[Discussion] Governance Improvements Proposal

👩‍⚖️ Governance ⚡ Proposal Drafts
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Proposal Champions
Shelby Steidl - @shelb_ee | shelb_ee#9785
Abbey Titcomb - @abbey | abbey#5646

The official discussion for the Governance Improvements proposal. With this post, the proposal has entered the second phase of the governance process. Please review the drafted proposal and contribute feedback by Tuesday, February 28th.

Purpose

The following proposal is an overview of governance updates supporting the DAO’s adoption of a new ecosystem model. The proposed updates are made by the Community & Governance team and are based in learnings gathered throughout the last year of stewarding the DAO. These updates also aim to make it easier for RadicleDAO members to follow governance proposals, participate in governance, and understand the DAO’s ecosystem model.

Overview & Background

The Radicle project is on the journey of “transitioning to the DAO”. As part of this journey, the RadicleDAO is adopting a new ecosystem model (explained in Next Steps: Introducing the Core Development Org ), where teams & contributors organize themselves within independent Orgs. Each Org exhibits its own governance processes and manages its own funds. Orgs are funded through RadicleDAO and its treasury, meaning that they will need to maintain mission-alignment and create regular governance proposals to receive treasury funding.

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Radicle Ecosystem Model

Implementation

Proposal Actions:

The two major additions to Radicle’s off-chain governance process are the Governance Manual and Proposal Directory/Template Library. These two governance resources introduce an assortment of updates that we believe will make governance of the RadicleDAO cleaner, simpler, and more effective.

Governance Manual

See: PR#2 & PR#3

Up until now, Radicle’s governance process has lived on community.radworks.org (see here) and is maintained by the Radicle Foundation’s Governance Team contributors. With the introduction of the Governance Manual, the governance process can be managed by the RadicleDAO. Radicle’s Governance Manual will be a living document outlining all processes, cycles, and rules related to governance of the RadicleDAO and its Treasury. This Governance Manual will live in a version-controlled repository (radicle-dev/radicle-governance) and can only be updated through a formal off-chain vote (see contributing.md).

The Governance Manual presents some changes to to Radicle’s on-chain and off-chain governance processes. These changes are being introduced by the Community & Governance Team based on learnings taken from facilitating governance over the last year.

These updates include the:

  • Removal of the Temperature Check step from the Governance Process
    • In theory, Temperature Checks are meant to be informal discussions around an initial idea or question, with the goal of developing a potential proposal. Yet in practice, we found proposers submitting detailed proposal drafts, typically expected in the Discussion step. While Temperature Checks will remain as an informal label for discussions on the forum, it is removed as a required step in the governance process.
  • Introduction of a formal proposal numbering scheme and proposal types: executable, social, consensus (e.g. [Executeable][RGP - #] - [PROPOSAL TITLE])
    • This will make keeping track of proposals a lot easier for contributors. The numbering of proposals throughout their journey of the governance process will make it easier to keep track of multiple active proposals at one time rather than remembering the name. The explicit mention of the proposal type in the proposal title will allow voters to know if the proposals requires an on-chain action or just needs off-chain social consensus. You can find definitions and examples of all proposal types in the Proposal Directory & Template Library (currently PR#4 )
  • Introduction of monthly proposal cycles
    • Monthly cycles will sync voting periods and establish a manageable cadence for governance participants. It will also make the proposal process more straight forward and reliable for proposal authors. We understand that emergencies may come up and will not fit in these cycles. There will be a process for emergency proposal requests.
  • Transition of governance process from Discourse to GitHub (see contributing.md)
    • Version-controlled documentation of the governance process will be crucial to track and learn from changes over time. We also have included a clear process for updating the governance process, which had not existed before.

The full description of proposed changes can be found in PR#2.

Proposal Directory & Template Library

See PR#4

A new library of proposal templates will make it easier for community members to draft and post proposals. The directory helps folks better determine where proposals should be posted within the DAO based on their goals & objectives.

The Proposal Directory & Template Library provides contributors with a set of templates that can be used to create proposals to the RadicleDAO and its various Orgs.

Reasoning & Analysis

We believe that these governance updates will greatly improve the way the RadicleDAO is governed. The Governance Manual and Proposal Template Library introduce updates that will make it easier to participate in the RadicleDAO, which we believe will support the long-term stewardship of a self-sustaining, freely accessible, open-source ecosystem.

Open Questions

  • Are the proposal types (executable, social, consensus) clear to everyone?
  • Is a monthly voting cycle a good cadence for our project?
  • What other updates do we want to make to governance in addition to this proposal? Some ideas are:
    • Governance module upgrades like Compound Governor Bravo or OpenZeppelin Governor
    • Quorum changes: Change to different participation %, make quorum based on # of voters rather than number of tokens, other?
    • Private voting: Different tools to hide individual votes, revealing only collective end result
  • Do token holders still find the Active Delegate Platform beneficial? Do we want to keep the Active Delegate Platform or rely on the delegate profiles on Boardroom or Tally?
4 Likes
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Just saw this post today. I am happy Radicle is becoming more decentralized especially with the establishment of a community managed Radicle DAO. Wish to ask the following questions

  1. Radicle dao if i am not mistaken, To make a proposals would require the individuals to hold a certain amount of $RAD irrespective of the value this individuals have incurred in the years of Radicle existence, Do you still think this method favours decentralization? i feel the community should be allowed to participate in governance of the Radicle dao irrespective of the amount of $RAD held this favours decentralization

  2. For Organizations will they exist as DAOs specific for a particular goal in relation to the Vision of Radicle example Marketing Org, Developers Org, Community Org , Startup Org , Regional Community Org ??

  3. In relation to teams, some might need to be involved in more than 1 Organizations vision how can this be managed ??

  4. I wish to Create a Regional team for Africa: Radicle Africa community tasked with Business Development, community building, marketing, event hosting, education, Developers training and project incubation how can i go about this??

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Thanks for the questions!

  1. In the current governance process, anybody with 1% of RAD delegated to their address can propose a Governance Proposal. We want to prioritize defining and creating a more coherent reputation mechanism to distribute power and influence within the project this year. Once we have a better system in place that can better reflect decentralization in the project, we can decide if it would make sense to update the governance process outlined in the Governance Manual.

  2. Think of the Orgs as sub-DAOs within RadicleDAO. Each Org will serve a specific purpose in the overall mission/vision of RadicleDAO. They will have their own coordination processes and will manage their own funds which they will have to apply for from the RadicleDAO treasury.

  3. It is definitely possible for teams or individual contributors to be involved in more than one Org/team. This is actually the idea for the marketing team, for example, which will sit under the Foundation Org - all of the other Orgs will be able to use the services provided by the marketing team. The upcoming Foundation Org proposal will outline in more detail exactly how this support from these types of teams will be managed and funded.

  4. That’s really great to hear! You could apply for a Radicle Grant! You can find more information on the Grants program here and how to apply here.

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UPDATE - ADDITION TO PROPOSAL DIRECTORY & TEMPLATE LIBRARY

We are planning to add an Org Proposal template to the Template Library in the Formal Review version of this proposal. Org Proposals are a form of Executable Proposals. They are a request to the RadicleDAO to fund groups of contributors working on different purposes, objectives, and technologies. Org Proposals are different than Grant proposals, as they outline continuous budgeted work vs. milestone-based work.

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As @shelb_ee mentioned, we’ve added an Org Proposal template as an Executable proposal sub-type to provide more guidance for those submitting funding proposals for Orgs.

This proposal includes more discrete guidelines and expectations for what Orgs need to present to be considered for DAO funding (e.g. Annual Strategy, KPIs/Objectives, Organizational Structure etc…). This template will evolve overtime as we learn more about how Orgs should operate within the RadicleDAO.

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