Proposal 21: Setting up Powerhouse - Powerpool Management Board

Proposals
1

Set up a PP management board - Powerhouse. Its structure is to be similar to SNX’s Spartan council

Summary

  1. 4 persons selected out of the active community members @sergey @zero @defi @vasilysumanov
  2. Each member has 1 vote and the team has 2 votes - 6 votes overall
  3. Allocate 70k CVP reward per each with 18m daily vesting
  4. Every 3 months the community can vote to replace any of the management board members.
  5. Management board to report the development progress each month
  6. Create a discord topic for those who want to input. the Management Board will select candidates and payment scheme.
  7. Management board takes the revisor function as was described in Proposal 19
  8. Over the course of the first month the Management board should structure and publish a more detailed scheme of how it works
    8.1 For the first 1-3 months the scope of work will basically include everything
  9. Management board and community to consider additional incentive plans applicable for both - the management board members and for the community members
  10. In terms of the governance process the key goal is to decrease the number of votings where all the community have to vote, making most standardize most of the necessary votings and make them regular (say, once per month). Obviously, for the controversial steps, the community can always raise a proposal

Abstract

I read through many hundreds of pages, checked out the leading DeFi projects govn frameworks and spoke to some of the DeFi governance top minds which kindly agreed to consult me

The conclusion in simple words: decentralized governance has even more issues than the centralized one and there is no cure atm, but lazy consensus (community voting minimization) and efforts to find an optimal mix between an independent /elected governance council and community

I suggest starting with the above mentioned Management board structure because:

  1. We just have no time and need to move forward to make PP’s great product the market leader
  2. Similar structures are being implemented by some of the leading projects in the space (e.g. Polka, SNX), and I consider such structure as a lesser evil by a long list of parameters

There is no proper decentralized governance structure at the moment and we have to experiment.
On one hand a pure “democracy” as is (i) doesnt incentivize the active members, (ii) creates a bureaucracy hell when on 1 simple action one needs to approve 3 proposals (hyperbola) and waste 7-10 days (true) just to start actually do the job
On the other hand, while nobody wants overly centralized governance, someone needs to take the responsibility for concrete workstreams and allocate a fair amount of time to them.

=> As it always happens with governance/politics - we are choosing the lesser of two evils and then trying to make it a bit less evil via a complex trial and error method

Please see the links at the end of this post, I have no time to properly set the sources here, but all these articles are just must-reads for everyone who is interested in decentralized governance

Motivation

  1. For the team
  • outsource the most time-consuming parts of not a technical job to battle-tested and committed community members
  • Significantly speed up and increase the quality of all the abovementioned workstreams
  1. For the Community
  • Get a special weapon unit to be responsible for mid/long term leadership of PP and CVP value appreciation
  • Get everything related to PP transparent and crystal clear (current state and the plans)
  • Retain influence power for the Protocol development

The amount of job is tremendous, to save the readers time - happy to answer any questions in the comments re what key workstreams I see, why do I think there is a hell lot of job needs to be done with some of them

Specification
Please see the abstract.
From a technical standpoint, we are adding only an easy-to-implement off-chain layer

UPDATE 1
Include @DrGonzo into the Management board. I believe the community understands his role and his skills
so 5 members in the board + the team with 2 votes

UPDATE 2
Set the base rewards level at 50k CVP. Additional 20k are to be distributed in case either (I) $100 mn TVL achieved or (ii) DPI TVL is outperformed

Links













https://65eocu3ftlpiygeym3g5kply6zy2dtdjyrhbm4m26cb6bt3msyla.arweave.net/90jhU2Wa3owYmGbN1T149nGhzGnEThZxmvCD4M9slhY
4 Likes
2

Hi Sergey, great idea and clearly a lot of thought has been put into this and thanks for the links. Certainly we need something like this.

A few questions i came up with.

  1. So if this management structure is created, in the future would something like proposal 20 to reduce rewards need to be voted on by the community onchain, I assume so right? And for less important ideas proposals won’t need to be created and they can be passed on to the management board so they can vote?
    If that happens we save time and gas costs right?

  2. 70k reward to 4 members with 18m daily vesting, can you clarify what 18m vesting means thanks :slight_smile:

  3. “…who want to input” - what does that mean? Does this mean the board is also hiring workers for powerpool?

This proposal would significantly decrease on chain voting and save gas costs. However there is a community cvp treasury where a portion of cvp is set to be allocated to cvp holders who actively participate in governance. Will less voting overall because of proposal 21 cause an issue with allocation to active participants since being an active voter isn’t as relevant anymore.

1 Like
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TLDR: For.

As a contributor, I know how hard it is to launch something non-technical that have to be approved by the whole community.
I created 17th proposal about translators 27.12.2020 and all this time I was trying to find out is everything fine with this scheme, should I start voting etc. Now it costs too much for voting starter (not everyone have 10k CVP for that and couple hundred backs to pay fees), it costs 2 much to vote for or against it, and it is not as interesting for community as new indexes or decreasing of rewards. And I am not sure that I will launch another voting soon cuz of the gas price, so its better to have a council that makes decisions about such minor things.
I think that huge, most important decisions HAVE to be accepted by community and it HAS to be decentralized as possible, but rest of the decisions can be made by council.

2 Likes
4

hey, I think I can answer some of your questions:

  1. 18m vesting = 18 month linear vesting period

  2. The proposal is related to the Ecosystem Fund - Proposal 19: Smart Ecosystem Fund

  3. CVP treasure distribution mechanism is yet to be defined (for example: Proposal discussion: future fee distribution and the creation of xCVP)

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5

Hey, thanks.

So 18 month linear vesting means that 70,000 * 4 = 280,000 CVP. Therefore 15,555.55 CVP per month total released to all member. Per member 3888.88 cvp/month.
At $4 that is $15552/month payment per member which is a large payment and that’s fine but is it justified?

6

hey, thanks for the feedback!

  1. exactly with few comments:
  • Community will ALWAYS have a right to argue against ANY decision made by the management board - something like “rage quit” functional in Moloch DAO, but instead of the “quit” the community can stand against an unfavorable decision
  • As one of result of the management board work I see a simple and regular system of Management board elections. But right now I don’t see a capability to establish it. We will waste too much time. Lets start from a shortcut please.
  • I would be happy to lay out a more detailed logic in case this proposal is approved. even this standalone work stream is very time consuming Otherwise I just has too high opportunity costs to spend a large part of my capacity on ideation and implementation of the abovementioned stuff

  1. Easy. to shortcut the discussion (I have a number of ways to justify this reward size) lets use the most obvious benchmark - testers allocation size. Dont see even a need to explain more atm:) but Happy to discuss this very thing in a separate comments thread.

  2. Yes pretty much. not exactly hiring though. This is rather about the launching of a selfdriving cycle of promotion of new active community contributors and letting them to be elected in the MB / replace the current MB members via contributing on on-going assignment and being paid.

I am sure the rewards for the MB should be planned for the next 3 years, not just that mentioned 70k distributed in 18 months

So as you see, I am pretty much of libertarian views here and have no goals to ring-fence the MB members and capture the power forever .

Well, than the MB rewards can be distributed from locked CVP balance instead of the community pool.
And the rewards for all other assignments can be distributed by the MB from the community pool (but not towards MBs lol)

7
  1. yes
  2. I would say this proposal is superior to Smart Ecosystem Fund, it was launched later because it is more complex (but i tried my best to shortcut it so everyone could easily read through the principles)
  3. Lets allocate the rewards mentioned from the locked and unallocated CVPs
8

oh, mate, so your are insisting on this discussion :))
70*5 now as @DrGonzo is included into proposed MB

I would say the benchmarking price for CVP should be $2.

I dont think it is large, happy to continue the discussion in case you justify why is it large (taking into account a huuuuge time value discount factor for CVP - you cant say it is 15k per month (7k in case we take $2 base value for CVP))

For simplicy I’d suggest to start from comparing with testers allocations
If not enough - lets go further and discuss why and how I value my capacity:)

9

Oops I used the wrong cvp conversion. It should have been $2 dollars. I didnt like how much testers tokens were allocated. But I think this will be more beneficial.

Keen to see point 8 and 8.1 as it plays out so I can see the work streams :slight_smile: . DrGonzo is great no arguments here about him being added.

Thanks

10

Hey @Sergey and the other guys, thank you for the topic for discussion and even though I appreciate the idea/purpose you try to pursue, I must say that I strongly disagree with the moving the decisive powers away from the community members. Here are my reasons:

  1. the blockchain technology and decentralisation, which comes with it, is the main big thing comparing to traditional (centralised) governance model… the blockchain voting and the active participation in our common business IS the thing meant to change the world, the way we think, the way we take care of ourselves, the way we are involved… this is the great virtue and ethos that blockchain technology was meant to bring and encourage us to use… We finally have the means to effectively govern ourselves, we can finally do it easily from the sofa at home with few clicks… why should we trade this for old governing models again?! I really believe that moving away from this is directly contrary to the blockchain revolution.

  2. It was one of the selling points of PowerPool visions that people in the community can govern themselves and can extend this powers even to other ecosystems… META DEFI DEMOCRACY… remember? The purpose was to overcome voter’s apathy and involve people in the governance and there was a way to do it… by rewarding people (CVP holders) when they take part in the governance.… Why are we stepping away from this before we even give it a try? Why are we going to exclude all the people’s creativity, involvement and enthusiasm by reducing the possibilities to be part of it? I am sorry, but I can never say yes to this.

  3. I know that there are gas issues, I know that some people just do not have the time to read the stuff here in the forum and think about it BUT there was was supposed to be an option to delegate the voting rights to “PowerPool Politicians” who could vote on behalf of these people saving money for the gass or their time they need elsewhere… and sorry @DrGonzo now I have to take this out… I am repeatedly reporting for almost a month that there is an error with delegation of votes… I am quite known and popular in the group of people I brought to PowerPool and encouraged them to invest and many of these people would love to give me their votes to take actions on their behalf BUT they cannot do it because there is this delegation error (the delegated me their votes nevertheless I do not see them in delegation info and cannot use them). So why the heck we do not repair the fundamental errors of the protocol first and try to fulfil the original visions of the PowerPool before we try something else… Is the money chasing and being the market leader more important thant the very essence of the blockchain democracy?

  4. Where is layer 2 voting, guys? Why don’t you urge the core team to finish this first before taking away the power from the people? Please implement this first, then we can assess whether the community can take decisions more swiftly or not!

  5. In my opinion these issues should be done first before taking any other actions:

I. Make the votes delegation work flawlessly,
II. Give the poeple the opportunity to choose PowerPool politicians in ORGANIC WAY (i.e. by their own decision to whom they delegate) and reward these politicians for making their job,
III. Implement layer 2 voting as soon as possible,
IV. Reward the active members of the community taking part in the decision making.

Thank you for hearing my voice, guys.

5 Likes
11

Glow,
Thank you for your detailed feedback. I hope my response qualms some of your concerns with establishing a Powerpool Management Board.

  1. Inclusive votes are great for infrequent, heavily consequentially proposals. However, Powerpool is a startup finding product market fit in a now competitive industry. Our first mover advantage is slowly fading away. There are still hundreds of small decisions and interactions that need to be made on a daily basis. The current governance model serves as a bottle neck for building and shipping fast. This proposal is similar to a government funded entity doing Congressional quarterly or yearly reviews instead of weekly bureaucratic voting.

If the community isn’t happy with the quality of our work they could always submit a proposal to discontinue association and of course payments, and future payments. The goal is to limit proposals for each paycheck, task, and update.

  1. This proposal doesn’t imply that we will use meta-governance votes to vote on behalf of all Powerpool holders. This proposal is calling financing another development team alongside the current Powerpool core team helping them with everything from A-Z.

  2. Powerpool Politicians is something that needs careful business development to coordinate with the largest DeFi projects. A small team spearheading a few tasks is perfect to get this going while the core team works on technical updates. Meta-governance is definitely a goal for Powerpool but the rise of off-chain voting has hindered how lucrative this opportunity is. Hence, the team has been more focused on building ETFs like competitors.

  3. This point is addressed to the core development team

  4. This point is addressed to the core development team

3 Likes
12

Yes, only some small decisions mainly related to content creation/marketing/etc

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13

We appreciate your support man! We are truly believers in governance.
Nobody will transfer meta-governance voting power to these guys, they are needed for solving “daily” problems and some operational stuff.

All serious strategic decisions, meta-governance votings, CVP mining programs, new products, etc will be only in hands of CVP token holders without any doubts. Check out our statement for this proposal.

2 Likes
14

Sure, thanks for the feedback!

I don’t disagree with arguments 1, 2, 3. But they are
a. Either related to the decentralized govn issues overall

b. Just prove that we need a management board to take responsibility for the things to be done

  • I dont see an issue in having the management board and have the meta-govn in parallel

c.What I am offering is not to exclude the people involvement, opposite - I offer to intensify it by rewarding the people for their involvement and creativity!

Also - I would be bloody happy in case we carry on the elections etc, and we actually will have elections system for the management board.
But in case this haven’t happened in at least 4 months since I have been proposing it (and the team proposed it as well), I am afraid that in case we choose to have the election, we will spend other several months on it, while DPI will attract $500 mn TVL

What you are offering in I - IV is a great action plan, but as mentioned above, I am pretty sure it will take several months to be implemented.

I am offering the lesser evil imo

2 Likes
15

Yes, imo we are building a “lite” version of Polkadot governance.
Would be great to implement their voting mechanics, but I guess it will take time, while it is always better to have a product market fit with imperfect governance, than no product market ft with a perfect governance

2 Likes
16

OK guys, @DeFi, @Sergey and @powerpoolAdmin, I got your point, however then I would expect clearly and exactly defined tasks and competencies that the board would carry out. And perhaps it would be better do define this scope to be narrower than broader.

17

There were several tries to formalize such a task list (I tried to do this as well)
This task itself is very time consuming, and having spent a significant amount of time on it I tend to say, that I am happy to do this again in case the Board is elected.

This may sound aggressive, I understand. But it is not because, as I said, I have already worked on it and understand what is it - formalizing the tasks list, setting the priorities, breaking it down into sub-tasks, putting everything on a gant chart to see what can be done in parallel and where there are the most crucial points is at least 25% of job

18

OK, I believe you that it is what you said it is… however we need at least something to stick to (maybe it is enough to define the areas, if not specific tasks) and to assess when the work is done.

19

I think the translators’ proposal was an excellent example of why it’s crucial not to formalize the Board’s activity but to launch it asap.

Even such a vital proposal with multiple people involved and work already done failed to get quorum while 100% of votes were FOR the proposal. Gas/Time/Etc constraints prevent people from voting, and we expect many more smaller proposals as people got used to the system.

I think the results of Board’s work will speak for themselves, while the communuty will have enough time and leverage to change things on the fly.

2 Likes
20

You do not think L2 voting and flawless votes delegation could fix the majority of the problematic issues? But to be clear I am not against having working teams, I just say that some of your concerns could be fixed up by the functionalities of the protocol that should have already been implemented or should be implemented soon…And it is not that I would not support all of these great guys to be in the board, I just cannot get over the principle of setting up something very very quickly without knowing details of the duties to be carried out by the board.

1 Like