This post is not so much a formal kick-off as a review of why we need VOLT delegates and a place for those interested in getting involved to join the conversation. If you’d like to get involved as a delegate, please comment in this thread with your Discord handle and anything else you’d like to share. We will set up a conversation with those interested to get things rolling in the coming weeks, and are also reaching out to some potential delegates we’re acquainted with in the DeFi community.
Within the next month, the Volt Protocol team will ship the Veto Module that allows VOLT holders to reject changes proposed by the core team (or later VCON holders). We don’t expect all stablecoin holders to actively pay attention to governance, so a “neighborhood watch” empowered to act on behalf of their fellow VOLT holders will be key to the process.
We’re working on plans for how active delegates will be compensated, as well as figuring out what tooling they will need to operate effectively.
These delegates only need to say NO to dangerous changes but not make nuanced choices such as which is the better of two safe options. Since they don’t need to step in to vote unless a problem arises, the load should be lighter relative to MakerDAO governance. At the same time, we have to watch out for “free riders” punching the clock but not actually scrutinizing proposals.
As discussed in the white paper, having only a single time lock that can be vetoed puts the system at risk of griefing or hostage taking. Therefore, we will have both a fast timelock, and a slow timelock. The fast time lock will take only three days or so to execute, and also require only a small portion of the VOLT supply (say 5%) to veto. The slow time lock will take a couple of weeks to execute, but require a large portion (say 40%) of the VOLT supply to veto.
The reasoning is that a majority of stablecoin holders should reasonably be allowed to demand no further changes be made to the system without their consent, and a small minority should be allowed to “raise the alarm” and force a majority decision, but not put a permanent halt to changes on their own.
I am an MD (meaning I am a crypto rookie) and have started to learn about cryptocurrencies in the last year. My understanding of volt is that in a bull market it is relatively easy to keep Volt vault growth at CPI index levels, but in a bear market it is both low risk and high return, which places a high demand on Volt’s vault management capabilities, and for this reason I am interested in the subsequent governance of Volt.
Thank you for your post! Volt Protocol has actually moved away from a CPI peg for the exact reason you’ve mentioned – targeting a fixed rate of return can be very dangerous under certain market conditions if it encourages excessive risk taking.
The new system will have a floating market interest rate (currently there is a Placeholder Oracle where governance can adjust rates), which in the big picture we certainly would hope has a positive real rate of return (outperform inflation), but has the flexibility to use lower rates in the current environment of high CPI and relatively low DeFi yields.
It’s a working document and rather dense but here is the relevant section in the white paper:
Please let me know if you have questions about this design, really appreciate your time and interest in Volt.
I wanted to express my interest in becoming a VOLT Delegate. Discord handle: Lemonade Alpha#4059
My name is Peter Vecchiarelli, I sometimes go by the pseudonym Lemonade, and I’ve been deeply involved in the Ethereum community for the past 4.5 years as a core contributor with the Forecast Foundation (team behind Augur) and Index Coop as head of growth.
I also happen to be the owner of two of VOLT’s top ~15 individual holding (non-contract) addresses, and have been a holder and consistent purchaser since late April. I’m super stoked about what Kirk and the team are building here.
It would be an honor and privilege to serve the VOLT community as a delegate. I have strong knowledge of DeFi yield sources and would be comfortable challenging the direction of collateral when necessary.
I am so grateful for your involvement in VOLT! Thank you for your nomination, looking forward to having you involved as we iron out the details of the delegate program and the launch plans for the delegation feature + Veto Module.
One thought I wanted to share here in that regard, proposed by @Fishy , was to mint a certain amount of VOLT that can be delegated to help bootstrap the delegation program and ensure the delegate community can reasonably exceed the veto threshold, without the veto threshold needing to be lowered to an unsafe level such that hostile actors could easily cause a deadlock.
The delegation would be controlled by the Governance Multisig at first, and could either be disbanded or further decentralized as the system matures.
I’m nir.eth, co-founder of Yup, founding member of ForeFront, early investor in web3 startups which I have helped tremendously on the DAO side of things. I co-founded Blockchain at Columbia, Columbia University’s lab for all things crypto, and I helped them launch Lion DAO as the first student DAO. I’ve been following Volt closely and have had several conversations with Kirk about the economics, marketing, biz dev, etc. where I think I can be most helpful.
Delighted to see you here nir, have really appreciated your interest and our biz discussions.
It occurred to me at your mention of Blockchain at Columbia that student and campus groups are something to think about for the VOLT delegation context as well.
Hi everyone, wanted to give an update here, especially for those who have thrown their hats in the ring as VOLT delegates to our great appreciation @lemonade@nir.eth@zhizhi. Will have more to share on this at our community call on Wednesday. (12PM PST on Twitter Spaces)
We’ve scheduled the first external audit for the veto module for the week starting October 24. After this, most likely the week starting November 7, there will be a final Code4rena audit covering both the veto module and some other new VOLT code. The veto module and voting rights for holders will go live after this second audit round.
As a result, the Volt veto module and delegation features will go live in the third week of November if all is clear in the Code4rena audit as expected after extensive internal review and the preliminary external audit.
One further update: for the sake of simplicity and security, the VOLT token migration (which will enable delegation and is expected to be VIP 16) will not include deployment of the veto module. VOLT delegation will be possible, but the VOLT token will not gain governance powers immediately upon migration.
On the front end, during the migration from oldVOLT to newVOLT, and for first time minters, we will prompt VOLT holders to choose among those who self-nominate as delegates, or to self-delegate if they prefer.
The actual rollout of the veto module will take place in a separate future VIP.
We are interested in becoming a Delegate on Volt Protocol!
RiskDAO is a community of risk analysts and researchers with extensive experience across DeFi. We work in public and with an open-source mindset, some key contributions include our bad debt & ETH depegging dashboards, liquidation events simulator and much more. We see risks and disclose them.
As part of our collaborative approach with other protocols and across the DAOs ecosystem, we are expanding our governance involvement.
Volt Protocol is particularly interesting given the innovative approach to creating a yield-bearing stablecoin. We are excited about DeFi experimentation and also aware of risk vectors. This is the domain where we can add substantial value to the protocol.
GM @nonstopTheo, I am thrilled to hear that RiskDAO is interested in getting involved as a VOLT delegate. Our interests in securing the broader lending ecosystem are very much aligned. For other readers, I’d highlight how RiskDAO and Theo were early to call out price manipulation risk on Aave after the first of the recent series of perpetual platform market manipulation attacks.
General updates for everyone:
the VOLT token migration concluded its first external audit this week
We’re finalizing and will soon share our proposal for the delegate program kickoff, including delegate compensation details and ‘active delegate’ requirements (to receive delegate comp and be listed as one of the suggested delegate choices on the Volt app)
We will be working starting next week to complete the front end elements needed for the token migration and delegate flow, and performing additional security review of the token migration.
Once these steps are complete, we’ll be able to confirm the date for token migration and delegate program kickoff. Right now I think that the last week of November is a realistic target, will keep everyone updated.
Hello everyone! We’re Penn Blockchain (@PennBlockchain on twitter), a leading, completely student run blockchain organization from The University of Pennsylvania for both our undergraduate and graduate schools. The club currently has over 300 general body members and 75+ active committee members; and we’re expecting many more next semester!
Penn Blockchain has committees covering Governance, Research, Education, Business Development, and Development/Web3. On the governance side of things, our team has different members leading governance initiatives for different protocols we have delegations for. Current Penn Blockchain delegations include Aave, Compound, Uniswap, DyDx, IndexCoop, etc.
We’d love to be your Volt delegate. Our weekly discussions combine graduates with years of expertise in many jurisdictions with many bright minded undergrads eager to leave their impact and names in Web3. Members of our club are actively working internally on different projects, and would love to explore more into Volt!
I hope everyone is doing well in spite of the past week’s unsettling events. A couple updates:
Our next audit date is confirmed for November 28, so you can expect the VOLT token migration and beginning of delegation to occur in December. We’ll have a community call after the audit results are in to discuss before these changes go live.
I created a new Delegate Platforms category in the forum. For those who have expressed interest in being delegates, please create a thread in this category with your delegate platform and preferred delegation address. All those who do so will be included in the migration UI as suggested delegates.
Reminder that the token migration is happening before actual activation of the veto module and governance rights for VOLT holders. Token governance has its own risks and we will explore these carefully together as we properly implement checks and balances. In the interim, we plan to use Snapshot as a signaling tool. For example, VOLT delegates might vote on the size of the Maple allocation and resulting VOLT rate via Snapshot.
Please copy what you’ve already shared into your own top level thread in the Delegate Platforms category. You already shared your ENS, those who did not will need to please add one or an address. The following thread is a good example:
I’m working on proposed active delegate requirements (for delegate compensation). The baseline will be making posts in your delegate thread explaining your votes or decisions to abstain.
