The Tally Newsletter, Issue 22
March 10, 2021
Welcome back for issue 22 of the Tally Newsletter, a publication focused on all things decentralized governance. We’ll keep you updated on key proposals, procedural changes, newly launched voting systems, shifting power dynamics, and anything else you need to know to be an informed citizen.
This week we cover Compound’s proposal 40 (currently live for voting through Friday), plus a roundup of key proposals and protocol news from the last week.
We’re also excited to share that we’ve added six additional protocols to the Tally governance app! Welcome Indexed Finance, PoolTogether, Radicle, Idle Finance, Inverse Finance, and Unslashed Finance protocols to the Tally community!
Compound Considers Funding Grants Program
TL;DR: The Compound grants program would distribute up to $2 million in COMP over 2 quarters, with a focus on funding core protocol development.
While defi protocols have no shortage of development and community work to be done, it’s not always easy to thread the needle through governance and get a project funded. Governance funding decisions tend to be made conservatively, typically with an expectation of work being completed before a proposal is submitted for payment.
While this funding process works for established, well funded organizations such as Gauntlet (which received 1,000 COMP granted as part of proposal 30), it’s less feasible for individual contributors who would need to finance the cost of their work up front with no certainty of receiving a grant. This may explain why to date, only Arr00 has successfully submitted a proposal including a grant request.
The proposed Compound grants program seeks to address this by streamlining the funding process for protocol development. Proposal 40 would transfer 5,000 COMP to the newly formed Compound grants multisig, which should allow for setup and operational costs as well as up to $2 million in grants funded over the next half year. Developers can then apply to the grants committee for funding and receive a decision within around 2 weeks, without needing to organize an on chain vote.
While this is broadly similar to the Uniswap grants program (which was funded via Uniswap proposal 3 in November), Compound’s grant mandate is more narrowly focused. Where the Uniswap grants program welcomes applications for more broad based infrastructure projects, even if their benefit to Uniswap is more indirect, the Compound grants committee has stated they will focus specifically on protocol development and Compound related hackathons. This more focused approach could make the proposal an easier sell to COMP voters, but on the other hand may lead to a higher grant rejection rate and difficulty deploying the full amount of funds to the community.
With this being the largest governance funding vote to date, the Compound community took extra care in ensuring appropriate verifications and controls were in place. This included out of band verification of signers’ addresses, and clarification of the grant approval and payment process itself. The grants committee makeup also underwent a few last minute adjustments to ensure adequate representation of long term community members. These confidence building measures seem to have paid off, with near unanimous support from early voters.
Source: https://www.withtally.com/governance/compound/proposal/40
Voting continues through Friday, with participation expected from more delegates as well as the Index Coop’s DPI index (which participates in Compound governance via Snapshot voting).
Disclosure: Author is a reviewer on the Compound grants committee (monetsupply).
In Brief:
Active votes:
PoolTogether considers activating reserve rate (protocol earnings) at 5%: https://www.withtally.com/governance/pooltogether/proposal/2
Indexed Finance votes on extending liquidity mining rewards: https://www.withtally.com/governance/indexed/proposal/8
News:
PoolTogether allows for permissionless yield integrations:
MakerDAO proposes bridge to Optimism rollup with fast withdrawals:
Aave is added to open source Sybil governance platform:
Curve considers additional crypto asset pools in expanding partnership with Synthetix:
UMA Protocol and Yam Finance launch uSTONKS, a synthetic index tracking meme stocks:
Digital Currency Group announces purchase of GBTC units to reduce price discount:
DODO exchange hit by hack, with $2 million lost:
Thanks for joining us for issue 22 of the Tally Newsletter! Be sure to check out the Tally governance app, and join us on Discord for the latest updates!
Anything we missed? New developments or protocols you’d like to see covered? Drop us a line at newsletter@withtally.com
Best,
Nate, Tally