[Financial Proposal] Bringing Substance to the Aragon Court: Let the Eagles Fly! šŸ¦…

I appreciate the reply. That makes sense although, considering all of the unknowns in the second phase, I agree with Renee in that this should be a Proposal for phase 1. Then come back when more is known about what is needed for phase 2 to ensure you get all the resources you need.

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As already said, this thread is not intended for the discussion of a conflict resolution guild, but I think there are merits to clearly discriminate your Aragon Court proposal (especially Use Case I: Internal DAO Disputes) from a conflict resolution guild.

I am not sure if you are aware of efforts in other DAOs such as the Token Engineering Commons (TEC) around the topic of conflicts and soft-governance.
The TEC pioneered these topics and has a specific sub-DAO (Gravity DAO) specifically for conflict resolution. I participated in their second cohort training.
They are very successful at establishing a preventative conflict culture and fostering a strong social layer.

Such a guild is different from an ombuds office that only spins in action if the conflict has already grown big. On the contrary, there is active training and effort to establish a preventative culture throughout the DAO. For example, I could imagine that Ambassadors and other core contributors receive such a training by default. All of this is exclusively happening on the social layer of the DAO, and no smart contract is involved. DAO Members can then proactively solve small, emerging conflicts (themselves or by asking a mediator) before they grow into large ones. The ombuds office you mentioned sounds well-thought-out to me but seems to be still one escalation layer above what is successfully implemented at the TEC.

From what you wrote, I also assume that you think this is intended as a product that should be offered similar to court. This is not the intention.
From my perspective, a good internal conflict and error culture is an essential building block to enable productive work, especially in non-hierarchical organizations, that we should install for our DAO too.
This is tightly coupled to the community work we are doing anyway, which is why I especially value your opinion about it @Tayy.
If this works well, the guild could potentially offer trainings and services (maybe tailored specifically for Aragon DAOs) to other DAOs. This is also what Gravity DAO is doing.

Aragonā€™s past and also recent events in other DAOs (e.g., SushiSwap) demonstrate that this is a critical component. Conflicts growing over time can bring organizations to a complete halt, and we should install suitable preventative measures.

Further details regarding the implementation of a conflict resolution guild should be discussed in a separate thread.

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Thank you for the additional explaination. Now I got what you were talking about. I think that it could be a good idea, but I really struggle to see a nexus with our proposal. So perhaps it would be better to discuss the issue on another thread, as you have suggested.

I think that these systems have one important limit. Membership in DAOs is fluid and changes over time. It is difficult to instantiate a given culture concerning behaviors within a group which changes over time. From the experience that I have made in Bankless I would say that such kind of ā€œculturalā€ barrier would be very weak. Probably a non-existant one.
Moreover, I donā€™t think that it is scalabe. DAOs are growing and will become enormous ogranizations. We need fast systems of solving internal issues.
I also donā€™t like the idea of trying to manipulate the behavior of persons. I love the fact that in DAOs people have different approaches: Some are more direct and confrontative, others are more shy and calm. The important thing is respecting a code of conduct set by the organization.

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Hi Renee,
We understand where youā€™re coming from as this is an ambitious project with far-reaching goals, but we structured this intentionally with community in mind. We have three reasons for wanting to incorporate Phase 2 within this proposal (bearing in mind that weā€™ve already bounded off third-party costs, marketing, and technical development from this proposal):

  1. Efficiency: Simply put, thereā€™s a first-mover advantage here. If we want Aragon to be the place for ODR, we need real cases to refine the Court, which is a problem with the existing Court as discussed in our proposal. By having a pool of funding pre-allocated for Phase 2, we speed up the non-technical building process. Phase 2 deliverables, such as explanatory documents and client walkthroughs, flow directly from our Phase 1 research so having the runway to build through both phases from the very beginning is conducive to efficient development.

  2. Network Leverage and Partnership Commitment: We already have been engaged with preliminary partnerships within web3 and beyond ā€” as mentioned, weā€™ve explored opportunities for pre-build collaboration within web3 (Polygon, LexDAO, LexPunkT, to name a few) as well as within legal academia via the Stanford Journal of Blockchain Law & Policy (which has worked with other web3 ODR projects in the past). Naturally, these partners want to hear from us now and we benefit from pre-build collaboration, but theyā€™ll also be the stakeholders we work on implementation and product evaluation withā€”which are key Phase 2 Activities. By funding our genesis team proposal, we can offer consistency and commitment for these groups from the start without the risk of inter-Phase handover communication gaps or interim team dropoff that could inhibit lasting inter-DAO partnerships.

  3. Talent Acquisition: Thereā€™s no doubt that both Phase 1 and 2 will require additional support, and that many contributors from Phase 1 will be involved in Phase 2 due to thematic overlap. From a human resource perspective, it is much harder to hire for a three-month stint than a six-month-and-counting relationship. Put simply, incorporating some calculable Phase 2 funding as weā€™ve done here (and again, technical development funding needs which we canā€™t predict are not incorporated here) allows us to hire in a more transparent manner. more easily reach vital talent, and ultimately help ease contributorsā€™ concerns about job security.

Logistically, we could accommodate splitting the funding in two installments, but reap the above benefits from having this funding committed and allocated through this single proposal.

Hope this helps, and that it clarifies our reasoning for @Shawncubbedge too. We appreciate your interest in our proposal. Happy New Year!

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Shawn - please refer to our explanation directly replying to Renee above. Appreciate your concerns and thanks for allowing us the opportunity to clarify. Happy New Year!

My concern is that this plan presents a weak business case for phase 2 funding and that team responses (to date) highlight knowledge gaps and lack of diverse and direct experience required for a product development project of unknown scope.

Documentation and client walk through are depended on product development. What if the techincal development requires 6-12 months or there are limited available resources for three months?

Given the team is already selected, hiring transparency, vital talent and job security for contributors is ā€˜mainlyā€™ in reference to the authors/proponents. And while we agree that Phase 1 research is needed to inform phase 2 what stands out to me from your reply @sabinachain is that the proponents wish to secure 100k funding in advance of knowing the feasibility, resources, time, scope or budget required to deliver a solution.

I support phase 1 of the proposed project and would love to see the team here deliver a compelling case for funding the development of Aragon Court.

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Thanks for this proposal. I find it quite inspiring to see a team rallied from across the ecosystem, diverse and truly global, bringing and creating relationships with other DAOs, to advance a product that can potentially realise part of the promise of the manifesto. What more could Aragon want.

So on that basis, I look at this and will vote optimistically even in its current form (or as amended based on the feedback given to the proposing team). Aragon has tried to pioneer optimistic governance but our conversations donā€™t always seem that optimistic. Sabinaā€™s point re Efficiency resonates with me given our poor recent history of making it difficult for well intentioned people to allocate resources quickly. As I understand it the structure of Aragon Govern, the exec sub DAO and escrow will still control how and especially IF the funds for Phase 2 will be disbursed, and so not imposing another (minimum) 21 day proposal cycle for Phase 2 now seems reasonable but understand others may disagree

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First of all, congrats to all involved here. Incredible work so far and quite a good structure to kick start this project. Eager to see this happening and Aragon Court becoming a state-of-the-art, yet highly adopted web3 product.

Some comments/questions (sorry in advance for the long text)

1

Not sure what this one meansā€¦ Court is not on Arbitrum, but the discussion was to deploy it there because of the gas fees (not the high gas fees are there). Maybe just removing the Arbitrum from here would make it more clear. Or have I misunderstood something?

2

Although not clearly mentioned in the original proposal, but kind discussed in the comments, I would like to highlight that making sure Court worse in a cross-chain environment will be very important. Simply redeploying Court In many chains would not be practical since new guardians would need to stake ANT in several chains. It should have a single pool of guardians for all chains where it accepts cases (assuming guardians are still needed in the future version of course)

3

Would be interesting to know more about the structure of the team that will handle phase 1 - meaning, what are the skills of each participant, and how much of the budget goes to each. Maybe not necessarily the exact figures, but an overall of how much goes to the teams + skills, and how much is used to hire services/consultants for specific tasks.

On this topic, the values for preparation of report, explanatory documents and implementation in a DAO felt a little high to me (but again, maybe I am just missing some scope).

4

Regarding this comment from Shawn - and also discussed in more comments, it is indeed quite important that a multidisciplinary team can be formed to evolve the product, not necessarily with Aragon Core team, but more importantly, with all the skills required to manage and develop a product, and of course, highly aligned to Aragon strategy. Altthough this is a topic for another conversation I will start later here in the forum regarding a Product Committee - Why Web3 Needs Product Management ā€” Ramon Canales

5

Costs and timeline for the product adaptation look too low. Although it is modular, depending on the outcome of the initial research this adaptation might be tricky and complex to do. Would be good to have a sort of backup plan on how to validate the assumptions that will come from research even without the need for a fully functional product? How to sort of manually handle some initial disputes with a ā€œprototypeā€ product in case adaptation can not be done fast enough or the team runs out of budget?

Again, awesome work so far. Happy to help planning this!

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Thanks to the authors for putting together this much needed proposal to revamp Aragon Court and get it into the hands of more DAOs.

Previous research on Court (by Delphi Digital, Other Internet and other BD conversations) clearly pointed out that many DAOs have issues with giving up control of their governance to ANT holders via Aragon Court. When Court is positioned more as a governance insurance policy and trigger of last resort for when other internal dispute mechanisms fail, it becomes a lot more appealing.

With this in mind and without wanting to waste funds on research to draw the same conclusions, Iā€™d like to better understand the authors plans here to combine internal dispute mechanisms of a DAO with Aragon Court?

One solution could be to facilitiate other DAOs to deploy their own sub-courts of Aragon Court which would use their own token and their own juror sets. And then have a built-in escalation procedure to ANT jurors.

Overall, Iā€™m excited to have a team of smart minds contribute to improving Aragon Court!

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The Polygon Ecosystem DAO supports the study and development of the dispute resolution system internal to DAOs, considering it an important element to make the ecosystem more certain, fair and transparent.

The forthcoming constitution of a Legal subDAO within the DAO Ecosystem goes in this direction and aims to build a specialized intra DAO working group that answers the questions that the increasingly numerous ecosystem participants are asking.

Grendel - Polygon DAO Lead

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The extent of your proposal, especially w.r.t Use Case I: Internal DAO Disputes, is hard for me to grasp as well because the direction of the Aragon Court improvements is unclear. You refer mainly to the ombuds office implemented at Bankless DAO, which

has the power to immediately address complaints, hear the involved member/s, suggest resolutions between the involved member/s, and recommend non-binding structural solutions to the DAO membership.

Based on the information provided, your improvement to Aragon Court appears to go beyond that.
Moreover, it seems to go beyond standard court use cases (optimistic governance, content & information curation, escrows, oracle services), currently suffering from a low case number mainly due to

  • inherent win-loose mechanics
  • high gas costs
  • positive deterrent effect

and aims to implement a low-threshold, scalable, smart-contract-based dispute resolution system.
Is this correct?

If so, it is unclear how universal this system aims to be and if it overlaps with alternative conflict management measures employed successfully in traditional organizations and other pioneering DAOs (such as the TEC, The Commons Stack, Gitcoin Kernel Block) that I wanted to suggest in a separate proposal. These measures aim to establish a preventative conflict culture and would reduce the use cases for the system proposed (at least for current DAO sizes and Use Case I). This is the nexus I see.

The concerns with such a low-threshold system are best outlined in an essay titled How to nurture a ā€˜good conflictā€™ culture from which I would like to quote two passages:

The other side of the issue, though, is the opportunity for demonstrating best practice, a positive working culture where people have enough belief and trust in their organisation that theyā€™re willing to talk openly about problems; to admit failures and weaknesses. The biggest mistake organisations can make is to see any kind of conflict ā€“ even at the level of minor disagreement ā€“ as unwelcome and a problem, something to be avoided, and where it occurs, should be immediately swept into grievance processes. This attitude leads to pretence, to secrecy and reticence, and to a workplace culture where trust and honesty is in short supply. People become rigid with uncertainty, bottled-up grievances, and thereā€™s a burble of low-level conflicts that have the potential to escalate. The working environment becomes uncomfortable, and thereā€™s a block on people willing to express themselves, to challenge conventions, to contribute thinking from diverse experiences and perspectives. Innovation and change is stifled.ā€œ

and later

Most organisations concentrate their ā€œconflict-resolutionā€ resources in the top layer: a fire-fighting and reactive approach which is expensive and does not add value to the organisation. There is usually some ad hoc attention in the middle level, with perhaps access to trained mediators or external mediators, but little outreach taking place to normalise mediation or to position it squarely within a range of options for resolution. Most financial and human-resource investment is directed at fighting a small number of highly contested, high-risk conflicts.
Meanwhile, investment in the bottom layer of the pyramid, where most conflicts actually take place, is reduced; the majority of conflicts go unsupported and unmanaged, and remain invisible until someone goes off with stress, leaves the organization, or a crisis demands management attention. The return from adopting this pattern is poor ā€“ with high expenditure but little long-term return. Staff and managers may be aware of your values and their rights and responsibilities, but they do not believe in them, or even in you as an employer.ā€œ

Based on the information presented, the concerns expressed here may apply to the proposed system, and you seem to be opposed to preventative, cultural approaches currently applied in the DAOs mentioned.

Undoubtedly, you have great expertise in the field of law and as an ombudsperson. It would be great if you can alleviate these concerns that were raised independently by another active AN DAO member being also a member in the other DAO communities mentioned.
Perhaps it would be helpful to provide some examples of how such a smart-contract-based system could solve more complex inter- & intrapersonal as well as intra- & intergroup conflicts in DAOs.

I partially disagree for DAOs, at least of the current size. The culture is formed around the community values that attract the newcomers in the first place. Communities have core contributors setting the tone and establishing a culture that is inherited to newcomers. We can see how strong culture can become in phenomena such as Bitcoin and Ethereum culture and many other, real-world examples.
I agree if DAOs will eventually grow to the size of small cities and have only a loosely defined value-set. For this to happen, conflicts already hindering traditional organizations from growing must be overcome first.

I donā€™t have ethical concerns about establishing a culture of self-reflection and trying to understand the perspectives of others. This is also an integral part of the AN DAO Code of Conduct (p. 11, Our Standards, Examples of behaviour that contributes to a positive environment for our community). Having very confrontative or shy members can be problematic because ā€ža number of common cognitive and emotional traps, many of them unconscious, can exacerbate conflict.ā€œ

Overall, I still support the general gist of the proposal, but I would like to understand the approach you want to take more. As the intersection of social sciences & law is not my academic expertise, I welcome literature or experiences to form a balanced opinion on this topic. Resources about conflict management I used are listed below:

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Thank you for this thoughtful proposal!
Considering the extensiveness of the scope and the proposal itself I presume it is directed towards the main-DAO?
My take:

  • Evolving court makes a lot of sense and the team behind the proposal has done a lot of thinking and prep in that direction and has the right background
  • We need more humility in designing products and the outlined approach seems to rely on market feedback sufficiently to avoid the ā€œacademic perfectionistā€ trap
  • Ultimately for this to work someone has to sit down and write code but those discussions seem to be already in place

Leaving it to the people more competent and passionate about the arbitration topic to discuss the intricacies.

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Thank you very much for all the comments! We are very happy that our proposal has raised so much interest.
According to the received feedback we have changed the initial text.

The more substantive changes are:

  1. Given some doubts expressed by members of the community, at this stage we will ask only funding for phase 1. We are confident to deliver a report which will allow us and the community to continue the proposed program. But thanks @b3n for your support!

  2. Following @AClayā€™s and @joeycharlesworthā€™s indications, we will cover also the possibility of creating sub-Aragon Courts which allow the staking of different tokens.

  3. Following one of @ramonā€™s suggestions, we have put some information about the squadā€™s background. We are of course available to give more information if needed.

@fartunov itā€™s a proposal for the Main DAO!

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The vote is live:

https://voice.aragon.org/processes/#/0xf369171e5f661b7ecfb33b7d844721c6d72678b91d0a0070ffcd10e857f7d4d3

Firstly, thanks so much for this proposal. There are a lot of great questions and feedback as well.

From a purely business perspective. Can you better outline how, and if you donā€™t know now, at what stage, the ANT token and ANT token holders will benefit from Aragon Court in the medium to long-term.

I know itā€™s often a faux-pas in web3.0 to discuss monetisation and I deeply connect with and understand the need for Aragon Court and general mediation, arbitration, and decision making tools to benefit DAOā€™s and the success of DAOā€™s (which can also benefit Aragon). But iā€™d like to know how and where does this have a direct impact on ANT, which in the end funds these wonderful projects and people!

Mediation and Arbitration techniques are excellent ways of reducing risk, providing clarity, and in return saving organisations lots of resources. Which I personally believe could be modestly monetised. Itā€™s a wonderful tool to offer.

Thank you! @eaglelex @sabinachain @lion917 @Tayy

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Thank you Anthony, this is a very good question. ANT has always be a priority to us in thinking about the project.

As a lawyer in this space, I feel that there is a strong request of justice and ethical behaviors.

In my opinion, Aragon should become the on-chain justice system of the blockchain industry. Deciding cases means to excercise power and give a direction to the ecosystem. Projects should begin to buy and stake ANT in order to be part of this project and have representatives as Guardians.

A part from this, I think that a functioning Court would bring advantages to ANT holders in strenghten the use-case of the token. Until now, Court was deployed only in test disputes. We want Aragon Court to be well-known and used in real disputes.

Therefore, I would start from internal DAO disputes and then open up to DAO2DAO and finally arrive to off-chain disputes.

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Thanks for the response! I would advise, in my opinion as a necessity for me to continue voting for further implementation of this plan and strategy, at what stage a full tokenomic and monetisation strategy is created. This makes it mandatory and sets it as a required output at a certain time.

I think it would be nice to at least in the first proposal get UR feedback on clients willingness to pay, stake, etc to give us an idea and set expectations. I donā€™t think itā€™s enough to say it will bring greater reputation, etc. to ANT and Aragon.

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Sure, it is not enough.

If you donā€™t have clear expectation about a project, you cannot create tokenomics. What I can tell you is that there is a great request for a blockchain ADR in chains as Polygon and in big DAOs. Moreover, blockchain ADRs are discussed within the most important crypto-lawyers circles.

I think that Aragon is very well positioned, but that it tremendously needs to get external recognition and support by other projects, which mainly means beginning to get users that see the value of relying in a decentralized dispute resolution system.

To answer to your final question: I think that at this stage it would be difficult to have projects willing to engage in our journey, because the Court proceedings need to be simplified and made more efficient. This is an indication that the Research team also got from the Devs, who currently work for implementation and maintenance of the Court. This is why my idea is starting with media DAOs as Bankless, ForeFront and FWB as they could provide simple use-cases and augment the awareness about our product. Afterwards, we will be able to quantify and present precise business plans.

To be clear: In my opinion everything is feasible and Aragon Court will have a great future. The key point will be to involve the big DeFi projects which will bring significant staking amounts into Aragon.

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Another reason why this is so important became clear to me after telling a friend from Columbia about it:
He told me that sometimes, if courts have to deal with cases against cartels or important politicians, the place storing the evidence burns down ā€˜accidentallyā€™ or the prosecutors and judges have an ā€˜accidentā€™.

The success of this project would access the future of law and law practice generally.