CIP-202: City Council 2.0 International v.2

[serkanbenol]

TLDR

The purpose of this CIP is to create a more inclusive CityDAO Council and to fund the Community Team, which will make sure we have engagement across multiple communities. This CIP will last for 6 months, followed by democratic, open elections. The quorum for this CIP is 500 votes and the requested total budget is $107K. This CIP combines both a council CIP and the community team CIP, which is why the budget is high.

Why is this needed?

For the past year, CityDAO has had some very important problems that we cannot fix without authorization by the community through a CIP. The main problems can be explained in three categories: administrative, legal and taxes.

Administrative:

• Our multisig wallet has members who are no longer part of the DAO. This is not safe.
• Our quorums make it too easy to request large amounts of money and only require 51% approval from voters, no matter how much money is requested.
• Our voting allows for certain individuals to control the votes.
• Our international communities do not have enough representation.
• We have no process for complaints and grievances, which has led to negative behavior on the discord. This destabilizes our community and makes it harder for citizens to get involved with CityDAO.
• How to make sure that people who are paid to do work do not get paid unless they accomplish their work.

Legal:

• We don’t have clarity on what CityDAO can do to earn money as an American DAO LLC. Without this, we keep spending money without making any money.
• We don’t have anyone who can legally sign contracts on behalf of CityDAO for our events, partnerships, or for when we hire independent contractors for work.

Taxes:

• We need to pay our taxes and send out the proper forms from the American IRS to anyone who gets paid more than $600 per year. We need a CPA (certified public accountant) to handle some of these tax issues.

The proposed City Council 2.0 would include the following seven people: Blackacres, David, Nico, Ming, Lupei, SimplePixel, Serkan

1. Blackacres

• North American (NA) community communication

• Advisory board communication lead

• Handling and filing taxes including CPA oversight and paperwork

• Clarify the charter (GROUP)

  • Clarify how an NFT holder confirms their citizenship for forum likes
  • Clarify Snapshot voting to refine algorithmic quorums and/or implement quadratic voting

• Human Resource Management (GROUP)

  • Complaint and grievance process

2. David

• Work with outside counsel to handle legal issues in CityDAO

• Clarify who can sign contracts on behalf of CityDAO

• Clarify the charter (GROUP)

  • Clarify how an NFT holder confirms their citizenship for forum likes
  • Clarify Snapshot voting to refine algorithmic quorums and/or implement quadratic voting

• Human Resource Management (GROUP)

  • Complaint and grievance process
  • Hiring and dismissal of independent contractors
  • Dismissal of council members and other DAO members from groups
  • Clarification on DAO tool access

3. Nico

• Taking notes on meetings

• Summarize round-ups

• Keeping things in check on that we’re on topic at meetings

• Community (GROUP)

  • Cross channel communication across communities
  • Help out with community calls, especially with NA and China areas.
  • Hosting Twitter (X) Spaces

• Strategic operations (GROUP)

  • If someone proposed something and didn’t follow through, should they still get paid? The work people say they’ll do and what they actually do should be documented and shared with the DAO.
  • How can we ensure accountabilities for passed CIPs
  • Assist with strategic communications about the long term development for CityDAO - what are we building?

4. Ming

• CN community communication

• Wechat group management and public account management

• IRL meetups in China

• Translate newspapers and round-up into Chinese

• Partnerships and communication with other CN DAOs

• DAO TALK Twitter Space

• Strategic operations (GROUP)

  • Develop operational and marketing plans
  • Plan CityDAO branding activities

5. Lupei

• Thai community communication

• Translation and content tailoring in Thai community

• IRL meetups in Thailand (as needed)

• Community operations (GROUP)

  • Making sure everyone in the DAO has the same information
  • Community activities / projects management
  • CityDAO contest organization
  • Publishing newspaper
  • Twitter(X) management/access.

6. SimplePixel

• Co-lead Turkish community communication

• Management of partnerships with Turkish DAO/web3 organizations

• IRL events in Turkey

• Community operations (GROUP)

  • Management of community activities and projects for overall DAO
  • Hosting TR Twitter spaces
  • CityDAO contest organization

• Strategic operations (GROUP)

  • Clarifying the CIP process
  • Making a clear template for the creation of CIPs

• Clarify the charter (GROUP)

  • Clarify how an NFT holder confirms their citizenship for forum likes
  • Clarify Snapshot voting to refine algorithmic quorums and/or implement quadratic voting

• Marketing / Events (GROUP)

  • Figure out what upcoming events are happening globally and locally
  • Make a CIP and work with others on an events budget
  • Sponsorship & event participation for Turkish Community

7. Serkan

• Co-lead Turkish community communication

• Co-hosting biweekly Discord TR community calls

• Translation of newspaper and round-up into Turkish

• Community (GROUP)

  • Representing the First & Founding citizens
  • Connecting and gathering info about active/passive citizens on Discord & Twitter

• Strategic operations (GROUP)

  • Research other DAOs about success / failure

Advisory / CityDAO Assembly (non voting):
Anyone with more than 50 Citizen NFTs or any Founder NFTs. Being a member of the CityDAO Assembly provides streamlined access to the council and community team, which includes efficient feedback, communication, development of ideas and assistance in turning ideas into viable CIPs. This will be implemented after discussion and after main priorities are accomplished.

If any council member misses more than two meetings without explanation, they will be removed from the council. They will not be replaced until the next election. Voting on all issues within the council will require 4 of 7 votes to pass.

RESPONSIBILITIES

City Council 2.0 is meant to accomplish very specific goals. Each of these goals is directly tied to the effectiveness of CityDAO. The planned goals are as follows:

Month 1-3

• How to confirm citizenship for likes
• Adjusting quorums
• Update Charter
• Operations
  • Clarify the process of CIP creation → Forum → Snapshot
  • Making a clear template for the creation of CIPs
  • Clarify how an NFT holder confirms their citizenship
  • Ensure that only verified citizens are able to “like” CIPs on the Discourse forum
  • Clarify Snapshot voting to refine quorums and/or implement quadratic voting
  • Who posts Snapshot votes when the 20 like threshold is reached
  • Clarification of DAO tool access
  • Clarifying access process for Twitter & Discord
• Taxes and CPA relationship management and organization
• Appoint the 8-person multisig, remove non-participating members, and make clear rules

Month 3-6

• Legal

  • Establishing contact with outside council
  • Making sure there is a clear pipeline for legal questions to be answered
  • Who can sign contracts
  • CityDAO treasury payments from projects
  • Using NFTs as compensation to citizens

• Maintaining or hiring people to maintain the DAO tools including Discord, Discourse, Snapshot, Website, Notion, and Twitter

• Human Resource Management

  • Make rules for how members are removed in the future
  • Establishing and enforcing regulations for behavior on Discourse and Discord
  • Establishing a complaint and grievance process for CityDAO citizens

BUDGET BREAKDOWN

• Council Members: $1500 per member per month ($63,000 total)
• Lawyers, Accountants and Other Professionals: $12K total
• Council Fund (only used for bounties and hiring): $20K total
• Community Fund : $12K total

[TARKAN]

While no one was mentioning Nico’s name, I mentioned it. You’re still keeping me out for Citydao. It’s like this: Sometimes, when an empire is close to losing in the war of existence, it wins the war with the idea of ​​a commander. Is this how you rewarded that commander? exile.
You will all benefit again from how much aggressive power Nico will bring. but I am an exile. Anyway, gold does not lose its value if it falls into mud. By the way, I can become a signer for a multi sig wallet. The reason I said yes to this cıp is because you recruited !!! Nico to the team.

[lyons800]

Concerns with CIP-202: City Council 2.0 International v.2

Dear CityDAO community,

After reading through the details of CIP-202, I’ve come across several points that are deeply concerning, not just to me, but also potentially to the long-term sustainability and direction of CityDAO. Let me break these down for clarity:

1. Ambiguity in Council Roles

The proposal positions the council primarily for administrative duties. However, it includes individuals whose specific roles and purposes are unclear. A council should have a concise and well-defined set of responsibilities for each member. Vague definitions leave room for inefficiency and lack of accountability.

2. Misrepresented Administrative Concerns

Multisig Wallet: The problem isn’t that our multisig wallet has untrustworthy members; it’s that the existing signers aren’t as active as they should be. Each member on the multisig is a DAO member so your statement is false.

The fact that there is a call or suggestions to replace signers on thin/false/no justification is reckless and tantamount to a rug pull. Members who are inactive, should be replaced, however blanket grounds to replace at will…… is enough said.

Quorum and Voting: The proposal presents the current quorum and voting process as problematic, yet these have not caused major issues up to this point. Lowering the quorum promotes voter participation and preserves the democratic fabric of CityDAO. Could the governance process be better? Yes. But stating things the way you have is concerning to me as there is clearly an opinion of things that is affecting judgement.

International Representation: The assertion that international communities are underrepresented contradicts current dynamics. For example, the entire outfacing community team last quarter was international representatives. Surely it was their job to ensure adequate representation amongst their own communities too? As an international community member, this is a problem in all daos and communities, with proposals like the most recent one on events not listening to anyone even when they do speak up.

Complaints and Grievances: While a structure for handling grievances is essential, framing it as a primary council function feels like overkill. This could easily be established separately.

3. Financial Concerns

Budget: A whopping $107K for a vaguely-defined proposal is a red flag. There’s a need for full transparency and justification for each line item in the budget.

Compensation: Paying council members $1500 per month without providing qualifications or expectations is both excessive and unbalanced considering international wage disparities.

E.g. There is an inactive member, with 0 track record getting paid $1500 to translate a newsletter, co-lead comms for a single community, host a call twice a month, and do research. Seems excessive.

4. Legal and Tax Matters

While these are undoubtedly critical issues, the proposal remains nebulous on how these will be tackled. Specific questions and actionable plans are missing, making it difficult to gauge the effectiveness of this council in resolving these matters.

5. Community Team Assessment

Merging two different initiatives—administrative and community—into one council dilutes focus. The community team should present metrics on their effectiveness before being incorporated into such a pivotal role. I am still hoping to review metrics and successes/failures of the last seasons community team (same)

6. Concerns Over Marketing Initiatives

Without diving into specifics, there have been concerns about the true intentions behind certain marketing strategies. This raises red flags about their potential involvement in such an influential body.

7. Unfamiliar and Redundant Council Members

The sudden appearance of relatively inactive members like SB and having multiple representatives for the international council from the same region creates an imbalance and raises questions about the selection process.

8. The Need for Strategic Direction

Lastly, before establishing a council, CityDAO should be focusing on a roadmap with strategic direction, something that is conspicuously missing but fundamentally important.

Given these concerns, I urge the community to reconsider endorsing this CIP-202 proposal as it stands.

Best,

Lyons800

[TARKAN]

CIP additional clause should be added. In Citydao, wallet security is more important than anything else. There must be signers consisting of active members. one of them (I am a candidate). Details Approval with a rate of 8/5 (delay will be reduced since there will be active members) If 4 members approve but there is a delay(max 36 hours) in approval from other members, no money will be given to the other members. For this, each signer must be given 500 USD per confirmation. (These are chewing gum money since the income of our treasury will increase very sharply during the bull period).

I would like you to please consider me as one of the candidates as signer.

Görev vermezsenizüveyanamavradımolsunki hepnz sövedrım​:handshake:

[MemeBrains]

I believe the individuals mentioned in this proposal will succeed with the objectives noted within it.

There are inherent risks with everything everywhere. I feel the cost/benefit and risk/reward of this proposal as written are heavily in favour of CityDAO both short term and long term. I could be wrong with this assessment, however at this time of this writing I do not think I am.

I support this and see no reason not too. It’s long overdue, needs done, and this seems like a reasonable team to completed it successfully.

[Da3vid]

I dont’ speak for the council. These are my own thoughts in response to your concerns. I also note that you are a long-term, valued member of CityDAO and there is no desire to push you out, diminish your contributions or prevent you from continuing to help CityDAO grow and develop.

• Ambiguity in Council Roles: These roles are just the people leading these initiatives, not making unilateral decisions. We had to leave it somewhat broad so that it can be narrowed by the group who is actually working on it.

• Misrepresented Administrative Concerns: You are right that all multisig members are currently Citizens. However, we need to get absent members off the multisig. As you are a member, you know how hard it is to complete transactions currently.

• Quorum and Voting: There only plan here (since I’d be helping to lead this group) would be to have a more algorithmic approach to both quorums and voter approval ratings. I hope that both you and ScottA would be willing to assist with this.

• International Representation: Your feelings are valid, but so are members of the international communities, who seek more representation.

• Complaints and Grievances: If, as you said, “a structure for handling grievances is essential” then it really ought to be done. You may argue that it’s easy to do separately, but it hasn’t been done because no one has the authority to do it.

• Financial Concerns: It’s a lot of people and a lot of money. However, it does include all the community team funding from their previous CIP.

• Legal and Tax Matters: This is just to make sure we have a good working relationship with outside counsel and tax consultants. We just need authorized lines of communication.

• Community Team Assessment: Metrics are a reasonable request. The idea is to have metrics moving forwards.

• Concerns Over Marketing Initiatives: I think we’re crystal clear, as a group, that we don’t do anything to pump the price.

• Unfamiliar and Redundant Council Members: SB represents the founding citizens, not just Turkey.

• The Need for Strategic Direction: I personally believe that fixing basic admin issues will improve our ability to discuss strategy.

[Syntonikka1]

I look forward to having this small group of people to be accountable to keep CityDAO tasks more streamlined and enable CityDAO to create more valuable work.

[tippi_fifestarr]

Having Nico pay attention to CityDAO again is worth the whole budget of this CIP! Most importantly you are allocating funds to an executive group that can make decisions quickly. This is excellent and necessary, since having everything needing weeks of decentralized voting is a drag.

Lastly, having no accountability in HR is one of the deepest problems in this DAO.

[Melinda]

Hi! It looks like you’re synthesizing community-building work with governance. I still feel a little vague on what that would look like in practice. Is it a case of each council member taking responsibility for community-building actions?

[Melinda]

Right. Accountability is simply a core need of any organization to have a chance to thrive. MindTools | Home

[Melinda]

Me too! Sorely needed.

[Da3vid]

Yes, I appreciate the chance to clarify this. Previously there was a community team CIP that had more than 20 likes, but it was agreed that the best route forward was to integrate community with the council. In this way, each international council member would have the inside information to bring back to their communities, to hold calls in their local languages at convenient times, to increase DAO-wide awareness, understanding and engagement. Also, it could align the community-building actions with each other, so that all communities, including North America and Europe, are in cohesive alignment.

[lyons800]

I appreciate your response.

1. Ambiguity and Budget Concerns:

Initially, the council agreed to work voluntarily with the option of retroactive compensation. The current proposal, however, allocates a significant budget for similar, yet unclear tasks. A more detailed definition of these tasks, especially around governance, would be beneficial.

2. Checks and Balances:

The council shouldn’t have the authority to alter governance processes such as quorums and voting unilaterally. These changes should be proposed separately to the community for evaluation, creating a feedback loop and ensuring accountability before compensation.

3. Misrepresented Administrative Concerns:

There’s a need to address the inactive multisig members issue. My previous statement aimed to clarify the misinformation regarding the current multisig members.

4. Separate CIP for Quorum and Voting:

A separate proposal to address quorum and voting processes, managed by an administrative body, should be considered. This would ensure a more structured approach to governance changes. People like @memebrains, @fugyeah and I have a lot of experience with these in a variety of DAOs so it would make sense to have a separate effort for this that does not leave it at the councils discretion.

5. International Representation:

There’s evidence supporting my claims on international representation, but individuals can form their own conclusions.

6. Complaints and Grievances:

Although a formal grievance handling process is essential, it hasn’t been a priority due to the positive community interactions recently. However, there is an outline for this but a clear process for enforcement should be established.

7. Financial Concerns and Community Team Assessment:

A clear direction for CityDAO is crucial before allocating budget for marketing and community engagement. The community team should present past quarter metrics, a well-defined plan, and address the legal risks associated with miscommunications on marketing initiatives.

8. Legal and Tax Matters:

Agree on this, very important.

9. Unfamiliar and Redundant Council Members:

The inclusion of unfamiliar members like SB needs clarification regarding their contributions and suitability for the roles. I have even had communications where there has been complaints about having purchased the founding NFT in the first place so this seems a little strange. It seems like this proposal has a bunch of things squeezed in with administrative things to help it pass.

10. Need for Strategic Direction:

Establishing a clear strategic direction for CityDAO should precede the initiatives in CIP-202. Some administrative issues can be addressed in tandem, but a clear strategic direction is fundamental.

In summary, a more structured, transparent, and strategic approach should be adopted in managing CityDAO’s challenges. This includes better task definitions, proposing governance changes separately for community evaluation, and setting a clear strategic direction before proceeding with the initiatives and budget outlined in CIP-202.

[Da3vid]

It is, perhaps, ironic that the council proposal that you previous posted, and which I helped write, included things like “clarifying snapshot voting”, the power to “appoint the 8-person multisig” and even “any other changes the council determines are needed” - a provision that I disagreed with because it gave too much power to a single group.

These were not seen by you as problems when you were one of the people in charge, but are problems when you are not. You mentioned that grievance has not been a priority due to the recent positive community interactions. I believe we have had significant problems in CityDAO with generally negative community interactions, so I struggle to agree.

However, to reiterate my point from an earlier post - the goal, as I understand it, is not to exclude you. Far from it, the skills, abilities and contributions that you bring are invaluable. In recent discussions about the “first node”, for example, I can think of no one better suited than you to spearhead this. The sincere hope is that we can all work together, giving others a chance the same way I was given a chance when I first arrived. Since then, CityDAO has become so important to me that I am devoting my Ph.D. to the DAO space. I hope that other new members will find the same passion and opportunities here, and that together we will stand at the front of the DAO space as an example of how a community handles challenges and collectively comes out stronger as a reseult.

[MemeBrains]

@Syntonikka1

enable CityDAO to create more valuable work.

Amen to this

To my understanding, the intention of this Council is to complete basic yet important tasks, aimed at enabling the DAO to be more successful

I don’t think it’s an overly complex decision to just empower some people, like proposed herein, to just do the work required so we can all move forward and be more productive

[scottfits]

While I am supportive of a CityDAO Council, I prefer CityDAO stay focused on Wyoming and the US, where we have the ability to operate with our Wyoming DAO LLC.

• This CIP is far too expensive, authorizing a ludicrous amount of money for Community Management, translation, HR, and other non-critical expenses
• Putting multisig members up for a vote is dangerous and could increase the risk of hostile takeovers and fraud
• We already have a CPA and file our taxes.

[ImamOglu]

Ethereum will come to Istanbul. citydao would be there. You did not give 10k usd. But according to Lyons, you are appointing uncertain members to the council with high salaries.
simplepixellife There is no one in Citydao who does not know this name. I think the salary he will get is even low. But for some it’s too much. Pay less for civil servants because they are less helpful to the public. (SB)…

I asked a question and the response was unpleasant. Everyone read how Simplepixellife answers to the CIP it opened for Ethereum. But some of the newly will electe council members will receive thousands of dollars for their ridiculous job descriptions for 6 months.

You will give the money close to the budget for Ethereum Istanbul to a member. His mission is full of question marks.

and we will not be in Ethereum Istanbul. Is this a joke ?
I think @simplepixellife was disrespected regarding Ethereum Istanbul

[TARKAN]

What’s so hostile about adding me as a Signer? Make it 9/6 instead of 8/5. The aim is fast transactions… some signers have not been giving approval for months. Maybe their wallets have been hacked and they’re not telling us out of shame. Isn’t it a security threat to not have any votes in multi sig wallet?