To start, I think we should focus on Scott’s proposed performance metric of increasing citizen time on CityDAO property: Citizen Time at CityDAO Property = # citizens ⨉ # days at CityDAO property, which I would encourage everyone to read such proposal here: CityDAO Mission, Metric, and Values Discussion
However, having an elected official and leader that is able to make strategic, administrative and practical decisions on behalf of the CityDAO will enable CityDAO to spread decentralized governance of land, management of land, and the development of a decentralized City (although such City may have some centralized officials that communicate with CityDAO (related DAOs) and drive further decentralization and democratization of land through (as Josh has said) execution. Such execution should tie back with the Citizen Time metric above. Execution is generally easier when you have less decision makers, but not always, so I do think this is a very productive conversation.
As a practical matter, executing transactions with land is difficult to do with multiple proposals. I think really trying to unify behind one proposal would be helpful and there should be someone that is held accountable to effectuate transaction. Perhaps it does not need to be the mayor per se, but I really liked the Mayor idea. A mayor is beholden to his citizens, which is different than a traditional corporation where a CEO is accountable to the corporation’s board of directors (with the board appointed by the corporation’s shareholders).
If Citizens are concerned about power being concentrated with one or a series of actor, CityDAO could actually have a panel of Mayors (with the necessary qualifications) that could be randomly selected in order to implement a decision. I was just speaking with a collogue at MakerDAO that does substantial work in the RWA space and we were both discussing the importance of having a centralized person or team able to execute and make decisions on a deal. To the extent that people do not like the Mayor’s, Council’s, (or decentralized/qualified/rotated) Mayor’s/Council’s decisions, then there could be pre-set thresholds that must be taken to snapshot to Citizens, Guilds, project participants, subject matter experts, or the council. However, the strength with this proposal is that it empowers some people to implement a unified vision of the CityDAO, while continuing to scale out decentralized systems, guilds, projects and governance. The biggest risk of failure for any startup is disagreement amongst founders. In the instance of a DAO, I think one of the more critical points of failure is disagreement among guild leaders and actually solving coordination problems across guilds, which is a processes that is very time intensive (I imagine). A central mayor or council would be able to help process information, so that every facilitator does not need to know what every other facilitator is doing in order to make informed decisions. Every guild (or perhaps in the future project participants) should be focused on performing their task and goals and not spending as much time trying to interpret what other guilds are working on and how to unite efforts. I think we are all saying a lot of the same things, but just using different lingo. However, I just wanted to add clarity as to why I think this could be a good approach or a approach worth discussing over voice, as it has seemed to get a lot of engagement.
These issues become particularly complicated whenever we are discussing real-estate, which (by law) requires multiple parties in order to close and frequently it is necessary to put multiple offers in on multiple properties in order to successfully acquire a property.
In fact, in addition to Josh’s proposal, I would also suggest that the mayor and the Council be given an additional budget to be able to execute on a proposed transaction or funding mechanism (or potentially both). Having staff/contributor allocations is important; however, I would suggest that the Council and Mayor have some funding allocated as well, so the mayor and council is able to move swiftly in order to fully bake a transaction for approval and showcase their best talents work on behalf of the service to the DAO.
The final property selection could be taken to Snapshot for member approval, but permitting the mayor/council to put together a good deal or financing structure will allow them to approach citizens with a focused proposal, with the consultation of subject matter experts or members as needed.
In the end, a DAO is made up of people that execute on things and I think that CityDAO has gotten a bit bogged down in internal communication and debating actions vs actually effectuating transactions that achieve the common mission/metrics. It’s a bit late for me, but these are some of my initial thoughts on the proposal and why I thought it is a proposal worth a deeper discussion.
Regardless, I have enjoyed participating in this thread and the tension here between the approaches, because if we can figure out a way for people to freely assemble capital and build communities and decentralized cities, then wow… <3