Voting Process / Election Rules

Ideas
1

Following the StakeWise DAO Governance Process as outlined here: [StakeWise DAO Governance Process] I am looking to create a voting process / election rules for official positions in the DAO. The first application of this process will be to elect members to serve on The Bureau.

Simple Summary

This proposal implements rules for how StakeWise DAO members are elected for official positions with a defined expiration date - currently only “The Bureau” election is the application of these rules.

Abstract

This proposal creates rules for how to deal with elections in StakeWise – allowing any member to open the election if the term of the post expires in less than three months. Candidates must be solicited on all official channels. Official channels are: general Telegram channel, Discord - #general channel, Reddit, StakeWise DAO forum. [Note: if we need to have a discussion on what the official social channels are, please comment on the thread.]

Motivation

The StakeWise DAO wishes to kick off the SWAT process and needs to install members to the Bureau. In previous discussions [The StakeWise Acceleration Taskforce (S.W.A.T.) Initiative - #14 by brianchilders] it was suggested that we elect 7 members to the Bureau for a timeboxed duration of six months as a pilot program.

Implementation

  • When a mandate for an official StakeWise DAO position expires within 3 months, any member may open an election thread on the StakeWise DAO Forum [https://forum.stakewise.io/] to find a replacement.
  • If several positions expire within 3 months of the same time at the opening of the thread, then the thread must cover the election of all positions of the same type.
  • Candidates must be solicited on all official channels (as highlighted in the Abstract). At least one month should be allowed for finding candidates, and the deadline must be clearly communicated in the StakeWise DAO Forum thread being used for the election process.
  • All candidates must declare their intention to run in the official thread.
  • Candidates that intend to run must be willing to share “registration” information - one or more of the following (Discord handle, Reddit handle, Twitter handle); StakeWise DAO Forum handle; ETH Wallet Address
  • Within 3 days of the declaration deadline for candidates, an approval vote on Snapshot will be opened up, where the candidate(s) with the most votes will be chosen for the available positions.

Next Steps

My goal is is to let this discussion run as phase-1 for one week, then create a phase-2 of this, combining the input provided by the community as a response to this thread for another week, and then submit this as a proposal (phase-3) for Voting Process / Election Rules on Snapshot. If there are concerns to this timeline please voice your opinions accordingly. :slight_smile: Then after the rules are agreed upon via Snapshot, we can then start the election thread for The Bureau members.

Thank you!

Brian

7 Likes
2

Ok so first off, great post Brian, having only just joined the community (I’ve been lurking in the background for a while now) it’s clear to see you’re highly engaged and interested in moving this protocol forward which is awesome to see.

So I’ve read through the previous posts and there’s a ton of great suggestions by the community – instead of responding to each individual comment, I figured I’d post a quick summary on my thoughts/replies.

First off, I think it’s important to how back to first principles and Kiriyha’s first post on underlying reasons for creating the SWAT. The Swat team is designed to help the DAO achieve it’s objectives “like TVL and community growth”. If we start with this “TVL” as our north star, then it becomes evident to me that the purpose of the SWAT initiative in simple terms, is to exchange SWISE tokens from the DAO to the community (in exchange for their resources) to help increase TVL.

Not comes the part of how to effectively achieve this in a decentralized manner. I think it’s important to be cognizant of the fact that as a new protocol, the bulk of SWISE is still in the concentrated hands of certain individuals/protocols (the DAO in particular). So let’s be cognizant of the fact that the protocol is still relatively centralized (which is totally ok, because all protocols start off this way), and we need to put in place a SWAT initiative that helps move SWISE along this path towards increased decentralization.

In my opinion the best way to do this is to ensure that incentives of all token holders are aligned (i.e. we’re all pulling in the same direction”). To do this, I think that the Bureau should be thought of more of a an “independent board of directors” and the SWAT team as the “on the ground, community workers monetizing their time and skills”. This keeps the distribution of SWISE rewards for the SWAT program highly focused on the SWAT team, with the independent board of directors" performing more of an oversight function, but still remaining highly incentivized to grow the value of their SWISE tokens via increasing TVL. Over time, as the protocol becomes more decentralized, we can change the setup of the Bureau based on the goals of the protocol.

The way I’m imagining it, the Bureau would consist of 6 members, preferably an equal split of large and smaller token holders, to give each group a fair share (a quorum would be 4 or more). The reasoning here is that I’ve seen many protocols over the past few years where large token holders can hurt smaller token holders by creating initiatives or pursuing strategies that disproportionately benefit them (rather than considering smaller token holders). These roles could be split up as follows:

Roles 1 -3: People who have a large vested interest (hold large allocation of SWISE) in moving SWISE forward (Kiriyha, perhaps someone from Blockdaemon etc.)

Roles 4 – 6: Community members like BrianChilders and perhaps other colleagues of Kiriyha who can provide an independent vote and able to bring their crypto related expertise but don’t have a ton of SWISE (perhaps someone from Gnosis Safe or another one of the partnerships)?

Compensation would be relatively small for all Bureau members (the distribution of SWISE should be focused on those providing the most value and directly responsible for growing protocol TVL i.e. the SWAT team). I’m thinking reward for the Bureau could be a few hundred SWISE per vote (or whatever you think is reasonable) and people (roles 1-3 in particular) could choose to waive these fees or recycle them back towards the DAO/community if they’d like.

The above is just an idea, apologies for being late to the party here (I recently got a new job in crypto), and totally understand if we’re past the point of discussion. Looking forward to seeing this SWAT initiative in action!

3 Likes
3

I like this idea for the elections, seems like a good start and if needed can definitely be tuned in the future.

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I like the ideas shared and am in full support of this as a starting point. Thank you both @brianchilders and @SaffaAbroad for your well articulated thoughts.

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6

Thanks again @brianchilders for spearheading this effort. I am in agreement with the general process for elections.

It would be good to provide a short template for applicants to follow when declaring their intention to run. Something like:

Preferred Name:
Discord username:
Twitter (optional):
Why do you want to be a member of The Bureau?
Link to Snapshot: (if we are running a separate snapshot for each nominee)

@SaffaAbroad raised some great points too which should be considered for the next phases. The SWISE distribution between The Bureau and the SWAT team is something that will require fine tuning over time. We want to reward The Bureau members enough in order to keep the wheels moving. For some members who are already large SWISE holders, they may not require any further incentives and can forfeit their Bureau rewards for example.

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7

I think an important artifact to have well defined before a call for applications to “The Bureau” would be some kind of Stakewise constitution or mission statement.

If this exists then great if not I believe this would be a great addition to the platform. This would also provide a great asset to the application process in the context of how well an applicant understands and aligns their intentions around the key aspects that the platform is trying to achieve.

This document can also represent the top of the operational tree of which key areas of focus/deliverables can cascade.

3 Likes