This thread aims to discuss, define and accept improved rules for grant applications, which will eventually go to the RIP and a vote and be officially added in the RGP guidelines.
With the recent RGP activity it became evident, that we need to have more defined rules. And my initial thinking, which I voiced in #chamber in our Governance section of the discord was this:
Guys, what do you think, shall we add a mandatory delay between when RGP/RIP is created and a snapshot vote is initiated? I quickly went through the RGP sticky and didn’t find this requirement. The thinking is that there needs to be a time buffer for the community to:
a) learn about the existence of the RGP
b) have time to express their thoughts on the matter
c) time for others to think through the RGP itself as well as the following comments and critiques
d) allow time for the author to reply
So two rules I think we should add is the duration of the RGP thread being open before the vote and the duration of the vote itself. Durations are open for discussion. Personally I like 1 week for each, especially if the start is during the work week, so there’s always an overlap between two weeks (this is helpful when someone is on a vacation or similar).
The third rule that I’d like to discuss is a quorum. I think this is essential to avoid incidents where something gets accepted, just because the community lacked interest for it. For this we need to know the total voting power and historical activity on our votes.
I think these 3 rules are essential additions that we need to talk about and implement. What are your thoughts, guys?
Thanks for posting this, Arviee. I agree with the rest of the community that this is needed. And I agree on the 3 rules you outline. I believe Turducken’s ideas on timelines from the Discord Chamber channel discussion would be a great starting point for discussion (partially posted below).
2 weeks overall for exposure/awareness, then voting is pretty much how the last 2 RGP’s went, and dissatisfaction with that is what spurred this discussion.
Also would like to hear other community members’ thoughts on the quorum question. I think it’s a no brainer that we need one for the reasons you stated. Only question is the threshold. and perhaps whether that threshold is adjustable in the future, as engagement likely increases.
All proposals need ample time to allow DNOs and the community to become aware of them, consider them, discuss them, and vote on them with no hurry. I think 1 month minimum. The only exception being emergency measures with a timeliness component. 5 days is irresponsible, precludes discussion, and treats the grant as a done-deal from the outset needing only a rubber stamp.
I think we should consider again the idea of using quarterly funding rounds, how the CEF was to be used originally.
This structure can address all of the concerns that have been raised by having a clear deadline for when proposals should be submitted and discussed, and when the vote happens.
For example, a funding round can look as follows:
Voting happens at the end of the quarter and runs for 10 days
Grant proposals should be submitted at least 1 month in advance
As per the quadratic voting rules, all proposals will be voted on together
Since we will have predictable and dependable voting rounds, proposals can be submitted on time for each round and incorporate feedback until the final vote goes live. As there will be a pool of proposals, the community can compare and rank them based on relative importance. This also ensure a proposal cannot “steal” the funds from a subsequent proposal just by being early.
We do have this “fast lane” set in place which could undermine this by having proposals out of band. These should only be allowed under very specific circumstances and none of the proposals that we have seen so far would apply in my opinion. How we set up the rules is a bit difficult though, as the nature of the “fast lane” is to be able to deal with unforeseen situations, we might need some kind of board to take an executive decision on it or use forum votes as initial signaling.
Quorum is an important topic as well and should be applied across the board. I did some initial work on this already to gather statistics on our previous votes to try and come up with a threshold. I will need to update this though as it is a bit out-dated by now. Will try to do this soon and share it.
Shouldn’t an RFC be a requirement as well? I think its really important that those with ideas for a proposal take in feedback before officially submitting their final proposal. Having the RFC as a requirement gives a better chance for revision before the stakes are heated. When the pressure is on in the RGP feedback comes off as much more personal as some good/bad feedback can make or break the vote. It’s important that those submitting a proposal get a read on the community so they aren’t turned off if the feedback isn’t going their way.
This can be seen with RGP-2 RGP-000-002: EVI DAO - Bitcoin Backed, Inflation-Resistant Stable Asset - #27 by 0xCryptoseldon
While it was the author’s choice to submit this proposal straight without an RFC, and then immediately send it to vote, in the end he clearly felt all his hard work wasn’t taken seriously by our community. While i don’t think it’s our responsibility to hold anyone’s hand, I do think the process should be setup in a way that there is time for all ideas to be digested and responded to in a way that doesn’t leave anyone wanting to rage quit REN protocol (which is what this author did in the end).
Two weeks is way too short, I’m much more of a fan of what @Thomm is saying here. But if we aren’t doing that it would make sense to me that you have minimum:
RFC - 1 week
RGP - 1 week
Vote - 2 weeks.
The quorum issue would be much less of a problem if we are doing quarterly rounds with vote periods being very predictable.