Hey @cryptoabe - I’m sorry you feel that this initiative is headed in the wrong direction.
There was a community vote earlier this year where MOVR token holders approved the use of some of the Parachain Bond Reserve allocation to fund participation in the Axelar Amplifier program.
The idea behind this proposal is to build on top of the Axelar initiative, again using some of the Parachain Bond Reserve allocation to fund it. Note that we will soon be asking MOVR token holders to vote to ratify the use of MOVR from the Parachain Bond Reserve to fund the Beamswap grant as well as allocations to other projects such as Moonwell. Things cannot proceed until the blessing of the Moonriver community is achieved through that vote.
I realize that you feel that the entire governance mechanism of using tokens to vote is not a good model but unfortunately, it’s the model we have currently. This also has been the model since both chains were launched.
At the Moonbeam Foundation, our mission is to foster the development and adoption of the Moonbeam and Moonriver networks. Part of this is evolving our governance model in a way that allows the communities to become more involved. Any input community members have in terms of how things could be improved is always welcome but please come with constructive suggestions.
Completely reworking the entire governance model in the protocol would both be very time consuming and expensive but if you or others in the community would like to help develop a detailed specification for the community to comment on, please go ahead and do so.
However, in discussions with various community members earlier this year, the general feedback was that the community should move urgently to re-establish a major bridge/GMP protocol and reignite activity. Thus my personal opinion is that the community does not want to wait a year or more while a new governance system is researched and developed.
With regards to having different forums and other community services to support Moonriver vs Moonbeam - the Moonbeam Foundation has considered this but in the end, the cons seem to outweigh the benefits. For one thing, there are real cost savings that are realized by being able to re-use the same infrastructure, team members, etc. Secondly, there would be a lot of repetition of posts relating to core protocol development updates, etc.
One last point of consideration: I would like to remind the community with regards to the Moonbeam Foundation’s policy on participation in Governance detailed here. If you would like to become more active and drive more impact in the Moonriver governance process, I would encourage you to become a community delegate.
Thank you!