Governance Day - Apostando cartas para gobernar los bienes comunes - por 0x3liza y 0xRetro

Governance Day Buenos Aires 2023 · 12 Aug 2023 · 32:45

0x3liza and 0xRetro lead a workshop on governance-design strategies for governing the commons.

Speakers

Topics

From Governance Day Buenos Aires 2023, hosted by SEED Org.

Transcript

[Music] So This Is Us, and basically we're  a governance design at Maker DAO. So my name is Elisa and Retro, next to  me. And let's start like with journey to Maker Dao: so basically we have  like different experience like from Consulting incorporate, startups (I'm with  three) so in different companies, big ones and smaller ones, and then and now we are here  in DAO CRAFT which is part of Maker DAO.

So ¿what is expected in a workshop? Let's  engage, let's learn and let's have fun, first of all. So this Workshop is basically  for different levels so you don't need to be an expert in this field to participate and  to be here, and sorry and ask questions that's like one of the first things.  So first of all, we are gonna separate in different teams, and for this Workshop we're  gonna start like we choose your character: from I don't know anything, or like I'm  basically an expert in Maker DAO (I'm sorry not the Maker DAO) in a DAO itself -could be Maker  DAO, as well-. (Retro) So what we'd like to do is try to

break up into groups of four, and try to match  with people of your same skill set, so you're all on the same playing field you're all able to you  know ask questions to one another. It's better if you do have a table, so I'm not sure if we could  separate these you know clusters right now into two tables, maybe like two people on each side but  everybody has to get up and start pairing up, try to get into groups of fours and then we'll  be able to move on with the rest of the workshop. Si, vamos a explicarlo también en castellano para todos los que no estén tan duchos en inglés. Básicamente nos vamos a separar en grupos de a 4 personas, Puede ser hasta seis personas. Entonces - identify your governance mastery- si ustedes piensan que esto los representa

se van ajuntar con un grupo de gente que más o menos representa lo mismo. (reorganizan el espacio) (space organizaction) Okay so are we okay to start saying is Hay que elegir una columna, principiantes, medio y los que saben mucho de aquel lado.

So are we good to go? ¿are you all in a in a group guys? the most important part is to create groups (people organizing the groups) Okay so we are good to go! (Retro) All right, if there's any questions since I'll  be presenting in English please raise your hand I'm sure Eli would love to help translate. But just to make sure that we walk away with some skills after this Workshop, we're going to do  a quick introduction to governance operations and design, and then move into some of the exercises. To  kick it off ¿what is governance design? Governance is a fancy word for management it's uh it's  something web3 you know came up with for creating

a decentralized organization having a token run  things, but at the end of the day just like you may have seen from our uh Consulting experience  is just creating repeatable processes with systems and structures supporting it. So the main takeaways  or the main purpose of governance operation and design -from our perspective- is creating a system  where you can make Collective decisions, you can allocate resources effectively, both labor as well  as capital, and then manage conflicts that pop up when you start to go outside of the lines of  what has been defined already for the system.

So an example of what this looks like in  practice: think about designing a Sandbox. We have two very similar structures they're both  squares they both hold sand kids play in them, but one has a crazy ramp this other one has  some walls to separate some things and unless you really have a a specific purpose in mind these  are both functionally the same and fantastic. But when you start to look at how DAOs differentiate  themselves we've had some great talks today and I think decentraland is a perfect example  they're running their system both similar to how maker is but also very different and the  experimentation to make sure that the system is aligned for what the the protocol needs or the  organizational outcomes are are very important

so today what we're hoping to do is to give  you guys the tools to go out and actually produce and impact decentralized governance in  is by writing proposals understanding them and just help improve the literacy of what these  structures and and documents are trying to do uh in practice then uh what we like to come up  with is a little bit of this adapted Venn diagram where we focus on the people the situations  that the organization or the the protocol is currently trying to navigate and then take a  look at the incentives of both trying to break the system you know what what are adversaries  uh having in terms of motivation to to disrupt

or corrupt or attack as well as what are the  incentives for the community the workforce and the users to properly Leverage The protocol  and create this recursive system of improvement what this really talks about is change management  and this is the thing that we're really trying to instill at maker right now which is to  make sure that we're learning every day that information is no longer siled within  teams and that are documents and proposals are constantly improving from operational  data and not just theories and research so I think that's enough uh preparation  for starting to get Hands-On if there's any questions please raise your hand and we'll pause  here before diving in but what's next is starting

to identify the the the the tools that we'll  be using for the workshop which are Primitives that go into creating mechanisms and then  we'll practice using those on some hypothetical situations and then end today really trying to get  the group here to produce proposals that you know seed lattim can then take for funding and managing  the commons so any questions before we move on no good cool all right let's go uh all right  so first up is what is a primitive uh you may have heard this before if you've taken some comp  site courses or uh if you've done any development

but at the highest level of primitive is just a  fundamental element so if you think about it in terms of computer programming it's a variable it's  an INT it's a string it's a Boolean it's something that is just fundamentally uh objective very  simple it's the smallest part when we start to say what's a primitive for governance design it gets  a little bit fuzzier but we view it as solving one specific problem in a generic or unbiased way  so if you take a look at some of the examples I provided things like Cadence or time is very  important if you think about a governance cycle it doesn't care about holidays it doesn't care  about weekends it just keeps rolling week after week and I think to Ball's looking at because  you know we skip December every once in a while

but that we think fix that consensus is another  thing voting you know what what is the the the the the the variable for achieving consensus what  is the uh way of looking at reporting or actually creating transparency as well as infrastructure  what's the systems that these tools run on so one example of uh the the cards that  we'll be handing out to help facilitate the workshop is is uh demonstrating a consensus  primitive which is single Choice voting so do you want option a option b option C you  get one single Choice that's a primitive now if we start to bundle Primitives we see  mechanisms appear mechanisms are like functions

so that's taking several variables putting  them in a for Loop making it a repeatable call or it's generating an output from an input  and it may depend on the state of the system so when you look at it from a governance  perspective it's basically the same thing it's a repeatable process uh and more times than  not we use the word framework for that I think the most famous framework at maker has been the  the core unit framework which is allowing funding team leadership to emerge as well as attaching it  to a certain segment of work uh if you can go to the next slide what I've tried to demonstrate here  is just again uh an example of a mechanism that takes delegation and single Choice voting it pairs  it with a decentralized ID or a forum account and

then it ties it with compensation and these are  just four simple Concepts that allow you to create a narrative or allow you to start building  out a more robust and repeatable process for making governance happen when again there's just  tokens that have voting power how do we get from a to wherever maker is at today as an example  it's building with these uh building blocks okay so first question who here don't doesn't  speak English or like sorry doesn't speak Spanish because I can switch into Spanish as well if  it's needed or somebody okay so I will continue in English and so let's like start like check  your understanding so of what we saw until now so

grants like example so anybody here is not  really aware of a grant what a grants program is educate that's a no you all know so  and not so for example we have here like a situation in which we have  a lot of money and basically we are like running a grants program and we want  to separate each basically each of the I mean the grants program into strategy  consensus coordination and incentives so if we go to strategy what do you think is  like the first part that you need to address we've uh kind of given you the answer on this one  already uh in terms of like uh just taking a step

back real quick these decks are experimental uh we  tried to associate the suit to each one of these categories but they're really just a brain tool so  um you're not limited to what's necessarily on the cards uh some of the categories may be fuzzy and  it could be a consensus mechanism so again keep an open mind and we'd love feedback so if you have  good feedback and you want a deck make sure to talk to us afterwards and we'll trade information  for for goods but um like Ellie was saying for the strategy then we're saying that ah funds  that are idle are wasted this is the approach and perspective we want to look at writing a  proposal for a grants program so what's next from there what's a what's a consensus  mechanism then that the Dow can say you

know is this a good use of idle funds  or is it not how do you even start to look at idle funds so just somebody shout  out some way that consensus can be reached did I break something yeah so nothing nothing with the cards  right now just shout out some process

or some system that can be used to to  come up with consensus within a group voting perfect perfect so again for consensus  then we're not going to look at a committee we're not going to crowdsource it we're  not going to take data from Twitter which could all be consensus mechanisms and we're  going to say a vote so then what would be an example of a coordination primitive  that we can use for our grants program nah I I would say an application right an  application is a way that has a starting point an end point it exchanges information and then  there's probably some other things that need to be in there as well who's evaluating the application  uh how should the evalu uh the evaluation happen uh is it in Seasons or not is it just a rolling  window these are some of the things that you'll

be talking with in your group to build mechanisms  again so the last one then is the incentive so what's an incentive for the grants program to  to function what's the motivation for people to participate money there we go but how is the money  being handed uh out is it Milestone based is it lump sum up front so then the team can disappear  and never deliver is it no money for the first five years and it has to demonstrate value again  what are we trying to achieve it all goes back to the strategy and it's just let's have funds be  mobile let's let's use the resources that we have so here are some more examples of uh the  four categories of a proposal if you will and again the way that the the concepts we've  been talking about relate you have Primitives

which you now have a deck of cards in front of  you they they have some ideas of what Primitives are they then get bundled into mechanisms but  if we have uh just a ton of money mechanism or money uh focused Primitives in use then how does  that relate to a strategy how does that you know actually create coordination when you sit down  and write a proposal the way that we look at it at maker is that the strategy which is really  focused on the mission and the vision and what the organization cares about is then agreed upon  by some source of decision making whether it's appointed facilitators or it's a token holder  Vote or if it's a community Forum poll which we really don't do anymore but again these are just  tools that we have used in the past once there's

consensus on what we're doing how do we do it you  know is it a black box that's been a problem that makers had for years and the whole point of end  game is to really open up the black box and make operations a lot more available for improvement as  well as transparency and then last but not least is why are we doing all this why should people  care well most of the time it's money but at the same time if you can build reputation around  creating quality products or if you can again like align actors so that there's more intrinsic  motivations uh we'll save that for the next Workshop I guess but just to uh again demonstrate  how these things are tied together we're not going to play a game with the cards so uh again just to  reinforce these are just brainstorming tools uh if

you would like to look up the definition there's a  QR code on the back of the box as well as the URL uh and and again if you want to come up with your  own definitions within your group totally fine don't don't be limited to what's just printed  on there yeah yeah again feedback's welcome so if we were to use the cards to do  the exercise we were just talking about one strategy of making sure that there's Fair  funding and fair opportunity for everybody is using quadratic funding with ranked Choice voting  pairing it with time-bound funding so you're only going to get money for a certain period of time  and then incentives are usually the heavy ones where you need to have some sort of consistent  stream investing if you deliver again just an

example of what the output could look like  for the previous question that we just asked so let's play a game yeah so let's start  with the games and we start the first one which is because we are like relating the game  to like preparing everything for for a barbecue so and so first part so we are simulating a poker  game in this Workshop so in this practice so what you are gonna do is like firstly we're gonna so  I will explain like briefly this so basically it's like poker we have five cards each one of  you you have also like two cards additionally and then you like basically you turn all the cards  like first like these three cards and these other

two and then you're gonna start like turning like  turning all of them so basically and then to start like building a Dao let's say like this with  these four mechanisms that we talked about and um and basically that's it like that's the  first part um what else should we yeah that's foreign mechanism

additional foreign La Mesa important foreign

see exactly um yes I see perdon is hello foreign

all right guys let's spend let's spend about  five more minutes on this and then we'll come back as a group and then really get into the  main part of the workshop right after this all right let's take the next minute  to wrap up and come back as a group share your last ideas what what Okay one minute  more keep going keep going okay uh we'll try this again wrap  up the last ideas [Music]

we uh we're doing this one more time  after this exercise and like that's when it really matters so I think  it'll be a little bit more more fun all right so just to recap as we're starting to  come back as a group what this exercise should have shown everybody is uh proposal Rising  writing isn't the easiest thing in the world uh it should also show you that if you're limited to what's in front of you it may not be the  best time so you want to look and try to find

the best parts from other ecosystems but let's  hear from you what's uh every group share one thing they they learned or were confused about or  at least one or two where's my talking of people sure sure that's a good point so the the  concepts of the cards weren't readily available uh or weren't known uh I don't know  when everybody first started their career in web 3 but uh Merkel drops probably weren't very  relevant to you when you first started liquidity mining was a big thing years ago so if you're  entering today you do know it but when it first

emerged who knows and then also at the same  time if you're creating New Primitives it's hard to communicate that with just a label so I  think that those are a good takeaway and it is frustrating but it's a healthy process to at least  identify it know that you're not alone yeah please thank you Roger um we started with two  cards like uh in the strategy part we found a prediction market and secret ballot  and we take these two cards like a point to start building the strategy of the the grants  uh program and in the coordination part we had a motor grade time bound time-bound founding  very very credential and oversight and we

discard like two cards like about organizations  like token inflation and toggle Street airdrops we take it out this card because we we think  that it's not important and in the incentive part we have um founding Source like it's  um some obviously and Bounty part for like a way to give the gram to the to the teams and  they they show they all the tasks by a bounty so the grant you can control all the tasks  in this bounty strategy thank you very much no that that was really nice and a lot  of detail and hard to summarize just uh

from memory but the thing that I took away is  you guys really dug into the the mechanisms and tried to find the intent behind them  instead of just saying let's use this or let's use this and and the the most important  thing is you made a narrative behind it so all right so that was again the  the lessons here were just to get you exposure to Primitives to mechanisms and  then try to wrap that up in proposal writing uh we'd like to uh think see latinum  for having us out here so let's try to do some work for them today and what we'd  like to challenge everybody here within

your groups is to come up with mechanisms  for managing uh public and common goods so what what you see in front of you here is like  the five steps to proposal writing first it starts with the discussion typically within your team  or on the Forum it identifies a problem and then you start whiteboarding stuff out you just start  exploring Solutions and have a loose structure to take that to the next level mature wireframes and  actually defining a process from those discussions start to emerge this is typically when you start  to see it hit the Forum uh it's at a point now where you could share ideas and ask for feedback  and once you have feedback you start to layer in

the details you try to make it more tangible to  your point to really make sure that you know if it is a new idea you're you're defining it very  clearly or it's practical or finding the holes in it and then last but not least it goes into  to MIP form or bylaws or or a formal framework so what we'd like to try to do today is just  get through the first two parts of having the discussion and coming up with a loose white  board or wireframe for uh one of these six prompts that relates to funding the commons  uh there's concepts of overuse and depletion uh popular pollution is something that I  think everybody has experience with access and Equity but at the same time as long as it  fits within the theme uh the goal of what we

produce today is trying to put Primitives into  a mechanism that we can share with seedlatum to then take to uh retrogrants uh or some  of the other ecosystems that they play in so to do this what we've done is we've made  this template and if you hit the next thing there's a QR code you're able to scan the  QR code with your phone go to Google Docs and then start writing notes or bullet points  within each uh category you do have the cards if you need some help brainstorming but it's not  about the cards it's about defining small little bite-sized pieces of a proposal and putting them  into the proper category so that at the end of

the workshop you have a high level strategy for  saying dealing with pollution in a concrete way something like that could be creating a grant  for people to buy EVS or or doing research into some other topic or or promoting people to take  their bike to work instead of driving your car from there how do you achieve consensus to say the  strategy is working or we are executing properly what's the coordination behind that and  then last but not least how do you create an incentive mechanism to then put it into  a MIP and then hopefully have it get passed and the Dow recognize it as part of the  work that the organization's taking on

so again uh I I think this is where the workshop  gets optional but we'd love to have you all participate uh I'll be happy to walk around and  answer questions but again the the cards are just a tool what we'd like to do is scan the QR code  find a uh um a slide or a number uh there there's yeah they're one through nine so if you see  somebody riding in there don't delete their stuff but find your slide come up with a high  level proposal and uh we thank you for your time we're also uh happy to hear feedback at this point  or again uh we will be sending the secede lattim to have them implemented uh potentially in their  ecosystems if we come up with something powerful so for this we're gonna have around like 30  minutes so you can think you can write you

can do wherever so we have time for this here  are some examples if you want to and I posted basically this the QR code in the city latinum  group so you can actually like it's Elisa and there is like the link so you can go directly  into the the PowerPoint to so I know most of you she could be tired and so before leaving please  this is the pop-up of the workshop you are all invited to give feedback to meet your your proof  of attendance and of course to talk with us and to like to connect and this is our Twitter and  we also have telegram so you're all welcome