Title: [Draft 2] Firming up Governance
Authors: frogmonkee#6855
Squad: frogmonkee#6855
Date Created: November 7th, 2021
Date Posted: November 8th, 2021
CC’ing those that replied to the original post:
@NFThinker @hashedMae @hodl @RedVan @Kouros @Grendel @cyclist @tomahawk @angyts @chao @jameswmontgomery.eth @ZrowGz @chao @samanthaj
Changes from the previous draft are marked with a
SUMMARY
This proposal introduces some voting parameters and guidelines in response to feedback around the recent Proposal: Olympus Pro post.
Included are:
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Specificity on what goes to snapshot and what does not
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Quorum and voting requirements
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Community education guidelines
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Proposal wording and presentation
BACKGROUND
- Olympus Pro was first formally mentioned on October 1st during the inaugural tokenomics discussion.
- On October 14th, Proposal: Olympus Pro was posted to the forums.
- On October 22nd, the proposal was uploaded to Snapshot and went live for voting on Monday, October 25th.
Since then, voting is 78% in favor, with 6.7M BANK voting no. Relative to previous snapshots, this discrepancy shows a divide in the community’s sentiment. Previously, the largest deny vote we saw was just under 600K BANK at 2.66% voting Deny.
Having spent much time listening to people thoughts and concerns, I’ve identified the following pain points:
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Many individuals were surprised to know this vote would go to snapshot and not to the Grants Committee, as they were accustomed to seasonal specs being ratified on snapshot and the GC distributed the seasonal allocated budget.
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The proposal went to snapshot before some members could even participate in the forums. Specifically those with less time to participate in day-to-day activities
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Individuals that were not educated on the topic felt like they had to sit out
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Individuals felt like their opinions were ignored.
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The snapshot vote left out crucial information, like a link to the forum post and the voting options were worded were not impartial (Deny option)
MISSION & VALUES ALIGNMENT
Back during Season 0, when we began outlining our governance processes, we emphasized the importance of gathering consensus within the community and using Snapshot as a way to ratify decisions, hence a consistent 95%+ approval rating on prior snapshots. This was because, historically:
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Many snapshot voters are not engaged in day-to-day operations in the DAO and will miss a lot of context. Simple things like framing language are enough to significantly sway votes.
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Voter fatigue is real. Too many votes is too much noise. This is reflected in Index Coop, which has very low participation on many of their snapshots and is reflected in our own snapshots, with a variance of almost 50% of voters at times.
This is consistent with what Boardroom, a governance platform, is noticing as well.
https://twitter.com/kevinknielsen/status/1453492096833310720
For these reasons, we have a robust proposal process (unlike Sushiswap that has proposal like this) and a seasonal spec that embeds much of our decision into one ratified vote.
To align with these values, I’d like to introduce a number of different rules and mechanisms that will help us gather community consensus before moving something to snapshot.
SCOPE OF WORK
Proposes a series of changes to governance that, upon soft consensus will be ratified with an on-chain snapshot vote and subsequently included in each Seasonal Spec thereafter, as parameters are likely to change.
SPECIFICATION
What Goes to Snapshot?
Part of the confusion here is understanding what goes to snapshot and what doesn’t. Historically, we’ve sent the Seasonal Spec to snapshot, along with validating project and guild funding. This is the first time we’ve had a purely tokenomic post gain traction and it wasn’t clear to the community that it would go to snapshot. As such, here are few reasons something should go to snapshot. Please comment if you have further suggestions:
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Seasonal specification (including Grants Committee allocation) [1] [2]
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Seasonal Project and Guild funding [1]
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Tokenomic changes [1]
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Grant committee decision with sufficient conflict of interest (eg. cannot achieve majority vote) [1] [2]
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Extending budget
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Emergency vote / “Break glass” scenario (See Appendix A)
What does not go to Snapshot?
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Individual projects funding
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Additional guild funding
Quorum & Voting Requirements
Quorum requirements are formalities to achieve sufficient consensus. Culturally, we should thinking beyond quorum. If a proposal reaches quorum and voting requirements, it is your responsibility to capture feedback and dissent in order to achieve better alignment. If someone raises a good point or you gauge sufficient disagreement, go back to the drawing board and incorporate that feedback. @Kouros has a great example with his Gas Reimbursement post. Despite having a nearly 90% in-favor voting, he has opted to redraft his post to incorporate feedback. We are a DAO, we move together. Ape strong together.
We don’t have clear guidelines on what qualifies as quorum. As such, I’m proposing the following. I suspect some of these will be controversial, so I’ve added some context.
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Forum quorum is a rough estimate. For reference, both Olympus Pro and Tokemak have over 70 votes while these two 1M+ BANK proposals have 45 votes [1] [2].
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Snapshot quorum is the average amount of BANK voted with since S2 prep.
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80% approval is quite high, but I think we need to be strongly aligned. As mentioned, things that go to snapshot should already have strong consensus. Furthermore, there is a LOT going on in the DAO. A high threshold makes sure that only widely supported ideas get the financial and on-chain support they need.
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Tokenomics is not explicitly included as proposals would fall within the budgetary ask
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Timeline refers to how long it must stay up on the forums
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Emergency vote bypasses time requirements in favor of greater voter turnout and alignment.
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Each season, quorum & voting requirements can be updated as part of the Seasonal Spec
The biggest point of contention in the previous post was voting requirements. I’ve included some polls below to gather consensus:
Standard Forum Voting
- 51% +
- 67% +
- 75% +
- 85% +
Standard Snapshot Voting
- 51% +
- 67% +
- 75% +
- 85% +
- 90% +
Emergency Protocol Forum Voting
- 51% +
- 67% +
- 75% +
- 85% +
- 95% +
Emergency Protocol Snapshot Voting
- 51% +
- 67% +
- 75% +
- 85% +
- 95% +
The second biggest point of contention in the previous post was quorum. I’ve included some polls below to gather consensus (apologies for the # of options)
Snapshot Voting Quorum
- 30M BANK
- 35M BANK (Avg since S2)
- 40M BANK
- 45M BANK
< 50K Forum Quorum
- 20
- 25
- 30
< 50-250K Forum Quorum
- 25
- 30
- 35
< 250-500K Forum Quorum
- 35
- 40
- 45
< 500K-1M Forum Quorum
- 45
- 50
- 55
< 1M+ Forum Quorum
- 55
- 60
- 65
Governance Forum Quorum
- 55
- 60
- 65
Emergency Protocol Forum Quorum
- 85
- 90
- 95
- 100
Education Requirements
Proposals with big asks and governance changes are often complex. As such, they need to be properly communicated to the DAO with time for them to digest and process new information.
In the Additional Requirements section, there are three education tools to use:
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A short 5 minute presentation on the community call
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A longer Q&A and presentation, selected at an optimal time via Lettucemeet (needs to be included in the forum post and scheduled after surfaced on the community call.)
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Presentation must be recorded with at least 1 week to let people listen to the on demand video. This could extend the 2 week timeline if the recorded video is uploaded with less than a week in the timeline. PLAN ACCORDINGLY.
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Tokenomic and governance decisions would get priority editorial placement in the Weekly Rollup as an educational explainer piece while they are in the forums.
Proposal wording, presentation, and conflicts of interest
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Snapshot posts must always include a link back to the proposal’s forum posts
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Snapshot voting options must have a clear ask followed by two options: “For” and “Needs Revisions” as much as possible. Given that soft consensus is meant to be gathered well before moving to snapshot, multiple voting options can skew the outcomes, as pointed out by HashedMae.
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Proposals can have more than two options when asking the community to select between an array of options for an already-approved option. For example: [1] and [2] are not asking for consensus on whether we should execute a particular action, but rather asking for consensus on how to do something that has already been approved.
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Proposals must include a section for disclosing any conflicts of interest, namely if (1) Members of the squad are associated with any party involved outside of BanklessDAO and (2) Members of the squad hold any investments with any party involved outside of BanklessDAO.
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Proposals on Snapshot must include quorum and voting requirement criteria
- Agree
- Disagree (leave comments)
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
Not applicable
BRAND USAGE
Not applicable
SUCCESS METRICS OR KPIS
Not applicable
NEXT STEPS
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Incorporate feedback into a new draft
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Move to snapshot
SQUAD BACKGROUND
@frogmonkee - Long time contributor to BanklessDAO. Active in Writers Guild, Ops Guild, and strategy for the DAO. Care deeply about governance.
APPENDIX A - Emergency Scenarious
An “Emergency Scenario” would refer to a proposal/motion that needs to fast track consensus and would likely consolidate power into the hands of a few for a short period of time, often the multisig signers. Examples could include:
- Liquidating positions due to black swan events
- Legal action against the DAO
- Smart contract hacks
- Immediate changes to governance (IE closing a governance loophole)
Emergency proposals would indicate that they are initiating the “Emergency Protocol” which fast tracks soft and hard consensus by increasing quorum + voting requirements and removing all time requirements.
