[4.2][Executable] Fund the Endowment (second tranche)

DAO-Wide Archived Proposals
1
Status Active
Votes Onchain
Authors Karpatkey

Abstract

This proposal outlines the allocation of the second tranche, comprising 16,000 ETH, from the ENS DAO to the ENS Endowment. Additionally, it introduces minor adjustments to the existing permissions preset for maintenance purposes.

Motivation

In March 2023, the ENS Endowment was formally established following the joint proposal by karpatkey and @steakhouse, after the successful execution of E.P 3.4 - Fund the Endowment (first tranche). The community had expressed a preference for a phased funding approach, leading to the decision to allocate the funds in two equal tranches over a six-month interval. As we reach this pivotal milestone, this proposal seeks community approval for the second tranche.

Endowment Update

Based on the most recent monthly report detailing the Endowment’s performance for August 2023, the Endowment has achieved:

  • $28.03 M of ncAUM (non-custodial assets under management)
  • 100% of capital utilisation
  • An APY (annual percentage yield) of 4.1%
  • Monthly farming results of $93,841

A comprehensive review post detailing our collaborative efforts with the ENS DAO has been recently shared on the forum. We encourage community members to consult this post for insights into our achievements and ongoing initiatives.

Cumulative Revenues

In the 182 days since the Endowment was established, 173 ETH have been accrued through ETH-neutral strategies and $136,764 in stablecoin revenues via USD-neutral strategies. Operational reports were initially shared on a weekly basis and later transitioned to monthly updates, all of which were made available on the forum for community review.

The Endowment’s phased initiation should also be taken into account when interpreting these results. Full capital utilisation was only achieved 49 days after the Endowment’s inception, following the completion of the earned ETH-to-stablecoin tranche swaps. This staggered approach had a discernible impact on the reported financial metrics.

Taking into consideration the revenue generated during the most recent four months—after reaching 100% capital utilisation—the projected annual revenues at the current Endowment’s size stand at 367 ETH from ETH-neutral strategies and an equivalent of $351,654 in stablecoins from USD-neutral strategies. This results in a projected Annual Percentage Rate (APR) of approximately 3.4%.

Specification

Fund Transfer

Transfer 16,000 ETH to the Endowment (0x4F2083f5fBede34C2714aFfb3105539775f7FE64).

Permissions preset adjustments

In line with our commitment to streamline governance and reduce the frequency of voting events for the community, we propose targeted adjustments to the existing permissions preset within this proposal. Specifically, we are requesting three key changes:

  • Whitelisting the updated wstETH-WETH Pool and Gauge: As part of our ongoing optimization, we propose to whitelist the updated wstETH-WETH pool on Balancer and its corresponding gauge on Aura.
  • Revoking Permissions for Aura’s bb-a-usd Pool: In light of the recent vulnerability disclosed by Balancer on August 24, 2023, we recommend revoking all permissions associated with potentially compromised pools. It’s important to note that the Endowment had no exposure to these compromised pools at the time the vulnerability was made public.
  • Whitelisting the delegatecall function on Cow Swap: A minor bug was found in the existing preset configuration. Specifically, the signOrder function within Cow Swap’s order signer contract is designed to be executed solely via a delegate call, a capability not currently supported by the preset. This oversight not only hindered functionality but also revealed a flaw in the SDK preset testing framework. The issue has been swiftly addressed and rectified in a recent commit to the codebase.

As is customary, we are presenting an updated version of the "Preset permissions - ENS Endowment’’ document. This document comprehensively lists all permissions granted to karpatkey, with newly requested permissions highlighted in green and any revocations marked in red.

We are also sharing the payload to apply the proposed changes for your review. We strongly encourage community members with the required technical expertise to scrutinise the content and share their invaluable feedback.

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This is now live for voting onchain

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I can confirm that I’ve audited the set of actions and they do what they say on the tin.

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Posting for transparency on :fire:_ :fire: vote, we’re voting No for the second tranche of the Endowment funding.

As previously highlighted, if we want ENS to survive and thrive for a significant amount of time, committing such a huge portion of the treasury in such a small time frame doesn’t make sense.

Allowing Karpatkey to continue to manage the existing 16,000 ETH over the next 6/12/24 months in order to build a solid track record for performance and fees makes more sense than aping this remaining balance.

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I’m preparing to vote “NO” on this proposal. With due respect to all parties, Karpatkey has a strong relationship with Lido and they are staking funds in a way that has been identified as an attack against the Ethereum network by Vitalik Buterin and Danny Ryan. If we allow this proposal to go through we will be complicit to weakening the network.

I strongly urge other delegates to support our decentralized network. I urge Karpatkey to manage funds in a more decentralized way, and I urge Lido to self-limit their share of the network and promote high decentralization.

These risks are articulated in the following sources:

See also: The support of those who delegate ENS tokens to me: Reddit - Dive into anything

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I think any “self-limiting” theater is laughable. If people don’t like the outcome, then it sounds like those people should have designed Ethereum’s security model to align with financial incentives from the start, or should have chosen a different network to marry. It’s an open-source free market, so get out there and build a better Lido instead of whining about this nonsense.

It would have been great to air these concerns during the draft period, so that Karpatkey could respond and possibly address those concerns with reasoning or with tweaks to their planned allocations. I have been following their weekly/monthly reports and think they are doing a good job. If the ENS community wants them to decrease Lido/stETH allocation, I’m sure they would be open to the discussion.

The above post has strengthened my conviction to vote Yes, which I have now done.

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Back in July, the DAO approved diversification to rocketpool as staking provider, and presently about 10% of the endowment is invested in it.

I’d enthusiastically support a proposal to require Karpatkey to move more funds from Lido to Rocketpool. Sandbagging this proposal instead doesn’t seem like a productive way forward to me.

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In recent metagov calls, the topic of diversifying the Endowment’s LST holdings has been a recurring point of discussion.

Examining solely the LST holdings, the current allocation stands at 70% in Lido and 30% in Rocket Pool. This distribution includes both plain holdings and liquidity provisions.

karpatkey has clarified that the existing 70% Lido/30% Rocket Pool split is a transitional step towards more balanced diversification. The forthcoming objective is to have a distribution of 50% Lido, 30% Rocket Pool, and 20% “Others”. We remain flexible in modifying the proposed allocation to align with community preferences, ensuring that market dynamics and risk/reward constraints are thoroughly addressed and taken into account. In fact, we are actively working on a new proposal to seek approval for additional ETH staking strategies to populate the “Others” category.

As managers of the Endowment, maintaining an open channel for communication with the ENS community is paramount to us. We steadfastly follow its mandate. We urge delegates to adhere to the original funding plan by voting yes to this proposal and to actively participate in the discussions, ensuring voices and concerns are consistently heard and addressed.

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At this stage to change the permissions and payload, wouldn’t this need to be voted no against anyway?

The forum has seen a noticeable dip in community activity and input. From the 13 links @karpatkey introduced in their initial commentary, there were only 23 interactions, a portion of which were mine. This points to a subdued engagement lately. Furthermore, in just two weeks, only 555 individuals viewed the topic, leading to comments from a trifling three delegates; two of them expressing dissent. It’s disconcerting to see such limited enthusiasm in shaping pivotal DAO decisions, especially when there’s scant incentive for consistent contributors. The conspicuous silence of the stewards is puzzling. Their lack of public engagement on this and other platforms is intriguing.

It begs the question: are these discussions reserved for private circles, with public posts merely serving procedural purposes? This leaves me wondering about the true locus of ENS DAO’s pivotal dialogues.
I don’t think anything is quite laughable here. That notion seems very bias without due concern to the state of conversation.

@superphiz is right, there is a much larger concern about Lido’s position in other communication channels and it has been a growing topic in the past months.

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I only said the whole validator “self-limiting” social signal thing is laughable, nothing else. The fact that Lido has high domininace is a real issue, but is also only the side-effect of the core problem of Ethereum’s security model being designed to allow this in the first place, for some reason. But a social campaign to plead with economic actors to “pretty please stop making money and building a business!” is ridiculous.

And on the rest, for sure, the more conversation and engagement in here, the better!

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There have been at least 12 scheduled and public Meta-governance calls since July alone where the Endowment was discussed.

It’s likely been a line item on every meta-gov call over the past year.

Subjectively, the Endowment has been one of the most active and consistently discussed topics in the weekly calls. I’m not confident that link click-throughs accurately measure the depth of engagement on this long-standing and nuanced topic.

On the topic of diversification from Lido, the first instance of Stakewise in meeting notes occurred as far back as March. Stewards such as @5pence.eth have been very vocal about diversification away from Lido and have provided feedback to treasury managers on the composition, which they have, in turn, presented plans to move to a more diversified strategy.

@5pence.eth is currently OoO, but he is well aware of this proposal and has discussed it on the calls. I expect he will vote and chime in when available.

Edit: Provided extra link and context.

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Jumping in here as a Meta-Gov steward to address some of the responses here. For what it’s worth, for every single Tuesday since January of this year (that’s almost 10 months), the topic of the Endowment has come up. These calls are open to literally anyone and everyone, and the minutes are also posted weekly, in a timely manner. I also want to note that Karpatkey has been on every single call, and has answered every single question posed to them.

A simple search in the post would’ve yielded all of the topic addressed here, including but not limited to:

  • Diversifying from Lido - this is something we have talked about for the past 2 months, and we have literally taken action to actively diversify from Lido. So far we have diverted 20% of staked Eth away from Lido, and are actively in the works to divest even further. This has been an item of high priority and has been discussed out in the open, on the public calls and minutes (to other’s point, stewards such as @5pence.eth has been actively pushing this forward). Any Meta-Gov minutes recorded from August and September this year will show that. @superphiz – hope this answers your concerns on Lido centralization. I also echo @nick.eth’s sentiment that sandbagging this proposal instead is not productive due to a point that is actively being worked upon. I also hope you will take the time to read @Coltron.eth’s response (the one above mine).

  • @James / Fire Eyes- want to say that you are entitled to your opinion/ vote, but just want to note that this isn’t ‘aping’ the remaining balance-- the full amount of the Endowment was something that was agreed upon almost a full year ago. Splitting the tranches was also decided upon earlier this year. I just want to set this record straight for anyone else reading this. Again, all of these decisions and discussions are public and recorded in this forum.

In any case, I’m personally disappointed to see the level of deliberate ignorance displayed in some of these responses. Meta-Gov has had all of its discussions with Karpatkey/ Endowment in public, weekly, in open calls. It’s frankly insulting to stewards, people who actually attend, and contributors who spend hours record-keeping to say that any of these details are surprising or kept private. I know DAOs are messy and there’s a lot to keep up with, but imo the stewards have consistently kept an open dialogue on all these points and share these publically.

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How would people see the documents with information if people don’t click on them? I can’t imagine that each contract and the assets that are being traded within that contract, pool etc are being thoroughly discussed. I do agree with you, that the endowment is discussed heavily in MG WG calls. I know that. I also know that there isn’t enough time for everyone to verbally voice there opinion at 1 hour sessions.

@katherine.eth There is no deliberate ignorance. All I am saying is the interaction on the forum is dwindling down. If you look back two years ago at the page views per topic posted, the average view starts to decline and I don’t think people are just catching up over time.I know the endowment is talked about. Maybe that was a little brash. So I belay that statement.

Also please note that when referencing stewards, I am not pointing fingers at anyone in particular. Unless that is preferred. But everything is recorded on forum, which person are in discussions or just posting calendar dates, that’s out in the open for everyone to see. I mean certain people are not expressing there opinions on forum in public, then that means conversation is being held elsewhere. That seems to be what people are upset about at times.

I mean this thread speaks for itself. Nobody had any textual opinion.

It’s a lot of money and ENS users should have the ability to read opinions of the counsel of stewards.
Perhaps if we started recording the audio of calls for ENS users to listen to.

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Given current sentiment, I think it would be wise to accelerate those plans, and offer the community an opportunity to vote on a more aggressive diversification away from Lido.

If the concern is that there’s a lack of battle tested alternatives, unstaking may need to be included as an option, despite the impact on the return rate.

Quite the reverse; these proposals update Karpatkey’s set of allowed actions, they don’t prescribe how Karpatkey executes on them. A social vote would be required in either case to mandate Karpatkey take a specific option.

This wasn’t deliberate; it’s just that there’s no good way to limit stake size in a pseudonymous decentralised system.

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I wrote a script to resolve the names of the contracts listed on the manager roles doc on the original post using python. If the address had a name then it returned its respective name.

this address returned an error which terminated the query.

web3.exceptions.InvalidAddress:
 ('web3.py only accepts checksum addresses.
 The software that gave you this non-checksum address should be considered 
unsafe, please file it as a bug on their platform. 
Try using an ENS name instead. Or, if you must accept lower safety, 
use Web3.to_checksum_address(lower_case_address).', 
'0x3d9819210a31b4961b30ef54be2aed79b9c9cd3b')

Maybe double check your copy paste or ensure addresses resolve correctly
Working on a solution to offer web3.py in a PR if relevant or important enough…

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The use of 6 month was based on your input (you suggested 6 or 12 months and we answered on the 12 month here, question 2, it has now been 7 months). You are now suggesting that the first tranche stays for 12/18/30 months before a second tranche without providing any new element. You can understand that it sounds like it could be delayed forever.

Depriving ENS from additional revenues on strategies that ENS community voted on is hardly improving ENS resiliency. Quite the opposite in our view.

@karpatkey has already answered on their plan to diversify (target 50% Lido, 30% Rocket Pool, 20% others). If ENS community wants a specific allocation, it is welcome. It could be equal weighted for instance. Or 0% to any LST over 22% concentration. I hardly see how voting no on this proposal which has nothing to do with it is achieving the result you are looking for? Happy to work with @karpatkey on a proposal if that can help. @superphiz please let us know what you would suggest so we can take your input in consideration.

In any case, thanks @James and @superphiz for taking the time to write a forum post on your reasoning.

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Fully agree here re expediting a better distribution of 50% Lido, 30% Rocket Pool, and 20% “Others” (Others discussed and defined).

Also, as @katherine.eth pointed out, the Endowment has been the top topic of conversation in MetaGov calls from the moment the RFP went live during my tenure as MetaGov steward and has continued throughout. The @karpatkey team have always been receptive to community concerns during the calls and it’s one of the main reasons why the weekly and monthly reports were put in place.

Governance continues to be the tension between attention and action. Regarding the visibility or activity levels in decision making, I can only speak about my own patterns of activity - I find that processing information in prep for a vote can sometimes take up all that attention before the action, leaving forum interaction on the table. I’ll make sure I get back to sharing the process on the forum more.

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Hey all,
I apologize for my delayed response here; I was on holiday in the Atlantic last week.

On the “no Lido” discussion:

First, I’d like to thank @superphiz. I’m always frustrated that the LST diversification conversation is so contentious. The threat Lido poses is real, and I 100% support injecting it into any conversation we have as a community. Folks like @superphiz and @EvanVanNess take a lot of bullets for prioritizing this issue, and that’s unfortunate. They deserve our thanks and support.

I respectfully disagree with comments like:

Executable votes are binary choices - Yes/No. Often, while the “Yes” represents a well-defined action, the “No” becomes a catch-all for any objection or dissent.
We shouldn’t shame a delegate for using their delegated power to voice an objection. Their principles are exactly why they’ve been delegated that power.

It is true that in this case the metagov stewards have been working with Karpatkey to address this LST diversification recently, but we shouldn’t expect every delegate to be aware of every week’s meeting minutes. And in truth, Phiz’s objection leads us to this excellent next step.

This could actually be a compromise that would allow delegates to change their position on the issue.

On Karpatkey in general:

(Karpatkey deserves some defense on this thread.)

  • As a Metagov steward, I can vouch that Karpatkey has been excellent to work with. They’ve attended every call, they’ve continually lived up to their commitments, and they’ve always sought to educate and empower the ENS DAO.

  • The weekly and monthly reports from Karpatkey are excellent. The additional governance dashboards they’ve provided us have tremendous value.

  • Karpatkey and their team have always been available for any questions we have, and they do a fantastic job of alerting us to new DeFi exploits and our exposure, often in real time.

  • I’ve championed encouraging the LST diversification subject in the weekly calls, and Karpatkey has been receptive to all our asks. The Metagov stewards asked Karpatkey to set a goal of limiting our percentage of staked ETH that is held by Lido. When the “50% Lido / 30% Rocketpool / 20% other” was suggested, Karpatkey was quick to begin the process. On Sept. 6th they made this Tx removing 946 ETH from Lido and in this Tx they deposited 947 ETH to Rocketpool.

Additional Thoughts:

  • In the past I voted “No” on giving Karpatkey treasury management duties. My reasoning was that their fee structure was too high for the low risk strategies we employ. I still feel we pay them handsomely, but I’ve also seen their team work to go above and beyond to add additional value to the services they provide. That said, I’d have preferred to see a flat service fee as opposed to a fee derived from total Assets Under Management. On this matter, I’m very much aligned with the sentiments @James expressed. It’s worth noting that adding this second tranche will double the AUM, consequently doubling the monthly fees that the DAO pays to Karpatkey.

  • If we, as a DAO, want to hold back some ETH and stake it ourselves or take advantage of some other service, we can do that at any time, as Nick mentioned above. The funds are always still in the DAO’s control to move in or out. I think it would be great to see additional proposals of ways to use our ETH, but in the meantime we might as well have it under management. (Another reason a flat fee would be better, we don’t want Karpatkey incentivized to keep control of all the funds).

TL;DR:

All in all Karpatkey has been great to work with. I see them as cooperative and supportive to the ENS DAO. Overall, despite the high fees, they provide significant value to the ENS DAO.
I’ll vote “Yes” on this proposal. Although part of my “Yes” is also a commitment to follow through with the social vote to allow delegates to speak to the percentage of Lido staked Eth allowed in the treasury.
I fully expect @karpatkey to support this suggested proposal idea, and I’d love to see a public commitment here from them to honor the outcome. Perhaps that would change some of the delegates position on this vote.

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@superphiz Agree entirely.

@nick.eth , +1 on enthusiastically supporting a proposal that moves a majority? of staked ETH from Lido to Rocketpool (and others).

@karpatkey - On your reply about the 70%/30% stETH/rETH split - what does this process look like for ENS DAO? Making a proposal to you Karpatkey? To change the split to 70/30 the other way (or remove stETH completely depending on what the community think).

@Coltron.eth +1

@katherine.eth Agree and appreciate all of the work done by yourself, @karpatkey and the meta-gov stewards.

This I disagree with - a snapshot proposal to ‘agree to the full amount’ isn’t representative of moving that amount on chain - Especially given the ongoing discussion and information gathered over that time.

I understand the meta-governance stewards and Karpatkey have done a lot of work and thinking around these ideas during the calls, but disincentivizing discussion on this platform isn’t what we need here. Core team, Stewards, Delegates, Service providers, and anyone from this community should be encouraged to share their ideas and context.

@steakhouse As always, appreciate the work done and reply energy.

Viewing it as ‘Depriving’ the ENS DAO of revenue isn’t productive. That’s an infinitely deep hole - the DAO is always being deprived of some type of upside, we could just charge more for ENS name registration - but it’s not strictly about revenue. True decentralization and ownership are values that many view as equally important. If we’re building for the next hundred years I really don’t care about x months ‘deprived’ interest.

Also as above, how do we go about pursuing a target of 70%/30% rETH/stETH? What are the next steps here.

@5pence.eth +100 to all, love the take.

So to confirm - in passing this proposal, an already reasonably handsome fee is doubled? That does seem confusing.

I guess one instant solution here if the proposal doesn’t go through; convert x% of the ETH that was going to be sent to a non-lido LST derivative to be held by in the DAO treasury.

Overall great discussion here, I’ll be on the MetaGov call tomorrow and look forward to chatting further :pray:

Also - a call to action to @Coinbase to cast a vote here.

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You can just use to_checksum_address as it suggests in the error message.

This ignores the fact that delegates - and indeed anyone - can also put forward proposals. Nobody who is blocking this largely unrelated vote has made the effort to do that, though.

Cynically, I would say that it’s much easier to be disruptive than productive. By disrupting things like this, those who are concerned about Lido make it somebody else’s problem to fix while avoiding having to put in the (fairly low) effort to put forward their own proposal instead.

Nobody is disincentivizing discussion on the forum.

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