RFC-000-052: Project proposal to structure RENdao and SUBdao's

Requests For Comment | RFC
1

Name: Project proposal to structure RENdao and SUBdao’s
Category: Dao, Governance, funding
Status: Draft
Scope: This RFC is to propose the creation of a project (team, scope and deliverables) to redesign RENdao and operational & Execution SUBdao’s from the ground up having as focus being “sufficiently decentralized”, light and well equipped to efficiently grow the Ren Ecosystem.

Abstract

This RFC is a proposal to formalize a project to structure RENdao and relevant operational and execution SUBdao’s. The objective is to get feedback from the community during the next 2 weeks before launching a RIP that will include for approval, the scope, deliverables and a budget, as well as a section to vote on the candidates to be part of the project team.

Literature

There are relevant experiences that have been documented on how to build a DAO, but I found the “Sufficient Decentralization: A Playbook for web3 Builders and Lawyers” by Marc Boiron, as the most interesting reading that gives very direct insights as to how a DAO should operate. We propose to use this text as a reference in our project.

Problem Statement

One of the major issues that RENdao is facing is the lack of clarity of who the responsibles are for many of the important tasks within the ecosystem. It is very common to hear “the DAO is responsible” and the next question comes, “but who?” What specific person or group (doxxed or not doxxed) is responsible for?

This creates a lot of uncertainties and many tasks are just “waiting for someone to be executed” which creates delays, lack of communication and coordination, and lots of frustration. A formal organization with formal Roles and Responsibilities (R&R) will bring great efficiencies. RENdao shall be decentralized, but that does not contradict the fact that a DAO needs individuals to be responsible for the organization (doxxed or not doxxed) to manage, communicate and coordinate through the Ren ecosystem.

Research & Development, marketing, Business development, treasury, community management and others can be seem as Ren Execution SUBdao’s where there is a clear understanding of what their scope and objectives are, but yet, it is missing the link within them to guarantee proper alignment. Also, some of those SUBdao’s are still not operating (at least formally) and nobody (individual or team) are working diligently on them. Again, there is a missing link for effective coordination.

Proper coordination is not only about people and R&R, it is also a common understanding of what the purpose of the organization is, defined usually by the Mission and Vision statements in a DAO strategy. In other words, by stating a Mission and Vision it will provide the organization a focus, coherence, and direction, facilitating the language within the ecosystem.

SUBdao’s are no more than entities that deliver meaningful results, whereas the level of the results are mainly based on the level of quality of the resources allocated (budget, expertise, right size of the team, others). The RENdao community expects from the organization but the organization also expects from the RENdao community. Both types of expectations can be summarized as:

  • The Ren Ecosystem and all subDAO’s are governed by a constitution, and a central mission and vision.
  • There are subDAO’s to cover all needs for the ecosystem.
  • Every subDAO has a scope, R&R, and meaningful performance goals (short and long term) that are easy to measure.
  • Every subDAO has the resources to be able to perform: a budget, legal support, expertise and man power, others.
  • Every subDAO is visible to the community and its deliverables are properly rewarded.
  • Every subDAO presents a formal proposal to request a budget and resources for its operation to be approved by the RENdao community.

The issue is, all listed above cannot coexist efficiently without a minimum of coordination. Still, It is true that every team has to keep its own strategy and work independently, reducing any friction and keeping a minimum of decentralization, but the coordination will eliminate chaos and prevent delays, specially at the early stages of the DAO before reaching maturity. The dilemma of any DAO is how to be decentralized enough while still being efficient executing throughout the ecosystem.

Proposed Project Scope, Process and Deliverables

Scope: Redesign RENdao and operational & Execution SUBdao’s from the ground up having as focus being “sufficiently decentralized”, light and well equipped to efficiently grow the Ren Ecosystem.

Proposed Process: The order as listed the deliverables should be considered the process to follow for the formation of RENdao and SUBdao’s.

Deliverables:

  1. Mission and Vision
    The mission and vision statement will provide the strategic direction and insight into what RENdao hopes to achieve or become in the future.
    A mission statement clarifies what to achieve, who to support, and why to support them,
    While a vision statement describes where RENdao wants the Ren Ecosystem and Cryptoworld to be as a result of its services.

  2. Ren Constitution
    Ren Constitution will dictate the principal rules to be followed by RENdao, supporters and developers, and any project candidate to deploy within Ren protocol.
    The constitution is the core set of rules of the protocol.
    It is very important to approve the Ren Constitution at early stages by the community since it will be the core set of rules of the protocol, how RENdao and SUBdaos are to be designed as well as their ways to operate.

  3. RENdao and SUBdaos framework
    The framework describes the architecture across the protocol. It is a method to outline plans to achieve the Mission and Vision.
    In general, the framework will describe the pillars and its objective, allowing us to understand how the Ren ecosystem should work and what subDAOs and its individual objectives should be to achieve the Mission and Vision of the protocol.
    RENdao and every SUBdao should have a framework whereas RENdao’s framework shall explain the importance of every subDAO.

  4. Decentralized organization structure (Draft Proposal to send to Community and legal counsel for feedback)
    After the framework is completed, there is enough information to sketch and start to propose RENdao organization and job description of the positions to fill. The following steps shall be taken:

  • Determine minimum requirements for RENdao and SUBdaos
  • Design the organogram of the critical structure (RENdao and SUBdaos)
  • Describe scope, R&R, minimum resources and key indicators for each organization.
  • Job description for each position
  • GAP analysis on expertise, budget, tools and any variable that is missing to achieve the proposed scope.

  1. Legal counsel risk analysis of all described above.

  2. RFC draft proposal for Community feedback.

  3. SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the Ren Ecosystem and propose actions to increase efficiency as an organization. The structure could suffer alteration based on findings on this analysis.

  4. Final proposal for operation and execution SUBdaos after receiving feedback from the community, SWOT analysis and recommendations from legal counsel. The proposal must include as a minimum: Organogram structure, scope and R&R, required resources and job description, budget for 1 year of operation.

  5. RIP for approval by the community through Snapshot.

  6. Structure a treasury management process to support the new RENdao organization.

  7. Define a recruitment process and tools to attract the required talent.

  8. Communication Plan (ecosystem, foundation, subDAOs, others).
    The communication plan will be designed to provide community, RENdao, SUBdaos as well third parties with the latest updates on projects, goals and objectives. It is a detailed plan (from beginning to end) for delivering any strategic message to a target audience as a way to drive a positive business result. It will include the list of stakeholders to communicate, what to communicate based on stakeholder interest, how and when to communicate, what form of communication the content should take and what channels will be used to share it.

  9. Document all processes and procedures.

  10. Launch formal RENdao and handover operations to the new organization.

Proposed Project Team

These are the minimum positions recommended. We shall encourage participation so the participants of the board provide the expertise needed during the duration of the project.

  • Project leader. Expected 3 months and estimated 500 hrs of labor.

    • Coordinate overall process keeping in track schedule and budget.
    • Schedule and conduct meetings.
    • Weekly community update meeting.
    • Bi-weekly community writing report.
    • Prepare documentation for review and approval by the project team before submitting formal RFC.
    • Coordinate legal and HR reviews.
    • Raise RFC & RIP.
    • Handover RENdao to an elected team by community thru RIP process at the end of the project.

  • Board. Recommended a maximum of 5 community members. Expected 3 months and estimated 100 hrs of labor each.

    • Participate in the meetings
    • Collaborate providing material for the meeting
    • Approve documentation before submitting RFC.
    • Provide expertise in at least one of these areas: marketing, business development, finance, legal, human resources, DAO management, or other relevant areas.

  • Legal advisor. To be outsourced unless there is relevant legal counsel experience within the community. Shall be paid on a call basis. Estimated cost to be inform on RIP for approval,

    • Review documents and recommend changes to minimize liabilities and determine if the structure proposed fits as “sufficiently decentralized”.

  • Human Resources. To be outsourced unless there is relevant HR DAO experience within the community. Could be paid on a call basis or temporary hiring.

    • Translate RENdao strategy into a people strategy. That means assessing the proposed structure to identify and foresee talent to accomplish the mission and vision.
    • Develop recruitment process end to end with emphasis on talent acquisition.
    • Develop a compensation plan based on market (crypto) analysis.

I recommend that the positions are to be paid to guarantee the right dedication and expertise. That will allow an expedited project where you will see things moving. If you consider yourself as a right candidate for any of the positions above, please, reply describing your experience and area of expertise, the time you can allocate to the project and the value amount you expect to be paid.

If you cannot allocate time to the project, do not worry, there will be specific community calls as well as dedicated channels to get feedback from you and others that are willing to participate, (ej. meeting to discuss the constitution, to define SUBdao’s, etc). Remember, anything will pass through the voting process before final implementation.

If the expertise is not within RenDAO for the positions above, I suggest bounties to attract talent participants from other communities.

A budget shall be allocated from CEF.

Implementation

  • Hold a period of open discussion to formalize the scope of the project and the constitution of the project team
  • When a state of informal consensus is reached publish a RIP to vote on the proposal
  • If the RIP is approved, the project team can start working on the deliverables
    • This includes drafting up RFC/RIPs to change DAO governance rules, vote on Ren Constitution and the DAO Mission and Vision,etc
  • At the end of the project the team will be disbanded
6 Likes
2

Firstly, massive thanks for putting this together into a detailed, and well-researched RFC @martign0.

As a future DAO, we’re about to reach one of the most critical points leading up to the new foundation - and that of course means allocating roles/members/and assigning teams to form the future DAO. There’s a lot of responsibility here on the part of the community, but I am confident we have the talent in our ranks to fulfil the initial/early objectives of the DAO to get started.

As the project continues to grow and evolve post-Ren 2.0, the DAO will need to scale in its members, groups, and objectives and be flexible and adaptable enough to work around the constant changes in the direction of our project (1-5 years etc.)

Aside from the ongoing mission statement, vision document, and constitutional documentation etc. I think the community should start to think as soon as possible about:

  1. What working groups do we want?
  2. The number of working groups required?
  3. Role terms, funding per role etc.
  4. The number of roles PER group?

To try and help the community visualise this, I’ve created a very simple possible group scenario below.

This scenario includes:

  • 6x roles
  • Spanning 4x groups:

WG1
WG11833×1317 205 KB

Other posible scenarios include:

  • 3x working groups with 2x members per group = 6 total roles.
  • 4x working groups with 1x member in 3 groups, and 2x dedicated members for a 4th group = 5 total roles.
  • 5x working groups with 1x member per group (as below) = 5x total roles:

Again, the community will ultimately need to decide which working groups are required most from the following group options:

  1. Legal
  2. Marketing
  3. Comms
  4. Treasury
  5. Business Dev
  6. Human Resources
  7. DAO Management
  8. others+

My recommendation(s):

As above, I’d personally like to start with the most essential groups first (4 max) - and then adding additional groups at a later stage as the DAO grows (legal, HR etc.)

Terms:
Each role elected by the DAO for a term of 3-6 months, followed by re-election of the same or new member(s) to those respective roles.

Funding:
DAO working group roles should be fully funded, full-time positions with applications from the wider community.

Additional tasks:
These could be incentivised through tips/rewards for Ambassadors, covering anything else that may not be required by the roles above.

In the mean time I will:

  • Help assist with vision/mission/constitutional documentation (although this could be ongoing even after the DAO structure has been established).
  • Get behind David/The foundation as much as possible.
3 Likes
3

Thanks Shilliam for your comments,

The issue here is that we need to clarify what we want to achieve before build the SUBdao’s. I agree mainly with the SUBdao’s you are proposing, but, what is the scope for each of them and the deliverables? Expertise for each will depends on that. Most of us are not even clear of what our main focus should be. As for example, how will the technical side of the protocol work? Development most probably will be collaborators or a company that will directly be compensated by the Ren Foundation, but maintenance, ej. Open tickets with tech issues on the products, who will lead that??

Another one, what to focus on the marketing side? Are we going to have a soft rebrand? Complete rebrand, none? All of this will influence on the expertise needed for the marketing subDAO. Same for BD.

Additionally, there should be a focus on a team with the following functions on, which I consider the most important matters, to have proposer alignment of the organization:

  1. Overseeing the overall management and direction of the organization
  2. Setting and reviewing the organization’s strategic goals and objectives
  3. Approving major business decisions, such as mergers and acquisitions
  4. Ensuring that the organization is in compliance with all relevant laws and regulations.
  5. Monitoring the financial performance of the organization and taking appropriate action to address any issues.
  6. Evaluate the performance of the subDAO’s and propose new directions??? Others???
    Without this, I am afraid the lack of proper coordination will continue.

Could possibly be an alternative that each of the leaders of the subDAO’s are the ones taking the sits in the board? That probably could be a middle ground option.

What I am trying to pass is that we need to write what we expect before determine what to build.

1 Like
4

Re: management of a DAO

This is great stuff and I’d like to see it happen.

The Internet Computer (ICP) was built exactly for this purpose, including the establishment of sub-DAOs. I have some coins staked on their network.

I would be happy to investigate further and provide additional details to the community. I should be able to guesstimate costs and outline what the structure proposed here, implemented on ICP, might look like.

As an fyi, my undergraduate degree is in systems engineering from the University of Virginia. I have a background in finance and IT project management (Capital One), banking (Envision Credit Union), and financial regulation (Florida Department of Financial Services). Most recently, I was completing my second year of a M.D. program until I was forced to withdraw for a medical issue.

I’m currently recovering from an ear surgery that never should have occurred (irresponsible and incompetent doctors :smiling_face_with_tear:) so I have a bit of time on my hands :). However, I’d appreciate input from others before investing too much effort.

Thanks in advance.
-jeff (balser)

5

Do you have any material you can provide of the work that ICP is doing? thanks

6

Thanks for writing this up @martign0! Important stuff and lots to think about here.

First off a few questions from my side, mostly to understand it better:

Why does a mission statement describe who to support?

Do you mean the project would result in descriptions for each subDAO that would include all these items?

That would be a lot for the community to evaluate. Why not first come up with a high level governance structure that we would like subDAOs to adhere to, and can be applied to any? To me it feels like we should give subDAOs a certain level of autonomy to self organize.

Can you explain why you think we would need to have specific HR resources at this point? If possible with a practical example for my understanding.

Do you envision this to be the responsibility of a particular subdao or working group?

The project that this proposal describes is incredibly comprehensive. Could you describe how you would shape the project if you can only include 25% of the scope?
This would help me understand better what you’d think are the most important aspects of the project, and what the most important wins would be.

7

Thanks Thomm for the detail analysis

We create products and there should be a target audience for those. The message captures that audience when the statement is addressing those individuals need.

The target audience can be users, protocols or could be others? does not need to be an individual in particular.

The organogram structure, for example, is for how RENdao and SUBdao’s are connected, not how internally are the SUBdao’s structured. R&R, scope and others should be stablished with the bear minimum instructions, so, it is understood what is expected.

People expertise is the most important variable that will make us be efficient running the ecosystem. We must be sure we have the right compensation plan and a way to attract talent within the protocol or from outside (if there is not the experience within Ren community). DAO’s are becoming more and more competitive.

yes, I do believe a board has to be formed within RENdao or a SUBdao.

2 Likes
8

I can help with the project, I am certified public accountant in Florida and run my own firm. I have experience in investment and not for profit accounting which could assist. I have significant financial interest in helping the project move along, so compensation would be minimal.

1 Like
9

This is actually an interesting topic, but I think the premise of this discussion is all wrong. The DAO should not, and likely cannot, have a Marketing Manager or Bus Dev Manager. What you are describing is a company or organization, not a DAO. There is nothing “Decentralized” or “Autonomous” about weekly marketing meetings or sales calls.

Fortunately, you now have a Foundation which can do the work required to promote the wider ecosystem, drive traffic over your network, negotiate with 3rd parties, etc. The Foundation needs to hire people, market the protocol, etc., not the DAO. I once thought these functions could work through a DAO structure with sub-DAOs, etc., but now I’m fairly convinced it’s not going to happen. You can’t just recreate a company and pretend its a DAO. You get the worst of both words: complex and inefficient coordination combined with zero legal protections.

The DAO should be focused on autonomously managing the network. This is more a technical issue, how consensus and execution is built into the Ren 2.0 protocol. This by itself gives darknode operators tremendous power over what goes over the network. Ultimate control over the solution. Your Foundation should manage business activities.

But if your Foundation will be hiring and firing people, signing agreements, mapping out partner strategies, etc., how to ensure the Foundation is aligned with the DAO? That Foundation leaders don’t “go rogue.” There needs to be accountability. For example:

  • How do you become a Director?
  • How many Directors will form the Foundation, and how are they selected/removed?
  • Who controls the treasury, and what are the guidelines for its use? How are budgets approved?
  • What are the reporting requirements? Will the Foundation release monthly reports and answer questions on progress in a systematic way? Or will you go back to begging for info in Discord?

Accountability can come by having the DAO select directors for the Foundation, or at the very least remove directors. The DAO should not dictate work to be done, but it must be able to select who will do that work. Directors need to act based on a legal document or constitution, so work under a framework, a legal structure. They should be legally liable for their actions. To give one example, if a Director controls the treasury and in some way misallocates the treasury, he must be held legally liable for his actions.

For this challenging work and responsibility, Directors should be paid. It’s a difficult job requiring a lot of time and effort. Money should be controlled by the Foundation, but again, with strict limits and controls.

Currently you have this high level structure - Foundation plus DAO - but I don’t see any legal or organizational structure on how it’s all being managed. Trying to empower the DAO through organizational structure - hiring a Marketing Manager, for example - is not the way. You are simply recreating another business entity, not building a properly decentralized, autonomous organization…

If you believe there will be a Ren 2.0 at some point, if you believe you can solve the serious challenges of having almost no treasury and no clear rights to IP, no developers, no functioning website, limited access to your Twitter account, and a tarnished brand, then you should start to map out how you plan to manage all this in the future, asap. And that high level structure must ensure the DAO functions as a DAO, not as a de facto company. And the Foundation functions as a legal entity, with proper oversight.

If you think this is putting the cart before the horse, that the challenges and uncertainty are just too great now to map out your future org structure, then at the very least agree on how the Foundation will systematically update the community on progress. The Foundation should issue a monthly report, and also hold a monthly community call (soon after issuing the report) to answer questions. This should include specific goals, key deliverables and timing, how success is measured, financial overview, etc. The Foundation is a proper company, so it needs to act like one.

I would also suggest paying Directors for their work at the Foundation asap. You have almost no treasury, but I’ve suggested at least one way you can double your treasury short term. Use the money for what really matters, hiring Directors and building Ren 2.0.

1 Like
10

Is this statement from what is being proposed by Blockchainbard?.

From what it is being proposed originally on the RFC: We do need a structure and can be sufficient decentralized. What I wrote is just the steps to build the organization, but it is by any means the final organization structure to create. It is only a sequence of activities to make it happen. The final structure should be sufficient decentralized and we are proposing to follow “Sufficient Decentralization: A Playbook for web3 Builders and Lawyers”. From a constitution, a vision and mission statement of what we want from the DAO (not from the protocol), we should be able to plan and execute.

1 Like
11

Great, we need 4 more

12

Well, I applaud your efforts for advancing the discussion, well done. But I’m missing how the Foundation fits into this structure. And more importantly, how the DAO will ensure accountability for anything managed by the Foundation. Does that high level vision exist? You created a Foundation, is there a clear mandate for its scope and activities? Can you please share?

And as I noted above, managing business functions through a DAO, e.g. through “sub DAOs,” is, imo, a bad idea. It’s not just about being “sufficiently decentralized.” It’s about getting things done. DAOs are generally terrible at getting things done. Companies, otoh, are generally very good at getting things done. Because they have competent people, they pay salaries, there is structure, organization, goal setting, regular meetings, etc.

Business operations like marketing and BD should be managed by a proper business organization. The DAO can force accountability, replace management, allocate budgets, etc. but it should not, imo, attempt to manage.

It seems your Foundation is anyway off and running, defining scope of work, sending out agreements, about to hire developers, negotiating IP rights, and who knows what else. So while you debate, Ren’s centralized arm is making major decisions. Imo probably a good thing, otherwise you’d be here talking forever with no results.

But where is the accountability? You are talking about a marketing subDAO, you should be talking about how the Foundation will act in the best interest of the DAO, what legal structures are in place to ensure this, what reporting is required from the Foundation to the DAO and how often, how many Directors are required at a minimum asap (definitely more than one!), what budgets will be allocated to the Foundation, etc.

In short, stop recreating managerial work that should happen through your Foundation, start building in structure to hold the Foundation accountable to the DAO.

13

How can influence foundation if we do not have an arm within the community to be lead the discussion? Of course communication with Foundation and accountability is major here, but first is first, which is organize the DAO.

14

By voting on who can be a Director and for a fixed time. And making sure there are 4-5 Directors pulled from different parts of the community or the wider ecosystem. By approving a legally binding constitution for the Foundation. By removing Directors who act against the best wishes of the DAO. By allocating money based on pre-approved budgets. By ensuring Directors sign contracts and those that do not uphold their fiduciary responsibility to the DAO can be held criminally liable.

So, for example, let’s say in the future, a Director or Directors sell “all Ren assets and IP” to a third party, without the consent of the DAO. The Directors who facilitated that transaction should be held criminally liable.

15

I really do not share this vision. Foundation and DAO are different entities, different scope and responsibilities with equal important role in the ecosystem. I do not think is wise to wait until things are running to form a DAO. We are wasting time, should run the efforts in parallel. But, people is demotivated, I think the focus in a DAO organization (decentralized) will be delayed.