Shimmer Governance Voting Results March 2023

Shimmer to Establish Grant and Growth Committees

TL;DR:
All four governance proposals voted on by the Shimmer community during the past two weeks have been accepted. The community has agreed to set up a Shimmer Growth Committee and Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee, and decided who the members of these committees shall be. This blog post presents the final verified results and the next steps for the newly-established committees.

From March 16th to March 30th, Shimmer token holders voted on four proposals shaping the Shimmer project's future (you can see the original blog post outlining the proposals here). We’re excited to be able to share the final results that were given the green light by our amazing community.

Proposal [SGP - 0005] to establish a Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee

The proposal to establish a Community Treasury Grant Committee, set it up as a legal DAO entity in the Marshall Islands, and supply it with a budget of 27,204,307.5 SMR tokens for a one-year grant program, has been accepted by SMR token holders. The results were as follows:

Answer 1: Yes, execute proposal [SGP - 0005]

Votes received 15,968,734,665,057,648 (98.78%)

Answer 2: No, make no changes

Votes received 197,528,068,091,018 (1.22%)

Participation in this vote: 7.37% of maximal achievable votes

Proposal [SGP -0001] to select the Shimmer Community Grant Committee Program Lead

The community has elected community member JD Sutton as Program Lead of the Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee:

Answer 1: JD Sutton

Votes received 12,384,530,299,988,156 (88.68%)

Answer 2: Null (Rafael Brochado)

Votes received 1,410,549,256,294,991 (10.10%)

Answer 3: Issaus / Zilan Arslan

Votes received 170,225,198,866,668 (1.22%)

Participation: 6.37% of maximal achievable votes

Proposal [SGP - 0002] to select 4 Grant Reviewers for the Shimmer Community Grant Committee

The community has selected the following four community members to act as Grant Reviewers and form the Shimmer Community Grant Committee together with the Program Lead: 1. Linus Nauman; 2. Garret Jin; 3. Kowei; 4. Finazgoblin / Richard Mediavilla

Answer 1: Linus Nauman

Votes received 15,375,945,551,078,376 (18.32%)

Answer 2: Garret Jin

Votes received 13,913,136,033,786,008 (16.58%)

Answer 3: Ben Royce

Votes received 4,969,738,889,745,140 (5.92%)

Answer 4: Finanzgoblin / Richard Mediavilla

Votes received 10,357,355,610,584,492 (12.34%)

Answer 5: Kowei

Votes received 11,450,158,922,528,068 (13.64%)

Answer 6: Null / Rafael Brochado

Votes received 7,438,066,114,248,679 (8.86%)

Answer 7: Umair

Votes received 9,117,283,841,071,882 (10.86%)

Answer 8: Al

Votes received 1,212,974,718,740,549 (1.45%)

Answer 9: See3PeeOh

Votes received 1,220,376,779,808,322 (1.44%)

Answer 10: oxMarcus

Votes received 8,870,413,625,967,111 (10.57%)

Participation: 7.01%

Proposal [SGP - 0003] to establish the Shimmer Growth Committee as part of the Tangle Ecosystem Association

The proposal to establish the Shimmer Growth Committee and supply it with a budget of 90,681,025.5 SMR tokens for a one-year operation has been accepted:

Answer 1: Yes, execute proposal [SGP - 0005]

Votes received 15,871,642,706,278,576 votes (98.67%)

Answer 2: No, Make no changes

Votes received 214,275,025,327,008 votes (1.33 %)

Participation: 7.33%

The voting period ended at 3 pm CET on Thursday, March 30th. Since then, the community of node operators has validated the votes collected in their Hornet nodes and has verified the results in a decentralized manner. You can double-check the results of the validation process here.

If you want to understand exactly how the above-displayed votes were cast and counted, check out this article on the wiki.

What comes next: Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee

During this week, the new members of the Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee will start forming the organization under the temporary legal umbrella of the Tangle Ecosystem Association. They will activate their grant application system prepared by the Community Governance Group. The Treasury Grant Committees' annual budget of 27,204,307 SMR tokens will be transferred from the Community Treasury Wallet to a newly-created separate Treasury Grant Committee Wallet.

To start the operation, the first tranche of SMR tokens will be converted to 100,000 USDT through an OTC sale. The USDT will be given to the Treasury Grant Committee once it has set up its multi-signature wallet so it can commence operations.

In addition, the Treasury Grant Committee will submit a prepared application to form a DAO as a non-profit LLC to the government of the Marshall Islands through the agent that has been selected for this purpose. After the application to form the DAO LLC has been approved and all official documents received, the Treasury Grant Committee will become an independent legal entity under the legislative non-profit framework of the Marshall Islands, leaving its temporary engagement with the Tangle Ecosystem Association.

You can follow the Treasury Grant Committee’s activities at its Twitter account. Should you need support for your project, the Treasury Grant Committee will now be able to receive grant applications through its website.

What comes next: Shimmer Growth Committee

The Tangle Ecosystem Association will start setting up the Shimmer Growth Committee in the next few days.

As defined in the proposal, members of the Growth Committee will be the elected Program Lead of the Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee (JD Sutton) and the two Grant Reviewers with the highest number of votes (Linus Nauman and Garrett Jin). They will form the Growth Committee together with IOTA Foundation members Christian Sauer and Holger Webel.

The Growth Committee will look for opportunities to increase the adoption of Shimmer in the market. Its budget of 90,681,025.5 SMR will be allocated to a separate wallet, and the Committee will discuss the first projects and proposals that aim to accelerate the growth of the Shimmer ecosystem. You can learn more about their work in their quarterly reports, the first of which will be published in early Q3.

The IOTA Foundation congratulates the Shimmer community on these decisions. We believe that the new funding sources created as a result of these decisions will spur remarkable growth and adoption for Shimmer and IOTA. We also congratulate the elected Shimmer Community Grant Committee members and offer them our support in operating the Treasury Grant Committee.

We’d also like to offer our respect to all community members that applied to become Grant Reviewers for the Shimmer Community Grant Committee. Even if not everybody could make it into the elected committee, your commitment to the project in those applications has not gone unnoticed. We are grateful to you for offering to step up and support our ecosystem.

These votes are a further step in decentralizing Shimmer and its ecosystem and we look forward to the great things that will emerge from these community-driven initiatives.