Council: The Element Finance Governance System, with Charles St. Louis and Paul Vienhage

I Pledge Allegiance

Today's guests are Charles St. Louis and Paul Vienhage from Element Finance. In this episode we go deep on Council, the Element Finance governance framework, which features a few key innovations: Voting Vaults, the Governance Steering Council, and Optimistic Rewards. We also go into the broader philosophy behind Element Finance Governance, and how it differs from existing Governance systems.

Charles St Louis is the COO of Element Finance, and has worked extensively on Governance at Element, and previously at MakerDAO. Paul is the lead engineer at Element, and is responsible for implementing the Council smart contracts.

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Follow us on Twitter: @PVienhage | @CharlieStLouis | @lsukernik | @derek_hsue

Resources: Element Finance Governance Model, Governance Steering Council, Voting Vaults

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Show Notes:

• What is the Element Finance governance philosophy?
• How the Element team approached governance design from first principles, and advice for other teams going through the process
• Comparing corporate governance systems with decentralized governance models, and how they differ
• Governance Steering Council: Why it's useful, and can help scale decision making
• Voting Vaults: What they are, why they're novel, and how other teams can use them
• Why more protocols should consider formal Governance Incentives
• Lessons from MakerDAO governance and the Core Unit Model
• The kinds of DAO tooling they're excited about using