Thinking about and detailing delegated governance is obviously a very meaningful step for our community to take as it scales.
A twitter thread from this morning touched on some of these topics (h/t @fallow8): https://twitter.com/benschecter/status/1405373735344001025?s=20
In line with some of the issues raised in that thread, I think there are two big ideas that need to be addressed in tandem with any discussion on delegated governance (and I’m sure some/all of this may already be part of your roadmap, but I thought I’d add my thoughts here):
1. Hierarchy
I think “hierarchy” is probably one of the more offensive words for anyone working in a DAO, but I think it’s actually quite necessary for an effective organization. The extent of the hierarchy, and what hierarchy actually means in our organization, is how DAOs can continue to distinguish themselves from traditional entities, though.
I think this is what you have planned to address through this Index Gov 2.0 initiative (esp. given @DarkForestCapital’s follow on post to this one on the FC). This certainly doesn’t mean we need a CEO, but I think we need to begin to formalize a system where we have rules in place so that, e.g., if we have a document being shared externally, CDWG + Growth have reviewed/signed off, or if funds are being transferred > $X, TC/FC has signed off, etc.
In short, in many cases, certain functions are going to need to play an oversight role to other functions, and not everything can or should go to a community vote.
2. Transparency & Reporting
I think this is the piece that hasn’t been solved yet for DAOs. We’re scaling rapidly and organizing ourselves quite well with the development of working groups and delegated governance. However, I think we need better means of transparently reporting to our community the work each delegated group is doing. Anything on-chain is easy - we can track changes on dune or wallet/multi-sig addresses, but for anything else, we are left largely just with our Monday context-setting meetings and quarterly posts by WG leads as to progress for the past 3 months.
It seems like in a DAO, there should be a better way - especially as we continue to grow, otherwise our Monday meeting will only grow longer and longer. Maybe something like this will be solved by tools like Boardroom as they continue to develop, and many functions within IC have their own workarounds (e.g., AWG has a project board, CDWG has something similar, engineering has a pipeline, meta-gov has a pipeline, etc.), but it seems like this is something we can and should level up in tandem with our focus on delegated governance. Something I’ve been thinking a lot about.
Just wanted to share these thoughts - looking forward to seeing all that’s to come with Index Gov 2.0.