DAO Governance (Part1 Proposals)

💬 General
1

What is a DAO?

It is a community-led entity that is decentralized means it has no central authority. It has full transparency; at any given moment proposals, voting and the code of the smart contract that lay the foundations of the DAO might be publicly audited.

Who governs this DAO is its members by making decisions concerning the future of this entity like the technical tools used, advisors onboarded or treasury allocations.

In general, any member of the DAO can create proposals and then come together to vote on each proposal which should achieve a pre-agreed-on level of consensus to be accepted and enforced.

The most amazing about this process is how it is in each member’s favour and best interest, to be honest, and smart about their voting and only approve proposals that serve the higher purpose of the DAO.

Mostly, DAOs build new interesting ideas via grants, funding projects and entrepreneurs by submitting proposals to add more development of a protocol or the future of the DAO.

Proposals

Proposals can be used for all types of decision-making in the DAO. Add/remove members, allocate Shares and Loot, distribute funds, and even interact with other applications and communities.

Standard Proposal Types

These are the standard proposal types used within the governance in most DAOs.

  • Membership - Tributing capital and Requesting new shares to join the DAO

    • This is for non-members, they can acquire ERC20 tokens and apply through this proposal form to exchange them for membership.
    • Tributes: The amount of capital an individual will commit to depositing to the DAO Bank or Safe.

  • Funding - Tributing Spoils or Requesting funds from the DAO to work on internal projects and improvements

    • Payments can be requested or given by the DAO by any token or loot in the treasury held by the DAO.
      • Shares: gives voting power in the DAO & can be transferred or delegated to another member.
      • Loots: non-voting power in the DAO & would be used to fund projects.

  • Trade - Request the DAO to swap one asset for another

    • Should align with the DAO investment strategy and the DAO Bank if any has been established and should be approved first by the Governor.

  • Token - Request to add support for a new ERC20 token

    • Related to the Treasury and affecting the DAO funding resources and should be approved by the Governor as well.

  • Guild-Kick - Request to forcibly remove a malicious member through a vote

    • Any member who is found violating the DAO code of conduct/server rules, whether that incident was found on the server, through DMs or some other platform, is subjected to be voted on through this proposal
    • Can be initiated by filling DAO Rule Violation Reporting Form.

  • Minion - A contract that allows execution of arbitrary calls i.e. swapping assets in the DAO Treasury

    • Includes interacting with external smart contracts.
    • The outcome is the exact result of executing these smart contracts.
    • Can execute multi transactions once enabled, complex or basic ones.
    • Quorum level can be set and that automates execution when the minimum quorum is reached.
    • Useful for automating payments for outsourcing and non-members; like external advisers.

Creating your proposal

For a proposal to be accepted on discourse, it must meet the following criteria:

  • Identifies champions (at least one) responsible for executing the proposal
  • Highlights evidence of discussion/brainstorming leading up to a proposal
  • Helps us deliver on our mission, values, and goals
  • Has a clear timeline for delivery and measurable indicators for success
  • Specifies resources/tooling/changes required
  • Carefully consider the wide impact on DAO
  • Reaches a voting threshold for moving to Snapshot
  • Has clear next steps for implementing if the vote passes

The Governance Guild will moderate posts made to the “Proposal” category to make sure they meet this threshold and support people where needed.

Stages of a Proposal

1. Submit Proposal

Anyone, even non-members, can submit proposals to the DAO.

2. Sponsor Proposal

After submitting a proposal, it will enter the Unsponsored Proposals section. This means someone with shares (which could be you) must Champion the proposal for it to be moved to voting.

Note: You can sponsor your own Proposal, but it is recommended that you have another member sponsor it so they can make sure you have filled out the proposal with the correct information and you get the result you intended for.

Only members (during later Seasons to be referred to as Founding Members) can ‘Sponsor’ the proposal, sending it to the Queue

3. In Queue

Once the proposal has been sponsored it will enter the Queue. The queue ensures proposals are funnelled to vote in an orderly fashion. One proposal will go from the queue to the Voting Period in a time frame specified by the leader of the governance guild.

4. Voting Period

Once in the Voting Period, members can now vote on the proposal. Every proposal has an ‘X’ amount of time in the voting period where it must receive more Yes than No votes to pass.

5. Grace Period

Voting is over, and the Proposal is set to pass or fail depending on the votes cast during Voting. Members who voted No, and have no other pending Yes votes, can ragequit during this period

6. Ready for Processing

Next, The proposal is sent to Processing in which the vote is time-stamped on-chain.

7. Completed

After being processed, the proposal is marked as Completed, and all shares, funds or outcomes are executed as specified in the proposal.

P.S.: The mentioned below proposal’s scheme that was proposed in Season 0 by @kempsterrrr

Taking inspiration from Bankless DAO, the following initial governance flow is proposed:

Conversations → Brainstorming → Proposals → Consensus → Execution

Conversations: Discord
Brainstorming: Discord + Discourse
Proposals: Discourse
Consensus: Snapshot
Execution: Discord

Consider this as part 1 & Rewards Structure would be part 2.
This was inspired by Haus, Curve and other DAOs
Also, I would like to thank @willblackburn & @with-heart for their valuable input.

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