[DAO:8a56f28] Framework for New Committee who decides when to revoke grants -Updated proposal

Governance
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by 0x858343382132b9ab46c857a7d52fdbafc039f784 (Zino)

Linked Pre-Proposal

Who should make the decision of revoking grants?

Summary

This proposal aims to create the structure and guidelines for the New Committee who decides when to revoke grants, to function effectively

Abstract

Following a nurturing discussion on a previous draft, the community saw it necessary to split the creation of a New Committee into two steps:

  • One with the structure and guidelines for the New Committee who decides when a grant should be revoked.
  • Another after the framework is designed, to propose the Committee members.
    This is a next step towards defining this framework.

To unify criteria we´ve used this Governance Proposal as a starting point to include the procedure to create this new Committee and to add and remove a Committee member.
Due to the character limitations, you can find more information about this framework here.

The New Committee will have the sole responsibility to order the revocation of a Grant provided by the Decentraland DAO.
This New Committee is important to decentralize the decision-making process of determining which grants should be revoked and to take care of the DAO treasury. If this draft proposal passes, the path to revocations would be the following:

  1. The Grant Support Squad makes a recommendation to the New Committee to review a case when the grantee doesn’t comply with the terms and conditions and the Grant Framework.
  2. The New Committee of 5 members will study each case and will have the opportunity to request extra information regarding the case presented, and has the responsibility to provide a resolution to the community, either to revoke a grant or not to revoke a grant.
  3. If a grant should be revoked, the DAO committee will execute the revocation.

The New Committee will be constituted by 5 members and 2 substitutes. This committee selected by the Decentraland DAO Community is expected to be in office for twelve (12) months and the members could be re-elected only for one consecutive period.
Each committee member will be compensated with 200 USD in MANA per grant case, paid by the DAO treasury and executed by the DAO committee once the verdict has been posted on the Grant Proposal page.

Motivation

During the 5 months that the Grants Support Squad has been active, we got to know the grantees on video calls, spent time with them, listened to their needs, provided support in various forms, and have seen successful grants. Walking through those 58 grants that finished ($3.5MUSD) before the Grant Support Squad existed, we detected that 17 grants had some concerns regarding what they had first stated in their proposal and the finished projects. This represents 1,3M USD, almost 50% of the funds provided.

In the current active grants, we found cases where those grants were not able to complete the project that the community had voted on, and some other projects that were delayed on the proposed roadmap. The difficulty in these cases is that the contracts of these grants were still vesting, without clarity regarding their ability to complete them successfully.

For that reason, we recommended the DAO Committee (who has the ability to stop the vesting contracts using the contract action “revoke”), should execute the only technical mechanism that the DAO has to make sure those vesting contracts were stopped, as a preventive action. As soon as the grantee delivered according to their proposed roadmap, the DAO Committee also took the commitment to create a new vesting contract for the funds remaining.

The Grant Support Squad has started to work on the improvement of the Grants Program, particularly finding tools to mitigate the negative impact that the revocation has on the grantees.

This New Committee proposal would give an opportunity to the grantees to argue during the “revocation process”. This would mitigate the “centralized power” of the DAO Committee to judge the case, and execute the decision.

Specification

To create this New Committee and to add a member:

  1. There will be an open application period in the forum (like the community has done in the past and is doing with the new DAO Committee member). Applications will be submitted by the prospects as posts on the forum and applicants should answer the questions mentioned in the complete framework document - art. 3.
  2. The Grant Support Squad interviews the candidates and makes a final selection of 5 members and 2 substitutes. For the creation of this committee and its renewals, the final selection will be presented to the community in a poll.
  3. There will be a final poll for the community to vote to accept or decline this selection. This process will be repeated when the committee is renewed.
    Once this committee is created, the process for adding a new committee member if there is a vacancy will include these 3 stages: I) An Open Call is published in the forum in charge of the Grant Support Squad, II) The committee in office interviews the candidates for the vacant position and makes a final selection of the potential member from the applicants, III) and the community votes in a poll for the best fit.

To remove a member:

Following the DAO Committee framework, the DAO should add a REMOVE COMMITTEE MEMBER proposal category with the required parameters mentioned in the complete framework document - art. 3.

  1. A member could be removed by an Internal decision of the Committee members.
  2. A member could be removed by the community creating a proposal, and a simple majority vote would be needed to make it effective.

Procedure

  1. The New Committee starts to act when there is a formal request from the community through a form.
  2. The Grant Support Squad will request the grantee to respond to the concerns raised within 4 days.
  3. After that, The Grant Support Squad will send, in the course of following 4 days, the arguments for the New Committee to evaluate the case. This triggers a preventive revocation, later to be executed by the DAO committee.
  4. Then, the New Committee has 6 days to discuss the case among the 5 members.
  5. During the period of 6 days, the New Committee has the ability to request further information to the Grant Support Squad or the Grantee about the case presented, not exceeding 30 days.
  6. After that, the New Committee has 5 days to publish the final resolution.

Conflicts of interest.

Any member of the New Committee should be prevented from participating in a case according to the cases that are mentioned in the complete framework document - art. 7

Execution.

The New Committee will reach the final decision by simple majority.
The resolution should be clear and public with the committee’s arguments on why the grant should/should not be revoked.
The Final decision will be notified on Grant’s proposal page as a comment and on Grant’s dedicated discord channel.

Conclusion

With this draft proposal we aim to gather feedback and inputs from the community regarding this proposed framework with the objective of creating a final governance proposal that includes the vision and needs of our grantees and the community.
Please feel free to add any comments and suggestions to the complete framework document.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

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My only suggestion is that we add upon Grant proposals that the Grantee consents to this under the condition of applying for the Grant.

Offer, Acceptance, Consideration currently exists, but currently, there is nothing that gives this committee jurisdiction if the contract is enacted. They give jurisdiction to make a ruling and they certainly could revoke the grant, but in most government courthouses, this leaves room for the Grantee to seek a legal remedy from their own country. This is creating powers for the DAO without explicitly giving the DAO those powers.

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There is no mention of by-laws or updated rules created by the DAO. Along with this proposal, this committee must gain jurisdiction in the Grant Contract itself to be valid. Without direct consent of the Grantee in my personal opinion, there is a lack of jurisdiction.

My suggestion would be to gain consent from all future grantees upon them applying for a grant. They must consent to any governance changes enacted by the DAO.

Any attorneys out there that can help comment on this jurisdictional matter?

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Hi @Tudamoon!
Thank you for this comment and your suggestion.
Definitely, we need to include in the forms to request a grant, the questions “Did you read the Content Policy doc? Did you read the Terms of Use doc? Etc. In fact, it is something that we´ve suggested to the Gov Team to change and we are working on that point. In short, we are on the same page as you.

Regarding the “jurisdiction topic” and what you wrote in the document. It is written in the Docs that the grant could be revocable, but it wasn´t clear who should do it (jurisdiction). That´s why we started creating this governance process. So, to answer your questions, this new committee will have the jurisdiction to make the final decision, and to be explicit, we will include in the forms to request a grant the question “Did you read the Documentation regarding the Grants?” (btw, I´m a lawyer. Lol)

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I am not an attorney, but was a paralegal. I trust you to take care of it effectively. I did briefly review those documents, however I didn’t see anywhere that upon taking the grant who has the ability to revoke the grant and under which conditions. Obviously the conditions are implied, but I think starting off we should make lay it out more specifically to the reasons we know and more generic to the things we don’t.

Personally I would like to make this similar to judges in real life where they aren’t creating rules, but instead interpreting the guidelines of the DAO. We are seeing a lot of arbitrary decisions in the wearable curations committee, not to their own fault but due to the way they have to interpret generalized guidelines. A good framework made by the DAO can make this new committee’s job very easy if we do it correctly.

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yes, we need better structure, more investigation and repour before shelling out funds like there is an infinite amount. I couldn’t agree more with this !

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@Zino I also have another question. Will this be a fair process when it comes to choosing applicants? I know there was mentions in the past about specific people being chosen. I know it’s fairly easy to put up a posting for the illusion of creating a fair process, I am not claiming it wont be fair, but will all applicants be given a fair chance?

I also wanted to know if there has to be certain circumstances. We see in real life, courtroom judges have their own interpretations of the law that may differ from others - is it possible for the committee to out members because they do not approve of their interpretation of the guidelines? Of course unity is a good option when making decisions as a group, but it isn’t always the case.

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Framework for New Committee who decides when to revoke grants -Updated proposal

This proposal is now in status: PASSED.

Voting Results:

  • Yes 99% 2,138,241 VP (96 votes)
  • No 1% 1 VP (1 votes)