TIP-029: Threshold DAO funding for the Relay Maintainer v2

Proposals
1

TIP 29: Threshold DAO funding for the Relay Maintainer v2

Vote Type:

Token Holder DAO, Snapshot

DAO Elected Representative Sponsor:

Will

Overview:

This is a proposal to request that the Threshold DAO take ownership of the relay maintainer on a timeboxed period of 5 months starting on July 1st.

This means monitoring ETH levels on the maintainer and topping up as necessary.

Milestones and Deadlines:

Monday June 20th, 2022 TIP 29 hits the forum

Thursday June 23, 2022 TIP 29 moves to a 5 day snapshot

If passed, starting July 1st the Threshold DAO will be responsible for upkeep of the relay maintainer

Who is Involved:

This proposal directly involves Keep, the Threshold Treasury Guild and the Threshold Council.

Furthermore, this proposal nominates Ben (ZeroInFo56) to take lead on monitoring ETH funds in the relay maintainer and keeping the Treasury Guild up to date with said information.

Why:

The relay maintainer is a public good. Up to this point the Keep team has burdened the cost. Moving this cost to the DAO allows Keep to allocate resources more impactfully which will ultimately positively impact the DAO and the protocol.

Detailed Summary:

Community discussion on this topic leading up to this proposal occured in the #governance channel on Discord, at multiple DAO meetings and on the first TIP-28 proposal on the forum.

Starting with the month of July the Threshold DAO will take ownership of the relay maintainer for a timeboxed period of 5 months. Specifically, the Threshold Treasury Guild will be responsible for executing top ups on the maintainer in ETH. In the past, the maintainer has been topped up on a 2 week candece. However, the Threshold Treasury Guild can determine its own top up cadence.

5 months was chosen as a timebox period because that lines up with the timeline for launching tBTC v2, the new relays, and the projected timeline for fully sunsetting v1 where the current relay isn’t needed any longer.

The total cost per month is variable but breakdown of the cost for previous months is:

1600×666 68.8 KB

This proposal calls for transfer of ownership on the relay maintainer to occur starting in July so that there doesn’t have to be backtracked ETH refunds for the month of June which introduces cost conversion complexity that the DAO expressed a desire to avoid.

I appreciate support for this proposal.

Further Links:

4 Likes
2

What was the reasoning behind having the Treasury Guild multisig be responsible for making the transactions to in ETH to fund the relayer in this proposal, vs having the Keep team be reimbursed in T in TIP - 28.

The Treasury Guild multisig is relatively new and still finding its rhythm in sending out payments in a timely manner, my sense is that the setup in this proposal is more likely to result in the relayer having outages than the setup in TIP -28.

2 Likes
3

I support this proposal.

I believe that diligent monitoring will mitigate this concern

2 Likes
4

Maybe, it also introduces an attack vector.

The Treasury Guild signers could collude to exploit the network with the following steps.

  1. Let the funding of the relayer lapse
  2. Once it runs out of ETH they could then trigger several redemptions.
  3. The nodes would proceed to send the BTC to the requested address
  4. When the nodes try to submit the header to prove they sent the BTC back it would fail
  5. The malicious redeemers could then trigger then notify the Keep that they have not received the BTC
  6. The ETH bonds would then be auctioned off to repay the malicious redeemers the TBTC they spent
  7. Rinse and repeat.

The signers lose their bonds and have no BTC to recover.

I think TIP - 28 is a better proposal.

2 Likes
5

There was a DAO alignment call where this proposal was discussed last Friday. We came up with a game plan for moving forward here.

During that call there was rough consensus that switching to pure relay maintainer ownership with ETH top ups was preferred to avoid over complicating cost conversions for reimbursements. We then agreed it would make it into this revised proposal.

While important to highlight, I think the chances that the treasury guild colludes to attack the protocol are pretty low.

1 Like
6

I am against this proposal.

I think it introduces an unnecessary risk. We are still finding the rhythm for doing transactions efficiently, the last council transaction took 4 days to collect enough signatures and required chasing signers (two of the signers are away).

I don’t think there is complexity in the cost conversions, we can just do total ETH for the month * 30 day TWAP for the ETH / T ratio.

I think it would be good for the vote to be for TIP -28 or TIP - 29

1 Like
7

I have voted in support of TIP 29 for a few reasons, and I would like others to consider doing the same.

My primary reason for supporting TIP 29 over TIP 28 is simply, decentralization.

The DAO should take ownership of the relayer and ensure proper monitoring is done. I currently do not know who is responsible for this, but I do not like the thought of a Keep co person going on vacation and the relayer shutting down. This is currently a point of centralization and, in my opinion, is much better handled transparently by the DAO. In an effort to ensure that decentralization is always at the core of everything that we do, I have voted in support of TIP 29.

The snapshot is live here: Snapshot

1 Like
8

Late to the game post-vote and it’s not a huge deal… but the trivial fix for this is for the Keep dev team to continue to monitor the relay as a fallback :person_shrugging: No additional risk, and some removed as we only need 1 of 2 parties to be honest and online, rather than 1 of 1 as in TIP-28.

Anyway, the chips have landed. Onward and upward!

I appreciate all the work and patience from everyone in this thread, and the support funding the relay :heart:

6 Likes