Temp check on bDAO Community Alignment and Constitution

[Sprinklesforwinners]

This post is intended to be a temp check of the BanklessDAO community.

It also seems fitting to call it a brain dump to follow up on the brain dumps.

tl;dr

Far too much time, resources and contributor efforts revolves around the fact that the current BanklessDAO Constitution does not accurately represent a good majority of the way that BanklessDAO currently and previously has operated. This has directly impacted the ability of the DAO to grow in countless ways. It has also inhibited education and understanding of our Governance. Standard operational items have now turned complex, needing bDIPs submitted to correct simple wording.

The current Constitution has additionally incorrectly captured quorum and voting methods and failed to mention that each season, quorum & voting requirements can be updated as part of the Seasonal Spec.

Background

The Constitution was first introduced by 0xJustice and the GSE on the bDAO forum here in Season 4 (June 2022) to:

• “Introduce a canonical consolidation and crystallization of our org structure and governance processes”

• 51% of the community voted that this self proclaimed “bible” was not ready

Constitution and bDIP standard 2.0 by 0xJustice, was then seen two weeks later in June 2022.

The Season 5 community vote produced a vote of 90% in favor to:

• “Make the necessary changes to the Season 5 Specification to allow the GSE to implement the proposed bDAO Constitution and bDIP Standard”

The BanklessDAO Season 5 Specification ratified that necessary change as:

• “Governance Solutions Engineers will have the ability to change or replace the Seasonal Specification, subject to forum and/or Snapshot voting in order to implement the BanklessDAO Constitution & Community Handbook”

The snapshot vote for the Season 6 Specification and Community-Indicated Direction then was

• “reformatted to adhere to the procedure of governance changes as defined by our newly codified Constitution.”

Unless I am missing context, I do not see where the GSEs implemented the Constitution.

The Season 6 Specification left the community questioning why the GSEs there was no implementation from the GSEs. It was also noted that there were no GSEs anymore.

The only other publication from the GSE’s was the GSE Deliverables by 0xJustice as “an update and summarized status report on the current GSE initiative (from my perspective).”

Which does not include implementation of the constitution. It does, however, outline that the GSE Program did not follow their mandate, scope of work or produce the deliverables which were explicitly outlined.

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Below is a compilation of

Onwards to Season 3

Draft 1 Firming up Governance

Draft 2 Firming up Governance

Draft 3 Firming up Governance

The Snapshot vote firming up governance ratified

Draft 1 Firming up Governance

Draft 2 Firming up Governance

Draft 3 Firming up Governance

With the vote: to abide by the quorum, voting, education, and presentation guidelines set forth within this proposal.

This vote then enacted:

Quorum & Voting Requirements

Quorum requirements are formalities to achieve sufficient consensus. Culturally, we should be 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. We are a DAO, we move together. Ape strong together.

As such, authors will be expected to have reasonably attempted to incorporate feedback. as part of the passing requirements.

Below is a table for quorum, timeline, and voting thresholds. Numbers are a weighted average 7 of the results from the previous post.

Additionally:

Each season, quorum & voting requirements can be updated as part of the Seasonal Spec

Snapshot posts must always include a link back to the the proposal’s forum posts

Snapshot voting options must be impartial. Something as simple as “Approve” and “Deny” is sufficient in most cases.

Over 1 year has gone by. I don’t even know that we could begin to total the number of hours that has been spend working on quorum removal forum posts and quorum removal snapshot votes. Even once removed, the information that quorum could be set within the seasonal spec was lost - and not captured by the current constitution.

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Below is a compilation of

Draft 1 GSE Program

Draft 2 GSE Program

Season 3 Specification

Snapshot : GSE re-implementation

Gov SEs and Working Groups

The GSE’s are:

• Governance-minded DAO members elected to spec out a comprehensive solution to mission-critical DAO infrastructure challenges.

• These members are not to operate in silos and make decisions on behalf of the DAO.

• They are to work with the DAO to find the optimal solution by:

• progressively designing solutions

• presenting them to the DAO

• capturing feedback

• Iterating

One method of working with the DAO is to create a working group around these two problem spaces.

• As such, Gov SEs will have to work publicly in these working groups.
• Part of their responsibility will be coordinating these working groups, somewhere between a Guild Coordinator and Project Manager.

Deliverables are defined as:

• A thorough and community-aligned specification in order to update our governance procedures and create room for growth.
• A close comparable is: The original Season Specification that continues to act as an important cornerstone in our governance model that still serves as an important guiding document for the DAO to this day.
• This deliverable would have to be in its final form, if not extremely close.
• As such, community feedback must already be included.

I want to acknowledge that this community feedback can take time but if Draft 1 is done properly, much of the community consensus will already be aligned and the scope of work should be limited to our most existential threats:

1. Contributor Alignment
2. Strategic Prioritization

Contributor Alignment

• Refining the Guest Pass, L1, and L2 system to be more inclusive.

  • Includes ways to offboard contributors that no longer meet the activity/recognition threshold

• Create a compensation framework that can be updated and:

  • Define global compensation that standardizes compensation rules for the entire DAO
  • Provides guidance on letting projects/guild define local compensation.
  • Envisions a new incentive model that rewards long-term contributors that stick with the DAO for longer periods of time.

• Work with guilds to standardize guild roles and Coordinape rounds

• Work with guild Talent Scouts and First Quest to identify challenges and better retain talent entering DAO

Strategic Prioritization

• Model and present various strategic directions the DAO can take (present to DAO for feedback)
• Outline a business plan based on an identified strategic model
• Create an evaluation framework based on the identified strategy to help the DAO make strategic decisions with treasury and grant funding
• Create a new evaluation process that optimizes for both community consensus and responsible decision making (will likely deprecate the Grants Committee as it stands)
• Design a system that actually measures the output of funded projects and incorporates those findings into the evaluation process
• Balancing funding cost centers with things that generate revenue or token appreciation”

I do understand that the GSE Program was given quite the task. However, if the program was executed as it was laid out to be, I do believe that the deliverables that were set could have been delivered.

Instead, it appears that only 1 GSE chose to create an entirely new constitution that overlooked the Constitution that was in the process of being worked on, that was introduced here and seen again here, and simply pieced together semi-accurate information. Additionally, if you look at the working document, you will see that there are countless outstanding comments, comments marked as “resolved” that were not addressed and comments that were addressed by 0xJustice with only an additional comment of why he felt what was being commented on should not be changed, and marked as resolved.

To me, this sounds as though the GSE was the silo and did make all of the decisions.

This is the exact opposite of the criteria that was specified.

Breaking this down a little easier to digest:

Deliverable	Was it Delivered by GSE	Delivered/Being worked on
Refining the Guest Pass, L1, and L2 system to be more inclusive.	No	Tokenomics currently working on this.
Create a compensation framework that can be updated	No	Senad and iSpeakNerd worked on and presented a model
Work with guilds to standardize guild roles and Coordinape rounds	No	This has been funded as a workstream out of Ops
Work with talent scouts and First Quest to identify challenges and better retain talent entering DAO	No	This is being worked on by bDAO onboarding improvements
Design a system that actually measures the output of funded projects and incorporates those findings into the evaluation process	No	This is being worked on by Grants Committee
Balance cost centers with things that generate revenue or token appreciation.	No	This is being worked on by Grants Committee
Create an evaluation framework based on the identified strategy to help the DAO make strategic decisions with funding and grants.	No	This is being worked on by Grants Committee
Outline a business plan model based on an identified strategic model	No	This was worked on by Samantha J - Guilds as Professional Models

As I was gathering all of this info and looking through previous forum posts, it became clear that History is repeating itself in terms of the needs of the DAO.

To also display this in a clear method:

Previously	Current
Guest Pass Value Alignment	An idea for long term contribution alignment
How does bDAO solve the problem with time zones	Coordinated timing across BanklessDAO
4-Month Season Proposal	Set Season Length
DAO control of multisig	Swapping BanklessDAO multisig signers
Whitelist to snapshot	Swapping BanklessDAO multisig signers

There are about a half dozen more of these examples, but you probably see my point.

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See, as a Grants Committee Member, I have spent more time digging through previous forum posts and snapshot votes, that I haven’t had time to focus on what matters. And that is moving forward.

In order to move forward as a community, we should go back to basics and decide our priorities for the future together. This will align us as a community, minimize confusion and allow us to focus on what is important.
Doing this could solve:

• Seasonal Projects - BANK allocation (What we agree to focus on as a community gets allocated BANK, for that season)

• Wasted BANK- If each Guild/Department/Project had 1 coordinator, then every thing that needed to get done could be bountied out to those qualified to do it. There would be no uncertainty around what needed to be done and nothing would fall to the wayside because of not wanting to step on toes because it was someone else’s responsibility.

• Overhead - If everything is bountied out, then we would only need 1 multisig. In turn, this would solve the issues of wallet rot

• Clarity around seasonal BANK distribution There wouldn’t be a need for it, if 1 multisig distributed BANK, we would also reduce frauds seen with Coordinape
  In fact, I think this would empower us to effectively bring back and use Coordinape as it is intended to be used.

• UtilityI also think it would enable us to work collaboratively, together and use the BANK token as intended, within our community. For intra Guild/Department/Project needs from other Guilds/Departments/Projects.

As I originally said, this is a temp check.

Given all of this information, How do you feel about the current BanklessDAO constitution?

• Does it make sense for us to spend a tremendous amount of our time and effort writing b-DIPS to correct/capture what the Constitution as it is has failed to?

• Or does it make sense for us to go back to basics and to start this process over.

  • Starting with the original Season Specification, that will strategically align the contributors priorities.
  • Additionally having each Guild and Department write their own Governing documents.
  • It seems we could solve another issue by having Seasonally Funded Projects be projects that are necessary to carry out the priorities set in the Seasonal Spec.

Next steps:

• Gather feedback and gauge the community’s sentiments.
• If the sentiment is to change the governing structure:
  • Draft a Proposal or bDIP, depending on which one is needed per the community’s sentiment.
  • Draft Snapshot vote.
  • Gather feedback from contributors on what their goals are for BanklessDAO in the upcoming Season.
  • Those goals can then be voted on by contributors in the community vote, with the top (number needed here) becoming the upcoming Seasons priorities.

Temp Check: Do you think that the current Constitution and bDIP is the right Governing Structure for BanklessDAO?

• Yes
• No
• Undecided, I will provide more context in there comments below

Temp Check: Do you think that we should use a seasonal community vote and subsequent seasonal specification to align around priorities, using those as what projects get distributed BANK for the season?

• Yes
• No
• Undecided, I will provide more context

Temp Check: Do you think that each Dept./Guild and Project should have their own Guiding Documents?

• Yes
• No
• Undecided I will provide more context

Temp Check: Do you think that we should lessen the overhead, risk for fraud and abandoned wallets, by using only one main multisig?

• Yes
• No
• Undecided I will provide more context

Temp Check: Do you think we should bring back Coordinape by using it to reward work that has not been rewarded by the coordinator or bounties?

• Yes
• No
• Undecided, Please provide more context

## Temp Check: Should Guild/Dept/Project that is distributed BANK be able to offer a service to others within the DAO?

• yes
• no
• undecided

Temp Check: Do you think we as a DAO should provide utility to the BANK token, using it for services needed between Guilds/Departments/Projects?

• Yes
• No
• Undecided, Please provide more context

[LiviuC]

There is no vote to your questions

[Sprinklesforwinners]

well dang it! Thanks

[Trewkat]

I’m just not sure how to feel really.
You’re well aware that there is a group of contributors working on improving the Constitution, but you’ve chosen to sidestep that and bring your own ideas straight to the Forum.
I’m some ways I agree with the sentiment about the document and your frustration with the process but could you not have taken the time to have some discussion with the group who also feel passionate about getting this right for the DAO?

[Sprinklesforwinners]

I understand how you feel. Everyones ideas are wonderful. I am not suggesting any ideas. Only trying to provide a path so everyone is able to.

[0xJustice]

Few things:
If I’m not mistaken the constitution had the largest positive turnout in bDAO snapshot history.
Reinventing the wheel every 3 months isn’t the way to run bDAO.
Asking people to read through the entire history of snapshots is not ideal either.
The constitution/handbook idea is not novel. Look at RaidGuild or even the newest Arbitrum handbooks. Same idea.
If it’s not how bDAO works then we need to either update the doc to reflect that or change our processes to be faithful with the social contract.

Why the heat? “self proclaimed ‘bible’…” I did the GSE work, the following integration with Academy, introduced Otterspace badges, ThriveCoin rewards, and championed the new bDAO website for ZERO compensation. If anyone feels any of that is not up to par, they can have a full refund.

[ernest_of_gaia]

you really don’t understand our governance structure, is there a way we can answer your questions instead of you brain-dumping assumptions in the forum?

[Sprinklesforwinners]

@0xJustice I think that you did a lot of work here, but there is also a lot that isn’t reflective of how the DAO actually operates. For instance, in the Constitution, the Grants committee section states that there can be 5-7 members. However it also states that 4/7 signatures for the multisig. This does seem minor, but there are so many small issues like this, that we will be spending so much overhead writing bDIPS for each. Not to mention the hours put into figuring out what’s what.
I also noticed that the slide presentation is pink with skulls and in the constitution repo, there is an entirely new banklessDAO constitution and website in lime green and black. This stands out to me as it is not consistent with the bDAO brand, so I am confused what those have to do with BanklessDAO

This also is linked on GitHub and doesn’t seem correct

[0xJustice]

I’d suggest this:
Not sure I see a contradiction here but would have to dig in. It seem like what you’re suggesting though is that since our docs are inaccurate that we should just blow them away. Why not just correct them and post one big update? Also, if there is a broken or wrong link, we can just fix it. It could be an easy slam dunk bDIP and also a good way to grow your own reputation. Just a few ideas. I don’t have the bandwidth to drive but it seems your eyeballs are already catching all holes. You should go for it! Bet you could have something awesome in a few hrs. I’m happy to assist to provide any clarity for an hr or so. I’m very happy to see all the work you have been doing around the DAO.

[Sprinklesforwinners]

Thanks, I appreciate it. I don’t want to do it myself, I believe that the areas themselves know the best. And doing bDIPS on every issue would be countless hours of overhead, as they need to be done 1 at a time.

[0xJustice]

They don’t need to be done one at a time.

[NFThinker]

Thanks for bringing these things to the table. They’re here now, and that’s how people get more involved.

As @Trewkat says, there are governance channels in Discord that can be used to question previous, current, and future initiatives.

As the very gracious @0xJustice says, we don’t need to reinvent what has already been built. Nothing is perfect, even by design. I know he has always been at the spear of the tip concerning bDAO governance, and has put a TON of effort into the initiatives you’ve mentioned above.

The GSE cohort may not have delivered what it set out to achieve, but to put things into perspective, it was proposed at a time when BANK was worth about 15 cents. By the time the cohort was voted in BANK was worth a fraction of that. In short, the economic incentive to create a governance structure for bDAO was not fully there.

… now, we all know BanklessDAO is owned and operated by a passionate community of builders and doers, and that governance is “everyone’s duty”, so maybe the economic incentives had absolutely nothing to do with anything… BUT, it’s important to take that into consideration when thinking about why certain KPIs might not have been met.

In the end, we did end up with a document that can and will be iterated upon over time. @Sprinklesforwinners It’s great of you to bring this up, and you are the type of passionate person we need contributing to governance. I would love to see you and others build on this initiative, and to help maintain some order and continuity to the governance process.

To answer some of your questions:

Temp Check: Do you think that the current Constitution and bDIP is the right Governing Structure for BanklessDAO?
• YES because it’s what we have now, and can be improved

Temp Check: Do you think that we should use a seasonal community vote and subsequent seasonal specification to align around priorities, using those as what projects get distributed BANK for the season?
• Undecided - would this devolve into a popularity contest? Who decides what projects to incubate? How do we decentralize this important process without watering down the process through whale voting?

Temp Check: Do you think that each Dept./Guild and Project should have their own Guiding Documents?
• YES - HOWEVER, bDAO should provide a standard of governance for all guilds, departments, and projects. They should each be responsible for implementing and maintaining them in close sync with overall DAO governance standards

Temp Check: Do you think that we should lessen the overhead, risk for fraud and abandoned wallets, by using only one main multisig?
NO - Guilds, Departments, Projects need to operate autonomously.

NOTE: your point about the 5-7 GSEs and the 5/7 multisig raises an important point. A multisig is a trusted person in the community who executes a transaction based on the will of the community. GSE role holders and multisigs could be mutually exclusive.

Temp Check: Do you think we should bring back Coordinape by using it to reward work that has not been rewarded by the coordinator or bounties?
NO - not on a DAO level. It was too complicated and there should be other more efficient ways of rewarding at the DAO level, like Thrive Coin.

Coordinape is a fantastic tool for smaller projects, but it was too hard to allocate every month to 200+ people, IMO

Temp Check: Should Guild/Dept/Project that is distributed BANK be able to offer a service to others within the DAO?
Yes - share your work streams and share your BANK

Temp Check: Do you think we as a DAO should provide utility to the BANK token, using it for services needed between Guilds/Departments/Projects?
YES, and we should come up with more use cases.

[0xJustice]

Very well spoken, sir Hats off to you for this lengthy and thoughtful response

[MinaHasNoIdea]

With all due respect Sprinkles, several other contributors are working on this issue and trying to provide a path at the moment. They don’t just have ideas. From what I read I am struggling to see why the path you are proposing is better than what the constitution reviewing group is doing atm. If there is a group which generally cares about this issue and could provide you with informed opinions you will find them there. I believe you did a wonderful job at pointing out the current shortcomings, you might need to find a better method of collecting data on designing a solution. Personally, I would not suggest reinventing the wheel.

I understand you are not trying to offend, but I believe you can see how this could come off as slightly disrespectful to people who might all have different views from each other, want to improve our governance process and are willing to compromise for the greater good and organise together around this issue.

I believe it would be advisable to consult with the team working on the constitution rework even if you still want to propose a completely different approach. They might be able to provide you with more context and arguments than a temp check will be ever able to do.

At the end of the day, competition might be encouraging innovation, but there are some paths better walked together and slowly than alone and fast.

[Sprinklesforwinners]

Hi @MinaHasNoIdea - appreciate the comments. This is only a temp check. It was put up before there was an actual governance department. There is one now. My putting this up was not no offend anyone. If this got to a stage where it was more than just a temp check, it would allow for others working on things to not have to write bDIPS and figure out a backlog of info prior.
It also was aimed at changing how projects are funded. I do believe this would be in the wheelhouse of Grants Committee, so I should be okay to work on that one - of course it can be added to what everyone else is working on. But I am also wondering, are your suggestions?

[MinaHasNoIdea]

Just a clarification: the Constitution rework group was founded before your post and I believe it is safe to assume before the Governance departments. I might be wrong because I am not that involved with the Governance department, but then feel free to correct me. Given that @ernest_of_gaia made a forum post about what has been done so far before your post, I have a feeling I might be right here.

@Sprinklesforwinners

But I am also wondering, are your suggestions?

Given that I am not a native English speaker I always ask when I don’t understand something. Shall I assume you are asking me what are my suggestions? In that case, I would suggest connecting and coordinating with the Constitution workgroup. Given how few active contributors we have and their limited bandwidth, we should really avoid doing work twice.

[Sprinklesforwinners]

Thank you @MinaHasNoIdea. Initially, I wanted to be part of the Governance workstreams. However when I realized that there may be a conflict of interest, as Grants Committee had to vote on the budget. I also realized that even abstaining from the vote would not be helpful for the Governance Dept.
Understanding the need for a Governance Department, I did not take part in the work-streams so that I would not be biased and would be able to vote.

[MinaHasNoIdea]

I appreciate your decision deliberately avoiding conflict of interests is a very healthy DAO practice.

However, I cannot see joining or at least following the conversation in a public thread regarding the Constitution rework as a conflict of interests. As, I assumed, your post intended and as you answered to my comment, the issues regarding the way the constitution and procedures work impacts your work in the grants committee as well.

Nevertheless, I still stand by my point. I don’t think you intention was to offend. However, I can tell you put a lot of work, effort and time in this post. Given that there is already an existing group of people doing a very similar thing you are doing, also putting a lot of time and effort in their work, I highly recommend you joining forces or at least coordinate, so we can save on collective time and energy.

To avoid going in circles, I am more than happy to not get an answer to this comment, but please do genuinely consider my suggestion. Have a nice day, Sprinkles!

[homie]

Offering a suggestion, friend.

Focus on 1 priority at a time. Your priority is Onboarding.

Onboarding can bring people who are comfortable with expressing their opinion and making changes to the constitution.

Let’s see what changes happen to the constitution. If your onboarding focus is successful, you can probably see the changes you want to see in the constitution as a result.

There are folks like @Trewkat and @MinaHasNoIdea who have been working on the constitution. I was able to catch the last bit of one of the meetings, they’re putting in some work. @0xJustice took the time to create this.

I would say that you have 3 people you could talk to right there to help decipher your goals for the constitution (and the goals for your onboarding project). Get input on the constitution for onboarding, and get input on leveling up systems. You could potentially include this constitution discussion IN your onboarding project.

I know I am always the first one to say if you need to get your point across you’ve got to be loud and you’ve got to fight for it. As a matter of fact I’m thinking I said this pretty close to when this post was created. So I do apologize for that.

But sometimes, you also have to work around some
aspects, and instead of the fight, you take people aside and ask for their input.

This was rambly. TL:DR, focus on onboarding, then move on to another focus that you may have.