Shimmer Growth Committee as part of Tangle Ecosystem Association

Governance Proposals Shimmer & IOTA [Phase 1] Discussions
62

Yeah, I get it, you now outlined a few times how solution-oriented you are, but it does not answer fundamental questions. Like, why would one ignore the correlation between the non existing liquidity/growth and non existing EVM. Why is it in the community hand only? Why has it to be rushed? TEA is capable of acting now, because the community made it possible.

We as a community are an equal partner to the IF, whose job among other is to keep control of our funds as long as possible and make sure it is used in our interest (not 3 people). Of course there has to be a compromise between governing funds and releasing them to make the ecosystem grow. There were proposed alternatives, but not getting a second look as there is overall low room for alternatives because the no-time-narrative.

It is not about distrust but rational and mature behavior, sending a signal, the community is not just a cash cow who will give 50% out of hands because a proposal out of blue air. Who would behave this way in his private or business environment? Acting like this opens up room for opportunistic behavior and leads to a general decrease in the quality of the partnerships. It is simply naive.

I also would like to outline a special case on transparency:

There are projects to be funded under NDA. While it is understandable, there is no committment beeing established to at least give a certain degree what kind of project it is. Not only isn’t the IF giving any commitments for a certain degree of transparency, but also the community is not claiming this obligation. For two years now, nobody knows where +4 Ti of the EDF went, the transparency all of sudden stopped; people demanded for it multiple times! We also see it today, as 47% of the TEA funds got transferred to new adresses (new owners?). This is all a gradual shift in transparency, a result of IFs past experience with the community (opportunistic behavior). Again it is not about distrust, but maintaining control as community, which is simply common sense. One has to understand the community responsibilty and who we are in the IOTA ecosystem.

IMO, also this 50% funding needs a propper set up. While we talk about selecting 3 people from community into the growth committee, there are already plans by the TEA what projects should be funded. There is no thoughts on what abilities these people should possess to not be simple “yes-men” (coding experience, skills to plausibility the needs of projects and related costs - how does the funding process look like within TEA at all?).

If there is no time for it, cut the BS electing three community member into the growth community just for formality reasons and make it a fundamental vote to invalidate the 1:1 ratio between DAO:TEA and make it 1:3 or 0:4.

And no, your own bag is not a reason to give responsibility out of hand rush anything.

3 Likes
63

All great points that you wrote. Just a few questions:

  1. How long is “as long as possible” in your opinion and how does one determine that? Should we wait until the initial momentum of ShimmerEVM is gone and then try to solve the problems later, or should we anticipate them and address them while we still have time?
  1. How can the community become a “cash cow” if everything that is being done is done in our own interest? Or this is becoming “us” versus “them”?

Of course not, hence “bag”.

64

Yet still, they won’t be able to provide liquidity if there is no pool and maybe not even a date for the EVM upgrade.

There definitly is some sort of chicken+egg problem. We certainly won’t have good liquidity at first, since there aren’t many useful tokens to invest in initially. In my opinion the liquidity campaign must kick off about when the first DEX goes live and last for at least half a year.

65

From what I understand, you are talking about EVM liquidity. But liquidity on current CEXes is poor and there is a factor that additional liquidity is needed for listings on other CEXes as well.

66

“As long as possible” is not to be taken in an exclusively literal understanding but rather in entrepreneurial sense. If you have a budget building a house, how would you handle this budget? If you fund your muncipality with a budget of $7M for years, what measures prior needs to be taken care of? The less you think and bargain about potential hazards, just hand out money, the less satisfactory the outcome will be.

I fail to see how “momentum of ShimmerEVM” is defined. Also, you seem to ignore it, but there is funding potential at TEA available.

While I am not pointing out specially an “us vs them”, opportunistic behavior, which is described in game theory very well, is inherent to setups you do not have transparency about. This is also the reason why in businesses you put resources into contract management and controlling mechanisms (=costs), even before value is created. Simply because the moment your partner has too much “freedom” you will get screwed over.

As I pointed out above, it is not about distrust but rational thinking. The community as an entity is not the IF. While we might have the same goals, the routes to these goals are not the same, that is why we are talking DAO after all, leveraging swarm intelligence, uniting thoughts of the mass in a democratic way. If the community hands out 50% funds without propper governance, there is no more chance to demand and change the handling afterwards; the co-determination is simply lost. If the community hands out the funds, without taking past failures (EDF transparency) into account, situation will not change and so on.

If the community is not capable to set up a governance concept to get its own vision through, aka not interested in it, aka transfer the funds into a black box, my point still stands: cancel the Shimmer Growth Committee stuff, which is obviously just for formal matters to have some degree of community involvement, and give full responsibility to the IF.

1 Like
67

I think I remember Dom saying that they have thought about the schedule and it should align with the timing of an EVM launch. I agree and this should be monitored. Even still, it would be good to have the committee and proposal voted on and implemented. Then, the three Community Treasury committee members can monitor and ensure that funding only occurs when EVM is launching. It would be a bummer to spend funding, attract developers, and then EVM is broken. Though I assume people have thought about this, yet we can certainly ask Dom on Tuesday to confirm.

68

Great comparison, now imagine that instead of $7M you have $7M worth of iron. How much do you need to use to build your own house? When/how should it be converted into something more tangible? If you leave it for too long it may rust beyond usability. Today the price of iron is $X per kilogram, how much will it be worth in 2 years?

From what I see, TEA funds are already being deployed. So why should community leave everything to “them”? Should we take part as well? Isn’t that pur responsibility as well?

69

In the current setup it makes exactly 0 sense to vote and implement just for the sake to have a minimum degree of community involved. At this rate simply vote to hand over the funds to IF and make it as less bureaucratic as possible.

Yeah, lets switch to the fundamental problems - how to ensure there will only be funding after EVM launched

70

There is certainly no perfect answer here. Yes, we can still go with a 100% decentralized framework and do Firefly votes on every single little decision. Or, as you added, we can simply hand over all funds to the IOTA Foundation and be as centralized as possible. Yet the community has worked on this framework for over two years by attended consulting seminars, analyzing other DAOs, having 2 to 3 weekly meetings and discussing for an hour to two hours endlessly. After all that, the community came to the conclusion that voted delegation by the community is the best hybrid approach to balance between centralization, decentralization, quality, and schedule (ie: Time to funding).

So this is where we are at present. Personally, I think it is great to have three members that are from the community treasury on the growth committee to keep an eye on and ensure the 50% is being used in the best interest of the community. With out this stipulation revised into the proposal I don’t think I would have supported it.

Actually Dom mentioned this on the last community governance call that he attended. A few different community members brought up their concern that this funding should not be issued if the EVM wasn’t ready. Dom reiterated that this has indeed been thought out in depth. As well, he stated that it will take 6 weeks to 8 weeks to even get the proposal voted on which we in the governance community fully known and understand. So proposals won’t even be reviewed until the end of December / beginning of January after all firefly voting has been conducted and community delegates have signed NDAs.

As well, it’s not like all 50% of Shimmer tokens will be given out immediately. To follow that up, he did say that the team has discussed this and given the situation is with how close Shimmer Firefly voting is at present, as well, how close EVM beta is; the timing is right in regards to issuing the proposal now, to then let it take the 8 week lead time to get through Phase III, and then put into execution if the community votes on it.

The point is, you want the committee setup “before” EVM goes live not “after” it does. Simply because there is a lead time to even getting a team of delegates to the point of reviewing and approving such funding. As well, just because the committee is setup means in no way the funds have to be disbursed. There will still be a lot of steps in place before releasing funds, as well, the community delegates can ensure funding doesn’t go out until the timing is right with regards to EVM and any other situations that arise between now and then. The point is, the community is voting for their delegates to best represent their wishes and concerns. As well, there will still be weekly Treasury governance meetings where the community can ask their delegates questions. Of course, they will be under NDA, but they can simply answer, “yes, those concerns have been thought of and relayed to all parties involved in the grant funding”.

71

Sadly we don’t know. All we see is the movement of funds the community provided. No further information (transparency)

I did not say to leave everything to them. It was my counter argument against " we have to act fast". There are funds available which can be used to bridge investments which can be done today until there is more substance to the usage of 50% funds.

But you see, meanwhile 70 comments, lack of IF participating. 80% in favor, why even stress ourselves

72

I agree as well. At first I wasn’t necessarily a strong supporter of this proposal, though seeing quickly that the majority of the community favored this vote; I had to take a breadth and seek to look at the bigger picture.

The truth is, this is governance in action. As Dom has indeed read through all these comments, joined the community governance meeting, entered discussions, and will revise some variables to better create a proposal that is accepted by the majority of the community. This is governance and we have to keep moving forward with the best consensus of the community. Unfortunately we will never make decisions that appease every single person. One thing is for sure though, we all want the best thing for IOTA, Shimmer, and Assembly at the end of the day. We just may want to get to the end goal by different directions or methods.

I just really enjoy there is a place for us to voice or thoughts, open live discussions, and then work together as one community and team!

73

You are just outlining the extremes. There have been also proposal inbetween. Example

IMO, asking with that wall of text by Dom for 50% of the funds is so much more hazzle and polarizing, than just make some thoughts about setting up a propper governance, so we really can talk about a hybrid-like approach. But I guess, it is just too much asked, if we are not even given what the IF is doing with EDF and TEA funds. They can have so much benevolent funding, yet so less efforts :sleeping:

I am not saying to hand over 180M Shimmer but the 50%.

How did the few people from community meeting conclude, that a delegation (Shimmer Growth Committee) would be the best hybrid approach, apart from the formal organization structure? What about the responsibility? What will the delegation add apart from saying “yes” to the IF proposals? What skills do they need, so they are able to make a critical judgement? How does the funding process withhin TEA look like? Voting 3 community members with this limited information and framework, but believing it is somewhat decentral, is almost weirder, than just giving the funds to the IF, without adressing current transparency issues or believing the IF will magically do what the community would love to see. Apart from that, three people from community hold too much power to represent the heterogeneous community.

I want to emphasize again: just because one does not immediately hand over 50% but sets up a propper framework, the TEA can still bridge with its liquidity. I believe “Time to funding” is an empty phrase.

AFAIK, these ideas, e.g., how the process “delegates represent the community wishes and concerns” is nowhere described/taken into account. Nice ideas, but not anchored anywhere.

74

Just to be clear, I have been sarcastic :smiling_imp:. I doubt most of the people gave it a second thought, but following because “fast funding to moon” sounds great. Hence, also probably the reason why Dom/Phylo adressed like 5% of all arguments here.

75

I know it’s tough and seems like this proposal came out of thin air. The truth is though, we have been talking governance for two years. Dom and Phylo worked on this proposal and attempted to make it as short as possible. They stated this on the last call and the reasoning to shorten it was because we learned that the Governance Framework (which is like a post three times longer) was too long.

Dom also stated on the last governance call which he attended to discuss with the community that 50% of the TEA funds are being used along with 50% of the Community Treasury funds. So it certainly is as if the TEA funds aren’t being used in these grant fundings.

We have been having weekly meetings for two years discussing all of this. Here is link proving that because there are 50 recorded meetings uploaded to the IOTA Community Governance youtube account: https://www.youtube.com/c/IOTACommunityGovernance.

On top of that I and many other community members have been regularly tweeting these meetings. IOTA quick takes has made notice of the updates and links to the Youtube channel. Phylo and Antonio has put up and publicly given links on all social media platforms. We have had open meetings for any community leaders to join. As well, the IF themselves have done blog posts with links and information to all of these community meetings.

And this is the thing. Unfortunately within the crypto space an average of 2%-to-8% of the community usually participate in Governance voting and “MUCH LESS” actually take the time to read, watch videos, and attend community meetings. Yet what do we do? Should we do nothing? Should we spend 4 years to make a single decision? You see, the meetings “and” information has been public for two years.

So, the few people from the community meeting conclude delegation is the best approach, like I said:

  • They spent two years meeting twice a week talking for about 2 to 4 hrs a week. Probably a total of 234 hrs spent in governance decisions and delegation vs. 100% decentralized voting.

  • Community members took part in 9 or 10 meetings as DAO Pioneers meetings that meet weekly. The aim of these meetings is to review a Governance / Treasury DAO, the pro’s and con’s, that include looking at decentralized community approaches, delegation approaches, and centralized entity approaches. The DAO pioneers community members then picked a specific DAO and did an analysis on it and then came back to discuss with the group.

  • Then eight active members formed a Bridge Fund working group and met 2 to 3 times a week for about four months working on a governance framework.

  • The governance community than had meetings with bankless DAO after each Tuesday governance meeting to have Bankless DAO bring on and host DAO experts and explain their expert knowledge, pros, cons, etc. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5joP0FyJQU5HHmFP_tuthBMaX-VfAnn5

The “community” members (ie: Non IOTA Foundation members) have spent countless “free time” studying, analyzing, learning, building, and spending time and money from their own pocket to build a Governance / Treasury framework that best matches the consensus of the IOTA / Shimmer Community. Now, I hope and would imagine some, or all of, the delegates will come from this group because not only have they spent the 1,000 hrs that is needed to understand the Governance and Treasury frameworks, but they clearly are passionate and here not for the money, but here for the love of building and managing a community governance.

The sad truth is, do people really do more than vote along their party lines when people vote? I’m talking about real countries, when their citizens go to the ballot box to conduct real democracy voting. Do they prepare and spend endless hours researching and studying not just the president or prime minister, but all the little positions down to the local administrator? If they are voting on proposals politicians are submitting, do they research those? The answer is no! The majority do not. They simply read the headline, or vote along their party lines, and that is about it. So why would voting on chain be any difference? The situation is slightly different, but governance is governance and the passion of societies people to prioritize voting and governance knowledge over all their other daily tasks is very low.

Also, you must understand this isn’t an IOTA Foundation approach. This is a community fund with community governance. We, the community, can’t have the IF do everything. If you look, myself and Werner has also been responding. We are just two of several others that have been doing this work for the past two years, worked together with everyone to build this framework. So please include our responses and readjust the percentage of replies.

2 Likes
76

I also wonder what the point of this forum is. I thought it was intended to discuss, among others, governance proposals. And here we are. Dom posted a wall of text with lots of emotions and very little data. Phylo told us this will easily double the marketcap of Shimmer, again without any data. And thats it. Nothing, nada. Not a single IF employee has bothered to reply since then. And yeah I know on the official Discord which is more tightely limited to who is allowed to be there they are still active, but that still brings the question, what is the point of having forums here if they wont be used even by IF?

And yet despite those thousands of hours, literally the first proposal you are in favour of, is to throw everything which was discussed away and ignore all the proposed rules and guidelines.

I don’t even know why I make this post again, since all my questions are still open and no one can answer even those basic questions.

This is an IF proposal. But getting IF to reply is too much to ask? And we need replies from people who also cannot answer questions the other side has? (Simply because you lack the same information we lack, otherwise we already had the answer).

Cheap shot, but why would three random people from the community do that better than IF employees? And in the end only a single one of those three has to blindly follow what he is told to do, and it is useless. Other two cannot even protest since everything is under NDA.

Anyway, rant over. I hope this fails horribly in actual voting. Not just because of the funds which are taken, not just because of the precedent it sets for taking the next set of funds, but especially also because it makes a mockery of everything the DAO was supposed to be.

Edit: And reading this again it might seem I am irritated. And tbf, I somewhat am. Because of the absolute radio silence from IF and the joke this makes of everything being discussed before.

77

We kind of know that Dom is getting excited a bit too much sometimes (no offense)

We need to ensure things are working. Otherwise it might even backfire (“IOTA is not working”) as it confirms the still circulating FUD. We have one chance to get good out of it. If we fail, we will have a hard time getting the word out once again.

78

I and others “have replied” to your questions. They simply may be answers that you don’t like to here, but they are answers non-the-less.

I have also been in favor of “other” proposals “before” this one in which I personally have worked on building for over two years with the community.

I am sorry that you don’t find our answers sufficient to your questions. At this point it is simply a difference of opinion. What is important is clearly our answers, our efforts for two years, and all the time spent by this great community; their efforts do suffice the “majority” of the community.

I am no longer going to reply further, I have already spent a few hours responding to your questions. My focus is to the community now and working on future governance frameworks and support the DAOs.

One thing is for certain, the only time governance appeases EVERYONE in public is usually when it’s a totalitarianism society. The beauty of democracy and decentralized governance is that people have the freedom to voice their opinions.

1 Like
79

No offense, but I don’t get how some of your responses fit to my quotes and the points I have made …

Thank you for the convo though

80

If I ask if it is raining, and the answer is “I don’t know”, then yeah technically I got an answer. But that is of course not an actual answer to my question.

Now maybe I just completely overlooked it all this time, but to give just as one example, I don’t remember getting an answer to the question what changed since a few months back, when a 1:1 ratio was proposed and voted in favour for, that we now need to change it to a 3:1 ratio. And no, “We need liquidity” is not an answer to that question, since that was also known a few months ago, and thats why the TEA already for $15M.

And hell the answer could be something as simple as that you simply underestimated the required cost, plus a rough overview of what they already spend money on, and what they want to spend money on with the extra funds. That obviously does not break any NDA, but I guess that is too much transparancy to ask for.

But of course everyone can have different opinions. If you want to throw out half of the rules proposed for the DAO, then that is of course your right. Hell I actually agree some of the rules are imo too constricting. But then do it for everyone requesting funds.

1 Like
81

Afaik they plan to use 50%. Unsure if they already invested.

And indeed the community can set their own priority, like focus on Buidl instead of doing marketing. You argument regarding price works also in reverse - why spend the majority of the funds right now when we might have a 2x in x months after EVM is out and stable. Spending now would actually be like going short :sweat_smile:

But whatever keeps the treasury fund stable.

@TGCE just execute the transfer for the moment EVM goes live and pay the setup costs from TEA. We should probably put this in - might clear some reservations. I’m probably not the only one to see the true unlocking of Shimmer’s potential in the EVM upgrade.