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

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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

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Sorry for the slow reply. I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding here, and I apologize if we haven’t communicated the design clearly enough.

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?

All candidates can participate permissionlessly. HoS governance is permissionless. Anyone can receive veNEAR delegation and vote on proposals, and users can also choose to self-delegate and participate directly.

Why is there no one from the community on the screening committee?

I’m open to this idea. How would such a person be chosen fairly?

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Hi everyone, apologies for not posting here for a while. I actually only intended to update this thread until we announced the initial set of delegates, but I’ve had a few folks reach out and ask me to continue posting here. I’m not sure I can commit to posting here every single week, mainly because I won’t have any updates some weeks, but I can try my best.

Please note that there are already a number of different stakeholders involved in HoS (NEAR Foundation, NEAR One, the delegates including several organizations, Gauntlet, Agora, other community members and volunteers) and this list will continue to grow as the initiative matures. I can only share things as I see them from my perspective, but even at this early stage there are already many things happening under the HoS umbrella that I’m not even aware of!

Here’s what’s happened over the past month or so:

  • we finalized the contract and announced our partnership with Agora to build the HoS frontend, and to study governance best practice and continue to improve the existing design.
  • we held another X space to give the delegates a chance to introduce themselves.
  • we got all of the delegates, and some supporters such as Agora, into a Telegram group. We’ve held a few calls and workshops with this group, including introducing them to the Agora platform, discussing governance best practices, and exploring the delegates’ priorities and preferences.
  • setting up working groups for the delegates to focus on different areas of governance (Governance Infrastructure & Processes, Ecosystem Growth Strategy, Treasury Strategy & Management, Network Economics & Security)
  • I personally have had a series of meetings with individuals and teams including Fireeyes and https://www.eval.science/ to discuss tokenomics, AI governance, and governance best practice more generally.
  • the audit work of the HoS backend contracts is ongoing.
  • the excellent Buidl Asia conference happened, where I had the opportunity to join a panel on governance and discuss ideas including Futarchy and their potential relevance to HoS. The video isn’t up yet, but I’ll share it when it is.
  • at NF we’re in the process of interviewing several candidates to join the HoS team, including a candidate for a governance lead role and one for a comms/generalist role. If you’re interested in applying or if you’d like to refer someone, please reach out (DM me here or on X).
  • we’ve begun exploring areas where work that’s currently being handled by NF, such as ecosystem growth, founder success, marketing, etc., might overlap with some of the work that HoS and the delegates do, and work that HoS might support. We have to be cautious as we spin up HoS to make sure work isn’t being duplicated and that we’re all rowing in the same direction, but over time, if it’s successful, HoS should be able to take on a good amount of this work and allow NF to focus on its core competencies. This will be an ongoing conversation.
  • we’ve begun having conversations with NEAR-aligned supporters, investors, and other coin hodlers to understand their needs and desires, their thoughts about tokenomics, what a successful HoS looks like to them, and how to get them to transition from PoS to HoS. This work is ongoing.

There are several other initiatives and possible partnerships that are cooking, and I’ve been putting a lot of time and effort into those. I expect they’ll bear fruit and I look forward to being able to share them soon, but I’ll refrain from doing so until they’ve been agreed.

Here are the next milestones as I see them:

  • we owe you a few basic items, for housekeeping: a roadmap with tentative dates, and a basic knowledge base/information hub/landing page with more information on HoS including the project goals, stakeholders, delegates, upcoming events, etc.
  • we should have an initial, working prototype of the Agora frontend within a few weeks.
  • the delegates have an initial proposal template from Agora and work should begin soon on the first few proposals.
  • some sort of straightforward constitution and/or initial statement of principles and values, and maybe also a code of conduct - I think we can start with something very basic and iterate from there.
  • we (screening committee, security council, NF, in consultation with the delegates and the community) need to set some basic guidelines on this first phase of HoS: initial goals and scope of initial proposals, and portion of the treasury that’s in play.
  • we’ll kick off the AI governance work within the next few weeks, including building the governance assistant tool and designing the initial delegate actors.

Thanks for reading. As always, feel free to post your own updates, comments, and questions here as well. More soon. Happy weekend!

Lane

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Question #1: How much did the NEAR Foundation spend on the development of the House of Stake (HoS)?

Ilia publicly criticized Blaze for spending over $1M to build the NDC. What is your salary? How much did the NF spend on HoS development?

Some delegates were selected improperly due to clear conflicts of interest. They are therefore ineligible to vote and participate. Please understand this issue. They must step down from their roles or projects to be eligible — at least Yuen, NearWeek.

You selected the S cameron team, which now holds the majority of delegates in the House of Stake, instead of including individuals from different communities — as well as those who publicly criticized the NF for weak leadership, like Blaze and others.

Please note: we will be closely monitoring every proposal, X post, and highlighting all violations of conflict of interest and breaches of the Code of Conduct. Immediate action will be expected. Let’s start today.

The first complaint is against Yuen and NearWeek, who both have a strong conflict of interest (work directly for NF) and were selected by 3/5 where NF had majority.

They must step down from their roles or delegate positions.

This is deeply concerning. The closed “Cameron Club” which you selected for delegate roles is now poised to lead all major ecosystem initiatives. Why is this process happening behind closed doors again?

Unacceptable. All vacancies and opportunities must be made public.

It seems you’re becoming familiar with the NF hiring policy. LOL.

But given that delegates were selected off-chain, this lack of transparency is, unfortunately, not surprising.

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Hi @Diana_P, thanks for reading and responding with some questions. I’m happy to answer questions and I welcome constructive criticism.

That said, I don’t feel that your response is constructive or in good faith. I normally ignore responses that aren’t constructive or in good faith, and will do that going forward. The business of governance is difficult, and it’s very easy to snipe from the sidelines without contributing anything constructively, so to be frank I don’t have time to respond to such messages. I’ll always prioritize replying to folks who are actually, meaningfully contributing to this important, community-driven initiative.

All of the delegates and other stakeholders that I mentioned in my update have been engaging positively, constructively, and in good faith in HoS thus far, and I expect the same of community participants.

However, since House of Stake is a new initiative, I’m instead going to rewrite your message here the way I would’ve written it if I wanted to make a good faith effort to express the same ideas constructively. HTH.

Lane

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Hi Lane, thanks for the hard work on the HoS initiative so far, and thank you for the recent update. In response I have a few ideas to share and a few questions to ask:

First of all, with respect to funding, as we’re all aware many mistakes were made with the NDC initiative, which spent over $1M with very little to show. I’d like to make sure that the same mistakes aren’t made this time. To this end, I’d like to propose that we use the following tools to transparently track how the HoS treasury is deployed. I’ve seen these tools work well in other DAOs, such as X: [list of tools]. I’m also happy to help out with open source accounting for HoS. Could you share a bit more about how you envision deploying the treasury?

As we all know it’s impossible to totally avoid conflicts of interest in governance, especially in a small ecosystem like the NEAR ecosystem. I appreciate that you required each endorsed delegate candidate to state potential conflicts of interest in their initial applications.

I’d like to go a step further here and propose that we adopt this conflict of interests policy, which I’ve seen work well in DAO X and Y. It requires delegates to restate potential conflicts of interest biannually, and provides for a comment period where community members can raise concerns about potential CoIs: [link].

Thanks for the transparency throughout the process of selecting the initial set of endorsed delegates. I’ve reviewed the initial set of delegates, as well as your stated criteria for how they were chosen. While I understand the constraints, such as on the limited set of applicants, and I think we’re off to a good start, I’m concerned that certain constituencies within the broader NEAR ecosystem aren’t well represented by the current set of delegates. This includes constituency [Q], which is important because [reason], and constituency [R], which is important because [reason].

You also stated that we may decide to expand the set of delegates in the future. Can you say more about what this process might look like? How do you think we might get more representation in HoS from the constituencies I just mentioned? I’d be happy to lead a working group to explore these ideas in more depth, and come back with a concrete proposal.

Thanks for sharing this list. These working groups make a lot of sense! May I also propose that we consider additional working groups for [A], [B], and [C] going forward? Here’s my rationale: [explanation].

Since transparency is so important, it would also be great if the community could have some visibility into each of these working groups. I’d like to propose [A], [B], and [C]. What are your thoughts?

It’s great to see that the HoS team is growing. You must have a lot on your plate, and it’s important that NF and the community both recruit the best possible people to lead this project to ensure its success.

I’d like to nominate a few people for these roles: [nominations].

Also, again in the name of transparency, I’d be happy to help set up a HoS jobs board at [A], where the broader community could participate in writing job descriptions, posting nominations, and generally help out with recruiting.

Thank you very much for the effort to bring some transparency to the entire process. I understand that it’s easier to just make decisions behind closed doors, and I understand that transparency requires additional work. I’d like to help in the ways I laid out above, since this needs to be an ecosystem-wide effort.

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Hey @lane, I understand that getting criticism isn’t always easy. But wasn’t decentralization and transparency something Illia wanted from the start?

I see just one real problem here - and it’s easy to solve.

Just add a simple, clear report that the community can read. I’m sure 95% of the questions will go away after that.

The format can be very simple:

What was done:
A
B
C

Partnerships with:
A
B
C

Value for the ecosystem:
A
B
C

Money spent:
$1 on A
$2 on B
$3 on C

People ask questions when they don’t see what’s happening.

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Hi Lane,

Thanks for the updates and your continued leadership on the House of Stake initiative. It’s been interesting — and, frankly, a little surreal — to watch how quickly this process has embraced the NF playbook: closed-door decisions, delegate stacking, vague “we’ll set up a working group” replies, and the ever-reliable “DM me” when questions get too specific. It’s like watching someone speedrun the transition from Ethereum ideals to Web2 corporate politics in under three months.

A few open questions and thoughts, framed in the spirit of transparency, plural governance, and yes — some very real community concern:

  1. What happened to the vision of plurality?

Vitalik published an essay on plurality governance, where he argues that legitimacy in decentralized systems depends on balancing multiple sources of power and voice — what he calls plural public infrastructure. When institutions collapse into a single center of influence (in this case, the NEAR Foundation’s inner circle), the result is what he calls “centralized systems pretending to be plural.”

So: how does the current HoS structure reflect any kind of plural model?

From the outside, it looks more like a consolidation of control around the “Cameron Club”, rather than a diverse assembly of ecosystem voices. Where are the builders, critics, regional voices, or anyone who wasn’t already in the NF orbit?

  1. How did Cameron gain a majority of delegates?

You mentioned that “we got all of the delegates.” That was… surprisingly honest.

Could you walk us through how the “Cameron Club” ended up with majority control of HoS?

Is it a coincidence that this happened shortly after those private off-site meetings you posted about on Twitter? You were clear that some of those gatherings were “informal.” So, I’ll ask directly:

Can you state with confidence that no backroom deals, soft promises, or side agreements took place during those meetings?

Because from where we’re sitting, this doesn’t look like decentralization — it looks like pre-coordination dressed up as community consensus.

  1. Is there a reason this keeps happening behind closed doors?

The promise of Web3 governance was transparency, openness, and resisting the bureaucratic bloat of traditional institutions. Yet what we’re seeing instead is the repeat of every NF habit:

• Off-chain selection of decision-makers

• No published budget for HoS development

• A core team (your team) that appears to report to no one — while having access to funding, communication channels, and now, delegate control

• And most tellingly, NF-funded delegates (like NearWeek) with voting power

How does this align with any definition of legitimacy in DAO governance?

  1. What is your compensation and HoS’s actual budget?

Since transparency is being promised, could you please:

• Share your own compensation for leading the HoS initiative

• Disclose the full HoS development budget from NF

• Clarify how much has been allocated to delegates, ops, and “ecosystem growth” (read: travel, PR, and speaking engagements)

It’s not a hostile question — just one that matters in a post-NDC world, especially as token holders watch the price slide while top figures (like the NF COO) publicly withdraw $NEAR monthly on Binance.

  1. What happens next — another working group?

You’ve said several times that you’re “setting up working groups for the delegates.” Great. But who selects those groups? Will they include ecosystem critics? Builders who haven’t received NF funding? Voices from outside the “Lisbon circuit”?

Or will we see the usual names rotate between advisory boards, DAO councils, and speaking panels?

Lane, I’m asking all of this not because I’m against you personally — but because you used to work at Ethereum, and I’d hope that ethos still means something. You know what real decentralization looks like. You’ve seen what happens when processes become too cozy, too opaque, and too insider-driven.

This community deserves better than “DM me.” It deserves clarity, structure, and plural legitimacy.

Not just more softly centralized processes in DAO clothing.

Looking forward to your answers — publicly, not privately.

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Hi Lane!
Thanks for the great work you are doing with the HoS.
The fact is, the majority of the community are eagerly waiting for the HoS to go live. Hence, if you will sometimes have busy schedules, or little to no new updates, I think it’s a good time to have a particular person with you or from the NEAR MOD team who will CONSTANTLY share updates with the community without failure.

Amongst the other processes you mentioned, I understand the rigorous procedures that comes in play when roles are made public for everyone to apply. The criticism that comes after the selection. However, it will be beneficial if even with those ‘minor’ roles, you lost our criterias for those who would be interested and make such more public.

Thanks for all you do and I’m sure waiting to see the success of this initiative that will boost the community energy again.

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Hey! Eugene here.

I would like to comment on the initial HoS contracts design. The most important part is that the voting system is weighted with stake. Every vote is someone’s stake.

When we designed and implemented the V1 of smart contracts, we used Gauntlet’s proposal as a design and made sure a few important things are implemented. As a token holder of NEAR you’re not required to delegate in order to vote. Once you lock your stake for voting, you will be able to vote on the approved proposals directly.
The pre-selected delegates are still required to acquire delegation from other token holders to be able to vote. So unless NF sponsors them (which I would be completely against), the delegation to them will be merit based.

In the V1, anyone can create a proposal, but it has to be approved by one of the reviewer. The reviewers group is not related to delegates. I hope that most reasonable proposals are approved into the voting process, but there will probably be guidelines initially.
Note, in the V1 proposals are in free text form. They will not be automatically will be executed once voted in. But I hope we’ll get there soon.

The end goal of HoS is to decentralize NF and move important decision making into the hands of NEAR token holders. It will take time to do so.

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Well, that’s actually a good thing — because so far, not a single delegate has earned that merit.

Yuen is quietly pocketing $4,500 a month for managing NEAR’s ghost town chats. Cameron’s team excels at the art of pretending to be busy, while NEAR AI has shown absolutely nothing over the past six months (though some say back in the day, he was known to collect kickbacks, I don’t know). NearWeek censors content and conveniently skips over any real news in the ecosystem. Aurora = NF

Maybe — just maybe — Slime, Alan, and James are the only ones who seem somewhat trustworthy. But even then, Slime is likely to dance to NF’s tune, and only Alan and James appear remotely independent.

Honestly, it might be time to just dissolve the NF altogether and hand governance over to actual token holders. Let’s just hope the NF didn’t secretly distribute tokens to these handpicked delegates — otherwise, we’re looking at one of the largest governance scams in Web3 history.

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Hello!

Based on the experience of previous initiatives in the ecosystem, it’s clear that transparency has always been a cornerstone of community governance. It seems reasonable that all delegate roles and opportunities should be publicly posted — both on the forum and on Jobs | NEAR Foundation Job Board — along with any related support initiatives. Currently, it’s unclear what kind of support is needed or available.

In general, if we already have 11 appointed delegates — many of whom highlighted their extensive experience in their introduction posts — it’s worth considering whether their skills could be voluntarily leveraged to support and fill some of the open governance roles. For example, as I recall, @Yuen served as a notetaker and generalist in the NDC and was involved in several DAOs. As for the Head of Governance role, the current team could potentially manage it directly or involve someone like James, who has strong governance experience.
It would also be helpful to understand how much funding is being allocated to this entire initiative and whether there are publicly accessible updates or reports regarding spending and progress. I believe significantly more has already been spent on this initiative than it cost to launch the previous experiment — which was up and running much faster.

Regarding the composition of the current delegate group, I was somewhat surprised that — out of 11 positions — there wasn’t broader representation from across the community. That said, it’s reassuring to see the inclusion of Meta Pool, Shitzu, and James, as well as several institutional delegates representing larger stakeholders. The remaining delegates appear to be closely aligned with, and largely representative of, the Near Foundation itself — which likely reflects the current design and intent behind the House of Stake governance model.

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Iirc The NDC framework took almost a year to design and a little more than that for v1 to go live (Dec 23) so in terms of timelines HoS progress is somewhat faster.

I don’t think Shitzu is directly represented by any of the delegates.

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I believe it’s already been a year, or almost a year (~11 months probably) since NDC shut down, and we’re not going to see the first proposal anytime this month, and most likely, next month too, so not sure how much faster HoS is. At least, not considerably faster.

I’m part of Shitzu btw.

Update: I just realized that it’s not public enough (not an admin in group or member of dao) but I am working closely on different stuff with Shitzu internally

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First funding Jan 2023, v0 lauch June 2023

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True. I however view this differently. NDC wasn’t live till Congress was elected and GWG dissolved.

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NDC went live in June 2023 — at least in the version that was announced to the community. In fact, the Near Foundation began transferring — and effectively handed over — all funding-related initiatives to the NDC back in March 2023, starting with the creation of the treasury trusts.

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