VDP-34 Defining VitaCore

Proposals Passed Proposals
1

Summary

This proposal introduces a definition of the concept of “VitaCore”, specifying four stakeholder groups: Working group stewards and co-stewards, ambassadors of service providers, ambassadors of partner DAOs and strategic contributors.

Motivation

From VitaDAO’s inception and even before Genesis, a group of highly involved contributors helped oversee the objectives and coordinate activities across working groups, the community and external stakeholders. This group became known as “VitaCore” and continues to keep the DAO productive to date. However, the concept of VitaCore is loosely defined and not well documented, hence the need for a governance proposal defining VitaCore.

Specification

We propose to define VitaCore as an advisory committee that represents various groups of VitaDAO stakeholders. As such, VitaCore does not have any individual members, but individuals who are part of a certain stakeholder group.

To start with, these stakeholder groups are:

  • Group 1: Working Group Stewards and Co-Stewards
  • Group 2: Ambassadors of actively and significantly contributing Service Providers (currently Molecule GmbH and decentralized MATTER B.V.)
  • Group 3: Ambassadors of VitaDAO’s partner DAOs (currently labDAO)
  • Group 4: Representatives from strategic contributors (currently none, TBD.)

Further stakeholder groups may be added in the future.

It goes without saying that the concept of VitaCore is accountable to VitaDAO’s token holders who defined the scope of VitaCore’s executive power over operational decisions in VDP-6 and may refine these at any time in a new governance proposal. In that sense, holders of VITA are represented in VitaCore, but they are the overseeing and superior entity that governs VitaCore through proposals. Current initiatives around introducing OKRs, publishing a treasury report and other transparency initiatives will make it significantly more convenient for token holders to do so.

Implementation

If this proposal passes, we will publish a post (on Discourse, Medium, the website or another appropriate place) to make the list of stakeholder groups and their individual members permanently available . If not already done, we will also introduce Discord tags for each of these stakeholder groups.

  • Agree
  • Agree with revisions (please comment)
  • Disagree

0 voters

2

As a decentralized community, VitaDAO must refrain from any condensation of members into official “cores”. The only incentive for certain qualified members to take on more responsibility than others must remain purely monetary and not vanity perks.

2 Likes
3

Fully agree. In my opinion, the term “VitaCore” isn’t great. We might want to change that. Although more importantly of course, we need to get the rules right and make sure it’s a core group in the “DAO sense”, whatever that means (to be discussed).

The ideal I’d like to work towards is to make VitaCore sort of a secretary while the DAO (as in token holders) are the boss. To give a simple example, if the boss asks (votes) that the secretary may organise a work trip, it should be up to the secretary to decide whether he books a flight for $1k or $2k. But it would not be up to the secretary to decide whether the deal made during this trip worth $1m should be made or not.

My points are:

  • VitaCore must be tasked through the DAO (through any kind of vote including on-chain proposals which usually include a bulk of actions as well as votes within a specialised working groups which makes more granular decisions)
  • VitaCore must remain transparent and report to the DAO
  • VitaCore must have a certain degree of flexibility for the benefit of the DAO to be operational efficient

Putting this into processes is the real challenge, would appreciate any opinions on that.

4 Likes
4

Agree, but would also argue that this is already what is happening.

Also most of the heavy lifting work has been done by VitaCore, Stewards and key working group contributors! I’d argue that our encompassing definition for the key contributors and those that lead them works fairly perfectly with potentially some adjustments to bring them closer together (eg. stewards/core, working groups members)…

Ultimately every DAO, especially VitaDAO needs a strong operative, executive body, that is advancing our projects, research, mission, initiatives etc. with capability, and time effort!

1 Like
5

Decentralization does not require a flat hierarchy. I’ve heard from several people that the obsession with a flat hierarchy is actually very detrimental to getting things done. Nobody knows who ‘should’ be doing something and so even in an atmosphere where everyone can perform a task, nobody ends up performing the task.

The decentralization comes in by allowing movement and fluidity between the roles.

6 Likes
6

According to my observations, a coherent taskforce has already been established – spontaneously. Through several iterations of the working process, people have started to know each other, take on roles and responsibilities, form bonds, etc. All working towards the common goal. And they’re compensated for that. I don’t think it’s necessary to further solidify the already tightly-knit small group of members into a “core”.

I have a suggestion. Maybe I’d better post it in the Ideas section. 10 positive votes for a proposal to be considered accepted is too few. I suggest that regardless of the number of members defined as VitaCore in the future, the cut-off value for an accepted proposal is at least twice the quantity of VitaCore members.

1 Like
7

What do you mean when you say a “coherent taskforce”?

IMO, we should only have a core group if we really should, but so far there are lots of compelling reasons to me. You’re right that working groups have been doing a good job at spinning up squads and project teams, however working groups also need to sync across another and that is typically done by one representative. It wouldn’t make sense for every wg member to talk to every other wg’s members to coordinate these issues, IMO that’s what stewards are for and when they talk in a group, it’s just referred to as “core”. We can debate the name but the function of working groups being represented by stewards who then sync amongst themselves makes sense to me. Also, representatives from DAO2DAO relationships and service providers also have valuable input and need to have a place and time where they get involved, as they’re usually not following our Discord 24/7 but are busy working in their own DAO/business. For that function, a core group also seems reasonable to me.

Nevertheless, we should always question the purpose of the core group and clearly define the functions it provides, but never let core become a body without function.

That’s a good point that has been discussed a couple of times before, without clear direction that we should take. This discussion led to section b) in VDP-37, for reasons which include the following:

  • 10 positive votes in Discourse is very little indeed; however, most proposals barely reach these due to voter apathy. Increasing the quorum might result in the DAO becoming slower at passing proposals, if not even dysfunctional if the quorum is too high to be met accounting for voter apathy.
  • Discourse polls (phase 2) are subject to one-account-one-vote, so no matter the threshold there is always the risk of creating spam accounts. Snapshot votes (phase 3) are the most reliable tool we have as they are token-weighted and therefore sybil-resistant, whereas Discourse poll aren’t.
  • As a potential solution, we could merge phases 2 (Discourse) and 3 (Snapshot/token-weighted) so effectively resolve this issue, as just increasing the phase 2 quorum would arguably only resolve it partially.
  • On the other hand, there is the argument to be made that we want both types of voting: a proxy to one-person-one-vote as we have it in Discourse polls, as well as a sybil-resistant token-weighted vote on Snapshot.

This is why the proposal currently suggests to keep things as they are, but this can certainly be debated.

1 Like
8

Last call for comments! Two more votes and this proposal qualifies for phase 3.

To the person who voted ‘Agree with revisions’, have your concerns been resolved?

9

We do need a core set of contributors that provide continuity for our partners. We could not reasonably have the legal group’s steward change every month or we would incur significant risk to the DAO. Since we have that continuity codified as steward roles, it stands to reason that the group of stewards becomes a group, here called VitaCore. The purpose of this group is to ensure that continuity, and maintain the mission of VitaDAO. Including stakeholders like service providers, ambassadors and other representatives makes sense in terms of maintaining that continuity.

VitaCore’s main purpose is to coordinate actions across the DAO, provide a means for information dissemination, and to identify governance needs.

For the above reasons, I agree with the improved definition for who comprises VitaCore.

1 Like
10

This proposal is now live on Snapshot.
Voting starts on: 17 Mar 22 01:08 UTC
Voting ends on: 24 Mar 22 01:08 UTC