---

title: Governance House
status: Discussion
author: @Matthew_Graham
Created: 28-02-2022

---

Simple Summary

The proposal presents an opportunity for INDEX holders to support the creation of Governance House, a new type of DeFi primitive that provides Metagovernance as a Service across the ecosystem. Governance House intends to unlock an entirely new phase of community and voter participation by leveraging existing skills within the Index Coop community and enhancing the reach of metagovernance by including members of other DAOs to support the implementation of welcomed improvement proposals across DeFi.

Governance House is to become a DeFi focal point for providing Metagovernance as a Service (MaaS). The MaaS offering ranges from improving voter participation, all the way through to writing, coordinating and submitting improvement proposals on various protocols of varying degrees of difficulty.

Abstract

Index Coop’s metagovernance is a strength and with the creation of Governance House subDAO the Metagovernance value becomes clear. The vision for Governance House is to become a collaboration hub, an industry leader that supports the growth of the ecosystem. Governance House will expand the network and reach of Index Coop by welcoming trusted members from other communities into Governance House and attracting delegate votes from other communities.

Today, there are many DeFi communities that struggle with voter apathy, optics around decentralization and having to choose between working on large system upgrades or more operational day to day changes. Governance House intends to help communities to become more decentralized by supporting smaller operational upgrades needed to maintain existing DApps. This helps free up the core teams to focus on leveling up from V1 to V2 to V3 etc…

Governance House intends to optimize for voting, coordinating, writing and submitting governance proposals to implement welcome change within DeFi. Governance House will become a trusted partner with defi that will be known for acting in the best long term interest of the community/ecosystem.

Discussion

Introduction

Governance House provides MaaS across DeFi through collaboration with some of the largest names in the ecosystem. Governance House will have sufficient INDEX voting right to meet quorum, whilst also having additional delegated voting rights to other protocols which enhances the metagovernance reach beyond just Index Coop’s influence.

The metagovernance influence is enhanced by the delegation of outside votes to Governance House with the goal of coordinating, preparing the payload, submitting payload and voting on welcomed improvement proposals across DeFi. The vision is to work closely with the participating communities to attain sufficient governance support to streamline on-chain governance processes.

As noted earlier, only improvements welcomed by the receiving community will be supported by Governance House. There is no means of bribing or manipulating Governance House into supporting something not welcomed by the receiving community. Each respective community will be involved in the review process of the payload prior to it being submitted on-chain. This is in line with how Index Coop currently prepares AIPs within the Aave community.

In time, the intent is to use Smart Contracts wherever possible. However, during the initial phase Governance House seeks to define what is the minimum viable product and find a strong sense product market fit. The metagovernance influence will be coordinated by a relatively small and well connected team that is Governance House before moving more on-chain in later iterations.

Governance House will work with Index Coop to maximize the use of its metagovernance voting rights and in the near term, would like to expand beyond on-chain votes to become more active in community snapshot votes used to gauge sentiment for upcoming proposals.

How it works

Token holders can delegate their vote to a wallet address that is then used to vote and deploy various improvement proposals across DeFi.

Members of Governance House shall always collectively exceed the INDEX quorum threshold which grants passage to using the underlying metagovernance influence. Governance House proposes replacing the MGC by performing all the on-chain coordination and voting. Index Coop is expected to continue to operate Snapshot as it currently does with Engineering having automated metagovernance votes.

With respect to internal Index Coop votes, Governance House as a collective group shall abstain from Index Coop’s IIP voting that is not specific to Governance House and each individual participant is free to express their own view. Do note, this means each respective INDEX holder’s votes are still implemented via the delegate address and the decision to vote and how to vote falls solely on the owner of the INDEX tokens. Non INDEX holding voting rights are pooled and INDEX voting rights will remain delegated to separate wallets. For larger INDEX holders who delegate INDEX voting rights to Governance House, a wallet is set up whereby the delegator can participate in IIPs and Governance House can participate in Metagovernance votes.

All metagovernance votes are still intended to run through the Index Coop snapshot as per normal process and all INDEX holders can vote. Should a metagovernance vote reach quorum, Governance House will execute the vote accordingly (same process as with MGC today). Index Coop’s metagovernance votes will be delegated to an EOA as determined by Governance House. This enables Governance House to utilize the proposal power to submit improvement changes on various protocols and participate in snapshot proposals of other communities.

The creation of Governance House enables any good actor across DeFi to propose an improvement to a protocol. Governance House can provide everything from a full turn key solution to simply providing proposal power to implement an improvement proposal. This type of service does not exist in DeFi today.

Governance House intends to provide the following as a part of the MaaS offering.

1. Active voter participation.
2. Provider a focal point for entities seeking to propose a change.
3. Liaison between core community members and entities seeking to propose a change.
4. Prepare governance forum posts.
5. Conduct Snapshot votes.
6. Submit on-chain proposals to implement improvement proposals.

In return, Governance House is to receive payment for performing MaaS. This payment is to be distributed to Contributors during the initial phase and then also the Delegates during a later phase. The Payment is variable and shall reflect the complexity and extent of the work required to fulfill the request. During initial phases, payment is expected to cover the operating costs and reinvestment costs in growing Governance House. Governance House is actively seeking funding from various grants across DeFi, with its first application pending.

The longer term intention is to distribute rewards to delegates. However, the initial iteration will focus on rewarding contributors and saving funds to support the development of Smart Contracts that enable Governance House to transition towards becoming a more on-chain operation. The below graphic communicates the rewards flow within the model. In time, Governance House intends to reward delegates and the current thinking involves accepting INDEX as payment and distributing INDEX to delegates (later phase) and contributors (initial phase) alike.

For external Participants providing non INDEX, the token is to be swapped for INDEX. Ideally partners acquire INDEX and pay Governance House in INDEX for providing Metagovernance as a Service (MaaS). The below graphic shows the combined model highlighting all the interactions detailed in the above graphics.

The above graphics show the later phases when Governance House finds product market fit for MaaS. There are already promising signs emerging showing strong support for the concept expressed above.

The astute reader may realize that this mechanism is using INDEX as the life blood of the system, which in turn creates a steady flow of buy side demand for INDEX. This is a positive flywheel for INDEX holders and helps distribute INDEX to those who contribute to Governance House.

What is Governance House

Governance House is a subDAO of Index Coop consisting of like minded delegates and contributors who are all working to improve DeFi, through coordinating and implementing welcomed change on existing protocols. Governance House solves the complexities of coordinating and implementing change across DAOs. External protocol Core Teams, Investors, Contributors alike can all approach Governance House seeking to implement change on their preferred protocol or seek voting support to prevent any bad actor from taking advantage of a protocol. As metagovernance delegation influence grows, Governance House becomes an enabler to implement welcomed change and provide a level of protection from bad actors across an increasing number of protocols.

Governance House members are very well connected across DeFi, have deep understanding of the protocol, are active on the protocol’s forum and trusted by the community. This enables Governance House to build trust and obtain additional voting influence over time. On-chain voting records will demonstrate reliability and will serve as a testament to the character of Governance House. Individuals within Governance House are expected to perform the following:

• Specialize in governance matters.
• Share knowledge with each other collaboratively for the benefit of DeFi.
• Active governance participants.
• Onboard delegates.
• Support the structuring of deals for Governance House.
• Write / Coordinate submission of forum posts, snapshot and improvement proposals.
• Provide a link between Index Coop and the broader DeFi ecosystem.

Achievements to Date

Below is a list of proposals which can be implemented by the Governance House with the Aave community:

• AVAX risk parameter update, [4].
• Add DPI to mainnet Arc market, [5].
• Liquidity mining on mainnet Arc market, [6].
• Update risk parameters mainent Arc market, [7].
• Add DAI to mainnet Arc market, [8].

To accompany some of the above work a grant application has been submitted to Aave Grants DAO, [9]. We have active members of the Aave community contributing to Governance House in coordinating the above scopes. AIPs for the first few proposals to be implemented are already being worked on.

At the time of writing, Governance House has commits for 41.2K of INDEX from Galaxy Digital, 20.6K from WhiteStar Capital, 17K from 3SE Holdings and expects a further 60.2K from another large investor. We also expect several smaller holders to participate which takes Governance House near and over quorum. There are several other entities that have expressed interest and we hope they will join Governance House in time.

One of the key things here is for Governance House to always meet Index Coop’s quorum requirements.

Governance House Minimum Viable Product

EOA for voting on snapshot and ease of improvement proposal implementation.
Multisig - manager / distributor of funds via Parcel integration.
Established internal governance framework
Word of mouth / Notion Board

Index Coop currently provides all of the above either directly, like the EOA delegation in IIP–133 4 and through existing BD outreach.

Minimum Viable Team

Access to developers with experience on necessary protocols.
People who can foster/maintain strong relationships with the core teams of the largest names in defi.
Proposal power on at least one major protocol.
Early stage funding from Index Coop and various Grants DAOs.

For the initial phase, Governance House will support protocols where Index Coop is already active or pursuing metagovernance integrations (AAVE, Compound, Maker, etc…) and communities that have delegated voting rights to Governance House. For example, Tribe DAO has delegated AAVE and COMP voting rights to Index Coop and 2M TRIBE to members of Governance House, [11,12,13,14 ]. We expect others to follow in time and there are currently proposals being discussed that expand the reach of Governance House.

At the time of writing there are four developers, potentially a four soon, who are actively engaged in supporting Governance House initiatives. The developers are Austin (Llama), Noah Citron (Index Coop), Defi Jesus and Rajath (Llama). There are other developers that can be called upon as/if needed. Most of these developers have existing working relationships with Aave developers which is a great benefit.

Several meetings have been held with other DAOs and members from other communities are already contributing to Governance House. There has been an expression of interest from funds that hold INDEX partaking in Governance House activities. We have submitted our first ARC on the Aave governance forum, [1].

As Governance House becomes established more proposals like the one on Aave’s forum will be submitted. We intend to replicate this model across other DeFi communities whereby someone from that Community joins Governance House and brings with them a deep network and rich pipeline of opportunities to collaborate.

Ideally, members of Governance House are already active in other DeFi communities with established networks. To this end, there are members of Governance House who are actively involved in Aave, Tribe and Maker communities.

Future Phase

Governance House will seek to become a go-to place for metagovernance support within DeFi. To do that, there are a few goals Governance House needs to accomplish:

1. Build a strong presence in the governance activities of the underlying protocols and earn/build trust.
2. Becoming a financially viable MaaS provider.
3. Build and maintain a secure meta-governance infrastructure.
4. Pro-ecosystem and have no bias between competitors.

After proving the concept, Governance House will progress towards using Smart Contract wherever possible to facilitate the following via a MaaS User Interface:

• Smart Contract that facilitates the following:
  • Depositing funds
  • Whitelist for who can accept offers for providing MaaS
  • Uploading addresses for payment
  • Approval for distribution of funds
• MaaS Marketplace User Interface
  • Annualized APR for delegates
  • Metagovernance track record

Upside

• Pathway to proposal power at a fourth major protocol, (Aave, Compound, Uniswap, ??).
• Pathway to meeting voting threshold at a major protocol.
• Deep integration with several leading DAOs across DeFi.

Organizational Structure - Governance House subDAO

After meeting with several INDEX investors, it was viewed that growing the metagovernance value proposition was best implemented outside of the Nest model. As a result, Governance House is a new subDAO which provides a degree of independence.

To enable access to Index Coop’s metagovernance, Governance House intends to have access to more INDEX voting rights than quorum. In many ways, Governance House is a collaboration of INDEX holders and their delegated representatives which collectively have sufficient votes to meet INDEX’s quorum requirements.

Governance House is a service provider subDAO that replaces the functionality of the MGC within the Metagovernance Pod and in time may adopt some of the other functionality of Metagovernance Pod. Governance House will communicate directly with the Index Council / Leadership Team of the day and will reside outside of the existing nest structure thus creating a degree of independence.

The Index Coop ambassador program has a very strong overlap with Governance House. The ambassador program is at its core and outreach program that helps build networks and identify opportunities to work together. This type of program will pivot to include the goal of trying to solve the voter apathy problem across defi. Governance House can boost voter turnout by being an active voter in Index Coop’s metagovernance votes and also directly in other communities votes. We intend to combine the benefits of the ambassador program with Governance House.

There are several examples of other communities that have created something similar but more tailored to their own community, [2,3,10].

Remuneration

All contributors receive a flexible reward based on output and impact. However, those that are Core Hires from Index Coop, and likely other DAOs, will be primarily funded through their existing remuneration agreements. Core Hires from Index Coop will receive a percentage of the flexible rewards they would have received if there were not a Core Hire. For Developers it is 25% and for everyone else 15%. This exists to prevent double dipping on rewards whilst providing motivation to grow Governance House’s operations whilst fulfilling their Core Hire responsibilities much like the logic applied to Core Hire within Product Pod [15].

For example if a grant is submitted with a cost input of $1,000 for Project Management and this is performed by an Index Coop Core Hire, that Core Hire receives 15% of the $1,000, $150. The remaining funds are to be retained by Governance House and reinvested into growing Governance House. Payments are made to contributors in line with the milestones linked to the terms laid out by grant application. Ie: 30% upon award, 30% milestone and 40% upon delivery.

Funding Request

During the initial phase, Governance House will be reaching out to various DAOs via existing grant programs to explore various funding options. An application has already been submitted to Aave Grants DAO and others are being discussed.

As Governance House will absorb the role of the MGC and requests Governance Nest to reallocate the three fifths of MGC’s budget during Season 1 to support growing Governance House. This is a total of $22.5K over Season 1 and is to be used for growing Governance House. The remaining two fifths of the MGC budget, $15K, is to be retained by Governance Nest. Payment distribution will be from Governance House Central utilizing Parcel in line with the normal process.

Governance House Central: 0x82cD339Fa7d6f22242B31d5f7ea37c1B721dB9C3

After Season 1 has concluded, any additional funding will be attained via a grant submission through Index Coop’s Growth Grants Program. It is highly probable that grant proposals will be submitted to other communities for providing MaaS.

Reference

[1] ARC - Update Risk Parameters Mainnet Arc Market - General - Aave 3
[2] Aave <> Bored Ghosts Developing (BGD) - Governance - Aave 3
[3] GFX Labs' Proposal To Become Contributors - Compound Community Forum 1
[4] ARC: Avalanche Market - AVAX Risk Parameters Update - General - Aave
[5] ARC - Add DPI as Collateral on the Aave Arc Market - Governance - Aave 1
[6] ARC - Continue Liquidity Mining Program on Aave V2 Ethereum market and Introduce Liquidity Mining on Aave ARC market - General - Aave
[7] ARC - Update Risk Parameters Mainnet Arc Market - General - Aave 3
[8] ARC: Adding Multi-Collateral DAI to the Aave ARC Market - New Asset - Aave
[9] https://twitter.com/AaveGrants 4
[10] Proposal: Onboard Fire Eyes DAO as Strategic Partner - Ecosystem Fund - Balancer 3
[11] FIP-78c: Meta-governance - stkAAVE (Aave) - Proposals - Tribe 1
[12] FIP-78b: Meta-governance - COMP (Compound) - Proposals - Tribe
[13] Tally | 4PXDG1 1
[14] Tally | YJOE34 1
[15] Moving methodologist fee splits in-house 2

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0 1.