VDP-78: Steward Election Process

@consigli3re noting a consistency item:

  1. In a vote necessarily recurring every 6 months (1 term), members of all working groups vote on whether the steward should remain in place in an anonymous poll on Discord or Discourse. If a majority of members of all working groups do not confirm the steward, the steward is offboarded

We noted earlier in the proposal, and as anticipated in VDP-69 that token holders vote for the stewards and squad leads, that necessarily will require an on-chain vote, so we should remove the reference to Discord, and simply suggest that a VDP will be published on Discourse, and then put onto Snapshot, as per any other governance proposal. Not all token holders enter Discourse, and a bunch aren’t on Discord, they respond when they are asked to vote on Snapshot.

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Yes, you are right. Thank you for pointing that out. I have amended the proposal accordingly.

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I don’t feel particularly good about using Discourse for these polls. Discourse makes it really easy to create fake accounts or multiple accounts (this is also true for VDP proposals of course, but since this specific proposal is creating new outlines for the elections, we could already use our learnings here and improve the process for VDPs later).

Having the poll on Discord instead (and possibly using token-gating) would already be a step forward. There’s also the possibility of requiring a Gitcoin Passport from voters (https://passport.gitcoin.co/) for better sybil-resistance.
Maybe there are even Discourse plugins that allow to add some requirements for allowing people to participate in polls.

@consigli3re Happy to help on the tech front here, but I really think we should discontinue these polls on Discourse as soon as possible and don’t implement new processes using them.

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Great point. I agree that sybil resistance on Discourse isn’t ideal, even with increasing the trust level threshold from 1 to 2.

I think we can implement a Discord bot like EasyPoll in a wg channel that is token-gated (most preferably #general-wg) for anonymous polls, as they launch Jan 28th. I would love to hear your thoughts on how to implement the Gitcoin Passport for further verification in the election process.

I’ve updated the proposal after a discussion with @longevion about the Steward’s veto process according to VDP-69.

TLDR - Stewards can veto a nomination without making the decision or reason public. This is to possibly prevent unnecessary public shaming. However, the nominee and VitaCore have the right to always appeal to tokenholders even if these disputes are chosen to be kept private.

I have updated the proposal to use Discord as the main tool for carrying out the operations of this election. After agreeing fully with the sybil resistance concerns that @schmackofant brought up. Also, for the pure ease of engagement for the election.

I have updated the process of the elections to go straight to snapshot after the nomination period. This just smoothens out the process and still gives token holders the ultimate right in accordance to VDP-69. I realise this is a time-sensitive issue, now that the fundraising announcement is out, so I would wholeheartedly appreciate the “agree with revisions” and “disagree” voters to comment on any other changes they’d like to ensure the prompt passing of this proposal

More information on what we discussed moving VDP-78 forward can be found in our most recent Weekly Governance Sync.

Is it one wallet-one vote type of poll or token-weighted? If it’s the latter, the whole election becomes senseless. To save time, we can just ask the three richest tokenholders who they want to see as a steward.

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It is proposed as a token-weighted vote, like every other proposal we’ve had to date that has gone on Snapshot. The ability to delegate is also allowed.

Exploring the “one wallet-one vote” mechanism would be an interesting but completely different proposal altogether like VDP-70, which was focused on an instrumental change in the phase 3 voting mechanism. Is a “one wallet-one vote” strategy even viable on Snapshot? @schmackofant

A similar conversation is being talked about with the introduction of quadratic voting and Gitcoin Passport gating (on top of VITA gating). These features are all actionable on Snapshot as of now but like I said, a completely different proposal that needs to pass. You’re more than welcome to contribute to this.

This proposal VDP-78, however, is purely focused on the operational process of the time-sensitive elections.

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I wonder if starting the election the day after the proposal is passed is a bit rushed. I’d say give people 1 week after it has passed so that most people will be aware of it, and can think who they want to nominate. We delayed the election for more than 7 months now, a week more or less doesn’t make a difference anymore.

Also I feel that if we have Squad Leads we should also describe somewhere what those Squads will do, and maybe define if one person can lead multiple squads or not? Can new squads be formed after the election?

Might be good to split up marketing into “social media marketing/publishing” & “conferences/events”

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A week in between makes sense! I’ve made that change.

A Squad Lead’s key responsibilities and necessary requirements are detailed in the PDF attached under VDP-72. These core squads were proposed to ensure alignment within our strategic plan for 2023. Of course, new squads can be proposed. I’d associate its approval according to how close it influences our strategic plan but, then again that’s down to the community’s vote. I’d propose that one person can only lead one squad (as for the Stewards) purely down to certain requirements of expertise, experience, the democracy of ideas/opinions and conflict of interest considerations.

Good idea! Maybe “Marketing” can be more well-defined. However, I think Conferences/Events is already a vital project that is under our Community & Awareness WG. @alexdobrin

@consigli3re Okay. I sensed you were skeptical when I told you about the custom of governance filibuster at VitaDAO. I just wanted you to see what I mean. Are you ready for the contingency plan now?

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@consigli3re - just noting that recent governance passing (VDP-60 Seasonal Governance) will require the separation of the Stewards and the Squad Lead elections to be faithful to the VDP-60 process.

Therefore, VDP-78 should remove the Squad Leads from this proposal, and should be limited to the Steward election only. The process itself for executing the elections should be ratified this week.

Under VDP-60, as I understand it, the goals and objectives for the season will be presented to the community and Proposals will be solicited to address the projects/objectives.

As the 2023 Strategic Plan itself has already been developed and socialized with the majority of token holders, and as we are behind the official schedule indicated in the VDP-60 plan, I would like to suggest (cc. @catthu ) that the Stewards identify the specific goals and objectives from that plan that are perceived as top priority for the first season and present them to the community this week for discussion and to begin the proposal requests.

One of the goals and objectives from the strategic plan will be the formation of the squads identified in VDP-69 to execute the strategic plan. But, so as not to compromise/bias the flexibility of the proposals and recognizing that the formality of electing squad leads may be superseded by the proposals that are received (i.e. a team of people from the community may get together and decide they want to tackle a specific project and they may have a squad structure/skillsets in mind) we should leave the squad lead appointments open for now.

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Removed the squad leads to reflect the passing of VDP-60! The process itself has been updated along the way according to the community’s proposed revisions.

I appreciate your clarification on the custom of governance filibuster at VitaDAO. I apologise if my skepticism came across as dismissive. Can you provide more information on the contingency plan so we can have a productive discussion?

I made a few edits to

  • clarify where someone can nominate (privately or publicly) and add consistency
  • put a time limit on the Stewards’ veto process (3 days seems fine?)
  • require candidates (confirmed nominees) to make the election post (not someone else on their behalf)
deleted

Here’s a new poll for the proposal with these edits: [deleted]

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@consigli3re Hey! Sorry, I couldn’t make yesterday’s sync.

The contingency plan, as I see it, is multi-layered. There’s only one effective lever that comes to my mind that can be used to sway the community towards taking matters more seriously – we freeze all payouts until the elections have taken place. But in order to do this, the treasury must be controlled by the community and contributors. At present, multisig signers are not accountable to anyone. In our constitution, we say that multisig signers are not a decision-making body, but at the end of the day they have the ultimate control over DAO operations. And one can’t claim to have any level of control over an organization, a state, etc. unless they control the treasury. That’s why multisig signers must be too rotated regularly to include people without CoI so that there’s not too much concentration of power in the hands of the few.

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Sorry @longevion, @consigli3re - we now have two polls - can we simply reset the first poll, since the proposal now has those clarifications and revote it from there? I am worried having two polls will be missed by some.

Clarity for the people who aren’t following this perhaps as closely as we are. Thanks !

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Agree, vote has been restarted!

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