Retired: Christopher.conforti.eth

Apologies for the late post. As usual, my time was limited.

Proposal : Migrate AXS 250k Co-Investment to New Axie Infinity (AXS) Contract

This proposal is basic maintenance. Of course I’m voting FOR it, but these sorts of things should be considered patches; we honestly shouldn’t need to vote on this.

Proposal : Whitelist ANKR - 100K Co-Invest

I will vote FOR this proposal. The project provides “one-click” blockchain node setup using virtual containers run on clouds provided by service providers; the ANKR token is how service is bought and how service providers are paid for sharing their computing resources. There are no other places to stake ANKR yet, so being the first would bring benefits.

Proposal : Increase ROOK co investment by 600,000 BNT

I will vote FOR this proposal. Keeper provides on-chain underwriting services for borrowers, as well as internally handling liquidation of underwater positions without placing them on the open market. It incentivizes other keepers to be assimilated without being destructive or playing dirty. It also introduced kCompound, which utilizes the Compound protocol to provide safer loans. We’ve also integrated Keeper to power limit orders on our trade UI, with apparent benefit.

Proposal : Whitelist NEXO - 250K Co-Invest

I will vote FOR this proposal. I’ve had personal experience with Nexo, and their service has been around for some time. I’m honestly surprised we haven’t already whitelisted them. They are a centralized organization that provides services somewhat similar to Maker; collateralized crypto lending. Loans may be drawn directly to one’s bank account, or one may borrow crypto. They also have a card coming Soon™.

Whitelist Union Protocol Governance Token (UNN), Default 20,000 BNT Co-Investment

I will vote FOR this proposal. Union is a suite of individual insurance-like protection coverage tools that can be composed to form a sort of totally-custom blockchain insurance policy. Protections range from smart contract bugs/exploits to gas prices. This has many applications and this one should be kept close.

Proposal : Whitelist Perpetual Protocol (PERP)

I will vote FOR this proposal. If my understanding is correct, Perpetual is sort of like Bancor for derivatives, but with more of a focus on trading rather than the (more backend-oriented, I guess) AMM aspect. Perpetual uses a “Virtual AMM” to allow you to trade derivatives, which are a kind of “trading without trading just yet” kind of contract, with complete liquidity. (The concept is kind of new to me, I’m still putting it together in my head, but I think I got it.)

Proposal: Extend LM rewards on MKR/BNT pool

I will vote FOR this proposal. We have plenty of space in our MKR pool, but we are suffering a huge drought in liquidity. This must be rectified as quickly as possible! I will happily vote to extend LM rewards on this pool in an effort to bring this pool up to a competitive level.

Proposal. Experiment to assess effect of 0.1% swap fee on USDT stable coin pool

I will vote FOR this proposal. It’s a simple, two-week experiment of cutting the fee on the USDT pool in half (from 0.2% to 0.1%). I think this will probably result in an uptick of volume, coming from the pool being more attractive to aggregators. I can’t say that we should leave it at that; I think ultimately we should split the difference (at 0.15%) since we don’t want to make the pool unattractive to LPs.

Proposal: Co-investment limit Increase on ETH

I must ABSTAIN from this proposal. I cannot find the documents it references; knowledge is insufficient to make a reasonably well-considered decision.

Proposal: Whitelist THORChain (ERC-20 RUNE) + 600k Co-Invest

I must ABSTAIN from this proposal. Evidently, this was drafted in private (which is fine), and evidently it was deemed acceptable to drop this right into Level 2 scarcely hours before it was supposed to be put to vote (which is decidedly not so fine). Let me be clear; I find this behavior unacceptable, because it doesn’t leave time for voters to properly review the proposal and, I hope I’m mistaken, but frankly it looks like you’re trying to ram something through the process–something I’d expect from scheming politicians, not upstanding DAO members. Following this, I’ll be making a couple of proposals of my own regarding certain governance operations.

Thank you! I have not delegated yet, but I appreciate seeing everyone opinions.

Thanks.

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You’re quite welcome!

As a general reminder, I’m available to talk most of the time! I can be reached on Jami at ‘bancor-ccc’.

As time goes on I plan to build infrastructure (in the name of Bancor DAO, with permission of course) to support this and other communications projects I have in the works.

In any case, anyone can add ‘bancor-ccc’ to their contacts and ping me there at any time! The only reason I wouldn’t be online there is if I have a network outage, which is not as rare as I’d like. Please do ask before calling me directly, however, as all of my Governance telecommunications are currently in a more private area of my home until I can build out and move it to a separate device in another space. Also, I may not respond immediately, because I do have a day job, but I will respond to you, I promise; I do not ignore the people I serve.

EDIT: Changed it to ‘bancor-ccc’ as apparently Jami “rendezvous points” are not the same thing as group chats. Why that is, I don’t know, but I didn’t know it was that way until now (I had no reason to investigate because I don’t have friends :cry:) so until I figure it out, just reach me at my Jami account.

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Votes placed as declared:

Extra votes:

I voted only for Arbitrum. I don’t know enough about the alternatives to rank them, and I’ve made it clear how I feel about Polygon.

Votes abstained:

I wasn’t able to find enough data, so I didn’t feel confident that I was making an informed decision. Apparently we’ve lost track of some of our archives.

I saved this one for last, because it really annoyed me. From where I’m standing, it looks like a fresh, hot proposal (that I have to take time to research before I can even consider placing a vote on it, because I am very careful about what I do with other people’s votes) just got dropped into my lap on voting day with no warning. Reviewing a given proposal takes a significant chunk of time, at least a good portion of a day; delegates review all proposals (or they should, as much as they can). I understand that it’s been in (private) draft for a while, but I personally hadn’t even heard of THORChain until today; it’s unreasonable, no matter the size of your project, to expect everyone to know who you are and what you do right off the bat, and I feel like that’s what’s being expected of me. Sure, the vote goes on for three days, but I shouldn’t have to start researching a proposal the day it goes to vote; I think that’s an absurd way to carry out the task of governance, and we shouldn’t be asked to do it like that. We need time to review proposals; that doesn’t just go for me, because of my limited time, that goes for all voters, independent or delegate, because all voters have lives.
EDIT: I’d like to add that I’ve since read up on THORChain (research is not complete) and I am thoroughly intrigued and I really like what I see; had it been posted by Friday (or at least before Monday) or waited until next week to go to vote, I likely would have given this proposal a glowing FOR. However, I am constrained by, among others, the following two rules: a) I do not vote on proposals that I research after they go to vote, even if the vote is still active when I finish my research, and b) I vote on Mondays only, because I use the rest of the week to research outstanding Level 1 proposals as I can make time. I’m afraid I simply cannot be persuaded to break the rules I set for myself, especially given that I propose to be casting votes on behalf of others; in fact, it’s precisely for that reason that I will not break from principle. To some, DAO participation is a hobby; I have made it my solemn duty.

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It is a fair point about the RUNE vote. We do need to be more careful about observing the 2-3 day minimum, except for exceptional circumstances (this was not an urgent vote, and could have easily waited a week).

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I think I found it:

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What is the purpose of the 2-3 day minimum if the proposals are on snapshot for 3 days anyway?

Let’s say someone writes a proposal and pushes it to snapshot - while not the typical process - seems fine to me. It would be a shame to then disqualify it.

If the issue is that people need more time, lets make Snapshot open 4-5 days.

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Essentially, to give the community time to review the proposal and provide feedback. FYI, this is part of our guidelines:

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I 100% agree it is part of the guidelines

I guess I’m suggesting we reconsider. I would support a longer voting period instead of the review time.

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Personally, I believe the review time allows for a more democratic process.

  • It means that a proposal can be reviewed by the voter without voter bias, which might happen if we immediately put up a proposal for vote.
  • Quite often proposals are tweaked/changed after receiving feedback from the community on the forum.
  • If a proposal is unreasonable according to the participating community members on the forum, or non-feasible (even if only for the time being), the review process would ascertain the reasons to assume so and further explain/debate them.

That doesn’t mean we can’t debate on the duration of the review and voting windows.

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Time for community feedback. The idea is that all proposals should be available with time for consideration and editing.

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I agree with the points above about having a review time for proposals before they go on snapshot. There have been some recent proposals that do take longer than a few days to review (e.g. experimenting with fees on the stable coin pools, quorum requirements, etc…). The review time is crucial since it also lets us catch possible improvements (updating co-investment limits, discuss initial fees in the pool (see ichi for example), etc…) that need to be made on proposals.

The current cadence that we have at the moment is that votes go live on Monday (around 12:00PM UTC) and typically end on Thursday (3 days later). If there is no review time then theoretically votes can go live ASAP and this might throw off the expectations that we have set. I think most people have gotten use to reviewing proposals on weekends (Friday-Sunday) since our guidelines require at least two days before being put for vote. That means that Saturday is typically the cutoff and we see most new proposals go up before that day.

If we think that we should make voting longer then I think it quite reasonable to extend it until Friday or even Saturday if the DAO needs more time. An area of improvement that I think we should change is leaving the proposals/topics opened while the voting is live. We should close them once the voting finishes as this lets DAO members chime in on Discourse about a specific proposal if they have any questions, thoughts on why they voted for/against, clarifications, etc…

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No vote declaration here this week. I’ve declared my support or lack thereof for the proposals on the table, and whichever ones that actually go to vote tomorrow I will vote on as I indicated in their threads. I will make a post following the vote explaining my positions. My apologies.

Proposal: Whitelist Lido’s wrapped staked eth (wstETH) Plus 350K BNT Co-Investment Limit

I voted FOR this proposal. Lido is an Ethereum Casper staking bridge that doesn’t make your Ether illiquid. Supporting this project and remaining competitive with it will bring numerous benefits to us in the long run.

Proposal: Whitelist TrueFi (TRU) Plus 250K BNT Co-Investment (Attempt #3) LEVEL 2 (FINAL VERSIONS)

I voted FOR this proposal. TrueFi is an uncollateralized lending protocol. It allows anyone to lend, but only whitelisted addresses may borrow. Furthermore, whitelisted clients must submit a loan proposal that lenders must approve before funds will be released. This has myriad applications, even within our own systems. We should support this project and remain competitive.

Bancor Proposal: Whitelist Idle (IDLE) Plus 200k BNT Co-investment

I voted FOR this proposal. If you’re familiar with M1 Finance or Stash, this crypto alternative to those services isn’t too far off, and it seems like they’re heading that direction quickly. I think this is one that we’ll want to keep close.

Reduce the swap fee on ETH to 0.1%

I voted FOR this proposal. I fully agree with @mbr; however, I have my own reasons for voting this way, which are that volume has noticeable dropped off (following a short flurry for 2-4 days) since May 20th when the fee was raised. This could be for other reasons, but I think it’s more likely that we lost aggregator traffic. This is one that we’ll want to keep on the low side, because if we capture more of that traffic, it doesn’t matter if the fee is lower, the volume will make up for it. Ether is a huge route that we need to own.

Draft Proposal: Add LM Rewards to BOND

I voted AGAINST this proposal. While I support this project and I think it’s going to be one of the big winners, I think the timing of the vote is poor. We should wait until conditions are more favorable and what we can offer is more competitive.

Fellow Bancorians,
I like to investigate every project that comes to us. Unfortunately, my investigations of a project are typically limited to reading–not by the project itself (most are fully usable apps), but because I simply cannot afford the gas to spend on toying with every project to get the kind of interactive demonstration that I’d like to have.

Furthermore, because a significant portion of my weekdays are sacrificed to my day job, my reading is limited to the project docs–if I could cut back on my day job hours, even just to part-time, I’d very much like to spend more time reading news about projects, and even having conversations with community members.

It is for this reason that I must call upon our community to assist, at least for the time being. At this point in time, I am not a highly-paid professional with a salary; I am an hourly-wage laborer. My income depends upon my spine. I humbly ask for donations; any funds given to me will be used in the following ways:

  • ETH (or tokenized variants) will be kept and used to fuel exploring project apps.
  • Other currencies will be used to explore project apps (where applicable).
  • When not being used for exploring, other currencies will be applied to supplementing my income so I can devote more time to research and governance without needing to ask for future donations.
  • No donations, BNT or otherwise, shall be used for staking vBNT in the governance contract until I am financially independent (which I measure to be ~$1,000 per month)–at which point, I will no longer need to ask for donations. This can be verified by my voting weight (not sure where to find a public source for that) minus my delegations. As of today, it should read 20.71 vBNT, and it should not move until I announce that I have reached my goal.
  • Once I am financially independent, I will give full-time hours to governance–I’d spend my “9 to 5” on it, which is what I’ve been wanting to do from the beginning. Furthermore, I will devote 20% of my income to funding projects that improve quality of life for everyone; I will work with professionals to ensure that this is done via smart contract. * For example, one of the projects I’d like to fund is Gas Station Network.

I realize this is a big ask. But I will repay every TKN with the best governance I can provide, and I will endeavor to make the defi space better through your generosity.

Thank you!

I apologize for the complete lack of communication. To be honest, I’ve been burnt out and it’s been a struggle to find the motivation to do anything. I don’t mean to whine over the Internet; I’m just explaining myself, and I’ve learned that it often works out better for everybody if I drop the stiff-upper-lip act and lay out my headmeat as simply as possible for everyone to see so there’s no misunderstanding–as an aside, I appreciate it when others do the same for me, and the community members who’ve communicated with me in such a manner are a pure joy to speak to! :grin:

Long story short, I can no longer afford to juggle my jobs, my family, and the time investment required for the standard of work I want to hold myself to in Bancor DAO governance; it’s my opinion that if one is to govern the future of organizations and finance, one should aim to do it better than one’s predecessors (the elites of TradFi)–serving with the utmost devotion, transparency, integrity, honesty, and due diligence, for the greater good of all. Notably, my fellow delegates all meet these standards handily, and I am proud that they serve our community. But this requires a level of focus on this organization which I am simply unable to support at this point in time.

I’ll still be around, and I’ll still vote (not always), but essentially I’m formally retracting my bid for delegation, and putting governance on the “hobby” burner. Later, when I’ve built a bit of a passive income–I have a set of five rules and some neat little techniques that I can apply–and I am able to cut back my hours, I can gradually start to fade back into this. Any delegations to me from this point on should be done with the understanding that you’re doing so without any guarantee that I’ll vote the way you like, in a predictable manner, or even at all.

Or maybe things’ll go sideways and I’ll turn into the Diogenes of the community. Most of my peers think I’m bat$#%t already, so who knows! :rofl:

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I’m sorry to hear that, Chris.

I hope you are okay <3

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Sorry to hear ! On the bright side Diogenes is probably one of my favorite philosophers and was able to dumb found Plato himself at times. We will wait for you, just make sure you don’t end up living in a wine barrel.

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