lrettig
commented
5 years ago In my opinion deciding on a few organizations is easier then deciding on a group of individuals
Maybe, but at the end of the day I think it's people making decisions (and putting their reputations at stake), not orgs. Especially since I think most orgs in our space have no mechanism to participate in DAOs such as this - so in practice it would be people who happen to be a member of one of these orgs participating as an individual.
very quickly I realized that the number of people who have the previously mentioned requirement plus... is very very small
I agree that it's probably unrealistic to completely avoid conflict of interest since the overall pool of participants is pretty small - especially when you factor in second-degree CoI (i.e., funding my friend's project). So maybe we should be explicit about this upfront. I do think that, at the very least, the folks responsible for designing and bootstrapping one of these DAOs - the initial "core team" - should pledge not to receive grant funding from it for some minimum period of time, ideally until control has been fairly decentralized. (But I am okay with early contributors receiving some compensation for work done directly on/for the DAO, of course.)
After pondering on a good solution to choosing the members of the Multi-sig I thought of an arguably fair proposal earlier today and would like some feedback from the group. In the telegram and on twitter this has been one of the primary concerns and one of the primary reasons given a block rewards funding mechanism be intractable to implement from the beginning. Something worth a lot of thought and I hope you consider that as you read the proposal.
First, this proposal assumes the following is true about the mechanism;
My initial thought was to add trusted individuals who are not members of groups that receive funds. This would be ideal in some sense, but very quickly I realized that the number of people who have the previously mentioned requirement plus:
1) are deeply motivated and 2) know enough about the ecosystem to know where funds would make an impact
is very very small. Not to mention some way to choose them, or even choose how many of them to include is a daunting political task. Which I agree would most likely be intractable.
Then I had had an "aha moment" where I realized the opposite approach also works just as well and possibly makes selection even simpler. These rules are as follows
Require
The reasoning for six is:
The Case against Collusion
While it is unlikely that all groups have 3 member representation. In the worst case scenario two groups would need to collude on an also transparent mechanism for funds to be misdirected. I believe the public backlash on one's own organization is enough to discourage foul play. Also, as the funds are distributed in small amounts overtime, any "do it quickly and run" plans dissolve.
Additional Thoughts
An Example
This is not, I repeat, is not a formal proposal on groups to receive funding. I think a more complete plan is helpful to express the idea and so this is a concrete Example
Funds split between the following funding groups. These groups would distribute funds to other groups with their own mechanism. And, the organizations themselves can nominate which individuals would best represent them
Each of these with 1 to 3 representatives would mean the multi-sig would start with around 8 individuals. We hit go for 18 months, and revisit.
Why Orgs over People
In my opinion deciding on a few organizations that;
1) Have a currently working mechanism 2) Fund ecosystem development 3) Commit to transparent use of those funds
is easier then deciding on a group of individuals. With signalling from the community it is possible the community come to consensus on this point.
Looking Forward to Feedback