P-22: DAO Governance Structure Upgrade

[kempsterrrr]

@ntindle

@kempsterrrr

The Stewards Council meets weekly on Thursdays @ 4 pm UTC

This may be a helpful initial, but may be limiting in the future.

cc @luan

What do you mean you? I originally had this down as fortnightly but increased to weekly at begin with think we’ll need more time that not.

The idea is Steward’s meeting replaces Coordination Call.

@ntindle

@kempsterrrr

this role will rotate, with the next meeting’s designated agreed upon by the Stewards at the end of the previous meeting.

If no vote takes place, the role falls on the previous Steward.

Good shout. Have added:

If no facilitator is chosen, it falls back to the last chosen facilitator.

@ntindle

@kempsterrrr

DISOCRD_OR_ZOOM_OR_SOMETHING_ELSE

Discord stage with an audience? Allows audience questions or feedback in the same place as usual.

Unsure about the stage and encouraging an Audience. Stewards are being empowered to do a job and doing that job might be harder under such a model. Gitcoin do a zoom call, record this and then upload it to YouTube. Happy with discord but don’t think we should be driving attendance from Members and think it should be locked to Stewards (at least for speaking on the call).

@luan my view is Governance should remain in the main server, and Members should be encouraged to participate in Governance housed in a category called Govern/Governance. Don’t see the use case for creating a Governance section in another server and worry that it would hide Governance from Members, which would be a bad thing.

I shared a flow chat in the Members dropdown above, which feels like a good high-level structure for things which I’d love to review with you

@luan

@kempsterrrr

As per the Foundation’s ByLaws , anyone with at least 1 $CODE token is a member of the DAO, meaning they can vote in Governance

I propose that we change this, as soon as we’re able to. It’s not only confusing, but it’s actually pointless. Being a member of the DAO is tethered to accessing what the DAO provides. A lot of which, is situated within Discord.

cc @ntindle @Wikist

From the ByLaws related to Tokenholders (could this be more specific?)

Tokenholders = Members (as defined this in this document)

“Tokenholders” means the holders of the Tokens from time to time as evidenced by the Ethereum blockchain.

I agree that being a Tokenholders/Member or the DAO !== access to things in the DAO isn’t ideal and we should work on this. Unsure if now is the time to make that change as unsure of what the implications in discord are. Maybe we can have this as a goal in S2?

Regarding the utility of $CODE. This model leans into $CODE being our Governance token alone. Members get their value from participating in the experience Contributors create. Contributors are empowered to create value from which they can pay themselves.

If Members want to get more value (i.e. not $CODE, or grant support etc.) from directly Contributing to the DAO they get a role with the Foundation, an existing Sub-DAO or start a new one.

Members shouldn’t be selling their tokens unless they want to leave the DAO.

The big known unknown for me here, therefore, is “How are we allocating $CODE under this model”

My thoughts are we should do that in two ways:

1. Members earn $CODE by participating in the DAO (i.e. we set a $CODE reward for attending workshops, writing a blog etc.). Ideally, this is done using an hourly rate in USD converted to $CODE at the time of proposal. (i.e. takes 15 hours to write a blog and the USD rate is $50/hour. Thus Member gets 50 X $CODE market price as a reward) thoughts?
2. Contributors are rewarded in $CODE based on an estimated % of their hourly contribution converted from USD. One possibility being Contributors receive 20% of their estimated time contribution to the DAO in $CODE using the same USD conversation as Members above.

What do you think @Wikist ?

To me, this detaches the idea of $CODE paying folk’s bills whilst still distributing Governance out to Members to decentralise the DAO.

@luan

Can you elaborate on this, please? Who would nominate them?

Folks in the Sub-DAO would nominate them as part of their proposal which would go through DDIP and give members to chance to support/not support their nomination.

@luan

Also, have potential conflicts of interest been considered with this approach? An immediate one that comes to mind, is the use of one’s ‘Steward’ authority/access to elevate proposals that might benefit them self of their Sub-DAO, but may not necessarily be in the best interest of the broader scope of DAO’s members.

Added notes about handling conflicts in Simplifying DDIP proposal here. Is this enough? Might help to make it so you can elevate proposal you’ve authored?

Regarding acting in the best interests of the DAO, I think that needs to be handled via Governance and the still yet to be updated Code of Conduct Process. What are your thoughts on the Stewards being the folks who handle CoC violations?

@luan

Does this mean the OKRs team is being shut down, and enveloped into this Stewards role?

I think it should, yes. It always seemed strange having OKRs being set outside of the rest of the DAO-level decisions. If we’re empowering Stewards with strategy etc. my hypothesis is it makes sense they set the OKRs as well. Otherwise, how do we coordinate between the two?

The principles I’d found myself working from recently were:

1. Member UX optimised for “Players” of the game
2. Focus on 1 persona - web3 builders (Includes all types: Dev, Design, Product etc.)
3. Create a single experience for this persona
4. Objectives
   • Help folks Learn
   • Help folks build
   • Help folks grow their career

@luan

I’ve noticed that we currently have a total of 15 people listed as a Budget Steward. So for those of us who wish to remain in this role in S2, we’ll be expected to put ourselves forward for election, correct? And all of us who are currently listed as ‘Budget Stewards’ will be tasked with participating in that voting process?

Yes, I think this is the right way to do this, so folks are chosen by the community.

Feelsbadamn anointing myself as a Steward given the foundation director role but I wasn’t sure I saw another way around that given the required legal context that position brings. I’d like not to be such a bus factor in the future and open a path for someone else to be the foundation director.

What do you think about this?

@luan

Something that remains unclear to me, is how does the new structure limit/lessen the number of budget proposals?

Primarily it’s by raising the bar a little for submission and requiring Stewards to handle conflicts/overlaps between proposals.

@luan

I know restructuring Guilds as ‘Pods’ under DD Labs (Operational Layer), and then also restructuring Guilds as ‘Hubs’ under Developer DAO (DAO Layer) will help to consolidate some S1 work-streams, and remove others. However, some of those work streams will remain. And some new ones will come to the fore, in the form of being a SubDAO.

Am I right to assume that each ‘Pod’ and each qualifying SubDAO will still be able to obtain a budget allocation (if eligible and requested)? Or is something else being proposed, here?

Hope we can explore this more when we speak later this week, but I’m not personally thinking of Guilds > Pods/Hubs. The existing structure IMHO doesn’t, and we’d be far better off greatly simplifying it from a Member experience point of view (i.e. channels > Categories for everything that needs a space) and then from a rewards standpoint, focusing on more meaningfully retaining individual people (or very small groups) to perform the bulk of work and then bountying out other things that make sense too). What seems to make sense is funding the following as part of the D_D Labs (just another sub-dao, ideally owned by the core contributors to it’s creation as directors)

• Community Management
• Operations
• Partnerships & DevRel
• Fundraising
• Platform (Dev & Design for the website, grants platform if we do one etc.)
• Jobs

@luan

‘SubDAOs are entities that are created by Developer DAO members, which exist (in part) to advance the DAO’s overarching mission. They can be for-profit entities, public goods initiatives, or a hybrid of both. And being a derivative of the DAO, they are expected to return some value to it, thus feeding back into the ecosystem that they benefit from.’

Agree, and I like this a lot more. We should probably say entities or groups of contributors. thoughts?

This way, we can handle the Active (Foundation) status of Sub-DAOs.

@luan

@kempsterrrr

Active (Foundation)

DevDao Women comes to mind, as does AxisOne.

Not sure what scope you’re thinking bout for Axis One but seems like it could just be the job of a Community Manager(s), rather than another Sub-DAO? At least in the short-term and if it grows turn it into something more.

Also very out of touch with D_D Women’s latest thinking but just saw they’re suggesting it be a social layer/networking space. Might be easier to speak over a call on this.

@luan

@kempsterrrr

At least one representative attends INSERT_EVENT
4. An opportunity for the community to ask questions and provide feedback about certain aspects of the Sub-DAO and its operations

Happy to brainstorm around this, as it crosses into some of my Community-based focus areas. Particularly, how to ensure pathways between contributors and non-contributors are not blocked. Happy to adapt the 2min Rundown concept, but it can’t run during TH.

Lets brainstorm when we speak and in the DMs

@Wikist

I still wonder what those legal entities of Sub-DAOs should be. Are we supposed to go with the law jurisdiction of the countries that the biggest number of Sub-DAO’s contributors come from? How much influence should D_D have over the nature of them? If there is a person who have a good Sub-DAO idea and skills, but lacks the law knowledge how can we help and guide such a person? Some more details with regards to those legal entities should be determined, as leaving them in Sub-DAOs decision might create a lot of chaos in the future.

Doesn’t really matter. Should be a structure that best suits the aims and jurisdiction of the folks creating the Sub-DAO. Just an entity that provides a service to the DAO via a contract agreement with the Foundation.

The DAOs influence is voting them in as a Sub-DAO and keeping them accountable to what they promised (i.e. they wont get voted back in if they don’t deliver and contract will be cancelled).

Think we can support folks in getting the right thing set-up but they should assume the legal responsibility for whatever they setup. Personally, I think this is a good idea for ensuring folks are serious about their work as well. Furthermore, part of this model is limiting what is in the scope of the DAO/Foundation so as the limit the legal risk or every other area of the DAO by one part’s actions. The other part is about allowing members to easily create value for themselves and the DAOs ecosystem.

more to reply to in various threads, will do so later. great discussions