House of Stake Mandate

House of Stake Governance
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I’m putting this into a standalone topic here, in the interest of sharing it for comment, and also so that I can link to it from multiple other places.

We (the HoS core team) had extensive conversations face to face two weeks ago, and we also had the opportunity to discuss House of Stake with NEAR Foundation leadership. We all agreed on the importance of having a relatively narrow initial mandate, i.e., initial scope: the things that we want to see House of Stake achieve in its first “season.” Note that, while it makes sense to keep this list fixed for some period of time, until we’ve been able to deliver some early wins, we do believe that this list will evolve over time as HoS matures and builds capacity, and as its role in the broader NEAR ecosystem evolves.

Here’s the mandate:

  1. Economic governance (of NEAR protocol and other NEAR products)
    • Treasury management
    • Programs to support economic sustainability
    • Economic parameters
      • Inflation
      • Fee switch for AI products, intents, etc.
  2. Technical governance
    • Incremental, narrow scope to begin
    • e.g., MPC signers for chain signatures
    • Determine which NEPs should be escalated to HoS
      • Anything that can’t be governed on Github
  3. Build Legitimacy
    • Maximize the amount of NEAR/veNEAR in the system
    • Participation by broad subset of the community
      • Decentralise Screening Committee
    • Put in place policy: mission vision values, constitution, charters, policy, co-creation cycles
  4. Grow Engagement and Ecosystem Health
    • In the DAO, in governance, in the protocol, in NEAR ecosystem more broadly
    • Decentralized stakeholders participate in governance

Note that the first two items here are the most important, and I expect we’ll spend 80% of our time and resources on these two.

Also note the following explicit anti-mandates, i.e., things to avoid:

  1. Grants for the sake of grants. House of Stake won’t have an official “grants program” for now, and there won’t be a free for all for funding requests. This is something NEAR hasn’t done well in the past, and it’s something that NDC didn’t do well either. Proposals that target the above mandate items may, of course, include requests for funding for specific uses.
  2. Full technical governance of the NEAR protocol, or of other products including Chain Signatures, NEAR Intents, and NEAR AI. These products are all extraordinarily complex and House of Stake doesn’t have the necessary technical expertise, and isn’t well positioned, to own this anytime soon. We’ll start with less complex technical governance tasks, such as the one outlined above: governing the Chain Signatures MPC signer set, and build capacity to take on more technical governance in the future.
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Thanks for publishing this mandate in a standalone topic. I think the clarity here is a big step forward. Narrowing scope makes sense, especially if the goal is to rack up early wins and build legitimacy.

One thing I’d like to surface, drawing from my experience with governance processes in other ecosystems (Jito on Solana, for example), is the importance of governance memory and outcome tracking.

Right now, you’ve set ambitious goals around economic governance and technical governance. But both of these will generate decisions whose outcomes will only become clear months later. (e.g., whether a treasury allocation program supported sustainability, or whether a change to inflation parameters impacted validator and user participation.)

In my view, HoS can strengthen legitimacy by not only making decisions, but also by tracking and reviewing them over time. This doesn’t need to be heavy-weight: even a simple system for logging proposals, mapping intended outcomes, and setting lightweight review checkpoints (30/60/90 days) can go a long way in (1) providing transparency, (2) making governance more data-driven, and (3) reinforcing the community’s trust that we’re learning as we go.

I’ve been working on a framework I call the Governance Memory System (GMS), which is essentially a structured way to log governance actions, track outcomes, and loop learnings back into future decisions. I’d be happy to share a small pilot example with HoS if it’s useful, even applied to a single proposal, to show how this could slot into the current mandate without expanding scope too much.

To me, this ties directly into the “build legitimacy” and “grow engagement and ecosystem health” pillars of the mandate. It ensures HoS doesn’t just make decisions, but also demonstrates accountability for those decisions over time.

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Hi Othman, thanks for sharing this. I see a lot of value in the idea you’ve proposed. I agree that, for accountability purposes, it’s super important that we not just say we’re going to do things, but that we indeed track how well we’re doing.

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It seems this entire scope can be handled without our Community funds (NDC treasury).

I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

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Is there a process for rewarding contributors?

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Are you referring to The HoS treasury?

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Does the security council hold MPC authority over NDC funds currently? Are they also signers on The HoS treasury?

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Appreciate that, Lane, glad the idea resonates.

To keep things transparent and actionable, I’ll put together a brief memo outlining what an accountability layer could look like for the first House of Stake season. The goal isn’t to add new bureaucracy but to make sure we can clearly see how decisions translate into outcomes, especially around the core economic governance items.

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Is there a plan on how to do this?

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We don’t have a formal process in place yet, but as you’re aware, a “compensation committee” group has been discussing this for a while. Now would be a great time to see some concrete proposals!

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No, NDC funds are custodied by the NDC trustees. The security council members are not signatories on the HoS treasury. The signatories are the NEAR House of Stake Foundation director, our accountant, and Bowen from NEAR One.

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Yes. This will be an all-hands-on-deck situation. Once HoS is fully live, maximizing engagement and the amount of NEAR in the system becomes our top priority. We’ve discussed this extensively - it involves a lot of outreach to various stakeholder groups, an effort that @bearmans has been leading. Of course it’ll require community support as well.

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