Financial Proposal: A Path to Decentralised Governance (dGov S1 COMPLETE)

Vote Results @ Aragon Voice 13

The Decentralised Governance (dGov) team request the Main DAO to fund $72,000 for 1 May through 31 August 2022 to support governance-related cross DAO, Aragon Association and ecosystem collaboration. Our work is intended to help the Aragon Network DAO (AN DAO) develop

• decentralised governance in favour of the equitable, collective-consensus
• embed a community-wide understanding of the importance of DAO governance
• Develop routine governance practices and processes to aid transparency and understanding
• increase awareness and engagement with governance discussions, forums and voting
• develop opportunities for community participation in DAO governance
• establish responsibility and accountability for building unassailable, collective, governance legitimacy

By developing the type of optimal and battle-hardened governance systems that will allow ANT holders to collectively decided upon governance and funding opportunities, reduce the need for centralised decision-making and help re-focus the remit of the ESD 1 - we believe this work will ultimately help AN DAO to grow the number of active Aragon DAO and support the overall purpose of the DAO defined in the Aragon Network Charter 2

1. Rationale

Although becoming more active, AN DAO governance is primarily undertaken subsequent to funding proposals to the Main DAO or via the ESD funding process. We need to raise the importance of Governance as a community-led function because it directly relates to the products Aragon exists to create, grow and maintain.

The DAO has a recognised need for a cross-discipline, highly coordinated and accountable team tasked with navigating from the current state to optimal and battle-hardened governance. A team that can work to secure the type of unassailable governance legitimacy (summit) that will one day enable a fully decentralised Aragon.

A Quick Analogy

Kevin Jorgeson and Tommy Caldwell made the first free ascent of the Dawn Wall from December 27, 2014 to January 14, 2015, over a 19-day final push, and seven years of searching for the line and working the route’s 32 pitches.

Akin to the route up the Dawn Wall - there is no easy path or shortcut to unassailable, collective governance legitimacy. There is no single solution just a series of “pitches” with their own “problems” and “cruxes” that the community can only work to overcome as we face them, so as Caldwell and Jorgeson said of the Dawn Wall “we’ve got to pace ourselves”.

S1 dGov Objectives

Support existing SubDAO Governance work as outlined in ESD Strategic & Governance proposal 2:

1. Drive or Support the step-change process to update the Aragon Network Charter 2; a series of updates intended to better serve the needs of AN DAO and our growing community as we decentralise.
2. Support efforts to supplement the Charter with operational standards that clarify governance contributor remit and responsibility, establish accountability and aid transparency
3. Fund a governance secretary role to support the ESD, Tech and Compliance committees to increase transparency and aid accountability

Decentralise governance through community:

1. inform our collective understanding of how governance supports progressive decentralisation
2. develop ways to increase community engagement and participation in governance, whether surfacing actions, developing proposals, contributing to forum discussions or voting
3. investigate, document and offer recommendations to the community to vote on around Governance tooling designed to increase engagement and participation in the journey to decentralisation

dGov Deliverables

Impact Deliverables

1. Decentralise: Support work to document Charter adaptations 1 and publish a governance timeline/calendar (30 June) to promote and raise community awareness and forum engagement and voting participation
2. Decentralise: Investigate, compare and propose governance tooling and community mechanisms that support decentralised governance with at least one supported proposal (31 July)
3. Understanding: Plan and propose in collab with the community (30 June) the delivery of a series of governance workshops to help our community define the AN DAO Mission, Vision and Values that inform individual positions on Governance proposals and voting.
4. Engagement: Provide a community touchpoint for proposal authors to seek guidance on proposals, seek feedback if requested and clarify questions as to the governance process

Operational Deliverables

1. Participation: Surface and define S1 Governance roles/functions to be shared between members of the dGov Coordinape circle (30 May)
2. Engagement: % Increase from baseline of participation in discord and forum based on the preceeding three months (Feb-Apr) (May-July)
3. Responsibility: Provide easy access to documentation of dGov team member responsibilities, aligned objectives and metrics (30 May)
4. Accountability: Ensure routine and operational governance tasks have performance metrics applied for tracking and reporting (30 May)
5. Understanding: Governance community survey to inform accountability, workshops and governance discussion (30 May) (31 July)
6. Understanding: Document frequently asked questions to build shared understanding for inclusion in Community handbook v 2.0

Routine Deliverables

1. Transparency: Monthly performance analysis & reporting
2. Transparency: Monthly community call
3. Transparency: Weekly activity documentation
4. Accountability: Weekly teams meetings and goal setting & performance tracking
5. Engagement: Weekly governance topic/reading/discussions

Proposed Team

• S1 dGov Author: lee0007#8152 (40-45 hrs) Aragon Ambassador intake 1, undertook the DAO proposal bounty 2season 1 and active ESD member. Will work S1 to develop practices and processes to aid community engagement and participation, coordinate deliverables and draft proposals to help decentralise governance.
• Community Coordinape: targeting 10+ flexible contributors by the 31 July across impact, operational and routine deliverables as well as roles yet to be defined to allow the community to surface and participate in dGov
• Bounties are clearly defined roles and responsibilities tied to objectives and metrics.

3. Strategic Alignment

• Governance legitimacy within the DAO is integral to modelling the type of governance our products are designed for. We expect a report by the end of May from Hoola Hoop that will share insight on Aragon’s path to decentralisation, which will undoubtedly inform this team.
• We seek to evolve the Manifesto and support the Aragon Association pledge specific to experimenting with new governance models and building a community that defends the Manifesto’s values and work to engage the community to help evolve the Manifesto towards a definitive statement of our shared Mission, Vision, and Values.
• This initiative is aligned with the strategic priorities of the Executive Sub DAO based on the funded S1 ESD Strategic Governance Funding 2 proposal to develop, support and facilitate Charter changes, documentation, and strategic governance
• Governance fundamentally requires community engagement - surveys, workshops, and community calls will be used to develop understanding and surface our shared governance goals. We intend to work closely with all DAO teams to create and respond to proposals that will help us decentralise.
• We intend to investigate, recommend and propose Governance tooling that can support the journey to decentralisation. In S1 we will focus discussions around Tao voting, the Common Configuration tools and Arbor Vote while continuing to seek other options that serve the needs of the decentralised governance.

4. Limitations & Risks

• Current ambiguity around the charter effectively undermines governance legitimacy; unchanged, we will remain in a position of uncertainty and stagnate.
• We can not say whether our efforts will be successful or whether we will be deemed adequate/successful (yet) by the community, but this is a risk we are willing to undertake to move forward.
• Governance is not exactly a fascinating topic. It could be hard to engage the community that we rely upon to truly decentralise.
• We are limited by the availability and resourcing of those with the highest context and expertise needed to make change.
• Ultimately, governance requires voter participation to reach quorum and pass proposals, while we will work to build this we can not foresee whether or not voters will rally to support the journey to decentralisation.

5. Funding Information

We request the funding for $72,000 for Governance from 1 May through 31 August to be paid as per the prevailing finance guidance 3. This amount is equivalent to funding for 2-3 full-time equivalent roles, however in order to decentralise and engage contributor participation more than fifteen governance focused functions 7 have been identified, but not yet fully defined to allow community input. This is not intended to be a definitive list of opportunities but it is the basis that informs the requested budget. Many functions naturally align with work undertaken by existing teams but as these teams are already funded additional funding via coordinape is requested.

• Core: First Points of Contact within the team with responsibility and accountability for deliverables rewarded via Coordinape.
• Flexible: contributions that help the team achieve our stated deliverables rewarded via Coordinape.
• Advisory: Applied to collaboration with AN DAO contributors, teams, the Aragon Association and ecosystem collaborators rewarded via Coordinape.
• Community: Open learning and experimentation opportunities rewarded via Coordinape.

We request the use of a multisig in favour of default escrow as we believe this is necessary to effectively function and meet our commitments to contributors in a timely manner.