Bankless DAOplomats

Title: Bankless DAOplomats
Authors: @0xbaer
Squad: @Quietfox @Jengajojo @sergioarizav.eth @0xbaer
Date Created: 25 May 2022
Date Posted: 14 july 2022

link to original doc with comments

Summary

This proposal presents the opportunity for the DAO to leverage its immense experience in decentralised governance in offering Metagovernance-as-a-service (MaaS). DAOplomats from BanklessDAO help its partner DAOs in the governance process by writing and coordinating proposals.

BACKGROUND

BanklessDAO is one of the top DAOs in governance participation and implementation of proposals, with more than three thousand members of the 4.8 thousand token holders participating in governance1. With our enthusiasm for DAOing, we have managed to make partnerships with many DAOs and web3 organisations throughout four seasons and hold more than ten governance tokens2 in our community treasury which has a total of 3.5 million AUM.

At the same time, well-established DAOs are having a hard time dealing with voter fatigue and unmet quorums in governance participation3. As a result, these DAO actively seek quality engagement from the broader community to kickstart discussions and help their protocol evolve.

The flow of current DAO governance

The current governance structure of DAOs follows ‘token-based’ governance model, which often lacks specialised groups - like the GSE of BanklessDAO - that actively participate in the governance. The governance structure requires token holders to vote and pass almost every proposal. For votes to move forward, they have to reach quorum. Reaching a quorum can be challenging since many token holders aren’t interested in voting. According to DeepDAO, many top DAOs have less than 5% participation.

source: DeepDAO.io

Do you believe that The DAOs need more engagement?
  • Yah
  • No; decentralised governance is dead

0 voters

Understanding the Problem of reduced participation in DAOs.

As said before, the DAOs rely heavily on token holders to make decisions. Token holders often lack context on proposals and have problems collecting information required to vote on decisions within the DAO. As a result, they often tend not to vote or make uninformed decisions. Another reason for voter apathy is the reasonably complex nature of decentralised governance; there is a lengthy period of discussion which follows a temp check. In most DAOs temp check leads to off-chain snapshot votes and eventually to on-chain voting. As a result, an average person Getting lost in this long process of multiple voting rounds is to be expected. Lower voter turnover and unmet quorums hinders the maturing process of DAO.

‘’Governance architects and token holders historically believed in delegating voting power to individuals with competence, discipline, and bandwidth to participate in DAOs. We have seen ineffective and poor delegate participation run rampant in some protocols. For example, nearly three-quarters of $COMP delegates have never voted on-chain (Governance Participation: Perils and Promise). -Dan Wu, Governance expert

As Dan Wu says, individual delegations often encounter the same problems as the token holders.

  1. Lack of information - Hard to find information
  2. Lack of engagement- Derived from the above problem, they usually don’t know if the right people are involved.
  3. Lack of financial incentive to participate- There is practically no financial incentive for a delegate to participate in the governance process.

The Solution:

The solution for lower voter turnover or reduced participation is to include unique and dedicated groups in the governance process who have the resources to take part in the governance process and help the DAO evolve.

This could be considered an improved version of Metagovernance groups, where both DAOs benefit mutually and help nurture a positive relationship. If you want to know more about Meta governance, here is the Ultimate Guide to Metagovernance - by Ben Giove - BanklessHQ.

These governance groups will have dedicated members who understand the problem, do the necessary research to propose a solution, and help the partner DAO process and implement the solution as improvement proposals.

Introducing Bankless DAOplomats

Bankless DAOplomats are professional DAO politicians from BanklessDAO who are specialised in solving the DAO governance trilemma (Voter Apathy, ignorant voting, and plutocratic voting). We provide Metagovernance-as-a-service (MaaS) through DAO to DAO partnership. Bankless DAOplomats will also involve with Bankless subDAOs to carry forward the Bankless mission and represent the interest of BanklessDAO.

The meta governance influence of the Bankless DAOplomats will be limited to the delegation of voting power from token holders to us, both from the BanklessDAO community and outside. We tend to hold only a minimum amount of voting power required to pass different thresholds. The proposals we put forward will not be hostile towards the partner DAOs.

Mission and vision

United we stand: We, DAOplomats, believe decentralisation is paramount in governing web3. We aim to represent everyday users of web3 and have their unheard voices heard.

Net positive engagement: We represent a community aiming to empower all parties involved and develop in a positive-sum manner.

Quality participation: We believe the quality active contributors that could help a DAO evolve. We aim to deliver the best quality of work with minimum bureaucracy.

How do Bankless DAOplomats work

We have two main ways to facilitate governance in partner DAOs. First, token holders delegate their voting power to the DAOplomat wallet address if they are not actively participating in governance. We also try to collect governance tokens from the revenue we generate.

Concerning the governance process of subDAOs, we will hold a significant amount of BANK or the subDAO tokens to meet the quorums. The voting power of idle BANK from the multisigs of different BanklessDAO guilds and projects could also be delegated to us after going through the internal governance procedure of respective guilds. This delegation of voting power ensures the maximum utilisation of the BANK in the governance of our DAO.

Within BanklessDAO and SubDAOs the term ‘Bankless Stewards’ will be used to avoid confusion with the DAOplomats tag of DAOlationships Guild.

MaaS offered by Bankless DAOplomats.

  1. Full-stack development of ‘Improvement proposals’ for partner DAOs
  2. Provide a vantage point for the community to governance-related issues in the DAO
  3. Facilitate on-chain and off-chain proposals for individual proposal authors who can’t meet the proposed threshold. (Proxy Authoring)
  4. Governance training: Educate the Bankless community on the best practices of decentralised governance through courses.

Partner DAOs can leverage the services mentioned above by funding the project fund. In the initial stages, the revenue will be distributed among the contributors and some portion will be allocated for accumulating voting power. As soon as the project attains self-sustainability, we could offer a revenue-sharing mechanism for individual token delegates in the form of BANK tokens brought from the open market.

Goals for Season 5

  • To become recognised as a leader in meta governance. In season 5, we want to be active in the most prominent governance communities in Web 3, namely MakerDAO, 1inch and Uniswap. We also try to validate our model, which doesn’t accept bribes or table hostile proposals. We also want to gather a delegation of large voting rights from different community treasuries to us.
  • Educate BanklessDAO about the importance of governance and provide our DAO members with the avenue to level up themselves as community stewards and governance experts.

KPIs for season 5

Participation KPIs

  • The number of proposals voted: we aim to vote on at least two high to very high priority proposals and eight proposals of varying properties (low and medium). The classification of proposals is according to the impact they might have on the community and how the token holders might react to our voting choice.
  • The number of proposals submitted and passed: our aim is not just to vote on proposals. We also want to improve protocols and DAOs actively. During season 5, we wish to submit at least one improvement proposal of ‘High’ to ‘Medium’ property and pass it through the governance process.

Educational KPIs

  • Build a workflow to onboard new contributors and convert them to apprentices.
  • Launch v1 of an educational campaign in association with the education guild.

Operational structure

The DAOplomats projects will consist of Protocol experts and contributors.

Responsibilities of Protocol Experts.

  1. Holding protocol-specific ‘transparency calls’ and ‘meet your delegate’ calls.
  2. Keep track of the proposals in a particular protocol.
  3. Join community and governance calls of respective protocols to keep track of the development.
  4. Consulting with contributors to vote on proposals.
  5. Propose improvement proposals for the Protocols they are working on designated.

Contributors are the backbone of this initiative. Responsibilities of Contributors include.

  1. Researching on improving different protocols.
  2. Provide professional support for Protocol Experts to make educated decisions in governance polls.
  3. Running educational campaigns on governance for minting new DAOplomats
  4. Ensuring that DAOplomats uphold the Bankless values and represent the DAO

Call to action : If you hold $AAVE, $BANK, $FORTH, $st1INCH consider delegating it to DAOplomats.eth and claim an amazing NFT

Considerations for later seasons (roadmap)

  • Enable BANK holders to influence the voting of DAOplomats in High to high priority proposals.
  • Making use of BANK (veBANK) in Proxy Authoring i.e requiring service seekers to hold a minimum amount of veBANK

SQUAD BACKGROUND

  • Quietfox (Quietfox#2574) - Coming from an Engineering, Finance and Economics background with a passion for Education. Desire to spread the word on crypto, Defi and DAO - this is the future.

  • 0xBaer.eth (0xBaer#6344) - A DAO and protocol politician figuring his way to make DAOs great again.

  • Jenjajojo.eth ( jengajojo.eth🏴#5896) - Analyst in the metaverse, project manager & governance in DAOverse.

  • Sergioarizav.eth (sergioarizav.eth#3536) - Brand Strategist turned DAO designer. Doing meta governance.

Achievements to Date

Source

  1. DeepDAO
  2. banklessvault.eth - Zapper.fi
  3. Governance Participation: Perils and Promise — Orca Protocol
Should we offer our governance experties as a service?
  • No, we need to deal with our problems
  • Yeah, DAOs can evolve together.

0 voters

published under CC-BY

6 Likes

I think bDAO has the surplus resources to commit to this project. Helping other DAOs and furthering networking opportunities… win/win if you ask me. Bravo!

1 Like

I agree to offering our services as a form of generating revenue for the DAO. This is a very nice idea.

2 Likes

Long-term I fully support this endeavor, I’m just not sure bDAO is ready to provide this as a service at the present time.

2 Likes

Starting with small endeavors will be key to work out unexpected hurdles. I think starting this process in early develompt of the bDAO could pay off in devidens, both monetarily and networking, in later stages of development. As we know a small seed planted now can flurish. Coming from a land of plunty… if this endeavor takes off bDAO will have the resources to cover it indefinitely.

1 Like

Hey @DoubleB, thank you for your support. This project is intended to work more or less as a public good; we have two different work streams, one focused on helping DAOs evolve and the second WS concentrating on producing new governance experts. The members of BanklessDAO will get free training to be protocol experts, so if we follow the KPIs established in the proposal, I guess we are ready to offer this product.

2 Likes

Great idea 0xBaer! I’m sure DAOs especially newer ones, will be looking for guidance on how to effectively manage DAO governance. This is a pain point for most.

2 Likes

thankyou @theconfusedcoin we are trying be bridge the gap between the token holders and the decision-making process and are hoping to gather more interest around governance

1 Like