YIP-61: Governance 2.0

Authors

@tracheopteryx @lex_node

Summary

A proposal to establish the future of yearn’s operational governance by extending certain of the Multisig’s[1] powers from YIP-41 (Temporarily Empower Multisig)[2] on a newly clarified basis in coordination with newly empowered autonomous contributor teams (‘yTeams’).

Status

This proposal passed on April 25, 2021 at 7:00 UTC with 99.97% voting for.
See the vote on Snapshot.
Learn about our voting rules in YIP-55[3].

Abstract

if adopted, this proposal seeks to:

  • ratify continued delegation by YFI holders to the Multisig of certain powers first approved in YIP-41 (Temporarily Empower Multisig), together with certain modifications and clarifications to the nature and scope of such powers as set forth below;
  • delegate certain powers to a set of yearn contributor teams that have emerged organically from the community (‘yTeams’), as appropriate for each yTeam based on its objective (‘yGuard,’ ‘yBrain,’ ‘yDev,’ ‘yPeople,’ ‘yBudget,’ ‘yFarm,’ ‘yTx,’ and ‘yOps’);
  • update and clarify YFI holders’ role in governance and the types of proposals available.

Motivation

In August 2020, YIP-41 (Temporarily Empower Multisig) was approved by YFI holders to:

  • temporarily empower yearn Multisig members “to make personnel & budgetary decisions” for a six-month period; and
  • task the Multisig with “facilitating the creation and transition to a multi-DAO structure”.

Since YIP-41 was approved, the Multisig has fostered a ‘multi-DAO structure’ by encouraging the development of autonomous ‘yTeams’ consisting of volunteer and paid specialist contributors.

The six-month Multisig empowerment period was extended for three-months via YIP-59[4] on February 24th, 2021 and will expire on May 24th, 2021. Thus, before the expiration date, YFI holders should approve a new proposal to establish the future direction of yearn governance. This YIP constitutes such a proposal and, if approved, would supersede YIP-41 and ratify yearn’s current de facto operational governance practices.

Specification

Governance 2.0 Overview

We present here the first phase of a progressive decentralization and improvement to yearn’s governance. This proposal seeks to update the decision-making structures within yearn, not their software implementation. It is our intent to offer implementation proposals in the future once this model is validated and the appropriate technologies become available for use.

Yearn is a network of independent doers united by a shared vision. Our bias is on action over bureaucracy. We move fast with great freedom and agency. This is our way. Towards this end, we have pioneered a method of governance we call ‘constrained delegation’ whereby YFI holders delegate their governance powers to autonomous groups like the Multisig and yTeams and thus empower them to be creative. Gov 2.0 takes that a step farther by making governance powers discrete and transferable objects under the direct control of YFI holders.

YFI Holders

Gov 2.0 connects YFI holders to yearn’s products and teams through a more direct, aligned, and transparent mechanism — giving them direct control over who gets to make decisions. Rather than being asked to make specific, operational decisions, YFI holders will conduct how power flows within yearn, wielding granular and clear control over every aspect of what yearn does.

YFI holders will now be empowered to take three kinds of actions:

Proposal Description Hypothetical Examples
Yearn Improvement Proposal (YIP) A proposal to execute on any power delegated to YFI holders or outside the scope of enumerated powers Ratify a new yTeam and assign it power; Burn the YFI minting keys; Do anything outside the scope of proscribed powers, like change yearn’s name; remove a yOps signer; mint a new power
Yearn Delegation Proposal (YDP) A proposal to change where any discrete decision-making power is delegated Move the ‘Pay Team’ power from yPeople to a new yTeam; undelegate the ‘Set Budgets’ power from underperforming yBudget team and delegate to YFI holders until a new solution can be found
Yearn Signaling Proposal (YSP) A non-binding proposal to signal community feelings or intent on any issue A suggestion to change membership in a yTeam; A desire for a new kind of vault or product

yTeams

yTeams are small, autonomous groups of yearn contributors empowered by YFI holders to act independently in the best interest of yearn within a constrained domain of action and with enumerated, discrete decision-making powers.

Each yTeam will be organized around a group of signers. The signers for each yTeam should be nominated by rough social consensus of that yTeam and be reasonably acceptable to the Ops yTeam (‘yOps’). yTeam signers are empowered to choose their own consensus mechanism for decision-making and curate their own discussion and feedback groups on telegram. Decisions issued by yTeams will be executed on-chain by the Multisig until a more decentralized system is approved for implementation.

It is important to note that yTeams are not the only teams that can work on the yearn ecosystem. Indeed, each of the current yTeams was formed permissionlessly, emerging on an ad hoc basis as enthusiasts grouped around a workstream. This proposal is merely recognizing that a number of such informal groups have achieved sufficient consistency of membership, quality of results and autonomy of internal governance to deserve a constrained delegation of powers from YFI holders. More informal contributors should continue working, alone or in groups, on yearn and seeking to have their contributions ratified by YFI holders on a more granular, post hoc basis; these informal groups may also eventually coalesce into additional yTeams.

See below under “Constrained Delegation” for additional thinking on the governance philosophy underlying yTeams.

yTeam Objective Membership Pool
yGuard Protect the vaults YFI Protocol Dev, YFI Strategists, YFI Mechanics, YFI Secret Admirers
yBrain Manage the strats YFI Strategists
yDev Manage the protocol YFI Protocol Dev
yPeople Curate the team YFI Compensation Working Group, YFI Advisors
yBudget Spend money well YFI Finances, YFI Advisors
yFarm Grow the treasury YFI Secret Admirers, YFI Secret Entrance
yTx Write transactions YFI Doers
yOps Coordinate contributors YFI Ops (initial signers: @banteg, @lehnberg, @milkyklim, @tracheopteryx)

The Multisig

In effect, the Multisig is a special yTeam (‘yChad’) utilizing a Gnosis Safe multisig[5] for on-chain execution. While most of the decision-making powers previously held by the Multisig move to yTeams, the execution power stays with the Multisig pending future proposals. The Multisig is tasked with executing the decisions issued by yTeams within their domains of action and with ‘Veto Power’ should they feel a decision needs further review. As we iterate on governance in the future, YFI holders can decide to delegate this ‘Veto Power’ to external arbitration or other forms of secure adjudication.

Decision-Making Powers

Power Delegation Description
Manage Powers YFI Holders YFI holders can vote to create, assign, or revoke discrete powers to or from yTeams.
Change YFI Token Contract YFI Holders Any interaction with the YFI token contract, such as to mint YFI or burn the minting keys, remains under the control of YFI holders.
Set Fees YFI Holders Set the standard fee structures in the Yearn Protocol
Change Multisig Signers YFI Holders As the Multisig will continue to hold critical powers over the near term, only YFI holders can vote to change its signers
Ratify yTeams YFI Holders Formally ratify or deratify yTeams to control which yTeams can hold delegated powers
Change yOps Signers YFI Holders As yOps has the power to change signers of other yTeams, this is a special power to change the signers of yOps
Spend Treasury Funds YFI Holders Spend funds from the treasury
YIP Power YFI Holders YFI Holders have the power to propose a YIP on anything not already delegated
Execution Power Multisig The power to execute decisions made by YFI holders and yTeams on-chain
Veto Power Multisig This power allows the Multisig to veto any decision and ideally should not be needed
Transitionary Power Multisig A temporary power enabling the Multisig to operate under the mandate of YIP-41 until the set of decision-making powers covers all needed transactions
Emergency Powers yGuard Immediately intervene in case of attack or bug to shutdown or rollback strategies or vaults
Manage Strategies yBrain Activate, deactivate, tune, and maintain strategies
Define Yearn Protocol yDev Decide what code is considered part of yearn and what isn’t
Manage Protocol yDev Maintain and improve the Yearn Protocol
Add Strategies yDev Add new strategies to vaults
Delegate Transactions yTx Create delegated transactions for the multisig to sign and execute
Pay Team yPeople Create, deploy, modify, or terminate Yearn compensation packages
Set Budgets yBudget Create budgets for coordinape, grants, hiring, operations, or other workstreams
Farm Treasury yFarm Farm with the treasury and make decisions on airdrops
Ratify yTeam Signers yOps Formally approve or remove signers for each yTeam

Implementation

This proposal requires no additional implementation beyond the adoption of new processes utilizing the platforms currently active within yearn.

The nested consensus mechanisms needed for yTeams can be implemented in a number of ways today, but after much discussion and feedback from the core team and yearn community the authors decided to limit this proposal to the social layer. The detailed description of yearn governance provided in the proposal is intended to guide the research and development of new governance platforms custom tailored to yearn’s specific needs to be developed and proposed for our use in the near future.

Our friends at Gnosis[5], Colony[6], LEGO Dao[7], Snapshot[8], Tally[9], finance.vote[10], and Orca Protocol[11] have offered to help us build whatever we need to implement our vision of governance.

Examples

To help clarify how the changes proposed in this specification will function in the wild, here are some hypothetical examples of decision-making in Governance 2.0.

Replacing a yOps Signer

Banteg goes rogue, starts shilling XRP hard and is absent from important Yearn work. Someone creates a YIP to replace him from yOps with Justin Sun (who has become a benevolent, humble, and trusted yearn contributor). The vote passes, banteg is removed as a signer and Justin is added.

Creating a new yTeam

It turns out pension funds are yearn’s golden opportunity. A group of contributors on the dev team have been working on a whole new product line. Someone creates a YIP to ratify this group as a yTeam (‘yPension’) and assign them management power over the new set of contracts for the pension product. The vote fails to pass, the new pension contracts remain under the control of yDev where they were made, and the pension group can still work but without specific power.

Deciding on an Airdrop

Spurn Finance, an unauthorized fork of yearn on Iota launches and sends a large airdrop of SPYFI direct to the Multisig. They say in their docs it’s supposed to “reward the yearn community.” The yFarm team has the ‘Farm Treasury’ power which includes deciding on what to do with airdrops. They decide to give 50% of the tokens to Andre and the rest to a Coordinape[12] contributor circle for distribution.

This causes conflict in the community. Some members feel the airdrop should have been given to all YFI holders proportional to their holdings. Other think they should have been given to vault users proportional to TVL. Others think all should have gone to the community contributors not just half.

yFarm decides to stick to their belief and they send their decision to yTx. yTx creates a transaction to implement yFarm’s decision and delegates it to the Multisig. During this time there is much discussion on twitter, telegram, discord, and the forum. People ask the Multisig to veto it to give them time. Since there is so much turmoil, the Multisig does decide to veto and give the community more time to think about other options. yFarm is fine with that, they can always resubmit again later.

Someone makes a YDP to remove the ‘Farm Treasury’ power from yFarm but it fails since they were being super reasonable. A number of alternate allocations are suggested. Andre comes out and says thank you, but he doesn’t want the airdrop. Someone puts forth a new split that goes to YFI holders, vault users, and a Coordinape circle that they agree to implement. yFarm likes it, but changes the proportions a bit, then they puts through the tx which the Multisig does not veto and it is executed.

Redelegating Veto Power

Kitten Court (an unauthorized fork of Kleros Court on Dogecoin) comes out with a new product, the Veto Master 9000, it’s an AGI that can decide on vetoes better than humans. Someone makes a YDP to move ‘Veto Power’ from the Multisig to the Veto Master 9000. It fails because this is obviously a skem.

Yearn Proposals & Delegated Powers

Vitalik joins the dev team and people are so pumped they want him on yDev immediately. Someone writes a proposal to add Vitalik as a yDev signer and wants it to be a YIP. But YFI holders don’t have that power, so the proposal can only be a YSP (Yearn Signaling Proposal). yOps has the ‘Ratify yTeam Members’ power, so it’s up to them to decide. The YSP ends with 95% of voters signaling yes. yOps thinks this is meaningful, so they agree that if Vitalik wants the job, they will ratify him as a signer. He agrees. We all party in a space hotel.

Adding a Product to the Yearn Protocol

Andre writes a new perpetual insurance product. This can be part of vaults and a stand-alone product. It’s passed audits and looks great. Another community contributor, VALISfan1981, has also written a perpetual insurance product and she has deployed it already, unaudited on her own site which allows people to deposit into vaults with her insurance system. She wants yearn to adopt her product as part of the Yearn protocol.

yDev has the ‘Define Yearn Protocol’ power. They review both options, discuss with the community, and decide to add Andre’s code as part of yearn and use dev team resources to develop it further. VALISfan1981 can continue to offer their alternative product, of course, but it will be offered as an outside service.

Deciding Something Outside of Defined Powers

Dark Ghosty decides that the Spix’s Macaw[13] is the official bird of yearn and is telling everyone this on telegram. He’s really pushing hard for it. Deciding on our official bird is not a defined power. Anyone can say that a bird is yearn’s official bird, but that doesn’t mean anything. But Ghosty loves that bird, so he does a proposal to adopt the Spix’s Macaw as the official bird of yearn. The forum poll looks good, so he goes ahead and does a YIP, and that passes. The Spix’s Macaw becomes the official bird of yearn.

Aggressive Attempt to Fund a New Project

The Coordinape team wants to ask yearn for a grant to fund development. They can ask yOps since they have a set amount of money for stuff like this that they get from the treasury as determined by yBudget via their ‘Set Budgets’ power. yOps says no, so Coordinape decides to ask yBudget directly to allocate them some recurring funds, but they say no too. Then they go to yDev and ask to be added to the Yearn Protocol with the ‘Define Yearn Protocol’ power so the dev team will help them build their product, but they are too busy.

Next option, they do a proposal to ask YFI holders to fund them. They get to the YIP but it fails. The Coordinape team is pissed. They work their asses off and have an amazing product. So they craft a devious plan…

First they do a new proposal to ratify themselves as the yApe yTeam. The YIP passes! yOps talks to the new yApe team and together they decide who the signers should be, and yOps formalizes them with their ‘Ratify yTeam Members’ power.

yApe is a yTeam but they have no power. They do a YDP to take the ‘Set Budget’ power from yBudget and spend thousands of dollars on a marketing campaign to convince YFI holders. But YFI holders don’t buy it, they can tell something is off, and the YDP fails. yApe does a new YIP to create a new power ‘Fund Coordinape’ and this fails too. The community is not happy with Coordinape, so someone does a YIP to deratify their yTeam, it passes.

After some soul searching, the team recognizes their mistake, makes an apology, and yOps decides to give them a grant. It’s enough to make a sick product which changes the world.

Rationale

Constrained Delegation

The authors of this YIP embrace the principles of creative freedom for yearn contributors set forth in what has come to be known as “the yearn manifesto”[14]. Anyone with the requisite talent, ideas and willingness to work should be able to contribute to yearn, even if they do not hold YFI, and even if YFI holders do not authorize them to do so. Thus, we see the merits of what may be called a ‘core development’ philosophy of technology governance, and do not believe that yTeam members should need to be elected by or otherwise formally accountable to YFI holders. On the other hand, we also recognize the ‘tyranny of structurelessness’ that can ensue when anarchist principles of self-organization are pushed to the extreme, as well as the omnipresent threat that core-style governance can become captured through its dependence on the patronage of for-profit corporations and their proxies (‘associations,’ ‘foundations,’ ‘consortiums,’ etc.)

Similarly, we recognize both the potential benefits and perils of bottom-up, DAO-style governance. YFI was disseminated as ‘the governance token of yearn’. Although the meaning, scope and mechanisms of such governance were (perhaps deliberately) under-specified at the time of YFI’s creation, certain emergent cultural values are fairly clear: YFI holders expect that they have a vital value-creation role in the yearn community even if they do not have technical skills and are not ‘core developers’ or other highly active creative participants in yearn. Furthermore, YFI holders expect that yearn contributors do not work contrary to YFI holders’ interests. For example, it would be unacceptable for the Multisig to drain the entire treasury to give themselves unearned or excessive bonuses. But, just as creative autonomy can degenerate into the tyranny of structurelessness, so, too, DAO governance can deteriorate into “the tyranny of the masses”—bikeshedding, needless bureaucracy and populist political haggling are all apt to emerge when decision-making is driven by those who view crowdsourced governance as an end-in-itself.

We can see the tension between creative freedom and group consensus play out at the practical level in a kind of Catch-22 faced by creators. If all decision-making authority is vested in governance token holders, then, in theory, all uses of community resources should be pre-approved by token holder voting. So, for example, if a developer needs a budget to create a new product, the developer would first need to write up a spec & get it and the budget approved by YFI holders. However, this is far from ideal, because developing such a spec itself requires effort and resources, and the approved spec may unnecessarily constrain freedom, requiring the developer to go back to governance to get re-approval for deviations from the spec that are inspired during the development process. On the other hand, a developer could self-fund the product and submit it for ratification of YFI holders and a financial reward after it is done, but this is also suboptimal: it essentially creates a negative externality on developers by requiring them to bootstrap a project that might not end up with product/market fit or an adequate reward, thus deterring new contributions.

Because of the way the Multisig was empowered in YIP 41, the yearn community has generally skirted this governance Catch-22. Most new development has been funded at the discretion of the Multisig and, after funding but before full deployment, has been ratified to become an official part of yearn through a proposal to YFI holders. We believe this is an important part of why the yearn community is known for having some of the most capable volunteer developers with the most aggressive pace of innovation of any DeFi community. If political debates were a gating item to every new project, good devs would be deterred or hampered from contributing to yearn, yearn’s progress would be slow.

We note, however, that while this process has been effective, it has led to a muddled conception of governance that spawns many questions, e.g.: ‘How meaningful can governance be if YFI holders are only asked to sign off on a new development after there are material sunk costs?’ ‘What does it mean for a new product to be ‘accepted into yearn,’ and who gets to decide that?’ ‘What do YFI holders govern?’

Our modest proposal for threading the needle through these philosophical tapestries is a model we call ‘constrained delegation’–in effect, YFI holders delegate their governance powers to autonomous groups like the Multisig and yTeams and thus empower them to be creative. These battle-tested, YFI-approved yTeams are privileged to be able to get funding on a more spontaneous, informal basis and have their contributions presumed to be ‘yearn-official’, but are still subject to being monitored by YFI holders and disenfranchised if they abuse their roles.

In contrast to core governance (which is top-down relative to users and bottom-up relative to creators) and DAO governance (which is top-down relative to creators and bottom-up relative to users), ‘constrained delegation’ avoids subordinating either group to the other. Instead, we propose using a kind of checks-and-balances system that has more in common with the governance of corporations than that of kibbutzes, while still being more open, creative and spontaneous. Unlike with a corporation, yearn has no state charters, legal agreements or fiduciary relationships. YFI holders have not made an investment of capital into yearn, do not hold ‘shares’ with rights defined by a state statute, and should not expect that yTeam members will act like single-minded automatons blindly devoted to increasing YFI holders’ profits at the expense of more multifarious purposes. Rather, if yearn is similar to a corporation, it is more like an idealistic version of a public benefit corporation—a public commons that exists to simultaneously benefit many different kinds of stakeholders (users, creators, students, other friendly DeFi communities, etc.) in a delicate set of tradeoffs.

Through rough consensus, YFI holders govern de facto rather than de jure and use that socially constructed governance influence to actively monitor and, to the extent desired, modulate the behavior of contributors. When it comes to governing yTeams, this governance may often look very similar to YFI holders ‘doing nothing,’ because YFI holders have already endorsed the Multisig and yTeams and they are presumed to act on a selfish but incentive-aligned basis consistent with the expectations of the community. However, when the contributors stray too far, or fail to communicate adequately, YFI holders should always be waiting in the wings to intervene in the situation, revoke their endorsement and restore a positive-sum equilibrium for the yearn community.

The Future

This proposal architects a powerful, flexible, and novel form of decentralized governance that satisfies two critical needs: 1) giving YFI holders clear control and 2) empowering the team to execute with the speed yearn is famous for.

We believe that DAOs are in their infancy and there is much to learn. Although the promise of fully on-chain and trustless governance is alluring, we are not there yet. Behind every DAO implementation, there is a group of trusted contributors. Our model seeks to foreground these trusted relationships and give YFI holders the ability to modify them directly.

This proposal provides a northstar for implementations of Gov 2.0 that can iterate and improve over time. Here are some additional ideas we would like to explore further in the future:

  • implement nested multisig-style consensus mechanisms such that each yTeam has execution power for their domain of action, flexibly reconfigurable based on delegated powers
  • move away from proxy voting via either a tool like SafeSnap[15] or an on-chain L2 implementation with something like Compound’s Governor Bravo[16]
  • tokenize decision-making powers as NFTs for improved transparency and functionality
  • deprecate veto power via third-party arbitration
  • utilize Coordinape for some yTeams, for example:
    • budget allocation circle (yBudget)
    • compensation setting circle (yPeople)
  • explore using conviction voting to establish new yTeams and their membership
  • migrate to on-chain voting using Colony v2, utilizing reputation for yTeams
  • collaborations with Gnosis, Colony, LEGO Dao, Tally, finance.vote, and Orca Protocol
  • establish practices for ratification of yTeams wielding off-chain decision-making powers on domains such as marketing, docs, and the web

Credit

This proposal is the result of months of work across many teams and has benefited from the advice and feedback of dozens of brilliant people. You know who you are. Thank you. And a special shout out to the YFI Governance telegram group in particular for the regular and lively discussions.

Vote

Non-Binding Forum Poll

  • Yes, I support this proposal.
  • No, I am against this proposal.
0 voters

Binding Snapshot Vote

Cast your vote on Snapshot

References

[1] https://docs.yearn.finance/faq#what-is-the-multisig-and-what-do-they-do
[2] http://gov.yearn.fi/t/yip-41-temporarily-empower-multisig
[3] YIP-55: Formalize the YIP Process
[4] http://gov.yearn.fi/t/yip-59-temporarily-extend-multisig-empowerment
[5] https://gnosis-safe.io/
[6] https://colony.io/
[7] https://twitter.com/lego_dao
[8] https://snapshot.org/
[9] https://www.withtally.com/
[10] https://www.finance.vote/
[11] https://www.orcaprotocol.org/
[12] http://coordinape.com/
[13] Spix's macaw - Wikipedia
[14] http://gov.yearn.fi/t/how-we-think-about-yearn
[15] https://blog.gnosis.pm/introducing-safesnap-the-first-in-a-decentralized-governance-tool-suite-for-the-gnosis-safe-ea67eb95c34f
[16] Compound v2 Docs | Governance

18 Likes

Huge thankyou to everyone who helped put this together!

This made me laugh.

On a serious note though, formalizing the structure is great and necessary in my opinion. One thing the YFI holders need is more insight into what the yTeams are doing.

We have The State of the Vaults (Which is great) but I think we could benefit from broader reports with some kind of regularity for those yTeams.

What I don’t want that to be though is something that adds a drag on the teams and slows them down.

It could be someone who’s kind of a lurker in those Telegrams/Discords that compiles a little blurb for the week of what’s going on.

5 Likes

Extremely well thought out, and a lot to digest here. Really like the fundamental structure and progressive decentralization model while keeping the priority on speed. Look forward to reading in more detail!

5 Likes

It’s clear you guys have put a lot of work into this and the main concepts make a lot of sense.

With the establishing of yTeams I would love to see something like a yAGM or yQBR (quarterly business review) process established where each yTeam shares and presents what they’re working on. If one power of the YFI Holders is to add/revoke powers from the yTeams then we will need to ensure a level of transparency on how yTeams are performing so that the YFI Holders can effectively fulfil that role.

7 Likes

I do like this idea a lot. We actually discussed something very similar at one point and it kind of got lost in the noise.

The issue with something like this, though, is that YFI holders do not have off-chain authority over the yTeams, and meetings/calls are off-chain events. I do think yTeams should consider dedicating like 1-2 days of calls, talks, etc. once a quarter to engage with the community, but this would need to be something each yTeam decides for itself or that the yTeams all agree on and do together.

4 Likes

An excellently crafted proposal, so thank you to all who have contributed.

Absolutely in favour of adopting this approach. However, I’d echo the above comments – there is something missing here around completing the circle through information provision back up to YFI holders. YFI holders can’t properly enact their role in this structure without such information.

This could be as simple as each yTeam committing to a sensible cycle of information sharing (e.g, weekly in some cases or quarterly in others) as a quid-pro-quo for their delegated power.

Alternatively, a more structured approach would be to treat the delegation of information reporting responsibilities in the same way as the delegation of decision-making powers. This may work well for the more important areas such as financial reporting or vault performance monitoring, although is perhaps overkill in other areas.

5 Likes

'Nuff said. :sunglasses: :+1: Good to go as is – the finer details, future teams, suggestions and reporting can be determined by the working teams themselves (together with the community in multiple new forum posts/channels). This proposal is more than sufficient for our initial structure.

Two future teams to consider:
1.) yCommunity or yGov - let’s not kid ourselves. **Managing the gov/dao community, ** ie. adequately reporting to the community, engaging forum posts, onboarding new community members to our chats and creating explainers on how voting/gov works, planning Governance 2.1x…is a full-time job. yOps already has their hands full coordinating contributors/signers and are internal; we need an external facing team to communicate, organize and engage the community in governance, and to be a bridge between the community/holders and yTeams. (Could be nested as a sub-team under yOps or its own)

2.) yMarketing or yGrow - We need a legit growth marketing team. We’ve outgrown the meme train and it’s time to think about long-term strategies as we grow . To attract, educate and build loyalty for the next generation of mainstream users and institutional clients–and to attract partners. This is everything from educational sites, to pitch decks, website messaging, Discord/Telegram/newsletter strategy, comms calendar, PR (journalist relationships/crisis comms etc), and events (conferences, clubhouse, etc.)…of course to dank memes and merch (ySocks jk). In a broader sense, this could also include Business Development (ie. yVault x Coinbase partnership or CB education course, government treasury vault for city of miami etc.). This is also a tricky one due to our past history with marketing…and our cultural DNA to not engage in shilling. It’s a balance, but it must be done. At the very least, start with education and communication. The community will figure out the memes and shilling on their own, but let’s get the core materials and messaging right. Just like the dev roadmap, we need a strategic marketing roadmap.

Consider when we have $30B+ TVL and 1000x more community members. Our vaults can scale relatively easily, but our community comms/marketing/education/gov isn’t scalable through code; we need dedicated teams to help scale our growing community and relieve the burden from our devs.

10 Likes

A yGov/yCommunity team, for example, could help organize a quarterly/monthly clubhouse call with the community and help summarize reports from the various teams. Each yTeam is so busy working on their priorities and as teams grow larger it gets more and more difficult to schedule/prioritize reporting and community chats without a dedicated owner to nag everyone and make it happen. :sweat_smile:

1 Like

Man, that’s a long one. But the examples more than make up for it.

Maybe we do need to define which yTeam has the power to declare yearn’s official bird, just as a nod to this proposal.

3 Likes

very well thought through. Nice one.

I knew this was a troll when i read this:

I’m agreeing with the scheduled call, but very against clubhouse as the medium.

3 Likes

Discord now has a clubhouse feature so we could use that sometime.

1 Like

We have a weekly sync with aggregated notes published here:

7 Likes

Never knew…

Very useful, as a first iteration just a little more detail on the points plus publicising this (weekly discussion thread here for Qs?) would deal with my point above. Don’t want to burden with unnecessary reporting, but do feel holders need a bit more info in order to fulfil their role in Gov2.0

I congratulate for the proposal. It seems very well written and highly innovative to me.

One of the claims is that in Yearn hierarchy does not exist. According to Yearn’s Manifesto “Nobody has authority over anyone else”. Actually, this is not entirely true as in the outlined structures veto-powers are – although temporarily – attributed to the Multisig. Moreover, yOps has the power to ratify yTeam Members and to change signers of other yTeams.

I am not against these “special powers”, as I think that every organization needs to grant powers in order to control and to coordinate the common activity, especially where powers are delegated, as in our community. To better coordinate the activity, for the future one could think about adding an additional board composed by representatives of the yTeams (one Member of every yTeam). This board could be consulted by the Multisig and the yOps with respect to strategic decisions. This could grant more cohesion among the teams, without harming flexibility and innovation.

I find this sentence a bit misleading: “Through rough consensus, YFI holders govern de facto rather than de jure ”.

In the Yearn protocol the distinction between de facto and de jure simply does not exist. The basis of the governance 2.0 is a social contract, ratified through a vote. This will undeniably be the law of Yearn, a kind of material constitution. In the blockchain world it is beautiful to state that everything is run by code, by technology, etc. I really appreciate when you frankly write “Although the promise of fully on-chain and trustless governance is alluring, we are not there yet. Behind every DAO implementation, there is a group of trusted contributors”. Through this proposal we are setting the rules ( de jure ).

At any rate, according to the proposed structure, I think that instead of distinguishing between the facto and the jure one could say that YFI holders do not directly govern the protocol. They are able to control, propose, vote, etc.: as usually do citizens in a country. In this respect, the proposed governance system seems to escape from the structure of a corporation and reassemble more the one of a State, in which the yTeams are kind of Ministries. The difference is that our community is small and token holders have powerful means to influence the governance.

Said this, I fully support the proposal and I am thankful for such an enormous contribution.

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Terrific proposal. Yearn has one of the best templates for decentralizing operations and treasury spending. How can I get involved with one of the yTeams? I have experience working on asset allocation, spending, and reporting with DAO treasuries. I would love to contribute to Yearn, possibly on the yFarm or yBudget team.

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Great proposal, well thought out. If and when this is executed will be an awesome way to leverage the great community we have here with yearn. Combine with coordinape and could be exciting. Cheers to future of France asset managers :no_mouth:

so who wants to ratify yOnboarding?

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Awesome! We always need people to help out and if anyone wants to know what they can do, they can always dm the mods on here, telegram, or discord. Sent you a dm to see how you can best get involved.

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Fair points, @Eagle . Personally I do not consider “social contracts” to be de jure because there is no clear enforcement or remedies mechanism. This doesn’t mean that there is no possibility of enforcing performance or remedying breaches–just that doing so depends on moral suasion and power jockeying rather than on a legalistic mechanism backed by the threat of state coercion (such as it is). In some situations, social contracts may even have sharper teeth than legal ones, but that doesn’t mean they are legal contracts.

Thanks for the reply @lex_node. I understand your point. You basically consider everything de facto because state law does not apply. My idea is that we create law here in exercising our autonomy. Discussing about sources of law on Ethereum would be very exciting, but not of interest for the forum :slight_smile:
If there is a kind of Yearn legal team, I would be more than happy to be part of it and give the maximum of my support!