[DAO:1a929fe] Should the DAO Mandate an Annual Review and Update of All Governance Documents?

Governance
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by 0x7bbea9c18cd0541acab8c19da2b11d0c03faef1c (Mxyzptlk)

Linked Draft Proposal

Should the DAO Mandate an Annual Review and Update of All Governance Documents?

Summary

Makes Governance Documents Annual Review permanent policy: DAO Council reviews and updates core governance docs yearly, with a 30-day trigger for structural changes, a fixed minimum-scope list, and a public accountability report each cycle.

Abstract

This proposal makes the Governance Documents Annual Review permanent DAO policy. It follows two passed community votes: the pre-proposal poll (1,008,422 VP, 100% Yes) and the Draft Proposal, both confirming community support for a standing, structured review of governance documentation.

It establishes:

  1. An annual review cycle for all core governance documents.
  2. A 30-day trigger clause requiring documentation updates within 30 days of any structural governance change.
  3. A defined minimum scope of documents that must be kept current
  4. An accountability framework making the DAO Council directly responsible for execution, with authority to commission outside help.

This proposal does not create new governance bodies or shift budget authority. It assigns an existing responsibility, keeping core documentation accurate, to an existing body, the DAO Council, on a fixed schedule with a public compliance report.

Motivation

Every functioning organization, public or private, traditional or decentralized, maintains its governing documents as living records. Corporations update their bylaws when their structure changes. Nonprofits review their charters annually. Government agencies publish updated procedures when policies change. This is not bureaucratic overhead. It is the minimum standard for any organization that expects its participants to follow rules and processes that are written down and accurate.

The Decentraland DAO currently has no such requirement. Documents may be created when a proposal passes and never touched again. Two specific examples are already confirmed on the public record: the DAO Council’s roles and responsibilities are not documented in any single official maintained source, and the DAO’s community-approved mission and vision statements, voted on through governance in 2024, have never been published in an official maintained DAO document. They passed through governance and were never formally recorded anywhere the community is expected to look.
(The only place you find these is by attempting to search for them in completed proposals

That is the problem this proposal is designed to fix. Not just discoverability, but the absence of any process to ensure governance decisions are documented, kept current, and maintained by someone accountable for doing so.

This is not a hypothetical risk. On July 7, 2026, a Foundation representative stated in Discord that DAO references were removed from the main Decentraland site to avoid being associated with “web3” publicly, a claim the Foundation has since described as inconsistent with its stated position that it is not distancing from the DAO. Whatever the intent, the DAO’s own governance link disappeared from the main site nav, and the contradiction between the two statements is now part of the public record. Outdated and contradictory documentation is not a cosmetic problem. It is how participants lose track of who is accountable for what, and it is a documented factor in DAO legal exposure (see CFTC v. Ooki DAO, 2023; Samuels v. Lido, ongoing). A DAO whose own published description of itself does not match its operating reality cannot demonstrate representative governance or informed consent from participants.
Discord Conversation
[Attach: DCL Discord Conversation screenshot]

These gaps affect every community member who tries to understand how the DAO works, every new participant who reads the documentation and forms an inaccurate picture of the current governance structure, and every accountability conversation that stalls because the rules are not written down anywhere reliable.

An annual review cycle with a structural change trigger is the minimum standard expected of any organization that takes its own governance seriously. This proposal asks the DAO to meet that standard.

Specification

Responsible Party
DAO Council. The Council may execute the review directly or commission a contributor or vendor to do so, at its discretion, within existing budget authority.

***Review and Approval: ***
Work done by a commissioned contributor or vendor is submitted as a draft, not a final publication. The Council reviews each draft and records a public approval, or requested changes, on the forum within 14 days of submission. Only Council-approved drafts are published as official governance documentation. If the Council does not respond within the 14-day window, the submission is automatically escalated to the next scheduled Council meeting for a vote. This applies regardless of who performs the work; the Council remains the final approver of anything published under this proposal.

Annual Review Cycle:
Once per calendar year, the Council conducts a full review of the minimum-scope document list below, verifies accuracy against current governance structure, and publishes an updated version of each document that has changed. The first review must be completed within 6 months of this proposal passing.

30-day Trigger Clause:
Independent of the annual cycle, any structural governance change (a new role created, an existing process modified, a governance body deprecated, or a new mechanism introduced) triggers a requirement to update all affected documents within 30 days of the change taking effect.

Minimum scope (must be kept current at all times):

  1. The Governance Legislative Tracker, restored to public accessibility.
  2. DAO Council roles, responsibilities, and timeline obligations.
  3. Documentation describing how governance proposals advance through each stage
  4. A summary of the Regenesis Labs mandate and operational scope as it relates to DAO governance
  5. Wearable, emote, and creator submission guidelines and fees including where the fees go
  6. Any documentation describing DAO governance bodies, committees, or squads
  7. The DAO’s approved mission and vision statements, and where they are published
  8. A List of who’s who and bests way to contact them.

Document Standard:
Every document in the minimum scope carries a visible last-updated date, a version number, and a status marker (Draft or Official). A single shared changelog records who made each change, what changed, and when the Council approved it, keeping the documents themselves short while the full history stays one click away.

***Accountability Framework: ***Each annual cycle concludes with a short public report to the forum stating which documents were reviewed, which were updated, and which are still pending, with reasons. If the Council commissions the work to a third party, that arrangement and its cost are disclosed in the same report. Failure to complete a review cycle or a 30-day trigger update must be explained publicly within 30 days of the missed deadline, with a revised timeline. No governance document becomes ownerless; ownership transfers must be publicly documented.

Starting Point: the community-drafted materials produced in July 2026 (DCL_DAO_How_It_Works_Updated, DCL_Governance_Entities, DCL_Mission_Vision, DCL_Council_Roles_Responsibilities, DCL_DAO_Legal_Status) are offered as a starting draft the Council may adopt, edit, or discard at its discretion. Their existence is proof this work is achievable without new tooling or budget.
SEE ATTACHED DOCUMENTS*

Impacts

If passed: governance documentation stops drifting further from reality every year. New and existing community members get an accurate, findable description of how decisions get made and who to contact. The 30-day trigger closes the specific failure mode already seen with docs.decentraland.org, where a structural change (deprecating old bodies) happened without a corresponding documentation update, and it has sat wrong for over two years. Public accountability reporting gives the community a way to track whether this is actually happening, instead of relying on informal follow-up.

There is a modest ongoing cost: Council time, or a commissioned contributor’s fee, each year. No new governance body is created and no existing authority is transferred, so Council workload is the main cost, offset by using the July 2026 community draft as a starting point rather than starting from zero.

If it fails, or passes but is not enforced: documentation continues to describe deprecated bodies, the Legislative Tracker stays inaccessible, and the gap between what the DAO says about itself and how it actually operates keeps widening, with no standing mechanism to close it.

Implementation Pathways

  1. Upon passage, the Council designates an owner (a Council member or commissioned contributor) for the first review cycle within 30 days.
  2. The owner reviews the minimum-scope list against current governance reality and either adopts, edits, or replaces the July 2026 community drafts, submitting the result to the Council as a draft.
  3. The Council reviews and approves the draft within 14 days, recording the approval or requested changes publicly on the forum.
  4. Only after Council approval are updated documents published to the appropriate official channels (docs.decentraland.org, governance portal, forum) within the review cycle.
  5. The Legislative Tracker is migrated off its current inaccessible format to a publicly reachable page.
  6. The Council publishes the first accountability report to the forum at the end of the cycle.
  7. The 30-day trigger clause takes effect immediately upon passage and applies to any structural change going forward, including changes already in progress (e.g., the wearables curator restructuring).
  8. This proposal, and each year’s completed review, is itself added to the minimum scope list, so the review mechanism documents its own existence.

Conclusion

The Decentraland DAO approved a mission that includes representative governance and efficient management of collective resources. Governance documents that are outdated, inaccessible, or simply wrong undermine both.
This is not a complex ask. It is the minimum that any serious organization maintains: a regular review cycle, a named responsible party, and a requirement that documentation reflects reality. The fact that it needs to be put through governance at all is itself evidence of why it is needed.

A properly maintained Governance Legislative Tracker, updated as required by this proposal, serves as the living directory of all current governance responsibilities, decisions, and accountable parties — making it the single reference point the community has never had.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

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In regards to

a Foundation representative stated in Discord that DAO references were removed from the main Decentraland site to avoid being associated with “web3” publicly,

Here is a screenshot of what was stated in that regards.

Screenshot 2026-08-08 123048
Screenshot 2026-08-08 123048918×252 20.3 KB

Here are some of the DAO Documents I went ahead and already updated. The Council can choose to use them or not. I am also stating that I would like to be considered to do the updating of the documents should they decide to hire someone instead of update them theirselves.
DAO Council Roles and Responsibilities

DAO Mission and Vision

DCL Governance Entities

How the DCL DAO Works

DCL Legal Status and Participant Information

1 Like
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I was just curious about the cost of this Annual Review, not sure I understand well, but

It something necessary imo, with or without additional cost.

So if there is no needs of additional budget, as I understand with this sentence above, there is no reason for not doing it.

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Yes from me cuz MetaBeast a legend

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If a Council member or existing Regenesis Labs staff does the review, incremental cost is effectively zero, it’s inside work they’re already compensated for.

If the Council commissions someone that’s a normal procurement decision within budget that already exists (Regenesis Labs’ approved 18-month operating budget). No new treasury allocation is being voted on here.

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Voted Abstain although I support the objective of keeping the DAO’s governance documentation accurate, accessible, and up to date. However, based on the approved Council proposal, the DAO Council Charter, and the Executive Arm’s current scope of work, directly reviewing, drafting, editing, publishing, and maintaining these documents is not presently an established operational responsibility of either the DAO Council or the Executive Arm.

The Council is expressly constituted as an oversight body, not an execution arm. Its existing mandate focuses on overseeing the Executive Arm, approving strategies and budgets, monitoring treasury management, ensuring alignment with the DAO’s mission, and reporting to the community. The Executive Arm’s current scope and approved 18-month operating budget likewise do not expressly assign it permanent ownership or maintenance of the DAO’s governance documentation.

If this proposal passes, it may make the Council accountable for ensuring the review is completed and approving the resulting documents. However, accountability and approval should be distinguished from performing the underlying operational work. Requiring a Council member to personally research, verify, draft, edit, publish, and maintain the documents would constitute an additional responsibility beyond the Council’s current mandate. If a Council member undertakes that work, its scope, deliverables, compensation, and any potential conflicts of interest should be transparently disclosed and approved through the appropriate process.

I also disagree with the suggestion that the incremental cost is “effectively zero” if a Council member or existing Regenesis Labs staff member performs the work. Compensation for an existing role does not mean that any newly created responsibility can automatically be absorbed at no cost. This work requires time and resources that would otherwise be used for existing responsibilities and deliverables. The existence of an operating budget does not make additional labour free; at minimum, there is an opportunity cost that should be acknowledged.

Nor is it established that Regenesis Labs’ approved 18-month operating budget is automatically available for this purpose. That budget supports the Executive Arm’s approved objectives and operations. The Council’s authority to review and approve the Executive Arm’s strategy and budget does not necessarily give it operational discretion to procure unrelated work directly from that budget.

The Executive Director may determine that supporting this work is consistent with the Executive Arm’s priorities and that sufficient resources can be reallocated without affecting existing commitments. However, because documentation ownership and maintenance were not included in its approved scope or budget, the Executive Arm should not automatically be obligated to assume the responsibility or absorb its cost. That decision should remain at the Executive Director’s discretion unless the Executive Arm’s mandate and budget are formally amended.

The proposal should therefore clearly distinguish between three functions: ownership of the documents, execution of the updates, and final review and approval. It should also identify the responsible party, procurement authority, anticipated workload, and funding source.

The statement that the existing drafts prove the work can be completed “without new tooling or budget” does not resolve these questions, especially when the proposal also permits the Council to commission a contributor or vendor. Existing drafts may reduce the initial workload, but permanent review and maintenance will continue to require accountable ownership, time, and potentially additional funding.

References:

DAO Council Charter:

DAO Council Responsibilities:

DAO Executive Arm Objectives and Key focus:

1 Like
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@Existential14 I would love for the abovementioned issue brought up by @MetaRyuk to be addressed before voting.

The doubt is not about intent but execution.

Thanks!

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Thank you MetaRyuk. To summarize the case simply:

The Council’s mandate to represent stakeholder interests and ensure alignment with the DAO Mission makes this a Council responsibility. Community members as stakeholders have a direct interest in accurate governance documentation. That is not debatable.

Regenesis Labs has transparency listed as a budget action point in their approved 18-month objectives. GinoCT has publicly confirmed he accepts responsibility for making the DAO transparent. Official governance documentation that misrepresents the current structure is not transparent. Correcting and maintaining it falls within that commitment and that budget. The payment question is already answered.

This proposal does not create new responsibilities out of thin air. It formalizes commitments that already exist and puts them on a defined schedule with public accountability attached.

This passed unanimously at the poll stage and the draft stage. These concerns were not raised at either point. If it fails now and starts over, we are looking at months of delay, whoever leads Regenesis Labs next may have no commitment to this, and what costs nothing today becomes a procurement process tomorrow.

I have even started the process for free. You are welcome to use or reject the documents I attached up above in my first response to this proposal.

The goal is right. The mandate supports it. The budget covers it. The commitment already exists. I would welcome your yes vote.

2 Likes
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I tried to make my response short and to the point and I believe it should more than answer those questions.

Thank you,

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Its 2026, and the DAO governance docs are still outdated, even though we now have the DAO Council, Regenesis(Executive Arm) and the Foundation.Time to change that.

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I support the objective, but I disagree that the Council’s mandate and Regenesis Labs’ budget already make them responsible for owning and maintaining all DAO governance documentation. The Council Charter expressly states that the Council is not an execution arm. Its mandate concerns representation, oversight, strategic approval, and accountability. Reviewing and approving documents may fit that mandate, but researching, drafting, publishing, and continuously maintaining them are operational responsibilities.

Likewise, Regenesis Labs’ commitment to transparency does not automatically assign it ownership of every form of DAO documentation. Its approved scope concerns transparent reporting on Executive Branch decisions, operations, progress, and results. This proposal introduces specific recurring duties, including annual reviews, 30-day updates, version control, changelogs, approval deadlines, and accountability reports, that are not currently defined within either body’s responsibilities.

I genuinely appreciate the time and effort you have contributed by preparing the initial drafts at no cost. If the proposal passes, the Council would be happy to engage and work with you on those materials. If Gino has explicitly confirmed elsewhere that Regenesis Labs accepts this responsibility and considers it part of its existing scope of work, then by all means, that should be considered. However, based on my understanding of the approved scope, it is not currently an established responsibility. It should therefore remain within Gino’s discretion as Executive Director to determine whether Regenesis Labs accepts this additional work, whether it can be performed with or without additional cost, and whether sufficient budget and capacity are available without affecting existing commitments.

Earlier unanimous support does not prevent implementation concerns from being raised at the binding stage. Again, I am not against this initiative; I believe the documents need to be updated. However, we must establish a shared understanding that, at this stage, ownership and maintenance of these documents do not fall within the existing responsibilities of either the DAO Council or Regenesis Labs. We should not assume otherwise, nor should we assume that Regenesis Labs’ existing operating budget or the monthly allowance paid to Council members automatically covers this additional work.

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To be fair to all parties, I got an impartial party (ChatGPT) to read through 3 proposals, the formation of Council, Executive Arm(RGL) and this.

My prompt:

Read through these 2 proposals:

Tell me, should this proposal pass, does the responsibility fall on the Council, the Executive Arm, or none?

ChatGPT’s conclusion:

I would vote YES on the annual governance-document review proposal. The responsibility should sit primarily with the DAO Council, not the Executive Arm.

There is, however, an important qualification: the Council should be responsible for ensuring the review happens, but it does not necessarily need to personally write or edit every governance document.

WHY THE COUNCIL IS THE CORRECT BODY

The original Council proposal explicitly assigns the Council responsibility for governance-level oversight:

• Hiring and overseeing the Executive Director.
• Approving the annual strategy and budget.
• Treasury-management oversight.
• Formal oversight of the Executive Director.
• Publishing reports on DAO operations and treasury.

The subsequent Council Charter makes the division even clearer: the Council is an oversight body, not an execution arm.

Meanwhile, the Executive Arm was created to handle operations and execution under Council oversight. Its purpose is to actually implement strategies, allocate operational resources, hire people/contractors, and execute initiatives.

So I would draw the line like this:

Responsibility | Council | Executive Arm

Decide whether governance documents need review | YES | NO

Ensure annual governance review occurs | YES | NO

Determine whether governance rules accurately reflect DAO structure | YES | NO

Draft/edit documents | Could do it | Could assist

Maintain operational procedures/internal documentation | Oversight | YES

Execute the DAO’s approved strategy | NO | YES

Oversee Executive Arm | YES | NO

THE PARTICULARLY STRONG ARGUMENT FOR PASSING IT

The third proposal identifies an actual governance deficiency: the Council’s own roles and responsibilities are not consolidated in one authoritative governance document, and there is apparently no documented SLA/timeline for moving passed polls and drafts through the governance pipeline.

That’s significant because the Council was specifically created to solve the problem of diffuse accountability.

The original Council proposal says that one of the problems with the old DAO was that responsibility was spread across the entire voting population, making it difficult to determine who was accountable for failures or missed opportunities.

Leaving the governance framework itself undocumented creates exactly that kind of accountability problem.

ONE WEAKNESS IN THE PROPOSAL

I wouldn’t give the Council an unlimited mandate to rewrite “all governance documents” however it wants.

The proposal says that if a document is outdated or incomplete, it must be updated before the review cycle closes.

That’s reasonable for administrative/documentation corrections, but potentially problematic if “updating a governance document” effectively changes the DAO’s constitutional rules.

For example:

“The Council notices that the governance process should have a 30-day deadline instead of 14 days.”

That’s not merely documentation. That’s a governance change.

Likewise, changing Council powers, voting thresholds, treasury authority, veto rights, proposal stages, etc. should not be accomplished merely through the Council’s annual documentation exercise. Those substantive changes should go through whatever DAO governance process is required.

So my ideal interpretation would be:

Council = custodian of governance documentation and responsible for keeping it accurate.

DAO = authority to change substantive governance rules.

Executive Arm = executor/administrator where implementation is required.

MY VOTE

YES — pass it.

And if the question is specifically:

“Who should be responsible?”

My ranking is:

  1. DAO Council — clearly the primary responsibility.
  2. Executive Arm — may assist with drafting/administration, but shouldn’t own governance.
  3. None — definitely not.

The proposal actually fits the architecture created by the first two proposals rather well.

The Council was established as the governance/oversight layer, while the Executive Arm was established as the operational/execution layer.

Assigning governance-document stewardship to the Executive Arm would blur that separation.

One interesting wrinkle is that the annual-review poll already passed 100% in the poll stage, and was subsequently advanced by a DAO Committee member. So the real question now is less “is this conceptually appropriate?” and more whether the binding proposal should impose this obligation in this particular form.

My answer to that is still YES, with the caveat that the Council’s mandate should be interpreted as reviewing and maintaining documentation, not unilaterally rewriting the DAO’s constitutional/governance rules.

2 Likes
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Ok. I think I understand now what your concern is and hopefully this will clear it up.

The Council’s role, the part that fits its existing mandate, is reviewing submitted documents, approving them or asking for changes, and publishing that decision. That’s oversight.

The Council is NOT required to research, draft, or write the documents themselves. That’s execution, and the proposal handles it separately: “or commission a contributor or vendor to do so, at its discretion.” The Council decides who does that work, whether that’s Regenesis Labs, a paid contributor, or a Council member if they choose to, and discloses that decision and its cost in the annual accountability report.

***So to be clear: this proposal doesn’t assign the writing to the Council. It assigns the decision of who does the writing to the Council.

On payment: this proposal doesn’t allocate any new treasury funds, and it doesn’t assume the work is free or already covered by Regenesis Labs’ current budget or the Council’s monthly stipend. If the Council decides to pay a contributor, deciding that, and deciding whether it needs new budget, is the Council’s call, since approving spend is already part of their existing mandate. Whatever they decide gets disclosed publicly in the same accountability report.

“For the record: the paragraphs above are my intended interpretation of the Specification’s ‘Responsible party’ and ‘Review and approval’ language. If this proposal passes, I’d expect the Council and community to treat this clarification as the author’s stated intent when implementing it.”

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Glad we are now aligned. Changed my vote from Abstain to Yes.

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Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

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omg wrong thread lmao

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Should the DAO Mandate an Annual Review and Update of All Governance Documents?

This proposal is now in status: REJECTED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 98% 5,036,461 VP (29 votes)
  • No 0% 0 VP (0 votes)
  • Abstain 2% 153,651 VP (3 votes)
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The Decentraland DAO voted on and passed a mission statement. Inside that proposal was a specific commitment:

“The mission will be prominently displayed in all DAO communication channels and governance interfaces, forums, official website, documentation. Timeline: Within 1-3 months after approval.”

Whether it was oversight, loss of ownership during restructuring, or simple failure to execute, the result is the same: a binding governance requirement was not carried out.

You can check for yourself.