DCL DAO: Regenesis Summit Summary

Governance
1

In June, I proposed an IRL meeting to address growing concerns about the stagnation of the DAO. With the Grants Program frozen and an urgent need to better utilize the treasury, it became evident that the DAO was not effectively advancing the project. To move forward, we recognized the necessity of creating a path toward establishing a clear vision that guides the Decentraland project, and a mission for the DAO. The summit, privately funded and self-organized, was an opportunity for key stakeholders to collectively rethink the future of Decentraland.

The summit took place over three days in Lisbon, with 24 members from different parts of the Decentraland ecosystem attending. We had people from the Decentraland Foundation, DAO Core Units, DAO Delegates, community creators and developers, whitepaper authors, and everyday users.

Participants were divided into 4 diverse groups to ensure a broad range of perspectives. Each group engaged in discussions on six topics:

  • Mission and Vision: What is the reason for the existence of the DAO within the Decentraland ecosystem?

  • DAO Operations: How should the DAO operate to realize the mission and ensure the growth of the project?

  • Community Funding: How can the creators and developers in Decentraland better leverage the existing Treasury to successfully execute their projects?

  • Treasury Management: What actions should be taken to ensure the long-term sustainability of the project?

  • Governance Design: What mechanisms should the community use to make decisions within the governance system?

  • Community Engagement: What behaviors are considered acceptable among community members, and how can we distinguish them from unacceptable actions while fostering community growth?

The discussions spanned 3 days, allowing groups to explore each topic in depth. Every group brought different insights to the table, and although there were some differing views, the discussions were collaborative and solution-oriented.

The summit ended with an exercise to align on a unified vision for the DAO’s future. On the final day, a survey was crafted to gauge key opinions, and after six hours of discussions, the group reached a consensus on some crucial points to kickstart the next phase of the DAO.

Key Agreements

  • A clear mission and vision are needed to align everyone on a strategic path forward. This mission and vision explain the Why, What, and How that are unique to Decentraland.
    • The vision should be shared universally across all Decentraland entities, including the Foundation, the DAO, and the broader community.
    • This vision represents the future state of the world if the missions are successfully accomplished.
    • Together, the group developed the vision: “Own your digital life through open standards to enable social connections.”
  • The Decentraland DAO needs to agree on a mission. This is what the group came up with:
    • “Ensure the sustainability of the Decentraland ecosystem through representative governance, management of collective resources, and technical innovation”.
  • The current state of the DAO requires effective and efficient improvements. Therefore, a new iteration should be proposed to achieve our mission.
  • The DAO needs to delegate most of its critical operations to capable representatives:
    • Create a DAO Council to help craft a long-term strategy and provide guidance aligned with the DAO´s Mission.
    • Establish an operational arm to manage day-to-day tasks and provide services to the DAO, including fund management for community projects, governance enablement, oversight of treasury management strategies, and additional services the DAO may require
    • The Council will hire, supervise, and if necessary, fire the person responsible for managing the operational arm.
  • The operational arm will have the responsibility of:
    • Defining a strategy that must be approved by the Council.
    • Proposing an annual budget, to be approved by the Council.
    • Operating under a transparent framework, allowing the community to audit them from a financial and operational standpoint.
  • Through proposals, the DAO and its VP holders will retain ultimate decision-making authority by::
    • Electing and removing DAO Council members.
    • Exercising veto power on critical council decisions.
    • Implementing a governance mechanism to dismantle this operation entirely.
  • Other agreements:
    • The DAO keeps its existing three-stage Governance process.
    • VP holders should not vote on individual project funding allocation (Grants or Bidding & Tendering).
    • The current Security Advisory Board (SAB) that safeguards the DAO Treasury and Decentraland smart contracts continues to exist.

Next Steps

It is important to mention that the statements above reflect the broad consensus among the group given the limited time available at the Summit. Further implementation details still need to be worked out.

To implement these restructures, we will follow the three-stage Decentraland Governance process. Before voting, we will gather community feedback through forum posts and sessions on platforms like Twitter Spaces and Discord. First, a poll to gauge community sentiment on the overall idea will be published, followed by drafts for each specific proposal. Afterward, final governance proposals will be posted, and if approved, the corresponding actions will be initiated.

Further Reading

Prework documents, discussions, and individual group notes can be found here.

Results of the survey conducted by independent community members to gauge sentiment amongst the community before the summit here, here, and here.

Results of the survey crafted by a Summit attendee on the final day before the consensus conversations started here.

—

We look forward to the community engaging and providing feedback on this new path for Decentraland and the DAO.

photo_2024-09-10_12-51-31
photo_2024-09-10_12-51-311280×762 167 KB

(Sango, punkpink & Maryana are missing from this picture :frowning: )

Signed by: eordano, maraoz, Yemel, HPrivakos, Tobik, Santi Es, Kimbo, Maryana, Canessa, Pablo DCL, Priscila, Szjanko, MetaRyuk, Unknower, PunkPink, Sango, CheddarQueso, Ginoct, Zino, Palewin, fifitango, Fehz, ProtocolSquad, Kuruk.

14 Likes
2

I am disappointed to see that after 3 days of DAO discussion it seems like fixing our horrendous Voting structure was not a main topic. Looks like we will continue to have bad actors manipulate this DAO…

2 Likes
3

While I do agree with the things they identified as in need of improvement, and think the ideas they have put forth for ways to advance into a new dao paradigm are worthwhile and interesting, I have to also agree that your concern that without addressing the existing failings of the voting system, there is no reason to believe that the council and operational arm will simply be puppets of the existing culprits who have already leveraged their VP, stolen or otherwise, to continue to act in bad faith.

Hopefull Gino just didn’t mention that part of the discussions to prevent said bad actors from raising up a protest narrative :crossed_fingers:

4

Thanks, everyone, for the feedback and for assuming good faith in this discussion. Regarding the voting structure and VP sources, several topics came up, though we didn’t reach a broad consensus. You can find these points in the meeting notes, including ideas like creating a VP pool and distributing it through various mechanisms, gatekeeping certain proposal types for users with specific social recognition, and even a creative idea from @Unknower about contribution-based incentives.

The one thing everyone agreed on is that we need to stop voting on Grants and B&T, as they have become a honeypot for bad actors and are threatening the project’s long-term sustainability. Please note that this is just a brief overview. The specific details will be shared before posting the draft proposals, likely after a community call or some form of synchronous meeting to address any questions and listen to feedback.

2 Likes
5

Thank you Gino! I’m super excited to see the next steps come to life.

One minor thing; regarding the mission of the DAO:

I believe it’s important to add “efficient” here (before “management of collective resources”). Why? Because future conversations between members could use that to decide on a course of action: “I believe we should do A instead of B because it’s more efficient – and efficient is on our mission”.

6 Likes
6

Here I add some ideas we discussed about funding.
Thanks @ginoct !

2 Likes
7

Before the Decentraland DAO ReGenesis summit in Lisbon, I held open discussions on X spaces to explore the various aspects of the Decentraland DAO that could be improved. Some of the suggestions included:

  • Getting rid of the Discord server and moving all governance discussions to the forum
  • Dissolving various committees
  • Finding ways to incentivize people who actually contribute to the platform
  • General reform discussions

I believe the ideas agreed upon at the ReGenesis summit can address the core issues behind many of these suggestions. I’ll attempt to share the full story of my ReGenesis experience and explain how I came to support the ideas presented above.

I didn’t realize that a lot of key discussions had taken place during a workshop at the first Community Summit in Argentina earlier this year. The workshop on DAO reform was held at the same time as a workshop I hosted for Virtual Land Manager, so although I heard it was productive, I didn’t get many details on what was discussed. Considering that, I arrived at the ReGenesis event feeling relatively unprepared. I had the beginnings of an idea for implementing a reward system for creators and contributors, but it wasn’t discussed much at the summit. My group felt that, with all the other changes that needed to happen, this idea might be too much and that other reforms needed to be prioritized.

At least on the first day, I felt the opposite of my group’s sentiment—that what I was designing could ultimately replace the entire grants program and dissolve a number of squads and committees related to it. I saw my idea as the solution to almost everything. So, I felt a bit rejected when the group started to align around a structure that seemed much more complex and almost bureaucratic to me.

I was in a group with @Zino, @HPrivakos, @ginoct, and @szjanko. I was a little disappointed that my group lacked representation from current Foundation members or original founders. Additionally, many of the ideas that came out of the different working groups were similar enough to make me think the concept had been shared among key people beforehand.

I started asking around about why there was so much similarity between groups regarding the idea of setting up an operational company. Initially, I felt we could have dedicated a working group to this concept alone before the event. It felt a bit like these discussions had happened without the community’s involvement.

One night at dinner, I asked @ginoct a few direct questions to understand how many people had been exposed to the proposed structure before the summit started. It seemed like the idea Gino presented in our group was his own, so I wanted to hear it from him.

Concerned I might come across as accusatory, I asked, “Gino, can I ask you some things that might seem confrontational but aren’t? I just really want to understand—how many people in the other groups knew about the operational company plan?”

Gino told me he had only shared it with @yemel, @maraoz, and the grant support squad (@Zino, @palewin, and @fifitango), and that it wasn’t fully fleshed out yet.

“How come you didn’t talk about this in my X space, and why didn’t we have any working groups to discuss this idea? It was a great idea, and I think a lot of the community would have supported it. But I also think people would be upset if they knew that key players were aware of the plan beforehand, while the rest of the community wasn’t.”

Gino explained that not everyone knew about it and that he wanted to get feedback from a few trusted people before sharing the idea with a larger audience. That made sense to me, and I’m not sure why my initial conclusion was that it was done to exclude people.

In hindsight, I think I made a mistake by sharing parts of my idea too early. This led to some misinterpretations in my working group, but also raised good questions that helped me identify problems and attempt to solve them. There’s always the chance that the smaller group Gino shared his idea with might not have liked it and could have helped improve it, which seems to have been the case.

Looking back, I believe getting feedback from a few others probably saved us valuable time at the summit by allowing us to start from a more developed point.

As I continued talking to my group over the next couple of days, I realized that although some form of my idea could work, it wouldn’t guarantee the platform’s sustainability. It wouldn’t inherently structure the DAO to eventually take over the work currently done by the Decentraland Foundation and the Protocol Squad.

At least for now, I don’t know if there’s a good way to drive consistent, well-planned improvements to the platform without some kind of “centralized” team to manage things once the Foundation hands over responsibility to the DAO. We need a structure that makes sense globally, and something entirely decentralized or overly experimental might be hard to manage effectively. The platform’s longevity must be our top priority.

One key takeaway from the discussions in Lisbon was this:

The decentralization of the protocol and the platform’s sustainability are more important than complete decentralization of work efforts and decision-making.

I’m unsure how difficult it will be to implement another radical change if the DAO ReGenesis ideas evolve into a successful proposal, but I did receive some support for my idea from a few people within the DAO and some of the founders I spoke to.

What I’m working on now has evolved significantly from where it began—initially a series of open-ended questions I posted in our private Discord channel for the summit on September 4th, the day before the event. I started to feel that these questions gave people the wrong impression, as where I ended up was so far from where I started. This realization has led me to do what I once found concerning at the summit—sharing the start of an idea with trusted, like-minded friends so that I have a more solid proposal to bring to the community for discussion. This includes people who attended the summit and some who didn’t.

I’m hesitant to reveal too much detail about what I’ll eventually propose, as I believe restructuring the DAO in a sustainable way should be our top priority. I’ve been shaping my idea to fit within the governance structure we agreed upon in Lisbon. The consensus we reached feels like a prerequisite for my idea’s success. We need to be prepared for the handoff, and under the current structure, we are undeniably unprepared.

So, today, I fully support the consensus we reached, as laid out in this forum topic.

It’s important to note that reaching a consensus wasn’t easy. There were minor disagreements about responsibilities within the structure. I don’t think anyone feels like they got everything they wanted. We all had to compromise to get to this consensus.

The group that came together at the ReGenesis summit has real potential to shape this platform into something great that benefits us all. There’s something special and unique about coming together in a physical space to share our cultures, learn each other’s languages, and understand our perspectives. It’s easy to take for granted how much our global community offers when we’re all online. We’re building something bigger than Decentraland, but Decentraland is still our home. I hope we can continue the spirit of positive and constructive collaboration we felt in Lisbon.

We’re off to a good start, but I’d like to see the community come together for more detailed conversations about these reforms. I agree with the sentiment that the VP structure could use more reform, but I believe that if we pair the ideas presented with some kind of merit-based incentives, we could put more power into the right hands and slowly see a shift in VP that comes with something even more valuable—ownership.

To the founders, DAO, and Foundation: Thank you for the opportunity to attend ReGenesis and for finding a way to include community members who felt they had something to contribute.

To the community: Thank you for the support and contributions to my X spaces leading up to the event, and for openly sharing your concerns. I did my best to represent the community and advocate for reforms that wouldn’t further alienate us. I look forward to discussing any questions or concerns in the Community Building Decentraland (CBD) space this Saturday. It’s important we find any blind spots that still exist.

Most importantly, thank you to those who put in the effort every day to make Decentraland something special for everyone. Your contributions do not go unnoticed, and I hope we will soon have more ways for the community and DAO to acknowledge and reward you for them.

Signed,
Unknower

5 Likes
8

1000% agree @Unknower with this thanks for taking your time out of your to fight for what the entire community has been asking for.

1000% agree with @esteban here on the importance on efficiency. It defiantly needs to be worked on and keeps getting over look. As everyone knows been working for years now on our PVP and Decentraland Dino/ Waifumon Gen-2 pets and majority of our time keeps getting taken up by unnecessary rules, regulations and abuse of power of positions that just make everyone’s job harder. 1. We have had to re-render and redesign the 30,000 3D files GLBs like 4 times now for us to keep tryin to fit unnecessary requirements. 2. We have had to rebuild our PVP 7 times due to frustrations and when we finally finished building it we now haveing to rebuild it to work in SDK 7. Thanks to @Ozymandias for your help on this part. 3. We have had to make over 12 DCL DOA proposals and canny requests that space out over a year in a half just to get where we are now and even though they have been voted in by the community and approved we are now dealing with abuse of power by the DAO committee making several excuses not to enacting some of them.

I heard this was what was being proposed:

Regenesis_OpCO_-_Frame_1-2
Regenesis_OpCO_-_Frame_1-22000×1091 123 KB

However I could be wrong I think this would be more of a solution:
Screen Shot 2024-09-11 at 9.22.34 PM

I just have seen to many great DOAs and Companies fall as they continue to add more and more roles, teams, committee’s and why I think a lot of tech companies are doing massive layoffs similar to what Elon Musk as done with X which is a lot more efficient. ApeCoin DAO I know has had way bad time going this direction with massive amount of roles, teams, “working groups” and committees of dozens of people all makings $240,000 a year each and I don’t eve know what any of them do. For example I last heard they even added a Metaverse committee and I don’t even think any of them have even tried Decentraland lol. Just wild. I hope my case studies have help and I know what this may also get censored as all my other recent posts have been. But to that group of people that does not like me, I do not care since just in case it helps worth sharing just in case it does help. :saluting_face: :orange_heart:

2 Likes
9

While I am an advocate for advisors that have specific skill sets, what exactly will they be doing. Without knowing what the foundation is working on how can a board steer us in the right direction. We would just be paying people to continue doing what we have been doing and getting no where. We are limited on what can actually be done. Most things go thru the canny for the Foundation to decide if it’s even something they want to implement.

So let’s start small fix the things we can and work our way up? We need to fix the communication methods and the voting mechanism. At the very least encourage people to delegate their VP and we should not require them to have multiple wallets (which people frown on to begin with) in order to delegate to multiple people.

Why are we not working on making things autonomous that we can control? POI, Name Bans etc.

1 Like
10

I confirm my signature here. What a great 3 days of conversations and “revolutionizing” the DAO. This kind of work are why I still love getting involved with Decentraland after 9 years!

Great way to put it!
Thanks for the write-up @Unknower, and really nice to meet you in person!

3 Likes
11

I would like to kindly point out that 24 people is fewer than the 38 mentioned in the DappRadar meme. It appears that you may not have the required quorum of 38 participants to make decisions.

On a more serious note, I sincerely hope to see improvements in the community’s thinking, leading to wiser decisions in the future.

2 Likes
12

After returning from Lisbon, I found myself wanting to articulate my thoughts in a clear and concise manner. I abstained from sharing my own personal opinions during the summit, as I felt like I did not have all the information necessary to make informed statements while we were actively working. Each day my own biases and convictions were challenged and adjusted. My biggest fear has been relaying inaccurate information. Now that we’ve returned, I’ve waited to provide my personal opinion, as I wanted each user to read carefully and formulate their own opinion independent from any of our biases. Please do your own research, and I invite you to present your concerns to me here, or privately in DM’s as you feel comfortable.

In preparation for the summit, I spent a week going through every grant ever approved through the Decentraland DAO. I sorted them chronologically, and itemized how much each grant recipient has accepted from the DAO throughout the years (And also found some users accepted multiple grants from separate wallets, making it challenging to determine how much money specific projects have actually received). I also determined whether each grant could still be used in DCL today using the guiding question: “Can I go see or use this project in world right now?”

The results were staggering.

Identical projects had been funded over and over again. Grantees were handed blistering amounts of money; grants were paid out that took 5 minutes of research to know they had pocketed the funds instead of completing the grant.

Bottom line: This ain’t it.

We’re wasting not only money, but the most precious commodity there is: time. In my opinion we need to give the resources to qualified creators and let them do what they do best, build.

During the talks in Lisbon I at times disagreed with my group, as I felt that the direction some wanted to take this new Regenesis felt more centralized. It caused me to examine the word “Decentralized”, which is overused. We want a decentralized Discord and a decentralized forum and a decentralized everything… but in reality, the protocol is decentralized, the layers built on top are not. I believe it is crucial to understand where true decentralization begins and ends. Who takes the blame for failed grants? Who decides whether a grant is successful or fails? Who ensures that once we invest money into a grant, it won’t vaporize when the funds run out? The more I asked myself these questions, the more I supported having one person whom we can hold accountable for grants in the DAO. I especially liked that we can hire/fire based on this success, without requiring consensus from the community (Assuming that capable and fair council members are put into power) . In this manner, grants will no longer require the lobbying of community members, however it will require that we have capable individuals who have the best interest of Decentraland elected.

I see this as the most efficient way to get funding into the hands of builders who want to build. It prevents chaotic voting through whales with questionable VP accumulation. It allows projects to forecast expenditures far out into the future. It protects this DAO against future bad actors wishing to extract value.

I have seen far too many friends join Decentraland, navigate the social scene, discover the DAO, invest heavily in the governance process, only to leave, not just the DAO, but Decentraland because of the drama, toxicity, corruption and overall negative experience they encounter. I’ve had countless DM’s of people asking for my vote on their proposals that will give them monetary gain. I’m ready to let a governing body decide where the funds go, so that my friends don’t have to keep asking their friends for their vote. It has brought out an ugliness in people.

Likes vs Dislikes:
I like that people will no longer need to lobby/slide into our DM’s asking for our votes.
I like that we will have a single person we can hire/fire if they underperform
I like that projects will stay funded and no gaps in productivity will occur
I like that our focus can now be on building
I like that our founders were a part of this process (and genuinely wanted my feedback)

I don’t like the risk of putting unaccountable people into the council.
I don’t like that the person in charge of the operation arm will have a BIG job (BIG stress!)
I don’t like the risk of losing a community voice (MUST have community representation IMHO)
I don’t like that we did not address the climate and culture of the DAO Discord during the summit
I don’t like the temporary uncertainty this will cause

Ultimately, the success of this DAO will depend on people, not protocol . With the right people in the right positions, we can go far. The past 3 years has been an expensive experiment. We’ve learned. We’ve lost. And now it is time to realign our ship and move FORWARD.

~Canessa

11 Likes
13

My only problem with this is there is too much we don’t know, in order to make many decisions. How would it be different for the “person in charge?” I foresee more Backpack kind of scenarios where someone had a great idea and had our support on it only to have it rugged out from under them by the Foundation creating it themselves. There are plenty of things that we could work in fixing ourselves, like the methods of communication and automating the things that we control.

Otherwise I would agree as it’s basically what I’ve been saying for years.

1 Like
14

Thank you so much for your kind words. It was incredibly insightful to have had conversations with you and to hear your ideas. I’m grateful that you shared them with our group and took feedback to refine them.

I’d also like to acknowledge an important issue you raised a few times. I made the mistake of communicating that we would stream the Summit discussions without first asking attendees for their consent. This led to some confusion, giving the impression that the meeting was a secretive activity or that something was being hidden. After considering that live-streaming would be a technical challenge, likely not engaging for listeners, and might limit open discussion among participants, we agreed to instead take detailed notes and share them in real-time. That’s what we ultimately did, with the great support of @Unknower, @Tobik, and @Zino, who were instrumental in making it happen during the shared sessions, and the notetakers on each one of the working groups. Thanks to them as well!

3 Likes
15

It’s important to mention that a lot of the details will be flashed out after the rounds of feedback with the community (such as this one). My personal thoughts on what the Advisors/Council should do:

  • Help building a strategic vision for the DAO
  • (If the idea of the Operational/Executive Arm is agreed on) Make the OpCo accountable for the work they are doing and hire/fire the person in charge of that operation
  • Safeguard the day-to-day operations of the treasury (Access to Aragon and multisig)

Regarding your concern about knowing what the Foundation is doing, I think the board should have a member from the Foundation for sure, that would be critical to align on the initiatives between both entities.

Regarding communication methods and iterate governance design: Agree 100%, I think the OpCo should have some kind of Governance Enablement team dedicated to that. After the Facilitation Squad left, we’re in a not-ideal situation regarding those topics.

2 Likes
16

I’ve read through the notes from the regenesis and have had some time to think about the event and my thoughts for moving forward. And if you don’t want to read;

TL;DR - How can you create an organizational structure now, with people and processes in place, if you don’t even know what the product you’re managing will be in the future? Therefore, The DAO should be indefinitely paused; close the discord, put the remaining treasury into staking protocols; wait for The Foundation to finish their contract terms and then decide how to manage 1) the platform 2) DAO funds.

  • The DAO currently has zero influence in the direction of the platform

  • The DAO does not need an organizational structure (yet)

  • The DAO spends its majority of funds on grants and nothing else

  • I barely (if any) saw any notes on discussions around implementing Decentralized technologies to help Automate our governance

There’s a lot to unpack, but the bottom line is not a single person outside The Foundation has any approval rights on platform code. There are no formal mechanisms for the DAO to currently enforce a change on the platform. If anyone outside The Foundation wants to suggest/make an improvement, you’re told to use Canny. Last I checked, Canny is not part of the DAO or any formal DAO proposal process. Additionally, The Foundation has confirmed that they do not have to abide by a passed governance proposal in our DAO. Therefore, what influence does the DAO have on any material changes to the platform?

The Foundation has shape up cycles for building the platform. Not one technical person representing the DAO is invited to those shape ups - not even to listen to what’s going on let alone opine / offer suggestions on what the community desires (again, use Canny right?). This creates isolation, and on one hand is good to eliminate too many cooks in the kitchen but then also creates vagueness and unknowns for what the product will become.

This separation of work and lack of transparency makes me look at the scenario through the lens of 2 start ups: The Foundation and The DAO. The Foundation has their start up money and The DAO has their start up money. The Foundation is working on a product and in a determined time frame will hand off that product to The DAO start up, right? If that’s the case, shouldn’t The DAO have some insight / influence into the product they’re being handed? And if not, then why have any formal organization and spending prior to the hand off? Let The Foundation start up, with their treasury and team, finish their product. Once they’ve run their course, The DAO startup can “start” with their treasury and work on whatever product is left to them. Reminder, that is 6 years from now.

Therefore, how can you create an organizational structure now, with people and processes in place (spending money), if you don’t even know what the product you’re managing will be in the future?

Will there be swimming? Will there be basements? Will there be flying? How many clients will there be? What types of engineers will be required for the future product? How many engineers? What types of infrastructure will be required?

Continually we put the cart before the horse, and in the consensus of creating an organizational structure now, that’s exactly what we are doing.

What will this new DAO organization currently manage?

What will HR do for a virtual community - will there be compensation packages, retirement plans, healthcare plans, training sessions and workplace code of conduct seminars? The suggested organizational chart mentions marketing and partnerships - will there be collaboration between The Foundation and DAO on this? How much? Will The Foundation require approval on DAO partnerships? Will The Foundation expect all partnerships to be managed by The DAO? Management of funds was mentioned in 3 different sticky notes - Finance, DAO Treasury Management, Projects Funds Management - seems highly redundant and a waste of resources.

I ask a simple question, if the organization was in place right now, what would be different in our DAO in terms of influencing the platform?

  • Almost all grants are frozen, therefore, the majority of spending is frozen
  • The DAO cannot currently enforce any platform changes
  • So, what would be different?

Is the agreement that once there’s a formal organization structure, The Foundation will finally work with the DAO on implementation and influence mechanisms collaboratively?

In my side conversations with others, I’ve tried to equate our DAO and its members to the Founding Fathers of America. Was that their job title? Did they get paid to create the Constitution, or did they do it for free out of a sense of a larger duty? I genuinely have no idea. I bring it up because I equate it to our current status in the DAO. Do we need to pay people to figure this out for us, or can we as individuals come together and find technical solutions to implement for governing ourselves autonomously (DAO)? I am all for paying people to build technologies and create things for our DAO, but those things should render human interaction obsolete in a DAO.

There was very little talk (at least in the notes) about decentralized or autonomous technologies. If we want to be governed by humans who “have ours and the platform’s best interest,” that’s fine, but let’s not call it a DAO.

In conclusion,

  • The DAO currently has no influence over the direction of the platform; therefore, it’s too early to set up an organizational structure and spend money on things that will have no impact on the product
  • The DAO discord should be discontinued as it provides zero positive value (all discourse can happen in the forums and on our web platform)
  • If The DAO want to continue the grants program, it needs to be overhauled and weighted with a much smaller percentage going towards community concepts, with a heavy majority going to focused efforts through RFPs (a traditional sense of bidding and tendering, I’m happy to expand on this concept)
  • The DAO should stop all spending except for finding an optimal solution on staking its funds for the future
  • The DAO would be paused until The Foundation startup is closer to its termination and hand off

I’ve made this space my passion and my life since 2018, and I’m still here building. I still want to make Decentraland a market leading technology and virtual destination. I love discussing everything Decentraland and appreciate the time and consideration.

Lastraum

7 Likes
17

Lastraum made several good points and raised justifiable concerns. This is my response to the points where I partially agree or disagree with Lastraum’s conclusions.

An organizational structure must exist for the DAO to prepare for the eventual dissolution or decommissioning of the Foundation. Given the current structure and the mismanagement of funds since its establishment, it’s evident that change is necessary. An organizational structure with clear roles and responsibilities is crucial to ensure accountability. Products developed and events created through grants, costing millions, have not generated income for the DAO’s long-term sustainability, nor attracted a significant user base or more players on a daily basis.

The DAO Discord should continue operating rather than being discontinued. Discord offers several features that are more efficient than a forum. For example, someone needing a direct link to a Townhall can quickly ask on Discord, rather than creating a new topic just to get a meeting link. The Discord also has a #socialamplification channel where creators can submit links to their social media content for timely review by social media managers. Tagging individuals on Discord sends a notification to their phones, allowing for a prompt response. In contrast, forums rely on users to visit the site to check for notifications, which may delay critical responses. If toxicity is a concern, specific channels can be created where users can engage only with people they want to have constructive discussions with. While direct messaging (DM) is an option, not everyone allows their profile to be added as a friend or to receive DMs to start a conversation.

I define a DAO as an organization with community-based autonomy rather than one fully executed by automated technologies. A key aspect of a DAO is replacing traditional centralized management with smart contracts on blockchains, which is already happening in the current DAO. Even if some aspects are centrally managed from a human perspective, it is still a DAO. I disagree with the idea of not calling it a DAO simply because it is governed by humans rather than “autonomous technologies.”

I agree that the DAO should stop all non-essential spending at this time. However, in addition to staking funds, I suggest reviewing the key operations. Cheddar raised an important question during the summit: “What is the most important thing we should save in the event of a ‘fire’?” The majority agreed that the protocol is the most critical asset. Therefore, I suggest taking a step back to review the key operations necessary for Decentraland to continue running (e.g., catalysts, nodes, signers, smart contracts) in case of a crisis. Prioritizing key elements will help structure cost management and allocation, allowing us to proceed strategically.

In conclusion, I believe a DAO organizational structure should exist, and the right, experienced people with proven expertise should be voted into positions. This preparation is essential for being ready for a Foundation-less future, rather than scrambling to act as the Foundation dissolves.

-MetaRyuk

5 Likes
18

Hi MetaRyuk thank you for your thoughtful feedback! These types of discussions are much needed to solve the path forward. I want to pitch 2 questions to set the stage for the my discussion:

  • Would you (anyone) still use Decentraland if the DAO did not exist?
  • What would a new organizational structure do now to better influence the platform, speficially addressing your last sentence of paragraph 2?

In terms of structure and mismanagement, we already have a community appointed Governance Squad to manage Grantees and accountability, with clear roles and responsibilities. How would a new structure be different than what we currently have? What would a new structure do differently than the current one? The Foundation has 6 years-ish left on it’s vesting contract before the supposed “hand off.” Has there been any overlap in roles and responsibilities identified in the proposed DAO organizational structure with the Foundation? Examples - Marketing, HR, R&D, etc?

Are these data points defined in the new Mission & Vision of the DAO?

  • Generating income
  • long-term sustainability
  • attract significant user base

I only know of 1 client (way to access Decentraland) that is not in alpha or beta phase (an over generalization but possibly true, please check me on that), and it’s been confirmed to be discontinued - the browser. Therefore, is it the right time for the DAO to try and tackle any of those bullet points?

Regarding the DAO discord, my potential solution was just that; potential. I’m 50/50 on it to be honest lol. But I’m trying to think outside the box. However, didn’t one of the DAO squads implement notifications into the DAO web app? Doesn’t a mention in the forum do the same thing as a Discord notification?

Would you be able to expand on what “community-based” autonomy is and how that is different from “representative based autonomy” (hiring an organization to make decisions in the elected best interest).

Can you help provide examples of what is autonomous on chain that our current DAO does? I’m asking so there will be context provided in the discussion for those reading.

You mention a key aspect of a DAO is replacing traditional centralized management yet you say some aspects are centrally managed from a human perspective, it is still a DAO. Can you help identify other key aspects of a DAO to clarify this statement?

I believe a lot of the substance behind decisions and discussions get lost without context. So, I will try to provide example(s) and apply the following questions:

  • who made those decisions
  • how was the decision implemented into the product / platform
  • what was the current DAO’s role in that decision & implementation
  • what would the future organizational DAO do differently

Example: The community wanted an Exotic wearable category

  1. who made those decisions? - the community
  2. how was the decision implemented into the product / platform? - the Foundation
  3. what was the current DAO’s role in that decision ? - forming community consensus
  4. what was the current DAO’s role in that implementation? - none
  5. what would the future organizational DAO do differently? - I have no idea

Conclusion:

  • if the DAO currently has no implementation vectors for such proposals and ideas, how would a new organizational structure be different in the next 6 years?
  • if the new DAO organizational structure is given implementation abilities in the next 6 years, what are they? to what extent?
  • how much influence will the DAO be given in the next 6 years?

I agree we should prepare for the future! However, since we have no current influence or insight into the current product, I believe it’s too early.

3 Likes
19

I’m speechless. Dumbfounded really. If the DAO comity was doing their job properly and efficiently, or stepping down because they can’t handle the job. Hire experienced people who have worked with a DAO before. And like Bitfiend said the other day you dont build a house then remove the foundation. So does the foundation not train people now in that department to form a new foundation with clear and working protocols already set. Adjust the smart contracts with grants with some kind of commitments to continue project after grants end. distribute the vp where it belongs. either give out a certain amount of grants a year of a much lower amount with better more detailed grants. The system isn’t that broken just lack of commitment. The platform is called DECENTRALAND This is the clear picture. Bring in an expert to help organize peoples responsibilities in the DAO Comity