CIP-151: Quorum and Elections (Reboot)

Proposals (CIPs)
1
TLDR - This CIP has 3 Goals:
1. Adjust Quorums
2. Hold Elections
3. Complaint Process
Category Governance
Criticalness High - Relates to elections, votes and administration
Impact High - All members of DAO will be affected
Duration 6 months
Total Budget $70.8K

The three goals are explained in more detail below:

1. Adjust quorums

Currently, the way votes are counted for quorum is 1 NFT = 1 vote. After a year of governance, CityDAO contributors have realized that it makes no sense for quorum to be the same for $11K and for $2 million, and it makes no sense that a non-financial vote has the same quorum as a CIP for $2 million. The new proposed system would still count 1 NFT as 1 vote for quorum with the following amendments:

  • 1 vote = 1 quadratically-counted NFT
  • An algorithm will be used to determine the quorum for different request amounts.
  • An algorithm will be used to determine the voter approval rating
Algorithms:
Quorum Algorithm 50 + (1/2 * (square root of $ Ask))
Voter Approval Rating Algorithm 66 + 24 ($ ask / treasury)

Screenshot 2023-04-24 at 2.58.25 PM
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  • To amend the Charter will require a quorum of 200 counted quadratically. Currently, it takes 1000 votes counted non-quadratically to amend the Operating Agreement (OA). This CIP does not intend to alter or amend the OA. This includes NOT changing how votes are counted for altering or amending the OA. They will be counted non-quadratically as 1 NFT = 1 vote.

2. Hold Elections for City Council

This CIP will create elections for seven (7) members of City Council. Within one week after elections are completed, the Council will choose one (1) individual from inside or outside the Council to serve as the Executive Facilitator (EF). If a member of the Council is chosen as the EF, then the remaining Council members will choose one additional member.

The EF will be a separate position and is not in the Council. The Council delegates the authority to the EF. The EF does not vote in the Council. The EF will be in charge of the day-to-day administration and operational execution, while the City Council is in policy setting and strategic direction. The Council may determine the authorities of the EF. The Council may not interfere in the EF’s authorities except if the EF is incapacitated. The Council are the decisions makers and the EF handles implementation.

The EF will have the following powers and authority:

  • Implementation of projects, including resource availability and oversight
  • Handle relationships with outside counsel
  • Handle mailing address, copyrights, trademarks, legal formalities
  • Handle relationships with CPAs for bookkeeping and taxes
  • Any powers and authorities delegated by a majority vote of the City Council

The City Council will have the following powers and authority:

  • Appointment of Executive Facilitator.
  • Possible hiring of an Ops Admin
  • Appointment of Multisig Signers.
  • Create advisory boards of citizens.
  • Policy setting and strategic direction.
  • Maintain or hire people to maintain the DAO tools including Discord, Discourse, Snapshot, Website, Notion, Twitter.
  • Adopt its own rules of procedure and set the time and place of its official meetings.
  • Provide for the prosecution and defense of legal causes on behalf of CityDAO and retain counsel and set their compensation.
  • Declare a project or defunct and repurpose its resources.
  • Establish and enforce regulations for behavior.
  • Establish and enforce regulations for the resolution of disputes.
  • Enter into agreements with other DAOs or entities.
  • Levy and collect taxes, rents, lease fees and other sources of revenue.
  • Make investigations of CityDAO affairs; inquire into accounts, records, and transactions of any CityDAO department, office, or officer; and, for these purposes, require reports from any project and the production of official records.
  • Adopt rules and regulations necessary for the exercise of its powers and prescribe fines and penalties for the violation of ordinances in accordance with city law.
  • Place questions or propositions directly onto Snapshot, when agreed to by 5 of 7 of the total membership of the City Council.

The City Council will appoint the eight (8) multisig signers. The role of the multisig signers is transaction evaluation and execution. All multisig signers will undergo proper training to fully grasp the implications and responsibilities of being on the multisig. The multisig signers are responsible to check transactions, to check where the funds are being sent, and to follow all the requirements for a proper transaction for the protection of CityDAO. The key aspect of the multisig is that the signers be trusted members of the DAO.

  • Operations and Day-to-Day Administration

The City Council will help organize and delegate operational tasks, such as maintaining the meeting minutes, permissions, passwords, independent contractor agreements and contracts. The City Council will schedule weekly meetings at regular times, which will not be changed with less than 48 hours notice. Each member of the council will have access to passwords for all DAO tools and the Council will determine who else should hold any permissions or passwords.

  • CIP Template Creation and Management

In addition to formatting a template for CIPs, the City Council will help problem-solve and request additional information where necessary, to make sure that proposals further the mission of the DAO.

  • Transparency Dashboard

The City Council will require that, for quality, transparency and clarity, all CityDAO projects create a transparent and available document that provides all pertinent information on funding received, expenditures, milestones and benchmarks. This document will be written in plain English and will be available at all times to all citizens on the CityDAO website or Notion page. The Council will finalize the details of the process. This is not meant to punish people but to provide transparency. Project members must populate the dashboard in order to receive continued funding.

Election Method

If this CIP passes, there will be open elections for seven (7) City Council members, all with six-month terms that begin on the day the election ends. Any citizen may run for any position. A citizen may be on the City Council and the multisig simultaneously. There will be no hierarchy of members on the City Council.

To be elected, candidates must put up a platform statement on Discourse. All candidates will take part in a series of two (2) public debates with questions submitted in advance by any citizen, moderated and run by the Community and Media Guilds together. After the debates, separate ranked choice votes will be put on Snapshot. All elected members of the multisig and the City Council must be willing to be KYC’d.

Election Rules

  • The election may not be used as an excuse to disparage the character of another member of the DAO.
  • Candidates may not make pledges, promises, or commitments of any sort.

Compensation and Budgets

Multisig Compensation: The multisig signers will receive $100 per month each, regardless of who actually signs the transactions. This is meant to incentivize all members to pay close attention to the transactions, their purpose, destination, suitability and potential liability to the DAO.

City Council Compensation

  • 2 Citizenship NFT per month per councilmember
  • Upon purchase of land for CityDAO, the City Council will receive a bonus of $1K each and 10 Parcel 1 NFTs
  • City Council will have a fund of 5 NFTs total per month to bring in talented individuals to the DAO. 4 of 7 vote required to give an NFT.

Executive Facilitator Compensation: The EF will receive $4K per month in compensation + a potential bonus of up to $2K per month based on performance from the City Council, and will have a budget of $24K over six (6) months and the authority to execute agreements.

  • In an emergency event where CityDAO gets sued and is required to pay fees in excess of the funds in the City Council treasury, the City Council can put a CIP on Discourse and Snapshot concurrently, with no time limits required. Quorum will be however many people vote.

Removal

The multisig signers will have one week to sign or reject transactions. If a transaction is rejected, the signers must document reasons and next steps within a reasonable time. If any of the multisig signers refuse to sign (2) or more transactions, they will be removed and the candidate who had the next highest vote will replace them. If there are no candidates left, a new election will be held for replacements or the City Council will choose replacements. The members of the multisig can vote off any member with a 5 of 8 vote.

If any of the City Council members miss more than three (3) meetings, they will be removed and replaced in the same manner as the multisig signers. The City Council can vote off any member with a 5 of 7 vote. The City Council can remove the EF at any time with a 5 of 7 vote. CityDAO Citizens can call for a removal or replacement of members of the multisig or the City Council or the Executive Facilitator with a CIP and a quorum of 50 votes. If a CIP is put up, it will be done with an anonymous “City Council” account.

3. Complaint Process

A complaint may subject the citizen to penalties up to and including a prohibition on offending parties from holding administrative positions at CityDAO or in CityDAO projects.

Substance - What Constitutes a Complaint?

An allegation of wrongdoing related to projects, behavior, transactions, or violations of the rules at CityDAO.

Process - How is a Complaint Dealt With?

  • Step 1 - Mediation by an individual who is agreed-upon by both parties.

Both parties must agree on an individual, preferably (but not necessarily) a CityDAO Citizen, who will hear both sides of the argument and attempt to mediate between the two parties.

  • Step 2 - Jury

Complaints that reach step 2 will be heard by a Kleros court. If either party is not satisfied with the decision, they may appeal to a Kleros appeals court. Both parties must write a complaint document. This complaint of wrongdoing needs to be complete and make specific allegations along with any evidence.

In case of failure, the City Council can choose to use a randomly selected group of six (6) CityDAO citizens using the Chainlink Verifiable Randomness Function (VRF). Payment for “jury duty” is $50 per person. This jury of 6 people will make a binding decision based on the facts presented. The Executive Facilitator will enforce the result by initiating a resolution that will go to the City Council to handle the dispute accordingly.

24 Likes
2

A few questions:

  1. How much quorum would this CIP need to pass the Snapshot?
  2. Last year, CIP-124 ceased the payment of citizen NFT to guild facilitators as to not give them too much voting power. What’s the idea behind the decision of paying city councils entirely (less the bonus) in citizen NFTs?
  3. The sole responsibility/authority of the multisigs would be only to verify and sign the transaction and provide document if rejected, correct?
  4. I assume the 6 month term apply to all the roles: EF, council member, and multisig unless they’re voted to be removed, and the term for the replacement would be the remaining of the 6 months?
1 Like
3

It has been 21 days and CIP149 failed to achieve 20 likes. Something about this seems wrong.

1 Like
4

Weeks ago, I wrote clearly on the top of the previous CIP-149 that it was no longer active and was going to be resubmitted based on comments. I did not take it down so that people could see any earlier comments to compare them with this version. Nothing is wrong. However, I will change this CIP number to 151 so that it no longer causes any confusion.

5

This would need 500 NFT votes to pass snapshot. The reason we have reconsidered giving NFTs is twofold: first, because once we switch to quadratic voting, there is much less possibility of whales using many NFTs to vote; second, because we don’t have much money and we want City Council to be incentivized towards building the project, not just getting compensation.

The sole responsibility of the multisig is to sign transactions. This includes understanding how to read transactions to make sure they are going to the correct address and that everything is proper with the transaction. You are correct about the six month roles and that any replacements would only for the remainder of the 6-month term.

3 Likes
6

I may have a suggestion:
If there appears a strong objection/anger etc. to EF or one/some/whole council members, citizens should have the rights to dismiss them temporarily/permanently.
There should be an (I don’t know if this is the right term/word) impeachment mechanism in order to protect citizens’ rights. I don’t know how to implement this but I just wanted to share this idea.

1 Like
7

In this proposal, there are ways for all positions to be removed, either by the other members or by citizens. Please see the “Removal” section at the bottom.

3 Likes
8

First of all, I just wanted to express appreciation for putting together this proposal! It is well thought out, and covers a lot of angles. I haven’t been as active recently, but this feels like a positive direction and it has my vote.

The council has a lot of authority to do things like hiring etc. But what if there is disagreement in the council. They just vote on whether to hire person A or person B? Or disagree on what the CIP template should look like…

I think the answer is that the council will determine its own procedures as you state, but just wanted to confirm.

1 Like
9

Yes, the general idea is that we want the kind of council we used to have at the beginning - where we were working together, spending lots of time, hammering out disagreements without needing long lists of what could and couldn’t be done. It was all for CityDAO and there was a great sense of camaraderie. That’s kind of been lost due to lots of infighting. We tried to write in clear rules about removal and voting people out if they are only there to stir the pot and cause dissention.

1 Like
10

…so even though this was presented to the community and failed to meet the 20-like milestone for snapshot a few weeks ago, it is now being re-proposed with some minor tweaks?

I think this sets a bad precedent. Run a proposal - and if it fails to move forward the first time - change a minor detail and repropose it. That is what I mean by “something about this seems wrong”.

I believe there are some topics in this proposal that may be worth exploring but I still feel this process is not being conducted in a way that provides transparency or allows for community members to participate, nor does it appear to be in line with the spirit of the original CityDAO mission, vision, or values.

You are essentially proposing a conversion of CityDAO into a manager-managed type of entity - which was never the point of a DAO in the first place - and doing so without formally changing the DAO’s legal structure. It may in fact be more efficient but if you want efficiency you should just form a startup / trad legal entity.

The problem at CityDAO is not the lack of a “board of directors” - Its a lack of accountability and a bad incentive structure for execution where human activities are involved.

This proposal, while seemingly well-intentioned, will not create an efficient or cost-effective incentive structure nor will it promote accountability on project execution. Its just another bureaucratic maneuver to pay people to push discord messages back and forth while remaining “in control”. It has long been time for new ideas and new energy from new contributors but unfortunately I suspect the outcome of this CIP - if successful - will simply be further entrenchment of the same old usual suspects.

1 Like
11

Is there something you propose? The usual suspects, as you call them, are simply the people who show up and keep trying.

As I said in the above message, CIP-149 was NOT proposed - it was halted so it could be retooled through weeks of public and open discussion in town square voice to create a new CIP based on citizens’ feedback. This is open governance, as opposed to putting up a CIP and adding language saying that it can be changed after people liked it. That seems wrong to me. The intention was to take the feedback from CIP-149 and adjust the ideas in public forums to create a new CIP, not just propose the same one again. As you’ll notice, they are different CIPs with different proposals.

12

I want to commend your open and transparent process. You held multiple meetings over weeks of open and frank discussion that allowed anybody to have significant impact on the outcome of this proposal. We had many disagreements without being disagreeable, and it felt like a step in the right direction.
It’s a much better process than racking up 20 likes and then making sweeping changes while pointing to the small print.

1 Like
13

Generally, I think this is great and appreaciate the work that you’ve put in @Da3vid to move the governance discussions I and others in the DAO have been working on since last year towards a concrete proposal.

I do have some small but important questions:

This seem like it gives too much power to the council, there is no check on this so council can just shut down any CIP.

Why are we incentivizing land purchase rather than citizen participation?

This allows the council to avoid disputes with itself not sure why it needs to be a power if the process is laid out below.

Why kleros court if the paragraph below has a system within CityDAO?

@Da3vid you should list specifically the tools that the city council should have access to so that those who currently own access can hand it over. And at what level of permissions.

14

EF 3K no Bonus
5 instead 7 for City Council, each 500 $

This way budget would be more reasonable and the rest could be spent for projects and expenses.

Can we see some examples for quorum ? That way people would understand the logic.
How many votes needed for a spesific amount. Also the rate (%)

15

Thanks @Da3vid for putting this together. I support it for the following reasons:

  • Right now I see us as operating as a purely direct democracy, which is slow and inefficient. Most legitimate governments around the world are representative democracies because it allows for people to elect people to represent them - and those representatives can spend much more time on policy and outcomes than each Citizen can on their own. It will also reduce voter fatigue and create an incentive structure for the Council to represent Citizens.
  • The new council and flex quorum will create momentum and ability for a smaller group to execute on things more easily
  • I know you really workshopped this and incorporated a lot of community feedback here

I would also note that perfect is the enemy of good. I imagine we’ll have to tweak some things here but I have a feeling this will be a lot better than what we have now.

Scott

2 Likes
16

These are good points, @kkopczyn. Re. the first point, I agree that it’s a lot of power for the council to declare a project defunct or repurpose its resources. Maybe we could limit this (ex. require a 7 of 7 decision) or eliminate it. I agree that council should have a check. Maybe the council and EF would need to agree.

Re. the bonus for the council, the idea was that we really want to incentivize CityDAO to purchase land and to have the council be on board for that. However, this does just incentivize buying any land rather than good land. As with @simplepixellife’s comment below, I agree that we should change this. A recent idea was to remove that $1K bonus, and pay the city council $200 a month, 4 or 5 NFTs per month and 5 Parcel 1 NFTs instead of 10.

Re. the dispute resolution, I personally believe that we should use Kleros. They have a well-developed “civil court” style system and decentralizing dispute resolution could scale as we develop. The reason we had a secondary method was in case there are any problems with Kleros, so that we aren’t stuck with only one required untested method.

1 Like
17

Here are some sample amounts. We took them out of the above CIP because it was making the document too long.

Amount Quorum
$5,000 85
$10,000 100
$50,000 162
$100,000 208
$500,000 404
$1,000,000 550
$1,500,000 662
$2,000,000 757
Amount Voter Rating
$5,000 66
$10,000 66
$50,000 67
$100,000 67
$500,000 71
$1,000,000 76
$1,500,000 82
$2,000,000 87
18

All good points and resolutions, to follow up:

  1. I do think we should remove power to terminate cips. It opens up attack vectors for the council to block cips it doesn’t like. Which fundamentally changes how decisions are made for the DAO.
  2. I vote just pay the council in NFTs.
  3. Kleros makes sense.

In terms of tools access, we should specify:

“Council members will each have the highest level of admin permissions on each of CityDAO’s tools, including but not limited to discord, discourse, Twitter, Notion, snapshot and Google Workspace”

1 Like
19

I agree with points 2, 3 and the tools access language. Re. the first point, I agree that we want to make sure the council doesn’t have unilateral power over CIPs. I believe the council should be involved in making sure that CIPs reflect the mission, are legal, feasible, measurable and realistic prior to the CIP going up to Snapshot. So, in that sense, there would be no need for the council to terminate CIPs after a Snapshot vote.

2 Likes
20

We talked about this one and again ratings are so low when we look at the past snapshot.

100 K for 67 rating ?

Also, here is the math for quorum. Am i wrong ?

100 K = 208 quorum
FP 0,10 which is 185 $
185 x 208 =38.480 $
You can buy 208 NFT and make a profit of 60 K $