Community AMA - Head of Gov Role

House of Stake Governance
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Hi all. Anon candidate for the head of governance role here.

Why anon? I’m currently employed so I need to have some discretion. As a result, I won’t be able to answer questions about my experience. I did, however, have a meeting with the set of endorsed delegates and shared my background with them as a compromise to not being able to have a fully public AMA. I’ve also met with Lane, Harshit, Konrad, Klaus, Jack, Maxwell and longstanding community members Cameron and James (who I have known for a while).

In this post, I wrote up some thoughts on what I would want to focus on to start if I were chosen for this role. Keep in mind, this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list. It’s more of an initial sketch of ideas.

I know there are a lot of updates happening / forthcoming. This post is less about staying on top of these updates vs giving you a sense of how I generally think about governance. More than happy to react to anything specific as part of the AMA itself.

I am posting this on Monday August 25th to give folks some time to read and ask questions. I will then be signing back on Wednesday August 27th from 930a-1030a UTC-4 and from 3p-4p UTC-4 to answer the questions that do come up. Excited to chat!

Understanding of the context (tldr version)

NEAR has been a pioneer at the intersection of AI & web3 and there are a lot of exciting advances, such as NEAR Intents. NEAR’s broad mission is working towards a user owned internet.

In relation to governance, the first attempt was the NEAR Digital Collective (NDC). It was a whole thing, it was stopped a few years ago, and House of Stake (HoS) recently had a soft launch. There is both a lot of excitement and caution around HoS as many folks feel burned by NDC while also recognizing the need for governance. Also, given some delays with HoS starting, there is now a lot of anticipation to get going heading into the full launch this month (August 2025).

HoS is a governance system based on staked governance. As in, folks will need to stake their NEAR to get veNEAR, which they will be able to use to vote. The longer you stake for, the more veNEAR you get. It’s fundamentally focused on maximizing alignment between token holders and governance.

When proposals emerge, a Screening Committee reviews proposals. If approved by the committee, then a proposal has a simple majority to hit; if it fails, then a super majority is needed.

All of this has been put in place after months of discussion and development from many parties. Lane’s medium post has been the most succinct overview of this that I’ve found.

Priorities given where things are

I see the main priority areas as follows:

  • Delegate relationships

  • Social layer of governance

  • Working with service providers

  • Research & experimentation agenda

  • General operations

Work across these areas would begin once the head of governance starts.

Why these areas?

  • Delegate relationships - while we don’t all need to be best friends, we do need to know we’re on the same team and working towards one goal (NEAR succeeding).

    • Trust between a head of governance / governance team and the delegates increases the chance that we can move as one, while developing systems that can balance a plurality of opinions / being inclusive and being able to make decisions and move quickly is crucial for effective operations.

  • Social layer of governance - to systematize what was mentioned above, it is important to have a serious focus on the social layer of governance.

    • This means having specific materials as a community (code of conduct, clear mission, values, etc.) that can be the building blocks of formalizing a culture.

    • It is important to have a cohesive culture in order to make sure that we can work towards a single goal as a team (one that is full of a plurality of views).

  • Working with service providers - there has been a lot in the works over the last year plus, so it’s going to be important to spend extensive time with the service providers to getting caught up on all of the details and planning how to best work together going forward

  • Research & experimentation agenda - there is a lot of room for improvement in governance overall and the only way to keep improving is by identifying areas for improvement, scoping relevant research and experiments, conducting them, learning from them, and adjusting the system as appropriate based on the learnings.

  • General operations - in order to build the best possible governance system, we need the best possible operations.

    • It’s easy to think about governance purely as the mechanism of how decisions are made.

    • However, effective governance systems are intertwined with high performance operations.

What does all of that actually look like?

Let’s break it down a bit more and get into what each of these would actually look like.

Building connections with delegates

This would entail:

  • Offering 1-1s with delegates, especially those who are central nodes in the community social graph (as in, whoever speaks to a lot of other delegates, those who have been here long and are seen as OGs, those who have big bags, and generally anyone who considers the self an active delegate)

  • Hosting office hours and/or AMAs to communicate with larger groups

  • Joining existing calls that different community members host

  • Reviewing any materials from Fork That’s or other materials that can help learn more about delegates

Social layer of governance

I know the team is already working on aspects of this, particularly the code of conduct and doing certain mission, vision, value exercises and making them clearer. Doing those things would entail some amount of co-design, and I think that semi-formalized co-design processes could be a good thing to systemize.

I also think there needs to be more formal culture building. This can involve having some kind of consistent recurring calls and ideally creating some kind of shared rituals. It can be more things like the Fork That events that took place in Cannes (and think through what else could be added whenever the community gathers offline).

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the goal of this is for us all to be best friends or want to sit around a campfire singing kumbaya. Disagreement is actually healthy and I always appreciate constructive criticism.

The ultimate goal is for us to have a shared identity as stewards of NEAR. We need to all want the same thing - success for NEAR. We will likely disagree on the details of how to get there, but if we are all honestly working towards the goal of collective success, then we can win. If we let our egos get in the way, we will lose. And I generally don’t like win and lose in these contexts because they’re often misunderstood. I don’t mean these relatively (we win over someone else). I mean that NEAR is in a unique position where it can become one of the most impactful projects out of web3 and become an integral part of the tech stack of the future. We’re competing against ourselves, so the more we are one team, the greater the likelihood we fulfill our potential (and win / succeed).

Service Providers

The governance team is responsible for ensuring that the governance system operates in a way that is in line with the expectations of the community, based on what was approved. As part of this, it will be important to work closely with the service providers to ensure that all of the work

  • Spending time and setting recurring with Gauntlet, Agora, FastNear, HackHumanity, others?

    • Let me know who else you think should be on this list.

  • Track how the new launch of HoS goes and what is going well / what needs specific support.

  • Ensure that there is proper accountability of all existing and future service providers, as well as ways that the community can publicly or privately share feedback on the service providers.

Research & Experimentation

Governance is an ever-evolving discipline. Therefore, we will need to think about continuously assessing and improving the state of governance at NEAR. This will involve a range of efforts from slightly more theoretical work through more applied research and active experimentation. The balance between purely theoretical and more applied should definitely skew towards the applied, but we should not be afraid of supporting theoretical work if there is strong conviction that it can help the ecosystem.

Potential areas of research and experimentation includes, but is not limited to:

  • The use of AI in governance.

    • I know there is a roadmap being developed at the time I’m writing this and I will be happy to discuss my view on any aspects of it during the AMA

  • How to most effectively run and scale decentralized organizations.

  • Which deliberative decision making tools can lead to better outcomes for specific governance processes.

  • How to most effectively use cryptography and privacy preserving tech to maximize the efficacy of the governance system while preserving the right to privacy.

  • Understanding any new voting mechanisms that can help better represent the interests of stakeholders in the ecosystem.

  • Exploring methods of preference signalling and alternatives to direct voting.

  • Potential alternatives to Discourse (as in the forum) as the backbone of shared understanding in web3 governance.

General Operations

I see operations in relation to DAOs centering around two general areas:

  • How the DAO itself is organized, and

  • The policies, processes, and tools that are used within the organization.

At the end of the day, DAO’s are organizations. That means they need to have clear structure relating to what functions are generally needed for the org to accomplish its goals and what is the best way to organize the relevant roles in order to accomplish said goals.

This does not mean that there needs to be a hierarchical org chart with a ton of layers. There is a lot of learning to do from sociocracy, holocracy, and other areas where small teams are able to do things effectively on reasonable timelines without having too much bureaucracy. In addition to having clarity of roles, it’s important to then build the actual policies, processes, and tools to make sure that roles function as smoothly as possible.

Conclusion

This post is meant to give a sense of my own thinking when it comes to approaching governance, and some of the things I would focus on if I were to be in the Head of Governance role.

As mentioned at the start, I will come back to the forum on Wednesday August 27th from 930a-1030a UTC-4 and from 3p-4p UTC-4 to answer the questions that do come up. Have a good start to the week everyone!

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Eugene Leventhal - applying for the Head of Gov role
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Gm, @anon-gov-applicant so nice to get to hear about how you see yourself in this role for governance and I’m looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts on the AMA tomorrow. I’m also hoping that a some point before the finalization of the chosen person for the role, that you will be able to dox yourself to provide the community with more insights into your writings, past presentations, etc.

I did have some questions that possibly you could address tomorrow, and expand upon on the forum. I’m newer to this DAO, however, my experiences as a delegate in other ecosystems, my obsession with governance and the running of organizations are the basis’s for these questions below.

Thank you so much for submitting this post, and I look forward to hearing more!

My questions are:

  1. This role emphasizes bridging communication between the Foundation and the broader community, not just the endorsed delegates. How do you see the Head of Governance role as a bridge between the Foundation, HoS and the wider, non-delegate community? What specific channels or initiatives would you use to engage non-technical community members and individual token holders?
  2. Your post outlines an excellent strategy for improving the “social layer” of governance. What are your metrics for success in this area? How would you measure whether communication is actually improving and trust is being rebuilt, and how would you report on this progress to the community?
  3. The role requires for the overseeing of product delivery, ensuring technical upgrades roll out smoothly with zero downtime. Since you were unable to provide a track record (due to being anon), could you speak to your philosophy or a mental model for managing complex technical projects and ensuring operational excellence, even if you are not a developer yourself?
  4. The role requires a “battle-tested” individual who can “defuse criticism with data and empathy.” Can you provide a hypothetical scenario of a major governance dispute or a contentious proposal, and walk us through how you would handle the situation from a communication and operational standpoint to ensure a civil, fact-based resolution?
  5. Given the importance of transparency and “making things feel simple,” how would you use this role to simplify complex governance decisions or technical updates for the average community member? Can you provide an example of how you would translate a complex topic like “mechanism design” or “AI-governance” into a format that is accessible to all?
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I’m genuinely curious and asking this from a neutral, non-problematic standpoint.

How are we expected to ask questions, assess, or get to know someone when we’re given none of the basics: no name (not even a Web3 fake name), no professional history that demonstrates relevant experience, and no information that shows how they are qualified for the position?

What then is the purpose of a forum post or AMA if the individual remains completely anonymous to the point where they cannot even discuss their work background? We are told they’ve already spoken with the delegates, but if that alone were sufficient, why host a forum post or AMA at all?

Maybe let’s trust the judgment of the people who already had a meeting with the candidate and skip this …….

they can’t even join a Twitter space, without showing their face and just speak directly to the community, and answer questions.

Just a faceless and nameless forum account created today. For all we know, it could be me behind that , or anyone else posting under that name while providing no real information.

Honestly, instead of doing things like this that are plain ridiculous, please carry on with the way you’ve been doing it all along and inform us when HOS is ready for community.

if you feel you don’t owe community as little as basic information then there is no need for any of this.

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Only one question: do you hold $JAMBO?

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Getting the first part of the AMA start. Will be on for an hour now. Will do shorter replies at first just in case a higher volume comes in, and then will circle back and answer q’s in more depth

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Hi coffee-crusher (can’t mention you as a new user).

I do want to be upfront that I’m not sure if that’s likely. The whole reason I’m anon is that I’m currently employed and doxxing myself could jeopardize my current role. Despite how excited I am about this opportunity, I can’t risk losing my current role and not getting this role.

This role would need to be a bridge between all relevant stakeholders, with a particular focus on tokenholders and existing delegates. I would be keen to explore more general communication beyond that, but the priority would be to ensure that NF, HoS, and all active participants feel there is clear and consistent communication. I will also want to ensure there are feedback mechanisms put in place to get feedback from the community on how I / the gov team could do better.

It’s unclear to me if that’s a need on the gov side or not. I would want to get a better sense from existing delegates / tokenholders if they feel the general communication is somehow too technical (though that shouldn’t generally be the case). As someone who is not an engineer/dev, I will generally strive for the communication to be as approachable and understandable as possible

This is a tough one to have objective metrics so anything I say here will 100% need to be revised once the head of gov joins and gets a better sense of the community. Some metrics could include:

  • is the engagement with the set of delegates / tokenholders increasing (more engagement on the forum, call attendance, active conversation with delegates
  • is there participation in any attempts at co-design and / or culture building? does that engagement increase activity to activity (say with things like the Fork That activities or other similar ones)
  • there can be things like surveys to assess community sentiment to try and get a baseline and how how that changes

That’s not a complete sense by any stretch but just to give a sense of some things to start with. In terms of community reporting, it would be a mix of informal reporting via the community calls and generally trying to provide quarterly updates on priorities (at the start of each quarter, say) and how that went (within a week or two of each quarter ending). Can also do more in-depth reports once to twice a year if that’s desired in the community.

At a high-level, it would entail:

  • scoping the initial work and being clear on deliverables (both with the service providers and with the community)
  • working with technical colleagues in the community, HoS, and NF to better understand likely failure points and how to mitigate them
  • doing regular check-ins (or potentially agile style meetings if appropriate) to keep track of what’s going on

It would also depend on the nature of the project (single service provider or multiple, as well as the specific complexity of the project) that might require additional activities. Let me know if you have something in specific there you’d want me to comment on further

Let me think about this and let me know if you have ideas of a scenario as this is really ecosystem specific and I’m still new to NEAR.

Generally speaking, I would try to identify the groups with strongly differing opinions, have some 1-1’s with them as possible to make sure I understand the nuances of their position, and try to facilitate discussions to see if there are compromises that can reasonably be made. I would want to encourage that conversations be grounded in civil discourse, ideally focused on facts and ideas than personal comments and to generally focus on constructive criticism. Potentially using discussion frameworks that show where people have hard no’s vs maybe’s assuming certain changes vs agreement could be helpful

I would want to start this by understanding what hasn’t been sufficient in the past. I wouldn’t want to make assumptions on this and let the changes be dictated by exact needs.

I would generally assume that a community like NEAR’s is already pretty proficient in these topics and it’s more about being clear about what changes are taking being presenting in a specific proposal, what is the most direct and simple way to explain that, and make sure that the impacts of those changes are clear as possible.

Say, with something like the previous HoS proposal and the introduction of veNEAR, I would want to make sure to stress that that change would shift to a model where participants have more skin in the game in the decisions. The benefit of this is incentive alignment between stakeholders.

If community members feel things aren’t clear, then I would work towards understanding what isn’t clear and how to clarify them.

Let me know if I can add more on any of these.

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Hi Blessedchidi. I understand that this is unusual (for me as well). Just given where I’m at, I can’t be public about looking for a new role as that would potentially lead to me losing my current role and I can’t risk that without a new role in place.

The logic of doing this was, from my understanding, to have more of a ‘case study’ phase of an interview be with the community in this public fashion given that I can’t be public with my search. As in, this would focus on governance ideas vs my specific expertise.

I understand that the community wants a more public recruiting but there is the balance of who is actually able to go through one. Being fully public would mean that anyone currently in an equivalent role in another ecosystem is likely not able to go through the process due to the public nature.

I know this probably doesn’t assuage your concerns and your concerns are reasonable. The hope was that the balance of certain folks (who I already mentioned in both NF and endorsed delegates) knowing my exact experience while I could host a more public convo with the community.

Please let me know if I can share anything else for now

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I do not ser. Please let me know if I can share anything else for now

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I’m going to search through NEAR proposals to find one to comment on - let me know if you have one in mind

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I guess I’ll circle back on the HoS proposal itself. From my understanding, the general concerns roughly fell around the fact that a stake based system with delegated gov feels more centralized and would not be as representative as a system where each person is expected to partake directly.

I would want to stress and gather data around the challenges that most DAOs have experienced with 1t1v (one token one vote) systems. I would also want to have an honest discussion with the community around what did / didn’t work in NDC to clarify the ‘problems to be solved’ and make sure there is some rough consensus on the problems. This would hopefully make it easier to have a more focused conversation on the potential solutions and why something like HoS makes sense.

I would also want to stress that the current design doesn’t have to be an end state, especially when it comes to the delegated portion. As the state of AI+gov tools improves and it is more reasonable to shift away from delegated gov, that can definitely be explored and experimented with. But it’s important to recognize that is an open question more broadly - can AI enable more efficient processes (both in terms of operations and cognitive load) for more people to partake in governance meaningfully.

I would want to host multiple discussions, maybe use tools that help map the community sentiment more clearly, and clearly articulate the tradeoffs.

Please let me know what else I can share here

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I’m signing off the first session now. I’ll be on again later today (in just over 4 hours).

I realize this is an unusual activities and I appreciate y’all being open to engaging despite the obvious limitations.

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Hi all. Signing on for hour 2 though it seems there are no new questions unfortunately. I’d really love to engage with the community more. Please let me know what questions you might have

Again, I know this is a weird setup. If you have different ideas of how we can find a meaningful way to engage recognizing the constraints on my side of not wanting to lose my current job before I find a new job, I’m all ears. I’m really excited about what’s going on in NEAR and really think we could do a lot together.

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Gm @anon-gov-applicant , thank you for the responses to my questions, I haven’t had a chance to fully digest your responses, but I will. I totally get your reasonings for the anon, and in a “normal situation” doxing would be required for the application, interviews, reference checks and KYC during an only Foundation hire process. Since NF has incorporated the DAO to participate in this process makes it more difficult if the applicant, like yourself cannot dox.

I know that you stated that using this format (“live” during set hours on Forum), but maybe it would be more inclusive and build trust with the community (which is one of greatest barriers) is instead participate with the DAO in a live session on GMeet/Zoom and you would have your camera off. For me, it’s important to hear your voice - even if it’s just to determine that you are a real person (or at least as real as possible) without the DAO having all the facts.

It will provide to the DAO a better understanding on how you are qualified, and if we are not even be provided with any of your writings, presentations, etc., which gives us an understanding of a more of the breath to your thought process. Then if the NF does select you as the awarded candidate, we can understand why you were selected - i.e. your qualifications, experience, etc. Otherwise, it will be hard for this community to accept any candidate without understanding the reasoning for their selection and the basis of the biggest issues of the DAO is the broken trust, that can be rectified by starting now.

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Thanks for following up coffee-crusher. The challenge with that would be that multiple people here (and I’ll be candid to the risk of already dox’ing myself, yourself included) interact with me where I’m employed on a pretty regular basis. You would 100% know who I am once we start talking. So unless I use some kind of voice modulation, which feels a bit weird, then we’re back to square one.

I’m not opposed to having a call with the community if those on the call are ok committing to not making my application public. The challenge with this is that I’d be trusting the community while there’s no accountability mechanism on the community (as in, once we’re on the call, anyone on it can screen and post to twitter and tag me and make things difficult for me in my current role, which is a major concern if I don’t get this role). Maybe we can do this as a final step if the NF does intend to give me an offer?

If others have idea for a compromise, please throw it out there.

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Hi all. I’m going to sign off now. Please feel free to drop q’s if you have them later. Have a good rest of the day / week everyone

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Thank you, @anon-gov-applicant for that response, and I agree with you that the potential of someone sharing on a call (even just your voice - and especially if they recognized it) and then tagging you on socials is highly probable. So I concur, I wouldn’t recommend that, but I do like your compromise of allowing the DAO to meet you “live” before the final step if you’re offered the role. That way the DAO can feel like that they are part of the process.

I will not go down that self-induced rabbit hole regarding your identity if by your own omission that I would know you, as that would be very unfair to you, and I respect your reasonings. So from my perspective, I really hope that your candidacy continues and blossoms into an offer from NF, since if I do know you, then I presume that I already like and trust you, and that we will have the opportunity to meet you live.

I’m sure that you have already been told by the endorsed delegates and the core team that you have met during this interview process, that building trust with the DAO members is going to be instrumental for anyone’s success in this role. The DAO is a chaotic mess (from my limited observations) and some voices are very vocal about it. So this role will not be easy. But I also see so much opportunity to get this right. So I truly hope that your candidacy is successful and that we will get to meet you soon.

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I’m not a fan of anonymous candidates.

  • How can we properly measure their experience?

  • How can we trust their track record?

The thing with being anonymous is that achievements often sound impressive, but without accountability, it doesn’t matter who is behind them. There are also legal challenges to holding an anonymous role within the House of Stake.

I think this is not enough to justify an anon profile.

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It’s good you expressed your interest in the Head of Governance role. But you will agree with me that governance leadership demands a high level of transparency, accountability, and trust-building.

These are foundational to representing the community, leading decision-making processes, and ensuring integrity in our ecosystem.

How are we sure you’re real and not a bot. Who do we hold accountable if things go wrong? This ecosystem won’t stop surprising me.

JSYK SIR, Governance leadership is a position of visibility and responsibility, and anonymity would make it difficult to uphold the standards and trust expected from this position.

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