My ANV-4 Positions

AGP-81: Common court with Kleros

I will be voting No.

I think the Kleros project is really interesting and their work has heavily inspired the direction that has been taken by Aragon One in the development of the Aragon Court. I think that the proposal to link ANT to PNK as a way to align incentives between the two projects over the long term and make room for meaningful collaboration is smart. I think it might be a smart move for Kleros to make that link regardless of the outcome of their proposal, but I don’t think that it makes sense to stop the work on the initial version of Aragon Court and it doesn’t make sense to fund both Aragon One and Kleros to work on a court integration with Aragon at the same time.

In addition, I think the discourse around this proposal has been pretty bad, and doesn’t lead me to believe that closer collaboration would be particularly productive.

AGP-84: Adding Flock track to AGP-1

I will be voting No.

I think that the Flock program should be treated a separate signaling initiative and not be codified as a specialized version of the Finance track process. My position is that Finance Track proposals should be used for all proposals which move funds, and that programs like Nest, Flock and any number of other initiatives can be funded through that process. As it stands Flock should be treated as signaling from the association to ANT holders of which proposals have gone through their vetting process, but there is no need to create a separate track for this. Somewhat related to this position is my proposal AGP-105 which clarifies the association review policy related to Finance Track proposals which are proposed outside of the Flock or Nest programs.

AGP-87: AraCon 2020

I will be voting No.

I felt like the first AraCon was a great event, but I still question the need to have a large community conference at this stage. I don’t think the budget is crazy for the type of event proposed, but not sure that having an annual event like AraCon makes sense for the community right now. I would like to see this deferred, at-least for now. Perhaps exploring some other alternatives like sponsoring and helping to coordinate many smaller meetups in many cities rather than one large event.

That being said, I have less conviction on this particular proposal than others. So take that for what it’s worth.

AGP-88: Community Rewards DAO

I will be voting Yes.

I think it’s really important for us to dogfood Aragon within our community, and support community initiatives which leverage the tools we are building to improve our own community and governance.

There seems to still be some details to work out because the proposal is somewhat dependent on the mainnet launch of the Open Enterprise apps, but I expect that that should happen in the next few weeks. So this should still be able to launch shortly after the ANV passes.

At 12k ANT it seems like a low risk experiment that will give many more people an opportunity to engage in an Aragon DAO on a regular basis.

AGP-89: Modify Aragon Network Fiscal Year

I will be voting Yes.

The reasoning for this change makes sense, the AGP process ends up being a significant effort for everyone involved and ensuring that the bulk of that review/due diligence process not coinciding with the end of year and block of holidays seems like it will be very helpful.

As a side effect it seems that this will also result in a relatively short cycle between ANV-4 and ANV-5, and a total of 5 ANVs this year.

AGP-90: 1Hive DAO Sponsorship Proposal

I will be voting Yes. (/disclaimer, I’m a co-author of this proposal and actively involved in the 1Hive DAO)/

I’ve been working to help nurture and grow the 1Hive DAO the past few months and have been extremely impressed by the output and engagement of the people who have been attracted to and contributed to the various projects and initiatives started from within that organization.

So far 1Hive projects have relied on Aragon Nest grants (Dandelion), and CFDAO proposals (Apiary and Conviction Voting), but we have found that neither of these work sufficiently well to support some of the core support and coordination efforts that have resulted in 1Hive and its many initiatives being as impactful as they have. This grant will allow 1Hive to continue to incubate small projects, ensure they have the right people involved to support and validate them before they either become self-sustainable, or seek additional funding from Nest, AGPs, or Aragon Fundraising. It will also alleviate the strain 1Hive has created by heavily utilizing the AGP10 DAO.

AGP-92: Flock Funding for Frame

I will be voting Yes.

I’m not sure if it will make sense to continue to be the only financial supporter of Frame longer term, but for now it seems like the right call.

The proposed deliverables seem valuable to Aragon, and perhaps more importantly the continued maintenance of the only signing provider that enables Aragon users to perform actions with the Agent using a browser/extension is really high leverage.

Additionally, it seems to be becoming increasingly important for application layer developers to take further control of the entire user experience, including the signing provider/wallet experience. We cannot necessarily depend on the ecosystem getting to the point where every user will already have crypto and a web3 wallet installed and ready to go.

AGP-103: Aragon Network Budget

I will be voting Yes. (/disclaimer, I’m a co-author of this proposal)/

I see this as the most important proposal presented during this AGP cycle.

This proposal established a fairly conservative budget for AGP process that ensures that there is always approximately 5 Years of runway (spending no more than 5% of the treasury per quarter). This budget ensures capital outflows are relatively consistent and predictable over time.

Assuming a budget period (quarter) has more spending approved than the budget allows, the proposal has a process for prioritizing which proposals to actually execute. This policy has quite a few subtle properties that I think will improve how projects engage with the AGP process, encouraging teams to unbundle large monolithic proposals into smaller and shorter proposals.

AGP-104: Aragon App Mining

I will be voting Yes. (/disclaimer, this is my proposal and If approved I will be managing the execution of this proposal)/.

This proposal approves 50K in DAI to develop and launch an “App Mining” program that would reward Aragon App developers based on shipping apps that Aragon users actually use. It also approves a recurring 100K ANT per quarter starting after the next ANV to be distributed to Aragon App developers based on a performance score.

There are many details, including the KPIs and weightings used to determine the Aragon App Score. The proposal is structured such that the implementation team can work with the community to finalize these important details before the program is scheduled to launch (after the next ANV, allowing the launch to be deferred if there is not consensus on the implementation details). I expect that in order to finalize these details it will be important to coordinating with relevant stakeholders, and validate options are both technically sound and feasible to implement. Therefore I decided to get approval for that work rather than propose a specific solution in the AGP.

AGP-105: Allow finance proposals that could otherwise fit in Nest or Flock

I will be voting Yes. (/disclaimer, I wrote this proposal)/.

I think that the precedent that has been set by previous Association Reviews limits the flexibility of the Finance track and unnecessarily limits the authority of ANT holders. This proposal would either have ANT holders confirm the current policy of the Association Board, or ask the Association Board to change their policy moving forward.

AGP-106: Develop Aragon Chain

I will be voting Yes.

My view on this is fairly well articulated in Aragon One’s announcement post. In addition to what is described there I want to emphasize a few ideas about how Aragon benefits from supporting deployments not just on Ethereum Mainnet but on many compatible and interoperable chains.

I think that it is reasonably likely that proof of stake and cross-chain interoperability tech like Cosmos SDK/Substrate and IBC will result in a blockchain landscape characterized by many important chains (as opposed to a winner-take-all outcome).

I think that, particularly for a DAO platform like Aragon its valuable to be able to enable users to choose which platform to deploy and operate on so long as supporting multiple compatible chains doesn’t put undue burden on maintainers. Aragon will benefit from and needs to focus on adoption of Aragon, it does not necessarily need to directly depend on or focus on the adoption of any one specific blockchain.

I ultimately would like to see Aragon on other EVM compatible chains, on Aragon Chain definitely, but also on Ethereum Classic, or Flora. If a chain supports deployment of Aragon and it offers a unique value prop or has a community of users that would benefit from Aragon then I would like to see that chain supported.

AGP-112: Oppose any change to Ethereum’s mining algorithm before Ethereum 2.0

I will be voting Yes.

I’m opposed to ProgPOW and may as well express my sentiment in this proclamation AGP.

AGP-116: Comprehensive Aragon Bug Bounty Program

I will be voting No.

I think this is a reasonable extension to the existing program that should not meaningfully increase the scope of responsibility for the AA. However, I haven’t seen much discussion yet on this proposed change and it doesn’t seem particularly urgent.

I haven’t even had the time to really dive in or ask people who I think would have valuable insight what they think… Are the amounts correct? Is the blanket scope appropriate? Should the tiers be based on some KPI? How does the budget limit work? What has been the success of the previous bug bounties? Would it be reasonable to ramp up the amounts over a period of time from when code is published?

In short, I think this should be rejected and revisited in a future ANV.

AGP-117: Comprehensive Aragon Security Review Program

I will be voting No.

Not every application poses the same risks to users, or will have enough traction to warrant spending funds on an audit. Having a policy which treats all applications the same doesn’t make sense.

It seems reasonable to potentially extend the security review program, or create supplemental programs associated with an application being included in specific APM registries. However, this particular proposal doesn’t seem like the right approach, and also doesn’t seem like given the many proposals in this batch of AGPs that there has been adequate review and discussion. I would like to see this rejected, and potentially different options explored to improve the underlying pain point identified in future ANVs.

AGP-118: Aragon Comprehensive Legal Review Program

I will be voting No.

This doesn’t seem very practical, it is unclear how much it would actually cost to implement and maintain and it significantly increases the scope of the AA.