Governance Discussion: Immutable Guidelines

Do immutable guidelines contradict the nature of a Charter as a living document? Do they limit our ability to govern or do they safeguard us? What other questions should we ask?

The Aragon Network DAO Agreement S 1 currently states

  1. Immutable Guidelines
    The guidelines in this section shall not be amended and shall apply to all proposals submitted to the Aragon Network DAO(s). If any other guidelines in this Agreement conflict with these immutable guidelines, the immutable guidelines shall take priority for enforcement purposes.
    a. Proposal Compliance
    i. Proposals must be governed by this Agreement or a future version of this Agreement as
    modified within the bounds of the Agreement.
    ii. Proposals must not disproportionately benefit a majority of ANT Holders voting on a proposal over the minority.
    iii. ANT held by the Main DAO and/or Sub-DAOs must not be used to influence proposals nor
    votes, nor be staked in Aragon Court.

Reasonable, unreasonable, clear or confusing?

This post is part of a series of dGov S1 conversations about the Aragon Network DAO Charter

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Thank you for taking the lead once again Renee!

Some comments:

  • In principle the idea that less than 0.2% of the voting weight on the network which supported the current version of the Charter can enforce immutable rules on the entire network is somewhat absurd
  • These guidelines are phrased as something that can be used for grounds to veto actions and be resolved in court. Transitioning away from optimistic governance makes some of those obsolete - i.e. “Proposals must not disproportionately benefit a majority of ANT Holders voting on a proposal over the minority.”…the fact that it’s unclear whether it means the majority of wallets holding ANT or the majority of ANT held is just another symptom to the absurdity that our current Charter is

TLDR - whether we call it “evolving” to protect the feelings and egos of the original authors, the document has to be shredded and built from scratch with a “must make sense” mindset

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Is this something you are wanting to lead Ivan through stakeholder engagement?

100% agree with “must make sense”
100% agree changes are required

Decentralised governance would mean the options to evolve shred or something in between is a conversation we need diverse stakeholder engagement on. dGov is here to help raise awareness, engagement and participation on these discussions.

Wondering if you and @daniel-ospina might want the opportunity to provide insight on both options for the community to consider. Our first governance debate perhaps!

As you’d be aware I am working to evolve the Charter towards a “must make sense version” while maintaining the safeguards and governance legitimacy that it has and does provide. See links below.

Let’s not underestimate the work required to start from scratch - and the challenges that the original authors faced. Moreover, we can evolve and build at the same time, they are not mutually exclusive.

Ultimately a charter should be a living document, intended to evolve. Even improved future versions will need to evolve with the DAO. Would you include immutable guidelines - this power to veto - in your preferred version of a charter?

Hey Renee,

I shared my thoughts on evolution vs revolution in this thread: Current DAO unsuitable for fund transfer. Honestly, unless there is a vote on this, the debate is not really helpful.

Even then debates are not won by the better solution. Debates are won by the person who is more eloquent, articulate, and popular - Daniel has me outmatched across all 3.

On the topic of immutable guidelines - it is a good question. The answer is maybe.

  • The ones currently in place are not fit for the next stage of the DAO’s life. Changing them already means going against the existing Charter, so not sure why we are afraid of change.
  • The immutable guidelines in my view should be output. First, we draft the rules of the new DAO and then figure out if some of them should be permanent.

To make it abundantly clear - the current immutable guidelines mean that less than 0.2% of the network has decided on behalf of everyone else in perpetuity…does this seem right if we are aiming for inclusive and legitimate governance?

Refusing to transfer the treasury to that existing structure is the only way for the remaining over 99.8% of ANT holders (both in terms of number of people and voting power) to escape the tyranny

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Fair call on debate it was more for fun

Would love to understand more about this. By existing structure do you mean AN DAO? Would this mean a new token too (#3?)?

Presume we stay on alternative 1 (evolve the AN DAO). Changes are not fast and drastic enough and when the fund transfer should be voted an alternative 2 (clean new structure) is preferred by the token holders. It’s a hard fork where the current AN DAO becomes ETC and the alternative becomes ETH.

Alternatives 1 and 2 are described in Current DAO unsuitable for fund transfer.

More questions but will move over to the Current DAO unsuitable for fund transfer post to ask