The advantages of curated delegation supplemented with meta governance

TLDR

In this Rage Report we are recognising that General Members and Delegates can play an important role in collective guidance and execution in a DAO. This can be accomplished by including general members in light periodic meta governance activities. These events can add context, direction and fidelity to the DAOs top priorities and make for a more inclusive and fair DAO.

Problem

Current DAOs which use delegation have several issues.

Issues with delegation

• Anyone can be delegated too. Which is good but the problem is that a new holder has little context on who to delegate too.

• The members have no trust minimized way to curate potential delegates and surface the best ones.

Issues with member engagement

• Token holders select a delegate then do not engage after.

• non delegate members do not have a way to surface and signal their interests

• delegates do not have a way to understand the needs of their 'constituents'

• This usually creates a DAO where operators and delegates are involved and general members are mainly passive. This may be better for financially motivated DAOs but less for DAOs which hope to leverage the needs of all members towards a purpose.

issues with recognition and rewards

• delegates do not have a way to be graded on their actions

• delegates do not have a way to be rewarded for their actions

Issues with operation overhead, admin responsibilities and off chain points of failure

• Some DAO examples have attempted to solve these issues through off chain solutions for example discord, forums and twitter.

• This adds overhead and a required role of admins to ensure that things are running and available.

• It’s is a central point of potential capture and censorship

Framing

• Delegates should have a way to tactically execute strategy and goals that are set by the larger daos general membership.

• The general Non Delegate populous of the DAO, should participate in creating signals on what the DAOs larger strategy is.

• Non Delegate populous should also have a way to hold delegates accountable and/or reward them for their actions.

• General Members and Delegates have different roles in the DAO, we should leverage these so all members feel proper representation and control of direction. We can do this through meta-governance at the high level objectives (DAO OKRs) and during periodic reflection periods of retroactive recognition and rewards.

Assumptions

• If general members have better ways to participate and have inclusion of their desires in the DAO, they will be more active.

• Active general members will embrace the responsibility of observing their delegates actions and acting accordingly.

• If a delegate’s actions are not in line with the members expectations they should actively re-delegate to someone that is more inline.

• If a delegate does an exceptional job they will be rewarded by the general members

• A curated list of delegates, that have clearly stated their intent, will make delegation and re-delegation easier for the general member.

• If delegates are held accountable and/or rewarded they will do a better job.

• If delegates can see a prioritized strategy and OKR list created by general members they will do a better job

DaoHaus Experiment

The flywheel of inclusive governance

Allow delegates to apply for a ‘Champion’ status with an on chain profile that is voted on and accepted by other current voters. This will give new members context on who the delegates are and what issues they strongly represent. Because on chain data is expensive profiles can be supplemented with off chain data posted to a forum.

General members are encouraged to choose a delegate and participate in high level objective signaling and retroactive rewards. This is through a minimal token curated list where all members, even if they have delegated, can participate in a signaling event. Seasons are used to time box these signaling events into waypoints. Book ended with a high level objective (DAO OKRs) to start and ends with a retroactive rewards event.

These signaling events allow any member to create a choice and allocate their points to any number of other choices; a member can reallocate points at any time during the time box. Points are determined by an on chain snapshot of a member's current governance units (Shares and Loot / voting and non-voting).

In the time between these signaling events, delegates are expected to ‘champion’ and enable execution on the key results laid out in the winning objectives. This may include scouting teams, creating bounties and RFPs, running sub signal events and/or updating protocol parameters.

High Level Object and Strategy Signaling event

Members submit DAO level objectives and key results. Objective title is submitted on chain with supplemental KR data linked to in a forum. Members can allocate or reallocate points through the timeboxed window. At the end of the event the top three objectives are marked as the highest priorities for the DAO in the current season, and their execution results should be taken into account by participating members in the retroactive rewards event.

signaling event 1 results

Retroactive Rewards Event

Members submit nominations. Any person or team can be nominated for a reward, including Champions. All general members can then signal with their points (on chain snapshot of loot and shares at the start of the event). Champions, although they do not have a larger stake than any other member in signaling events, have the added responsibility of vouching for a nomination. The top nominations, after the time boxed event, will be rewarded up to 3% of the uncirculating supply of the token, split between winners by percent total points allocated. This rewards winners with more governance power to delegate to themselves or to someone else. read more in rage Jelly 1.2

Other Definitions:

General Member or Non-delegate members - Voting(Shares) or Non-Voting(loot) holder of the DAO. Share holders can vote on all direct execution proposals unless they have delegated.

Delegate -  a general member that has been awarded more voting power from another general member. A delegate is a general member but a general member is not always a delegate.

Champion - a ‘verified’ delegate through DAO governance.

Points - On chain snapshot points, this is a snapshot of current general members token holdings, this does not account for any power delegation that has been made. For example: Alice has 100 voting shares and 100 non voting loot, they delegate their voting power to Bob who has 10 voting shares. Bob now has 110 voting power but at the next snapshot Alice will have 200 points and Bob will have 10.

Choice Vouching - a Champion can vouch for a choice to give it more weight by staking at least 1 point on it.

Meta Governance - A governance event that adds context and fidelity to the DAO

Sub Signals - In between the main events there may be sub signal events that are used to find higher definition on winning Objectives and execution tactics.

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Season - period of OKR setting, execution, and rewards

Waypoint - the point of rolling over from one season to the next

Token Curated List (TCR) - a list of choices where members can allocate different weights to those choices based on token holdings. The result is a list weighted from highest priority to lowest based on the collective signal.

Rage Jelly story time

A Merry band of nomads caravan across the world spreading good vibes and hallucinogenic jelly. They run their merry band democratically, with each jolly soul receiving some amount of power based on their personal jelly stash which they have received through experience, merit and contributions. They come to the conclusion that they can get more done if they are able to elect representatives to execute on their wants and needs as an individual in the collective. Besides just this election they have periodic parties to align and choose the top priorities for the entire clan, every jelly holding member has a voice (not just the representatives).

Their jelly has other special powers, it allows them to convign with each other across long distances and across borders.
They want to cover as much ground as possible, and build their nomadic nation by jellying up new travelers along the way and ofcourse, finding the best jelly in the land. So they have no set destination and where they are ultimately traveling is unknown, all they can do is set periodic waypoints where they can reconvene and throw one hell of a party, and recharge their jelly. They call themselves the Priests of Jelly on a Plate and their parties are called Parties of the Ages.

At one of these festive Party of the Ages they find themselves at a junction. All trails have ended and in front of them is a barren wasteland full of ravenous thieves and cyborgs. They decide to spread out in all directions across the wasteland and spread their merry ways to bring a more party full life to all the inhabitants (cyborg or thief, it’s not too late). They will meet back at this spot for another party in 3 months to share what they find and realign around a new mission and recharge the jelly.

First the members create a list of goals, each member submitting something important to them that the collective can accomplish in 3 months. These goals are voted on by all members and the results look something like this:
--
O: Recruit more party People

KR: 100 new members by the next party

KR: Clear Manifesto on how to party

--

O: Find the best hallucinogenic jellies of the region

KR: experiment and document with 20 new local jams and jellys

KR: stock pile 10 jams and jelly for the next party

--

O: Build influence and awareness in neighboring regions of the benefits of jelly

KR: throw 5 small parties on the borders of the wasteland

KR: have 12 local cyborg schools include a jelly cooking class

After the party they spread out across the land with new purpose and mission, all working to accomplish their shared goals and telepathically sharing their progress with each other. Many of these goals can be accomplished with pure altruistic determination but some of them require further resources, for this the elected representatives are there to manage resource allocations and further information dissemination through jelly meditations. This frees up the majority of members to focus on the goals.

The three months pass and everyone reconvenes for the next waypoint party, they share their accomplishments, new knowledge and recognize their jelly wins. They reward the people that did the most with more jelly and begin another Party Of The Ages.

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