bDIP-01: [PATCH] Correcting Grant Proposal Requirements

Governance
1

Title: bDIP-01: Correcting Grant Proposal Requirements
Scope: patch (bug fix)
Draft Authors: links
Working Group: links, hirokennelly, trewkat, siddhearta

BDIP SUMMARY

The BanklessDAO Constitution failed to capture the operational realities of the Grants Committee, and incorporated incorrect requirements (quorum, ungated polls) for grant proposals. This bDIP will bring the Constitution in line with the practices of the Grants Committee, providing clarity for future funding requests.

BDIP BACKGROUND

The BanklessDAO Constitution lists Forum quorum requirements for grant applications which are specified in the Firming Up Governance Snapshot vote. Those quorum requirements were interpreted by the Grants Committee as having been vacated by the Quorum Removal Vote. In the perceived absence of a quorum, the Grants Committee created its own quorum adjustment method, with help from the GSE, and this has been in operation since July, 2022. Later, the Constitution was enacted via a Snapshot vote which incorporated the incorrect quorum information.

The BanklessDAO Constitution also states that proposal votes are REQUIRED to be ungated. This was never specified in any seasonal specification or previous Snapshot, and introduces significant security issues (sybil attacks). There have already been one suspected and one confirmed case of non-BanklessDAO members voting for grant proposals to meet quorum requirements, so it’s important we ensure the Constitution does not encourage this.

This bDIP’s intent is to patch the two bugs listed above.

BDIP SPECIFICATION

Since this is a “bug fix”, this bDIP can be considered a patch.

Current Form

Forum voting leverages one vote per user and is not token-weighted or gated. Forum proposals require 70% approval to pass to successive stages of governance. Proposals must be posted for one week unless the request exceeds 1M BANK. In these instances, they must be posted for two weeks. Forum quorum is the minimum number of voters that need to be present for the vote to be valid and is listed in the following table. For example, if your Forum post is asking for 50,000 BANK or less, only 25 voters need to cast their votes for the vote to be valid.

Requested Bank Forum Quorum
< 50k BANK 25
50k - 250k BANK 31
250k - 500k BANK 40
500k - 1M BANK 51
> 1M BANK 63
Governance (Major) 63
Governance (Minor) 51
Governance (Patch) 40

[See Snapshot]

Proposed Form

Proposal votes are one vote per user and are not token-weighted. Grant proposals must meet the quorum requirements set by the Grants Committee (available on their Notion page), which may be adjusted seasonally at their discretion.

Governance quorums are listed below.

Governance Update Forum Quorum Approval % Timeline
Major 63 70% 1 week
Minor 51 70% 1 week
Patch 40 70% 1 week

EXPECTED IMPACT

The Constitution will accurately reflect the current quorum requirements in effect at BanklessDAO.

ANALYTICS

None

NEXT STEPS

  1. Get Forum consensus (40 votes)
  2. Get Snapshot consensus
  3. Update the Constitution

WORKING GROUP BACKGROUND

links was the Grants Committee Lead from S4-5 and Champion of Bankless Card.
HiroKennelly is a long-time DAO member and helps lead various projects…
Trewkat is a member of Writers Guild and Lead Staff Editor of the EPA.
Siddhearta is the Writers Guild Coordinator and Newsletter Team Champion.

POLL - Do you accept this bDIP change?

  • Yes!
  • No! (I’ll explain why in comments)

0 voters

8 Likes
2

Edit: I don’t want to fractal the issue at hand so I’m going to find somewhere else to post my concern.

2 Likes
3

Governance channel would be great! Curious what’s on your mind my friend, and thank you for your consideration.

5 Likes
4

No objection here. Go to go :v:t5::100::zap::confetti_ball:

2 Likes
5

Looking good for approval. LFG!

2 Likes
6

I really like this bDip yet I’m not sure if the quorum for grants should be decided by the grants committee itself.
I would personally prefer that to be decided by the entire DAO.

4 Likes
7

The proposal is good!

Deciding quorum by grants committee? Not good.

If a project has bias, for or against, that gives a disadvantage/advantage and an uneven amt of power to the decision

Still for this proposal however.

8

Quick question: what happens if the stipulated proposal does not reach quorum within the required time? Then, I think, getting quorum should be done based on the number of participation we have in governance. instead of setting a ridiculously high number that cannot be achieved.

9

Well, when the entire DAO decided on quorums, they set them insanely high and our governance was ground to a standstill. Personally I think that there are very few decisions we should get the entire DAO to decide - we should push decisions to the groups that has the best information to make the decision.

In the case of Grants Committee, the DAO decides who is on the committee, and then trusts them to make a decision on quorum, for which they have the best info. This is my view, anyway.

I would hope that if members of the GC were abusing their power, they would be recalled or voted out. But for members that are elected in good standing, why NOT give them the authority to make stuff happen?

It should be mentioned that the time frames are MINIMUM times. If it takes one month to achieve quorum, that’s fine. If you achieve quorum in one day, you still have to wait a week to ensure DAO members have a chance to see the proposal.

That’s exactly the system we set up in Grants Committee that this proposal is implementing. We used community vote numbers to adjust quorums up and down.

1 Like
10

Then there you have it; we are good to go. its a yes from me.

2 Likes
11

I just think this is a centralized design that puts more authority into the hands of grants committee.

I also think anything more than 1M bank should be in the forums for 2 weeks.

This change only applies to Governance Updates and bdips and does nothing to address the quorum of projects or proposals in general. now there will be no quorum requirements for projects or guilds and basically GC will have sole discretion in deciding what gets funded based on their review process.

Perhaps you should add in the info from the notion not just reference it, may clear up the ambiguities

1 Like
12

Yes, it does put more authority in the hands of the GC. The reason is because they are the ones who are responsible for reviewing all grant requests, so they have the best information to set quorums.

When the DAO set quorums, they were static and brought our governance to a standstill. Over the last two seasons, GC has set their own quorums and grant requests have been processed and paid out. I personally think the latter is better than the former (hence this proposal).

Agree! That’s exactly the spec that’s on the GC notion page that is linked.

Actually this proposal does not touch bDIPs or governance proposals. Only grant proposals. I believe there is an effort to update the proposal process as well.

I don’t think this is true - the proposals have to come to the forum to get consensus. If the GC sets consensus too high, projects and guilds won’t get funded and it’s likely the GC will not be re-elected. The GC answers to the community.

If the quorums are included in the constitution, then they will require a constitutional Amendment (bDIP) to change, which requires a forum post and snapshot. That’s against the spirit of this bDIP to delegate this authority to the GC

1 Like
13

Because you would have to trust those people. If the last week has taught me anything, it’s to not do that. At least not blindly.

(Reputation building could help here)

1 Like
14

Snapshot Link:

bDIP-01: Correcting Grant Proposal Requirements

1 Like
15

Can you please put Patch at the title?