The discussion outlines the scope of a strategic collaboration between Townhall (Polka Labs Pte. Ltd.) and Astar Network Treasury to research and develop the governance infrastructure and supporting products for the Astar Network ecosystem. The document highlights the details of work done and makes a retroactive funding request to the Astar community as the first decentralized treasury proposal in Astar ecosystem.
Discussion
The discussion aims to highlight the work done to create a robust governance infrastructure and develop supporting platform called Townhall for the Astar Network based on the vision that was outlined by âAstar Governance Whitepaper.â It focuses on enhancing decentralised decision-making and propelling growth by refining the network voting power, building governance resilience through worst-case scenario analyses, and defining roles within a bicameral governance setup.
The scope of the proposal includes development of AstarGov - An off-chain & on-chain voting platform tailored to meet the needs of Astar Networkâs vibrant governance and to research and build a novel new governance mechanism with govASTR as a governance token.
The scope of work with govASTR includes but is not limited to, simulating govASTR locking periodsâ impacts, analysing staking and slashing rates, and fostering dAppsâ involvement in governance to prioritise voting power based on their contribution to the network rather than a simple token of value based voting mechanism.
The Townhall team in collaboration with Hoon & other Astar team members, has been working together over the past 6 months to research and develop a novel governance mechanism for the Astar Network, and we, the Townhall team, have a good understanding of how the network and the community interacts with each other.
We are excited to partner with the Astar community to create an effective & decentralized governance mechanism that leads Astar into one of the top blockchains in the entire ecosystem. Here is the detailed link to the proposal with budget.
Hello!
Thank you for your and your teamâs development. Your request for retroactive development is very sincere and I support it.
However, I would like an opinion from the engineers mainly because I cannot determine the reasonableness of the requested development fee.
In addition, the Townhall is actively discussing this issue, so we may want to look there rather than the Forum.
Like @you425, I think it is a very well thought out proposal, and I think the documentation is well done (I am referring to the proposal document).
However, I cannot clearly measure what is being proposed, it is outside my area of knowledge, but I want to understand it. I also ask for the opinion of the Astar team on this point.
similar to @you425 and @Juminstock , I can see the value of the proposal and the contribution to the Astar Governance, I have also used the Townhall, and overall have a good experience. I would like to hear some more feedback from the Astar team!
Iâve read the proposal document. It was very easy to read, with transparent and clear explanations. I believe governance system is essential for the ecosystem to grow.
The budget requested this time is quite large compared to previous proposals, but considering their contributions and behavior up to now, I think it make sense.
Let me write a rundown for the readers and those who are not clear about the scope of this proposal and what it is asking to be funded.
This is a retroactive treasury request for works that were already finished.
Astar Governance (voting with dApp Staking + govASTR token) modeling research and prototyping: The Astar Foundation wanted to start with a simpler governance model (dubbed Governance v1) before the govASTR token model is fully integrated into the system. Therefore, this proposal only considers the research groundwork that will be used in the future based on the communityâs needs and support.
Townhall Governance UI: This is the primary UI for interacting with all Astar Governance needs (with or without govASTR), and it is linked in the post. The funding request is further broken down into the following elements
Chain Snapshot Database and Website Service
Discussion Forum and Discourse Integration
Communication and Engagement Tools Built into the UI
And continuous UI/UX improvements/maintenance based on the community feedback
I hope this clarifies the scope of this proposal and adds context to the amount. The TH team wants to make this as a starting point for a long-term governance partnership.
I totally agree that governance is very important and I think your product is good (not perfect but itâs good
What bothers me about this proposal is the lack of detail in the amount requested. Could you detail the different features implemented specifically for Astar and give the FTE and the price per feature?
For this reason, I voted no but I am in favor of another proposal, more detailed, containing only the work done by the Townhall Team for the implementation of AstarGov.
Agreeing with the other voices here. Governance is very important in crypto, but the amount seems kinda to high to me. Its a lot of money which should be carefully planned if its used.
@0xAthena
After reading again the messages, I found the details of the requested budget.
So, from my understanding, $65,000 covers the R&D work done by @hoonkim for 6 months, right?
Itâs a pity that this governance model proposed by Hoon was not implemented on Shibuya or Shiden as suggested by Maarten.
But all work deserves salary and I guess a large part of this sum will go to Hoon for his work and I think itâs deserved.
For the implementation part of AstarGov, 7 FTEs worked for 4 months, right?
Personally, I find the FTEs slightly âinflatedâ especially the CXO part but on the other hand I find the monthly salary per FTE very reasonable.
In the infrastructure/cloud costs part, I see that you charge for the licenses of the dev tools. Usually, an IT team already has its tools and does not bill the customer.
âExternal APIs and serviceâ are billed monthly. Will they still be operational in 3 months or do you plan on re-billing?
To summarize my opinion, the amount requested is certainly inflated but not unreasonable. It is a pity that the R&D work done upstream has not been implemented and certainly never will be.
The most regrettable, in my opinion, is the way this proposal was passed. Two whales, certainly the beneficiaries of this request, swung the result in their favor.
This is not a community vote, too bad! The proposal and the vote lasted less than 7 days (only 6 full days) and this was during the summer holiday period of part of the community.
These observations and comments made by @GuiGou are really important and deserve attention. Like GuiGou I also find myself puzzled by the way the proposal was approved, we are talking about 24.3 M $ASTR tokens, if we realize had it not been for that, the proposal would not have been approved, this is extremely unfortunate, the vote was not balanced.
After seeing his comments and explanations, I once again think that we need to work hard for a decentralized environment and come up with something new.
