House of Stake Updates: Transparency Thread

Ecosystem Governance
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Gmgm! In an effort to increase transparency around the process of establishing the new House of Stake, I’m going to post regular updates in this thread.

Here’s today’s update:

Delegate selection

We received ~30 applicants from candidate delegates. Thank you very much to everyone who responded to the Call for Delegates! We originally stated that we’d announce the set of endorsed delegates by today. It’s going to take a little bit longer, but not much longer. We’re still in the process of reviewing all of the applications. We’ll also share the composition of the Screening Committee, which is responsible for selecting the initial set of endorsed delegates. More soon.

HoS backend

The @fastnear team is leading the work to implement the backend contracts that will power escrow, delegation, and voting for HoS (per the governance proposal). The work in progress contracts are visible here: GitHub - fastnear/house-of-stake-contracts. We expect it to be code complete by the end of this month, and we’re in the process of onboarding one or two teams of auditors to conduct an audit next month.

HoS frontend

We’re in discussions with three teams (Tally, Aragon, Agora) that are candidates to build the frontend for HoS, which will allow NEAR holders to escrow their coins in exchange for veNEAR (vote escrow NEAR), delegate veNEAR to endorsed delegates, and vote on proposals. All of these teams have also offered to provide ongoing governance consulting, design, development, and operational/maintenance support. We expect to make a decision and announce a partner at the end of this week.

Roadmap

As of today we’re still on schedule to begin rolling out the new HoS platform next month, and we expect the initial set of features (as described above) to be fully functional by the end of April. The next task is to finish the selection process for endorsed delegates, and to work with the delegates to define the initial scope of governance, the initial set of questions to be answered and decisions to be made, etc. We also need to decide and announce the composition of the Security Council.

Let me know what questions you have, if any.

Lane

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Hi everyone, I hope you had a nice week. Here’s another weekly update.

Progress

I had a lot of very productive face to face meetings last week in Denver. I had the opportunity to spend a substantial amount of time with all of the partners who are candidates to help us build out the HoS frontend, and to provide some ongoing consulting as well, including Agora, Aragon, and Tally. I also had the opportunity to meet several of the organizations that submitted applications for the endorsed delegate role, and with many others who have deep expertise in governance and who were able to provide a lot of helpful advice and ideas.

Delegate selection

This process is ongoing, and my goal is to announce the initial set of delegates by the end of this week. I apologize for the delay, but it’s an important decision and we want to make sure we’re being thoughtful about the composition of the initial delegate council, that we’re including a diverse set of delegates with experience and expertise in many relevant areas (technical, social, economic, etc.).

HoS backend

The @fastnear team continues to make good progress on the HoS backend (the repository is linked above). Things are a little delayed due to ETHDenver, but we currently expect to be code complete, and to kick off the audit process, within two weeks. Two of the three smart contracts that power the HoS backend are more or less finished.

HoS frontend

We have proposals from all of the potential partners mentioned above, and our goal is to announce a decision by the end of this week. After this, we expect work to begin as early as next week, and to have an initial prototype finished with ~6 weeks.

Roadmap

No major changes to the roadmap shared above.

As always, let me know if anything is still unclear or if you have any questions. Expect to hear from me again within a few days.

Lane

10 Likes
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I hope everyone’s had a great week and a nice weekend. Here’s the latest weekly update!

Progress

This week was all about due diligence: following up on conversations that started in Denver, making progress towards choosing a partner to build the HoS frontend, and reviewing delegate applications. As part of the process of choosing a partner to build the frontend, I reviewed code and checked references. I also continued to review delegate applications, and we compiled a short list of candidates that we’re considering for the endorsed delegate role. We also finalized the Screening Committee.

Screening Committee

The initial Screening Committee, which is responsible for picking the initial set of endorsed delegates and also for fast-tracking proposals, consists of the following seats:

  • NEAR Foundation: 3 seats (senior leadership, legal team, and myself)
  • NEAR One (core developers): 1 seat
  • Gauntlet (governance/cryptoeconomics design and strategy): 1 seat

Finalizing this committee is important because it was a blocker to finalizing the delegate selection.

Delegate selection

As mentioned, we have a short list of candidates. The Screening Committee is in the process of reviewing the list, making sure we have all of our bases covered, etc. Some concrete questions we’re discussing include, do we have enough expertise in specific areas such as economics? How many initial delegates do we want to choose? How many professional teams do we want to include, relative to individual delegates? (If you have feedback on any of these questions, feel free to share it here.)

Again, I’m sorry that this process is taking longer than we initially thought, but we are making steady progress and we expect to be able to announce the initial set of delegates very soon. My goal is to begin contacting the endorsed delegates this week to make sure they’re still committed to the task, and once that’s done, to share the list here.

HoS backend

@fastnear informed that they continue to make good progress on the backend code. We have calls this week with potential auditors, and expect to be able to begin the audit process no later than the end of this month/beginning of April.

HoS frontend

We finished reviewing the proposals and conducting due diligence on the candidate partners. There will likely be a bit more negotiation involved in finalizing terms and signing a contract. I very much hope that happens this week and that work can begin this week or next week.

Roadmap

We’re probably a week to two weeks behind the initial roadmap shared above, due to the delays finalizing the items described here. Once the HoS backend is code complete, and once we’ve signed a contract with a partner to build the frontend, we should be better able to estimate when the work will be done and the system will go live. Stay tuned.

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Hello,why are not all candidates allowed to participate if people are willing to delegate their tokens to them? Why is governance once again being restricted to a closed group? Why is there no one from the community on the screening committee?

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@lane
For your information, she/he is waiting answer