Melee 2 - Results & Recap

Shutter Champions Melee 2
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Shutter Champions: Melee 2 has concluded!

Thank you to everyone who bought and held SHU, proposed slates, gave feedback, and voted. Here’s a summary of the round and its outcomes:

Quick Recap

Melee 2 was a $10,000 Shutter Champions funding round focused on one question: What is the best way to advance Shutter with $10,000?

This round split responsibilities between two groups:

  • Shutter DAO 0x36 Delegates, Security Council Members, and Keypers created funding slates
  • anyone who bought SHU between May 21 and June 10 (and held it through July 10) received non-transferable Melee 2 voting power to vote on the slates via ranked choice voting on Snapshot.

Proposed & Selected Slates

Six slates were proposed in the Melee 2 category on the Shutter Forum:

Per the Melee 2 rules, brainbot gmbh selected 4 of the 6 slates for the ballot: Kickstart Shutter PEN, Delegate Impact + AI Agents, Shutter Governance Live Pilot, and Spreading Shutter’s Voice. A fifth option, “None - Add Funds to Melee 3”, was also included.

Voting Power

16 addresses bought SHU on the eligible pools during May 21 - June 10. One address transferred its SHU before the end of the holding period and was disqualified, leaving 15 addresses that received Melee 2 Voting Tokens - a total of 706,278 voting power, distributed in proportion to the amount of SHU bought and held.

The full breakdown is available in the Melee 2 Voting Power spreadsheet.

Turnout

10 of the 15 eligible addresses (67%) voted on the Snapshot proposal, casting 367,782 voting power (52% of the total).

The Winning Slate

The winner is “Spreading Shutter’s Voice”, proposed by SEEDGov. Final ranked choice results:

Slate Voting Power
Spreading Shutter’s Voice 272,438
Kickstart Shutter PEN 64,953
Delegate Impact + AI Agents 20,759
Shutter Governance Live Pilot 9,632
None - Add Funds to Melee 3 0

Who Receives Funding

Per the winning slate (the updated canonical version), the full $10,000 will be distributed as follows:

Recipient Amount Paid in Purpose
ETH Daily (ethdaily.eth) $2,000 SHU Continued Shutter coverage across podcast, newsletter, and social through the rest of 2026. Half upfront, half on October 17 upon delivery of a coverage recap.
The Book of Ethereum (foundation.booe.eth) $2,000 SHU Shutter-dedicated content stream on X, Telegram/Spaces discussions, and onboarding pieces. Half upfront, half on October 17 upon delivery of a content recap.
Web3Privacy Now (web3privacynow.eth) $5,000 SHU Shutter presence at the Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress in Mumbai: speaker session, Congress visuals and web presence, and post-event content. Half upfront, half after the Congress recap.
Shutter PEN deployment bounty $250 SHU Paid upon successful on-chain deployment of Shutter PEN.
Shutter PEN frontend bounty $750 SHU Paid upon delivery of a working frontend (SEAT sales/refunds, health dashboard), hosted or pinned on IPFS for 12 months.
Total $10,000

In addition, as creator of the winning slate, SEEDGov will receive the $200 (in SHU) slate creator bounty.

Congratulations to the new Shutter Champions!

Feedback & Suggestions

Melee 2 was an experiment (restricted buy-and-hold voting, slate-based proposals, ranked choice voting) and we want to hear what you think:

  • What worked well, and what didn’t?
  • Should slate creation remain restricted to Delegates, Security Council Members, and Keypers?
  • Was the buy-and-hold voting token mechanism a good way to bring new voices into governance?
  • Any other suggestions for future Melees?

Please share your thoughts and suggestions below. Thank you all for participating!

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Hi there @Loring-Brainbot;

Just geeking out here :nerd_face:

BTW, congratulations to @SEEDGov on putting together the winning slate. Keep up the good work. :clap: :clap: :clap:

Now, focusing on the “melee” mechanic rather than this specific slate, I’d like to share some thoughts in the form of feedback:

I appreciate the experimentation happening here, and I think the Melee format is interesting because it creates a lightweight way to test things (eg. funding mechanisms, governance participation, and ecosystem priorities) without committing the DAO too much.

I think there is value in keeping slate creation somewhat restricted (to Delegates, Security Council Members, and Keypers) because those roles can carry more context, continuity, and responsibility for the DAO’s direction.

At the same time, I think the earlier stage could be more open. For example, anyone could surface intents, needs, ideas, or problem areas, while Delegates / Security Council Members / Keypers help translate those inputs into more concrete slates, terms of reference, or executable funding strategies.

I like that it can bring new people into governance, create a reason to engage with SHU, and potentially support the token. But I also think there is a real tension here.

In this round, one voter had around 58% of the voting power. In this case, SEEDGov behaved constructively and ranked other slates too, but I do not think a mechanism should depend on the benevolence.

That is my broader concern with token voting. Even when it works well socially, it can still reproduce plutocratic dynamics structurally. Of course, I don’t have a perfect alternative, but I think future Melees could explore safeguards such as voting caps, quadratic voting, conviction limits, separate stakeholder classes, etc.

I think the slate creator role feels unresolved and confusing.

I understand the reason behind preventing slate creators from funding themselves is to avoid self-dealing, but the current rule also creates a strange separation between proposing a strategy and being responsible for executing it.

People may need to find someone else to include them, slate design can move into private conversations, and the person with the clearest execution capacity may not be able to propose the slate where they are accountable for delivery. It can also create incentives for informal reciprocity: “I include you in mine, you include me in yours.”

From my perspective, the more natural model would be that a slate creator can propose a slate where they are responsible for delivery, as long as this is made fully transparent. If there is concern about conflicts, maybe the restriction should apply at the voting stage instead. For example, a slate creator or affiliated recipient cannot vote for their own slate.

Also, creating a serious slate takes real work: reading context, understanding priorities, talking to people, designing a coherent funding strategy, managing conflicts, and writing something legible for voters.

For a $200 reward, I am not sure how many times I would want to do that level of work unless there is stronger compensation, clearer authority, or a more explicit path to execution responsibility.

→ ←

And that’s all from me.

Namaste

:folded_hands: