Proposal: Amendments to the Steward Council
Preface:
This document seeks to amend (not replace) Proposal: V2 of the Steward Council which was passed on Snapshot on December 05, 2022.
For simplicity, this document will capture “amendments” which will update components of the Proposal: V2 of the Steward Council. For transparency this document will list the relevant “Original wording” and ”Amended wording” segments of the proposal as well as “rational” for the change.
There are three amendments this document attempts to capture:
Amendment #1: Removing the specificity of the team composition
This is mostly a non material clean up item. This change allows Gitcoin to adjust the number of works streams without adjusting the Steward Council election document.
Amendment #2 Changing meeting type and frequency
This change builds on lessons learned that smaller, more targeted time with the external stewards delivered greater value to the Gitcoin workstream leaders. This change reduces “context” time for the external partners and increases targeted time with specific topics relevant to the Gitcoin Workstream leaders.
Amendment #3 Adjustments to the election process
This change eliminates the reference to the voting tool and changes the voting mechanism from an egalitarian vote (all voters are weighted equally) to a token weighted vote (more tokens = greater influence). This change also opens voting up to all GTC token holders (who are eligible to vote) vs. the previous approach which whitelisted participation to Gitcoin Stewards.
The changes in detail:
Amendment #1: Removing the specificity of the team composition
Original wording:
To facilitate a move to an externally-aware advisory body, this proposal changes the team composition to 6 Gitcoin core team delegates and 10 external stewards.
Amended wording:
To facilitate a move to an externally-aware advisory body, this proposal changes the team composition to one Gitcoin core team delegate from each workstream and external stewards.
Rational:
This change would allow Gitcoin to add or remove workstreams without needing to adjust the Steward Council election process.
Amendment #2 Changing meeting type and frequency
Original wording:
Amended wording:
Rational:
Based on the prior season, both workstream leaders and external council members found the 2x’s general reviews did not lead to rich and insightful conversions. They were helpful for maintaining context for the external steward council members - especially when accompanied by pre-reading, but the frequency was too often and added little value to the Gitcoin representatives. Conversely, ad-hoc meetings with specific topics held with a targeted audience of domain experts resulted in better discussion and insight. Based on this information, we propose reducing the general sessions to make room for specific topic reviews as needed by the workstreams.
Amendment #3 Adjustments to the election process
Original wording:
Step 3: Steward elections:
The fifteen nominees (5 workstreams x 3 candidates) will be entered into a quadratic voting pool for a steward vote using https://quadraticvote.co/ 1 tool. Existing stewards will vote on nominees using the nominee linked bios found here 2. Each steward will receive 10 “votes”, which can be used to vote for up to 10 candidates using the standard quadratic voting methodology. Individual voting links will be distributed via email to voters, and it is the responsibility of the voter to pass along their preferred email address.
The top 10 of this ranking will be invited to join the Steward council, and the outcome of this Quadratic vote will be considered final. There will be no additional snapshot or Tally vote to ratify the selection of the 10 + 6 steward council members.
Amended wording:
Step 3: Steward elections:
The nominees will be elected via a token weighted quadratic vote. Existing token holders will vote on nominees using the nominee linked bios found here 2.
The top 2/3rds of this ranking will be invited to join the Steward Council, and the outcome of this Quadratic vote will be considered final. There will be no additional snapshot or Tally vote to ratify the selection of the steward council members.
Rational:
In late 2022 we didn’t have a method to safely execute a token weighted quadratic vote. Today we feel confident that we can execute a sybil resistant token weighted vote using Snapshot, the quadratic voting strategy and Passport. Note, we originally had 15 external nominees, and the top 10 were placed on the council. We change the specification to “2/3rds” so that the number of winners can adjust with the number of workstreams and nominees (2 nominees per workstream).
