Decentralization Plan
At launch, Vesper network governance relies on a strong social contract between the founding team and stakeholders. Over time, the Vesper platform will mature to become entirely community-driven. This means that Vesper stakeholders will eventually be in total control of the future of the product ecosystem. From Day 1, the long-term objective is to develop a robust decentralized community of which the founding Vesper team only accounts for a small minority of the decision-making authority.
Across all phases of decentralization, we have a firm commitment to engaging with VSP holders and community members on all major changes and updates.
Overview
VSP is the platform’s governance token, which gives token-holders the ability to participate in on-chain votes on new pool strategies and other platform decisions. This section addresses how members of the Vesper community might use their tokens in this manner.
Governance Phases & Rationale
Vesper Governance is derived from the Compound governance module, a tried-and-true framework that has become familiar to the DeFi community. From Day 1, the founding team will begin relinquishing control over Vesper operations through phases of progressive decentralization, and will strive for the highest standards of communication and transparency.
Transitioning to Community Governance
Many DeFi projects have experienced early 'growing pains' when initiating community governance. We hope to mitigate this friction with an iterative transition to community governance.
For the first 2-6 months, ownership functionalities will be retained by the team’s multisig in order to upgrade strategies, introduce new pools, allocate VSP rewards, and so on.
After 2-6 months, governance responsibilities will be transferred in full to holders of vVSP in the vVSP vault.
At the end of that 2-6 month period, the Founding Team will stake 1,000,000 VSP from the community reserve to the vault. This will mint vVSP 'receipt tokens' as a 'governance bootstrap' to ensure quorum and good governance principles are met. The voting power of those tokens will be initially delegated to the Founding Team's multisig. As the 1,000,000 VSP that created these voting tokens are unstaked, they will be deposited back into the vault for the benefit of the other vVSP holders.
Over the course of one year after the governance module is launched, vVSP delegated to the Founding Team will be forfeited quarterly, so that 100% of the control will be in the hands of the community at the end of this one-year period.
We expect the community’s voting power to exceed that of the team by Month Six.
The revenue generated by the reserve fund is 'community property' and is sent back to the other vVSP holders. The flow of assets will be very visible/auditable to the community.
Votes can only be cast by vVSP token-holders. The vote passage/approval requirements are as follows:
Action | Threshold |
Bring a proposal to vote | Submitters must have the delegation of at least 1% of the outstanding vVSP supply. |
Voting - Reach Quorum | 4% of the outstanding vVSP supply must vote ‘Yes’ on the proposal. |
Voting - Vote Passes | A minimum of 50%+1 of votes cast with a minimum of 4% of vVSP supply as ‘YES’ votes . |
Voting & Participation
Participants can engage with the Vesper community by proposing, developing and assisting Vesper Improvement Proposals [VIPs], casting votes on VIPs, and sharing their opinion in our community chats. (See "The Voting Process.")
Treasury Management
2,950,000 VSP is dedicated as DAO reserves. Most of this VSP likely stays in the primary wallet and deployed on voting for the likes of reward extensions and VSP boosts for new pools.
But beyond that, there are many, smaller expenditures required to facilitate further growth of Vesper. There are two "satellite wallets" represented as OpComms and Community Marketing. Each wallet is a 2-of-n multisig with a modest allowance (2,000-4,000 VSP) to be utilized as needed per the discretion of signers.
OpComms is designated for misc. one-off purchases and expenditures. This includes audit payments, bug bounties, freelance work, and so on. The CM wallet is utilized for community engagement, contests and campaigns, content bounties, and so on.
These types of siloed wallets enable a more efficient ecosystem that doesn't require a vote on every single spend and maintains security of the overall treasury by fragmenting allowances to different groups and categories.
Today, wallet signers comprise of team members, Vesper community members, and external reputable faces in DeFi. Ultimately, more and more weight will shift away from the team and towards the community.
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