Ethfinex Governance Summit: An Overview

In the first weekend of October, a collection of expert speakers, academics and revolutionaries within the realm of decentralised technologies descended on the picturesque town of Lugano. There they participated in two days of presentations and workshops about governance models, before using these discussions as the basis for the first Nectar token holder meeting, on Monday 1st October.

As well as being a chance to celebrate Ethfinex’s successes to date, such as the launch of Ethfinex Trustless, the summit was an opportunity to source ideas from our community members, lay the foundations for our roadmap, and ask for guidance from the wider blockchain community and governance experts for Ethfinex’s transition to distributed decision making.

Having delivered on the original proposals set out by the Ethfinex whitepaper on 2nd August 2017, the next part of Ethfinex’s development will be completely defined by our community of Nectar token holders. Many of these community members were invited to participate in person and discuss Ethfinex’s progression towards decentralisation, and the part they will play in this journey.

The meeting represented only the first of many in-person events for Nectar token holders to directly input into the future of our platform, and we look forward to continuing down this path of governance, ensuring all token holders are given a thorough platform through which to communicate their ideas, concerns and feedback.

Thank you to all our token holders, traders, developers, sponsors and enthusiasts who travelled long distances to share their ideas around on-chain governance, Ethfinex and the decentralised exchange space. Ethfinex is a platform created solely for its users and your continuing dedication to the project is the core reason behind our success.

Day 1

The weekend kicked off with Giveth.io founder, Griff Green, providing an energetic and informative presentation on ‘decentralising all the things’ – the revolutionary mindset and energy behind the far-reaching, collaborative development nature of this space.

Following a day of excellent presentations and discussions, Alex Gladstein, CSO at the Human Rights Foundation, delivered an excellent demonstration on why decentralised governance may be the way forward for society, and the dangers we face by not properly addressing current threats to freedom.

Day 2

Our second day was started by two panel discussions delving into on-chain governance with independent blockchains and the transition to distributed governance. The first panel, featuring Vlad Zamfir, Phil Lucsok, Igor Barinov and Nicolas Bacca, delved into the true value of on-chain governance and was made thrilling by the combination of contrasting yet equally valuable opinions on the subject.

The second panel collected Luis Cuende, Adam Vaziri, Matan Field, Tim Bansemer and Dean Eigenmann  to discuss society’s transition to distributed governance models. Both panels were livestreamed for the Ethereum community and featured a series of questions by those watching from home, specifically related to the fiduciary duty of token issuers and innovators in this space.

The rest of the day was spent discussing challenges facing the evolution of the digital asset space. A cosy networking event by Lympo concluded the day’s activities and provided a more informal setting for attendees to continue their discussions.

NEC (Un)-Board Meeting

Igor Barinov kicked off day 3 with a look at Ethereum network scalability efforts at POA Network before the NEC Meeting took place where token holders from around the globe debated the strategic approaches needed for continued progress at Ethfinex.

Structured as an un-board meeting, everyone was free to raise issues, share their thoughts and debate with the team and other attendees. The meeting was designed to draw on topics raised from the wider NEC community as well as from and lessons learnt throughout the weekend.

An overview of the most discussed topics were as follows:

• EVT and the community listing vote. How can we best align incentives so that excellent projects are voted onto Ethfinex?
• What should be done with Nectar Smart Contract funds. Currently ~10,000 ETH is stored in the Nectar Smart Contract as part of the Ethfinex fee collection programme. Should this be used for the continued growth of Ethfinex, paid out to Nectar holders or something entirely different?
• Nectar staking. Staking NEC for running on-chain Ethfinex trade validators, as the next step towards full Ethfinex decentralisation.
• Governance models. How will Nectar token holders be given a chance to have an input on a continued basis, simultaneously sourcing guidance from this group of experienced industry professionals and traders, without slowing down the speed at which Ethfinex can make progress.

Engagement from the NEC community was incredible. A more detailed summary of discussions will shortly be presented to NEC holders, structured as proposals for consultation.

What Next

Over October we will be rolling out new platform products and features, as well as improvements to the way we approach governance and decisions making.
The overwhelming message that we took away from the summit was that the NEC community contains an incredible amount of expertise and experience that we can leverage to make Ethfinex one of the leading token trading exchanges in the world.

A playlist containing all presentations and discussions which took place throughout the weekend are available here. More photos are available on summit.ethfinex.com/gallery.

Take control of your trading on Ethfinex Trustless – our recently launched Ethereum based trading portal.

To learn more about the tokens, please visit the Ethfinex Knowledge Base.

Check out the Ethfinex Trustless Developer Guide to interact with Ethfinex (and Bitfinex) order books whilst maintaining control of your portfolio.