Ethermint Funding Proposal For Past Development, Addressed from The Evmos Community to The Kava Community

This is an inter-chain diplomacy proposal for the Evmos Community to ask the Kava Community to reward Ethermint past development efforts (done until October 1st 2022), with 1.25M (1,250,000) EVMOS. The equivalent amount in $KAVA is 1,326,013 $KAVA (calculated at $1.57 $EVMOS, $1.48 $KAVA). The entire amount will be sent to an Evmos Community controlled multisig.

Discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/kava_platform/comments/xyxr1o/prevotelast_version_ethermint_funding_proposal/.

The initial request (2.5M $EVMOS) was reduced to 1.25M $EVMOS. Comments on Kava Reddit 1, Kava Reddit 2, Evmos Commonwealth, Evmos Governance Council.

$KAVA tokens will be used to buy $EVMOS. On Evmos, the 1.25M $EVMOS will be used for Ethermint development, following a similar procedure to Evmos Grants:

1. stake the $EVMOS to active validators that have under 0.66% voting power, to improve Evmos's Nakamoto Coefficient (the beneficiary, Tharsis, will select the validators)
2. fund Ethermint development from staking rewards
3. Recommendations:

• 3.1. the equivalent of 0.25M $EVMOS (in $KAVA) can be used to provide $KAVA liquidity to Evmos DEXes.
• 3.2. $KAVA -> $EVMOS swap to be done in Evmos DEXes, to the extent possible. This is out of respect for the Kava Community, to have a gradual token swap.
• 3.3. *The Evmos Community multisig signers will lead the above processes and decision-making and will forward $EVMOS to a Tharsis-owned account, for staking.

Multisig on Evmos: 0xd04DB421f518D0E3449D2A3cefEac25b31485c71

Multisig signers selection on Evmos Discord

• Mr.Sir | Orbital Apes
• InstaFinanzas | Stakin
• LPX | Evmos Governance
• arda | Validator.run
• luisqa | OzMage Validation

Multisig on Kava: kava1809ey47kugp6qjcxq333m74nc3vm9ha6kywzkt

• Mr.Sir | Orbital Apes
• InstaFinanzas | Stakin
• Loredana Cirstea | The Laurel Project
• arda | Validator.run
• luisqa | OzMage Validation

NOTE: This is a summarized version of the proposal, for more details check the full proposal description here

A. Summary of Facts

1. Ethermint is a Go module that bridges the Cosmos APIs (Cosmos SDK, Tendermint, IBC, etc) to EVM (using the go-ethereum library as module). It is the de-facto way to have EVM-powered Cosmos chains.
2. Ethermint is developed and maintained by Tharsis & other contributors & volunteers.
3. Kava is "One Network. Two Chains. Ethereum and Cosmos."
4. Kava is today valued at ~$400M market cap
5. Estimated Total Value Locked on Kava Co-Chains: $291M (Cosmos TVL: $274M, EVM TVL: $17M). Source.
6. EVM support was announced by Kava Labs on Aug 26, 2021, in The Kava Product Roadmap diagram. "Kava 9 also implements several core infrastructural changes, paving the way for EVM support in H1 2022".
7. "Kava Rise Program: $750M Developer Incentive Program. The structure of the Rise program will focus primarily on driving adoption and growth for the new Ethereum Co-Chain."
8. Kava Community Pool has ~80M KAVA tokens
9. Kava uses Ethermint for their Ethereum Co-Chain and Cosmos SDK for Cosmos in their code
10. Tharsis made this Commonwealth proposal to the Evmos and Kava communities, "requesting 3M out of ~80M KAVA tokens (3.7%) from the Kava Community Pool Treasury to fund, develop and advance critical EVM Infrastructure through the Ethermint Engineering and R&D team for 1 year.", followed by opening a Kava Community Discussion. Resulting in the formal on-chain Kava proposal #96
11. Proposal #96 was rejected. 13/21 of the top validators votes YES, 1/21 voted ABSTAIN, and 7/21 did not vote. The top 21 validators have 88.90% voting power. Kava's co-founder & CEO's response.
12. Kava Labs made its own "Kava Infrastructure Security rewards" proposal #97, with no mention of funding Ethermint, as critical infrastructure. With no link to any Kava Community discussion. This proposal passed.
13. "The Kava DAO is a fully decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that governs the Kava Network. Made up of the Kava stakers and validators that help to secure and run the network"
14. Kava did not make any concrete offers to reward past development efforts for Ethermint (not even future development efforts).
15. Due to #14, the Evmos Community decided to open a formal negotiation with the Kava Community.

• 15.1. Discussion on Evmos Commonwealth
• 15.2. Governance Council Discussions: 1, 2, 3, 4
• 15.3. Proposal #62 officially passed on Evmos Governance, on-chain.
• 15.4. Pre-vote discussion was started on Kava Reddit, 27th of Sept 2022 with final version on 8th of October, 2022.

G. Votes

If you vote YES: you agree to reward Ethermint past development efforts with the agreed-upon amount.

Proposal Lead

This proposal was led on behalf of the Evmos Community, by Loredana Cirstea - elected by vote in the Evmos Interchain Office (Evmos Governance proposal #45) and a volunteer from The Laurel Project. This proposal is made from a volunteer capacity (independent, unpaid, self-funded, and from the heart).