[Temp Check] CVP Upgrade Proposal

Metis Governance Governance proposals
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[Temp Check] CVP Upgrade Proposal

Intro

This post is a “temperature check” to gather feedback and community sentiment about the below draft ideas. In order to make progress quickly and keep things as simple as possible, I have separated ideas into “now” and “later” sections, including only a few simple updates in the “now” section. This way hopefully we can move forward quickly with a few changes, measure their effectiveness, and then repeat the cycle with continuous improvements and measurements.

Draft Proposal for Phased Upgrade to the CVP System

Objective: Community Verified Projects Program and Badge

To maximize the success of the maximum number of high-quality dApps launching on Metis by:

  1. Increasing participation in eligibility votes to boost community engagement and project awareness.
  2. Reducing Sybil votes to ensure accurate measurement of community sentiment.
  3. Enhancing safety and transparency for users researching new projects.
  4. Allocating marketing resources effectively to balance project reach and quality.

Motivation

  1. Community Engagement and Awareness:
    • Projects new to Metis often struggle to connect with tokenholders, and the number of projects makes it difficult for tokenholders to efficiently DYOR. Metis Foundation’s role is to create a resource-efficient system that supports projects in engaging with the community while making it easy for the community to DYOR.
    • “Governance fatigue” is a common issue in web3. To combat this, participation in governance should be made as easy and meaningful as possible.
    • Currently, raising awareness for CVP votes often requires manual interventions such as DMs to tokenholders. This is inefficient and unsustainable.
  2. Sybil Attack Mitigation:
    • Fake wallets are more prevalent than desired and, in some cases, have helped projects meet quorum. While the impact is minimized because marketing resources remain at the discretion of Metis Foundation, improving “Sybil defenses” is critical for decentralizing decision-making.
    • Reducing Sybil votes will also make marketing metrics more accurate, thereby increasing marketing effectiveness as participation rates rise.
  3. Safety and Transparency:
    • Users need more tools to conduct meaningful research on projects. The system should incentivize projects to increase transparency and make it easier for tokenholders to evaluate them.
  4. Effective Resource Allocation:
    • Some projects mistakenly believe passing CVP guarantees unlimited Metis Foundation marketing support. This is not feasible for all projects and does not align with strategic resource allocation.
    • CVP is already defined as granting eligibility for support rather than guaranteeing it. As the system evolves, future enhancements can further clarify eligibility criteria.

Phased Upgrade Proposal

Phase 1: Now (Immediate Actions)

1. Structural Changes

  • Voting Minimums:
    • Set a minimum of 0.1 METIS to participate in governance votes.
    • Reduce quorum to 400 unique wallets (from 500) to balance reduced Sybil votes and sustained participation.
    • Justification: Lowers the impact of Sybil attacks, while maintaining an accessible entry barrier. Encourages participation by those aligned with the Metis ecosystem.
  • Batch Voting:
    • Group votes into batches of 3–5 projects, held monthly or bi-monthly. Use Snapshot’s existing Approval Voting Mechanism to group the votes into one, without changing anything else.
    • Justification: Reduces governance fatigue and streamlines community participation.
  • Fast-Track Option:
    • Allow projects to opt out of batching and AI podcasts if they prefer an immediate vote and believe they can reach quorum independently.
    • Justification: Provides flexibility for high-priority or well-established projects.

2. Outreach Initiatives

  • AI-Generated Podcast:
    • Use tools like NotebookLM to create engaging 5–10 minute podcasts summarizing project details.
    • Integration Example:
      • Projects provide key information (e.g., pitch decks) via a submission form.
      • Podcasts are shared on the Metis ecosystem portal and governance Twitter.
  • Project Showcases (AMAs/Shill Sessions):
    • Schedule live sessions for project teams to pitch directly to the community during the eligibility voting period.
    • Justification: Increases community trust and engagement with projects.

3. Marketing Resource Clarification

  • Clearly communicate that passing CVP votes makes projects eligible for marketing support but does not guarantee it. This is already noted in the documentation here.
  • Ensure all communications emphasize this distinction to avoid misunderstandings.

Conditions for Advancing to Future Phases

  1. Voting Participation:
    • CVP votes consistently meet quorum (400 wallets, 10k METIS) without manual intervention beyond outreach initiatives.
  2. Sybil Votes:
    • Obvious Sybil vote percentage is consistently below 10%.
  3. Community Engagement:
    • Metrics (e.g., AMA attendance, podcast listening rates) indicate meaningful use of outreach initiatives.
  4. Reassessing Phase 1:
    • If data suggests Phase 1 changes are ineffective, the strategy will be revisited before advancing to future phases.

Phase 2: Later (Future Enhancements)

This section is intended to show the direction of the CVP program’s evolution. It is illustrative and not part of the current temperature check or proposed governance vote.

  1. Tiered Verification System:
    • Introduce multi-level project verification, with illustrative examples:
      • Level 1: Basic eligibility (current CVP vote structure).
      • Level 2: Additional requirements (e.g., audits, partial/ZK KYC).
      • Level 3: High-trust status (e.g., community-led audits, open-source verification).
    • Display badges for each level on https://projects.ceg.vote.
    • Justification: Gradual scaling incentivizes transparency and safety without overwhelming early-stage projects.
  2. Enhanced Safety Features:
    • Implement annual (or more frequent) batch renewals requiring community-led safety audits.
    • Justification: Encourages projects to maintain progress and ensures ongoing safety.
  3. Community Investigations and Rewards:
    • Introduce incentives for community members to conduct thorough evaluations (e.g., bug bounties, investigative reports).
    • Justification: Strengthens project accountability and fosters active community engagement.

Conclusion

This phased plan improves CVP alignment with Metis’ strategic goals, addressing immediate challenges while setting a foundation for future growth. By balancing community engagement, Sybil mitigation, transparency, and resource allocation, this proposal ensures the CVP system evolves sustainably to meet the needs of the Metis ecosystem.

Questions

  • What do you like about this?
  • What would you adjust to make it even better?
  • What do you think is the most important item to include in the “now” section?
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Yo Daryl. :sunglasses:

Thank you for bringing some long awaited proposed upgrades to this CVP process.

As the Metis CEG Advocate I have been acting as a “middle-man” between Metis/Metis Governance and projects trying to go through the CEG process.

Your proposed upgrades aim to solve the problems I’ve seen projects facing time and time again that go through this process.

I’m most excited about the increased outreach initiatives. I host an open Twitter space every week to invite the projects that are up to vote as one way to introduce them to the community. However, most aren’t even aware that these exist and I get little to no support from the rest of the Metis/Metis Governance team. But what really perked my ears up was the AI generated pods to increase accessibility to the project info, USPs, use cases, etc…

I’m also excited about the immediate upgrades such as reducing the quorum to 400 and raising the requirement to .1 per wallet. This aligns with your overall goals of increasing accessibility while still maintaining solid sybil protection.

Looking forward to these upgrades and am excited to help implement them.

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Thanks @cobibean, your feedback is much appreciated.

Here’s an example of a potential AI generated pod, in this case generated based on the last 2 weeks of posts here on the forum: (hosted on my Notion page)

If anyone else has feedback please share ASAP, otherwise I’m going to create the “now” proposal, and we can go to a vote and hopefully get this implemented. Cheers!

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0.1 token is too low a threshold. maybe the amount should be at least 1 token?

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how will this be checked?

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As far as I know this tool is still not perfect. don’t you think that if bugs are detected, it will not attract new users to the project, but on the contrary will scare them away?

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please share the details of this. Quantitative measures are interesting.

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Great questions @crypto4ell !

Stepping through your comments:

  1. Re: 0.1 token threshold:

I agree, you’re probably right that 0.1 is too low. That said, we have to balance this with the resulting reduced numbers of voters (for now). According to my back tests, adjusting quorum from 500 to 400 wallets, while at the same time establishing the 0.1 METIS minimum should have a net zero effect on our ability to reach quorum. It is a MAJOR challenge for great new projects if they are unable to reach quorum to earn their CVP status.

I would propose that we “start small” with this change, make sure we can continue to reach quorum (especially with the new proposed outreach initiatives) and then further increase the minimum from there.

  1. Checking Sybils

Neither this change, nor this proposal, is meant to be “perfect”. It’s logical that establishing a minimum won’t increase Sybil activity, and that’s as far as we get with this proposal.

That said, there are several METIS community members (who wish to remain anonymous) who have done pretty extensive reviews and back tests, and there are several tools such as BubbleMaps that I think could help. If you have suggestions, or would like to help, please share!

  1. NotebookLM

I agree that this tool definitely isn’t perfect. I think this is a great reason to start small (eg on the @MetisGovernance X account with ~7k followers) and iterate fast. That said, I highly recommend that you listen to the sample podcast it generated (via the notion link in my reply above). It pronounces “Metis” wrong - which I have a fix for - but otherwise I think it does a pretty great job.

This is meant as an experiment, with low risk, and based on the results we can come back with adjustments and a new proposal. This is why I used the “now” and “later” framing of the proposal: small changes, see what happens, iterate.

  1. Community Engagement Metrics

I absolutely intend to share metrics, AND, they aren’t finalized yet. This is one of those cases where we’d actually have to do the project to see which combination of metrics is easily available.

Are there specific metrics you think would be particularly important?

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