[PASSED] Development Approval Request for the ATOM Alignment Treasury

This proposal and the research prior to it was funded by the AADAO. Although the design has changed significantly, the initial post outlining the long term vision of the AAT is available on the forum here . Authors: Noam Cohen & Facundo Medica / Binary Builders Change log • 2023-11-20 Created initial post • 2023-12-08 Last Call. Added link to high level technical specification. Clarified that the deployment is contingent on a final governance proposal. Made it clear that the AAT is comprised of three individual modules. • 2023-12-15 Proposal is on-chain here Summary This is a signal proposal requesting approval for the development of the first version of the ATOM Alignment Treasury (AAT) into the Cosmos Hub’s software known as “Gaia”. It is a sentiment check to see whether ATOM holders believe time and resources should be allocated to this project. AADAO has signaled their willingness to fund development of the AAT. The AAT is an infrastructural solution to two problems we’ve observed in the wild already: • Liquidity deployment in the AEZ such as the 450k ATOM in prop 800 can help bootstrap new protocols in the AEZ. These are not investments where money is…

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Hello, up for it.

If aadao get renew, then this proposal pass. How long will it take to get first version of aaT?

Can we know more and less. how much ressources is needed ?

Loving this idea, the voting mechanism especially. Would you say this is a replacement/competition for Timewave, or supplemental to it? We are already deploying liquidity and doing token swaps so this is a natural progression for the Hub’s POL. It shouldn’t be much of a curve ball to anyone. Do you have any estimations of cost if this did end up as a community pool ask? For the voting mechanism, this is very important to ensure proper say in consumer chains and open up governance participation. What about tokens that aren’t deployed as POL and sit in the community pool? Could the AAT track the number of said token it owns at any given point whether LP’s or not and enforce that voting weight to consumer chains? This needs to be standard for every consumer chain relationship. In cases where the hub has very little economic stake like Stride, it could also be negotiated to give a sizeable flat or dynamic voting % to the hub that is relatively tied to the economic value ATOM instead of their native token. This will get tricky on when to include proposals and when not to. It can become subjective really quick. What if there was always a vote when there is weighted voting, and as…

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Can this functionality be built on Neutron? I generally don’t like the idea of complicating the code base of the Cosmos Hub and opening it to attack vectors. All of the functionality described here opens up the Hub to multiple attack vectors (accounts doing liquidity management, voting, unstaking, etc). Other chains maybe affected by actions taken from the Cosmos Hub which then reflect badly on it and have to be fixed with governance proposals on the Cosmos Hub. I don’t think the Hub should be involved with account management - in any form.

CONTEXT: In response to the proposal regarding the Atom Alignment Treasury (AAT), we acknowledge the infrastructural solutions it aims to provide for observed challenges in the Cosmos ecosystem. The two primary issues addressed are the manual execution and management of liquidity deployment in the AEZ and the lack of a mechanism enabling the Hub to vote on critical proposals on Consumer Chains. The proposed x/aat module seeks to automate these processes, ensuring efficient liquidity borrowing and facilitating governance alignment between the Hub and Consumer Chains. Importantly, the proposal emphasizes the core value of maintaining direct access to the Hub’s assets, avoiding centralization in the decision-making process. ANALYSIS: Version 1 of the AAT wisely abstains from including logic for actively maintaining position sizes within the Gaia binary. Instead, it suggests placing this logic on Neutron, allowing for greater flexibility and responsiveness to changes in DeFi protocols. The proposal also recognizes the importance of account separation, particularly in distinguishing between treasury management and the community pool. This separation safeguards against potential…

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Tricky | Cosmos Spaces: Would you say this is a replacement/competition for Timewave, or supplemental to it? Absolutely supplemental. The AAT can handle very simple mechanisms like IBC transfers and bonding, but we can’t build out the logic on the Hub for swapping, or interacting with the plethora of DeFi protocols out there. All of that, and probably much more is in scope for Timewave. The AAT can be seen as a mechanism for the Hub to express itself, Timewave can be seen as the executing party. Tricky | Cosmos Spaces: Do you have any estimations of cost if this did end up as a community pool ask? Tagging @tanned as they asked the same question. We would start development in Q1. The work shouldn’t take long, but it depends on resource availability when we’ll be done. Ideally we’d complete work between 3-6 months time part-time. Full time this would take ~2 months. We haven’t fully mapped out the costs at this stage and were planning to do so at the end of the year. This isn’t a funding request, but a sentiment check on the AAT itself, which is why we don’t have these numbers yet. Besides this we’re also committed to developing the DRIP and another…

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Because of the governance aspect here, there is no way to completely run all logic on Neutron. Modifications will have to be made to x/gov in order to allow for custom voting periods, prop cloning would have to be handled in a front-end (which is not needed if done on the Hub only), funds would have to be streamed to the AAT periodically, requiring changes to distribution module. It’ll end up quite a Frankenstein piece of software that’ll be very hard to maintain as the SDK bumps versions over time.

More philosophically though, I think all of the Hub’s core functionality should sit on the Hub. As Liquidity-as-a-Service becomes part of the core offering it makes sense to have it on the Hub. It’s a lot of money being handled, it needs a secure place to do this.

It would be a great addition, and it is much needed I believe.

Consumer chains should implement a standard voting interface/API so that the Hub can vote. Absolutely should be part of the agreement.

Perhaps a voting API could be part of the ICS Consumer module?

Cc @jtremback

FYI, spec will be posted Friday or Monday, and will then also move this prop to Last Call before it goes on-chain.

YES!

We really need these tools to make ICS a larger success and the Binary team is more than capable enough to deliver this.

Ertemann - Lavender.Five Nodes

This is a must have !
Does it means a proposal can incorporate several ICA message in a queue ?
Writing proposals will become a very technical job, a good UX to help writing proposal will be needed IMHO !

Technically any amount of messages could be executed in a queue. But it gets a bit tricky as we’re not building out elaborate failure handling. Basically if one message fails, the queue stops and a subsequent proposal is needed. As such, it’s not designed for complex stuff, but really just for simple things like sending tokens over IBC and then staking them on a consumer chain, for example.

Anything more complex, like swapping tokens, or adding to an LP position should be handled by a third party like Timewave.

Edit: Yes, UX will be important. At a first we’ll make sure to get some good docs out there with Gov examples when using the AAT. But ideally we’d have a website to easily construct Gov proposals.

Noam:

enabling of Interchain Accounts Controller module in the Gaia binary so that the Hub can create Interchain Accounts on Consumer Chains.

Excited about this specific improvement, there are other projects that need this capability as well, including DAO DAO deployed on Neutron to enhance Hub governance on behalf of Hub community.

One specific question about this funding:
Why not having it voted right now instead of waiting AADAO approval to get funded by them?
The subject seems very interesting and aligned with the Hub development and community should be more aware of it than just passing the governance and going through the DAO…

In support of this development module!

I mean, we don’t mind either way. I’m just under the impression that Hub Gov has signalled that small grants work (which is what this is) should go through the AADAO, and large funding proposals (like Informal & Hypha) should go through community spends.

I’m also in agreement with that distinction and delegation of responsibilities.

I don’t think it would make a big difference in terms of awareness whether this is a signal prop or community spend prop.

Last call! This will go on-chain next week.

We’ve added a high level technical specification here. This is simply a starting point and we’re very open to feedback! A more elaborate technical specification will be created once we enter development stage next year.

@Noam sorry if I missed it above, but how does this interact with your work on DRIP? Is there some synergy? Can you do both at once?

Very little overlap tbh. We’d prefer to approach these as separate features. But ideally both launched in the first half of 2024 or shortly thereafter.

Third module we’re designing would leverage elements of both (queue system, ICA manager & oracle system).

Proposal is on-chain! Mintscan

go ahead!
I think you should do it

any update about AAT ?

A lot of the functionality that sits within the AAT overlaps with what is currently being discussed around ATOM wars. We are waiting for clarity around the scope of that to better understand what the Hub’s needs might be here. Most likely ATOM wars is more about shorter term alignment v.s. AAT’s longer term alignment, but we have to wait for the following:

• What is the suggested scope of ATOM wars?
• What type of protocols are targeted?
• Is the community in favor of it?
• If the above is clear, what place does the AAT have in this context, and is it worth adding significant logic complexity to the Hub?

Until we have clarity around it I think it would be a waste of resources to go ahead with building the AAT at this point. I hope everyone can understand that sentiment, but I’m happy to hear folk’s thoughts on this!

We can perhaps relaunch the debate. Do we have enough perspective on the protocols targeted by hydro? and the other questions associated with the development of AAT?