This is great, can’t wait!
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My question remains regarding the autonomy of the Aura contracts.
There are lots of concerns around Convex’ multisig control over a large portion of Curve; @Fernando also pointed out this issue in a recent Twitter Space. So, clarity around Aura’s approach would be very helpful.
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This is the era of Balancer battle. LFG
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Thanks for the intro @0xMaki. Addressing the relevant technical points here.
My question remains regarding the autonomy of the Aura contracts. - @LongJuanSilverado
Good topic here ser. Yes, we are also concerned about the centralisation/opacity of the Convex governance. To solve this, we have done the following:
- supported ERC1271 to allow snapshot votes to be made to the Balancer snapshot on chain
- added vote delegation on chain to our vlAURA contract
- composed 2 multisigs (treasury: 3 of 5 and dao: 4 of 7) comprised of known DeFi industry professionals, and will look to fill 2 of the 7 initial dao multisig spots with Balancer ecosystem participants (e.g. Ballers)
Initially, the voting on Aura will be done on a snapshot, and forwarded via the dao multisig. However, with support of the delegation and ERC1271, we will transition both Aura internal governance and Balancer vote forwarding to on chain solutions as soon as is reasonable (~3-4 months).
I’d like to caution against bringing a Snapshot vote for making additions to the allowlist before the relevant contracts have been open sourced and deployed - @TomFrench
Totally agree. To address this, the contract proposed to be whitelisted should be deployed and posted here before the snapshot proposal takes place. In addition, once the vote has been concluded, all solidity files relevant to the Aura protocol will be open sourced and posted on both codearena and immunefi for a week before they are deployed.
If the smart contracts are not yet ready and the team needs funding to get them across the finish line, I would support some arrangement that provides the team with those funds - @markus
The contracts are ready. As stated in Makis post, this $$$ would be used to reimburse the Aura core contributors for significant out of pocket expenses made booking audits. This cost would cover the 2 audits (1 finished, 1 upcoming) and allow $$$ for an initial bug bounty(s).
This is the era of Balancer battle. LFG - @totojack
LFG 
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I support the splitting up of this proposal into the 2 components as listed by Mkflow. When discussed internally a Grant of 300k exceeds the DAOs current grants program and as an investment 2% doesn’t equal a good deal for the Balancer Community. Providing these funds as a loan is a lot more palatable, however the terms and condition would need to be clearly presented.
I’m not personally against the grant but if we’re going the loan route, would it be possible to provide BAL as collateral to allow Aura to borrow stables and not cause selling of BAL?
@joey anything the FeiDAO could do here?
- 0.5% to voters of our proposal (allowlisting)
How do I go about voting?
someone can correct me if i’m wrong but my assumption is that this applies to veBAL holders voting on this proposal once it reaches snapshot
Do you think it would make sense to take this proposal to a vote without the initial request for 300,000USD reimbursement?
I think we have not yet found an elegant way/broader agreement for this to happen while at the same time we are all eager to see this proposal go to a vote. (for example we could setup a special request to the grant Committee or something similar?)
I believe the whole Community is excited to work with Aura
(This is my personal opinion, not talking in the name of any group in particular so feel free to disagree)
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I don’t understand this. You say contracts will be open sourced a week before they are deployed, and this would be once the vote has been concluded, but at the same time say the contract would be deployed before the proposal goes to snapshot. Can you please clarify?
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I don’t know the first thing about VC investments, but could you please expand on why 2% of the fully diluted supply for $300k would not be a good deal for the DAO?
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Any competitor would have to go through the same allowlisting process just as Aura has to and wouldn’t be looked on fondly by virtue of being a copy-paste. I don’t see the issue here as contracts are expected to be open sourced for some time before deployment.
Balancer governance needs to be able to know what it’s voting on.
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What is the expected timeframe for this grant to be payable. I’m interested in what milestones Aura is expected to hit before Balancer would pay this out.
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Yes makes sense. Good initiative from well respected defi OG
Very excited to see where this proposal goes - if it happens!
Hey Tom. Happy to comply here and publicise all the solidity files before the snapshot goes up so that Balancer governors know what they are voting on as you say. I do think that these competitive aspects that Maki is referring to are legitimate concerns, but if these are strict rules imposed by the Balancer governance that all files related to the system being whitelisted must be public before snapshot, then it’s no problem. With that being said, maybe it would be prudent for Balancer governance to create some sort of checklist for future allowlisting requests?
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I think it’s expected that this money would be utilised immediately to fund crowdsourced bug bounties (codearena + immunefi) before the treasury has funds of its own:
- audit 1: $30k
- audit 2: $150k
- pre-launch codearena/immunefi: $120k
In terms of milestones, to me getting the code audited is already a big milestone worth the grant, and would hope that the Balancer governors see the value in helping to keep Aura fair launch & secure, we could however continue to use our own $$$ for this if the community seen some issues there
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Knowing how expensive audits are I find this breakdown very sensible.
The loan option would not solve the need for capital (mainly for security) in the early phases of Aura, so it would just kick the can down the road. With the grant Aura can stick to the fair launch approach which IMO is extremely valuable: no investors stewarding the team in their own interests or holding massive amounts of AURA tokens.
@0xMaha and @0xMaki: To move forward would you consider accepting @Mkflow27’s suggestion of breaking this down in two proposals, the first being the grant?
Thanks!
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If we were to view this as an ‘investment’ it’d tend to look very favorable for the BalancerDAO. I’m hesitant to look at it through that lens but since the comparison has been made then, let’s do it.
$300k for 2% puts the valuation at $15mm. The valuation is inline with seed rounds that are being raised nowadays and shows the goodwill of Aura. If Aura were to reach the same FDV as Convex, the Treasury’s 2% share of the token would be valued at $54m.
This is very sound. I encourage the DAO to ratify this grant as soon as possible.
Very good suggestion by @Mkflow27 and @Fernando to move this forward.
This way the BDAO can help Aura fund their audits and provide their team with the assurance the DAO is supportive of our their mission. At a later date, when the code is ready to be reviewed, given the BDAO’s stake in Aura, the second vote will surely go through if all the conditions and best practices are met.
@0xMaha how does that sound?
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Sounds good to me ser although I think we could post both proposals today.
We were waiting for the resolution of the other Balancer proposals before posting here to ensure any potential changes were accounted for (e.g. [Proposal] Distribute protocol fees in BAL where appropriate - #16 by zekraken, Decide on Gauge Unexpected Behavior - #47 by Fernando)
Posting the spec here for @0xMaki to add to the proposal along with any final comments.
SPEC
Allowlist the following contract on the veBAL smart_wallet_checker once available: 0xaf52695e1bb01a16d33d7194c28c42b10e0dbec2
You can view the diff between this and CurveVoterProxy: VoterProxy - Diff Checker
Other relevant code for Aura Finance here on Github: https://github.com/aurafinance/aura-contracts-lite/
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