# Gitcoin DAO Governance Process v2 - updated

[gmcmullen]

Hi people - this is my first post in the Gitcoin community. Hopefully fresh eyes will see some things the grizzled veterans have missed.

Overall I think this document is a great start. As a non-technical newcomer with a working knowledge of DAOs, I was able to parse it and figure out how the process works. There are a few areas where more detail would be helpful, and a few things that were missing and should be added. The document could also benefit from an edit for clarity and readability. I’d be happy to take a stab at that before the next version if people think that would help.

On to the comments:

@Pop

Governance Roles

There are three main roles in Gitcoin governance: stewards, delegates, and contributors.

Becoming a steward : Getting involved in a steward is easy, anyone who wants to be considered simply has to state their intent here and express why they think they’d be a good fit to build and govern for the public good. Any community member may pledge their intent to be a steward, but fellow community members will delegate voting power according to their own views.

Delegating your voting power : Anyone that wants to delegate GTC to a steward can visit the dashboard here and choose from the current list of interested parties. Delegation goes a long way in ensuring everyone’s views and thoughts are well represented. Delegations can be changed at any time.

Contributing to a workstream : Workstreams that have been successfully ratified, as defined below, will constantly be looking for new contributors, and over time just like in any DAO members who do well will be rewarded and given more stake in the future they’re helping to build.

This section explains the how, but not the what. It could use brief definitions or explainers for each of the roles, not just how to do them. This is one area that is probably clear to experienced community members, but a governance document should be usable by beginners too.

@Pop

Governance Process:

Note: All meaningful governance discussion should take place on this forum to ensure the community has full transparency

The Gitcoin governance process is the act of proposing, discussing, and deciding initiatives for GitcoinDAO to take on around the mission of sustaining digital public goods. As currently scoped, workstreams provide a place for discussion and collaboration, leading to proposals which are then voted on by the community.

Proposals can vary broadly, they can be qualitative / procedural (e.g. “Should Gitcoin Grants allow VC backed projects?”) and have no funding requests attached, or make an explicit request for funding (e.g. “We would like to create a workstream focused on building a decentralized architecture for Gitcoin Grants”).

This section might benefit from adding a brief step-by-step roadmap to the governance process as a whole, with links to detailed discussion of each point later in the document. Something like:

1. Create workstream
2. Develop proposal
3. Discuss proposal
4. Vote on proposal
5. Report on progress

An illustration might be even better

@bobjiang

could we have a picture to illustrate the workstream lifecycle?

@Pop

Moving to Vote

Once a proposal has met the above criteria, a formal Snapshot vote can take place.

In either this section or the Proposal Approval Process section directly above, there should be an explanation of how the move to the Snapshot vote occurs. Who decides if the criteria in the Proposal Approval Process have been met, and how? Who triggers the vote, and how? Again this might make perfect sense to someone who has been around the community for a while, but to a newcomer this is a black box.

This section could also be expanded to explain how voting works - what tokens are eligible to vote (ie. can you vote tokens purchased after vote is called?), how delegation works ie. (how to delegate, who can be delegated to, changing delegation…), what thresholds are required for certain kinds of votes (ie. simple majority or supermajority?), etc.

Finally, this section should set out how off-chain results are implemented. Who is responsible for sending tokens from the treasury?

@Pop

Conflicting Votes

From time to time there may be conflicting proposals, to avoid issues, the 5 day window above can also serve as time for anyone to list their preferred alternative option on the forum. Each proposal on an associate topic will have a [TOPIC] block placed in its title.

An explanation of what is meant by a conflicting proposal would be helpful here, along with some consideration of who gets to decide if a proposal is conflicting and how that decision is made.