Method for Selecting Catalyst Technical Council

[kenricnelson]

Problem

A method is needed to select members of the technical council that ensures members have high qualifications with the appropriate technical competency. A community vote works well for selecting Circle members since these individuals are responsible for representing the people of the community. In contrast, the technical council is responsible for representing the technical parameters of the Catalyst process. The individuals with the appropriate skills may not have the political skills necessary to win a popular vote. Therefore an alternative selection process that provides input from the community but is focused on the evaluation of technical skills is required.

Proposed Solution

For example, a suggested process would be the following. Randomly select a Selection Committee from the community of Catalyst IdeaScale members. A committee of 5-10 individuals would be charged with reviewing the qualifications of applicants for the Technical Council, holding interviews, and discussing the qualifications. The committee would hold a meeting to arrive at a consensus for recommending a nominee. Consensus could be defined as either 2/3rds majority or unanimity. Optionally, the nominee could be approved by a simple majority or 2/3rds of the Catalyst Circle. Such a process would ensure committee input (through random representation), focus on technical competency (through interview rather than voting process), and reduction of collusion (by insulating the Circle from the process).

[mark-stopka]

Randomly select a Selection Committee from the community of Catalyst IdeaScale members.

Does not provide sybil resistance.

The committee would hold a meeting to arrive at a consensus for recommending a nominee. Consensus could be defined as either 2/3rds majority or unanimity.

So does the committee recommends or appoints?

Optionally, the nominee could be approved by a simple majority or 2/3rds of the Catalyst Circle.

Simple majority of what? Of The Circle, or committee?

reduction of collusion (by insulating the Circle from the process).

This argument doesn't hold for the optional variant.

[kenricnelson]

@mark-stopka For some background, I raised the issue of how the Catalyst Technical Council is selected. The first 3-person council was appointed by IOG. As IOG currently oversees the technical parameters of Catalyst, their appointment of the first council was an appropriate initial step towards handing oversight of the technical parameters to the Catalyst Community. IOG is currently recommending an election of future technical council members. While elections have a lot of merits, if both the Circle and the Technical Council are selected using the same method, you'll get the same kind of people on both bodies. If the purpose of the Technical Council is to provide technical oversight, an interview process may be better at identifying the right candidates. But of course, an interviewing process doesn't scale. Random committees are commonly used for juries and have been studied for other types of public functions. I'd like to know more about them and whether they could be used as part of ensuring the selection of a highly-skilled Technical Council. While the first reaction may be skepticism about the qualifications of a random committee, an election is also a random process. The selection design will drive the type of Technical Council the community has.

Finally, at this preliminary stage, I'm not making any judgment about the relative merits of different procedures. The best input at this time would be suggestions of potential procedures and research papers that have evaluated different methods.

[mark-stopka]

@kenricnelson I do agree that it takes different people for echo of these roles, however I also think that each role attracts different candidates.

Here is the flowchart from the presentation on the Catalyst Circle meeting....

Based on the minutes and the flowchaer, I think we should do the following:

• Ask the IO to specify the exact scope of Catalyst parameters, so far we have:
  • how funds are spent (ratio between proposal funding, CA rewards, vCA rewards, voter rewards)
  • dates
  • voting power thresholds
  • etc (this needs better definition, can we for instance introduce minimal participation quorum?)
• Zoom Meeting is unclear to me, is it a zoom meeting of "community members", or "Catalyst Circle + Catalyst Technical Council"; if it is "community members", why don't we make it a proper on-chain vote; synchronous settings assumption is not very good for global communities, from experience I can say that synchronous models work for APAC + EMEA or EMEA + Americas or Americas + APAC; but for all 3 it is always hard on one of those three...

In addition, it is unclear to me, if in step 3, Circle already makes some specific proposal for change, or just tells the Technical Council to "look into this one" and make a proposal; based on the minutes I would say it's the makes specific proposal, but we should clarify it and document it.

Here is how I think it could work:

1. Community feedback
2. Deliberation
3. Specific proposal for change (by Circle)
4. Veto or adjustment (by Council)
5. Vote (by Circle)
6. Vote (by Council)
7. Vote (by Community; on-chain -> I bet you can tell I don't like power of my stake being reduced ;) )
8. Change implemented or the parameter remains the same as last time

What should be enabled; some parameters may be inter-dependent, so there should be an ability to group several parameters?

Thoughts? Should we perhaps also define maximal change thresholds, with respective vote pass thresholds & quorum requirement, e.q. increase of fund budget to 2x the last size required simple majority, above that we require 2/3 or 3/4 supermajority? Same for going down, reducing to half, simple majority, larger reduction supermajority?

And a final thought; about the quorum, I am thinking we need to start setting up minimal quorum, what I was thinking, we may use evolving quorum, where as we progress and gain more participation the minimal quorum would be increasing up to a defined minimal threshold, but we also need to define some failure path what will happen if we miss the required quorum repeatedly.

[kenricnelson]

This article describes a successful use of a randomly selected committee to draw district maps in the state of Michigan. District maps have become a contentious issue in the United States. Traditionally, legislative majorities have used the maps to define districts which protect their majority. Instead, this non-political committee drawn equally from citizens registered Democratic, Republican, and Independent were able to create balanced maps.

Drawing a committee from Cardano members who register as participants in the Catalyst program would be an interesting way to interview candidates for the Technical Council.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/01/michigan-republican-effort-rig-elections-voting-rights?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other