Summary
Upgrade governance processes at Gitcoin DAO by fixing governance gaps and creating a DAO constitution.
Motivation
Today, governance in the DAO works as following:
- Proposers take guidance from the governance manual
- In most cases the manual provides guidance for what the proposer wants to achieve
- In some cases (eg 1,2) there the proposal does not clearly fall into a given category so its combined into governance proposals
This creates confusion and a lack of standardization when it comes to following procedure, documenting changes and following an iterative development process for evolving governance.
Specification
As part of DAOplomats engagement with Gitcoin we have analyzed key aspects of the DAOâs governance and here are our suggestions.
1. Differentiate between proposals based on how they are enforced.
Currently there are 4 types of proposals: funding, ratification, governance and reallocation and no difference between regular proposals and community proposals. However there is some overlap between the four categories and some proposals which do not fall in any of the other three categories are posted as governance proposals by default.
In order to provide a clear distinction as well as guidelines for future proposers the following changes are suggested.
Implement two master categories: Onchain and Offchain and two sub categories for each. The proposer can follow this flowchart to identify which type of proposal they are making irrespective of where they lie in the ecosystem orbit
Definations
Offchain | Offchain | Onchain | Onchain |
---|---|---|---|
Social | Legal | Admin | Token |
Agreements enforceable by peer pressure which do not require changes to any contracts. | Agreements enforced by the legal system and which involve updating the legal setup | Agreements enforced by the blockchain which involves Making changes onchain without changing token balance | Agreements enforced by the blockchain which requires changing token balance |
Examples:
Social | Legal | Admin | Token |
---|---|---|---|
Establishing/modifying DAO cadence | Electing/removing foundation director | Updating governor contracts | Sending/receiving/depositing/withdrawing/staking/lending/borrowing tokens |
Modifying essential intents | Establishing/disbanding legal entities such as Grant Lab | Forming/disbanding multi-sigs | |
Modifying/electing council members (CSDO/Grants council) | Dissolving the foundation | Adding/removing members to any multi-sig | |
Modifying program or product policies | Delegating tokens | ||
Adding/removing partners | Adding/removing Hats to a member or a multi-sig | ||
Establishing/modifying constitution | |||
Changing Governance policies, tooling or other mechanics |
Based on what a proposal finally aims to achieve, the proposer can decide on a category and subcategory and proceed with the governance flow. The forum categories can be modified to reflect these changes.
2. Create a DAO constitution
In order to solidify the core principles of the DAO, a constitution which captures high level goals of the DAO should be created. This document should be rarely modified and should require significant consensus to be established and modified.
3. Implement a minimum threshold for Steward approval based on proposal type
In order to receive a higher quality signal from token holders and avoid spam, it is suggested that stewards should have a higher skin in the game for each consecutive change. Here is the minimum suggested threshold based on proposal types
Type | Social | Legal | Admin | Token |
---|---|---|---|---|
Minimum Voting Weight | 1 | 10 | 100 | 1000 |
4. Improved proposal labelling
Based on which stage a proposal is in its life cycle, it is primarily the responsibility of the author to label the proposals as follows:
- Initiating proposals as drafts for community feedback, marked as [DRAFT].
- A âtemperature checkâ phase to gauge community sentiment, indicated as [TEMP CHECK].
- Finalising the proposal for voting, labelled as [READY]
- After the final vote has concluded, labelled as [PASSED/FAILED]
5. Updating manual
-
Updating the DAO Structure: The governance manual currently does not include recent changes such as Ecosystem collective and other entities in the DAO orbit such as grants lab, passport, RPP etc⌠It is suggested that the manual be updated to reflect these changes. This also includes removing older unexisting structure such as Workstreams
-
Recategorise and organise governance roles from various types to three main types: Multi-sig signer, Pod Member and Governooor. Each of these categories can then include subcatgories to signal specific subroles such as matching pool guardian or CSDO member as MS signer. WS lead, Ecosystem contributor, core contributor as a pod member. Steward, delegator and governance coordinator as governooor.
-
Delegate the responsibility for updating the manual to the governance coordinator: Since the manual only reflects changes made by gitcoin governance, updating it should not require a DAO vote.
Next Steps:
- Collect feedback from the community
- Submit a formal proposal