Community-driven DAOs: Proposed Structure for Community Fund DAOs as of Jan 2022

[simeon4real]

Exciting to see that the governance of these NEAR DAOs will be moving towards more community participation. It’s even more interesting that this change is happening around the same as chunk-only producers is introduced on Validator side of things (Become a Validator on NEAR Protocol).

I’m now waiting patiently to see the final draft which will be made available just in time before the holidays. Exciting times ahead

[Dacha]

Couple thoughts:

1. Councils from Community in Executive Pool should be independent persons, don’t have any relationships with NF, don’t be involved in management of guilds which asking money;
2. Mandatory rotations every three months. I will check every persons for relationships with current councils members, it should be real rotation, not a substitute one council on his/her “friend”. Very important to give equal access to all Near Community Members;
3. Before to be selected, every council should write information about participation in Near guilds, groups, internal activities with NF and declare that will work independently and impartially;

Thanks

[simeon4real]

1. I think this was answered already. Although it’s still in WIP.

@Grace

rotated every three months (there must be at least a 6-month gap between

3. It should ultimately depend on council members to decide what to do with council participation rewards.

@Dacha

Probably, some councils can decline their monthly payment as true Near believers and do work for free; Or spend money on charity;

4. Agree with you on this one.

[Dacha]

5. “Related” people cannot to be councils in one DAO.

6. and May be independent audit team who will review councils work, their involvement in the forum life (now as I see some people visit it couple times a week) , relationships between grantees, control money flow from idea to final results.

Thanks @simeon4real , @Monish016 , @mr_free for discussion. I hope everything will write their thoughts too.

[carrapatoso]

@Grace

The proposed DAOs structure is specific to the following DAOs:

• Community DAO
• Ecosystem Development DAO
• Marketing DAO
• Creatives DAO
• …
  Among the next steps: Open Call for candidates to the Operating and Executive Council Pools, Vet candidates for the pool, develop a council rotation system and finalize the DAO governance guidelines.

Based on conversations with @jlwaugh, it would be good to have a DAO specifically to Diversity & Inclusion projects (DAOversity?, as he suggested). I’ve just created my DAO (TibiraDAO) and I am missing a vertical that could contemplate all specificities of projects related to the topic – which they pratically sit in the merge of all DAOs listed.

Is it possible to contemplate it in the new structure?

[JulianaM]

Thanks @Grace for such a detailed explanation. I’m looking fwd to see how these changes would help improving the ecosystem.

• Council Rotating System

About this: Incubadora submitted a challenge (Brutus) in the previous Metabuidl Hackathon, it might be interesting to implement something similar for Council Rotation.

[JulianaM]

hey there! I guess Diversity falls into Community, no? But I agree we need to put more eyes on this topic for sure!

[KriptoRaptor]

Great initiative! I see NF is taking huge steps towards more decentralization as stated before. People out there gotta see this

[carrapatoso]

Not necessarily. TibiraDAO, for example, falls in Ecosystem, even though is working with the LGBTQIA+ community. It is better to think about diversity cross verticals instead of isolating it in one.

[frnvpr]

@Grace

The proposed Governance

Each DAO will have 9 Council Members. Initially, there will be a maximum of 3 NF team members (⅓) in each DAO. The ultimate goal is for NF team members to remove themselves from all DAOs Council after the second quarter in 2022.

DAO Council members will be drawn from a pool of vetted candidates (criteria for vetting needs to be defined and published publicly) and rotated every three months (there must be at least a 6-month gap between two tenures across Community DAOs). This approach offers more opportunities for community members to serve as Council Members.

We propose two pools with a minimum of 20 candidates in each cool.

Hello @Grace! Awesome to see the community trying new and better forms of governance . Thank you!

I have some comments on a few of the things I read in this topic.

@Dacha

Councils from Community in Executive Pool should be independent persons, don’t have any relationships with NF, don’t be involved in management of guilds which asking money;

Hey @Dacha. The issue of impartiality is of extreme importance. I see 3 hurdles to solve.

• The first is that it’s extremely difficult to find people who don’t have skin in the game willing to do council work and engage with all the guidelines and community strategy. Right now, using the Creatives DAO (of which I am a part of) as an example, it’s common to have DAO (DAO’s under the vertical) members voting on proposals in which they are an interested part. I, for example, vote on proposals from Incubadora DAO and VR DAO, both of which I am a part of. However, there are not much people who are 1) not NF employees and 2) trully independent and engaged.

(so, this makes active DAO members become Vertical Council)

• The second hurdle is voting onchain vs voting offchain. I feel that, as long as proposals are being voted offchain (forum+TG+astrodao) , they are mainly verbal and demand some kind of consensus from council members. One thing does not derive from the other, i.e people could just vote and that’s it, but since voting happens in a context of traditional ‘power relations’ and ‘trust’, imo it’s problematic to have these Vertical Council Members be part of the DAOs which are being reviewed.

(so, active members become council, because they are the ones pushing the community forward; but then transparency suffers and the community becomes too dependant on their expertise)

• The third hurdle is time. Proposals should be approved or not approved in a resonable time frame. If there are too many council members, that is difficult to achieve and the system becomes too bureaucratic. If voting happens offchain, this problem will be, imo, aggravated.

(this also relates to the other 2 hurdles, since it obviously pushes for less people to make decisions in order to make them faster, again that being against decentralization).

@Dacha

Probably, some councils can decline their monthly payment as true Near believers and do work for free; Or spend money on charity;

An extra point on this, before I continue.

I don’t exactly understand what it means to be a ‘believer’. Does it mean that only ‘investers’ can be real NEAR believers? If someone thinks NEAR has a bright future should work for free, even though they can’t invest? So, where would they get NEAR in the meantime? They would not, right? So, I would love for you to explain a bit more your position on this matter. I think I get where you are coming from (people using NEAR to get rich without trully contributing), but I might be wrong, so would love to hear more

If council members do not get some sort of reward (I am of the opinion that many council positions are overpaid, but that is a slightly different matter), then

• council work has to be extremely soft, probably no more than half an hour per week,
• or only people who already have a lot of money and free TIME can be Council members.

The first option I would love to see happen, and it would not be difficult if council were large enough and voting happened onchain, but the second just seems super problematic to me. As someone who is an artist and represents other artists in the community, the idea of working for free, even in something that one ‘believes’ (I have big problems with the concept of believing, but let’s leave that out of the conversation), while at the same time struggling to survive, doest not make sense.

@JulianaM

About this: Incubadora submitted a challenge (Brutus) in the previous Metabuidl Hackathon, it might be interesting to implement something similar for Council Rotation.

I wrote Brutus right in the beginning, when I joined this community in May, and most of it’s ideas I still think could be useful for DAO governance.

I have some extra comments, based on the stuff I wrote above:

• I would like to see voting happening 100% onchain, with each council member simply ‘voting’ on astrodao. No place for lobbying.
• I would like to see a lot of council members for each Vertical. Agree with the proposal of 9 out of 20.
• Council should rotate every 3 months, as I suggested in Brutus.
• If timing becomes problematic, why not change funding periods from 1 month to 2 months or 3 months? That way, 2 or 3 weeks of processual timing would not make that much of a difference.

Thanks!

[Kemal]

@Grace

As of Jan 2022, we invite all NEAR Community members to join the various Community DAOs as Council Members. We welcome active community contributors aligned with the community values and vision to actively participate in the decision-making process on all matters related to our Community development and engagement.

It is great to see that what was once a vision now becomes true. I think this is the most important step towards a decentralized and most important community-oriented ecosystem. I will eagerly follow the process and looking forward when you open call for candidates. And thank @Grace for this great initiative which brings us closer to a decentralized future!

[Grace]

Thanks to all for your feedback! Its nice to learn different points of view, it reaffirms that we are in this together and we seek the same purpose.

As mentioned. We will hold an AMA on Tuesday, Dec 21st. Here is the event link
Everyone is welcomed to join, share your thoughts or clarify any doubts or concerns you may have.

Hope you see you all there!

[Kemal]

@Grace

Here is the calendar link

Hey @Grace, the link doesn’t work, could you update it please?

[nullzero]

Had some struggle with the link too. Thanks for so much information and we’re looking forward to being here.

[jack]

@Grace

Selection of candidates for both Pools

should staking 1K stNEAR in Council Pool DAO(Initiated by NF) as credit

[Grace]

Thank you for pointing it out. It is now added to the near.org events page: Proposed DAO Structure AMA (Community Driven DAOs)

[Dacha]

@frnvpr

council work has to be extremely soft, probably no more than half an hour per week,

Agree.

@Grace

rewards in accordance with the activity of the DAO)

Who will control it?

[ALuhning]

@Grace

DAO Council members will be drawn from a pool of vetted candidates (criteria for vetting needs to be defined and published publicly) and rotated every three months (there must be at least a 3-month gap between two tenures across Community DAOs). This approach offers more opportunities for community members to serve as Council Members.

If underlying reason for rotating every three months is to provide an opportunity for more members to serve as Council Members, then one could also consider a setup of continuous delegation. Then you could do away with the timeframes and let people serve on the Council for as long as the community deems them worthy to do so - with every person in the community having equal opportunity to become a member of the Council while still reaping the benefits that experience/tenure provide.

Some of the issues I envision with a three month turnover and enforcing three month gaps between serving on other DAOs:

• it takes people time to get accustomed to a role and become efficient with the work, with three month turnover, you are constantly invoking a state of chaos in the system as transitions occur and new Council members learn how to be Council members;

• if you don’t do something like stagger the rotations, you may end up with a completely new Council every three months. That could cause large shifts in direction/how things are run with every new Council that will inevitably cause friction in the community; and

• limited tenures and gaps between eligibility poses risks for participation and community retention. People drawn to leadership/managerial/council positions are the same people who are not necessarily going to wait around for three months or another shot - would suggest there is high potential they will go get involved in something else and you’ll lose their experience.

Potential Recommendation

Consider a system of continuous delegation. For example, if the Council is going to be nine members, then give every member of the community nine votes. Allow them to assign their vote to any nine members from the pool of eligible/identified potential Council members at any time, including switching at will. Automatically designate the nine members with the highest number of delegated votes as the Council members.

The council will change as people delegate their votes to other people (including themselves if they desire). That may better reflect the will of the community and if council members are doing incredible jobs, that will be recognized and they’ll remain council members (why shake it up if it’s working really well?). Likewise if someone isn’t fulfilling the role, no need to wait three months - once the community decides they leave, their vote delegations make it so.

Vetting Candidates

Do think this is a good idea - at very least to determine a minimum level of understanding of the community prior to being involved in decision making for it. Would suggest some of the criteria include:

• minimum length of time as a member of the community. Whether they participate or not, hopefully they are observing/learning the culture and purpose/values of the community

• maybe a threshold knowledge quiz that confirms both working of governance mechanisms (Astro/tools used) and understanding of the goals/vision of the community

• no anonymity - if someone is making decisions for the group, those votes should be public and should be a minimum level of transparency required otherwise probably find little accountability for decisions taken (should be a reputational hit if they do something malicious)

• good standing reputation in the community (although this is something that vote delegation helps confirm anyways).

Just some thoughts. Hope they’re helpful.

[jlwaugh]

Thank you Grace for leading such an important discussion! Just wanted to articulate one point below…

@Grace

Each DAO will have 9 Council Members. Initially, there will be a maximum of 3 NF team members (⅓) in each DAO. The ultimate goal is for NF team members to remove themselves from all DAOs Council after the second quarter in 2022.

This probably wouldn’t work because it’s a significant vulnerability for NF. Let’s imagine someone sends 100 NEAR to a Community DAO with 6 of 9 council members who are not NF employees. They could approve payouts without following the rules, and NF might be responsible. Furthermore, we can’t guarantee our team will ever be removed from the council.

Alternatively, if we start with a majority of council members from NF, then we could let others vote first in order to gauge community approval. Or if it has to be 6 of 9 members from outside NF, we can simply raise the approval threshold to 7 of 9.

Thoughts?

[Grace]

Thank you to all who participated in today’s AMA on this subject.

Great questions on council composition, responsibility, fund distributions, conflict of interest, etc.

Hope you found it informative, there is still a lot of work to get done but with your feedback we are confident we will get the process started.