Basically, while the Ren community has skin in the game, the Ren community is currently not able to influence the Ren Ecosystem as much as the core Ren team, and this needs to change to properly have a decentralized system. The proposed Fund would be a natural start, as money is the easiest way to get coordination going.
2 Likes
In principle I believe this is a great idea!
Is there a reason that this is being tied to gas-less claims other than framing? It implies that there is some dependency between the two, can you elaborate on that?
Framing this as re-purposing money that would otherwise have been spend on gas fees only holds on a superficial level. In the end it is still Darknode operators that are footing the bill, so I donāt see why we should conflate the two.
Both ideas stand on their own and I donāt think either of them should hold up the deployment of the other. Especially gas-less claims should be rolled out as quickly as possible and not be held up by the implementation of the Community Ecosystem Fund. As mentioned we are loosing more than 100k USD per epoch.
Why do you believe the voting should happen off-chain, how do you propose only Darknode operators can participate in the final vote?
I have no problem with the team being the initial custodian of the funds, but do believe there should be a clear path towards community custodianship before the Community Fund is rolled out. Similar to the Road to Decentralization laid out for RenVM.
5 Likes
Iām generally in favor of a Community Fund, but as people already mentioned the whole idea needs further ironing. And I have a feeling that it might be a bit early for this. But one thing Iām very firm on is community involvement!
Community and public positioning/image is crucial to long term success of basically any business. We do not need to create artificial barriers for engagement and project loyalty! Current and especially future REN price will be a sufficient enough barrier by itself.
To the āDN are paying for thisā & āskin in the gameā argument this is what I have to say:
- DN operators, especially long term holders, will have huge voting power compared to non-DN operators and new investors.
- It is known that community participation in governance of most decentralized projects is very low as it is, which only further decreases unincentivized voting (read non-DN operators).
This is why Iām very firm on allowing anyone to cast their vote! Not only DN operators, but EVERY WILLING REN holder should have a say!
2 Likes
Mostly, just because this is how we figured we could make this work. Nodes already pay 10% per epoch in gas. Itād be a kick-in-the-teeth to have to pay 15% per epoch in gas + funding. We had already been trying to find ways to resolve the 10% gas issue, so we figured we better do both! And given the discussion and time and dev requirements for both, it is more efficient to bundle these two components (and this is just an RFC, so if everyone loves the gas part and hates the funding part, it is trivial to simply exclude the latter from the RIP, whereas the opposite is not true).
5 Likes
That makes sense.
This proposal contains no details on how the gas-less claims will be achieved though. Does this require a separate RFC/RIP or is it a trivial change from the user/operator perspective?
Either way more details on this would be greatly appreciated 
1 Like
Iām specifically thinking about this application that a lot of other projects use: 7Slots Casino š”ļø GerƧek Para Kazanmak İƧin GĆ¼venilir Online Casino
Buuut if people have different ideas please share. And Iām only suggesting it as a temporary solution at first, then more robust solutions can be developed later if the community has any ideas.
Having it off-chain, like Snapshot, means no risk that people wonāt vote because of gas fees (if it costs $50 to vote, I suspect we will have a lot of people who donāt participate).
I believe you should be able to configure which addresses are allowed to vote/based on some feature like deposits into a contract, like the Darknode Registry Contract. If thatās complicated for some reason (I know there are folks in the community that know how it works in detail, so please correct me) we could perhaps airdrop people some non-transferable ādarknode tokensā based on how much REN you have locked up in the Darknode Registry Contract.
2 Likes
Generally supportive
Itās really great to see so much community feedback in a relatively short period of time! This is in addition to a ton of discussions ongoing in telegram groups as well.
Generally, I am for this ecosystem fund and think this is a fantastic step towards decentralization of the Ren and the community. I also agree that moving towards a more DAO like structure or a Ren Foundation type format would be incredibly interesting.
Points of discussion/concern
However, Iām a bit hesitant to voice 100% support as the RFC stands for 3 reasons that I think would be great discussions points for the community.
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Before agreeing to forego what would be our own darknode income, Iād like to see a bit more structuring with frameworks put in place for what the funds will be used for. I personally think incentivizing builders is the most important at this stage
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This is more of a point of preference, but Iād really like to see a doubled-down investment into this fund with a matching element from the Ren Team. I donāt mean to hijack this conversation to focus on the Alameda acqui-hiring, but itās relatively obvious that there was some sort of monetary/token exchange with this deal. Even a symbolic gesture from the Ren team (or even Alameda) to seed this community fund would mean a lot to me (and Iād imagine other Frens) whether that comes in a form of matching up to $X,XXX,XXX or matching some XX% up to $X. At the end of the day, this fund will take workload off of the Ren team but will also take Darknode revenue away from us operators.
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Not to sound like a āwen boyā, but Iād like to understand the timeline for this endeavor for planning purposes. Thereās significant work involved with putting together frameworks for utilizing these funds. Letās make sure we time things to align accordingly.
In terms of snapshot - I know 2 of our Frens that have experience with setting them up.
Conclusion
Let me finish off by saying that I truly believe that this is a tremendous step towards something potentially ecosystem-transforming. RenVM is linking assets and chains together with an unprecedented method. Eventually, weāll have the ability to deploy contracts directly on RenVM to allow for even more seamless cross-chain activity.
This fund, if we set it up properly and collaboratively together, will birth the next generation of cross-chain innovation. I personally will be directing my own development resources towards these efforts with teams seeking to further Ren through this community fund. The fact that we have so much community support for this speaks volumes to our mutual agreement towards building together, and it makes me even more excited than ever to be part of this journey with all of you.
10 Likes
We will add some more light here over the life of the RFC. We have a design and a prototype implementation, so it does work and can be done. Just wanted to keep the initial focus on the overall concept and high-level discussion points, before diving into the technicals. It may well be that there is feedback that dramatically changes how we might approach the implementation of removing claiming. Certainly this will be the case for voting.
2 Likes
I donāt understand, if we are part of Alameda, what is their role? We were told that it was to help with development. If that is true then what is the purpose of the fund?
Some high-level points:
- While I agree with people that have said that it would be nice to include non-Darknode operators in the governance process of this fund, I do not believe that this makes technical sense. In reality, the Darknodes have the power in RenVM (and, because RenVM holds funds from other chains, it will never be able to have the same kind of āclient drivenā decentralisation that other chains can enjoy). The TL;DR of this is that when it comes to āhow RenVM worksā it is pretty much always going to be down to the Darknodes. Even if we did create some kind of voting contract for REN holders, I cannot think of a feasible way to actually force Darknodes to adhere. So, in short, I think governance of the funds would be down to Darknodes, and pooling (or some other kind of higher-level delegation system) would be needed to get <100K REN holders into the process. That is a discussion for another time.
- As for scope, again, I think it is hard to force any particular scope at a technical level. But, this just means the Darknode operators can essentially vote to offer grants to anyone that the majority of Darknodes feels should get them. This could be to encourage developing third-party tools, bots, websites, applications, educational material, or even integrations and liquidity mining programs.
- This fund would be completely stand-alone. None of these funds would be going to the core development team, which has plenty of funding to continue its work. The goal of the fund is to encourage non-core work (i.e. work that is not directly related to how the network functions). In principle, yes, one could simply expand the core development team and take on more of this non-core work, but this is not a meaningful way to expand our ecosystem in the long-term. We want as many different/independent people/teams contributing their own great ideas and unique spins on what to build. Creating their own sub-communities, etc. and this is a good way to bootstrap that process.
- Before anything moves forward (even to the RIP stage) we will definitely iron out all of the details (of which there are many). However, we wanted to get everyoneās thoughts on the details, and not be overly prescriptive from the outset.
- Timeline: hard to say, because auditing would be required and we are not really able to control that. But, we are talking on the magnitude of weeks for when funds could start accruing (if the RFC progress to RIP and is accepted). It would then likely be on the order of months before we could get a voting system live (much more complicated to implement, depending on how this RFC evolves, but also requires UIs and notifications, etc.).
3 Likes
There is a big difference between development done by the core team, and incentivizing people outside the core team to participate in RenVM. Decentralization of the community is important, especially over the long-term, and this is a way to be able to fund activity beyond core development that is sustainable in the long-term. As mentioned above, this could be new applications, new tools, analytics websites, pooling services, educational material, liquidity programs, and so on. Having funds controlled completely independently of the core team is important (the independent part is very important) because you do not want one team to have all of the control over where all funds are granted. This would constrain the growth of RenVM to only exactly what the core team wanted it to be, which is the opposite of decentralization.
6 Likes
Sounds good. Iām in.
There is a project that may or may not be useful to jump start the
governance of the fund. https://www.dfohub.com/
Decentralized Flexible Organizations(DFOs)
āDFOhubāthe first DFOāis an On-Chain dApp that facilitates the creation and governance of all other DFOsā
3 Likes
I like the idea of potentially implementing this like Gitcoin has implemented grants. People put forward proposals, and Darknodes vote for the ones they think are valuable, and the payout is proportional to the vote (where we would follow the good example of quadratic voting, as oppose to linear voting). It is simple, and proven to work. I wonder if we could somehow even use Gitcoin to do this.
EDIT1: This also has the advantage of not needing a specific level of participation, because funding is granted proportionally to whatever votes were cast.
EDIT2: It is worth keeping in mind that we do not need a āfully fledgedā governance system at the moment. Something capable of sanely distributing grants is all.
12 Likes
Nice proposal, definitely in favor of this proposal 
1 Like
In favor. Contributing to the development of the REN ecosystem is a much better use of funds that donating it to miners.
Only darknodes should have the right to vote as the fees being used ābelongā to darknodes.
Anyone should be able to submit a proposal.
A fund that distributes grants in BTC (or renBTC) should be able to attract many great ideas.
1 Like
Yes, very much in favor of this RFC, well thought out, likely to succeed IMO
1 Like
Am very much in favor and awesome to see many good comments!! Reminds me a bit of this sushiswap forum post I saw the other day where the interaction impressed me (which I also believe is a big part of the success that project is experiencing).
Few comments I have:
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Agree 5% is a good start and I could see a balance between 2-5%.
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I like the idea of using Snapshots off-chain voting especially since the team behind snapshot (Balancer) also have worked closely with projects like Aragon which could be one proposed solution to an easy launch of DAO.
Aragon Govern together with Blancer and their ERC3000 innovation saves the hassle of multisig setup and still be able to link the offchain voting of snapshot with onchian execution on ethereum (which works since renBTC can be on ethereum and the community fund doesnt have to be a BTC vault on Bitcoin). More information about Aragon Govern here.
(I dont hold any aragon tokens and have no financial interest in them, i just think it could save a lot of time and hassle with writing new contracts, audits, when thats already done by Aragon and battle tested by many projects).
(side note, this kinda ties back to the convo @MaxRoszko and I were having in the post here. If a project like Aragon would run on renVM instead it could tie the offchain voting with onchain execution on any chain. But thats a separate discussion hehe)
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I see no issue with Ren team and Alameda to be in control of the keys to the fund initially, this worked well for sushiswaps multisig structure last year so we have seen it work fine as an interim solution. Besides, if Sam would agree to tweet about it they are basically publicly holding themselves acountable at the same time as renVM gets some marketing exposure and maybe attracts new people to renVM governance. SBF has many followers after all.
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Cannot think of any reason why anyone other than node operators should be able to vote. Will just be too easy to game the system if everyone can vote. Just think of the fud around the voting power large tokenholders like exchanges will have when they have zero interest in the progress of renVMās future.
Maybe a good solution to this can be found at a later stage where REN token holders have to lock their REN tokens for a time period to prove their interest in the project. I dont mind all token holders voting, just need to make sure incentives are aligned with best interest of renVM and not some P&D or manipulative/malicious incentive. Still too early to allow all token holders to vote imo, possible issues should be ironed out first. -
@loong had a look at Gitcoin and i like it, I assume you mean for the process of finding external devs? How would the DAO be funding it though? Can it be linked to the off-chain voting? That would be cool. If yes then itās probably easier solution than Aragon I mentioned above, that would be more a long term DAO solution.
5 Likes
Very interesting share, never seen that before! People should definitely consider something like this and discuss trade-offs vs. just using a standard Gnosis multisig.
2 Likes
I own a node and I agree. We need a more formal way of voting and reaching out to Ren holders. Most pistols have no idea what it going on.
1 Like
I think this is a very well thought out proposal and I believe it will add a lot of value to being a darknode owner as well as an active member in the community.
2 Likes