Authors: @mel.eth @Lavi @sixtykeys @puncar @shawn16400
Reviewer/Editors: Finance Nest (complete), Index Council (complete)
Introduction to GovNest
Hoot! from the Owls of the Governance Nest (GovNest)!
We’re excited to turn an incredible amount of initiative and collective experience into governance excellence here at Index Coop. We’re looking to get the operational aspects more refined, streamlines, and more resilient by enabling greater access to creating Snapshot proposals. We’re also looking to really level-up our collective understanding of applied governance (and meta-governance) and bring some of the less-understood aspects to light so that we can make the best meta-governance decisions possible for our community. Season 1 will be about pivoting to a transparent bounty system for administering governance processes, providing open processes for contributors to follow and providing content highlighting the value that metagovernance brings to Index Coop. Having a reliable, trusted and transparent governance process is key to the long term success of Index Coop.
Governance Nest Structure
This proposal identifies and details the Primary Objectives, Projects, and Requested Budget for Governance Nest in Season 1. This proposal has also been shared with the Index Council and Finance Nest and the feedback provided by these groups has been reflected in this proposal.
Governance Nest exists to support Index Coop to provide a trusted and reliable governance process. This can be broadly split into two buckets.
- Operational Governance
- Meta Governance on other protocols
Governance Nest provides two broad overarching services to the community, internal change implementation via the snapshot and a contributor voting process, and how Index Coop utilizes it’s metagovernance to support the implementation of change on other DeFi protocols.
Primary Objectives
Create and maintain several transparent and trusted governance processes in conjunction with providing content highlighting the value of metagoverance and how it pertains to the INDEX token.
The following details the Primary Objectives for Season 1 (Feb 1st - June 30th).
- Provide and manage a streamlined, transparent and open governance process
- Ensure INDEX metagovernance voting rights are utilized
- Grow awareness and opportunities to utilize Index Coop’s metagovernance influence
- Improve the UX and participation of INDEX voters
Each of these objectives are owned by the Pods.
| Pod name | Primary Objectives |
|---|---|
| Operational Governance | #1 Provide and manage a streamlined, transparent and open governance process #4 Improve the UX and participation of INDEX voters |
| Meta Governance Pod | #2 Ensure INDEX metagovernance voting rights are utilized #3 Grow awareness and opportunities to utilize Index Coop’s metagovernance influence |
Nest Reporting
Following Finance Nest, GovNest will be providing monthly updates on operations and major project progression, per pod. We will also provide a more comprehensive quarterly report detailing our progression toward the overarching Nest Objectives.
Pods
Operational Governance
Contributor: @mel.eth , @mringz, @sixtykeys, @lavi, @puncar, @shawn16400 and @Elmit
The Operational Governance pod is responsible for maintaining the Index Coop’s governance process and providing support to community members interacting with the process. This Pod will endeavor to boost participation, improve the existing process and will work with token holders to promote awareness of the INDEX tokens governance influence. This pod will be the owner of all internal Index Coop elections for groups like the Index Council.
Objectives
#1 Provide and manage a streamlined, transparent and open governance process
#4 Improve the UX and participation of INDEX voters
Deliverables/Responsibilities
To provide the community with a streamlined, transparent and open governance process:
- A transparent IIP governance process that any contributor can follow within the community handbook
- Transition towards enabling more community members to manage their own improvement proposals over time
- Facilitate awareness, education, improvement, discourse, challenges, record keeping, reporting and accountability of our community governance processes, across the business.
- Maintain a directory of all open improvement proposals and follow up on those not yet implemented. Provide Nest level updates during regular scheduled community calls
- Develop a prototype dashboard/tool which provides visibility to projects, outstanding tasks, metrics and issues.
Support and improve Index Coop’s voter UX and participation rate:
- Increase the INDEX token participation rate as a fraction (%) of circulating supply
- Provide support for Snapshot/Forum proposals and community updates on upcoming votes
- Incorporate into the existing quarterly survey, a questionnaire seeking feedback on the governance process and implementing improvements to improve the participation rate with results published via the Monthly forum report.
Success Metrics
The following quantitative metrics are intended to track and showcase the performance of the pod.
- INDEX voter participation rate (%) tracking as a percentage of circulating supply held outside of Index Coop internal wallet addresses
- Percentage of IIPs processed by non Governance Nest participants each month
- 95%(->100%) error-free process-execution as measured by adherence to established governance processes
- Number of Monthly reports detailing IIP and Metagovernance votes published within the first 10 days of the month
Pod Budget
This pod’s budget is partially covered by the Core Hires proposal, IIP-128. In addition to Core Hires costs, a budget of $15K per month is being requested. This reflects the stipends budget of Q4 which is expected to be sufficient to cover all expected bounties plus an additional $1,000 month contingency. This pod will be pivoting towards a standard bouty schedule for the governance process plus bounties for ad-hoc work.
Each IIP processed will be rewarded based on a standard bounty schedule. Ie: DG1 vote is worth $X, normal IIP is worth $Y. Core hires will work with Growth Nest members to set up any partnerships/integrations that can enhance Index Coop’s governance.
Meta-Governance Pod
Contributor: @mel, @lavi, @puncar, @kiba, @oneski22, @ncitron, @yuan-han-li
The Meta-Governance Pod (MGP) is to support all metagovernance activities across the Coop and with future partners using Index Coop’s influence to implement improvement proposals on other protocols. The core of this pod is to maintain a transparent and trusted meta-goverance process which includes the MGC that votes when INDEX holders fail to quorum. This pod will work closely with other areas of the Coop to support product sales and integrations with other communities.
Objectives
#2 Ensure INDEX metagovernance voting rights are utilized
#3 Grow awareness and opportunities to utilize Index Coop’s metagovernance influence
Deliverables/Responsibilities
To provide the community with a streamlined, transparent and open meta-governance process:
- Manage the metagovernance Snapshot process with a MGC in place to vote on proposals which do not meet quorum
- Promote INDEX metagovernance appeal
- Work with Business Development to explore solo proposal strategies that drive value to our products and sustainability for our community. Ie: Use metagovernance to support product sales
Support and improve Index tokens metagoverance appeal and participation rate:
- Increase the INDEX token participation rate as a fraction of circulating supply
- Publish educational content promoting INDEX token’s metagovernance appeal
- Explore ways to attract requests to support submitting governance proposals on other protocols
Success Metrics
The following quantitative metrics are intended to track and showcase the performance of the pod.
- INDEX voter participation rate tracking as a percentage of circulating supply held outside of Index Coop internal wallet addresses
- Number of inbound requests to utilize Index Coop’s metagovernance influence on another protocol
- Number Medium article published highlighting the value of the INDEX tokens meta-governance influence
- MGC [sic; council review]
Pod Budget
This pod’s budget is partially covered by the Core Hires proposal, IIP-128 and the fixed stipend that funds the MGC, IIP-92. IIP-92 has an allowance for 6 members on the MGC, however there are only 5 members on the MGC. This additional $1,500 per month was not spent during Q4. However, bounty emissions were distributed during Q4. A $1,000 per month is requested to support the MGC and broader Pod activities.
Contributors
While Nest success is the responsibility of the Nest Coordinator there are several contributors that have demonstrated initiative and produced work that has been beneficial to the organization; these contributors will continue to play important roles in GovNest in Season 1. Proposed Owl levels are based on GovNest contributions to date.
| Name | Owl Level |
|---|---|
| mel.eth | Gold |
| mringz | Gold |
| sixtykeys | Silver |
| Lavi | Silver |
| Puncar | Bronze |
| Shawn16400 | Bronze |
| Ronald | Bronze |
| Gold | 1 |
|---|---|
| Silver | 2 |
| Bronze | 5* |
*We’re looking to have at least 3 capable GovRep contributors, by process type, in Season 1. We currently have no cross-functional GovReps and 4 major process-types, yielding a target of 8 new trained GovReps (overlap from cross-functional training reduces this). We expect a total of 6 GovReps across all active processes in total and GovReps will be at least a Bronze level Owl given the context and permissioning currently required. 4 of the 6 new Bronze roles outlined here are envisioned for new GovReps, 2 are for development of other new and interested contributors. We’ll keep bounties as permissionless as possible across context levels to incentivize maximum participation.
Funding
A detailed breakdown of the monthly spend is shown below:
| Funding Source | Funding ($) Month | Season 1 (1st Feb - 30th June) |
|---|---|---|
| Core hire IIP-128 | $11,666 | $58,333 |
| Operational Governance Season 1 Proposal | $15,000 | $75,000 |
| Meta-Governance Pod Season 1 Proposal | $7,500 | $35,000 |
| Total Spend | $33,666 | $168,330 |