Hi all,
Not sure if anyone else is feeling this way, but I feel like we’re chasing a boulder downhill. Or drinking from a firehose - choose your favorite analogy! The project oriented set up has yielded a lot of great ideas, but each time one comes up, I have no idea how much money we have left in our budget, how much we have promised to future projects, or what the status is on projects that we have funded already.
I know we are constantly struggling to hit the right balance of “LFG” vs. “wait guys we need to talk about this more” but it feels like we’ve swung too far in the direction of just doing a bunch of stuff without really seeing what direction we are headed.
We’ve started to talk about maybe only voting on these big proposals at set time intervals in the link below; so thats one potential solution. Maybe a short term easy one is just having a roadmap of all the projects that have been approved, their timeline, and their projected budget drawdowns.
Totally on board with this right after we pass CIP 128
We have discussed this before, but QV would help. A full QV where you have multiple votes, or voice credits, to assign across options. If you vote for one you have less to vote on another. That and a quorum that is proportional to the budget you ask for. That would temper the proposals where a large percentage of the treasury is being asked for.
For the moment though not sure of a fair way to just delay things. You don’t want to bias one way or the other, but ya, it feels a bit rushed at the moment.
It seems I am standing alone when it comes to speaking up about doing things the right way lately - but I strongly support this.
I think all projects including those that have already passed should be paused, and a new collective community focus should be placed on upgrading CityDAO’s governance. An all-hands-on-deck effort.
CityDAO should force everyone to work together to align and agree about governance instead, as boring as that may be, because we have launched a ship into the water with holes in the bottom. Pausing the projects would force the proposers to help upgrade governance instead of looking to take advantage of it, and then after a proper effort to define how CityDAO moves forward, we revisit the proposals.
Another really good idea that someone pitched (might have been you @Nick123) is that votes of such large magnitude should be staged at 3 month intervals so that the community can look at the menu of proposals and make their selection instead of a 7 course tasting menu where the food just keeps coming. (I know the latter sounds delicious but we should be more fair to other contributors and ideas than the “race for the cash” mentality we have seen of late)
Sounds a lot like what @will has proposed re voice credits
The fair way to delay is to delay all, objectively. Force governance overhaul (and incentivize participation from the very proposers who want to see their projects move forward - but also the broader community). Maybe someone out there in the CityDAO ecosystem (or another DAO even) has a solution to governance that ensures the voice of the community is reflected in the direction of funds flow from CityDAO’s treasury better than what we are currently seeing.
Seeing as nobody can agree on CityDAO’s mission, governance structure, use of treasury funds, etc. I can’t find a reason to take one side or the other re: velocity.
IMO there’s as much an argument to be made for running no further projects and investing all of the money (aiming for a higher probability of productive returns) over the next 12 months (see: CIP-132: CityDAO Ventures).
Forcing people to work together may be a barrier to collective efficacy. I do think the issues you mention are worth discussing, though. Before we halt all projects, could we elaborate what elements you feel we need to agree on re. governance? As Fug said, maybe it’s about having a clear long-term vision and shared mental model of how we achieve it.
To Nick’s point, I agree it feels like a lot of projects have been pitched. I agree about having roadmaps so all citizens can see what’s going on, and what the plans are for each project. Having voting in intervals could be a useful method to try to slow things down.
The people should be afforded a right to directly determine how they will be governed. I believe the council did a nice job of getting CityDAO from 0 to 1, but we seem to be now headed down a path that will fundamentally alter the direction of the project. Current CIPs are now absorbing all of the DAO’s current treasury holdings (on paper anyway, assuming they all pass). I think a lot of people are going to wake up in 6 months, rub the bear-market sleep out of their eyes, and wonder where the CityDAO project went.
CityDAO can do so much better than current governance. For example - We don’t need forum post likes as a gatekeeper (let alone “likes” coming from non-citizens as we have seen frequently). We also see people playing the quorum games - proposers requesting $9,999 or people rallying approval votes by political means, backchanneling, oversaturating the airwaves, or other methods of pushing the proposer’s own agenda that seemingly violate the spirit of good faith.
Right now, voters will literally pop in and vote “yes” to anything, including and especially, when it is posted by people with “soft power” such as yourself. While I agree that you have done an excellent job of leading your calls, and leading your initiatives and teams here at CityDAO, I am not sure you speak for a proportion of the community that is commensurate with the funds requested. Rather, you are well-liked, and people are voting for your proposals based on that fact combined with the seemingly “official messaging” from CityDAO (as opposed to a feeling of conviction about what is - and is not - in CityDAO’s best interests).
I want to caveat that I intend this conversation to be fruitful and productive, and so I apologize if it seems personal, its not intended that way. I think the community could easily rally around updating the “how” we make decisions, instead of a few people holding a pen we let the community take the lead, and then revisit all of the projects in light of whatever we learn through conducting such an exercise!
I certainly agree with this proposition. I’m not sure how we improve this system, but I’m all for it. Certainly, the 20 like requirement was never a great way to move things from forum to Snapshot, and the static quorum numbers could be improved. I’m all for improving both of those aspects. The question seems to be how can we encourage the community to act in their best interest if they are not doing so now?
Maybe the best we can do is empower more citizens to communicate their ideas and suggestions, both on discord and the forum, and to improve “how” decisions are made. We could put limits on the number of projects at one time, or the amount allocated to different projects, but without the feedback of the community, it would all be a small group guessing on the best interests of the larger group.
I agree we should take a pause! It seems to me like proposers are trying to grab from the CityDAO treasury because pretty much every snapshot has been unanimously approved (@DAOvolution also pointed this out). This is not to fault the people, but rather the system which we have created and have the power to improve.
I think informing citizenry on these three items is one simple way to yield better decision making. I further think that proposals should be priced by their value to CityDAO rather than their cost. Instead of proposers just stating how much money they want and the decision being accept/reject, I think bidding by citizens on the value of a proposal would harness collective intelligence. If the winning bid is less than the proposers are wiling to put in the effort for, then it would not happen. I am curious if there is any support for this seedling idea.
I think planning a proposal event with all queued ideas presented to citizens along with info about CityDAO at large to foster informed decision making would be a great next step from this post that I would be happy to help coordinate that.
imho we’ve spent like 8 months going in circles, burning treasury, not producing results, pausing on everything to talk more in circles while burning more treasury seems like the most risky option I’ve seen in months, it feels like adding fuel to an already blazing fire.
I’ve been sitting on the sidelines not putting forth a proposal while here watching the burn and lack of progress, and finally I’ve been inspired to take strong action for the benefit of everyone here. Then immediately after I push forward, a bunch of other proposals pop up, and someone says ‘hey let’s pause on everything’. that’s a really tough one to consider, nevermind to swallow. If people love the idea of just sitting in a circle debating and burning even more treasury for a further 8 months on top of all the debating and treasury burn that’s already taken place, that really doesn’t sound like a community I or others would want to be a part of
I agree there’s a major gap in overall leadership for the DAO this year. I’m happy to be a part of that discussion and to take a VERY ACTIVE ROLE in resolving. But I’m NOT in favor of watching our treasury continue to burn while people argue over the same problems to infinitum
Agree. In the end, if you have a good idea to improve governance, propose it and vote on it. I am all for improvements, but pausing in hopes of finding some perfect form of governance is a 100% guaranteed recipe for burning the treasury.
This is essentially the essence of Quadratic Funding. The next best is quadratic voting, which makes sense, given the citizens have already funded the treasury. We want to allocate funds, not raise them. But we can’t do that without proof of personhood. I am not sure what exactly we would do that would allow citizens to be informed. Every proposal is announced and spends at least a week on discourse.
We are following the same basic procedures that Ethereum and the rest of Web3 for improvement proposals. The goal is to move towards transparent protocol, not to backstep into flawed political systems. I am firmly in favor of improvements at the margin, but stopping the process now that it has just started is a recipe for the citizen’s token to go to zero. At the same time, the treasury is slowly depleted by those incentivized to continue the process ad infinitum.
Transparently, and not to argue, I think there is a great difference of opinion with respect to the notion that any of the projects proposed thus far provide any benefit at all to “CityDAO”.
I am not suggesting a time waste. I am saying, its high time for the community of people who want to take money out of CityDAO’s treasury - for any purpose - to meet in person and align. We may not all want to work on the same projects, but we all came together for the same CityDAO, and the governance is low hanging fruit in terms of something that can be solved, working together in person, to the satisfaction of all. FORCE the people to come together, in particular those who want to take money and run a project, and lets be humans while we fix the factory.
Last, while I for one appreciate the offer you make to take strong actions and a very active role - I think you are oversimplifying. The problems that have arisen have done so over the course of months, not overnight. No one is able to fix this alone.
Lets all meet up in person, fix governance, engage in team and relationship building and be a stronger community. It doesn’t take 8 months. It takes planning, patience, commitment, dedication, and team work.
Also since burn is being commonly cited - end guild pay immediately. I said that many times. Preach! But that doesn’t change the issues we see with current governance being bad for CityDAO outcomes.
Again, if it were that easy, it would have already happened. Instead I would rather force smart and capable contributors (like you) to come together and work to solve this never-ending debate once and for all. What I am proposing is really simple, and I understand there are a lot of people who just want their money or to get going on their work, what about CityDAO? What about doing right for the project that you were so fortunate to benefit from in the first place? Why have we put the rest of the project and its contributors into the rear view so quickly?
We can fix and save the project if we act before its too late!
I was thinking about it more like a marketplace than quadratic voting, but now that you mention it - I think QV makes more sense! Why isn’t this something that CityDAO has tried to implement? Not sure what you mean by “without proof of personhood.”
As mentioned above, I think the three things that I quoted @Nick123 on (how much money we have left in our budget, how much we have promised to future projects, or what the status is on projects that we have already funded) is a simple thing that could be added to proposals to help citizens make better decisions. The proposals are solid. I just find it challenging to make a decision on if it is good for CityDAO without having the CityDAO info available. The transparency dashboard can definitely help here.
Why just improvements at the margin? That seems to imply that the foundation is impeccable, which I don’t think could possibly be the case given how new all this is (talking about DAOs in general, not just CityDAO). We are experimenting and learning. I don’t see why we would want to limit ourselves to marginal improvements.
Are you saying that pausing the process now would make the citizen token go to zero? I agree it would be unwise to pause without a plan, but I don’t see how trying out a proposal event in a couple months would have a significant treasury impact in the long view. I actually think it is continuing on as we are now that could have that negative impact since larger sums are rapidly being pulled.
Just being practical, this would be very hard to do. Gaint party at @MemeBrains ? Or we can all meet at parcel 0 and sit on the bench until we figure it out.
This is actually the exact type of thing t0wn would be so valuable for. Get a group of people together working on the same problem IRL to figure it out. Allow them also to learn from other DAOs and develop best practices.
YES TO BOTH (When it comes to parties word on the virtual streets is that @MemeBrains throws bangers)
Or - Each Parcel 0 holder has to show up at Parcel 0 and remain standing on their NFT’s coordinates until we finalize governance
Seriously though… @wdclapp proposed a “constitutional convention” many moons ago and I feel it would be a great thing to do before we decide to go ahead and divvy up the entire treasury to the current project teams/proposals.
We can pull this off and it would be the ultimate success story for CityDAO.
QV would be ideal. It isn’t a perfect fix, but it would help a lot (there really is no perfect fix). We are partially using it now because we take the square root of citizens’ NFTs. So if you have 9 NFTs, you get the square root (3 votes). But this is just part of QV. On top of that, you could issue voice credits across options. So say you have 10 voice credits. I theory you could only have 10 to issue across all the CIPs currently up. You could put all your voice on one, or spread them out, but you have to choose across options with the reality that each voice credit issued to a choice has less and less of weight (since you take the square root). This forces citizens to really think of the option they like most and weigh them relative to all the options.
Proof of personhood is just the simple fact we can’t tell how many wallets one person has. Say you have 9 NFTS. If you vote with one wallet, you get a weight of 3, if you spread them out and put them in 9 wallets, you get a weight of 9. Thus, you can game the system essentially. We need a way to prevent this.
I wrote a article about this months back if you are interested, check it out.
This would be ideal. Interestingly we are working with some students from InHolland University (long story why we are doing this) to potentially develop a app. An app you could open and get a quick summary (you could get notifications as well) of votes, proposals, how much is in the treasury, etc. If you are interested in working on this project I would love to chat more!!!
So my suggestion is basically it is not perfect, at all, but it never will be. Voting just has flaws. if you really board check out Arrows Impossibility Theorem for example, the long story is that voting will always have flaws, you just try and make it the best possible. That is why I suggest improvements a long the way. I don’t like the idea of stopping to get an ideal system, we will never get there.
I am all ears for your idea though. I have said in the past that proposals should be put up at the same time. Sort of like how Git coin has rounds. Then people have to weight them against each other.
