Thanks for your comments @shawn16400 and @funkmasterflex – I think they highlight a difference in philosophy across IC wrt metagovernance. I believe the purpose of metagovernance is to make informed, reliable, timely votes on partner proposals. It strengthens our partnerships and allows us to vote in the best interest of IC products and holders. While I believe strongly in higher participation and smaller whale influence in “everyday decision making”, I’m not as concerned about individual tokenholders having a higher influence in metagov votes.
Maybe I’m wrong! (That’s happened a few times before ) But I’d love for this discussion to center around first principles for metagov at IC and then figure out the best solution. It feels like Gov Nest has come up with their own frameworks which may be at odds with the broader community sentiment, and this issue hasn’t been marked as a priority or problem to solve by the community. I’m eager to ensure wider discussion and buy in.
I love this. Really this IIP is an attempt to responsibly automate (with more appropriate quorum/math) and decentralize (allow for greater INDEX holder participation) something that currently feels centralized (5-member committee currently down to 4) and labor intensive (we pay that committee as much as $90k a year for these decisions). I’ll try and give balanced context building at the top of the discussion tomorrow, present my solution, and allow for conversation.
We’re of one mind on wider discussion and buy-in, but I’ll make some points here that may be important to note going forward:
GovNest is running this as they would any other IIP, I hope. I trust @sixtykeys to coordinate and communication from the @GovNest account and @pujimak_in have been clear . . . if there is a framework to be discussed in the sense you mean here that is at odds with your mental model, yes let’s please discuss that but I believe it to be separate to this topic, see next point
I’m an individual submitting a proposal to improve Index Coop; I fill a role at the DAO that includes ensuring continuity of distributed decision services and implementing improvements. I’m a customer here given that this doesn’t align with v1 or v2 objectives; the product I’m demanding is better automation and inspiring greater decentralization through allowing participation with guardrails. If you feel as an individual I’m abusing this service, please let me know, but I’ll note that I had to solicit feedback ahead of this second run, so while I have a good sense of appetite for this, we’re now finally in the public conversation phase. I’ll attempt to educate the community; I’m not using any contributor resource other than awareness on a calendar for an AMA.
You can engage with this proposal or not and have already communicated voting intent; it’s my hope you consider the alternatives and find this one most appealing, but the goal here isn’t to burden you with non-core issues. This issue is dear to me in the sense that I find value in understanding how this organization works, and pushing greater influence to individuals that are willing towork, pay for, and exert it. I see it as unlocking value and I’m trying to do it responsibly. This proposal goes toward both cutting cost and reducing the burden on yourself to participate in metagovernance matters, while allowing for greater participation (read INDEX accumulation to participate), so as shocked as you are that it’s running with a significant parameter change, I’m as shocked that you’ve communicated passed judgement ahead of considered review.
I’m conscious that I’m attempting to upgrade the DAO and our tokenomic model, while you’re attempting to protect it. Please be aware that this proposal IS me walking the line of responsibility AS I SEE IT. There is some more risk here, but I could easily counter that it’s well-considered relative to the reward and that 5% was arbitrary and hasn’t been representative of a manageable contextual participation-rate for decentralization EVER. There are arguments to be made on both sides, but I’m making them. While as Nest Lead I don’t consider this part of my remit, as an INDEX holder I find it unacceptable that the DAO has crafted a game that only 5 can play, and appears to be protecting it still while touting metagovernance as the main value proposition of the INDEX token (provably false outside of positions of size) . . . there’s a disconnect I’m trying to bridge: the connection between voting rights and value in a governance tokens. I hope you come to the conclusion that they are positively correlated and that we can responsibly unlock that feature to increasing benefit for our community. I also maintain that INDEX token price increasing is a positive feature of a good governance model and reflects a healthy desire for participation . . . while not proven it’s pretty easy observe the correlation between a lack of ability to meaninfully participate in metagovernance at IC and what appears to be an unbound bottom to the price of our governance token.
If this IIP rose to the level of protection as I see it rather than a suggested upgrade I’d have rallied for greater support on the first run and thrown the weight of a Nest behind it if I thought that approriate. As it stands I’m not demanding any resourcing from the DAO, just running an IIP and will provide feedback as requested, so far only by @funkmasterflex and yourself here. I have received feedback elsewhere and it’s considered in the revised proposal.
I understand this isn’t your field and not core to your ICC duties as you see them, but suggestions are very welcome. I understand that “DO NOTHING” is always one of two choices we get with any IIP, but I’d really challenge to make suggestionsre improving participation as context develops. I’m taking a position here that I know better than you, and you can outvote me 7-to-1; it’s a conversation I want to have and I like that your having it. If you can be there tomorrow it would be appreciated, if not I’ll drop the recording here and will be happy to touch base after - I saw you dropped a calendly link and I’m looking forward to catching up.
Hey @catjam, while this was not a proposal from GovNest, it is a potential solution to an issue we have been working on in GovNest - metagovernance participation.
Recall the Owl Pulse survey was completed last Feb and we used those results to build our action plans. Here are some relevant verbatim responses to What would incentivize you to vote more?
If quorum wasn’t decided by 1 voter
Ability to impact. If my vote mattered
If my vote matteredI don’t have enough voting power
Having INDEX tokens
Having greater voting power
A realistic opportunity to impact the result.
While I get that this proposal may not have the urgency of other items we are working, it is a low risk solution to address an issue called out by our contributors. Recall that this proposal disenfranchises no-one, it does not preclude a whale from stepping in and tipping the scales - it only removes the necessity of their participation via a more efficient decision making process.
Hey @shawn16400 , I was hoping to touch on this during Mel’s meeting but we ran out of time!
I LOVE the responsiveness to the Owl Pulse survey, but fear this is a bit out of context. As a participant in that survey, I thought of all the governance questions as related to internal IC governance rather than metagovernance – where I do not feel disenfranchised, but rather underinformed! I have a hunch that many in the community responded in the same way and wonder how we could validate that.
Hello @mel.eth , how about the discussion above last day? I was interested, but unable to attend since my timezone is not comfortable to it.
I hope discussion has been in a direction of decreasing quorum. I think current status metagovernance is equal that IC states “We are not interested in your governance, except for price” from point of community incorporated in each IC products.
This is because we are almost always abstain for votes for each community. As I assume you always aware that it is clear on “Metagovernance vote log” section:
I expect this will be more greater issue when we will be one of whales in their community, as it means ignorant to vote is sitting in mainstream in their community. Currently not, but I assume. (on both our growth and issue.)
Last vote I was against because there was no lower limit of quorum, but now your plan has it (1%), so I am comfortable to vote FOR next time on snapshot, but I am wondering how others think on this especially why others AGAINST for this topic.
If you do not mind, can you share points why others against on this vote? ( from your perception. ).
I would like to bring the reason of against into forum discussion to understand.
hey @catjam thanks for engaging on a deeper level. I believe when we get into the nuance of a domain, we begin to build mastery vs. context. Your question is spot on and survey informed us of challenges around better voting usability, incentives for voting, lack of impact, and better context.
The survey itself asked about governance participation, metagovernance participation and then asked “what would incentivize you to vote more often”. With the data, I could only draw an inference between those who had verbatim comments related to “lack of impact” and metagovernance as those respondents who indicated “impact” as a driver had lower metagovernance participation scores vs. general IC governance participation (when controlling for the % drop between questions). It became more clear in the 1 to 1 follow ups I did to go deeper. Many of the four points were brought up, but related to metagovernance, the points were “I don’t understand the votes” and “metagovernance is a waste of my time - my vote is never counted”.
While that last statement is not totally fair - in this report you can see that in the 60 metagovernance votes cast this year, 52 failed to reach quorum - and was thus decided by the Metagovernance Committee. So the sentiment of “metagovernance is a waste of time - my vote is never counted” was correct in 52 of the 60 votes. This proposal was not one of the action items the Governance Team identified, but it is a novel way of correcting that issue.
To close out, this proposal does not address the specific pain point (context) you draw out, but it does have an impact. One way of addressing context is delivering RabbitHole - like metagovernance reports (here is an example: Uniswap: Deploy v3 to Gnosis Chain - Metagovernance Pod ) so that voters (including the ICC) can quickly scan a summery in human-readable English, and see a recommendation based on organizational principles. The cost for these reports are higher than expected and we don’t have budget for it. However, if we can sunset the Metagovernance committee - it would free up between $45 to $90K per year to which would help pay for such reports.
So, @catjam how about it? How about we show our voters that their vote matters, lets teach them how to fish, and lets lead the way in decentralizing metagovernance.
Read the whole GovNest analysis on the Owl Pulse Survey - and thanks again to @MaryQ for letting us co-opt the OPS : )
@funkmasterflex has engaged deeply on this topic and challenged my thinking in ways that will result in better proposals. Period. I’ve always maintained that if you’re a whole-org contributor at a DAO, sometimes your best ability is your availability. @funkmasterflex when you show up to the conversation my brain temp jumps a degree or two and for that I’m ever grateful.
@catjam - two things: Through this process you’ve both taught me the importance of finding the proper starting point in a conversation and the importance of empathy (assuming positive intent) here among the contributor-base at IC. I’ll endeavor not to project here @catjam, but I feel as though your influence is reshaping the WAY we interact here at IC and while we all try and make our piece of the pie better, you’re reshaping the landscape of interaction here and have made me want to be better at communicating in the ways that are valuable. I’ve been terrible at matching your level of empathy and in the process of challenging a narrow proposal you managed to upgrade my holistic framework for advancing ideas within the organization. Thank you immensely for your counsel and feedback; it’s had massive impact on me personally and is going to reshape outcomes for the org positively as I see it.
Thank you both and all for coming on this journey!
One of the larger discussion points developed was initially fielded by @catjam: “What is the proper use of metagovernance at Index Coop?” There are a diversity of opinions at present and developing a framework we can agree on and build on top of are essential to effective progress and management of our metagovernance powers. No next steps at present, but I do plan to let this IIP run again with the parameter change to a 1% minimum quorum. At present I do not plan to run this IIP again immediately if it fails as I will have considered two attempts on this particular topic sufficient to try and address decentralization in this way. I have no doubt that we end up in a better place as an org as a result of the learnings here no matter the outcome of this vote.
) But I’d love for this discussion to center around first principles for metagov at IC and then figure out the best solution. It feels like Gov Nest has come up with their own frameworks which may be at odds with the broader community sentiment, and this issue hasn’t been marked as a priority or problem to solve by the community. I’m eager to ensure wider discussion and buy in.
