Shimmer Governance: Time to Vote

Your Chance to Vote on Four Shimmer Governance Proposals

TL;DR:
Introduced and fine-tuned last year, four proposals by the Shimmer Governance Group are now ready for the final round of voting by Shimmer token holders. The first three proposals focus on a community-driven committee to manage grant distribution for ecosystem projects. The fourth is to set up a Growth Committee as a joint force between the Shimmer community and IOTA Foundation. These proposals are ready for a final vote by all Shimmer token holders in Shimmer’s Firefly wallet. Voting on these proposals opens at 2pm CET on Thursday, March 16th.

The Governance Proposals presented by the Shimmer Community Governance Group in November last year have reached their third phase: the final vote by all Shimmer token holders via Shimmer’s Firefly wallet.

This follows Phases 1 and 2. Phase 1 was the announcement of the proposals in November last year, followed by online discussions. Phase 2 was the governance forum votes on the final versions of the proposals in December and January.

The following proposals await your decision:

1) Establishing the Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee [SGP - 0005].
2) Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee - Lead selection [SGP - 0001].
3) Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee - Grant Reviewer selection [SGP - 0002].
4) Establishing the Shimmer Growth Committee as part of the Tangle Ecosystem Association [SGP - 0003].

All four proposals will shape the community’s role in the future of Shimmer – and the final decision is now up to Shimmer community members like you!

The latest Firefly Shimmer release includes governance functionality, enabling you to cast your final votes on all proposals – you’ll find more details at the end of this blog post.

From 2pm CET on Thursday, March 16th, you can cast your votes in your updated Firefly wallet.

Starting from Thursday 23rd March, your votes will enter the counting period, which lasts seven days. You should hold your votes for the full seven days to reach your maximum voting weight.

The counting of votes will end at 15:00 CET on March 30th, after which the results will be validated by the node operators.

Here’s an overview of the proposals:

Proposals 1-3: Establishing the Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee

The Shimmer community allocated 20% of the token supply to bootstrap a flourishing ecosystem around the network. This amount was split equally between the community and the Tangle Ecosystem Association, which oversees the development of the IOTA and Shimmer ecosystem.

Proposal 1: To manage a yearly budget consisting of 15% (27,204,307 SMR) of the communities half of this ecosystem fund efficiently and independently, proposal [SGP - 0005] asks you to agree on establishing a Community Treasury Grant Committee as a Decentralized Autonomous Organisation (DAO), which will use the allocated budget to give out grants to ecosystem projects and initiatives. This proposal also defines all rules and procedures for how the Treasury Committee should operate.

Should the community decide to establish the Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee, it will need dedicated individuals with the right skills to handle all grant applications on behalf of the community and give out grants from the Treasury budget. Therefore, the community seeks:

Proposal 2: One full-time contracted Community Treasury Grant Committee Lead: Proposal [SGP - 0001]

Proposal 3: Four part-time contracted Grant Reviewers: Proposal [SGP - 0002]

The five selected individuals will form the CommunityTreasury Grant Committee and will be responsible for the grant system and contracted under a legal DAO entity in the Marshall Islands.

(The decision to establish a legally-recognized DAO with MIDAO came after lengthy consultations with lawyers from different legislations seeking the optimal solution for the specific needs of a grant-giving community organization. Currently, the Marshall Island non-profit DAO LLC offers one of the most decentralized and community-friendly legal wrappers for an organization with a DLT-based governance structure.)

Should the proposal be accepted, the Governance Working Group and the Committee members will set up this committee and all necessary legal frameworks throughout the weeks following the vote.

Proposal 4: Establishing a Shimmer Growth Committee as Part of the Tangle Ecosystem Association

The Shimmer community’s journey into governance and ownership independent of the IOTA Foundation is hugely encouraging. However, the progress can be slow, with trial and error being a part of the learning curve.

That’s why Proposal 4 [SGP - 0003] is about establishing a Shimmer Growth Committee. It would consist of members of the IOTA Foundation, and the Community Treasury Grant Committee (as established under proposals 1-3) – these would be the Committee Lead (Proposal 2) and the two most-supported Grant Reviewers chosen in the member selection process (Proposal 3). Together, the Growth Committee members would work on boosting the Shimmer ecosystem, Shimmer’s utility, and its positioning in the market.

The Growth Committee does not seek to replace community-driven efforts but speed things up and use all possible opportunities to grow Shimmer into one of the most attractive ecosystems for Web3 applications and builders.

The next steps: digging deeper

The Shimmer Governance Group invites you to read through the full proposals in the Governance Forum and ask questions if you need clarification. If you don’t yet have an account in the Forum, you can set one up by following these simple instructions.
You are also welcome to join the discussions in the #governance discussion channels on the IOTA Discord.
We have opened a separate forum in our Discord that lets you directly communicate with the candidates and question them about their applications. Please visit the Discord Candidate Forum here.
For more background on each proposal, you can watch recordings of the weekly IOTA Discord governance calls.
The Shimmer community has also developed a framework for all governance matters, including the proposals described here, which serves as the Shimmer “constitution”. You can find it here for reference.

How to participate: Firefly’s new governance feature

The latest Shimmer Firefly wallet upgrade delivers full governance voting functionalities, so please update your Firefly Shimmer wallet from the official Firefly website and access the new Governance tab.

Here you can decide how much voting power (in Shimmer tokens) you want to use for the governance votes. You can then vote on each proposal with whatever amount of voting power you have chosen. If you participate in the votes, your tokens will not leave your control, and everything happens securely in your Firefly wallet.

Find a step-by-step guide on using this new feature in the Shimmer Wiki.

Node operators: help count the votes!

Every Hornet Shimmer node with enabled participation plugin (this is enabled by default on all nodes that have been set up using the recommended setup process) will be able to participate in the decentralized counting and validation of the votes. To do this, you must add the events (as json or raw-links) you wish to count in your Hornet node dashboard.

You can find the event links and a tutorial on adding them using the node dashboard here.

Every vote counts, so choose wisely!

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