The online forum discussion primarily focused on a proposal by Kene_StableLab to further decentralize the Aave Grants DAO (AGD) through community-run elections. The proposed changes aim to enhance accountability and transparency within the Aave community. This includes conducting elections every six months to elect a Grants DAO Lead and seven reviewers, using web3 native grants platforms such as Questbook for transparent review processes, and providing compensation for committee members and staff.

Several users, including Hazbobo and Oneski22, suggested that the DAO should consider separating the budgets for events & merch and funding projects in the Aave ecosystem. This could potentially involve creating separate entities like GrantsDAO and merchDAO. However, Jengajojo and 0xbilll raised concerns about the process and structure of the proposed change, questioning whether the grants lead and reviewers are positions of trust or skill, and expressing concern about Questbook's compensation being based on a percentage of total grants disbursed.

MarcZeller expressed his belief that the AGD can be optimized, but disagreed with the current proposal. He opposed the idea of grant reviewers elections, suggesting instead to elect a grant leader who can assemble a committee. He also expressed surprise that AGD is not a legal entity yet, and urged 0xbilll to rectify this.

daveytea, a current AGD reviewer and former Aave developer, criticized the proposal for lacking real-world experience and understanding of the grants program. He emphasized that grant funding is about supporting projects that grow the Aave ecosystem, and not about transparency or decentralization of the process. He argued that a well-functioning grants team needs to be nimble, fast, and independent, and that too much transparency can create distractions and inefficiencies.

eleventh19 from Metagov, a governance research non-profit, shared their thoughts on the topic of community voting and decentralization. They argued that while on the surface, community voting seems to promote decentralization, it may not necessarily lead to positive results. They pointed out that not everyone will vote and the loudest voices or most popular individuals might be more likely to win due to social dynamics.

skarri shared their experience with Questbook, stating that they discontinued its use due to poor results compared to their existing technology stack (Airtable with integrations + automations). They found that review times were longer and there was no community engagement. They also mentioned that Questbook's user experience was not sophisticated enough to manage the tracking, reviewing, and interviewing of applications.

Subhash from Questbook responded, thanking the AGD team for their feedback during the pilot. He highlighted that their suggestions have led to significant improvements in Questbook as a grants orchestration tool. These improvements include allowing community members to comment and share views on proposals, conducting objective reviews through a customized evaluation rubric, empowering review teams to propose and set up interviews, performing batch actions such as accepting, rejecting, requesting resubmissions, and making payouts for multiple proposals at once, and making milestone-based payouts to accepted proposals directly from the multi-sig safe.

In conclusion, the proposal to decentralize the Aave Grants DAO and increase transparency and accountability has received support from the community, but also raised several concerns. Steps to implement the proposal will be taken at the end of the quarter if the community supports it. Despite the concerns raised, the discussion has led to significant improvements in the Questbook tool, which may be beneficial for the AGD in the future.