[DAO Proposal] DIP0: Decentraland Improvement Proposal Guidelines

Status: DRAFT

Summary:

DIP stands for Decentraland Improvement Proposal. This proposal aims to standardize the way the Decentraland community collaborates on proposing improvements to Decentraland via the Decentraland DAO.

Abstract:

Future DAO proposals should be accompanied by a post in this forum and adhere to the template specified below. After some initial community discussion in the forum, the author can start a DAO vote, and moderators will assign the proposal id to the DIP when on chain. This will serve as future documentation and guideline to organize Decentraland DAO governance.

Motivation:

It’s currently not clear how to go about creating a Decentraland DAO proposal and gathering community support. Many other decentralized governance systems have standardized ways for proposing changes, funding projects and organizing the community to improve the protocol. See for example, bitcoin BIPs, ethereum’s EIPs and yearn’s YIPs.
Having clear guidelines can help streamline the process for new contributors and reduce the (mis)communication overhead for everyone. This governance process was greatly inspired and adapted from Yearn’s YIP system.

Specification:

A new category should be added to the Decentraland Forum with the name “Governance”, where all future proposals should be posted.

Proposals for common operations already supported by the governance app (such as adding Points of Interest, adding a Catalyst, or banning a name), don’t require a forum post, and can be dealt with completely on-chain. These proposals may include a forum post anyway, allowing the author to explain their motivations.

Proposals that require on-chain changes (such as changing the DAO configuration, issuing funds for projects, etc) should be reviewed by the SAB or technical community members, and include the proposed changes execution in the DAO vote (ie: don’t issue a “Question” vote if you want actual on-chain changes to be made). If you don’t know how to get your proposal to be executed on chain, or you’re unsure if it’s even possible, feel free to ask in your forum post.

When creating a new post make sure you:

  1. Stick to the template below.
  2. Write concise title with no number. The number will be added by mods once on-chain voting starts.
  3. Add understandable, non-tech, ELI-5 summary.
  4. Add an abstract: what will be done if the DIP is implemented (keep it below 200 words).
  5. Write a longer motivation with links and references if necessary.
  6. Add specifications if necessary. You can also ask for help from technical community members to write necessary code or specifications.
  7. Formulate clear for and against positions. (i.e: what does it mean to vote Yes or No)
  8. You may include a poll to measure sentiment before sending on-chain if you want.
  9. Don’t rush with putting a proposal on chain, keep discussion going for at least 3 days.
  10. Submit the proposal on chain for voting using the governance app.

Template:

Status: DRAFT | ACCEPTED | REJECTED | WITHDRAWN

Summary:

Simply describe the outcome the proposed change intends to achieve. This should be non-technical and accessible to a casual community member.

Abstract:

A short (~200 word) description of the proposed change, the abstract should clearly describe the proposed change. This is what will be done if the DIP is implemented.

Motivation:

This is the problem statement. This is the why of the DIP. It should clearly explain why the current state of the protocol is inadequate.

Specification:

This is a high level overview of how the DIP will solve the problem. The overview should clearly describe how the new feature will be implemented.

For:

Against:

Poll:

For: Change current DAO proposal process to follow this standard. All future non-common new DAO proposals should include a post in the forum.

Against: Keep the current open-ended DAO proposal system.

6 Likes

I just saw that a Governance category was created 4 hours ago by @Agus, as I was typing this post. Awesome! :smiley:

2 Likes

Vote live on chain:
https://governance.decentraland.org/proposal/0x0741ab50b28ed40ed81acc1867cf4d57004c29b6/vote/9

Thanks, @maraoz for the proposal. It’s great having such a clear framework that can help us take better informed decisions. I love the simplicity of the template.