These are my thoughts after 3 days of discussions in Lisbon for the Decentraland DAO Regenesis Summit. Most ideas are stolen from conversations and studying what other DAOs are doing, curated by me. This doesn’t represent everyone at the event, and specific proposals should be drafted and voted in the DAO in the following months.
Problems
The Decentraland DAO needs fixing. We’ve been at it for 4 years now. We had many wins, but our operations are a mess.
The DAO needs to execute better and make decisions faster. It needs to guard funds better. It needs a long-term vision. Right now, it has none of these. We waste money. We don’t work well with the Foundation. We focus on short-term wins and have suffered money-grabs.
It’s time for a DAO rebirth.
Mission & Vision
But first, what is the purpose of the Decentraland DAO? (A definition for vision is: the ideal world we want to reach. Mission is how we get there.)
Here’s what my working group came up with:
Our DAO’s vision is to achieve the sustainable development of the Decentraland ecosystem and community.
Our mission is to guard, grow and govern our assets (treasury, tech, content) and people.
That creates the following jobs for the DAO:
- People → funding + purpose + connection
- Tech → innovation, alternative clients, smart contracts
- Treasury → financial reporting & management
- Content → creation, curation, discovery
- Governance → enforcing and updating the ruleset
Our values are: (1) community ownership, (2) transparency, (3) welcomingness, and (4) innovation.
We later synced with other groups and better wordings for the DAO’s mission and vision appeared, which I liked even better (slight rewordings by me):
The vision of Decentraland is to enable a user-owned digital world through open standards to enable social connections.
DAO mission: Ensure sustainability for the Decentraland ecosystem through representative governance, management of collective resources and technical innovation
Solutions
Here’s what I propose:
The DAO should vote less, but votes should be higher-impact. To do so, let’s create a DAO Executive Branch to run day-to-day operations. A team of real people that can take responsibility. So it can define seasonal strategy and manage resources efficiently.
The community will first elect a Board of Advisors by voting individual members. The Executive Branch is led by a President, who will be hired on a 2-year term by the Board. It has clear, public goals in alignment with our DAO mission and vision. It gets an annual budget which it can then spend with full discretion.
The DAO can revoke this budget at any time if execution is not aligned with its mission. No payments go outside of the Executive Branch channel from now on.
What will this new DAO Executive Branch do?
- All Grant-making: No more grants via direct DAO voting. Allows the creation of a professional grants management team with paid advisors and active business development.
- In-house strategic projects: hire staff to work on key initiatives (seasonal events, creator tooling, communication).
- Operations: Provide transparency reporting to DAO, ensure legal compliance, pay staff salaries, and work with the Foundation.
What remains in the DAO?
- The Executive Branch SHOULD NOT have control over smart contracts (LAND, marketplace, wearables, upgrades, config, etc.)
- The Executive Branch SHOULD NOT have custody of DAO Treasury.
- The Executive Branch SHOULD NOT be able to change governance mechanisms.
- The DAO retains its oversight function to keep the Executive Branch aligned with our mission and values.
These functions remain in the DAO and are subject to community VP-weighted voting.
(Political sidenote: Changes in DAO governance mechanisms should consider how the new proposal will be pitched to non-participating whales. Noble-sounding ideas like 1 vote per address or participation-based assignment of Voting Power are non-starters. Non-participating whales don’t engage with the DAO but history shows they will stop these kinds of proposals unless we (I stress it once again) explain why reducing their own power is good for THEIR long term interests (not ours). I couldn’t think of any governance changes that would work.)
The DAO Executive Branch should be transparent and accountable. This is in accordance with our transparency core value. We’re not centralizing power, we’re delegating functions and retaining power in the DAO. The DAO Executive Branch should provide live dashboards and standard financial reporting (balance sheets, P&L, cashflow, etc.) for the community to audit. The community will give feedback on strategy but it should be defined by the Executive Branch. The community voice is represented through the Board and the President guides direction but is accountable to the Board.
The DAO retains ownership of these functions, only delegating them for a term. This is in accordance with our community ownership core value. At any point the DAO can fire the President, or any board member, and appoint new ones. The Board of Advisors will approve funding yearly and review it quarterly.
The Board of Directors, the President, and all Executive Branch staff shall be compensated at fair market values. This is in accordance with our mission of guarding our people.
Final words.
These are big but necessary changes. Decentraland needs to evolve. We’ve outgrown the current model, so… let’s try a new experiment!
It won’t be easy, but it’s our best shot at making Decentraland the leading open metaverse. Let’s make it happen.
Cheers,
Manu
Open Questions (for which I don’t have good answers yet)
- How frequently should the DAO review and adjust the powers delegated to the Executive Branch?
- We probably need a DAO Constitution.
- We probably need a workshop to define what skill sets we’re looking for at the Board of Advisors (credit: eordano).
- Should the initial Board have representation from the ecosystem “factions” such as Ambassadors, LAND holders, founders, MANA investors, Wearables committee, content creators, govenance squad, etc? (credit: MetaRyuk)
- Should POIs, name bans, catalyst modifications, and Wearables be moved to the Executive Branch, stay in the DAO like today, or move to a Curation SubDAO? (credit: Tobik and Gino)
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Maryana, CheddarQueso, Fehz, MetaRyuk and Pablo for surprisingly civilized and productive working group discussions. Thanks to HPrivakos, Yemel, Esteban, Gino, Zino, Pablo, Canessa, Santiago, Kim and many others for inspiring quick chats.
It was truly amazing to meet such passionate Decentralanders in person.
