Temp Check: Proposed Revision to BanklessDAO Constitution

[Trewkat]

Temp Check: Proposed Revision to BanklessDAO Constitution

Authors: Trewkat, HiroKennelly, links, Ernest of Gaia

Summary

• The current Constitution has been found lacking in clarity and completeness.
• We have created a revision of the BanklessDAO Constitution which simplifies the language without making any changes to governance.
• We would like the DAO’s feedback on the revised document itself, as well as input on a few outstanding questions.
• The revised document is available here.

Temp Check: Constitution Revision

This temp check seeks comments from the bDAO community for a revised version of the BanklessDAO Constitution & Community Handbook, hereafter referred to as the ‘Constitution’.

This work has been supported by the Governance Department with the dual goals being:

• to update the wording of the existing Constitution so that the information is presented in clear and concise language within an intuitive, numbered structure.

• to document information about existing governance practices which were not included in the existing Constitution.

The goal for this round of work has NOT been to introduce new governance principles or practices, except where there was concurrent work happening and its inclusion made sense.

Examples of this are the inclusion of a section which covers the BanklessDAO Vault Multisignature Wallet (Section 4.5, arising from bDIP-08 which has now passed Snapshot), and the smaller but still important recognition of Departments as one type of DAO organizational unit (Section 4.2, for which thinkDecade had introduced bDIP-04 and then kindly agreed to merge that work with this effort).

The core working group of Trewkat, Ernest of Gaia, HiroKennelly, and links have met for several hours a week throughout Season 7 and have discussed and debated the content right down to the commas and the capitals.

We feel this proposed text is an accurate representation of the current state of governance at BanklessDAO, even though in some areas the text looks very different to the existing Constitution. Every effort has been made to retain existing text and maintain the spirit and intended meaning of the existing document.

There are a few points we felt it necessary to draw your attention to:

• The proposed document now includes numbered sections (similar but changed since the earlier temp check posted by Ernest of Gaia) which will make it much easier to discuss and revise in future bDIPs.

• Section 4.6.4 Grants Committee Election Process will likely need further clarification via the bDIP process to ensure inclusion of appropriate information or reference to the autonomy which Grants Committee (GC) may have over a particular process. For example, should aspects such as the fact that GC prompts the election with a Forum post and that dates for this are usually set in the Season Spec be included?

• Section 4.6.4 includes a statement to the effect that ‘anyone’ may volunteer for the Grants Committee, which is what the existing text states. However, since Season 5, Forum posts about GC elections have specified that those self-nominating must be a Level 1 member. Please see Poll 1 to have your say about this specific question, remembering that the goal has been to document what we know to be current practice, even if that practice is not accurately reflected in the existing Constitution text.

• Section 4.6.4 also includes a sentence from the existing Constitution which has been adjusted for clarity. The current text is: “Committee members can be recalled with a 51%+ Snapshot vote.” The proposed text is: “Committee members can be removed with a Snapshot vote which reaches ≥51% approval.” Please see Poll 2 to signal your approval for this change, which we believe captures the intended meaning better than the existing text.

• Section 6.2.2 BanklessDAO Forum includes revised descriptions for the three different levels of changes to the Constitution. The existing text uses language associated with software versioning and has been the source of much debate due to its inherent ambiguity when applied to a textual document. Please see Poll 3 to signal your approval for this change, which we believe captures the intended meaning better than the existing text.

• Section 7.1.1 Guild Funding does not make reference to the detail of the member-based guild funding initiative. In fact, Sections 7.1.1 through 7.1.3 have been kept deliberately lean due to the lack of both existing coverage and operational clarity about the seasonal funding of organizational units.

• The existing Code of Conduct (Article 8) has been slightly adjusted, purely for clarity’s sake. We recognise that there will likely be a need to update the Code of Conduct in future iterations of the Constitution.

• Throughout this process, the group has felt that some information in the current Constitution, and much of the information we first thought should be documented in a revised version, is in fact better placed in a separate Community Handbook which does not require a bDIP to change.
  Examples of this might be some of the Grants Committee information, Discord admin procedures, or seasonal transition information, including the dates that were proposed for the transition to a 16-week season through 2023 and set dates from 2024. That information was approved via a Snapshot vote but didn’t seem appropriate to include in the DAO’s Constitution.
  Therefore the proposed revised Constitution removes ‘Community Handbook’ from the title and does not document some of these aspects, although we would like to do so in a future round of work.

Thank you for reading. We recognise there is a lot of information here. We’d love you to read the proposed revised Constitution and let us know whether you approve or if there are specific points of contention. Please indicate in Poll 4 whether you’d be happy to see this proceed to a bDIP in its current form.

Poll 1
Should anyone be able to run for Grants Committee (current wording), or should it be restricted to L1 (current practice)?

• Anyone may run for Grants Committee.
• Only Level 1 Members may run for Grants Committee.

Poll 2
Do you support the change from the existing Constitution text: “Committee members can be recalled with a 51%+ Snapshot vote.” to the proposed text: “Committee members can be removed with a Snapshot vote which reaches ≥51% approval.”?

• Yes
• No - please provide feedback in a comment below.

Poll 3
Do you support the change from the existing Constitution text about Major, Minor, and Patch level changes to the proposed text in Section 6.2.2.2, as follows?

“There are three levels of Constitutional change.

• Major: there is a change in rights, responsibilities, or procedures.
• Minor: there is a change to the wording for clarification purposes only; there is no change in rights, responsibilities, or procedures.
• Patch: wording changes to correct typographical errors.”

• Yes
• No - please provide feedback in a comment below.

Poll 4
Do you think the proposed revised Constitution is ready to proceed to a bDIP in its current form?

• Yes
• No - please provide feedback in a comment below.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR INPUT

[Trewkat]

Please, if you vote no to something, tell us your thoughts.
If you don’t, there’s no way we can consider it valid feedback

[CryptoReuMD]

Great work on this :D.

[homie]

Will there be any more revisions before it goes up as a bdip?

From the very very few times I was able to hop in I saw how much work you three put in. It looks good to me overall with wording, sections, and others. I was curious if there were any last minute proofreads before it goes up to be 100 percent ready, or is this 100 percent ready?

I voted in favor either way. Just felt like asking

[Trewkat]

Thank you!
We think it’s ready, but we’re asking if you think it’s ready

All four of us have read and discussed this version. We believe there are future bDIPs needed for various aspects but this Constitution gives us a firm base to do those from.

[Dane]

Easy to read and digest. Yum. Well done.

[homie]

Totally understand!

Bring it to prime time!

What a wonderful job you guys did!!!

[Rowan]

First, thank you @Trewkat and the team who put so many hours into this important work. I’m grateful for your dedication and the value you place in ensuring the bDAO Constitution is as clear and effective as possible.

I voted “No” in Poll 3 because, although it generated discussion and confusion at times, the previous text was broad enough to encompass any change that made a proposed update incompatible (on any level) with the existing Constitution. I appreciate the intent and effort to clarify, and there may be very few bDIPs that don’t result in changes to rights, responsibilities, or procedures, but I wonder if it’s better to keep it broad and include changes beyond rights, responsibilities, or procedures that make a proposed version of the Constitution incompatible with the previous version. For example:

“Major: Changes incompatible with previous versions. For example, changes to rights, responsibilities, or procedures.”

If we don’t keep these categories broad enough, I feel we might limit the scope of changes that are “allowed”, by direct or implied language.

With that said, and with respect to your final bullet point, perhaps the Constitution should be reworded to explicitly indicate its scope, or what it governs and what it doesn’t. Adjacent handbooks could be referenced for the sake of having a complete set of governance documents, even if their contents don’t require a bDIP (and associated governance process) to update.

For the reasons above, I also felt I should vote “No” to Poll 4.

Thank you again to everyone who has put so much time into this!

[hirokennelly]

Hi Rowan, Thank you for your comments and votes .

As to Poll 3, we chose the wording “rights, responsibilities, and procedures” to be as broad but unambiguous as possible. In our view, all activities within the DAO are encompassed by that language and in fact the reference to ‘incompatibility’ is what limits the scope because of its ambiguity.

For Poll 4, this first pass at the Constitution is meant to capture current practices, but not introduce anything new. As such, we chose not to reference the not-yet-written Community Handbook. If these changes to the Constitution are accepted by the DAO, we would like to capture the processes omitted from the original Constitution and this revamp in a Community Handbook in later updates.

There are two places in the revised text which indicate the Constitution’s scope:

First in the Preamble:
" the Constitution serves our community as the agreed set of standard procedures by which the DAO as a whole will operate, while also recognizing the sovereignty of DAO organizational units."

And again in Article 6:
“This Constitution concerns DAO-wide governance. DAO organizational units have their own governance policies and procedures which are beyond the scope of this Constitution.”

I hope these clarifications alleviate some of your concerns. Cheers!

[Cakesgirl]

It seems there was a large amount of work put in here. Thank you.
I wonder why it has to be so confusing?
Is there anyway to simplify all of this?
Your goal is to increase participation in governance, correct?
The length and ambiguity of this and other governance docs is a gigantic barrier for participation.

[homie]

It was four! I’m sorry @links

Overall even if it was for a quick second (for me) it was a joy to see how this played out.

[Trewkat]

Please note there have been adjustments made to sections 3.2, 3.2.1, and 3.2.2 of the proposed revision document, due to the recent addition of wording relating to tlBANK to the existing Constitution (bDIP-09)

As I noted in my comments on that bDIP-09 proposal, the wording there did not work well with the wording this group had developed.

Therefore I have now tried to incorporate the bDIP-09 wording into section 3.2 without loss of clarity.

The bDIP which will be posted shortly for the Constitution Revision will include this wording.