Governance Proposal : Future of the AN DAO Charter

These are words of wisdom. Thank you, I think that you made the best comment since the launch of the Aragon Network forum.

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Just wanted to share this from owoki Knowledge Transfer: The Gitcoin Hyperstructure šŸ¢ - šŸ§™ šŸ§™ā€ā™€ļø Ideas and Open Discussion - Gitcoin Governance As a different lens through which to try and unify the different elements of our future DAO

Thought it might provide a useable framework to help answer the question @ferranrego raised "Is Aragon is ready to become a protocol DAO? Socialware at least begins to speak to the human element of DAO I would like to learn how we account for at this junction @evanaronson be interested to know if this might align with your thinking or at least help get us all talking a similar language (yay taxonomy)

Socialware - Mechanisms that create assurances through human relationships, incurring a high social coordination cost.

Trustware - Mechanisms that create assurances through technology, incurring a low social coordination cost.

Hyperstructure - crypto protocols that can run for free and forever, without maintenance, interruption or intermediaries

Credit for these definitions: Orca: socialware to trustware , Zora: Hyperstructures .

Gitcoin Progressive Decentralisation Gitcoin started as **socialware** (*high social coordination cost*) + more **trustware** (*low social coordination cost*) has evolved over time. Once Trustware runs all of the core operations of Gitcoinā€™s products, then Gitcoin is a **hyperstructure** (*a crypto protocol that can run for free and forever, without maintenance, interruption or intermediaries*)

The four phases of this evolution of trust @ Gitcoin are:
1. Socialware
2. Modular socialware
3. Trustware at the center with socialware at the edges (hyperstructure phase)
4. Growth via network effects

As Gitcoin Progressively decentralizes over time, I believe itā€™ll move from centralization to a decentralized and modular set of protocol-based codebases.

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The Autonomous in the DAO part was put too early. We are Digital Organization moving to a state where coordination would be assumed to be seamless. Letā€™s start with basic. I agree to what @ferranrego said but will have to stress the basics
Goals <---- Community <-----Governance<------Operations .
on @AClay proposal

1, can we create the next version of Charter for delegated governance before dissolving the present version? Google Docs comments would be great than tedious CIP1 CIP 2

2, By dissolving do we have to delete all roles and responsibilities?

3, Not a fan of forking - I do not see purpose of forking the DAO

I would keep it simple work on basics - Goals and Charter first then rest comes later, working on too many things create half cooked work.

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Iā€™ve noticed some community members are not sharing their thoughts based on the 3 options that @AClay provided. Theyā€™re focusing on the headline ā€œClarifying the path towards evolving Aragon Network governanceā€, which is too broad IMO.

If we add this to the fact that the topic from a legal perspective is already causing a bit of confusion, itā€™s evident that reaching a consensus wonā€™t be easy if the discussion continues this way.

Perhaps reframing the topic, as @evanaronson suggested, is the way to go.

I also suggest the discussion should be limited to the charter only. People should share their thoughts on whether the charter should be maintained/updated/terminated and if/when creating a new charter, what should be taken into account. Other topics on how to evolve the DAO can be discussed separately in the future.

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Thanks everyone for participating in this discussion, many important nuances and questions were raised. However, the conversation has diverged from the original intent of this post : clarifying how to proceed with AN DAO governance. At this point, itā€™s helpful to stick to this topic and clarify the questions that need to go to vote, so Iā€™ll update this post and reframe the question.

Iā€™ll also create separate proposals and threads in the Forum for some of the key topics raised, so we can have discussions that are more focused and constructive :

  • Finance: Iā€™ll create a financial proposal to address the financial risks and implications of this vote.
  • Community: Iā€™ll start a new thread for the AN DAO community members and contributors to discuss the implications of the governance and financial proposals and how they want to continue participating in Aragonā€™s mission.

Irrespective of the state of AN DAO (smart contracts, charter and/or funding), itā€™s important to state that All ANT Holders can participate in the governance of the Delegate Voting DAO. The community is also welcome to rally around Aragonā€™s mission and advance the ideas in the Aragon Manifesto, as it has been from the beginning of this project.

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I have updated this first post.

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Thanks for this clarity Alex and bringing it back on track!

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No united DAO can have two Charters.

  1. Is the intention is to have two seperate DAO with different Charters?

  2. When we can expect the new Charter to be shared?

Discussing what we do with the current Charter seems to me contingent on understanding what is defined in the new.

And if the intention is to have a united DAO is a seperate vote needed? Once the new charter is shared can we not simply vote.

"Adopt New Charter to replace Original Charter effective as of mmddyy?

  • Yes
  • No

I guess what Iā€™m saying is that we would be better served to discuss the future of governance in relation to a forum post sharing the new Charter than attempting to define the path forward based on the outgoing charter

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VOTING LIVE: 14 days via Aragon Voice

For ther record

The intention to vote to ā€œTerminate the Charterā€ was only bought to light on the 8 September. Originally this proposal was about

1_ amending the current charter or
2_ dissolving or
3_ forking the AN DAO

When and who decided that the direction of the proposal and ensuing vote would be changed?

I feel the tactic of changing the direction of a proposal halfway through is misleading. Was terminating the Charter always the intent of the proposal and vote? Does this proposal even meet the 30 days notification requirements?

Moreover, this idea of terminating the current Charter ahead of even a glimpse of the New Charter is ā€œputting the cart before the horseā€. If we intend to model the benefits of Decentralised Autonomous Organisations, we need to do better.

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I donā€™t mean to offend you because I respect what youā€™ve done for AN DAO.

That said, the proposer is not using any ā€œtacticā€ to change the proposal as you claim. If you read all the comments right here youā€™ll notice the idea of terminating the charter was brought up in the course of the debate. The proposer is simply following community suggestions by restructuring the proposal accordingly.

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No offence taken. Iā€™m simply sharing my opinion and youā€™re welcome to as well. As you can read I asked questions more than once as to ā€œwhy to terminateā€

Which imo have never been adequately addressedā€¦ which is exactly why I question - When and who decided that the direction of the proposal and ensuing vote would be changed?.." because I do not see (transparency) that conversation here in the forum. If there are decisions here that Iā€™ve missed (easy enough to do) please quote/share them to correct me

I consider this a tactic because this is not the first time that changing a proposal - and subsequently the issues being voted on - has been recently observed. Hereā€™s one example

Are you also aware of the impact that this change had?

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Iā€™m relatively new here and didnā€™t take part in the discussion of that topic so canā€™t say anything about it

If I knew you were going to edit your message this way I wouldnā€™t have replied. You clearly donā€™t welcome criticism.

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@Vallery unfortunately Iā€™m not the only person that asked questions that remained unanswered before it was decided (when and by who?) to pivot this proposal and vote to terminate the charter

This forum is rife with judgement and so I routinely edit responses as I gather references to substantiate my communication and temper my perspective. I do my best to be constructive and clarify where objective feedback switches to subjective, personal opinion.

I welcome your perspective @Vallery and tbh, rather than seeing your responses as a criticism I consider it an opportunity to build shared understanding, share differences of perspectives and communicate

  1. Respond to your post, specifically no apology is required
  2. Clarify my position and questions on transparency (or lack thereof)
  3. Invite more information, if you have points to build on
  4. Provide additional information as to why I see this as a tactic ( a device for accomplishing an end )

Originally this proposal was about

  1. amending the current charter or
  2. dissolving or
  3. forking the AN DAO

And I questioned the method that could logically pivot the original proposal to one to terminate the Charter.

So Iā€™ll ask again, can anyone provide information as to when and who decided (here in forum? behind closed doors?) that the direction of the proposal and ensuing vote would be changed to Terminate the Charter? @AClay?

Just to clarify I shared again that people were blindsided in the past by significant pivots on proposals because when changes were made to the Transfer of Funds proposal it was communicated to me that ā€œā€¦The disappearance of the $20M allocation from the first proposal to the final one was probably the worst communicated decision in historyā€¦ā€

This is the knowledge I have to build upon and why I suggest we can do a much better job of

  • Transparency
  • Open communication
  • Responding to & addressing peopleā€™s questions/feedback
  • Providing substantiated & constructive feedback whether in favour of, against a proposal or anywhere in between
  • Acknowledging that all constructive opinions are welcome and provide the opportunity to build shared understanding
  • Recognising that disagreements will occur and avoid making destructive comments (typically ad hominem) or taking constructive feedback personally
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Apologies, I thought the clarification on the vote made it easier and simpler for the decision to be made. This was not closed door, I read the comments from @evanaronson and discussed them, agreed with his assessment that clarity was needed. This was 20 days ago now.

I agree that it may feel like the cart before the horse, however the way I tried to word it was that it will only take place when a new charter is voted in. Until that point the current charter is still deployed. If this vote passes then it will allow us to provide clear, non confusing assessment of a new document, the alternative is comparing two which are incompatible with each other which will be much slower.

On the point of the original three questions posted, With the change to the vote hopefully it is providing more certainty. The three answers to the vote were confusing, dissolve sounded like everything related to the DAO, Forking was a confusing concept with poor clarity from different members on what it meant compared to dissolving, and edit the charter would come as a result of voting no to termination. Also as we have a charter which some are classing as a ā€œpartnershipā€ we could not have two at the same time.

We now have a very focused clear question on the charter alone, terminate, and move to a new one when it is voted in. Or stay with the status quo. This is very clear, as until that point the current Charter remains in force, and then there is simply a swap over of the governance process.

I want to be clear here the current charter will only be terminated when a new one is voted in. There is no date here set on purpose, as we donā€™t know for certain what will happen with a new charter, does a vote fail for example, this would mean that the current charter can continue.

Using past reference of points, these I am sure could have been made clearer, however I left the original post on purpose in the proposal so people can clearly see what has been changed. I do agree I could have clarified the change better, hopefully the above justification is clear.

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I have to agree upon re-reading the entire thread that the communication and course of the proposal adjustments was clear and driven by community suggestions. The proposal structure is clear. I am also relatively new to the forum, but a long-time ANT holder, and sorry you feel attacked.

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Thanks for taking the time to read, assess and share your perspective. I agree the proposal format is currently very clear, because it was significantly altered on Sept 8. This is why I feel it is a misleading tactic (even when unintended) - to start out with legally complex and on very different and contentious topics and then narrow and clarify based on one colleagueā€™s suggested direction and ensuing comments while offering no response to the community members that sort to discuss the change of direction.

I also recognise a need for a new charter but I disagree (hence my posts) that there is sufficient transparency or open discussion of the matter at hand, given its importance.

My questions following the edits went without response for more than two weeks. Does that strike you as open, participatory decentralised governance? To me it indicated that the new agenda was not welcoming or encouraging discussion.

My concern (imo) with this centralised governance agenda is that it is likely already decided (votes accounted for). Discussion is a formality to establish some legitimacy and a pretence only for decentralised governance. I was never under the illusion that what I say can impact the result of the vote here but in aid of

I will try to model that set of recommendations.

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Please take this as a straight/practical response and professional, and I hope it isnā€™t rude. Sorry for my english.

The main form of legitimacy is on-chain execution, that is why we are in web3.0. Less so to mince words but because code is law as core member @evanaronson alludes very often.
Someone not responding to you is not illegitimate and although it may seem unfair, no1 is entitled to a response. The only entitlement anyone has is weighted voting ANT and the execution. I think it is important, since we are using blockchain technology to change the world, to remember that. Otherwise, why are we in Aragon?

If people are not responding to you it may be that what you said wasnā€™t important or they do not respect your post, or you. Iā€™m sorry to say. The same goes for me! As I said above, we can write all these rules all we want, but ANT weighted voting is all that matters in the end. So if people arenā€™t responding itā€™s not nice, but itā€™s fine, they donā€™t have to and itā€™s their choice!

Sorry for tough words but this is the fact. Have a nice day!

You misunderstand/ misinterpret my responses - Illegitimate, unfair - were never points I raised. My points are that