We are looking for a product that results in step change improvements in ideation, and decision making (governance).
Productivity (forum style, github style, notion style, chat); incentives; moderation, slashing, token gating / membership NFTs; reputation systems (inc soulbound); committee based governance; polling; secret ballot.
- A multi feature, integrated product (maybe plugins) that covers multiple issues in the document below. Features between multiple products that users have to toggle between, is a big hurdle to adoption.
- Primary customer is BitDAO.
- Easily adopted by AEs and other DAOs.
- “Step change” improvements to ideation and governance - i.e. not “nice to have” or “small upgrades” that won’t result in better ideas being proposed or differences in governance outcomes.
- Open to new development, or adopting existing solutions.
DAO treasury management, DAO automated operations.
Note: The items below are not exclusive lists or the defined frameworks for the solution, however should be referenced as part of the overall research and solution design exercise prior to submission.
Incremental Proposal Development DAO proposals are often published as complex, lengthy, near final-form documents. A lack of collaboration tooling means these documents are created and reviewed privately by stakeholders, with little input from the broader community. We are looking for solutions to enable the development of DAO proposals in a transparent, public and incremental manner. Solving this problem will require re-imagining our interaction with forums (i.e. discourse) and defining new models for how proposals can be componentized with change logs, threading, token / reputation weighted commentary, polling, etc. Inspiration can come from existing collaboration models, including: notion-style widgets, github commits, or topic-specific chats or channels.
Well managed communities (e.g. Wikipedia, subreddits) are often heavily moderated. This allows for the curation of a community’s purpose and values. We believe that effective moderation can elevate the work of good actors, while penalizing the disruption of bad ones. We are looking for solutions that can empower communities to self-moderate. Such a solution may involve features such as: token-gating (membership NFTs), reputation gating, slashing mechanisms, incentivized moderator roles with retractable permissions/powers. A good solution will allow communities to curate their ideation environment and elevate valuable, constructive criticism over low-effort or detracting comments.
Membership NFTs allows for an independent mechanism (distinct from token holdings or delegated voting power) for contributors to receive additional reputation and access rights. A basic form will be a soulbound (non-transferable) NFT with updatable metadata, with advancements such as XP levels and skill trees - for example “Level 5 Legal Contributor”, “Level 4 Technical Contributor”. The membership NFT can be used to “gate” the forum, prioritize comments, provide modified vote weight on polls, etc.
Complex proposals typically require the support of a major token holder or stakeholder who can help shepherd an idea through the development process. Lacking a ‘sponsor’ figure can leave proposals without the necessary attention, response, or support, especially in the case of complex proposals on partnerships, high-value deals, or technical implementations. Ideas that are not adopted by a major token holder / delegate are often left unreplied in the forum. Having proposals without any form of follow up - even if the answer is “no, not interested” - is discouraging for future proposals. We are looking for a product that can encourage proposal ‘stage-gating’ and recognizes major token holders or delegates as reviewer entities. A solution may identify important metrics and incentives for reviewing entities while creating transparency and accountability to ensure proposals receive adequate follow up, feedback, and response.
Amongst tokenized communities there is a version of the ‘Free Rider Problem’, in which passive token holders are viewed as problematic to the DAO. We believe that passive token holders are not ‘free riders’, and instead are economic contributors that provide resources for community operations. A more productive framing for this problem should focus on amplifying the work and influence of contributors, rather than creation friction for holders. Here, we believe a wide spectrum of incentives can be used here, including monetary (micro-payments, grants, RFPs), social (reputation, vote-weighting), and experiential (skill development, personal growth). We are looking for a solution that can organize and distribute incentives based on threshold levels of contributions towards key contributor competencies, including: idea generation, proposal development, technical contribution, DAO management, etc. We welcome creativity on defining the incentives, contribution area, and interface for such a product.
Merely making the vote more democratic does not necessarily mean better decisions. Small tinkering with vote weight may not change the outcomes. The majority of soft and official proposals either result in “quorum not met” due to apathy, or 80%+ in favor. Any product idea that aims to adjust vote weight (such as quadratic voting, or “ve” models) should first reflect on whether this will result in better decisions being made.
The success of certain DAO actions, venture investments and treasury management for example, are sensitive to the quality and timeliness of decision making. For the instance of venture, there are issues with: information confidentiality, counterparty negotiations, as described here. A one-token-one-vote governance structure makes these critical tasks difficult.
In traditional organizations and political systems, governing bodies elect qualified decision making bodies rather than voting on all topics. For DAOs, committees can also be elected to make time-sensitive, qualified decisions. In this model, the DAO retains top level control as it can: adjust mandates, define limits, define governance rules, modify members, or even entirely dissolve the committee. DAO tooling can be adopted to enable this process and increase transparency of committee-based governance.
Polling is innately enabled by crypto technologies due: to authenticated message signing, snapshot, delegation, and gasless transactions. This allows for frequent polls on various components or parameters of a proposal. Polls can contain demographic details to better inform proposal development. For example from a single poll we could analyze for: the vanilla vote, the popular vote, the reputation or role categorized vote, or any other modified vote weight outcome.
Within organizations there is often a disincentive to challenge or directly criticize the decisions of leadership. This can lead to decisions being made with a misunderstanding of overall support. All voting in the current world is by secret ballot (except within the highest ranks of government which is a massive problem but that’s a topic for another day). A product could cover three voting or polling options:
- Public: this is the standard today.
- Private until vote finalizes: This allows for interesting gamification, for instance, you will be rewarded if you vote in the majority. This requires people to read through the proposal and be plugged into community sentiment unlike if it was public where someone could just follow the larger initial whale voters.
- Fully private: Sometimes there are votes where members will face external pressure, can be bribed, or face consequences based on their vote. Some (or perhaps all) DAO votes may need to be fully private (both during and after the vote) to ensure that token holders vote their conscience.