CIP 20: The Museum, and how we must prioritize our voting mechanism in the DAO

Proposals (CIPs)
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Hey everyone,

I hope you all had a solid Thanksgiving and for those outside of the US a solid week and weekend.

We as a DAO had two votes over the holiday/week. One was a general thought process vote, in short ‘What do we see as the vision for the DAO,’ and the other was a vote on starting a NFT museum…that involved the use of Treasury Funds. Now, before we go any further, I did vote yes on both proposals (as highlighted in the #NFT-Museum thread in the CityDao Discord).

The first thing I want to bring up for discussion is timing. It was a holiday. Let me repeat, a holiday. I propose any votes that concern funds not be available to vote within a +/- week of a major holiday. I know, with a global scale it will be impossible to avoid every single holiday, but we can probably agree, a holiday such as Thanksgiving is going to be more disruptive to an individual’s day to day schedule than President’s Day. Also, a vote must end on a Thursday or Friday, to allow Citizen’s to discuss the proposals up for a vote in the general meetings held on Wednesdays. Also, if the general calls ever move from Wednesday, a vote can only end 2 full business days after.

The second aspect is Quorum. Looking at both votes that have been up for vote, it is within reason that a quorum count of one thousand (1,000) is achievable. I propose that we make that the standard for now. Obviously, this is intended as something more ‘living’ and not a hard number. However, 100 is far too low when funds are in play.

And third, I propose that specific guidelines be put in place in regards to notifying members of the DAO. We should begin with notifications in discord, much like occurred in the #announcements thread. Also, if it is possible to have a bot send direct messages to Citizens, understanding that spam and nefarious actions are a thing, so we must decide on a mechanism that is as fool proof as possible. Also, in the notifications, the originating CIP AND Snapshot vote link must be included, to allow Citizens the ability to have the opportunity to be as well informed about the voting that is occurring.

In summary, no vote concerning funds can be done +/- a week of a major holiday, Quorum must be higher than 100 especially if 1000 is achievable during a holiday, and guidelines for notification on votes must be done via discord, direct messaging, and must include both the original CIP and Snapshot link.

I know technically this CIP could be broken into three. But I am doing this as a way to bring awareness to our necessity to iron out a voting system, and by extension our #charter.

BlackAcres

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An effective voting mechanism is very important. Only projects approved under an effective voting mechanism can continue to operate.

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Thanks for the thoughts. I agree we should raise the quorum and outline a clearer process. I think these should be incorporated in the City Charter since the voting rules are “meta laws”

Some things we should think about

  1. Instead of a no holidays rule, maybe just a minimum time window of 7 or 10 days or so for voting to be open

  2. A clearer process for when proposals go from forum posts to voting
    After discussions, proposals often incorporate feedback and change. Maybe we need to create a separate forum post to incorporate amendments first, like CIP-20a or 20b or osmething and post that as a fresh topic.

  3. A fast track mechanism for low stakes proposals
    Maybe if a proposal does not touch treasury funds or less than a certain amount, it can be voted on faster. Basically a land purchase proposal should not be treated the same as something lower stakes

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Hey! thanks for taking the time to add some thoughts!

I think 10 days maybe best, as it would cover enough time for notification and allow the community to have time to think over the proposal, etc. 7 days would be more efficient (and realistically speaking, majority of voting could be ‘projected’ with efficiency), but some weeks out of the year would make 7 days seem tight.

Yes, I think there should be a alphabetical notation for finalized proposals that are available to read before a vote. There has been talk of a proposal committee, where the group would go through a proposal and make sure it meets certain requirements. It would be good to have this final proposal include criteria, such as, cost, ROI, risk, who is involved/roles, etc. Maybe a member of the core team or a formed committee could sign off on this final iteration of a proposal. Even if its done in the form of a comment…“Scottfits signs off on this proposal, as it meets the X requirements for bringing this proposal to vote.” Or all voting ready proposals are posted by a member of the committee/core team, with credit given to the original proposal writer. This is just to ensure the community can trust in the validity of a vote ready proposal.

A fast track system would be good to have for proposals that come at no expense of the Treasury. I think this aspect should be received as a more ‘living’ part of the proposal and ultimate Charter. As the DAO develops, the possibility of sanctioned budgets for specific pods/task forces/teams may already be in play so this aspect may change as needed. But, for now, votes that require funds need to go through the full process: original proposal, community interaction, ensuring all aspects/criteria is met, then final ‘voting’ proposal. Non funding related votes may go through a: proposal, community interaction, vote.

The one aspect that would be in need of being ironed out is funds that are X% or less of Treasury. I have been pondering the idea of a percentage of the budget being considered and set aside for such things. 1% does come to mind. Hopefully, we can get up and running a regular listing of the Treasury status, thus making it capable of being transparent for the citizens. At the moment, I am leaning towards having 1% of the budget, per fiscal year, being set aside for such minor costs. This approach is more restrictive, and would need its own set of appropriate and fair guidelines, but I do believe its best. On the contrary, if we went with ‘1% of total Treasury’ that 1% can be bled out overtime by numerous ‘1%’ fast tracked proposals. Thus, allocating 1% of the total Treasury, per fiscal year, for fast tracked projects seems reasonable. -BlackAcres

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how about building a temple for Satoshi？the first one in the world

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I agree and second all three of @scottfits points and also suggest there should also be a ‘high stakes’ stopgap also for if we might need to take an emergency action in shorter than 7 or 10 days. Maybe it needs 2/3 to pass. But sometimes you just can’t wait.

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If he knew, he wouldn’t agree. There must be many people who think like me. :rofl:

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I’m working on a DAO operating framework and haev been thinking about how to balance decentralization and speed of action. My idea below is not fully decentralized but is worth considering, imo.

We could formally appoint committees that are responsible for initially evaluating relevant proposals. These committees should have a minimum number of people on therm (let’s say 5 or 7 to ensure a level of decentralization). Examples could be Land Management, Metaverse Real Estate, NFT Curation, Governance, Treasury, etc.

When a relevant proposal comes up, the committee vets it within a finite time period and then takes a decision if it’s not treasury related (with appropriate documentation of reasoning) or suggests a path forward for the rest of the membership to vote on.

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We’re a global DAO, avoiding every holiday in any country is infeasible. If it were Christmas this would be a more reasonable complaint.

Quorom should be raised but 1000 seems too high, maybe 500.

In favor of a standard notification process. I don’t think the vote in question had the necessary publicity.

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我建议是建设一个名人博物馆，只要是推进币圈进程的人都按照顺序放在博物馆

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I had proposed a citizens committee which sounds very similar to an idea you are talking about but a little more granular. Probably better your way for a group this size. It’s also very much like the task forces they talked about a few weeks ago. I think we will see something like this develop.

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