Brutus
(Et tu, Brute?)
Brutus is a experiment in governance.
It’s main focus is to implement forced rotation systems within leadership contexts.
In practice, it aims to force the rotation of members of a specific DAO’s council, empower various users, increment diversity and stop power grabs.
It is developed with the sputnikdao system in mind, but aims to experiment with governance in the wider context.
How to implement it
Brutus needs to be completely automated in order to achieve its proposed purpose. If a DAO wants to engage in this experiment, members (starting with the council) forfeit a bond of 5 Near.
That bond aims to amass the necessary value to allow for staking; in turn, staking alows for the creation of the social tokens Brutus will use to manage the ladder system. Brutus alows for any member to engage for a determined period and then leave.
Since its proposed time-frame are trimesters, the following system governs the bond: if a member leaves the ladder after more than 6 trimesters, the full 5 Near are restitued. If a member leaves the ladder after 3 trismesters, only 2,5 near are restitued. If a member wants to leave the ladder before staying there at least 3 trimesters, no restitution takes place.
Any member can enter the ladder by paying the bond, and will do so starting from the bottom (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RT50DwWGBc). In addition, the council can vote and pay for someone to enter the ladder. No other members can do this.
A percentile is defined: the council has x amount of people, the successors can never be more than 25% of the total members, the remaining members are citizens.
The ladder system
The ladder has 3 native positions. Council member, the highest tier, Successor, the middle tier,and Citizens, the lowest tier. Members of a DAO ocupy their positions in the ladder according to their ranking.
Visually, it would be something like this:
Council
councilmember1.near
councilmember2.near
councilmember2.near
Successors
succesorsmember1.near
succesorsmember2.near
succesorsmember3.near
succesorsmember4.near
succesorsmember5.near
succesorsmember6.near
Citizens
citizensmember1.near
citizensmember2.near
citizensmember3.near
citizensmember4.near
citizensmember5.near
citizensmember6.near
citizensmember7.near
citizensmember8.near
citizensmember9.near
citizensmember10.near
citizensmember11.near
citizensmember12.near
citizensmember13.near
Managing Time
The management of time is essential to the success of Brutus. The minimum time frame proposed is a trimester.
So, time is divided by epochs, and an epoch is a trimester.
Brutus acts every epoch delivering tokens for everyone’s participation.
Plus, a timeframe of 6 epochs is established to promote turnout on the Council tier. Every epoch, Brutus checks if there are Council members with a permanence of 6 epochs or more. If the answer is yes, one of the Councl members in that situation must be demoted to the Citizens tier, 1 Successor must be promoted to the Council tier, and 1 Citizen must be promoted to the Successors tier.
The way Brutus chooses who must be demoted and who must be promoted, is by checking the Flowers and Daggers tokens every members was awarded (positives and negatives) and establishing a ladder.
The lowest ranked member of the Council tier in that situation (anyone with at least 6 epochs as council, plus the one with the most daggers) is demoted to the Citizens tier, and the highest ranked member of the successors tier (the one with the best ratio between flowers and daggers) is promoted to the Council tier.
If more than 1 council member is tied worst rank, Brutus will randomly chose 1 of them. If more than 1 successor is tied for top rank, Brutus will randomly chose 1 of them. If more than 1 citizens member is tied for top rank that tier, Brutus will randomly chose 1 of them.
Is’s important to note that the demoting of a Council member takes into account both the time and ranking system. Anyone who has at least 6 epochs as council is eligible to be demoted and will eventually be even it they have a better ranking than others who are not at that tier for 6 epochs yet.
In practice, older Council members are expected to be demoted even if they have the highest of rankings.
When a Council member is demoted, they are stripped of all their daggers and flowers, and start anew.
Besides this system, there is an exception created to solve extreme cases: a Council member who reaches 12 daggers (double what they will get by just being in the council 6 epochs) is immediately demoted and substituted by a Successor.
Social Tokens
To establish reputation and garantuee the ladder rewards positive behaviour, two social tokens are put into place.
The first are Daggers, the second are Flowers. These are generated by the ammount of Near bonded to the DAO’s Brutus.
Daggers are the main way in which both negative actions and time is measured. Flowers are the main way in which both positive actions and time are measured.
The following rules govern the attibution of daggers and flowers:
//this 3 rules aim to increase turnout
Council members can only receive daggers.
Successors can receive both daggers and flowers.
Citizens can only receive flowers.
Every trimester each council member receives 1 dagger.
When a council member doesn’t vote on a proposal, they receive 1 dagger. (either by the time it expires or its voted by other council members)
A successor can receive both flowers and daggers
Every trimester each successor receives 2 flowers.
For every proposal approved, a successor earns 1 flower
For every proposal not approved, a succesor earns 1 dagger
For every trimester without a proposal, a successor gains 1 dagger.
A citizen can only receive flowers
Every trimester each citizen receives 1 flowers.
For every proposal approved, a citizen earns 1 flower
For every proposal not approved, a citizen earns 1 dagger
Final Notes
Brutus doesn’t stop organic decisions, like a Council member stepping down out of his own will.