“Natural progression” might not be the best way to describe it, but the fact is that it happened in two different instances and the cat is already out of the bag when it comes to going around the time lock.
To be more specific as fairly pointed out by @Username1, it seems like they are two issues we are trying to address in this discussion:
Convex increasing voting power
Circumventing veCRV timelock
My hope is that removing the whitelisting process will facilitate the emergence of some counter-power to Convex which would mitigate 1).
Convex is already attracting short-term participants as the 16-week lock is on the governance side only (CVX), but short-term participants most likely care about the economic side only which they can get with cvxCRV which has no lock and can be swapped back for CRV and then ETH. So I think removing the whitelist won’t fundamentally worsen 2).
That being said, the risk of seeing a new protocol effectively enabling a full tokenisation of veCRV (economic + governance rights with no time lock) is a valid concern. But if we are keeping the whitelist for that reason, how can we then ensure that any new whitelisted protocols do not end up doing that? In particular, it seems difficult/not fair to veto a project that would want to match Convex terms (fully liquid economic rights and 16-week lock governance right).
That being said, while I support the spirit of the proposal, I don’t think it is likely to make much of a difference given the amount of CRV any new protocol would have to accumulate in order to effectively compete with Convex, so I recognize this is probably a lot of talk for a very limited impact.
FWIW - I cut my teeth in Defi with Curve. I took a leap early on and locked some up. I did that because of the quality of content (Pools, Team, Maths, Support, etc.). While I loved the Factory aspect that was introduced; quite honestly it became like a youtube for pools. Anyone and their alpaca can create one, and it’s much more difficult to choose where to park $. While some of the factory pools are obviously awesome; it added a layer of quantity over quality (as in now I have to check how much liquidity there is b4 aping, etc). To me quality is one of the distinguishing features of Curve. And to open the floodgates, while likely bringing in some innnovation and cool new products will also bring in bad actors. I’d rather there be a filter. There is something great about Curve being legit and if anyone can piggy back and rug; I’d rather not have that be an option and sacrifice some of the “potential” that is being lost. In the long run, the potential will be unlocked if history with Curve is an indication of the future.
In terms of Convex, it seems obvious that the CRV team did not mind users no longer locking up their CRV on the CRV platform. The most important thing is liquidity and as long as the deposits stay, NBD. The proof of deposit can go anywhere and there is not much lost from the CRV perspective if there is an aggregator for locking. Still gets locked. Most rational investors would move their LP tokens over to CVX.
Now what happens, say if a fork of convex popped up tomorrow and had some sweeter incentives or someone comes up with a cross chain platform that ties them CRV’s together. Would that be seen as a threat or building the ecosystem? So far it seems that the whitelist aspect is a closely held prize and I think at the root and as mentioned on this thread; if it helps curve it helps everyone, so presumably the major stakeholders would act in the best interests of the protocol at all times.
we have to as a core pillar of the DeFi ecosystem remove this. I understand why Convex wants it but its just not a fair system, surely something more democratic can be put into effect.
the idea of having it opened to anyone anywhere at anytime isn’t wise.
I may not understand how this works in its entirety but if the team is innovative, and project is good there should be a process to legitimise the project. If legitimate it should be whitelisted.
However, the whitelist should not be removed. We should think of a way to welcome legitimate , good applications.
I came in here quite skeptical of the idea, but after reading the thread, I’m mostly convinced that removing the whitelist and letting veCRV just be another defi lego is a good idea. With that said, here’s a likely scenario we should all consider:
A new protocol launches an interface to make veCRV as liquid as it possibly can be and rents out voting power block-by-block to DOAs or other stakeholders. Similar to Convex, but with no locking whatsoever and no big TVL to back it. Just a simple voting power rental agency.
I’m not sure this is a problem. I think gauge voting power being rented and fought over is generally good for CRV and the curve community, making it a more an even more foundational building block of defi. But I am a bit concerned about governance actions outside of gauge voting. For example, could a malicious actor quickly rent enough voting power to propose and pass a proposal that’s genuinely bad for the protocol?
Sort of like a flash loan attack on governance…
Anyone want to weigh in here? Do ya’ll think this is a reasonable concern, or not really an issue?
That’s a fairly reasonable concern, and it was the reason for vote-locking to start with. A mitigation when no whitelist is present is to have a blacklist of malicious actors
Again, no one has offered any proof that the whitelist is doing anything to stifle innovation at the moment. There is a reason the whitelist exists. It is to prevent scam tokens from popping up every minute. If we need to blacklist certain protocols, then that will take up a TON of governance time trying to constantly play whack-a-mole. Plus the overall ecosystem will be hurt by having scams and rugs everywhere.
I urge someone to come up with a reason that’s not “oh it’s against the ethos of the system” or “it’s stifling innovation”. Otherwise we’re just in here jerking each other off.
After careful consideration, I think that simply removing the whitelist isn’t a good idea for the project right now. It seems to be functioning well and there is already a clear path for innovative projects that support curve to get voting power.
But I would support separating long-term governance actions from week-to-week gauge-weight votes and protocol fee earnings, and allowing the gauge weight voting aspects to be completely permissionless and liquid. (In fact, I think many in the space are learning that that’s probably a better design for tokens in general. See what scoopytrouples is doing at alchemix for more on this.)
Governance/token redesign isn’t a high priority for the protocol right now imho. But if someone was stoked on it and wanted to work on it as a side project, I think it could be worthwhile.
This proposal is a solution to a problem that simply does not exist: the author has not mentioned any examples of innovations being stifled.
The whitelist is a filter for spam, and a blacklist is the antithesis of defi: it should not exist.
It is my recommendation that the whitelist remain. Furthermore, it is also my recommendation that people participate with similar fervour in choosing what’s best for Curve: take part in whitelist proposals, scrutinise what innovation they bring to the table.
The whitelist has already failed given that CVX has achieved the status of CRV but with less restrictions. Where DAO’s used to compete in the CRV wars, the new battleground has shifted to CVX wars, as DAO’s vote to buy convex. Sure a proxy for CRV, but does such a dynamic enforce a Convex is a subsidiary of Curve or does it portray Curve as a subsidiary of Convex?
Giving Convex the ability to vote against competition is bad for CRV, and prevents competition from naturally balancing the power of any individual delegated conglomerate vs native CRV stakers.
We want the best option to be staking yourself. We want DAO’s locking CRV for 4 years, not one DAO locking CRV, and everyone locking their token.
The whitelist limits the ability for competition to organically arise, and positions Convex into a position where it can defend its power within CRV governance in a way individual stakes are not able to.
We should aim not to allow any entity to have a privileged position in the CRV economy and that means voting to remove the whitelist
“Innovators” don’t have to submit a 200 page essay on why they want to be whitelisted, nor be scrutinized by a panel of PhDs.
It could be as simple as an outline of the idea, answering a few basic pre-determined questions, and then a vote. It’s all done in 7 days
If they can’t even be bothered with writing a few lines of what they are doing (which they can probably copy/paste from their website) and answering a few pre-determined questions, are they even serious?
Opening up for competition to Convex/yearn is a good thing but doesn’t mean we have to let everyone in without even a basic screen.
Those who oppose a whitelist can still vote yes to every project, but it’s difficult to rectify something when damage has already been done to Curve’s name through bad actors.
A basic standardized screen would be easy for quality projects and at least filter out some lazy unserious actors from getting blanket access
We whitelisted Convex,
Convex delegated to Votium,
Votium voted for a scam pool w/ infinite mint.
Curve then incentivized liquidity on this pool due to the leadership CVX delegated to Votium. Those who trust Curve then played the game and arbed the incentives.
The protocol minted and sold into that liquidity costing our LPs funds, and used the profits to buy CVX to stake, no doubt to be able to vote on future pools.
The issue is not who owns CRV but what happens to the CRV that enables bad behavior. We don’t need a whitelist, a whitelist only enables Convex to vote against competition. It doesn’t prevent scams, it just lets Convex enable them with less consequence.
We don’t need a whitelist we need penalties for bad governance. This is how you prevent bad actors not by pretending they wont find a way in.
I will tell what has changed. Actors want to profit and pillage the Curve/Convex ecosystem. I agree with you 100% we are not in a place where any whitelist should be removed.
Is the whitelist at all effective if DAOs are now openly buying CVX which allows them CRV governance access without a whitelist at present.
The lack of whitelist compounds Convex’s power over Curve since its easier for DAO’s to utilize staked CVX for the exact same purpose w/ less restrictions.
Our whitelist failed to ensure CVX governance was whitelisted.
Our whitelist failed to ensure CVX had adequate time locks.
Our whitelist failed to prevent empowering centralized delegates in Votium by not requiring CVX can’t be delegated.
Is there anything the whitelist has succeeded at preventing that it hasn’t just pushed to exist in CVX instead with all the same benefits?
Hi there!
Why nobody keep discussing about this topic? I think it’s a necessary to discuss about this topic. I’m from another DAO which also want to get whitelisted. So, we ask ourselves these questions:
why we need whitelist of Curve contract? Motivation?
If we get whitelisted, what benefits we could bring to Curve or the CurveDAO?
Does what we do have to get this whitelist otherwise we can’t do what we gonna do?
So the whitelist is making sense for me personally, even my project need it , everyone is watching the CurveWar and know how much value Convex brought to us, the question is we may don’t need another Convex in this area. If one protocol want to get whitelisted, we have to think about the questions above.