Signaling proposal to allow Hub governance to execute clawbacks with ease

Summary This proposal aims to introduce a ‘Claw Back’ tooling that would allow the Cosmos Hub community to recall all funding provided to DAOs, like the Atom Accelerator DAO (AADAO), back to the Community Pool through an onchain governance vote. Please note that this proposal is NOT calling for the immediate dissolution of AADAO. Recent events have prompted conversations in the community and the DAO about restructuring the organization, but this proposal is unrelated to those issues. This proposal is to modify DAODAO tooling such that any ATOM Community Pool funded DAOs’ assets can easily be clawed-back by governance, if and when needed. Background The Hub’s community is the true owner of AADAO’s assets and is the sovereign voice enabling it. Meaning that, at any moment, the community could choose to halt the DAO’s activities, claw back funding and dissolve Atom Accelerator. Motivation The community’s supreme authority, via onchain governance, over all of AADAO’s activities isn’t new and has been part of the DAO’s Internal Protocols since inception. That being said, if a community member wanted to introduce a proposal to claw back funds and disband AADAO, the process…

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I think that’s a nice idea, however there are a few caveats (not that I do not support the idea, I do, but these needs to be thought about):

• what if the pre-governance discussion starts, then the wallet owners see it and move their funds away so they can’t be clawed back this way?
• if some of the funds were already spend, there’s no way to get them back this way

And obviously only those funds that were received via the CommunityPoolSpendProposal should be able to be clawed back, otherwise it can lead to a precedent like with Juno and its proposal 16 (which I think should have never happened and executed in the first place).

(All of these points above are also relevant for clawbacks via SoftwareUpgradeProposals, which doesn’t make them invalid.)

I think the ideal approach would be not using CommunityPoolSpend proposals, which can be clawed back, but instead something like a linear/milestone-based vesting. Imagine this: someone asks for funding, and instead of asking for a CommunityPoolSpend, a vesting account (or some kind of it, not sure about the internals, I’m just merely brainstorming and proposing the general approach here) is generated. If everything goes okay and the team delivers, it emits money either once the team reaches some milestones or linearly over time, but if not, the community (or AADAO) can propose cancelling this vesting account (or whatever it would be) and the portion of tokens that was not yet distributed would be just not distributed to a team, end of story.

Pros:

• the whole amount is not distributed to the team, preventing cases like proposal 101
• if the team does not deliver, cancelling the undistributed part of the grant would be way easier than clawing it back

Cons:

• ???

Hey @freak12techno thanks for chiming in. These are all valid points to consider. Regardless of how many measures we can put in place, there’ll always be a certain level of trust required when it comes to funding teams working on the Hub from the CP. Technically speaking, there is nothing stopping teams that received funds from the Community Pool once a clawback process of any kind is initiated. This is why the process to get funding from the CP is long in the first place: based on the proposal presented, the community will have to assess the team, the likelihood of them delivering on their promises and whether or not the amount asked is justifiable. The intended tooling that we aim to introduce isn’t supposed to replace the key trust assumption of trusting the team to not steal funds, instead it builds on it to make the clawback process easier, automated and accessible to any community member. freak12techno: but instead something like a linear/milestone-based vesting We fully agree on this. For example, grants approved by AADAO are subject to milestones and deliverables to unlock the full amount approved, which could be tracked on AADAO’s dashboard for…

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Awesome, thanks for explaining.

With that being said, I’m all in for adding a clawback functionality to Hub (or should it be sdk in general, I assume?) and would vote yes on the proposal once it’s on chain. Vesting approach would still be better, but given that it’s not there yet, having a clawback via governance is better than having nothing (except for clawbacks via SoftwareUpgradeProposal) at all.

Thank you for initiating this conversation, @ATOMAcceleratorDAO . Wishing the entire team are staying well. A few concerns: 1 ATOMAcceleratorDAO: The Hub’s community is the true owner of AADAO’s assets and is the sovereign voice enabling it. If this statement is true, is there a deliberate effort from AADAO’s core team, and a linked Cosmos Hub Top 20 Validator, conceived through the grants program, in avoiding responding to the Aid Proposal for Earthquake Survivors in Türkiye thread? ATOMAcceleratorDAO: Give AADAO (or other DAOs) the chance to reply and address the concerns motivating the proposal. This previous employee, let alone founder of a Top 30 Hub Validator, has an overdue response requested by the broader Cosmos Hub Community. 2 ATOMAcceleratorDAO: Community Pool address control over funds in the custody of AADAO. Not only does this further lessen the credibility of AADAO, let alone the ability to custody the hub’s community pool, if that is being understood correctly, this signals to the broader community that AADAO should indeed be dissolved, immediately. Please note, this is not something necessarily…

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Thanks for your thoughts on this @FHZ . I wanted to address an aspect of your post - about proposal 101. FHZ: If this statement is true, is there a deliberate effort from AADAO’s core team, and a linked Cosmos Hub Top 20 Validator, conceived through the grants program, in avoiding responding to the Aid Proposal for Earthquake Survivors in Türkiye thread? NO, AADAO is not using the grants program to avoid responding to your questions about the Earthquake proposal. I don’t even really know what it means. The Earthquake proposal, like many other “Community Spend Proposals” are in no way linked to AADAO; nor does AADAO have any power, influence or control over the people behind those proposals; nor is AADAO in any way responsible for the deliverables listed in these non-associated proposals. I can see you have already brought this issue up in the thread below, and Grace (member of our Oversight) has already responded to you: Aid Proposal for Earthquake Survivors in Türkiye Hub Proposals Hi there, Dilan left AADAO earlier this year, March 2024. Mikey’s contribution ended with the pilot year. Current and former AADAO contributors lists…

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@Syed Thank you for your response!

Respectfully speaking, intentions were not to “hijack” this thread, but to enforce the accountability factor being stated here, on behalf of the members who requested for a response from the 101 thread. Believe it or not, the desire is to see AADAO succeed, for the good of the collective Cosmos Hub community.

Why AADAO does have “something” to do with Proposal 101, relates to the former employee, who is the founder of the Validator responsible for Proposal 101. If the individual left in March 2024, it falls in line with Hub community members requesting a response since the passing of Prop 101, dated February 23, 2023. Outside of this scope, you are 100% correct AADAO does not have relation to it, at the least, any longer.

Thank you for your time reading/responding.

We view this proposal as a crucial step toward enhancing decentralized governance. While it may be perceived as controversial or potentially risky for operational stability, we at Govmos uphold high ethical standards and see no evidence suggesting it would cause significant harm to DAO protocols. On the contrary, we believe the update would foster greater accountability and responsibility. Empowering the most decentralized governance system—the Cosmos Hub—is, in our opinion, a clear net benefit.

On behalf of the PRO Delegators’ validator team, we will cast a positive vote on this proposal.

Thank you for your attention,
Govmos

Curious if the proposer, alongside supporting top validators, would have voted in favor for this proposal if it meant “clawing back” funds for Prop101.