Council members value transparency and have agreed to follow Chatham House Rules for sharing meeting notes. On Monday, April 5, 2021, The Graph Council held its 3rd meeting.
The Graph Council Meeting - Meeting #3 - April 5, 2021
Roster
Council Members (“Members”)
Michael Anderson
Jim Cousins
Yondon Fu
Gary Morris
Justin Moses
Spencer Noon
Santiago Palladino
Brandon Ramirez
Yaniv Tal
Kayvon Tehranian
The Graph Foundation
Eva Beylin, Director, The Graph Foundation (the “Foundation”)
Note Taker
Jeremy Sklaroff, Edge & Node Ventures, Inc. (“Edge & Node”)
Council Business
The meeting commenced at noon PDT.
Meeting
GIP-0002 Recap and Post-Mortem
A Member discussed the GIP-0002 upgrade process and informed the Council that the upgrade has been completed, is already being used, and is functioning as intended. The Member stated that the community response has been positive so far. Another Member noted that though there were certain community groups strongly opposed to the decision to implement 0002, community support for the decision was ultimately extremely positive.
There was a discussion about community moderation and norm-setting. One Member observed that it is hard to know how the Council should react to small but vocal minorities who disagree with a given proposal even though there is widespread community support for it. The Member stated that the Council should clarify that Snapshot polls do not imply governance votes - such polls are used to gauge community sentiment but are not binding. Another Member echoed the need to clarify the use of Snapshot polls.
The discussion widened to ways that other decentralized projects have engaged in community moderation, including by elevating community members who have made strong informal contributions to governance to more formal governance positions. The Member thought The Graph could adopt this approach to improve community protocol improvement discussions and further decentralize decision-making in the ecosystem. A Member discussed The Graph Foundation’s plan to introduce a Community DAO, which could be used to empower such community members in discussions of GIPs.
The Members discussed the need to ensure that Delegators are adequately represented on the Council. One Member, who participates in the ecosystem as an Indexer and a Delegator, spoke about how the Member balances the different governance and economic considerations in serving as an Indexer versus serving as a Delegator. The Members thought that the previously discussed mechanism to elevate actively engaged community members in protocol improvement conversations could be a way to provide Delegators greater representation as well. The Members also thought that there should be improved communications with the community as to the fact that there are two Members who were nominated to represent Delegators and smaller-scale token holders.
Finally, the Members discussed the need to ensure that these initiatives have sufficient funding from the Foundation.
GIP-0003
There was a brief update by a Member that GIP-0003 is nearing completion and that the Members should expect an async vote on the proposal soon.
Foundation Updates
The Foundation gave an update on Wave 1 Foundation grants.
There was a discussion as to the appropriate role of the Council in awarding Foundation grants. The Foundation will provide the Council an opportunity to vote on Wave 2 grants and will continue to consider the details of such a vote. The Foundation was also sensitive to the need to avoid overly-granular Council votes, so as to avoid bottlenecks and ensure the Council can focus on higher-priority issues.
Subgraph Migration Plan
A Member discussed the subgraph mainnet migration plan, reviewing the migration process that has been previously publicized in recent Foundation blog posts.
Sugraph Migration-Related GIPs
A Member gave a brief preview of the Protocol Town Hall taking place the following day.
Graph Council Charter Updates
A representative from Edge & Node discussed ongoing work with the Foundation to construct a Council Charter. The Charter is being designed so that it is a flexible document that does not impose burdensome procedural requirements on the Council, and to give the Council the maximum amount of governance power over the Foundation allowed under Cayman Islands law.
Governance Tooling
A Member briefly discussed the need for the Council to continue adopting new governance tools, such as those related to the GIP process.
Audits
A Member updated the Council on engagements with protocol auditors. Engagements have been finalized for May and June, which should accelerate review of new GIPs. The Member also described plans to engage an economic auditor to review protocol changes from an economic, rather than technical security, standpoint. The economic auditor would be engaged through a Wave 2 Foundation grant.
Protocol Town Hall
A Member described the agenda for the Protocol Town Hall taking place the following day.
Ramping Up Council on Protocol Knowledge
A Member discussed ongoing work to determine the appropriate level of technical protocol educational efforts for Members. The Member described the importance of Members having a strong technical understanding of the protocol but avoiding going too in-depth on topics that could distract from the Members’ other governance duties. The Member stated that they would plan to continue the current practice of providing necessary background on technical topics as necessary to evaluate proposals. Another Member explored the possibility of using a Foundation grant to incentivize the creation of public educational content around technical protocol concepts.
Next Meeting
The Council agreed to meet again in two weeks.
The meeting adjourned at 1:00 pm PDT.
Thank you very much for that!