Proposal: Maple Finance Governance Process

Proposal Forum
1

Here I propose a governance process for Maple’s early days. The inspiration for this process will be given in the first comment. Would love to hear your questions, comments, and concerns - this is completely open to feedback and revision!

Step 1: Request for Comments

Create a topic on this governance forum with the details of your proposal and create a corresponding snapshot proposal. In your proposal, please include a one paragraph summary of the proposal, the motivation for the proposal, and any other relevant details. The titles of the forum topic and snapshot proposal should be “Request for Comments - <name of your proposal>”.

Please keep the snapshot active for at least 1 week to allow enough time for proper discussion. Be sure to respond to questions and concerns from the community on the governance forum and on Discord.

When the voting period ends, if the vote passes with a quorum of 1% of all MPL (100,000 MPL), you may move onto Step 2. If there is no quorum, you may incorporate feedback from this discussion and create a new request for comments.

Step 2: Maple Improvement Proposal (MIP)

Create a new topic on this governance forum and a new corresponding snapshot proposal. Be sure to incorporate feedback from the Request for Comments and include links to the forum topic and snapshot proposal from Step 1. The title of this second forum topic and snapshot proposal should be “MIP<number> - <name of proposal>”. The first MIP should be named MIP1, the next MIP2, and so on.

Include any necessary code changes and make sure the code is well tested. Major changes should be professionally audited. You may submit a separate proposal to have the community decide whether to use the Maple treasury to fund audits and/or development.

Please keep the snapshot active for at least 1 week to allow enough time for proper discussion. Be sure to respond to questions and concerns from the community on the governance forum and on Discord.

When the voting period ends, if the vote passes with a quorum of 5% of all MPL (500,000 MPL), the Maple team will enact the change via a multisig.

Once this process has matured a little and we have made any necessary tweaks, we will move to on-chain governance.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to the community on Discord to discuss any ideas!

Links

Discord: https://discord.gg/ajSZhamS
Documentation: https://maple-finance.gitbook.io/maple/
GitHub: https://github.com/maple-labs/maple-core
Snapshot: TBA

4 Likes
2

Inspiration

Pretty much all major protocols have at least two steps to the governance process. This allows feedback to be incorporated into subsequent revisions of each proposal.

Uniswap governance (the above proposal was mainly inspired by this)
Step 1: Snapshot. Quorum: 25k UNI (0.005% of circulating UNI)
Step 2: Snapshot. Quorum: 50k UNI (0.01% of circulating UNI)
Step 3: On-chain voting. Must have 10m UNI delegated to create the proposal. In order for a vote to pass, the majority of votes must vote yes, and at least 4% of all UNI must vote in the affirmative. This is to ensure that measures pass with adequate voter participation. Submitted code must be audited.

Aave governance
Step 1: Aave Request for Comments (Discourse poll)
Step 2: Aave Improvement Proposal (on-chain vote). Must be submitted by a community member with enough proposition power.

Compound governance
Seems to be unstructured discussion on their discourse and then anyone with 1% of COMP delegated to them can create an on-chain proposal.
There are also “autonomous proposals” where people without 1% can pool their votes.

Maker governance
Long and formal governance process
https://forum.makerdao.com/t/makerdao-standard-governance-processes/4298
https://github.com/makerdao/mips/blob/master/MIP0/mip0.md
https://forum.makerdao.com/t/mip0-the-maker-improvement-proposal-framework/1902

Notes

  • The amount of MPL circulating at first might be less than 10% of the total MPL; the quorums may need to be adjusted.
  • Many protocols only allow certain people to create the final on-chain proposal, the last step in the governance process. These certain people are generally either trusted community members or people who have enough token power delegated to them. Not sure if Maple should also do this?
  • If/when Maple’s treasury gets big enough, we could have a grants program like Uniswap’s and Compound’s.
6 Likes
3

Be careful taking uni gov as a model. It has major issues.
I can come up with more details if really needed (not easily found on a quick search)

I favor simplicity and to be sure the gov model doesn’t have the risk of getting stuck.

1 Like
4

Hi Unus, can you describe those issues? And what parts of the process do you think should be simplified? Would love to hear your thoughts! Are there any protocols whose governance you do like?

2 Likes
5

This is great @stonksman - sets out a solid starting point for Maple’s governance process.
I think the two stages are sensible, my only comment would be to echo what you mentioned about initial circulating supply potentially being under 10% and hence warranting us to choose lower quorums.

We will aim to preserve flexibility at the start by having implementation managed by the governance multi-sig so that the community’s will can be effectively implemented once determined.

4 Likes
6

Great first stab at this. Governance is an amorphous blob, especially in early days. It will begin to take form over time, but definitely valuable to have the conversation about how it should work.

I would strongly recommend splitting your Step 1 into 2 parts:
1.) Forum Post
2.) Snapshot

In my experience with other DAOs (BarnBridge, CREAM, Yearn, Carbonswap, etc.) forum posts are the best way to get a feel for how the community feels about it and, more importantly, if the proposal needs adjustments before it’s ready for prime time. The forum discussions can go on for weeks or more before a Snapshot should be created.

Caveat: There are situations where Core Team members will go straight to Snapshot due to information they have to act quickly. This is expected and encouraged. The Snapshot will decide.

Good job!

Jonny

2 Likes