[RFC] Delegate community multisig OP to ambassador multisig

Summary:
This proposal would delegate the OP tokens Hop holds in its Optimism community multisig to the Hop Optimism ambassador multisig. This proposal does not prevent the community multisig from spending the tokens in the way the community sees fit, and would make use of the OP holdings by augmenting the ~200K OP already delegated to Hop with the community multisig’s ~800K OP.

Rationale:
Delegating these funds puts the holdings to better use before they can be spent by dramatically boosting Hop’s voice in Optimism’s decision-making.

Specification:
The community multisig signers delegate the holdings to the ambassador multisig address through Optimism Agora.

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How does this impact funds that the current community multisig needs to use for rewards programs?

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It wouldn’t. Delegation doesn’t lock funds so everything would continue as normal.

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Oh I misread this then, I see it is indeed just delegating the votes and definitely no impact! I’ll be voting yes.

And this RFC is now HIP-27 and up on snapshot for vote: Snapshot

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I voted For this proposal (HIP-27)

Delegating OP Tokens to the ambassador so they can participate in Optimism governance effectively is a no brainer. I voted in favor of this.

I will be voting abstain. A community member raised a concern about a policy prohibiting delegation of grant tokens based on a similar experience. The Optimism ambassadors will investigate it and reach out to the Optimism community for further guidance.

Still, I think the proposal should go through for two reasons. First, if it is determined that the tokens are eligible for participation in governance and a voter was in favor of this before, there should be no reason why they wouldn’t still be in favor of it. We don’t need to immediately delegate these specific tokens and if it is determined to be disallowed, we could pass a new Snapshot updating the decision.

Second, if these tokens do come with preconditions we will need to segregate them regardless and create a new community multisig address. We don’t want to commingle them with funds we can use freely. If Hop ever chooses to diversify its treasury or receives an airdrop from Optimism, we would still want to delegate those funds to the ambassador program if this vote were to previously succeed.

This vote gives the community multisig the authority to delegate their tokens to the ambassador program. If this vote doesn’t pass because of this new information, we’d essentially just have to redo the vote once we create a new community multisig. Given that the community has a strong understanding of what is meant by the term and the nature of addresses means that we likely don’t want to have to repass a vote every time a specific address is compromised or keys cycled, it seems unnecessary.

In short, I don’t think this new information should change how you vote and I encourage any delegates who switched their votes to reconsider. I am voting abstain out an an abundance of caution as one of the Optimism ambassadors, but it seems like an issue that would have quickly been caught, rectified, and understood to be a good faith oversight by myself as an ambassador and author of the proposal.

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With new information that phase 0 OP grants shouldn’t be used for self-delegation, we obviously shouldn’t use them for self-delegation.

No Self-Delegation of Grants
Token grants must not be self-delegated for use in governance. The primary purpose of these token grants is to incentivize sustainable usage and growth of the Optimism ecosystem. Accordingly, for partners interested in increasing their voting power, the preferred route is by encouraging users to delegate their rewards to your governance representatives.
Grant Policies - 📌 Policies and Templates - Optimism Collective

This definitely does change my vote. If the tokens are eligible for participation we’ll just do another vote with that new information. I see no reason to assume these tokens are eligible for participation.

So let’s redo the vote once you create a new community multisig, because the question of where tokens for delegation are going to come from will become important. This is still an open question for ambassadors w/ Rocket Pool.

In a similar vein, I think what is more relevant to focus on now that we’ve learned this information is what Optimism suggests themselves: “the preferred route is by encouraging users to delegate their rewards to your governance representatives.” How can we more clearly incentivize delegation of the distributed OP to Hop’s Ambassador multisig?

No one is arguing we should use these specific tokens if they are found to be disallowed. However, judging by the times posted (the policy about a year after the grant) I think it’s worth investigating if these tokens might be grandfathered in or if there are any other considerations. I’m currently speaking with an Optimism admin about our situation.

You’re saying in the event that the tokens are found to be eligible, it definitely does change your vote?

Assuming this address only holds tokens from this grant with a number of conditions, it should have never been considered a “community multisig” to start. The only error in this proposal, then, is a link pointing to this address for user convenience and it does not explicitly say the address in the text of the document. This address is importantly now known to not be the community multisig given it does not fall in line with the term’s use on mainnet or Arbitrum and was only ever known of by a small handful of high context participants.

Redoing the vote would be an exact duplicate changing or removing one link and would imply we also need to update any proposal that includes an address if that address ever needs to be updated, leaving only the most literal, address-based interpretation of policy possible.

The Optimism ambassadors have been and will continue to work on generating organic growth, but that wording also implies that it’s one of many possible routes and obviously as an advocate for Hop, I plan on exploring all of them.

I also just received confirmation from this admin that tokens received through means other than grants (donation, airdrop, purchasing) are eligible to be used in governance.

Not only this, they also confirmed this policy prohibiting grant tokens from being used was only formally established last month and would likely not have applied to these year-old tokens had they been delegated sooner. I think the implication in discussions that this has always been a bright red line misses the mark.

Here’s a good path forward as I see it, following the text of the document and in line with how the term “community multisig” is used not just within Hop, but also within the proposal where it mentions tokens being able to be spent “the way the community sees fit” which was clearly never the case for specifically earmarked tokens.

  1. Recognize Hop does not have a community multisig on Optimism

  2. Hop creates a new multisig using the existing multisig signers on Optimism as part of the upcoming Arbitrum proposal which plans to do the same thing

  3. Allow the multisig signers on our actual community multisig address to delegate to the ambassador program so if and when Hop receives OP from non-grant sources, those tokens will be used to help give a voice to Optimism ambassadors

This is not the only path forward, but I think it’s the path of least resistance by following the decision of the proposal, not going against Optimism’s policies, preventing Hop Labs from needing to make any adjustments to how onboarding rewards currently work, and preventing delegates from needing to duplicate this vote in the near future.

I like this approach.

Let’s just do anything that would not go against Optimism’s rules. Let’s first consult with the optimism people. I was not aware this OP comes from a grant that prohibits self-delegation. If I knew I would not have voted FOR.

But I think it makes sense to delegate OP that HOP has to our ambassador. At least the OP that has no strings attached.

Unfortunately I can’t change my vote even if I wanted to, since I am travelling and will be back only ~5 hours after the vote ends. I do not have access to sensitive keys when travelling.

But I don’t think it’s such a tragedy. We can still follow the idea that @max-andrew detailed above or in the worst case have a corrective re-vote.

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I voted against this proposal, since Optimism stipulates that Self-Delegation of Grants is not allowed.

There had been discussions amongst the Optimism community in the past regarding this specific topic, and I agree with their policy in place.

The proposal has passed. Lefteris voted with 4.5M HOP (85% of the “For” votes) before coming to know this. He ultimately left feedback above this comment with new thoughts.

You’re more than welcome to vote however you want, but to be clear there was never — and will not be — any self-delegation of grant funds.

Lefteris mentioned in his first line he liked the approach and that we should “just do anything that would not go against Optimism’s rules,” which we have not done and will not do.

Thank you, Max. I appreciate it.

This proposal was put to Snapshot before we discussed Optimism rules. As such, this is what was voted:

The vote as-is in Snapshot is proposing that we self-delegate 800K OP in the multi-sig, is this not partially a grant?

This is the reason why, excluding Lefteris, there are only 700K Hop in favour of this proposal, and 2.7M against.

My feedback, vote, and the comment above were just clarifying on the situation, since if we were to do literally when it was approved in Snapshot, then we would have indeed broken Optimism rules.

I think all of us delegates and community members have clarity and no one wants to break any rules, including you and me. I don’t see a positive path forward in opening up a discussion on something that’s already crystal clear, my comment and feedback from today was in context of the Delegate Compensation Reporting. We are all in the same page, Max.

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You got it, Olimpio. I know those who author proposals have done an excellent job so far drafting ones that have not had any new considerations after the voting process has started. Unfortunately, however, that is bound to be the case sometimes. This was a consideration that no one in the community raised during the comment period and, in fact, only became a consideration a month before when the new rule was implemented. I’m sure Optimism would have understood.

The question becomes how we can be flexible when issues do arise after a vote has already started. I suggested a path that wouldn’t require any additional actions from delegates or the core team without going against Optimism’s rule by recognizing the address we considered our community multisig should not have been. We have since passed a corrective vote to further clarify this point.

You’re entitled to your opinion, but your suggestion anything improper happened is incorrect.

You lost me. I find it difficult to understand your writing, sorry.

Just so that it’s clear:

  1. Optimism has two (March 2023) policies (April 2023) in place, not one, both preventing self-delegations of grants.
  2. Hop received 1M OP in the first ever round of delegations. This cannot be self-delegated.
  3. The Synthetix Council received criticism back in August 2022 because of self-delegation of grants. This is partially why we now have a clearer code of conduct in Optimism. Until the code was created, self-delegation was a controversial “unregulated” topic.
  4. I am not sure how you are presenting the concept of “flexiblity” - but, to me, votes are final and flexibility should be null. We vote what it is on Snapshot, literally. If there was an oversight or something that needs to be amended, we should re-vote, not leave a forum post and call it a day.
  5. I voted Against the Snapshot because my interpretation of the proposal was that we would be performing some sort of self-delegation, and I disagree with this idea. For this, other delegates changed their vote to “Against”, the same as I did. Lefteris could not since he was away of his devices.
  6. My message from today, 3 months later, was to include it on my Delegate Compensation Reporting thread. However, I’m happy that I did, since we clearly are not aligned on decisive concepts like the finality of a Snapshot proposal, and it can be brought to discussion.
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You’re welcome to interpret any of it however you want. As I said, we did not and will not violate any of Optimism’s terms. If this issue was as clear as you seem to believe, the feedback would have been helpful during the comment period. Unfortunately that didn’t happen so we had to make the best of the situation. Lefteris can and has spoken for himself.

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