Are you saying that FT contributors are part of the “community” and that Set, DFP, other methodologists, non-FT contributors, and (strangely) Matthew Graham are not?
All of these entities and individuals are integral components of the Index Cooperative community and I think that should be reflected in this discussion.
In this proposal, FT contributors are asking for special governance rights exclusive to themselves that do not apply to other community members.
How does giving FT contributors special and exclusive governance privileges benefit INDEX tokenholders?
I think this is a bit of an unfair assessment. We already allow our investors to vote with their full vesting token amounts. This proposal asks that we do the same thing but for the full-time contributors. Both our investors and the full-time group have money on the line and skin in the game. Why should we be treated any differently than the investors?
We have established a precedent that vesting tokens (outside of the Set Labs and treasury vesting) are allowed to vote. There is no special treatment going on here. If the community at large ends up receiving some form of vesting package, I would propose they receive those votes as well. Again, we are not asking to receive any extra votes, just those that have been allocated to us in our vesting packages.
No intention to be unfair. Maybe this is a lack of knowledge on my part. My understanding is that investors purchased their INDEX tokens subject to a lockup?
If my understanding is correct, then I don’t think you can make that direct comparison between investors and FT contributors. FT contributor vesting and investor lockups are not equivalent. The investors have already put up all their required capital for their locked INDEX tokens; the FT contributors have not done their full 2 years of work yet.
Matthew Graham has done a great job facilitating FEI DAO’s INDEX acquisition and the statement from FEI DAO has stated that while they are delegating to him (should the deal pass), their votes will go how the TRIBE holders vote.
totally fine with a 3 or 6-month cliff for simplicity, especially given that all eligible folks are long-standing members of our community who we all have deep faith in
I would hope that for future packages a cliff + vest structure is implemented especially if we do (and should) hire outside of the community.
I actually see it as a net Owl contributor voice gain. Your factual dilution is offset by more governance in the hands of people who have to collaborate openly and are accessible on a weekly basis. We have direct access to these individuals.
I know you’re hung up on an ideologically shaky band-aid being applied to a gaping genesis wound. I feel that pain, too. I just think it helps while we’re waiting for surgery.
The Fei community does a snapshot vote just like Index Coop does for metaverse votes and I simply implement the communities vote just like how Dylan, Greg and Punia do for Index Coop.
There is an undoubtable renumeration bias towards Full Time contributors relative to the commitments of Gold, Silver and Bronze Owls. Full Timers doing the same number of hours as a gold owl, arguably gets remunerated many multiple’s more. This was overwhelming clear when one full time hours gold owl transitioned to a full time contract. No material change in output, impact or hours of service and arguably no change in level of commitment either. But overnight, there was a material change in rewards. This is a design feature in the current structure.
In isolation each progression seems small. However, both level of renumeration and now level of governance influence are bias towards the same subset within the community.
Why should we further elect to opt into a system that further extends the bias towards a select few ?
Would it not be more equitable to offer such terms to a different level of contributor/s first rather than stack benefits on the same group.
The approach outlined in this proposal is contentions at best and to me in principle feels unfair.
Inarguably, yes. I’ll readily admit that accelerated vesting of governance is pragmatic versus ideologically perfect. But it’s also relatively elegant. Those vesting contracts are just sitting there. They’re not going anywhere else unless one of the full-timers murders someone in the Coop.
To me, this isn’t about compensation for full-timers versus precious metal Owls. I’ll agree with you that that split isn’t necessarily fair, but it doesn’t change how I look at this. Our votes are determined by a select few as it stands. If you can appeal to certain figures and OTC sale investors, you can likely outvote the majority of the contributor community. This is a step away from that. To me it’s as simple as that.
To be clear I’m also only on board with a minimum 6-month cliff. So for each contributor that’s just an 18-month period where there’s differential (and that differential fades over that period). Imperfect? Yes. Better than the status quo? In my opinion, also yes.
Can you please provide a link to the on-chain transactions funding the mentioned vesting contracts ?
To my knowledge, no INDEX have left the Treasury of Funding Council wallet into any such vesting contract.
How is this a break from our guiding principles? I was simply stating a fact that another large portion of governance power is at play outside of the core team or core community.
I am not claiming that these people/parties are bad, but that 100k will have its own interests and we as a community are so quick to celebrate that but we are so quick to deny this proposal.
Am I an outside party ?
I’ve been contributing to the community since Dec 2020. I don’t appreciate being singled out as someone who should be treated differently because I implement metagovernace voting on behalf of another community.
If anything DFP has reduced governance influence and another entity has gained influence. This actually moves the token distribution towards becoming more decentralised which I believe you are advocate for.
Currently, every voter has either been earned or purchased their governance rights. Gifting forward governance votes should not be done in a discriminatory manner.
This feels like it’s quickly becoming a contentious conversation. Rereading the Motivation section, I’m not sure I understand the “why?” behind the proposal:
I’d like to take a step back and ask a few questions from the proposers as I’m not really sure I understand the intent of the proposal. @anon10525910@DarkForestCapital@ncitron
What problem(s) is this proposal intended to solve?
How does this proposal solve the problem(s)?
Thanks and sorry if these are really basic questions!!
Reading all these thoughtful responses, it seems that everyone has a pretty valid point. To summarize,:
Giving voting power to FT members seems like an arbitrary step that doesn’t fit into a bigger plan to get power to the community. (@mel.eth)
It is unclear that immediate unlock of voting power makes sense and why it would be done @oneski22 )
There needs to be a better top-down, thoughtful plan to distribute votes / tokens across the various community parties (e.g. FT contributors, non-FT contributors (Gold, Silver, Bronze), etc.) (@Matthew_Graham )
There may be other methods to distribute / equalize power across the parties that have not been explored
I recognize these dynamics, and a general community goal with autonomy is to take steps to move in the right direction as we create a top-down plan around distribution (which takes time to put together and ideally includes input from unbiased 3rd parties). It makes less sense to take no action until we have a “perfect plan” . The intention is that if we can do things that are reversible in nature and moves us in a positive direction, that seems to be a positive development.
No you aren’t an outside party. There is a clear / between that and you. I was simply referencing the DFP sale to Fei and your involvement and the governance power there. I hear what you are saying about the distribution of gov power and unrelated to this I am a fan of that just like you are. I am simply pointing out that this proposal moves us in a positive direction, continues to distribute governance power, gives the “community” more gov power, and I don’t really understand why it has such resistance, especially when we celebrate so much when other DAOs, investors, etc get more and more governance power. Again, I am for that as well but it should be *in conjunction with the Coop making moves to give more gov power to core contributors across the owl spectrum.
I am all for making more and more moves to get gov power in the hands of all owls, not just FT. This proposal going through does not prevent that in any way - in fact it does the opposite - it sets more precedent that we as a community are eager to support one another, eager to help each other win, eager to collectively grow our governance power.
We have a history of rolling out things with the promise to improve, but implementation and execution of these improves often lags well behind any initial schedule.
Example: The VC raised executed months ago, mid may. Those investors were promised an additional 10% top up of INDEX tokens. Those tokens were paid for in May and it took 3 months for Index Coop to transfer those top up tokens.
The precedent for paying entities what they are owed is very poor. By further fragmenting the “haves” and “have nots” within in the community is not a good way to approach things when history tells us we are incredibly poor to progress from initial iteration to final design, ref. FLI product saga.
Are metal owls going to be back paid whilst Index Coop takes months to iron out the initial flawed renumeration structure ?
As this is so unclear and contentious - why embark on this approach without a committed timeline for implementing a holistic and fair methodology. The autonomy group already knows the genesis contract favours select entities and we know the contributor reward system is broken and bias towards a single role.
Why do we need to do this now ?
It is not on the Q3 agenda and furthermore is not deemed a priority at all. There is no dev time for implementing this if the priority is products. I think the dev work has been done offline and this discussion has made its way to the forum after the work was done in the background. @dylan can you confirm this to be so ?
The net affect will be that if all metal owls vote as a united block they will not be able to counter the voting influence of a select few within the community. Further to this the Full Time people will most likely fulfil future leadership roles, like a Board of Directors or the less influential expanded Funding Council. That gives ability to drive agenda and heavily influence the voting pushing the same agenda set by a select few. That is not really decentralisation is it.
Structurally and on a principal level, this push to give forward voting rights is not fair. Community ownership is through INDEX retention, not by receiving tomorrows voting influence today. I know some Full Timers are selling existing INDEX bags in preparation for receiving future INDEX rewards from a portfolio management perspective. Do we want to gift forward governance rights which will likely be partially sold once the token hits their wallet post vesting period. What signal are we sending by creating a class drive social structure within the coop.
If we look at history where laws separate fractions of society it leads to social unrest and uprisings, in some ways this sows the seeds for that future scenario to evolve. There is enough emotion in this thread that implies it has the real potential to be a pain point going forward. Why not take the time to develop a holistic plan. Each piece meal process amendment takes effort away from our core objectives. Just look at the effort and hours spent on the topic already.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here @setoshi - particularly your acknowledgement of the validity of the points made. I was remarking to an Owl on the autonomy committee just the other day that it’s frustrating to see a large chunk of our contributor resources dedicated to interfacing with Set on the subject of autonomy while there’s been a notable reluctance to engage in our established governance process. Although I’m curious why you chose this particular post to jump back into the forum given the inactivity since March, I see this as a positive development that I hope continues. Hoping I can provide some clarity here and pose a few questions:
I was not aware that token-distribution within the contributor community was a focus of the autonomy group, nor that there was a community desire for a top-down plan in that regard. Can you expand on your thinking here? In particular - while unlocking more governance power within The Coop’s contributor community relative to non-contributing stakeholders arguably improves our chances of sustainability, how does further shifting the balance of governance power to the already most heavily-compensated Owls move us further toward autonomy?
What third parties do you have in mind here? I could see bringing in some experts on tokenomics, fair launches, etc. as being highly valuable.
No one representing the other side of this debate has made reference to needing the plan to be perfect, but simply allocating more governance to contributors that wasn’t envisioned when the reward was allocated doesn’t seem like much of a plan at all. I’ve already stated in the comments above that if this were to be part of a well presented plan I would be more likely to support it.
I fully agree with this as a standalone statement, but in my opinion this has little relevance to the conversation at hand - the step being discussed would not be viewed as reversible, or broadly viewed as moving us in a positive direction.
Given that Set has such a large unused voting block, would Set be amenable to delegating those votes to the contributor community, giving The Coop the autonomous ability to defend against outsize influence from potentially non-aligned stakeholders? Given that this governance power is currently dormant, allowing those most aligned with the long-term sustainability of this organization to utilize it seems to be the low-hanging fruit we’re ignoring in these discussions - and would likely have the benefit of quieting the noise around token allocation in the short term.
I appreciate your participation in this process and look forward to your responses.
I’m with you in spirit, just not the execution @jdcook. Unless there’s an imminent threat to this organization wherein unlocking 0.75% of governance would benefit us as an organization, let’s take the time to get this right for all Owls, from go.
