Formation of the Autonomy Kick-Off Group

I’ll look into this tomorrow @mrvls_brkfst

Also confirming publicly available sheet does not contain any passwords.

Please reach out to me and @afromac directly via discord to receive your password.

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Yes, if anyone wants their password DM me and I will provide on Discord. It’s near 10pm here, so it will likely be my morning time before I can get back to you.

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You can also reach out to me for a password too!

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The voting experience was excellent @Pepperoni_Joe @Thomas_Hepner ! Thank you

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I just voted; it was seamless so I hope everyone that can does. Please don’t vote with your silence!

I just want to point out that @setoshi has indicated in a past post (@overanalyser was questioning the IC<>Set relationship early on) that reconsidering the token allocation pre-launch is on the table in October 2020:

This Owl’s opinion: Given that Set have been charging The Coop for engineering work, I’d say that anything more than a standard 10% founder’s allocation is piggish.

I’m really counting on the contributors chosen here. I don’t know where this ends, but we’re at a crossroads that will determine what the future of this organization looks like. Good luck and stay sharp; you have the best contributor community in the ecosystem behind you.

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Hi everyone,

I just wanted to confirm that the results for the Index Coop autonomy kick-off group are in - with 45 votes cast.

The election used rank order voting/STV to determine a winner.

This mean nominees who do not receive sufficient votes are progressively removed from the process. Then, any voters who listed the removed nominee as a first choice will have their vote transferred to their second option (and so on).

Visuals for how this played out for this vote is displayed below. I am also happy to answer any question about how the vote was conducted, either publicly on this post, or privately via DM.

IC - Core Team
From left to right, Core Team nominees were:

  • Dark Forest Capital (Red), Verto (blue), Lemonade Alpha (yellow) and Big Sky (Green).

Winner: @DarkForestCapital

Core Team Vote

IC - Community

From left to right, Community nominees were:

  • Matthew Graham (Red), JD Cook (blue), Thomas Hepner (yellow) and Fallow8(Green), Pepperoni Joe (Purple), Kiba (Orange), Defi Jesus (red)

Overanlayser asked to be removed from the nomination process.

Winners: @Matthew_Graham , Pepperoni Joe, [Fallow8]

Community Vote

Given how close the final voting was between myself, Matthew Graham and Fallow8, I would like to propose Fallow8 also join the Autonomy Kick-off group.

I have no doubt the value he will provide far outweighs the downside of having a slightly larger group.

Please indicate your support for this proposal below:

  • I SUPPORT Fallow8 joining the autonomy kick-off group as the third representative for “Community”
  • I DO NOT SUPPORT Fallow8 joining the autonomy kick-off group as the third representative for “Community”

0 voters

DeFi Pulse

For DeFi Pulse, the representative with be: @Etienne (as confirmed by Nassim on 26th July).

Set

For Set Labs, the representative will be @setoshi (as confirmed by Greg on 19th July)

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If we are going to add an extra person from community, should we not do the same for core contributors? Seems like an ad hoc change of agreement after the vote. Either leave things as people agreed or else apply the same changes evenly.

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Congrats to the winners.

Understand your point but I think the point Jo is making is that the core winner was clear whereas the community result was extremely close. Came down to one vote between Matt and Nate in the end by the looks…

The poll above is an acceptable way for the community to express their preferences IMO.

Given what is at stake maybe apply a healthy quorum and threshold to capture true representation?

80% + >25 votes?

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DarkForestCapital and BigSky were within a vote of each other after the first round, so if we are going to start arbitrarily changing the rules to suit the outcome we could apply the same logic there.

I think it sets a bad precedent to change the outcome of a vote after the fact. If the whole objective here is to expedite the process to the autonomy of the coop, how does our inability to stick to an agreement because the outcome was inconvenient affect the rationale to do so? I think it demonstrates we still have work to do in understanding what asking for autonomy actually means - and the responsibility that goes along with it.

Moreso, we carefully considered and agreed upon the makeup of this group in order to create balance in these discussions. Based on that discussion, people voted in good faith expecting that their ballot would be observed. If we had started the discussion by saying that there would be a ratio of 3:1 from community members to core contributors it would have changed the nature of the discussion and peoples’ voting behavior.

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Agreed. It was close, but adding Fallow8 is changing the overall make up of the committee now.

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@Pepperoni_Joe I agree with @afromac despite having personally voted @fallow8 to be in the Autonomy group.

We should respect the vote that just took place.

Let’s also remember that the purpose of the formation of this group was an Autonomy Roadmap.

If the Autonomy Kick-Off Group needs help or assistance building that roadmap, they should feel free to reach out to @fallow8, myself, or any other contributor whose input they need to be successful and push this initiative forward.

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That was in the first round, not the final where the votes are carried over so to me it’s not quite the same.

I concede with your point that changing the outcome after a vote is not ideal. But a forum poll to the same voters offers a choice based on clearly laid out information. If the poll came in with 45 votes 100% FOR then to me that would be consensus and not arbitrary.

I also concede that it may have changed the original inputs and therefore has effects on the outputs.

*Disclaimer. Whilst all my preferences came in, @fallow8 was also one of my votes *

I do not feel strongly about forcing this issue so I am happy to proceed 2:1 in absence of a strong consensus regarding the above. And TH has provided a timely reminder that F8’s wisdom is still on hand should it be required!

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Thanks Andrew.

I appreciate your willingness to listen to my concerns here. And while we might have different views on the next step to take, we are both just trying to help this conversation move forward as best we can.

I also take your point that the outcome of the first round is not the same thing as the outcome of the vote. I suppose I was just to make the point that the logic of the whole thing was getting quite fuzzy once we started moving the goalposts.

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Following on from this conversation, I spoke to Pepperoni Joe and found that the makeup of the Autonomy Kick-Off Group was likely to be changed after the vote, and that it would be discussed further on the Org call yesterday. I strongly disagreed with that decision and prepared a statement which I made yesterday on the call. Based on advice, I have decided to also post my statement here:

First of all, I just want to say that I really don’t like talking on these big calls. It makes me extremely nervous, but I think this is important so I’ll ask for your patience and attention for a few minutes please.

Also, just to say right at the start. This is not directed at the outcome of the vote. I am actually very happy that the community has aligned with both Matthew and Nathan. The issues that they have raised are real challenges that we are facing today. They made their arguments well, are outstanding contributors, and having either or both of them leading up the drive for autonomy would be a win for the coop.

That’s not what this is about.

Instead, I am talking to you because I believe that the proposal to retrospectively add another nominee to the autonomy group is a serious mistake. And that by doing so we risk undermining the legitimacy of our decision-making process.

When we think about the coop and DAOs in general, it’s natural to use an analogy of a company or a startup to guide our understanding. And this is a useful analogy a lot of the time, but it’s not always accurate. Some of the most exciting conversations I see people having about DAOs focus directly on how DAOs deviate from traditional companies, and how that is both an advantage and a challenge. It creates opportunities but it also requires imagination.

In some situations, a much more useful analogy to make, is to compare a DAO to a democracy. Last week we voted to elect people to a position of trust, to guide us through a challenging process ahead of us. We did not do this as shareholders, or as INDEX holders; we did it as members of a community and as equals. This is our DAO acting as a democracy.

Democracies are not about majority rule. They have not been since Socrates was the ultimate meme-lord on ancient Greek Twitter. Modern democracies are about power-sharing and accountability. Democracies live and die by the strength of their institutions. And those institutions live and die by how much people believe in them.

This whole conversation we are having about autonomy, in a very real sense, is about building strong institutions in the coop that people can believe in. Autonomy - the ability to affect your will, is useless in and of itself to the community. Autonomy only becomes powerful when it is coupled with accountability. That’s how you bring people along with you. That’s how leadership is empowered.

What are we trying to create here? A strong treasury that has the resources and the tools to enable us to act and deploy our capital safely and efficiently. A product team that can afford to be creative and experimental, because we trust it with the stewardship of our work from inception to completion. An engineering team that can focus on developing the technology that secures our future because it has the right resources and the right people to handle any situation. This is the institution building that we have all been engaged in since we got here.

When we went to vote last week, we were engaging in the process of building our institution of governance. In many ways this will be the most important institution we build. Unlike a company, we have no contracts, we have no legal system, we have no workplace regulations. We are accountable only to ourselves.

What we are talking about doing right now is changing the outcome of a vote. We are talking about ignoring the agreement that we came to as a community. We cannot afford to do this. This is our first big step towards becoming a true democratic body.

In the coming months and years, we will need the support of all of our key contributors to navigate the decisions that we need to make together. We must be capable of negotiating effectively with each other, and respecting the outcomes of those negotiations - especially when there are difficult decisions to be made. Our partners need to believe that we are capable of making decisions and sticking to them, or we risk being co-opted and manipulated.

All of that will be impossible if people do not believe in the process. That is the risk we take when we choose to ignore the agreements that we have reached. Our legitimacy to act and to speak for the community is what is at stake when people trust us with their vote.

So I ask you just to think. We have an opportunity here to set a precedent for how strong we can be as a deliberative body. We do so just before we begin what will likely be the most difficult period of transition we have yet encountered. I hope that we do not falter at the first hurdle.

Thank you.

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Thank you @afromac - these are the type of posts the DAO needs right now. Vulnerability and authenticity! This one is a trust builder and will ultimately help us, as a community, transition to an ownership mentality. Hats off to you

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Thank you. And hats off to you, sir.

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Congratulations to all the elected members and to those participating :clap: :tada:

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I’m also going to echo this, for starters

When we speak of changing the rules after an election, I’m reminded of this primary election. The DNC in AL didn’t like the result, sued, and got the primaries overturned against the wishes of the electorate, instead favoring themselves as an institution. What was once a surefire win in an election ultimately killed the AL Democrats and they’ve scarcely seen the gubernatorial (or almost any other) seat since.

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thanks for posting this!! :slight_smile: i had chills listening to you speak yesterday.

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I hate that I missed this yesterday and think the Coop is stronger for you speaking up.

As the person whose candidacy is the subject of this conversation, I’ve preferred to stay quiet and see what the community thinks. But I do want to say that @afromac previously reached out on Discord to state that it wasn’t personal and lay out his reasoning. I really appreciate that. He didn’t need to do that, because everything he’s said has come across as principled and I was never close to considering it a commentary on me as an individual or member of the Coop.

I received nominations and votes because I shared what I thought in the many fora we have to discuss this topic. I have and will continue to do that regardless of this vote or any group formation.

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