Governance Theory and Practice

Transcript

all right okay can you guys hear me i guess you guys can hear me all right sounds good all right it's really hot outside it seems like here is slightly better but i know that you guys are suffering so i'll make it quick um i'll just present really quickly and then i'll leave some minutes for questions if you guys have any so first thank you so much for coming so i'm a co-founder and cos table note and i'm also one of the recognized delegates for maker dial um i see some of the maker dial friends here so thank you for coming as well as well stable note in the members so to start off we're going to talk about you know governor's theory and practice i know it sounds kind of boring but it is also quite interesting right

because a lot of times especially in you know crypto or especially in d5 we like to talk about how this kind of ping dao can solve a lot of problems right so we also have a lot of different protocols or sometimes different companies and then they will ask questions like okay like we have this problem with less a token price we have we want to be more decentralized we want to solve this and this and that maybe even in the world hunger and others and they just think that becoming a dao will just magically solve it right well but the problem is that if you really dig this deeper and then you know kind of ask about okay so we want to become a dao but how can we become a dao i think that a lot of protocols as well as different

companies and entities have a very hard time understanding how actually become a dao and even if they understand what dao is like how do we actually get there like you know so what are the some of the case studies or some of the examples so a lot of times a lot of protocols will just put the literally named dao behind it thinking they somehow make it decentralized or they're kind of right about how much they like this innovation but in reality it is not right so we have seen that there are many different kind of dials growing and then for today's like talk it's not about talking about it's different in the dao and talking about how they're different right but just that we realized that especially as

protocols become more decentralized as was the industry is growing we saw that there was a lot of different diverse whether it's in nft whether it's a d5 whether it's more social costs and then so there are more and more dials but at the same time i think that there hasn't been a lot of research regarding like how to actually make a good dial and then not enough discussion like there are a lot of research and a lot of like opinions about it that is true but at least the market as well as the industry itself is very very young as well as the discussion so that's something that we want to discuss in this talk as well so the problem is that once again the number of dollars has been growing as well as their you know like the you know

diversity however there are many challenges right so there have been for example some of the governance attacks and this is even like happening at some of the more mature dials as well and then even for i would say not just governance attacks but it can also involve like a lack of oversight or it can be lack of accountability or it can be just lack of experience right because for a lot of protocols they might be very competent in terms of technology technical aspect but in terms of governance and others it is also a different matter so you know beside this we also saw some of the more tricky questions you know for example the question about if let's say token holders you know as a majority decide to do something should the team really um you know kind of agree to it

like is it something that's spined by promise and then something that's you know like smart contract or is it something that for example team if they decide they might be hostile and i'm not good for the protocol can they reject it right and then if the dao wants can they um you know basically for example in the case of the you know with mere circle like okay i understand the team made the legal contract but can dao basically be like okay we don't you know we don't want your money you can get it back with some profit like it's just something that's allowable you know and then i think there's a lot of those questions don't really have a clear answer right and then that's also the reason why we're having this kind of talk to discuss more about like okay what are the boundaries and what are the

discussions so you know that's where i think state stable node comes in is that for stable nodes we have been focusing on governance so we've been as individual or as a team we've been helping with many different protocols so you know for me personally i've been engaged with maker for quite a long time and then there are some other protocols like insta dev as well as optimism as well as finance and balance and others that we're helping and then you know so once again governance itself is very new so we like to say that there's not really a right answer there's just many wrong answers if you go too extreme right so that's how we like to say it is we we don't make you perfect and nobody's perfect it's not just like talking

between like girlfriend and in a boyfriend kind of thing it's like you know we try to minimize errors but you know there's no such thing as perfect for everybody right however what we can do or what we're thinking is that we want to focus on both theory and practice now i know that we also talk about dear versus practice and there has been some discussion regarding like you know both not just seeing like crypto right like we see in like a real world the question about okay theory and practice you probably remember back in college you looked at your professor and be like okay he knows all about theory but he has no you know real experience right i think that that same thing can apply in this governance as well so for stable node we have many different theories that we have we have all about different

governance that we develop over our experience you know whether it's for maker or talking with others or you know whether that's discussing with many different protocols now we use that to put into practice so whether that's working as a delegate helping as a delegate or helping them you know improve their doubts and others and then we see the feedback right so for example let's say that we have this theory and we go there and realize that it's really bad that we go back and say okay it was really really bad didn't work so we get and get the feedback right so you can see that we have this kind of feedback and cycle and then yes you know there's no really perfect answer or solution or silver bullet but we can try to minimize errors and also learn from our mistakes as well as you

know long-form success cases so what we've been doing is give me a second it is very slow i'm hopefully it's not built on ethereum what is this okay now it works so you know what we kind of also realized is that you know for also big protocols there's also a lot of different different discussions right and also reasonings and then whether it's uh so from the in the oscillator you know perspective it might be a simple decision but at least within government is something that requires a lot of discussion as well as a lot of coordination and then that same thing for maker as well you know there are some people who say maker is a boomer d5 i can't understand why

you say it but at the same time maker also has a lot of cutting-edge technology and also a lot of discussions and then also collaborations happening and that was involved not just technical aspect but also a lot of governance as well so okay so in terms of the how to look at the you know this kind of best practice sites what we want to do is that we want to examine and then extract and experiment so we want we want to look at some of the successful doubts right yes successful is subjective i'm not going to go into philosophy talk since especially we're in france i'm not good at that but what we can do is at least from those success cases we can try to gather some like okay what were some of the common elements right like how did they become successful or why

did they fail things like that and then we can use those and try to experiment so you know once again that kind of feedback right so we have this theory and they put into practice and then we come back and they say you know they didn't like it we say okay that's too bad it's like ice cream we tried a different flavor let's see what it works now so what we kind of realized is that we came down to this at least six major and then you know you can change as well but the idea is basically we talk about voting side right so whether it's on chain or in the off chain and then as well as communication so this can involve the communication within governance as well as like communicating about like there's a new voting coming up and things like that treasury you

know treasury is very important because we also saw that in without like this kind of oversight there might be some cases where it's getting hacked or they might run away and try to buy a new yacht although it might be nice to be there taco is probably not happy right or like we're talking about if you want to be a dao like how can you have these core units or others that work with them right so you know many different you know questions regarding it and then the next one is like for example like if you have a proposal well you can write proposals in many different ways but you want to also make it standard so it's easier for the community to try to access it as well as compare it in the in the past and then another important part a lot of dials forget is

that you want to also document it as much as possible so whether it's your process whether it's the result whether you know it's this kind of different interactions you want to document them so a third party or others who join the dow later can also review it and then interview as well now okay so i think the maker dial is also a very interesting case right because in a way it became dao so he started tao and then if roone is here he can tell you more about it but you know basically you know he can tell you that he started as a dial but they realized that they have a hard time paying people because it's a dial and they don't know how to so they start with the foundation to give this more your stability as well as other ways to expand and then now you know um

make a foundation dissolved and become a dao and then now it's managed by different core units as well as different you know facilitators and then now we also have delegates and initially the delegates were not paid up so it was more of an honor just itself but then realized that it's not sustainable because you know itself requires a lot of time and commitment as well as other research so now there's also delay compensation but this is also a good case where you know this kind of decentralization as an entire formation didn't just happen overnight right like it took many many years many many discussions many many tears and many many beers probably you know to try to convince as well as discussion so you know once again dog formation we like to hear that it's people say it's easy they just put down it but once again it's not

that easy but it can be done and it has to be a discussion and then talking more about you know maker dao is actually um you know before this winter mute um you know member talk about this as well it's like there's a lot of also interesting um ideas going on right so for example you know roon who's a former ceo at you know american foundation he had this idea for end game plan and he has many different ideas and then you know we also have hassou who also has a different idea for it so once again the interesting about dao and also this kind of decentralized organization is that you know everybody can present their opinions sometimes some people might disagree but they can always discuss and then think about ways to

benefit the protocol and then yeah i think that is it and then you know i know this is a meme but at the same time i think it's also true right because even for maker though who has been dialed for i would say you know compared to other dolls much more mature and also went through ups and downs is that there's not really a true thou per se right like it's a work in progress right and there's a lot of discussion and also a lot of mistakes and success to it so you know if you're curious more you can also contact here but um i don't know whether we have time left but if you have time left you can ask me questions okay so if anybody has any questions or complaints you can let me know i'm happy to hear all right any questions

okay seems like everybody wants to get out and get more creme brulee or something so i guess no questions okay so we have a question yeah yeah so um do mainly how like basically on all these protocols that you guys are in like how do you define uh what a good delegate is and and how do you see all these differences from one to the next what do you say that the delegates actually need to do for the protocol and what are the the requirements that you see for anyone to be successful there yeah you know that's a very good question so the

question about what sets us a good delegate versus bad delegate and i think it's also tricky question right because i'm a delegate myself so i consider myself good but maybe i'm a villain who knows but i do think that there's at least the common elements right like we want somebody that can also engage with the protocol so you know we have like for example delegates not just maker or but if you look at other protocols they might have somebody that maybe have a good idea once but then you also have to have this process where you get the feedback from the community and then you know back and forth so we believe that like you know some people might disagree but for us it doesn't matter if you have a lot of tokens delegated or not it's more about how do you engage with the

community and then i think that's important as a delegate that it's not like some kind of batch that you can wave but rather that you're part of the community and have to hear their feedback and then you know also kind of respond to it so that's kind of my idea of the ideal delegate where even if there's like even if delegate let's say it's not professional in their own like field let's say like somebody is not technical enough to understand it if they're willing to learn and also they're willing to listen i think that's more important than somebody that assumes that he knows everything so that's my and then i think somebody else has a question could you share an example of two of those that are leading on the frontier of governance and you think that other doubts should be

learning from maybe like some practical examples of what they're doing that other dolls aren't yep so that's a good question there was a very controversial question because if so don't say that i didn't choose something and then later play me right but i must say like especially maker tao has a lot of examples that other dogs can learn from now it's not for everybody you know sometimes i think it's similar to food choice whether you know sometimes it's more personal preference but i'll say that the reason why maker has a lot to learn is because it went through a lot of ups and downs right both bear markets and bloom markets both a lot of dramas that you don't need to subscribe to netflix anymore right so if you think about it like those kind of questions and then political struggle or others has made it very strong and also

the fact that a lot of like for example if you go to make a forum like you know you can go there and then you realize that there's a lot of discussion so but not just people talking about different news but people have different ideas how to improve the protocol but i would say that a lot of dolls if you go there there's not much discussion right well sometimes they have a you know post about can i get a refund yeah sure but you can imagine the healthy dogs have this kind of healthy discussion and that's why i think maker is a good example in terms of other dollars they might be also interesting would be for example ave i think it's pretty interesting and then their governance is different but at the same time it has been very healthy and if you go to the for example

their forum there are many different ideas floating around and then yes there has been also requests for many other for example transparency and like accountability but i think that applies to all different dials so and that itself is good because for example if you go to ave yourself those in the post talking about some of the clarifying questions right and that is good because you want the doubt to ask those questions if you have a doubt they just accept that like okay because it's been run this way it's fine it's not fine think about it if you're in like less a political system do you just want to trust the politicians do everything for you well maybe you do that's fine but you also want to ask about like where's the money going like you know what's the purpose of this and things like that so

i would say that that's kind of define us all right i think we don't have time anymore right all right well thank you so much for this okay so okay maybe one less okay yeah do you feel like you should be paid as a delegator okay so good question should i be paid or should i yeah or should i get fired myself that's a very good question but i would say that actually that depends because the reason is that um ideally in the long term it is true that delegates should get compensated in some way like even if it's not like salary per se like at least there was similar interest like whether it's investing on others but the reason why i say it depends is that for some of the protocols they might be too new to really have this concept or this kind of

idea but once you have a dial and like serious style that really focuses decentralized ideal i think it's very important to at least have the system because you also want to be you know have them commit both time and resource and also make sure that they're compensated for their time right so that's my thinking thank you [Applause] i