Co-authored with <a href="/u/0xbilll">@0xbilll</a>
<h1>
<a name="overview-1" href="#overview-1"></a>Overview</h1>
After two successful quarters of Aave Grants DAO, we are looking to renew the program for the next two quarters by providing $6 million dollars in AAVE ($3 million per quarter). See our <a href="https://governance.aave.com/t/arc-aave-community-grants-program/3642">initial proposal from May 2021 29</a> and our <a href="https://governance.aave.com/t/aave-grants-update-and-renewal/6371">renewal proposal from November 2021 22</a>. We are looking to add an events coordinator, marketing manager, and three reviewers to Aave Grants DAO. Please apply <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScMGF5sdi8wSGr5KSAyJvw6TCPOTMJGeMUU8B51t19PPzVCpA/viewform">here 47</a> if you are interested!
<h1>
<a name="mission-2" href="#mission-2"></a>Mission</h1>
Aave Grants DAO is a community-led grants program, focused on growing a thriving ecosystem of contributors within Aave through funding ideas, projects and events that benefit the ecosystem. We aim to drive development on top of Aave and ensure a constant influx of talented builders to maintain Aave’s long term growth. We help build culture and community around the Aave ecosystem that in turn attracts the best contributors.
<h1>
<a name="background-and-progress-3" href="#background-and-progress-3"></a>Background and Progress</h1>
This is the third proposal for AGD. The initial proposal launched Aave Grants with $1m of funding over two quarters, from May to October 2021. The renewal proposal was executed at the end of December 2021 and funded AGD for an additional 3 months with $2 million of funding.
With the decentralization of the protocol, Aave Company no longer funds events and sponsorships. This has resulted in an increase in the amount of funding requested as AGD has stepped in to fill that role, and takes on funding more Aave events and sponsorships.
Since the last proposal, our spending has been as follows:
<ul>
<li>
$328,200 for grants, primarily funding applications and integrations on Aave</li>
<li>
$100,000 for xSushi <a href="https://governance.aave.com/t/analysis-of-xsushis-incident/6335">bounty 6</a> to support security researchers who helped with the incident</li>
<li>
$634,000 for events, primarily major crypto events and hackathons to build the developer ecosystem</li>
<li>$263,000 for raave</li>
<li>The remaining difference from the total $2 million received was back paid for expenses and grants owed from 2021, used to cover operational costs, and realized losses due to the AAVE price decline between when the funds were originally received and the payments executed.</li>
</ul>
See a full list of <a href="https://aavegrants.org/funded-grants">grants 35</a> and <a href="https://aavegrants.org/list-of-sponsored-events-community">events 16</a> funded on our website. We distribute grants based on completion of milestones. For larger grants, we typically have three payment tranches: an upfront payment, a payment on completion of the first milestone, and a payment on the completion of the project. We follow up with projects where needed to check on their progress.
<h1>
<a name="success-stories-4" href="#success-stories-4"></a>Success Stories</h1>
Since December we have awarded 32 developer focused grants.
This includes:
<ul>
<li>
<a href="https://www.questbook.app/">Questbook 14</a> who is building a Decentralized Grant Orchestration Tool to streamline the entire application, shortlisting, and ops processes leading to more active community engagement &amp; quality projects receiving funding.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.minke.app/">Minke 4</a> has built a slick mobile wallet that leverages aUSDC on Polygon for their “savings” functionality and includes Aave in top billing of their marketing.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://www.hal.xyz/">HAL 3</a> has developed useful notification bots for Aave users and governance participants. These include notifications for health factor changes and governance proposals.</li>
<li>
<a href="https://forta.org/">Forta Protocol 4</a>’s Launchpad Program where developers were rewarded to write, test and submit completed agents to help monitor and secure the protocol.</li>
<li>Our biggest event engagement of the quarter was at ETHDenver, where we:
<ul>
<li>Hosted a booth to engage with attendees and hand out swag</li>
<li>Led multiple workshops on V3 and awarded $25k in bounties to 6 teams between the IRL and virtual hackathon</li>
<li>Cohosted the <a href="https://aavegrants.org/bleeding-edge-mini-summit">Bleeding Edge Mini Summit 1</a> with Alliance DAO which was a full day of speakers talking about the future of Web3 including the future of L2s, NFTs, Lending, and Gaming. It also feature Aave Grant recipients, including: Manlio from Hal.xyz, Julian from Cred Protocol, and Kevin from Boardroom</li>
<li>Kicked off the weekend by co-hosting the grand reception, <a href="https://twitter.com/AaveGrants/status/1494020001627529221?s=20&amp;t=EzqgdGU03_20UjMedl7EFQ">Let it Snow 1</a>, with Polygon, Coinbase, Sushi and Decentraland</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>After Aave Arc launched we sponsored the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/">Blockworks Newsletter 3</a> over 3 months to promote the market to an institutional audience and drive sign ups. In total, Aave Arc was featured in 18 issues and attracted a total of 3,691 cumulative clicks to apply with Fireblocks and 982,910 impressions.</li>
</ul>
 
Kain from Synthetix on a panel at the Bleeding Edge Mini Summit discussing Building with L2s along with Imran from Alliance, Sandeep from Polygon, Ed from Arbitrum, and Louis from Starkware.
<h1>
<a name="people-5" href="#people-5"></a>People</h1>
The original proposal included 1 lead and 7 reviewers. Over the program the team brought on a designer, operations lead, and community manager. Since our last update, we have added three new reviewers (all from previous grant recipients!). As two reviewers stepped down (outlined in our last proposal), AGD now has a total of 8 reviewers including the lead.
<ul>
<li>
Lead. Shreyas leads the grants committee. He has grown the team, overseen the distribution of grants, and makes sure Aave Grants DAO meets the strategic needs of Aave DAO.</li>
<li>
Review committee. The Review Committee is made up of:
<ul>
<li>Corbin Page - Paymagic, ex-ConsenSys</li>
<li>Calvin Chu - Impossible Finance</li>
<li>Aleks Larsen - Blockchain Capital</li>
<li>Imran Khan - DeFi Alliance</li>
<li>Francis Gowen - Flipside Crypto</li>
<li>Kakashi - Symphony Finance</li>
<li>Lawrence Mosley - Omni Analytics</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
Designer. <a href="https://twitter.com/Lauracsc_">Laura Sinisterra 5</a> has <a href="https://www.notion.so/June-29-2021-Aave-Grants-DAO-Logo-and-Branding-ba2c6f4cc97f4cd799c6ad7ef954b7b1">created a brand identity 9</a>, designed a logo, and produced content assets including POAPs and branding for Bleeding Edge.</li>
<li>
Operations lead. Neil Shroff has streamlined the application process, manages payments, KYC, and other administrative tasks.</li>
<li>
Community manager. Bill produces a weekly newsletter (<a href="https://aavenews.substack.com/">Aave News 5</a>), maintains the Twitter account, coordinates external Aave events, and coordinates other community initiatives, including community calls and ecosystem AMAs.</li>
</ul>
Compensation
<ul>
<li>
Lead: $150 an hour with a 30 hour/week cap</li>
<li>
Review committee: $150 an hour with a 10 hour/week cap</li>
<li>
Designer: one-off based on specific design engagements</li>
<li>
Operations lead: $3.5k/month</li>
<li>
Community manager: $6k/month</li>
</ul>
Maggie Love will be stepping out of her role as a reviewer due to other commitments. We thank Maggie for her contributions to Aave Grants DAO.
<h1>
<a name="recruitment-6" href="#recruitment-6"></a>Recruitment</h1>
We are looking to add five more people to Aave Grants DAO: event coordinator, marketing manager, and three reviewers.
<ul>
<li>
Events Coordinator:
<ul>
<li>Manage global events, including crypto and institutional events</li>
<li>Coordinate with event organizers, Aave core team, and the community</li>
<li>Market events and Aave’s involvement across online forums</li>
<li>Represent Aave Grants DAO at events across the world</li>
<li>This is a full-time role</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
Marketing Manager
<ul>
<li>Management of digital marketing spend and relationships with partners</li>
<li>Optimize performance of marketing spend across channels for the various Aave protocol products</li>
<li>This is a full-time role</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
Reviewer
<ul>
<li>Review grant applications, primarily developer grants</li>
<li>Judge applications, interview candidates, and fill out feedback forms</li>
<li>Present progress to the Aave community</li>
<li>Involves 2-10 hours of work per week</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>
<a name="metrics-7" href="#metrics-7"></a>Metrics</h1>
<ul>
<li>
Number of grants given out:
<ul>
<li>May-Aug 2021: 12</li>
<li>Sept-Nov 2021: 19</li>
<li>Dec 2021-Apr 2022: 32</li>
<li>Note that this does not include grants for hackathons, events, and sponsorships</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
Growth in community engagement since our last renewal proposal (December 2021):
<ul>
<li>Substack subscribers: 770 → 1511 (+96%)</li>
<li>Twitter followers: 5317 → 6930 (+30%)</li>
<li>Telegram members: 654 → 595 (-10%)</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
We have received and given out an increasing number of grants over time. Most of the applications received and funded were in the “applications and integrations” category. This was due to primarily funding developer grants, however, over time we have been funding more events and community projects. Shoutout to Lawrence from <a href="https://twitter.com/OmniAnalytics">Omni Analytics 3</a> for creating the charts below.





<h1>
<a name="proposed-budget-8" href="#proposed-budget-8"></a>Proposed Budget</h1>
<div>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Proposed Budget (2 Quarters)</th>
<th></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Outstanding Owed to Grants</td>
<td>$55,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Expected Grants to Award</td>
<td>$3,000,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Grants Total Budgeted Cost</td>
<td>$3,055,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Outstanding Owed to Events</td>
<td>$273,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Event Sponsorships and Bounties including rAAVEs (see list for details)</td>
<td>$1,395,500</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Digital Marketing</td>
<td>$750,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Sponsorships Total Budgeted Cost</td>
<td>$2,418,500</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Compensation</td>
<td>$267,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Other costs (tooling, operations, gas reimbursements)</td>
<td>$20,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Event production costs (SWAG, printing, production)</td>
<td>$60,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Operations Total Budgeted Cost</td>
<td>$347,000</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Total Proposed AGD Budget</td>
<td>$5,820,500</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div><h1>
<a name="events-sponsorships-9" href="#events-sponsorships-9"></a>Events &amp; Sponsorships</h1>
Providing funding to event and digital marketing sponsorships to promote the Aave protocol has become a key focus and source of funds for AGD. We have built on the hard work and relationships that Aave Companies has developed in the ecosystem to maintain the visibility of the Aave protocol at events and sponsorships.
Post COVID, events will strategically grow in importance for the Aave ecosystem. Having a strong presence at key industry touchpoints, as well as ensuring that our events are conducted to the highest professional standard and differentiated is of critical importance. It is our direct line into our diverse community which includesg industry professionals, influencers and builders. Events have a direct impact on Aave products and our mission is for events to continue to drive the adoption of Aave products. Other DeFi protocols such as <a href="https://forum.makerdao.com/t/mip39c2-sp32-adding-events-core-unit-events-001/13780">Maker 1</a> are strategically prioritizing events and we must continue to maintain our competitive position. rAAVEs in particular have been an important pillar and brand strength for driving Aave’s community,
Additionally, events are a way for us to increase our reach by partnering with other relevant protocols for cross promotion to their communities.
This budget includes event sponsorship but also costs for side events with partners, hacker houses etc.
Event Calendar
Below is a list of events we have identified for Aave to sponsor in Q2 and Q3.
<div>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Event</th>
<th>Date</th>
<th>Location</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>ETH Amsterdam</td>
<td>April 22–24</td>
<td>Amsterdam</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>rAAVE</td>
<td>April 24</td>
<td>Amsterdam</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>HackMoney</td>
<td>May</td>
<td>Online</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Permissionless</td>
<td>May 17–19</td>
<td>Palm Beach</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Consensus</td>
<td>June 9–12</td>
<td>Austin</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ETH CC</td>
<td>July 19–21</td>
<td>Paris</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Paris rAAVE</td>
<td>TBD</td>
<td>Paris</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ETHMexicoCity</td>
<td>August 19–21</td>
<td>Mexico City</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Mexico City rAAVE</td>
<td>TBD</td>
<td>Mexico City</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ETHOnline</td>
<td>September</td>
<td>Online</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>ETH Barcelona</td>
<td>September</td>
<td>Barcelona</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div><h1>
<a name="next-steps-10" href="#next-steps-10"></a>Next Steps</h1>
<ul>
<li>Get input from community</li>
<li>Move to a Snapshot vote</li>
<li>If positive temperature check, move to AIP</li>
</ul>

Aave Grants DAO Update and Renewal  Co-authored with  @0xbilll   
 
  Overview 
 After two successful quarters

Aave Grants DAO Update and Renewal

Authors: <a href="/u/helloshreyas">@HelloShreyas</a> and <a href="/u/0xbilll">@0xbilll</a>
<h1>
<a name="overview-1" href="#overview-1"></a>Overview</h1>
Aave Grants DAO has awarded 38 teams a total of $1.2m worth of AAVE since its inception in May 2021. This post outlines the progress Aave Grants DAO has made and proposes expanding the budget and scope of the program. Read the original proposal <a href="https://governance.aave.com/t/arc-aave-community-grants-program/3642">here 59</a>.
We propose a budget of $2m a quarter to fund more projects that benefit Aave. We are also working on expanding the grants team, decentralizing decision making, and providing more post-grants support. Please respond to this post if you’re interested in being a grant reviewer!
<h1>
<a name="mission-2" href="#mission-2"></a>Mission</h1>
AGD’s mission is to build a thriving ecosystem of contributors for Aave. We provide grants to projects, ideas, and events that benefit Aave and its ecosystem. We hope to be at the forefront of ecosystem development at Aave. Ensuring a constant influx of talented builders is critical to Aave’s growth.
<h1>
<a name="background-and-progress-3" href="#background-and-progress-3"></a>Background and Progress</h1>
<a href="https://app.aave.com/governance/13-QmURZNW6PT4z3e4DZqxHMAW1bWRFvxZjtyQZqhnhgdLB6R">AIP 17 21</a> established Aave Grants DAO on May 4, 2021 with the goal of funding ideas and builders in the Aave ecosystem. The two quarter pilot program had a grants budget of $1 million and an operating budget of $250,000 per quarter. The pilot program has awarded $1.17m to 38 grant recipients and made the initial steps to put the grants process and the protocol in the hands of the community.
Besides providing $ support to grantees, we have also provided post-grant support where possible. This includes support with marketing, strategic advice, introductions to auditors, introductions to Aave genesis team developers, and AMAs with the Aave community.
We have led content for Aave DAO, including 17 issues of Aave News, 5 community calls, and 5 AMAs with grantees and the Aave community. We have also funded hackathons including ETHGlobal and Gitcoin’s hackathons.
<h2>
<a name="grants-awarded-4" href="#grants-awarded-4"></a>Grants Awarded</h2>
Grants have been awarded to developers building to benefit the Aave ecosystem in a range of areas, including:
<ul>
<li>Protecting users - Cono Finance by Gelato Network, Aave Liquidation Notifier by Steven Li</li>
<li>Onboarding and attracting new users - Aave quests on Rabbithole, 2001 DeFi developing a mobile app for Aave, Blockchain Education Network enabling any student to participate in Aave governance</li>
<li>Increasing liquidity - Symphony Finance’s yield generating limit orders, and Sacred Finance’s privacy preserving DeFi protocol</li>
<li>Analyzing the protocol - a growth dashboard by Omni Analytics, community enabled analytics program by Flipside Crypto</li>
<li>Improving oversight and transparency - Safeguard by Tally</li>
</ul>
See a full list of grants awarded and amounts funded <a href="https://www.notion.so/List-of-funded-grants-0d0846e5f62141c5a3742fc7606f9ecb">here 38</a> and open RFPs <a href="https://aavegrants.org/Request-for-Proposals-160203ba5d1746daae31588924a6680a">here 16</a>.
Particular success stories include:
<ul>
<li>Gelato launched <a href="https://www.cono.finance/">Cono Finance 12</a> which protects Aave users’ positions from liquidation</li>
<li>
<a href="https://twitter.com/smsunarto">Scott Sunarto 3</a> integrated token streaming with Sabiler to easily stream tokens to contributors</li>
<li>
<a href="https://polygon.symphony.finance/">Symphony Finance 5</a> launched their yield generating limit order product on Polygon in September and so far has executed over $4 million of order volume</li>
<li>Rabbithole helped onboard new users - their Aave quest was completed by <a href="https://governance.aave.com/t/grant-received-to-create-an-aave-quest-on-rabbithole/4683/11">2,000 users in under 12 hours 4</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="https://governance.aave.com/t/update-on-aave-analytics-and-growth-dashboard-omni-analytics/5124">Omni Analytics 13</a> has built a detailed Aave-owned growth and analytics dashboard</li>
</ul>
<h1>
<a name="people-5" href="#people-5"></a>People</h1>
The original proposal included 1 lead and 7 reviewers. Over the program the team brought on a designer, operations lead, and community manager.
<ul>
<li>
Lead. Shreyas leads the grants committee. He has grown the team, overseen the distribution of grants, and will lead initiatives to begin the decentralization of the DAO.</li>
<li>
Review Committee. The Review Committee is currently made up of:
<ul>
<li>Maggie Love - W3BCLOUD and SheFi</li>
<li>Corbin Page - ConsenSys Codefi</li>
<li>Calvin Chu - Independent</li>
<li>Aleks Larsen - Blockchain Capital</li>
<li>Imran Khan - DeFi Alliance</li>
<li>(Note that Nick Cannon (Gauntlet) and Jose Maria Macedo (Delphi Digital) have decided to step down from the grants committee due to time constraints. We really appreciate their contributions.)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
Designer. <a href="https://twitter.com/Lauracsc_">Laura Sinisterra 15</a> has <a href="https://www.notion.so/June-29-2021-Aave-Grants-DAO-Logo-and-Branding-ba2c6f4cc97f4cd799c6ad7ef954b7b1">created a brand identity 14</a>, designed a logo, and produced content assets including POAPs and community flyers.</li>
<li>
Operations lead. Neil Shroff has streamlined the application process, manages payments, KYC, and other administrative tasks.</li>
<li>
Community manager. Bill produces a weekly newsletter (<a href="https://aavenews.substack.com/">Aave News 4</a>), maintains the Twitter account, coordinates external Aave events, and coordinates other community initiatives including four community calls and four community AMAs.</li>
</ul>
Compensation
<ul>
<li>Lead: $150 an hour with a 30 hour/week cap</li>
<li>Review committee: $150 an hour with a 10 hour/week cap</li>
<li>Designer: one-off based on specific design engagements</li>
<li>Operations Lead: $3.5k/month</li>
<li>Community manager: $6k/month</li>
</ul>
Expanded Proposal
Moving forward we propose renewing Aave Grants DAO with an increased grants budget of $2 million and an operations budget of $2 million per quarter. With the increased budget we will increase the number of larger community grants, fund non-developer grants including sponsorship and community events, and work to decentralize the grants process.
We propose keeping the current structure and makeup of the team (team lead, seven reviewers, designer, operations lead, and community manager) with the flexibility to add one or two more people based on need and as ad hoc tasks or events happen.
We will continue to have both rapid grants and community grants as outlined in the original proposal.
<ul>
<li>Rapid grants: &lt;$100k
<ul>
<li>Simple process to apply for a grant to AGD</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Community grants: &gt;$100k
<ul>
<li>Applicants post a proposal on Aave’s governance forum and Snapshot vote as a temperature check from the community</li>
<li>Based on feedback and discussion, the committee can decide to approve these grants</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
The increased budget will allow us to fund more community grants. For any larger grant, we will continue to solicit community feedback through a Snapshot vote as was the case with <a href="https://snapshot.org/#/aave.eth/proposal/QmQjEhB3sn6buCuG2a16Uvn7oaE87VNyMEwwHB1NHUmEg6">2001 DeFi’s proposal to build an Aave mobile app 10</a>.
We will also increase the scope of ideas funded to include sponsorship and community events, as so far we have only focused on developer grants. These will be with the goal of growing Aave’s brand in the ecosystem.
<h1>
<a name="decentralizing-grants-6" href="#decentralizing-grants-6"></a>Decentralizing Grants</h1>
We would like to explore ways to decentralize the grants process by moving some grant decision-making power to grantees and active community members, such as active governance contributors and community call attendees.
Besides decentralizing Aave grants, we have also worked towards establishing a <a href="https://www.notion.so/Apply-to-join-the-Developers-DAO-ac1235eca30e4833b09754e7562a670b">Developers DAO 21</a> and a <a href="https://snapshot.org/#/aave.eth/proposal/QmZfhgUj3iDhwvopPJJ91RMBhSosqY5ATnWx992fiVXvrT">Risk DAO 6</a>, focused on protocol development and risk assessment of the protocol, respectively.
<h1>
<a name="request-for-feedback-7" href="#request-for-feedback-7"></a>Request for Feedback</h1>
We welcome and look forward to hearing feedback on our proposal and ideas you would like to see implemented within Aave Grants.
Finally, Nick and Jose will be stepping down from the Review Committee once a suitable replacement is found. They have both been valuable members who we thank for their contributions. If you are interested in filling out two spots on the grants committee, please reply to this thread with some basic information, including:
<ul>
<li>Describe your involvement in the Aave ecosystem</li>
<li>What skills/experience do you bring to the committee?</li>
<li>Can you commit ~5 hours a week?</li>
</ul>

Aave Grants Update and Renewal Authors:  @HelloShreyas  and  @0xbilll  
 
  Overview 
 Aave Grants DAO has awarded

Aave Grants Update and Renewal

<h1>
<a name="update-sept-24-1" href="#update-sept-24-1"></a>Update (Sept 24)</h1>
We have an amazing set of candidates for the Aave Guardian. We want to move the process faster to <a href="https://governance.aave.com/t/aave-deployment-on-avalanche/5584">deploy 19</a> Aave Protocol on Avalanche. Interested candidates should respond to this post by 10 am UTC on Saturday, Sept 25. After this, we will put up a Snapshot vote for the community to elect 10 Guardian members.
<h1>
<a name="summary-2" href="#summary-2"></a>Summary</h1>
<ul>
<li>Allow the Guardian to temporarily hold keys of new deployments of the Aave Protocol on L2 (or otherwise) while the technical implementations for Aave Governance to control such deployment on those networks is finalized (i.e., a protocol governance bridge).</li>
<li>Rel-elect 10 members of the Aave Guardian. If you are interested in being a member of Aave Guardian, please respond to this post with your background, involvement in Aave, and interest in the role.</li>
</ul>
<h1>
<a name="proposer-3" href="#proposer-3"></a>Proposer</h1>
<a href="/u/helloshreyas">@HelloShreyas</a> and Aave Grants DAO
<h1>
<a name="rationale-4" href="#rationale-4"></a>Rationale</h1>
What Is the Guardian:
As discussed <a href="https://medium.com/aave/aave-protocol-governance-v2-has-been-activated-af4a4b228885">here 60</a>, the Guardian was established as a community multisig to protect against potential governance takeovers by centralized actors.
It was always intended that Aave governance would replace the current members through a vote, but no such proposal for this replacement vote has been made to date. Given the community’s interest in ensuring deployments of the Aave Protocol on various other networks (e.g., Polygon) and that bridges must be built from <a href="https://medium.com/aave/cross-chain-governance-and-open-sourcing-the-aave-ui-ad9dd632175d">bridges to Aave governance 14</a>, we believe it is an ideal time for governance to elect new Guardian members to be part of the Guardian multisig.
Enhanced responsibilities of the Guardian:
Currently, the Guardian only is intended to act as a “veto” on malicious attacks on the Aave Protocol through governance votes by centralized actors.
However, the Guardian — comprised of community members — also should have the ability to hold the admin keys to any new deployment of the Aave Protocol on other networks while technical solutions are being built to ensure that Aave Governance can control all deployments of the protocol, regardless of the network on which they’re running.
This additional responsibility is necessary because governance bridge infrastructure (i.e., cross-chain governance smart contracts) to control the Aave Protocol on other networks may not be ready at deployment time. Any deployment of the requires an Ethereum address to hold certain permissions on the pool, to later on be transferred to the Aave Governance on Ethereum. Considering that the Aave community actively supports expansion of the protocol to other networks, it will be useful for all future deployments to have a community multi-sig composed by reputable members of the Aave community as holders of the different permissions of the deployment.
New Members:
There are currently 10 members of the Guardian multisig, but we would like to re-elect all 10 positions from among the community. If existing members want to be part of the multisig, they need to re-apply.
We believe community members should come forward to express their interest in being a member of the Guardian multisig and should make a case for why they are well-situated to take on this role.
Any community member can respond publicly to this forum post to express interest in taking on this role. Please share your background, your involvement with Aave, and why you would be a fit for this responsibility. The community member should also provide a proposal regarding their ability and interest in being a member of the Guardian multisig.
To encourage censorship resistance we recommend the community to not have more than 3 key holders from the same jurisdiction.
Process for voting in New Guardian Members:
Once all proposals for new Guardian members have been submitted, the Grants DAO will publish a Snapshot highlighting interested members and providing background on the proposal submitted by those individuals.
Governance can then vote to elect the next members of the Guardian through the Snapshot.

Aave Guardian Update 
  Update (Sept 24) 
 We have an amazing set of candidates for the

Aave Guardian Update

The Aave Guardian Snapshot <a href="https://snapshot.org/#/aave.eth/proposal/QmduWeTjh4afJJsbCCvN52u2DAnbm2Hf2RZedga5WGuNhs">vote 22</a> has passed and the community has elected 10 members to join the Guardian.
These are the community-elected Guardian members:
<ul>
<li>
Arthur0x (DeFiance Capital)
</li>
<li>
coderdan (Aavegotchi)
</li>
<li>
Gavi Galloway (Standard Crypto)
</li>
<li>
Isa Kivlighan (Aave community, previously head of marketing on Aave Genesis team)
</li>
<li>
0xMaki (Sushi)
</li>
<li>
Hilmar Maximilian Orth (Gelato)
</li>
<li>
Meltem Demirors (Coinshares)
</li>
<li>
Corbin Page (ConsenSys Codefi, Aave Grants DAO)
</li>
<li>
Imran Khan (DeFi Alliance, Aave Grants DAO)
</li>
<li>
Dennison Bertram (Tally)
</li>
</ul>
Note that the vote type in the Snapshot proposal was initially incorrectly listed as ranked choice voting instead of approval voting. However, the Snapshot team helped calculate the votes based on approval voting methodology. The 10 elected candidates reflect the candidates most voted for according to the approval voting methodology.
We will now get in touch with the Guardian members to coordinate on next steps. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Aave Grants DAO Update and Renewal

Aave Grants Update and Renewal

Aave Guardian Update

Aave Guardian Elected Members

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