 months of the program, AADAO team arranged revenue share or awards to flow back to the community pool, for example: Mystic Labs (33% rev share on IBC Swap Fees), Shogun (25% rev share on smart order routing), $AXV (airdrop to community pool). This is value directed straight back into community pool and hands of $ATOM holders, can allow growth of community pool without dependence on inflation. We’re hoping one or more of these arrangements “hit” and generate significant returns to community pool in years ahead (many millions is very possible).
Then there is work to coordinate $ATOM as gas token in wallets within interchain economy or to support deployment of $ATOM POL on DEXs such as Astroport, which can increase liquidity for $ATOM and its use as collateral within the interchain.
By funding grassroots community building efforts in geographies like Colombia, Brazil, Italy, Turkey, etc. the $ATOM community can grow faster.
If initiatives like Messari research reports, Cosmosverse sponsorship, Bitgo custody of $ATOM for institutions, etc were not undertaken, the ecosystem simply starts to fall off of investor radar-- we are working hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. If we do really well in our job, maybe we can drive $ATOM to becoming a Top 10 cryptocurrency.
Then lastly, perhaps the easiest item to assess since it was liquidity straight into the community pool: thru AADAO’s presence representing the hub, AADAO team returned $22m of value via its role to redirect the Neutron airdrop into the community pool, which wasn’t on the table until AADAO team negotiated for it and stewarded the process.
With the renewal mandate in 2024, the intention is to complement the founding mandate of AADAO (i.e. open source, public goods, and community initatives), which the team tackled over past 9 months, with the addition of focussed marketing, onboarding, and deals functions. We see low hanging fruit and synergy in these adjacent areas, where a relatively small budget can have an outsized impact, and accelerate creation of value for $ATOM holders as well as put the DAO on a road towards self-sufficiency.
for the Guernsey Purpose Trust structure proposed for AADAO, the goal is to anchor the activity in an old world nation state jurisdiction with established legal precedents so that there is certainty around how other international actors must interact with it.
Without anchoring the activity in a jurisdiction somewhere, predatory regulators in any one of the 192 countries of the world who are anti-crypto in tone might be able to claim regulatory authority, and the lack of a pre-defined old world structure would mean they could determine how it is treated under their own laws, which could be risky for the ecosystem if they were intending to be hostile and to inflict maximum pain.
+++
Re status of the initiative to create a Gurnsey Purpose Trust for AADAO: the org model & key terms are architected at a diagrams & term sheet level of detail.
Long form docs not yet completed - attorneys up to speed, and ready to convert to long form when ready.
Our intention from process standpoint was to get the design 85% of the way & into strong conceptual state, but to leave flexibility in order to intake community feedback & fine tune details as we come thru this mandate renewal.
Also we didn’t want to pay legal fees to draw up long form docs until mandate renewal is done & path forward for DAO is assured.
Pls give us a day or two to figure out best way to present the design + key terms within the team.
I would never use dydx grants as a positive example of decentralization. It’s fully centralized and controlled by Reverie
1m+ USD in direct compensation and another massive 1m+ USD in potential ATOM bonuses seems like an insane compensation for a group that consists of many FT business owners, founders and generally very busy people.
I dont understand why AADAO has chosen to add so many members that clearly don’t see ATOM AEZ growth as their main effort in the web3 space.
Additionally id like to add that Note1 should NOT be taken into consideration, if you didnt want to force or ask members to continue work non-compensated then you should have brought this proposal to the forum and chain earlier.
Lastly, and ill have to think about this point further, An overwhelming percentage of the grants went to development of the Neutron ecosystem while often setting the Hub itself on the 2nd place. I think this proposal should see a clear cap in the amount of funding that can be spend on the Neutron ecosystem directly. It is gaining an outsized advantage from the AADAO not necessarilly to the increased benefit of the hub and in direct competition with any other Layer 1 in the cosmos ecosystem. This has come to the point where projects are being paid to port code or even leave their previous homebase which is not to the success of the Hub or Neutron but just a detriment to the entire cosmos ecosystem overall.
IBC wasm, IBC hooks and ICA exists, funding projects to deploy copy projects on Neutron harms the composability of the cosmos ecosystem and the longterm success of ALL appchains thereby hurting the hub and ATOM.
What Sarah, the marketing person of Regen Network has to to on the Cosmos Hub seriously!
Regen is clearly a project failing in marketing and now we are bringing this great expert of marketing on the most important chain of the ecosystem is this a joke.
I largely agree with @Ertemannand I add that these members are clearly chosen based on personal relations. If you are serious about the Cosmos Hub start to recruit people that actually are aligned with Atom and have some proven expertise. I don’t even want to comment on the Atom bonus, if you want to align your team with Atom pick people that are already aligned, or buy some atom on the market, create a keplr wallet and stake it.
Was in support of the proposal until I read the bonuses - slap in the face imo.
Yes, roles like that are a lot of work, but the pay is great and loads of people would die to have an exciting and meaningful role in the ecosystem.
Bonuses, like on 839, are parasitical practices trying to extract maximum value from the commons wherever possible.
Furthermore, the lack of detailled breakdown of expenditures, especially salaires, is another shocking example of the immaturity of ATOM, and crypto culture in general, that a mature team like AADAO would dare post such a draft proposal. Proposals posted to the forum without transparent and detailed funding breakdowns should be immediately sent back to the drawing board.
Hello @Krugg3r !
Thank you for your feedback, and for digging into this proposal at such a detailed level. Please let us know if the information provided below responds to your questions.
The overhead associated with AADAO allowed for the following developments that go beyond grant giving and grant project implementation, and is hence, an added value in comparison to typical direct request grant funding from the community pool.
In the first 9 months of the program, AADAO team arranged revenue share or awards to flow back to the community pool, for example: Mystic Labs (33% rev share), Shogun (25% rev share), $AXV (airdrop to community pool) which will generate returns to community pool in years to come.
Additionally, there is the ROI on all of the grants, which isn’t as easy to assess directly but will grow returns to the Hub community.
Also, there has been significant work done to advance $ATOM as the Interchain gas token in wallets and to support deployment of the $ATOM POL on DEXs, which can increase liquidity for $ATOM and use as collateral. For example, we currently custody the 450K ATOM deployed on Astroport, on behalf of the Cosmos Hub.
If initiatives like Bitgo integration for institutions, Messari research reports, Cosmoverse lead sponsorship, etc were not undertaken, the Hub may have begun to fall off of investor radar. Similarly, by funding grassroots community building efforts in geographies like Colombia, Brazil, Italy, Turkey, etc. the $ATOM community spreads faster.
By funding research to improve tokenomics, AADAO is setting the stage to strengthen the $ATOM token with more sustainable monetary policy and a creative fiscal policy while aligning with one of the strongest media and research brands in crypto: Blockworks. By funding innovative grants like Mesh security, the $ATOM community can continue to maintain an edge of technical leadership.
Finally, perhaps the easiest item to assess: AADAO team contributed to the returned $22m of NTRN tokens to the community pool via redirecting the Neutron airdrop, which wasn’t on the table until AADAO team negotiated for it the process.
We are taking (and have in the past) several steps to increase transparency and involve community:
a. Community involvement: as previously mentioned, AADAO will heavily shift towards RFPs and high value-add grants next year. We intend to involve the community in the ideation stage in order to prioritize which projects to fund. This process could happen here on the forum or on other social platforms. As a reminder, the community has been (and is still) involved in the discussions around tokenomics. The 3 teams have published their findings and are refining their recommendations based on community feedback.
b. Transparency reports - the Oversight committee publishes transparency reports on a regular basis to keep the community informed of AADAOs activities, including full disclosure of financial information. AADAO has also recently published its 2023 impact report which aims to be a full activity recap for the first 9 months. All conflicts of interests and recusals are disclosed in the appendix section of the report, The appendix also feature relevant internal policies from AADAO.
c. Recruiting - more than 80% of the AADAO team members have been recruited out of the $ATOM community to date, so the AADAO team is generally a mirror reflection of the community by its very composition.
Centralization risks: as part of the research funded under the tokenomics RFP, Blockworks Research and @effortcapital are working on a Vote Power Tax to increase the decentralization of the validator set.
Each batch of open grants undergoes a multi-step review process led by the DAO’s seven-member Reviewer Committee, supervised by the Oversight Committee. To reduce potential biases, two Reviewers are randomly selected and an objective Rating Methodology is used to score an application. Out of a total of 16 points, applicants must get an average score of 12 or higher to proceed to the interview phase.
If the gap between the two reviewers ratings is too large, this triggers an alert for the Oversight Committee, which then examines the reasons for the significant variance in the ratings. Discussions are then initiated at a team level to reconcile differing perspectives, and the applications in question are subsequently reassessed by alternate reviewers to guarantee an impartial evaluation.
The only operational costs that were not broken down are the Marketing and partner integration costs. We will update the proposal shortly.
The published mandate of AADAO during the first 9 months was to support public goods, open source projects, and community initiatives that accrue value for $ATOM. With this renewal mandate, we are adding to the mandate an emphasis on growth initiatives that include marketing for the Hub, onboarding of developers, investors, and users, and deal making to bring value back to the community pool in the form of airdrops and revenue shares.
On the grant side, our intention is to significantly increase the funding allocation around RFPs and high value-add grants as we believe those are the best opportunities to maximize the ROI of the CP’s money. In our proposal under ‘subDAO roadmap’ you’ll find examples of RFPs and high value-add grants we could be focusing on in the future.
Regarding grant payments, we systematically insert with each payment a memo on the wallet that gives the title of of the application and the batch #. This makes transaction tracking much easier. We will implement this as well for all operational expenses if we continue our work post funding proposal.
Where were they recruited? Missed the post to apply, is this a closed team that only you decide who is worthy?
How do you prevent reviewers from coordinating their scores? Can easily be bypassed by reviewers ensuring their scores don’t trigger an oversight review.
Several have mentioned payment details and you still haven’t shared how much each member will be compensated, this is either intentional obfuscation or a repeating mistake. I see Better Future in two teams, will he be paid double?
Concluding…
On my end, a concern of mine that is not addressed still is the time availability of several proposed members. It still seems ridiculous to me having CFOs, Lead devs and other people with more than full time jobs in any role. If you want a board of advisors that can help secure connections and facilitate meetings or advise on specific topics, create that. Clearly some will have significant more time available than others in the same roles and it would be short sighted to get people with strong time commitments on this teams.
Can i ask why this is seen as a material partnership?
I think i can name at least 10 Native cosmos teams that provide a better service for less money.
Also curious how many of these partnerships are redundant, in that its just another group of individuals doing outreach to potentially the same targets that are already connected to the Wider cosmos via various potential entities like Binary, ICF, Strangelove etc. Was there an effort made to make such a partnership list/outreach more cohesive throughout the entire ecosystem?
Edit: Also when can we expect the site to be updated with the latest Grants given, Just posting this on twitter hurts transparancy.
I’m generally in favor of this proposal.
The team has demonstrated a solid ability to execute in only 9 months, fund projects and essential research for the future of the Hub.
Of course, AADAO could be more transparent regarding certain aspects of its operations and processes. But all in all, the team aligns with the values of the Hub, and I believe it has its best interest at heart. They have also demonstrated an ability to listen to the community and accept feedback, one of their most vital traits.
Those interested in listening to Youssef talk about AADAO’s accomplishments and plans can listen to our recent conversation with him on The Interop.
This proposal is too egregious to even scrutinize it. It will surely be voted down hard. Maybe try with a legitimate proposal and let us work from there. Way too far apart to even consider countering.
Thanks for the comment, Mike. Allow me to answer your questions as a nominee for the Oversight Committee.
But first, I’d like to introduce myself for those who might not know me yet. My name is Damien and I am a Protocol Specialist and the Governance Lead at Simply Staking. We have been behind some key proposals that you might have seen on the Cosmos Hub from the past year including Proposal #88 to Increase the Community Pool Tax to 10%, Proposal #687 which was the Third Party Audit of the ICS code, and Proposal #826 which sets a Minimum Commission of 5% on the Validator set.
My motive to join the AADAO is that I wish to lend my hand where I can for the betterment of the Cosmos Hub. I am happy to have been nominated to the Oversight Committee to ensure we remain Hub-aligned going forward.
Now, onto your question and to quote Zaki first:
I can understand your concerns here especially given the past of the Institutions mentioned above. I would like to let you know that I plan to be as transparent as I have been in my other duties (mentioned above) within this ecosystem and act in the best interests of the Cosmos Hub.
Concerning disclosing conflicts of interest, the AADAO already does a great job at collecting these disclosures and recently also placed them on the 2023 Impact Report [LINK]. What I intend to do, is to take an even greater proactive approach by asking the rest of the team about any prior and present conflicts at (possibly) random intervals. This proactive approach would carry on during my term as an Oversight committee member. If a Conflict is found and wasn’t disclosed prior, I will use my power on the Oversight committee to remove that person from the DAO citing gross misconduct (terms to be defined).
The Oversight Committee currently has these functions:
I do not feel like the AADAO can be too Institutionalised and closed off like the other entities mentioned especially, the migration to DAO DAO playing an important reason. Migrating to DAO DAO will also give the Oversight Committee the chance to be part of the approval flow of transactions, something which is key from a risk mitigation perspective and that gives tangible, on-chain encoded powers to the Oversight.
As mentioned above, the Oversight Committee has exclusive VETO powers on all grants. If the committee assesses that a grant (or any other expense for that matter) is not aligned with the best interests of the Hub, it will take action, first by notifying the other parties involved. In the case of a non-resolution through dialogue, the oversight can go further and veto the expense directly on-chain. This prevents malicious behaviour from occurring as we can stop it through our veto power. Another thing is that we plan to elect a community member to be added to the current Oversight Committee so that the ATOM community is formally represented within AADAO’s oversight, thus increasing the alignment with the Hub.
This year a shift has been made whereby the majority of the team are now Full-time members, meaning they can dedicate more time to the AADAO.
Hi Tom, thanks for the comment.
The Oversight Committee currently comprises two members and each has a defined role. AADAO will initiate the process of welcoming a third governance-elected community member. We will keep you updated about the next steps if reelected.
KPIs will be defined by the Oversight Committee in collaboration with the AADAO relevant stakeholders to make sure that performance is aligned with the objectives of the Cosmos Hub. Once the Oversight Committee signs off on the KPIs, they will be shared with the community.
The bonuses are not automatic and they are based on strong performances and it is very unlikely that the entire performance pool budget will be distributed. The Oversight is involved in the ultimate signing off of bonuses and we can weigh in if we do not agree on specific performance reviews.
I hope this answers your concerns!
I think you should propose a more reasonable plan. You couldn’t propose to spend 20% of the total fund for your a year of work. As a risk control, if your plan fail or does not bring any catalysts to COSMOS, 5 proposals like yours will completely over-withdrawn the community pool and we do not have money for other “important” developments.
I would expect more real “development” other than “education” stuffs as on your website now.
thanks for the answer Damien,
i think these KPIs could have been constructed along the current year with some community members’ input. i don’t think establishing these performance parameters once the funding proposal is accepted is fair.
but thanks for the details you brought.
about the oversight committee, firstly, i’m glad you’re part of it. secondly, i’d say the same thing: it should have been constitued during this first year. it should not be 100% a committee “invited” by AADAO team members. 51% would be fine.
adding a community elected member is a good step forward. will he be pre selected?
again, all of this should have happened prior to this signalling proposal imo.
and i still have doubts about the new people AADAO hired. ex-AiB and Jae’s cultists should be avoided. (i know i know i’m a bit tough on this)
i do hope the oversight will be very careful and have a strong say if things stay as they are.
good luck anyway
Appreciate the response, My discomfort has been resolved.