Founder’s DAO Improvement Proposal - Procedures and Mechanics

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Founder’s DAO Improvement Proposal - Procedures and Mechanics

Author: Jacob Wittman (@jakewittman)
Co-Authors: @RustySailor_, @Arrahatteck, @VGFreakXBL
Type: Governance
Implementor: Pixel Vault, Inc.; Founder’s DAO Community Members

Created Date: March 7, 2022

Summary

This proposal offers a minimum “Founder’s DAO Improvement Proposal” framework to enable community governance over decisions affecting the Founder’s DAO. This updated framework empowers the Founder’s DAO community to make changes to, and execute on the behalf of, the Founder’s DAO in a transparent and efficient manner. Furthermore, this proposal ratifies the decisions made by the parties listed below in connection with the formation of the Snapshot page and voting parameters.

Founder’s DAO Informal Committee

This proposal and the relevant Snapshot page were put together after discussions among Pixel Vault, Inc. (“Pixel Vault”) and a community elected panel of the Founder’s DAO members, listed below. The members representing the Founder’s DAO were chosen by the Founder’s DAO via a poll on Discord. Minutes from the meeting of these parties can be found here.

Pixel Vault Team

  • Sean Gearin, Chief Executive Officer
  • Jacob Wittman, General Counsel
  • Arrahatteck, Project Manager
  • Chuba, Lead Solidity Developer
  • Arr00, Solidity Developer
  • VGF, Director, Marketing
  • Potamus, Community Manager
  • Krunch, Community Moderator
  • Keef, Community Moderator

Members of the Founder’s DAO

  • Rusty Sailor
  • Adrian
  • Richerd [MetaHero No. 5]
  • Ned Ryerson
  • SpaceWalk
  • Harristotle
  • Thomsen
  • BCheque
  • RenegadeMaster

What is a Founder’s DAO Improvement Proposal (FDIP)?

A Founder’s DAO Improvement Proposal (“FDIP”) is a document describing a potential improvement to the Founder’s DAO, for the decentralized community’s consideration. FDIP Procedures are the official mechanism to create community discourse and vote on decisions regarding the Founder’s DAO.

What can be proposed in a FDIP? While there is no limit to what can be proposed, here are a few examples of community proposals:

  • A proposal to establish incentives using NFTs or other tokens from the Founder’s DAO treasury.
  • A proposal to change voting parameters or governance methods.
  • A proposal to hire service providers to help develop, further decentralize, or otherwise enhance the Founder’s DAO.

Is there an FDIP Template? What belongs in a FDIP? A successful FDIP should have the following characteristics, however, each can be drafted differently from another:

  • Title - Simple and informative.
  • Preamble - Headers should include; Author(s), Type, Implementor, Created Date.
  • Summary - A short 2-3 sentence description of the FDIP. Suggested word limit - 50
  • Abstract - Detailed summary that touches on technical aspects and how the Founder’s DAO will change. Suggested word limit - 250
  • Motivation - Explain why this is being proposed and what the outcome of implementation will be. Suggested word limit - 100
  • Specification - Describe full technical details of how this improvement will function and what will be affected. Suggested word limit - 1000
  • Benefits - Explain what the explicit benefits of this proposed change are. Suggested word limit - 100
  • Drawbacks - Analyze explicit and potential drawbacks of implementing this update. Suggested word limit - 100
  • Outcomes - Explain how we will know whether the proposal was successful or not. Please provide specific metrics that will be tracked, the timeframe for those metrics and how they will be made available to everyone in the community. Suggested word limit - 100

How are Founder’s DAO votes taken?

Votes are currently taken using the Founder’s DAO Snapshot page and will be implemented by the community and/or the multisignature signers as directed by the relevant proposal. In the future, following a successful Snapshot vote, votes can be submitted (as a single vote or a batch of topics) for an on-chain vote. This allows votes to be vetted prior to on-chain voting, which uses gas.

Who can put forth a vote and what are the voting/quorum thresholds?

  • Proposal Threshold: Any holder with at least 1 PVFD may put forth a proposal.
  • Voting Requirement: Majority vote (50%+1) of votes cast to pass.
  • Quorum Requirement: 490 PVFD
  • Minimum Voting Period: 7 days total, where there is a 2 day voting delay period for discussion and a 5 day period for voting. This initial FDIP proposes that the official channel for proposal discussion should be https://forum.foundersdao.app.
  • Voting System: Ranked-choice voting.

These thresholds and other voting mechanics may be changed by a successful vote of the Founder’s DAO.

What is ranked-choice voting?

Rather than voters choosing their top option only, ranked-choice voting allows voters to rank their options in a sequence of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so on. The votes are first tallied based on the first choice on every ballot. When ranked-choice is used to elect a single option, and if no single option wins a first-round majority of the votes, then the option with the lowest number of votes is eliminated and another round of vote tallying commences. This process continues until one of the proposed options holds more than a majority of the votes cast.

For the various voting mechanics used on www.snapshot.page please visit this link. The voting mechanics can be changed by a vote of the Founder’s DAO at any time.

[End of Proposal]

2 Likes
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The Snapshot voting page for this proposal can be found here: Snapshot

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I would like to suggest changing the quorum requirement so that no single voter can represent 50% or more of the total vote for a given proposal. We can accomplish this by amending the quorum from 490 PVFD to the greater of:

  • 490 PVFD
  • OR 2x the votes of largest voter + 1

For example, if dingaling chose to vote 309 times for a proposal, the quorum would be raised to 619 (2 x 309 + 1) so that dingaling’s votes would represent slightly less than 50% of the vote.

The quorum will remain 490 if no single voter represents 50% or more of the vote. So if the largest voter registers less than 245 votes, the quorum would remain 490 for that proposal.

8 Likes
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I think that’s a really good point. Are we doing 1 vote per PVFD or 1 vote per wallet? If it is per wallet how do we account for people that may try to game the system with multiple wallets. It would be annoying to set up but, I don’t think it would be that difficult to make alt accounts.

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Can you amend a proposal or does it need to fail? Or does it make sense to pass the proposal, then create a new one for the amendment? However, if someone(or a group) has 50% voting power, then we could not rescind or amend.

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Are we doing 1 vote per PVFD or 1 vote per wallet? If it is per wallet how do we account for people that may try to game the system with multiple wallets.

We can definitely not use wallets as unique people. It will be gamed and sybil attacked. So I don’t see a way to implement a concept like “largest holder”, it will lead to all sorts of problems and incentivize people to split their tokens across multiple addresses.

So it has to be 1 token = 1 vote regardless of where it sits.

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:one: I would like to propose a simple addition to the new proposal template:

Modifications: Specific pieces of this proposal that are open for changes, like certain numbers, thresholds or other details. Call out each aspect that you feel is open for change before voting versus other aspects that are immutable in this proposal and go against its intent.

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:two: Another suggestion:

Maybe each proposal should also come with a video. That’s what we do at work for new tech proposals or important updates to respect everyone’s time to get up to speed quickly.

:three: It might also be nice to have a TL;DR section for each proposal which is a bullet list with the key points.

That can also be the focus of amendment requests, and allows people to digest the rough idea of each proposal quickly.

This is different from how the abstract is currently done because it’s easy to write it as a summary without the important key facts. The idea is that anyone can read the TL;DR and have 90% understanding of what is being introduced or changed.