SDIP Authors: jess, quickrider, 0xgregory
Project lead: 0xgregory
Squad: na
Creative approval: na
Abstract
This brief proposes several changes to our governance structure, in response to external market conditions and an ever-evolving NFT/DAO/community landscape. In summary, we propose to:
- Launch clear, more refined procedures for Governance
- Add a quorum threshold to Snapshot, ensuring high-conviction participation
- Limit proposal creation, to ensure that major decisions are driven by builders
- A governance framework that allows, in specific conditions, more rapid deployment of resources to and from the Treasury Squad
Motivation
To ensure that we have clear procedures for decision-making that can be followed and managed for a variety of situations that the DAO may encounter. For example, a 6-day review period for deploying funds is not always ideal. Having additional conditions that are clearly defined and supported will enable the DAO to act responsibly and quickly to changing conditions.
To ensure that we have a meaningful amount of participation in all major governance decisions
This is important to ensure that we have sufficient consensus on major decisions
This is also an incentive mechanism for DAO members to ensure that the broader community is engaged and supportive of major decisions
To reduce the ability for malicious actors to negatively impact the DAO
Currently, it costs roughly $5,000 USD (10,000 SQUIG) to be in a position to create a snapshot proposal, meaning that it’s relatively easy for a malicious actor to affect the DAOs interests in a negative way
To inentivize high-conviction participants in the DAO to create proposals
It is in the best interest of the DAO to take direction from those who care the most about the DAOs mission and outcomes. The most valuable utility for DAO members to-date is the ability to create governance proposals
Increase the velocity of capital without increasing significant execution risk
Reduce the time and oversight require for deploying small amounts of funding or resources in general, in order to maintain agility
Success Conditions
- Each governance decision follows rigorous standards and any exceptions to this standard are rejected
- Only high-conviction governance proposals are created, and passed
- The DAO maintains high alignment to strategic priorities (we say no to things that don’t matter)
- The ability for actors (malicious or not) to affect the DAO and/or it’s Treasury are limited to those with already significant commitment, and responsibility in the DAO
- Treasury Squad members are able to request funding up to X USDC or equivalent with a formal request, but not requiring a standard 3-day Snapshot Vote
Specification
New governance procedures:
Currently, most decisions of material impact must proceed through formal governance using Snapshot and a Genesis wallet transaction. For many reasons, this is not ideal, as the entire process can take over a week: 72h discussion, 72hr snapshot, 3d execution turnaround.
We have a wallet for the Treasury Squad that was created to alleviate some of this pressure but originally, it was only designed to distribute funds to projects that have already been approved via primary Snapshot!
From here, we launched the Grant Program, an experimental program to ensure more creativity and self-starting within the DAO. This program is running successfully, but has very limited budget and capability, with a monthly cadence and approval process.
However, sometimes there are ad-hoc decisions that need to be made with speed, and so we are proposing a new layer of governance to enable the Treasury Squad multi-sig members to take on more responsibility:
Establish a new sub-Snapshot with the following properties:
- 50,000 vote quorum and creation only from Treasury Squad multi-sig signers
- This snapshot governs the Treasury Squad multi-sig wallet
- 24hr voting threshold
- Max 25k USDC or equiv discretionary funding per budget cycle
Governance decisions will now fall into three categories:
This framework will be used to determine which system will be used to execute a decision.
ongoing-votes channel becomes announcement only
all discussion of any votes in flight is moved to forum threads that are referenced in this channel. Channel is moved to high visibility location
Set Snapshot quorum threshold to 300,000 votes.
This means that, to pass a Snapshot vote, at least 51% of votes must approve AND the minimum total voting on the item must be 300,000 votes.
To-date, most voting has easily exceeded this amount, as this represents only two ‘whale’ accounts (there are currently 7 > 100k).
Limit proposal creation to high conviction DAO members
Set creation threshold to 100,000 SQUIG. This would have the effect of limiting proposers to high conviction participants (7 wallets), but also leave space for new creators to join in a permissionless fashion
In the early days of the DAO, 10,000 SQUIG tokens was a fair creation threshold because the token was trading above $8. It’s currently trading at < $1 so this increase would simply reset the threshold back to what it was earlier.
Updates to the Treasury Squad Multi-sig
- 3 of 5 configuration
- Signers must be DAO members
- Maximum balance may not exceed $300k USDC or equiv. Additional balanced must be returned to the genesis wallet at the end of each budget cycle
- This wallet maintains a $25k USDC or equiv discretionary allocation that can be refreshed monthly upon the monthly budget snapshot. All uses of this funding are included in the budget retro (ie. May discretionary usage is included in the June request for funding and a refresh of the allocation).
Launch Details
This will follow standard SDIP governance procedures and will be ratified via Snapshot vote.
Costs
na
Rewards
na
