Proposal: Nomos Multisig Solution for Archway

Overview:

Nomos has been dedicated to providing innovative, developer-focused solutions in the Cosmos ecosystem, with a specific focus on capturing value for teams and communities rather than just individuals. Our multisig solution has been designed with projects like Archway in mind, ensuring secure and efficient asset management for various teams across the ecosystem.

Recently, Nomos has shifted its focus towards chain abstraction and interoperability to contribute to the broader blockchain landscape. As part of this commitment, we have made significant progress on Version 2.0 of our multisig solution, incorporating enhanced features and cross-chain capabilities. However, maintaining and developing the frontend and indexer for our multisig solution in its current form is financially unviable due to the limited user base within Archway and the broader Cosmos ecosystem.

Offer:

Phase 1: Open Source and Community Integration

  • Open Sourcing the Codebase: We propose to open our multisig codebase to the Archway community, allowing developers to build upon and customize it according to their needs. This aligns with Archway’s emphasis on fostering a vibrant developer ecosystem and promoting innovation through community-led initiatives.
  • Continued Technical Support: For the next six months, Nomos will provide dedicated technical support, including maintaining the frontend and indexer, resolving issues, and guiding community developers. This transition period will enable the Archway community to familiarize themselves with the solution and adapt it to their specific requirements.
  • Transition to Community Ownership: After six months, the management and further development of the multisig solution will be fully transitioned to the Archway community. By empowering the community to take ownership, we ensure that the solution evolves in a way that best serves its users and aligns with Archway’s decentralized governance principles.

Phase 2: Support for Multisig V2 Launch

  • Support for Launch: While we cannot fully commit to building Multisig V2 ourselves, we will support its launch and provide guidance to the community as needed. The new version is intended to feature enhanced design and cross-chain capabilities, such as asset swapping on Osmosis and staking on various networks. Our support will help ensure the community can leverage these improvements for greater interoperability and adoption.
  • Support for Community Developers: The Nomos team will actively support community developers interested in building and enhancing the multisig solution. We will provide documentation, workshops, and dedicated office hours to help developers maximize the potential of the multisig solution.

Request for Funding:

To ensure the continued support and development of the multisig solution during this critical transition period, we request 75,000 USD equivalent in Archway tokens. This funding is solely to compensate for the resources and efforts already invested, to maintain the multisig solution, and to provide community support, not for fully future development.

Additional Consideration:

  • Significant Team Commitment and Effort: Over the past nine months, a team of ten dedicated Nomos members has been working full-time on developing the multisig solution. This substantial investment of time and resources reflects our unwavering commitment to delivering high-quality tools that empower the Archway ecosystem. By funding this proposal, Archway can further establish itself as a network that values and recognizes the significant contributions of its developers, encouraging more developers to innovate and contribute within the Archway ecosystem.
  • Adjustment for Previous Funding: Nomos was previously granted 25,000 USD worth of Archway tokens, yet we delivered a fully functional multisig solution in less than a 5 month, demonstrating our efficiency and dedication. Due to significant market fluctuations, the value of these tokens has depreciated considerably.

Nomos vs. Other Solutions:

One of the largest open-source multisig solutions for CosmWasm is DAODAO. While DAODAO offers a strong multisig solution tailored for Cosmos chains, including CosmWasm support, it lacks a value-capture mechanism like the one provided by Nomos.

This distinction is crucial: with DAODAO, teams cannot share in gas rewards, which limits the ability to incentivize and reward contributors. In contrast, Nomos allows users to earn tokens for their smart contract operations and multisig usage, making it a more attractive option for teams looking to share rewards within their community.

Additionally, the costs associated with launching DAODAO multisigs can be prohibitively high, often exceeding 50,000 USD, as evidenced by deployments on Neutron and Cosmos Hub. Nomos offers a more cost-effective and feature-rich alternative, making it a compelling choice for teams within the Archway ecosystem.

Conclusion:

We are committed to supporting the Archway community throughout this transition, fostering innovation, and enhancing the ecosystem through our multisig solution. we are dedicated to supporting its launch and helping the community adopt and adapt it. This proposal ensures that Archway continues to offer secure, interoperable, and developer-friendly tools. We invite the community to join us in building upon this foundation and creating a more interconnected blockchain future.

We welcome any questions or feedback and look forward to collaborating with the Archway community to achieve these goals.

Ohad

1 Like

hey, noah from DAO DAO here! slight correction of some information in this post:

like this proposal, DAO DAO has requested grants ranging from 50-100k (increasing as the ecosystem grows and more features are developed) from each of our existing chain partners, for all the same reasons: indexer infrastructure costs, maintenance, support, and continued development.

DAO DAO is open source, and it’s completely free (and always will be) to launch a DAO on every chain we have deployed on. we have chatted with the Archway team a handful of times about a deployment (which would enable free/sophisticated/battle-tested/audited native multisig and DAO creation/management for the Archway community), but they haven’t yet been willing to fund the initial deployment and maintenance costs.

this option is still on the table, and we are ready to deploy our next-generation governance tooling ASAP (can be live within a week).

also, the distinction made above about DAO DAO lacking a gas value capture mechanism, as far as I’m aware, is simply because DAO DAO is not deployed on Archway. other chains don’t support this functionality, so it can’t be implemented there. but since that is one of the key features of Archway, DAO DAO DAOs on Archway would immediately have access to that feature. we’re also launching our automatic DAO member reward streaming/distribution feature in the next couple weeks, which would very nicely integrate with the gas-capture mechanism that Archway is pioneering.

here is our DAO DAO V3 roadmap, which we’ve already begun building and are really excited about, and we’re actively seeking grants to help fund. on top of the existing cross-chain membership, token-based, and NFT-based DAOs we’ve built, these are the critical missing features that will let DAOs scale to a whole chain and/or ecosystem: DAO DAO V3 - Google Docs

either way, I’m glad interest in governance tooling is persisting, especially open source, and I’m sure we will be able to learn a lot from each other. I personally believe it’s a bit wasteful to redo this much work, as we’ve created a sufficiently robust and modular framework that is very easy to build on top of (like Neutron did with their chain governance), and I suspect working together would be immediately and significantly more fruitful than duplicating effort. that 75k could go to building new functionality instead of rebuilding existing functionality (that’s been audited several times over). at the end of the day, I’m sure whatever decision is made will bring Archway and governance forward, and I wanted to chime in to make sure this problem is being approached with full transparency.

Noha, nice to connect with you here. I really appreciate DAODAO’s work and the transparency you’ve shown with the Archway community. I included the comparison paragraph to openly discuss the different options available in the market, and I’m glad you provided more insights about DAODAO.

Regarding your other comments, let me break them down so we can have a more open discussion about your statements:

  1. I completely understand the costs involved and didn’t mean to criticize DAODAO for how much you’re asking. It’s your right to set the price, even if it’s 1 million USD. We are in a free market, and as someone who developed a multisig solution, I understand these costs firsthand.
  2. Building capture-value protocols isn’t easy, and I encourage you to try out the Nomos multisig to see what we’ve done. We built a factory mechanism that can manage rewards from other smart contracts and track them, alongside a protocol like 0xSplit, which can divide the rewards among different users. This is why we call it a custom-made multisig for Archway, since perhaps only Nibiru has something similar. Archway is among the first to implement this kind of value capture, and it’s not just a simple adoption—it’s about building entirely new features to control smart contracts and distribute rewards fairly.
  3. I genuinely hope DAODAO V3 is developed. However, we haven’t generated any financial income from the multisig, so why would that change with DAODAO? If DAODAO can bring more users, communities, and activity to Archway, that would be fantastic, but I wonder why that hasn’t happened since DAODAO’s initial deployment. If DAODAO had a value-capture mechanism like validators, it could have driven Archway’s growth from the start. For example, if Ethereum had Archway’s mechanism, Safe would likely be the most profitable protocol globally, whereas right now, they probably aren’t earning fees.

To get back on track, we deployed without a grant because we believed strongly in Archway’s mechanism. Unfortunately, after a year, we’re realizing there isn’t enough activity on Archway or the broader Cosmos ecosystem. (Though what we’re building now is aimed at bringing more liquidity and users to Cosmos chains.) For us, it’s no longer financially viable, which is why we decided to shift directions and sell the product. This means Archway will have full control over the code IP.

  1. I don’t think the idea of “redoing” work applies here. These are different products, like comparing Adidas and Nike. It’s not a waste of money; it’s purchasing a product that most teams in Archway are already using, which provides a solid foundation for building more products on top of it. I’m happy to collaborate, even though we’ve moved away from the multisig space, and share some of our ideas and builds.
  2. Lastly, I agree with you—Archway needs to decide what direction they want to take next. There’s definitely an opportunity here, and whatever decision is made will shape that future.

I’m happy to continue this conversation here for transparency or over TG. Thanks for your comments, and I hope this sparks more discussion on the topic.

It’s been 2 weeks and we haven’t received any feedback, which means we will proceed with uploading it as a live proposal.