CONFLICT OF INTEREST - ALL FOR GOVERNANCE POWER?
- bDAO Multi Sig has delegated tokens in it’s wallet to DAOsteward. DAOsteward was a metagovernance group from bDAO that participated in governance in Optimism. The group consisted of thinkDecade, Hirokennelly and Jengajojo.
- Recently Jengajojo made a proposal to bDAO to hijack a grant fund that was meant to be paid to projects/contributors that participated in a campaign for Optimism.
- When the DAO rejected his proposal, he proceeded to use his role as a Multi Sig signer to influence the entire Multi Sig to overturn the decision of the DAO.
- After careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that Jengajojo’s proposal constitute a conflic of interest as the retention of tokens in bDAO Multi Sig grants DAOsteward governance power, which Jengajojo has been trying to take over with DAOplomat - another metagoverannce entity lead by him and 0xBaer.
Proofs
- The first wallet is bDAO Multi Sig wallet.
- After receiving the funds in bDAO Multi Sig, the voting power of DAOsteward went parabolic as seen in the chart.
- bDAO Multi Sig now constitute a whooping 62.3% of DAOstewards governance power. bDAO Multi Sig barely sell tokens so having access to these governance power will last longer as opposed to individual wallets that can sell anytime. It is therefore not surprising to see Jengajojo go above and beyond to retain the tokens in bDAO Multi Sig even it means stealing tokens of projects/contributors and retaining it in bDAO’s Multi Sig.
See the details here > 0xc249...d1ab | Optimism Governance Dashboard by curiaLab.
Governance power distribution
BACKGROUND - CONTEXT - For those who have no idea what’s going.
Here’s a TLDR & ELI5 of what’s happening.
- Last year, a group of projects within bDAO including the marketing department came together and made a proposal to OptimismDAO.
- The Proposal was a request for grant to embark on a global education and publicity campaign to spread Optimism’s vision.
- The idea was simple, bDAO, through it’s various ecosystem projects had built a global content machinery and audience that could be used to add immerse value to Optimism.
- It was agreed that each participating project will come up with a budget for work to be done under this campaign, the budget will be reviewed and amalgamated into one budget and presented via a grant proposal to Optimism. Established projects such as Bankless Publishing, Bankless Africa and IMN were contacted to participate in the campaign which they agreed to. These projects were then required to prepare and submit budgets for the work to be done including Work Schedule/Calendar. According to discussions, the evaluation and execution of work was under the supervision of projects leads/coordinators.
- After several meetings and budget revisions by projects leads/coordinators, the budget was finalized and proposed to Optimism.
- After several evaluations and a pitch session later, Optimism accepted the Grant and greenlighted the campaign.
- Projects proceeded to execute the campaign with supervision from their leads/coordinators.
Here are the major parties to Grant
On Payment
- It was agreed that 10% of the grant will be paid to bDAO, now BlackFlagDAO - Yes, the sustainability of the DAO was taken into consideration.
- The rest of the 90% will then be paid out to projects according to the agreed budget in the proposal.
Note: In order to simplify the receipt and disbursement of funds, it was agreed that bDAO Multi Sig should be used to received the lump sum from Optimism after which the Multi Sig will distribute the total to each project which will in turn compensate contributors. Initially, the funds were supposed to be received in a separate wallet. But the group trusted bDAO Multi Sig to receive and disburse. Thus bDAO in effect had no role whatsoever in this campaign, it was mainly going to receive a 10% claw back as the projects involved agreed that this will be a great way to add value to the DAO in general while finally getting external avenues to sustain themselves. Optimism sent the funds to bDAO Multi Sig.
A sinister proposal - sowing the seed of discord on discourse
When the time came for bDAO Multi Sig to disburse the grant as planned, Jengajojo dropped a forum proposal asking the community to keep all the funds instead of paying the projects involved. Jengajojo’s proposal literally asked the DAO to hijack the funds from the campaign. To say this came as a shock to projects and individuals who put in their sweat and blood to execute the campaign is an understatement.
Fortunately, the community saw through Jengajojo’s proposal and unanimously rejected it. But Jenga Jojo wasn’t done, he went on to use his role as a Multi Sig Signer to get his way.
A COMPROMISED MULTI SIG
- Jengajojo’s proposal was never about the future of bDAO, it was always about securing more governance power for his project - DAOplomat.
- He misinformed and misled Multi Sig signers with false and unrelated information about the grant in order to have them overturn the decision of the DAO.
- Unfortunately, most Multi Sig signers are busy and barely have the time to read through the numerous post made by the projects/teams that executed the campaign, therefore their main source of information has been from Jengajojo in the MS private group.
- This Multi Sig has put out a post about retaining the funds, giving similar reasons given by Jengajojo without due diligence and engaging the campaign projects/teams properly. We believe this is very detrimental and sets a dangerous prescedence of Multi Sig becoming a cabal and disregarding the decision of the DAO and siding with its member(s) in cases where members’ interests are involved.
NEXT STEPS
- We call on the Multi Sig to… ( @senad.eth , @AboveAverageJoe , @links , @Rowan , @Icedcool )
- Reconsider it’s current decision and release the funds to the projects respectively.
- Look into Jengajojo’s conflict of interest objectively.
- We call on the community to remove Jengajojo from his position as a Multi Sig signer, not only did he abuse his power as a multi sig, but he also jeopardized the DAO.