🗳 This Week in Governance - Mar. 9

A weekly resource covering crypto governance, politics, and power.

Mar 9, 2023

Gitcoin considers a post-vote appeal process
Aztec and Aragon propose to bring anonymity to Nouns DAO voting
Element Labs launches a new governance framework

Voting Activity (L7)
🗳️ 86,093 ballots
👥 25,913 voters
📜 228 proposals
🌐 63 active DAOs

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🗞 News Brief

Gitcoin considers a post-vote appeal process

On May 4, Shawn16400 suggested a “post-vote appeal” process for the Gitcoin DAO, stemming in part from the discussion following a recent budget request. The process is meant to create a clear, formal procedure for situations in which (potentially critical) new information about a proposal comes to light after voting for that proposal has already taken place. As Shawn16400 notes, “the web3 space changes rapidly and good governance processes protect against the implementation of bad choices, but it also needs to be flexible enough to rapidly adjust as new information as it is made available.” Discussion about what that process should look like — and who decides — is now taking place.

Aztec, Aragon propose to bring anonymity to Nouns DAO voting

Aztec and Aragon have joined together to put forward a proposal that would allow Nouns DAO members to participate privately in on-chain governance. Noting concerns about “public voting” in a tweet thread, the authors argue that their proposal will provide anonymity, confidentiality of votes, and confidentiality of outcomes (until voting is concluded). The initial census phase of the proposed process uses Noir and Aztec’s UltraPlonk prover to demonstrate Nouns ownership without revealing identity.

Element Finance’s Council Kit enables governance systems on demand

Council allows anyone to build adaptable governance systems that meet both the practical needs of day-to-day activities while providing the flexibility required for long-term governance. The framework could reinvigorate the standard model for DAO governance, keeping decentralization at the forefront and allowing DAOs to scale their decision-making. The new system is modular and upgradeable by design, allowing governance practitioners to evolve their systems to meet the unique and evolving structural and functional needs of their DAOs.

The Element Labs team has open-sourced the Council Kit which goes beyond the Council Protocol smart contracts and positions Council as an all-in-one governance framework. The Kit comes with a suite of tools to create and bootstrap DAOs:

Deployment Template – Allows developers to configure and deploy the smart contracts in a guided walk-through with the deployment template.
Reference UI – Makes the creation of governance portals simple with a fully customizable reference UI built with React, TypeScript, and NextJS.
SDK – Provides a TypeScript SDK which interfaces with the Council Protocol smart contracts and unlocks the ability to create custom scripts.

📚 Good Reads

The Collective DAO Archives: Governance Library, by Justine Humenansky (ETHDenver talk here).
Qualitative Insights from 23 DAO Leaders, from talentDAO
Policy Principles, from Polygon Labs
At the Buzzer: Inside Krause House's Almost Purchase of the Suns, by Alex Stein

Forums:

Aave: GHO Genesis Parameters
Balancer: Grants February 2023 Update
Bankless: Updating the Mandate of the Governance Department
Cosmos: Hub Governance Spam
Decentraland: Code of Ethics (conduct)
Decentraland: Should the DAO Limit Max Voting Power?
Developer DAO: Introduce a “last call” to DDIP
ENS: DAO alliances, ideas?
Optimism: Cycle 10 Final Grants Roundup
0x: The 0x constitution and software as free speech (or not)

🧵 Threads

Every crypto project has a choice right now, by David Phelps
Criteria for a quality delegate role, from polynya
Need a legal entity for your DAO? from Degoverned
Balancer’s vote escrow tokenomics, from Messari’s John_TotalValue_Locke
Doing Decentralized Identity Right, OP Labs on Kelvin Fichter’s talk.

🎧 Listens

Balancing Tech and Governance Innovation, on The Ownership Economy
Why We’re Investing $20M into DAOs, with Seed Club Ventures on The Blockcrunch Podcast

Selections from ETHDenver (video):

Schelling Point — ETHDenver talks on Twitch

Making Decisions in a DAO: Gitcoin Lessons Learned with Annika Lewis
Verifiable Open Source Elections using Homomorphic Encryption & Zero-Knowledge Proofs with Matthew Wilhelm
Wen DAOs Win? with Kyle St4rgard3n
Blending the Best of Hierarchies and Networks: An Organizing Structure for DAOs with David Ehrlichman
The Potential for Contribution-based Governance in DAOs with Stefen Deleveaux
Confronting DAO Assumptions with Jess Sloss et al.
Token Governance - Rethinking the veToken Model with Joshua Fraser
Incorporating Your DAO: The Pros, the Cons, and the Weird Sh*t No One Tells You About by Mark Lurie

📜 Highlighted Proposals

Prop Lot: Where Ideas Find People

View the proposal

This proposal intends to create “an ideas marketplace for Nouns” called the Prop Lot. Separating idea generation from proposals (which involve building) will allow for more ideas to be contributed, discussed, evaluated, developed, and refined. By way of the proposed portal, Nouners can vote ideas up or down and eventually move them to the Prop Lot page so they can become available for others to build on — and turn into temp-checks or proposals.

⏰ Voting ends: March 10
⛓️ Type: on-chain
✍ Author: Adelidusiam, Frog, and Tob

Boosting Decentraland Governance Participation

View the proposal

This proposal seeks to address low voter turnout and engagement in the DAO by “leveraging [the] automated proposal notification tool and direct voting system, which streamlines the voting process and makes it easier and more convenient for members to participate in governance.” The notification tool sends emails to all DAO members alerting them to new proposals — and uses ChatGPT to summarize the proposals themselves. “A few clicks” within the email would allow for DAO members to vote on a proposal. The proposers are requesting 5k DAI to support development.

✅ Voting started March 6
⏰ Voting ends: March 20
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: DAOhub

Implement Prime Badges for the Growth Program

View the proposal

With the passing of the proposal to implement “Prime Badges” using Otterspace, Prime DAO here considers the use of badges in its Prime Growth Program, which provides additional support to participating ReFi projects. Badges will be used to “attest to participation in the program, providing greater visibility and context to roles and relationships within it” as well as to determine access to various “communications channels, workspace, and events using Guild.xyz.”

✅ Voting started March 8
⏰ Voting ends: March 13
⚡ Type: Snapshot Vote
💬 Read the discussion
✍ Author: Luiz Fernando