Authors: BarryLime, Béguin, CheesySweets, cryptocomical, Matt | Alfafa or Spanky?, Mattgene, James K, Jeffery, JoJo, strongteapot375 and Yakitori.
Summary
This proposal seeks to establish, fund, and authorize the Aura Maxis as an independent and decentralized service provider (SP) for the Aura Ecosystem.
Background
Aura is a community-driven decentralized protocol and DAO. Over the last year, the Aura protocol has established itself as critical infrastructure for DeFi participants interacting with the Balancer Ecosystem. The goal of the Aura Maxis is to establish a decentralized and independent group of experienced and dedicated contributors from the Aura community who are committed to the protocol’s success. This is crucial for aligning the needs of Aura’s users and developer community and unlocking its true potential.
The Aura Maxis present themselves as an independent bridge between the communities of Aura and Balancer, serving as a decentralized model for facilitating the growth of the protocol and overall community.
The Aura Maxis’ mission is to augment and grow the Aura and Balancer ecosystems through the implementation and maintenance of decentralized and distributed frameworks and tools that:
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Facilitate the education and growth of the Aura community and the participation of its members in governance;
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Engage, analyze, and provide recommendations on issues arising in Aura and Balancer governance;
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Enable others who choose to build with Aura and Balancer with support from a technical and governance standpoint;
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Promote Aura in ways that transparently build consensus, independence, and censorship resistance; and
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Help build a diverse community of contributors and participants.
The Aura Maxis seeks to further empower our community by helping to foster collaborative interactions, resilience, and transparent governance.
To ensure decentralization and independence while guarding against centralization tendencies, the Aura Maxis will use shared tools to which each of the members has admin access, including Coordinape to democratically manage and establish compensation, and use a half + 1 multisig wallet to which everyone, if they so choose, will have signature power. There will also be a regular flow of open and collaborative communications and the use of internal polls to establish a common line on topics while constantly discussing new situations to maintain a decentralized mindset. These frameworks hold potential for future expansion and dissemination amongst other SPs and stakeholders, with the goal of enhancing the decentralization of the Aura ecosystem and promoting a distributed and cooperative environment.
These collective efforts will be marked by determination, ingenuity, and a commitment to maintaining the autonomous and decentralized manner through which Aura’s community interacts.
Initial Maxis
The Aura Maxis are an open and diverse group of collaborators of varying backgrounds in technology, communities, and governance that have collaborated with Aura or Balancer to help grow the conjoined ecosystems, including involvement in the Aura Ecosystem Fund (AEF), Balancer DAO, contributions to the Discord, governance forum communities, and numerous protocols.
The initial 11 Maxis were identified through open Aura forum applications, and self-selected through an internal democratic voting process. For future growth, an asynchronous and decentralized system to streamline new applications, selections, and onboarding is in development. New Maxis will be onboarded independently, based on distributed and complementary skill sets that align to satisfy the growing needs of our SP and the community as a whole, after an internal democratic vote.
Aura Maxis will be committed to uphold the fundamental principles that define Aura’s community, namely decentralization, independence, autonomy, and resistance to censorship. It’s of paramount importance how these principles help to foster an innovative and thriving ecosystem. With humility and a deep understanding of blockchain and DeFi technologies, Maxis will prioritize these ideals, ensuring a resilient and collaborative environment for all stakeholders, transparent governance processes, and wide-ranging community engagement. Together, Maxis will strive to promote these shared common values and a vision of creating an inclusive, decentralized ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders.
Domains of Operation
The distributed areas of the Maxis’ independent operations are outlined below, divided into 3 areas: Governance, Community & Content, and Protocol Support & Growth. This spreadsheet breaks down the current tasks and provides further details; it isn’t exhaustive - it will grow organically as we, the members of a decentralized and independent SP for the Aura community, expand and evolve.
Governance
The Aura Maxis will act autonomously to facilitate alignment within the Balancer Ecosystem while keeping in mind the best outcome for Aura Finance. Maxis propose to:
- Serve as an independent voice on the Balancer forum;
- Analyze all Proposals (BIP, Gauge, AIP) in Balancer/Aura Forums, providing independent feedback and a voting suggestion for Aura Delegates with the rationale for the suggested action;
- Advise third parties, such as DAOs and other projects, on Aura’s governance process, provide information, and answer questions;
- Create Aura’s Constitution, Code of Conduct, and Accountability Guidelines that, to be approved, will be submitted to Aura Governance; and
- Autonomously address and share independent observations on other Governance issues as they arise.
Community & Content
The Aura Maxis will be an autonomous line of engagement with the Aura community. Maxis commit to:
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Participate in Discord and the Forums as individuals and, at times we deem fit, collectively as a group, on governance topics, ensuring that questions or concerns are addressed in a timely manner, and raising relevant topics on behalf of the community;
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Moderate, manage and support the Aura Discord, fostering an autonomous and educated community that includes international language channels, and the Aura Forum.
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Create and manage an official Telegram Group for Aura, thus preventing malicious actors and providing a presence on another social media platform;
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Collaborate with current contributors to enhance Chakra Alignment (Newsletter), in-depth research threads initiatives, and International content translation;
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Maintain a Notion page for record-keeping with all frameworks used in our process to facilitate the onboarding or offboarding of any member or the SP as a whole.
Protocol Support & Growth
Aura’s future endeavors will be built on a solid and diverse technical foundation. To ensure to act independently and to align the Contributors and the community as much as feasibly possible, the Aura Maxis propose to:
- Help with Aura UI/UX testing;
- Provide feedback on features implemented with supporting documentation
- Forward to and facilitate relevant community requests with the Contributors;
- Identify enhancements on the front-end/UI or protocol/backend workflows and provide supporting documentation; and
- Maintain, update, and improve Aura documentation, with a focus on reviewing/expanding the FAQ and How-to sections on docs.aura.finance;
Reporting
A monthly report will be posted in the Aura Governance Forum to present Maxis’ accomplished and planned work and to gather feedback from the community. The report will provide information on the group’s activities and any transaction from the Aura Maxi multisig, as well as disclosures on spending.
Length of Engagement & Budget:
Term: May 1 - June 30, 2023.
The funding of the Aura Maxis can be summarized as
- Total for initial engagement: $12,500/month in Aura;
- Gas costs: 0.5 ETH/month in Aura.
The first epoch will be backdated to the first of May, to reflect the ongoing work of the Aura Maxis’s group that has been carried out since the 15th of April.
The grand total for May and June will be 13,440 Aura, equivalent to $26,880. The transfer will be to the multisig address listed below, which is solely controlled by the Aura Maxis:
ETH Address to Receive Funds: 0xd2F8D0C521BE12cf66d51bf696C0d5A8b0C6a8D6.
Specification
Should this proposal pass, the following will be implemented:
- The Aura Maxis SP will be approved by Aura Governance and funded by the terms of this proposal;
- [AIP-1] will be depreciated, and any remaining funds shall be returned to the Aura Treasury.
Voting
This forum post will be live for approximately three days before the Snapshot proposal goes live. We appreciate and encourage an open discussion.
This vote will be a single-choice vote. You may vote “For” or “Against” this proposal, or choose to abstain from the vote.
By voting “For” this proposal, you are voting in favor of establishing the Aura Maxis SP and funding them through transferring the 13,440 Aura from the Aura Treasury outlined in the budget section of this proposal. The vote will also deprecate AIP-1.