Summary
Streamline DAO governance with clearer proposal categories, updated manual, improved labelling, steward approval thresholds & exploring development of a constitution.
Background
Based on the feedback received in the discussion phase we have updated our suggestions and limited the scope to items which have received general support.
Motivation
Lack of clarity & standardisation often leads to confusion when categorising & processing proposals. While the governance manual provides some guidance, it overlaps & ambiguities remain, particularly with proposals that do not fit neatly into established categories. This hinders effective documentation, procedure adherence & iterative development of governance processes.
Specification
1. Clarifying Proposal Categories
Introduce Onchain and Offchain master categories with subcategories, providing clear guidelines to streamline and categorize proposals accurately.
| 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 |
| — | — | — | — |
| Establishing/modifying DAO cadence | Electing/removing foundation director | Updating governor contracts | Sending/receiving/depositing/withdrawing/staking/lending/borrowing tokens |
| Ratifying DAO-wide goals | Establishing/disbanding legal entities such as Grant Lab | Forming/disbanding multi-sigs | |
| Modifying/electing council members (Grants council) | Dissolving the foundation | Adding/removing members to any multi-sig | |
| Establishing/modifying constitution | Delegating tokens | ||
| Changing Governance policies, tooling or other mechanics | Adding/removing Hats to a member or a multi-sig |
2. Explore the development of a constitution
A constitution for Gitcoin would establish fundamental principles & precedents governing the organisation. While smart contracts ideally enforce these principles, our current industry limitations mean we can’t codify everything. Therefore, a legally binding constitution would serve as a supreme guiding document, outlining core values, structures, and functions. We will explore the development of a constitution that captures the high-level goals of the DAO and post it as a draft document on the forum for further feedback.
3. Introducing Minimum Steward Approval Thresholds
To ensure higher quality proposals & reduce spam, we propose implementing minimum voting power thresholds for steward approval based on proposal type. This approach requires stewards to have more significant investment in each proposal type, thereby improving the signal from the community. The suggested thresholds are as follows:
| Type | Social | Legal | Admin | Token |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum VP | 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 “temperature check” 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 & organizing the Governance Manual
Revise the governance manual to include recent changes, simplify governance roles into three main types, and delegate manual updates to the governance coordinator.
Voting options
-
Yes, approve these changes
-
No, reject these changes
-
Abstain