Project title: Signal Corps’ Reimagination of the NEAR Community Fund
One-liner: A redesign of the NEAR Community Fund’s governance process using quadratic voting and a hybrid [executive + elected] council
Project DAO: Signal Corps DAO
Challenge area: Re-imagine the NEAR Community Fund
Final Report: Signal Corps’ Project D.E.S.A.pdf
Presentation: Signal Corps DAO Presentation
Project members
- Hunter Plumer (hunterplumer.near)
- Taylor Plumer ( taylorplumer.near)
- Brandon Davis (blackdogdavis.near)
Project Summary
Inspired by the RadicalxChange Foundations’ RXC Voice platform, the Signal Corps team is designing a similar yet distinct governance process for the NEAR Community Fund. While RXC Voice is designed to democratically determine the RadicalxChange’s yearly strategic priorities with broad participation from the community, Signal Corps’ proposal for the NEAR Community Fund is designed to enhance and make more community-informed collective decisions in how it awards funding to support the NEAR ecosystem of communities, DAOs, and Guilds.
| CURRENT STATE | PROPOSAL |
|---|---|
| Open submission window. Grant applicants able to apply anytime. | Monthly round-based system with alternative Fast Track option. |
| Relatively static/centralized governing body through Community Council. | Dynamic credit delegation process that allows expanding levels of decentralization over time. |
| 7 Community Council Members. | 7 Executive Council Members + 2 Elected Council Members. Elected Council members will grow over time from 2 → 4 → 6. |
| Open community poll on discourse. Simple one person one vote. No impact on actual funding decisions. | Community-based quadratic voting of different grant proposals within rounds. |
| Simple up/down voting with additional voting/quorum thresholds. | Up/down council voting with a twist. Based on a proposal’s relative vote ranking revealed in the community-based voting stage, the council voting threshold to award funding will adjust (i.e. simple or +/- 1 majority council votes based on vote position). |
| A Fast Track process allows applicants to submit anytime, but the proposal will be held to the most difficult threshold (i.e. simple majority + 1 of council votes to be approved). |
Benefits of Proposal Over Current State
- The credit delegation process allows expanding levels of decentralization grown/sprouted out from the existing core. This leads to a more distributed governing body over time while also mitigating potential attacks early in the platform’s implementation.
- Community-based quadratic voting provides a mechanism to better capture the intensity of the community’s relative preferences between proposals.
- The community’s participation in voting is not just performative, as community voting impacts the council voting thresholds needed for a proposal to be funded. This allows for easier passage of proposals most favored by the community.
- The hybrid council represented by both executive and elected members promotes leadership from the core team in guiding its vision but also enables community oversight and feedback through democratic representation.
- Fast Track option allows the system to be nimble. This is a fast moving world. There needs to be a way to react quickly to opportunities that doesn’t upset the community.
Signal Corps’ goals for this hackathon include:
- Develop whitepaper and corresponding infographic/wireframes to visually guide the reader through the proposed governance process.
- Detail not only the system-wide features, but also include examples of different user personas’ perspectives (e.g. community participants, council member).
- Engage with members of the NEAR community and others interested in open web governance.
Overview
A high-level overview of the process is outlined in four summary stages below and depicted in the following link:
- Delegate: Credit distribution/delegation. This step is used to define the ‘community’ for the round/term (* a term is expected to be quarterly and each round will be monthly). The # of credits an individual is delegated will determine voting weight in the Elect stage and how many credits are able to allocate in the Signal stage .
- Elect: Voting to elect the community-based representatives to the council.
- Signal: Community-based quadratic-voting of different grant proposals submitted for the present round.
- Award: Hybrid Executive + Elected Council voting to determine whether a proposal is awarded funds. Threshold for approving funds impacted by proposals’ relative votes received in Signal stage.
