[DAO:vuuplf4] Who should make the decision of revoking grants?

[dao]

by 0x858343382132b9ab46c857a7d52fdbafc039f784 (Zino)

After a nurturing discussion on the previous poll about the procedure to revoke a grant, the community saw it necessary to split the poll into two separate questions:

• 1 Who should make the decision of revoking grants?
  One of the goals of our program is signaling to the DAO if a vesting contract needs to be revoked. Actually, when the grantee does not comply with the basic terms and conditions of the Grants program, it is defined that the grant must be revoked but not who should do it.

  After this decision is made, we will establish and document the procedure for revoking grants, making this publicly available for the community to have clarity on how we are moving forward.

• 2. We will review the practices that raised concerns based on the input given by the community, and seize the opportunity to reexamine Grant’s terms and conditions.

So, the question still remains:

Who should make the decision of revoking grants?

• Community Decides: The Grant Support Squad presents each case with our arguments and recommendations to the Community and asks if the Grant should be revoked.

• DAO committee decides: The Grant Support Squad presents each case with our arguments and recommendations to the DAO Committee to decide if the grant should be revoked.

• New committee decides: The Grant Support Squad presents each case with our arguments and recommendations and assigns the responsibility to decide to a NEW Committee, which specifically addresses these matters.

• Random, rotative and voluntary Jury decides: The Grant Support Squad presents each case with our arguments and recommendations, for a Jury to decide if the grant should be revoked.

• Do nothing.

We’d love to hear your opinion regarding the decision making. Let us know in the comments and we’d be happy to discuss them in more detail.

• Community Decides
• DAO committee decides
• New committee decides
• Jury
• Do nothing
• Invalid question/options

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

[Seanny]

Thanks so much for taking the feedback and restructuring the poll.

Just a reflection; I feel that voting for a New Committee doesn’t entirely mean that we cannot settle for a jury-oriented committee or involve the DAO Committee in the structure.

Personally, I feel a mix of both would be an interesting mix (for transparency and healthy rotations, whilst also ensuring the people responsible can actively build competencies in the role). This committee could also potentially have a member from the DAO Committee too.

I feel it would be helpful to begin a discussion on the structure of this potential new committee (once it is also the least specific answer), and link it up to the discussions on the code of ethics/best practices/deeper guidelines for grants.

[dax]

i was kind of split between the dao committee and jury option, so maybe the “new committee” is, as @Seanny suggested, a mix of these two

[pablo]

I think DAO vote for revokal is inefficient and as the DAO committe executes grants, they can execute revokations.
About “with our arguments” I think is not necessary own subjetive arguments if the rules are specific enough. So the squad should detect the grants not accomplishing the detailed specified rules, not open to any argument or interpretation, and start the procedure.

My view:

• DAO decides detailed rules not open to own interpretations.
• Squad detecs flaws on closed agreements and informs the community and the DAO committee
• DAO committee executes revokations

[HPrivakos]

There is already the Grant Support squad that will provide informations concerning grants and recommend one to be revoked or not, this poll is only about who make the final decision with the provided information.
I feel a brand new committee only for that purpose to be slightly overkill.

@pablo

About “with our arguments” I think is not necessary own subjetive arguments if the rules are specific enough. So the squad should detect the grants not accomplishing the detailed specified rules, not open to any argument or interpretation, and start the procedure.

Rules need to be defined better than “do what you said you will be doing” for sure, but not everything is measurable by numbers

[ile]

I’m torn on this. I like the idea of a jury of verified delegates as a way of making decisions, but as HP said, I think that system might be overkill in this case. We have already created the Support/Facilitation Squads as experts on keeping up with grants and their activity. I feel they are the most equipped to be making informed decisions on revoking grants as most of us only pop into the DAO every few days and don’t keep up with every single update.

But, like I said I’m sort of on the fence with this so if you feel strongly, change my mind.

[champ]

I think there is always going to be some degree of subjectivity in such decisions. That being said, it seems fair for DAO committee to take the decision to revoke grant (upon recommendations by the GSS), to keep the system fast and efficient.
I also think the community should have the right to re-instate such a grant and overturn this decision, no matter who makes it (perhaps needs some formalized procedure, but this can be worked upon progressively.)

[web3nit]

I think only Community must Decide to revoke grant because it gives it before.

[dao]

Who should make the decision of revoking grants?

This proposal is now in status: FINISHED.

Voting Results:

• Community decides 1% 127,332 VP (15 votes)
• Dao committee decides 14% 1,065,044 VP (20 votes)
• New committee decides 84% 6,002,635 VP (25 votes)
• Jury 1% 10 VP (1 votes)
• Do nothing 0% 0 VP (0 votes)
• Invalid question/options 0% 0 VP (0 votes)

[Seanny]

@ile

But, like I said I’m sort of on the fence with this so if you feel strongly, change my mind.

This summarises things really well on my end.

I think Pablo really broke a tangible view down that can be easily implemented:

@pablo

My view:

• DAO decides detailed rules not open to own interpretations.
• Squad detecs flaws on closed agreements and informs the community and the DAO committee
• DAO committee executes revokations

Like Dax, I’ve been torn between both options:

@dax

i was kind of split between the dao committee and jury option, so maybe the “new committee” is, as @Seanny suggested, a mix of these two

I felt the “new committee” choice was a better option, due to the fact that it was somewhat vague, and could give us more of a chance to flesh this structure out.

HP is right with this point, and we should avoid overly centralizing our decision-making structures.

@HPrivakos

I feel a brand new committee only for that purpose to be slightly overkill.

Currently, what I’m feeling may be the best fit is a merge between @dax’s opinion and @pablo’s opinion, whilst still taking @HPrivakos’s flags into account. Moreover, Hp flagged another important point regarding the rules we need to decide on:

@HPrivakos

Rules need to be defined better than “do what you said you will be doing” for sure, but not everything is measurable by numbers

A potential structure I’m currently leaning towards would be the following:

• The DAO will decide on the detailed rules, and attempt to make them as close-ended as possible (the less room for interpretation, the easier it will be for us to classify and flag grants which are up for revokal)
• The Grant Support Squad, who are already tasking with the monitoring of grants & their implementation, would be tasked with flagging any projects which are going against the guidelines, and should be revoked.
• The case for each argument is then presented to a community-led jury, which can potentially have DAO Committee Members as observers, who take the final decision on revoking the grant.
• The DAO Committee then executes the grant revocation, should the jury decide to do as such.

Once the DAO is the entity that’s passing grants, it does make sense to pass on the responsibility for revoking grants to the DAO too. In the long-term this can act as a capacity-building mechanism for the community to actively build best-practices and organizational precedents with regards to how these decisions are taken. This active knowledge transfer between the DAO and the systems we’ve set up would also open doors for community members to build competencies in the field of Grant Facilitation and Best Practices, which would empower us with more expertise and options in the long-term when it comes to expanding our teams.

A note on Juries:
I feel the jury system should be set up in a similar way to the delegate system, however, there should be a minimum threshold of VP held by the wallet in question (100VP would be my go-to, to pair it to DCL Names + the threshold for governance proposals).

Additionally, the jury could have the option to vote on the blockchain, making our decisions on revoking a grant as transparent and immutable as our decisions to approve one. Should we avoid taking this step, we can run into questions about transparency and governance in the future.

Moreover, following a decision taken by a jury, I feel the following information should be made accessible to the community:

1. The arguments compiled by the Grant Facilitation Squad
2. The summarised minutes of the Jury Meeting
3. A brief ‘statement’ by the Jury on the contents of their meeting + the reasoning on their decision.

This will allow the community to follow these decisions, whilst implementing a structure that is built on the ideals of transparency and democratization (and decentralized decision-making). Morever, these resources and transparency measures will facilitate capacity-building in the community in the long-term, which is never a bad thing.

Not sure what you all think, but this is where I’m currently leaning! Looking forward to your thoughts.

[pablo]

@champ

I also think the community should have the right to re-instate such a grant and overturn this decision, no matter who makes it (perhaps needs some formalized procedure, but this can be worked upon progressively.)

What I proposed in other discussion, is, for some points, instead of just revoke the grant, change the current contract code and implement a “pause”, where the funds will still be on the vesting contract but beneficiary cannot release.

[pablo]

And also, just to mention, I proposed to change the threshold system to pass a proposal (not approved), where just 1 VP can make a proposal to pass, that the proposal threshold to pass should be the difference between yes and no votes instead of the absolute value, this would result on better proposals, more detailed, more agreement and less needed revokations.

[HPrivakos]

I would go against modifying the smartcontract, as it’s currently safe (being used since the beginning of DCL and used for DAO and Foundation 222M MANA vestings) and modifying it (even something as simple as pause) could put some funds at risk. But we can always revoke a vesting then recreate it later if needed (with the correct cliff and duration so no money is lost or given early)

[pablo]

require(isPaused == false,“contract is paused”) at the start of each release function.
and a setPaused(_paused) onlyOwner

Quite simple, moreover we have quite eyes around, I don’t see a big risk here if the DAO decides it’s a good solution. Human action is more error prone, like an excollegue used to say “If a human have to repeat a task, he eventually will make a mistake at some point”. If DAO community thinks it is not a good solution, I’m fine with that, which I think is the first matter to worry about.

[dao]

Who should make the decision of revoking grants?

This proposal has been PASSED by a DAO Committee Member (0xfe91c0c482e09600f2d1dbca10fd705bc6de60bc)

[Zino]

Hi everyone,
Thank you for taking the time and devoting attention to giving feedback on this proposal. The Grant Support Squad is constantly working to improve the support to the community and your thoughtful comments helped a lot.
The next step will be to draft a procedure on how this new committee would be created and implemented.
We’ll be taking inputs from the DAO Committee, Governance Squad, and the Facilitation Squad based on their experience working within the DAO.
As soon as we have this proposal of procedure in place, we´ll publish it to gather input from the community.
Thank you so much for your patience and time.