Financial Proposal: A Path to Decentralised Governance (dGov S1 COMPLETE)

Thank you this does clarify and what you outline is ideal. It would be great to have this type of governance participation by the end of S1 as a result of proposed efforts to build awareness, engagement and community participation S1.

In the proposal planning Stakeholder identification is proposed along with Research and Applied Practice as an advisory function of the dGov circle - accounted for in the requested budget - to enable funding for diversity of governance perspectives cc @alex-kampa @mheuer @Sertac @GriffGreen

VOTING:Aragon Voice

At least for me, some of the details of this proposal are difficult to assess prior to the vote planned in early June that will go a long way in setting the high-level objectives/priorities when it comes to governance. Similar to others who have commented in this thread, I do like how you’ve broken down the deliverables, but I think their final form and prioritization will be materially impacted by the early June vote. What I’m a bit worried about is “analysis paralysis” and trying to do everything at once, instead of starting with a small set of core objectives/activities that are easy to communicate, understand, and iterate upon. Choosing between the on-chain DAO vs. legal wrapper route and revising the Charter are good examples of this, and both are essential for devising the action plan for the rest of the year. Anyway, my two cents. Regardless of the outcome of the June vote, I think the work described in this proposal has the potential to do a lot of good for the DAO.

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It took so much time for me to develop a response to this proposal that it passed in the vote. I will therefore drastically reduce my input. 1. This proposal is necessary for the development of Aragon, there is no doubt that governance processes need to be improved and strengthened, especially considering the transition that is taking place. 2. I think a lot of weight has been put on strengthening individuals but less on changing structure. I think the barrier to participation is still too high. Some ideas for lowering it:

  1. Pay attention to the language used in the proposals (easier to access and less technical)
  2. Leave room for expression by formulating open questions at the end of each proposal.
  3. Create a safe space (psycological safety) for debate with facilitators to ensure this space.

As Umbrella team we will also try to implement trust as much as possible to enhance participation in the governance. Looking forward to collaborate.

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Thanks for your feedback! The beauty of decentralised governance (and climbing) is this openess to and learning from a diversity of approaches.

dGov like all plans its only a starting point, as per the Dawn Wall analogy my approach is to tackle one pitch ‘problem’ and ‘crux’ at at a time…and the problem with Charter (to date) has been lack of incentives to coordinate and resource the time and talent to drive the process forward. My aproach to this problem is to seek funding to resource a more decentralised (vs centralised ESD) and flexible governance contributor base.

Certainly, interested so see which route we take on the legal vs onchain approach to this first crux - and although I have preferneces Im more interested in reaching the top of the wall than the specific route selected - Im not here to drive the decision in either direction but to build awareness understanding and participation from as broad a community of ANT holder as we can gather.

I see dGov as the community support system of ropes, belays, quickdraws and bolts that stop us plummeting to the bottom of the cliff when we make attempts that fail, because we won’t get it right everytime. The right support systems will help ensure we can continue to face and surmount the challenges that progressive decentrlised governance is bound to present.

And at this point in the proposal process, Im just keen to starting working on these problems with other people…

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Unltil such time as the vote is finalised it is never to late to voice your perspective and inform the outcome. I agree on all your points regarding the barriers to participation and hope dGov can address this. On your points as to the time required to develop a response and paying attention to the language used, I routinely dilema over the communications I post in this forum. It takes much more time for me to develop responses and incorporate everyones feedback than this thread would refelct.

I recognise that the proposal as it stands does not reflect the wealth of input garnered in the forum, and discussions to date but everyones input has certainly informed the work in Notion.

If funded I hope our results will evidence my belief that decentralised goverance can only benefit from diversity of perspectives and if I had an open ended question it would be a call for collaboration. Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, I hope goverance will find a place within every team and I hope we have the opportunity to collaborate to increase trust and participation.

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Sure, just wanted to add that my answer was not related to this proposal specifically but more broadly for conversations in the forum and the different points that might hold a member back from participating more actively in the forum.

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Hi @lee0007! Thank you for this amazing work you are doing to facilitate governance decentralisation! :heart_hands::hugs:
I also happy to see a lot of comments here, fascinating!)
I confirm the necessity to fund a dedicated dGov team who should take on your initiative and facilitate simplicity of decision making process, diversity of the decision makers and effectivity of the decisions.
Here is my feedback :blush:

I suggest that the main deliverable would be to build a governance playbook in form of guidelines, some sort of constitution so everybody can have a clear understanding on how to make decisions. This can be used for a chatbot construction: :robot: the govern steward :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Here the best outcome would be to design methodological processes for different scenarios, for example: to use open space technology in order to aggregate strategic proposals in a solution-oriented way “Houston, we’ve got a problem and here are the solutions to solve it”, to use organisational-activity games for community synchronisation - “we are not align on this question, so let’s simulate the resolution” etc. These scenarios can be picked up and used by a community with facilitation from dGov team.
Actually, open space technology can be used specifically for this :slight_smile: :

and organisational-activity games can be used for this:

Next, I am not a fan of increasing participation rate because of sociological reasons, what we need is a diversity of expertise and sociological representation. So,

As an answer to above I would also add additional deliverable:
As governance depends mostly on culture and traditions rather than a technology, we need to establish decentralised-by-design scalable ceremony. For this purpose I suggest to use the design thinking methodology involving key stakeholders - contributors, ESD members, hodlers, AA members, developers etc.

Next,

This is unclear for me and looks like designing a horse in a vacuum :slight_smile: What methodology did you use to identify these functions?
I would recommend and even can facilitate open space methodology to identify challenges first, then establish working groups and produce inside of the groups specific set of functions related to the challenge. Let’s keep it simple, okkam’s blade :hocho:
True

I would love to join this initiative, I was researching aspects of governance in context of social-economic dynamics for several years and now applying my knowledge and skills by facilitating organisation and governance processes for grassroots democratic movement of belarusian civil society fighting for freedom and right to return back our home.
Actually I’ve proposed before to take a govern master roll in a Discord
At this point I see that I can help by providing advisory, facilitation and advocacy contributions, but I’m gonna need to onboard analyst and content writer:) I also was thinking that I can publish my research findings from the work with civil society under the Aragon brand, I thought that I can post a separate proposal for it, but it actually can fit this proposal as well. What do you think?

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Thank you for your wealth of feedback @MikeAnanyin as the vote had already passed when you feedback landed, the proposed deliverables are what I now need to deliver on.

However, how the deliverables are achieved by the team is something we seek advisors and contributors for, there is certainly an opportunity for you to participate and happy to arrange a time to talk to build a better understanding of your offered approaches

There is a need and role for this within the current dGov functions as this proposal was developed based on my personal understanding - and progressively refined over several weeks of feedback - that we have some clear current needs in terms of upcoming proposals, Charter changes and community awareness/engagement/participation.

The proposal was developed in recognition of the widely understood need for diverse governance and stakeholder engagement @fartunova is developing the conversation here which we welcome your input on.

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May 2022 dGov Report

This report represents operation deliverables worked on during the proposal process and completed since funding was approved 23 May 2022. At today’s date dGov has 21 identified functional roles, currently two responsible core contributors a flexible cross-guild circle, flexible advisory circle plus bounties . Reporting based on ESD Template

[# status ]
[#] = number of functional role(s)
[status] = Not Started, In Progress, Complete, Priority, Specified

Impact Deliverables

  1. Decentralise: Support work to document Charter adaptations [1 In Progress] [1 Not Started] [Priority] Deliverable split see #2

  2. Awareness: Publish a governance timeline/calendar to promote and raise community awareness and forum engagement and voting participation [2 In Progress]

  3. Decentralise: Investigate, compare and propose governance tooling and community mechanisms that support decentralised governance with at least one supported proposal (31 July) [1 In Progress]

  4. Understanding: Plan and propose in collab with the community (30 June) the delivery of a series of governance workshops to help our community define the AN DAO Mission, Vision and Values that inform individual positions on Governance proposals and voting. [2 In Progress]

  5. Engagement: Provide a community touchpoint for proposal authors to seek guidance on proposals, seek feedback if requested and clarify questions as to the governance process [ Advisory Function, In Progress]

Operational Deliverables

  1. Participation: Surface and define S1 Governance roles/functions to be shared between members of the dGov Coordinape circle (30 May) [1 In Progress] Revised Due Date 30 June

  2. Engagement: % Increase from baseline of participation in discord and forum based on the preceeding three months (Feb-Apr) (May-July) [1 In Progress] [2 Not Started]

  3. Responsibility: Provide easy access to documentation of dGov team member responsibilities, aligned objectives and metrics (30 May) [1 Complete] [1 Survey Required ]

  4. Accountability: Ensure routine and operational governance tasks have performance metrics applied for tracking and reporting (30 May) [1 Complete] [1 Not Started ] Pending June Hand Off to Governance Performance Analysts

  5. Understanding: Governance community survey to inform accountability, workshops and governance discussion (15 June) (31 July) [1 Not Started] [Priority]

  6. Understanding: Document frequently asked questions to build shared understanding for inclusion in Community handbook v 2.0 [1 Not Started]

Routine Deliverables

  1. Transparency: Monthly performance analysis & reporting [In Progress]
  2. Transparency: Monthly community call [Scheduled]
  3. Transparency: Weekly activity documentation [In Progress]
  4. Accountability: Weekly teams meetings and goal setting & performance tracking [In Progress]
  5. Engagement: Weekly governance topic/reading/discussions [Priority]

Funding Request

Total:10,500

Financial transparency here and here. Finalised record of payments will be reflected by 15 June 2022

References

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June 2022 dGov Report

At today’s date dGov has 31 identified functional roles. DAO contributors across every guild have stepped up to support the S1 dGov Community Mission. Thank you to everyone that has rallied!

June was quite on the governance support mission #1 with only three Charter Improvement Proposals (CIP) currently under discussion CIP 0 CIP 1 CIP 2 but as teams on all sides prep for S2 financial proposals and at least three Charter Improvement Proposals moving to vote: July is looking to busy. How busy? Check out the S1 Governance Transparency & Key Dates

Reporting based on ESD Template

[# status ]
[#] = number of functional role(s)
[status] = Not Started, In Progress, Complete, Priority, Specified

Impact Deliverables

  1. Decentralise: Support work to document Charter adaptations [3 In Progress]

  2. Awareness: Publish a governance timeline/calendar to promote and raise community awareness and forum engagement and voting participation [+2 here here, In Progress]

  3. Decentralise: Investigate, compare and propose governance tooling and community mechanisms that support decentralised governance with at least one supported proposal (31 July) [1 In Progress]

  4. Understanding: Plan and propose in collab with the community (30 June) the delivery of a series of governance campfire (3) workshops (2) to help our community define the AN DAO Mission, Vision and Values that inform individual positions on Governance proposals and voting. [Scheduled, In Progress]

  5. Engagement: Provide a community touchpoint for proposal authors to seek guidance on proposals, seek feedback if requested and clarify questions as to the governance process [Proposal S2 Workshops & Debrief Scheduled]

Operational Deliverables

  1. Participation: Surface and define S1 Governance roles/functions to be shared between members of the dGov Coordinape circle (30 May) [1 Complete] Revised Due Date 30 June. All core support functional roles are now assigned.

  2. Engagement: % Increase from baseline of participation in discord and forum based on the preceding three months (Feb-Apr) (May-July) [Baseline, In Progress] [Priority]

  3. Responsibility: Provide easy access to documentation of dGov team member responsibilities, aligned objectives and metrics (30 May) [1 Complete May 30] [1 July Survey Required ]

  4. Accountability: Ensure routine and operational governance tasks have performance metrics applied for tracking and reporting (30 May) [1 Complete 30 May] [Baseline, In Progress] [Priority]

  5. Understanding: Governance community survey to inform accountability, workshops and governance discussion (15 June, Complete) (15 July, not started) [Survey Complete, Analysis In Progress] [Priority]

  6. Understanding: Document frequently asked questions to build shared understanding for inclusion in Community handbook v 2.0 [In Progress]

Routine Deliverables

  1. Transparency: Monthly performance analysis & reporting [In Progress, see references below ]
  2. Transparency: Monthly community call [Meeting Agenda & Minutes]
  3. Transparency: Weekly activity documentation [June 2022]
  4. Accountability: Weekly tactical goal setting & activity tracking {June 2022]
  5. Engagement: Weekly governance topic/reading/discussions [In Progress]

Changes to funding allocation

In the proposal, it was indicated that every participant would be rewarded via coordinape. This has now changed.

  1. In June, due to the cross-functional nature and many moving parts of the dGov efforts, it seemed highly unlikely that people would have the bandwidth to build context about governance support across every guild. Such context is needed to effectively allocate GIVE to others via coordinape. As such I decided to provide fixed incentives tied to very specific deliverables and success metrics rather than reward via coordinape.

  2. After receiving $2550 for rewards for the entire month of May via the advisory coordinape circle I have removed the funding I budgeted for core dGov from the circle mechanism to fix a 5k per month reward. While I will participate in coordinape circles to allocate and receive GIVE I would not be funded via the dGov advisory or community circles.

I am keen to hear from anyone that feels these changes are not ok, or out of order. The funding now looks like this:

  • Core: Fixed reward @lee0007
  • Flexible: DeWork (17)
  • Advisory: coordinape experiment here
  • Community: July begin testing coordinape

Funding Request

Total: $20,725 | ANT $2072.50 | USDC $18652.50

References

cc @Ricktik6

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Thank you @lee0007
I would like to suggest that the real on-chain outflow is reported, which result in the following distribution:

Funding Request

Total: $27.475 | ANT $2.748 | USDC $24.728

  • Coordinape: $5000 Core Advisory Circle to reward efforts in June in relation to Charter Improvement Proposals
  • Core $7450 @lee0007 Roles & Reporting $5000 fixed per month May & June less $2550 owing from May advisory coorodinape experiment
  • Bounties: $8275 based on projected rewards owning 30 June. Currently, 17 creator and core support roles are rewarded
  • Coordinape May: $6750 from May advisory Coordinape experiment

Note: A significant part of May on-chain outflow was postponed which result in an additional 6.75k (May advisory circle) + 2.45k (@lee0007 filler to 5k fixed reward) outflow in June

Disagree @Ricktik6

  1. Let’s not confuse cashflow with expenses. This is the funding requested based on June expenses. dGov advisory payments from May was requested last month as it was a May expense. It is owing (cashflow). This information is all available in the transparency post linked in my report

  2. More importantly let’s not confuse budgeted expenses or expected cashflow with final onchain payments. For dGov June actual expenses are yet to confirmed. June coordinape cicle for advisory is yet to close, let alone be finalised.

Cc @AClay fair to say we should not report the onchain outflow prior to onchain payments being made?

My reporting provides the advise

And I link the dework, notion and forum post dedicated to dGov financial transparency for the advisory circle, which is updated as the actual figures become available S1 dGov Transparency: Advisory Funding Coordinape Experiment [COMPLETE]

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I agree that the funding request and actual onchain payments will often differ, I should have stated updated/expected on-chain outflow*

My point was that we already knew that 27k was going out instead of 20k so therefore the remark.

I don’t want to make a big deal of it, as everyone can monitor the actual outflows in the monthly reports that Finance Squad is publishing.

Yes agree with @lee0007 here, the reporting and the cash flow management are separate.

The reporting and outflow are separate points.

Your reporting is correct @lee0007 and we will then need to account the difference in cashflow in the Finance sheet @Ricktik6

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My fail posted in the wrong location see Financial Proposal: Demoing a Tao Voting DAO - #2 by lee0007

July 2022 dGov Report

At today’s date dGov has distributed 39 identified functional roles. The process to distribute governance support has had it’s challenges. It was expected that there would be roles offered that would have been easier to do myself but the point was to decentralise governance towards the community and away from myself as a member of the ESD. Ultimately weaknesses are a reflection of my own leadership failings. That said, contributors in diverse places have delivered above and beyond, without me and my heartfelt thanks go out those crew, you know who you are.

S1 Impact Deliverables 3.16 / 5 COMPLETE

  1. [In Progress] - Decentralise: Support work to document Charter adaptations 3 Voting 1 Proposed 2 In progress

  2. [COMPLETED] - Awareness: Publish a governance timeline/calendar to promote and raise community awareness and forum engagement and voting participation + here + here

  3. [COMPLETED] - Decentralise: Investigate, compare and propose governance tooling and community mechanisms that support decentralised governance with at least one supported proposal (31 July) ** Demoing a TAO Voting DAO

  4. [In Progress] - Understanding: Plan and propose in collab with the community (30 June) the delivery of a series of governance campfire (3) workshops (2) to help our community define the AN DAO Mission, Vision and Values that inform individual positions on Governance proposals and voting. [2 COMPLETE Trust, Community Rituals, 1 Scheduled] Here’s a snapshot of dGov contributor values captured to date

  5. [In Progress] - Engagement: Provide a community touchpoint for proposal authors to seek guidance on proposals, seek feedback if requested and clarify questions as to the governance process S2 Workshops 1 COMPLETE & 1 Scheduled

S1 Operational Deliverables 4/6 COMPLETE

  1. [COMPLETE] Participation: Surface and define S1 Governance roles/functions to be shared between members of the dGov Coordinape circle (30 June) .

  2. [PRIORITY] Engagement: % Increase from baseline of participation in discord and forum based on the preceding three months (Feb-Apr) (May-July) **[6 Month Baseline here 3:3 Month Performance Comparison, In progress]

  3. [COMPLETE] - Responsibility: Provide easy access to documentation of dGov team member responsibilities, aligned objectives and metrics (30 May)

  4. [COMPLETE] - Accountability: Ensure routine and operational governance tasks have performance metrics applied for tracking and reporting

  5. [COMPLETE] - Understanding: Governance community survey to inform accountability, workshops and governance discussion (15 June, Complete) (15 July, not started) Survey & Analysis

  6. [PIVOT]- Understanding: Document frequently asked questions to build shared understanding for inclusion in Community handbook v 2.0 Shared Conversations. People have a vast array of questions about Governance for which there is no easy way to present Q & A in the handbook. The handbook would be best used to highlight key governance documents, as the dGov survey shows that more than 20% of people surveyed were not aware of the existence of the Charter and subsequently Community Guidelines. The Pivot here is to apply both the FAQ and S1 learning experiment to gamify the context-building process for DAO governance through self-paced discovery and learning.

Monthly Routine Deliverables - ALL COMPLETE JULY

  1. Transparency: Monthly performance analysis & reporting [Complete May June July]
  2. Transparency: Monthly community call Meeting Agenda & Minutes
  3. Transparency: Weekly activity documentation July 2022
  4. Accountability: Weekly tactical goal setting & activity tracking July 2022
  5. Engagement: Weekly governance topic/reading/discussions In Progress

Changes to funding allocation

The dGov Advisory Coordinape Experiment is COMPLETE. Instead, all governance contributors will have opportunity to reward each other in a single end of season August Coordinape Circle, as the more collective approach to decentralised governance participation.

Funding Request

Total USDC Equivalent $18,725 (transparency update based on finalised payments)

References

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dGov Season 2022

$72,000 S1 Funding Requested
$61,545 S1 Funding Allocated


$TBD S1 Remaining


ROLE MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST S1 TOTALS
Core 2550 5000 5000 5000 17550
Flexible 1250 9525 8625 11095 30495
Coordinape 6600 2150 5100 - 13850
TOTALS 10400 16675 18725 16095 61545

Please note figures are subject to finalising August creator bounties

S1 Impact Deliverables 100% COMPLETE

  1. [COMPLETE]- Decentralise: Support work to document Charter adaptations 3 Voted 1 Proposed 2 In progress. Hard Stop when CIP 0-2 failed to meet quorum signalling clear lack of ANT holder support to adapt the Charter.

  2. [COMPLETED] - Awareness: Publish a governance timeline/calendar to promote and raise community awareness and forum engagement and voting participation + here + here

  3. [COMPLETED] - Decentralise: Investigate, compare and propose governance tooling and community mechanisms that support decentralised governance with at least one supported proposal (31 July) ** Demoing a TAO Voting DAO

  4. [COMPLETE] - Understanding: Plan and propose in collab with the community (30 June) the delivery of a series of governance campfire (3) workshops (2) to help our community define the AN DAO Mission, Vision and Values that inform individual positions on Governance proposals and voting. [COMPLETE 2 Campfire’s Trust & Community Rituals, 2 Workshops S2 Planning, S2 Debrief TAO Voting 3 Param Parties & 3 Debates & Final Proposal

  5. [COMPLETE] - Engagement: Provide a community touchpoint for proposal authors to seek guidance on proposals, seek feedback if requested and clarify questions as to the governance process dGov Advisory 1 2

S1 Operational Deliverables 100% COMPLETE

  1. [COMPLETE] Participation: Surface and define S1 Governance roles/functions to be shared between members of the dGov Coordinape circle (30 June) .

  2. [COMPLETE] Engagement: % Increase from baseline of participation in discord and forum based on the preceding three months (Feb-Apr) (May-July) [6 Month Baseline here 3:3 Month Performance here]

  3. [COMPLETE] - Responsibility: Provide easy access to documentation of dGov team member responsibilities, aligned objectives and metrics (30 May)

  4. [COMPLETE] - Accountability: Ensure routine and operational governance tasks have performance metrics applied for tracking and reporting

  5. [COMPLETE] - Understanding: Governance community survey to inform accountability, workshops and governance discussion S1 Survey & Analysis

  6. [PIVOT, COMPLETE]- Understanding: Document frequently asked questions to build shared understanding for inclusion in Community handbook v 2.0. As reported July recommend that the FAQ and S1 learning experiment content be repurposed to gamify the context-building process for DAO governance through self-paced discovery and learning. A plan was perpared here as part of the S2 Proposal which is considered unlikely to progress due to lack of transparency and strategic alignment with AA.

Monthly Routine Deliverables - 100% COMPLETE S1

  1. Transparency: Monthly performance analysis & reporting [Complete May June July Aug]
  2. Transparency: Monthly community call Meeting Agenda & Minutes
  3. Transparency: Weekly activity documentation Aug 2022
  4. Accountability: Weekly tactical goal setting & activity tracking Aug 2022
  5. Engagement: Weekly governance topic/reading/discussions COMPLETE

Changes to funding allocation

There are no coordinape circles in the final month of S2. Creator bounties and fixed allocations were used and more effective in terms of allocating fair reward for impact delivered due to the limited number of governance participants when people are not directly paid to participate.

Funding Request

Total USDC Equivalent $16,095

Financial transparency: Finalised record of payments will be reflected by 15 August 2022 dGov tab here S1 Financial Position - Google Sheets

References

S1 Conclusion

Below is one conclusion via the S1 funded governance analysts. I encourage readers to draw their own conclusions from the transparency provided within this forum thread and the performance datasets linked below

S1 Governance Survey
Pre & Post dGov Discord & Forum Reported

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Thanks for the report @lee0007

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