Everything is 10x more error-prone (for example the multisig owners should be checked individually) and the amount is significant
The option where the multisigs are owned by the marketing team solves this. We would delegate to the university groups’ addresses.
It costs 10x more gas to deploy the multisigs and vote
Agree and that’s not ideal but the more we decentralize the more this will be the case.
It’s 10x more difficult/expensive to collect the rewards and return them
Expensive yes. But not difficult if the marketing team owns the multisigs.
It’s not scalable in that you can’t add or remove university groups easily
Granting/revoking delegation is easy.
If there is an equivalent solution that doesn’t have these disadvantages, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be used.
What is the equivalent solution?
To me the best solution would be that all the tokens are kept in one multisig but we delegate in smaller amounts to the university groups. But as Midhav pointed out delegation is all or nothing. We can’t currently delegate fractions so we need 10 wallets to work around that.
The marketing team stakes tokens through their multisig
The marketing team creates another multisig and assigns the addresses that represent individual university groups as multisig owners
The marketing team multisig delegates its voting power to the new multisig
The university group multisig is responsible with voting on proposals, adding or removing multisig owners as requested. If they don’t comply, you retract your delegation (and potentially delegate to a new multisig that doesn’t include bad actors).
This does require them to vote as a bloc, but I don’t see why this is not preferable.
I see. BlockVenture pointed out that if they vote off-chain it removes some of the incentive for the university groups because then they aren’t gaining experience directly participating in DAO governance. @ArielBlockVenture & @twellener should probably explain it in their own words.
A couple negative side effects I see are
It can deliver a different outcome if the block is evenly split on a close overall vote.
It kind of takes some of the fun/marketing benefit out of seeing university brand ENS names voting for/against proposals.
On the other hand I like the idea of being more gas efficient, which we get with a bloc.
Each group would still have to have a representative Ethereum address (which an ENS name can be associated with) and they would all have to confirm a multisig transaction and that is on-chain voting.
It can deliver a different outcome if the block is evenly split on a close overall vote.
It’s not obvious to me that this difference would not be for the better
To put it on record, there has been a lot of discussion on this proposal since voting went live.
The current thinking is that we would keep the whole fund in a single multisig wallet managed by the marketing team. This wallet would delegate to an address managed by BlockVenture. BlockVenture would organize off-chain voting amongst the university groups for each proposal using a polling tool, such as snapshot. Then a single vote would be cast in the API3 DAO for the university groups as a voting bloc.
This would be more gas efficient and make managing the tokens and staking rewards easier while still allowing the university groups to participate in governance.
Since we’ve decided to have the university groups vote off the main DAO and then together on the DAO as a bloc, does anyone have recommendations on a voting tool that should be used for the off-DAO voting?
The criteria would be:
Security: It doesn’t necessarily have to be as secure as the DAO itself (off-chain is OK) but we don’t want the bloc to be manipulated by a bad actor.
Visibility: The university group activity should be easily accessible and visible on the web, including any discussions and the university logos. It should be visually attractive.
Realistic: It should help the university groups gain real-world experience interacting with DAOs.
Interesting point! I had assumed a representative would be necessary but if they’re voting off-chain (gasless) or even on a very low cost chain then it could be more granular where each group member votes individually.
I think this forum is the ideal place for group meetings and discussions. It’s the most visible and there is no cost or technical reason to separate it from the main DAO. It could be in Governance Meta or we could create a subcategory for university group discussions.
That was my thought process with the groups voting off chain. There can be discussions and debates amongst the team over a decision rather than a majority or a single representative taking initiative. If we are trying to avoid malicious actors than leaving decisions to one or even a few from a group can lead to that sort of activity.
Leaving discussion on open form will work, can there be different tags for the different university groups. Having them discussing on one page will probably lead to confusion.
Congratulations to @ArielBlockVenture, @ryan and the API3 marketing team. It is great to see the API3 marketing team undertake initiatives with long term impact
Just sharing a thought, it may perhaps already be in the team’s plan.
Participation in governance would certainly be a motivator for students. I am wondering whether it will help to add on some immediate smaller benefits, to – 1. Build the visibility / buzz within the student community, 2. Make the program even more attractive.
I have generally seen that supporting a big idea with a few more activities, gives it a good boost. Could be anything that gives visibility or buzz to the program, for example
NFTs (simple ones, like POAPs)
Merchandize like hoodies
Small monetary rewards ? For behavior we want to promote (participation in discussions, voting, etc.)
Just a thought, for your consideration.
Wish you all the best for the program. I am sure it will have a good cascading impact with colleges and the young Web 3 community.
@ArielBlockVenture Hi there Ariel! This is Kagan From Hacettepe University. I’m Co-Founder of Hacettepe University Blockchain Club. I would like to learn more about progress, you can see my message at #introductions on discord. I could not found message button, thats why Im writing here.
Hello @ArielBlockVenture and fellow API3 contributors. I am honored to be representing VCU Blockchain here in participating in API3’s governance proposals and oracle solution. I believe that our values promptly align with API DAO’s mission to empower blockchain involvement in the youth. As much of the current traditional systems of finance/governance in society have become inefficient, the students involved in VCU Blockchain pride themselves on introducing the next generation to these newfound technologies.
Have any of these university groups built or written anything? Any hackathon or project submissions using Airnode/Beacons or whitepapers or articles about first party oracles? Would be interested to see some links or examples here or in Discord
