2024 Election of Working Group Stewards

Proposals Active Proposals
1

Summary

This proposal commences the 2024 election process as previously designed with the passing of VDP-78 and with reference to VDP-19, and further modifies previous governance, namely: VDP-69, VitaDAO Governance Constitution and suggestions from Re-election Announcement.

Team

Esther Klaps, Todd White

Motivation

The VitaDAO community and token holders wish to ensure that the organisation has the capacity to evolve and advance its mission by obtaining and retaining talented contributors.

While DAO governance and initiatives are executed by working group members, it is important to have community members who are able to provide both organisational continuity, and facilitate the work of VitaDAO across what has been the 3 pillars of endeavour: Longevity Science and Dealflow, Community and Awareness, and DAO Coordination.

Additionally, another position was added in VDP-128 for the Network Steward focused on the development of special jurisdictions for longevity and longevity network development.

In the past year, it has also been noted that a more concentrated effort on the utility of the VITA token is required. To that end, after some discussions, this proposal advances the idea that another Steward position be added to specifically address the tokenomics and utility associated with our governance token. A further proposal for this position is forthcoming.

It was also recognized that organisational continuity was very important for key functions such as messaging to the community, dealing with our IP projects and the academic community, and administrative functions like contributor management (compensation, expenses) and financial management (i.e. fundraising, accounting, treasury management).

In summary, it is proposed that the revised Stewardship positions will be as follows:

  1. Community and Awareness
  2. Longevity Science and Dealflow
  3. Coordination
  4. Network
  5. Web3

As a result, the election process contemplated in VDP-78 seeks to elect full-time Stewards to provide the organisational continuity and support for VitaDAO to each of the Working Groups.

Specification

The role of a Steward is defined as follows:

VitaDAO Working Group Stewards

As a VitaDAO Working Group Steward you play a key role in the day-to-day operation of the DAO. In this role you will be wearing multiple hats, but your main responsibility is to enable Working Group members to get more done, and thereby unleashing the full potential of the Working Group.

Prerequisites:

  • Note that the expectation is that this is a full-time position.

  • You have been a working group contributor within VitaDAO for at least 6 months.

Key responsibilities:

  • Keep track of all projects happening within the Working Group;

  • Make sure the Working Group delivers on the goals and performance metrics in the annual Strategic Plan and amendments as may be decided through governance;

  • Specify and track tasks and projects that have to be done; hold people accountable on delivery within their working group;

  • Empower Working Group member’s work by giving them resources they need and removing blockers quickly;

  • Manage and deliver bounties and compensations for the Working Group in a timely manner;

  • Monitor and approve Working Group compensation to service providers etc. ensuring quality and value for funds;

  • Monitor compliance with Compensation, Travel and other policies as necessary and the terms of any contract/bounty for which a contributor is providing services;

  • Support Working Group members, to understand how they want to develop within the DAO and help them to achieve their goals;

  • Development and maintenance of the Working Group’s Compensation Model;

  • Assisting and guiding Working Group members in growing into their roles and helping them develop themselves professionally;

  • Identify people the Working Group needs and recruit them;

  • Keep the WG on track and aligned with the mission to accelerate aging biology research and executing on the Strategic Plan;

  • Facilitate WG-specific governance, sometimes through DAO proposals; and,

  • Holding other Stewards accountable

Necessary requirements:

  • Must work collaboratively with others.

  • Very good and efficient communicator and delegator

  • Excellent at team building and motivating people

  • Proven Ability to execute on complex tasks

  • Very good skills in operations

  • Experience with task and project management tools

  • Passionate about building the future of Longevity Medicine

Nice to haves:

  • Comfortable with representing the DAO at conferences through public presentations

  • Understanding of Crypto (depends on the WG)

Implementation

This proposals seeks Nominations for 3 of the 5 Steward Roles mentioned above - Community and Awareness, Longevity Science and Dealflow, and Coordination. As the Network Steward role was only elected a few months ago, it is recommended that the incumbent will be permitted to continue as if they had already been elected as part of this process. The Web3 Steward role will be presented and elected separately in a forthcoming proposal.

Mirroring VDP-78 - it is requested that members of the community either self-nominate, or nominate individuals who they believe can fulfil these roles.

The name of the nominee along with their Discord username should be emailed to Esther Klaps or estherkl on Discord within the nomination period. The nomination period shall be from January 10-21st, 2024.

Those nominated will be vetted by Stewards per VDP-78 by January 27th, 2024, and a final list of nominees will be presented in the following proposals by January 28th, 2024:

VDP-137.1 Proposal to Elect the Longevity Dealflow Working Group Steward

VDP-137.2 Proposal to Elect Community and Awareness Working Group Steward

VDP-137.3 Proposal to Elect the Coordination Working Group Steward

Each nominee, who is willing to accept the position, should prepare a short paragraph submission which should be provided as a comment to the respective proposals no later than January 27th, 2024 using the template below:

Title: [[Name of working group]] Candidate [your preferred name]

For example: [Coordination WG] Candidate Vitalik/vbuterin

Body: copy and paste this into your Discord message -

  • Your preferred name

  • Twitter profile link (optional)

  • Why do you think you would be a good steward of this working group?

  • Time availability? (xx hrs/week)

The above proposals shall be moved to Phase 3 on-chain voting on January 30th, 2024 and voting shall conclude after 7 days.

Budget

  • No impact
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Thanks for posting @Taliskermalt ! It would be good to see the VitaDAO Delegate Applications be decided on and go to Snapshot before the final Stewards nominations are voted on. My hope is that by having more VitaDAO delegates in the wider community, this will balance the weighting of token votes. Onward!

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I’d also suggest that a.) all L-TIP and compensations packages are in place before this goes to snapshot. and b.) that all 5 Steward roles are being voted on, to have them unified, and ideally confirmed also by all the new token holders.

Moreover, I think, we should leave the term limit at 6 months, as this gives a regular temperature check on how people feel about the stewards, opens room to talk about stewards performance, and hopefully leads to avoiding back room conversations that lead to stewards stepping down as has previously happened.

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agree with Max. We should leave the term at 6month and have a future amendament.

Think @Taliskermalt already made that change.

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5

VDP-19 would need to be amended anyway for that to happen, so removed that from the implementation.

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6

This should also be deleted, as it’s no longer relevant, right?

To that end, the current electoral process with a 6 month timeframe, as defined within VDP-19 Option A, is perceived as disruptive as it interrupts not only planning by incumbents, but also deprives the DAO of interest by high performing contributors to put their name forward as the timeframe does not provide adequate stability It is suggested that, at minimum, VDP-19 Option A be amended to be a one (1) year term. This is perceived as more reasonable, and current governance provides for the removal of stewards as needed by token holders in the case of bad actors at any time.

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Yes, we can remove it to avoid confusion. Done.

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Several people have said we should have more than one steward for dealflow as it’s the arguably the most core aspect of vitaDAO. I could be on board with 3 longevity stewards: one for the science, one for dealflow, and one post-funding to advance what was funded (could be builder squad leader but would also need to liaise with the companies vitadao assesses). This could be visualized as a funnel where the science steward would be at the top of the funnel and would hand off to the deaflow steward who would then hand off to the post funding steward (potential names: Builder or Accelerator steward).

Network and Awareness stewards and connected activities as are the coordination and web3 stewards. To me it makes sense to have 3 clusters of 3, 2, 2 stewards who work together as small teams/pods.

It’s not about titles but more about making it more clear who is doing what. And knowing who to go to. Dealflow is a big a job for one person IMO.

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I think there are conversations happening elsewhere reflecting on the right organizational structure going forward. I expect that will result in other proposals coming forward for consideration separately.

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10

I agree with Tim, we need more than one person working full time on the dealflow working group

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11

Good point, however, the post-funding is not part of the “deal flow”. It’s more of X relations (replace X with Customer, Investors, etc.)

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12

Agreed. Having at least 2 Longevity Stewards sounds reasonable.

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13

not necessarily two stewards, can be a steward and a lieutenant . Just to avoid confusion and conflicting messaging

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14

Based on conversation on discord it looked like having two stewards was the case previously and it wasn’t working efficiently

15

** The list of nominees will be published February 9th to allow for further discussion of the comments above.**

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16

thank you Todd, given the ongoing discussions about the Longevity Dealflow Working group Structure doesn’t it make sense to delay the Longevity Dealflow steward election until we figure this out?

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Imo we should consider rethinking what we mean by steward, in my view everyone should be able to make themselves accountable for outcomes on our roadmap and get compensated accordingly, this could include being accountable for specific aspects of longevity, from sourcing, dealflow, to research management etc., which in my view might warrant different individuals taking ownership and leading those individual functions as an example - but also understand the simplicity of having a steward

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vincent you read my mind ahah I am actually creating a document that goes in that direction. Happy to share it with you once I am done

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19

Was the list published?

20

No it hasn’t been. Based on this comment: 2024 Election of Working Group Stewards - #16 by michele.gallia and others elsewhere, there has been a pause pending a further proposal for organizational changes which would relate to the 2024-2025 Mandate document.

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