As outlined in The Next Phase of the RadicleDAO, the goal of this workstream is to do an “audit” of our governance tooling stack, processes, and parameters to ensure a well-functioning and accessible DAO as we approach transitioning fully by February 2023. The current deliverables of this workstream are:
- Provide a landscape review of DAO tooling providers (e.g. Tally, Wonderverse, Otterverse etc…)
- Guiding Question: What new DAO tools can be used to improve Radicle governance processes?
- Set of design criteria for well-functioning and accessible governance (e.g. reimbursed voting fees, discourse/discord integrations etc…)
- Guiding Questions: What pain points do governance participants have? How should we re-evaluate our governance parameters (e.g. proposal & quorum thresholds 2)?
We have already started inviting DAO tooling projects to demo their tools to the Radicle community via Discord. The goal is to get a landscape review of who’s building what, and start evaluating these tools with Radicle’s needs in mind. We’ve already hosted Otterspace, Parcel, Guild, and Boardroom - just to name a few - and have been capturing our notes in the Governance Tooling Archive. The next steps are to start evaluating each tool and consolidate a set of recommendations for what tools address existing issues or could offer improvements to Radicle’s governance process moving forward. If you’d like to propose a project that you’d like to see a demo of, please feel free to respond to this post or reach out on Discord!
We also wanted to quickly note that this temperature check is heavily intertwined with the Org Design temperature check and as the thinking around that evolves, it will act as a guide for what tooling and best process practices for this workstream.
Workstream Contributor(s): @shelb_ee
Further Guiding Questions
To help us consider what governance tools would be most beneficial for the Radicle community, it might be helpful to consider the following questions.
- What are our governance “must-haves”? What elements does a “dream governance process” have?
- What do we want to get rid of/what do we definitely need to change about the current governance process and stack?
- What other issues/pain-points with the current governance process/stack?
- What are some potential future governance pain-points after fully transitioning to the DAO?
Current Governance Process & Stack
Radicle’s current governance process is a 4-step process outlined in detail in this README. The following are the current tools and platforms used to facilitate and communicate governance at Radicle.
- Voting:
- Snapshot: off-chain consensus for Formal Review (third stage)
- Sybil: on-chain voting for Governance Proposals (final stage)
- Communication/Resources:
- Discord: Governance section & governance-updates channel for proposal notifications
- Discourse: proposal discussion & debate (first and second stage)
- Governance Hub (Notion)
- Active Delegate Platform (Notion)
- Notifications:
- Radicle Governance Twitter
- Discord Governance Updates channel
- Radicle Governance Updates newsletter (bi-weekly)
Evaluation of the Current Governance Process/Tools
To help understand what tools might be most useful for our community, it is helpful to understand a few existing issues with the current process. Earlier this year, the governance core team conducted a series of interviews with Radicle contributors and investors to see what issue they ran into while trying to participate in the governance process or barriers that were keeping them from participating in the first place. The following is a collection of some of the issues discussed in these calls and from the governance core team. This is by no means a complete list.
- Findability of governance resources and documentation. Current governance documentation lives on various public Notion pages and that are updated and maintained by the governance core team and across Discourse. These links are not listed on the Radicle website, sending folks to sift through Discord, Discourse and Twitter to find the information they are looking for. This also makes uniform on-boarding of new members difficult.
- Lack of version controlled governance docs. As the DAO matures, it will be important for organization and transparency reasons to have more official version-controlled documentation.
- Automation of certain tasks to ensure up-to-date information and resources. There is also a lot of manual work for the governance core team, including transferring all data to Active Delegate Platform when new delegates announce themselves, updating proposal tracker in Governance Hub. These processes could potentially be automated on version controlled pages to make sure the community always has the most recent information.
- Staying up to date with information and governance announcements. Are we using too many platforms/mediums of communication for governance? Could they be better organized? Should communication expectation standards be set for each? How do we control that?
- Sybil’s infrastructure issues. What other platforms exist that solves these problems? What would the transition process from Sybil to another platform look like/what challenges could come up?
- Sybil provides two links for the Radicle profile - Sybil vs gov.radicle.network. One lets you vote and the other doesn’t. This has been a point of confusion in the past that seems unnecessary.
- Privacy issues. The only way to verify an address on Sybil is via Twitter. This is problematic for two reasons: 1) not everyone uses Twitter and 2) some voters prefer to remain anonymous when participating in governance for various reasons.
- Sybil is no longer being maintained, meaning we cannot expect any solutions to the issues mentioned above or major support in the future. This makes is less of an ideal platform for Radicle’s governance needs going forward.
- Poor distribution of voting power amongst core contributors. There have been attempts to help remedy this with re-distribution/delegation campaigns but still is unbalanced and not a long-term solution. Are there DAO tools/different voting mechanisms that could help here?
Looking Forward - Future Challenges to Address
Potential issues after transition to the DAO:
- Payroll, invoicing and contracts. How will contributors get access to important documents needed to do their taxes, show proof of employment, get a visa, etc.? DAOs will still have to service these needs of core contributors going forward.
- SubDAO on-boarding and coordination. How can we support and nurture the formation of subDAOs within the Radicle network? What is needed for the smoothest on-boarding, resource sharing and support?
- Others?
Available Tools & Initial Ideas for Solutions
The following proposed solutions to some of the issues discussed above are based on the conversations with contributors and community members. The tools listed below each point are from the Governance Tooling Archive. Please see this link for the most updated details and demo notes from each DAO tool.
Make governance resources easier to find to help with on-boarding and general consensus on the governance process. This also aids in discoverability of RadicleDAO.
Potential Tools:
Radicle adding version controlled docs to the website
DAO Central
DaoLens
Station
Consolidate voting platforms - either through a new tool that handles both off- and on-chain voting or a platform that can display our off- and on-chain voting tools (currently Snapshot and Sybil) in one place (potentially through our own portal?). What would be better (why/why not?) and what options are currently out there?
Potential Tools:
Boardroom
Wonderverse
Commonwealth
Snapshot X
Rethinking incentives. Understanding the complications that can come from incentives for voting, explore ways to incentivize governance participation through: gas refunding, NFTs, etc. What tools could be useful here?
Potential Tools:
Tally - gas reimbursement for governance participation
Otterspace
Guild
Karma
Admin/payroll support
Potential Tools:
Utopia
Parcel
Wonderverse
Sub-DAO support
Potential Tools:
Orca
Station
Karma
Better distribution of influence. Introducing a non-financialized layer of governance could support better balance of decision-making power among the core contributors. What could this look like and how could this help give more voting power to dedicated contributors to the project? (see Org Design Workstream post)
Potential Tools:
Otterspace
Guild
Reminder: You can find these tools and more on the Governance Tooling Archive. As I mentioned above, we recommend you reference this page as it will be updated and curated as our research into DAO tooling continues.
Open discussion
Now is the time to let it all out and voice problems, concerns and visions for Radicle’s governance process and tools going forward! I look forward to your feedback, comments and questions!