Governance Workshop 7.13.22

Proposals & Drafts

• KIP-26 voting is in progress. This proposal is to extend KIP-12 and KIP-21 to continue to empower key decision-makers to expand and organize the DAO. [0:20m]
• Two proposals are up for discussion: Testing Wallet and Treasury Charter. [1:00m]
• The Testing Wallet is designed to give the Treasury team a budget for internally testing the protocol, rather than rely on data and usage from third parties.
• The Treasury Charter aims to serve as a “North Star” for the treasury’s vision.
• The Q3 Labs Budget aims to reintroduce mission-based budgeting and is under development. [3:00m]
• Non-Core Asset and Bancor Fund Withdrawal proposals are ready to be published in the next 24 hours. [4:00m]
• An Optimism Gov Fund proposal is active on the Optimism forum. Please comment to support this initiative! [6:40m]

Current Events

• The Product team is working on UX testing on the trading app. Please visit Maze to participate in this initiative. [8:20m]
• Governance reform is underway, including templates and standardizing KIPs. [9:15m]
• The Overall Process KIP empowers a set of governance stewards to enforce standards and move the governance process forward. [24m]

Sophon Discussion [17m-40m]

• The Sophon Framework outlines the roles and responsibilities of Sophons, and formalizes their value to the DAO. The Sophon onboarding/offboarding process will be broken out into another KIP.
• Hazard: Sophons are expected to execute the mission of the DAO on behalf of the various stakeholders. Due to their subject matter expertise, Sophons are in a position to educate token holders and act as representatives of the protocol itself. [19:30]
• The Sophon nomination process may be similar in design to delegates or council members from other DAOs, so lessons may be learned from other models.
• Sophons originated from the community and core contributors. Part of Jason’s proposal includes requiring Sophons to provide rationalizations for their arguments. [25m]
• Above Average Joe mentions that from his experience in Bankless, Sophons should act in the interests of their constituents, and the onboarding/offboarding process provides the checks and balances needed to maintain accountability. [29m]
• Sophons should review proposals and act on behalf of the protocol and community while also using their expertise to act as “white blood cells” against poor proposals. [30-35m]
• Jason, AAJ, and aia believe Sophons should be compensated for the work in order to incentivize high-caliber individuals, but appropriate checks and balances should be in place (for example, a requirement to hold ROOK or xROOK).
• There is much discussion around handling toxic or malicious Sophons, particularly during off-boarding. For example: who stands above the Sophons to intervene in a hostile situation?
• Hazard points out that the failure mode is not extreme, since a KIP could always be created to deal with the toxic Sophons. They could prevent consensus, but they cannot execute malicious code. “The worst that can happen is that nothing happens.” [50m]
• “Do not muzzle the ox that grinds the grain” – Above Average Joe (Deuteronomy 25:4)
  

Schedule Changes [57:00m]

• Treasury Tuesday will continue every Tuesday as usual.
• The Gov Workshop will be moving to bi-weekly (twice a month); odd weeks will be used for Community Office Hours.
• The Friday Town Hall will be rebranded as “Rook DAO Status Update” to discuss the high-level updates from each team and move to a biweekly cadence. Odd weeks will be used for events such as Twitter Spaces, AMAs with other teams, etc.