The First Step Toward AssangeDAO Governance

Feb 12

The AssangeDAO Snapshot space has been established at: https://snapshot.org/#/assangedao.eth.

Snapshot is currently limited as far as who can submit a proposal for voting. This is because AssangeDAO needs to ratify its governance model before the flood gates are open for generic proposals. The community members that initially have authority to submit proposals are a de facto set of AIP submitters, whose sole responsibility will be submitting proposals related to establishing AssangeDAO's governance:

parazyd.eth
E (0xB62D7052F3E0Deb75a2d91A3526cA0A5934537df)
Z (0x0BF72198CA3c215fD2F7bc041824dF97CBb7aDF5)
Kali (0x2168284Dc81f39B1869575DeB68a1716Cf9F4657)
Aphidia (0x1A35fDBd975cF764c043D0F737CD86F4d9FEB160)
LP (0xb0A15FA284aa926F9AD707335E0a90dBe08F93a2)
JB (0x9234dA5B588A8FE47DfEb9a7852d49399CfB5a94)
fatalm.eth
MD (0x00c07cb8991381d11553e6e6372e3bb4d8919976)
WN (0x2f0959C4fA0e168c7D184FE2543919EB1C39EC8B)
PQ (0x5a575A52eaEbDC906d8087991Cc445d27B13ed3E)
AssangeDAO multisig (0x7BE99ca4E6893ef57cf349ab56307628100feA00)

It's possible for anyone to create a Snapshot space and link it to $JUSTICE, however the assangedao.eth space is the official Snapshot as it is linked to AssangeDAO’s Gnosis Safe (0x7BE99ca4E6893ef57cf349ab56307628100feA00).

Governance Discussion Topics

These are some initial questions we think are important to discuss so we can work towards a governance model that effectively aligns all stakeholders in the community. This list is not comprehensive. In the coming days, we will iterate further on the questions below and create a series of forum threads. For topics that do not have clear consensus, we will create surveys in Snapshot to get a better understanding of the community sentiment.

1. Advisory council (aka Assange Family unit aka Consensus Unit)

Should there be an advisory council?

If there should be an advisory council, should the advisory council have veto power?

If they should have veto power, what are the limits of their veto power?

If there is not an advisory council, what mechanism will be used to mitigate adversarial actors that want to harm Julian Assange and slow down his liberation?

2. Community moderation

What rules and standards do we want to enforce for moderating the AssangeDAO Discord and forum?

What spam prevention techniques should AssangeDAO implement for its Snapshot?

3. $JUSTICE

Should the option be left open for more $JUSTICE to be minted (by DAO vote) or should the ability to mint more tokens be revoked?

4. Multisig

How many signers should the multisig have?
What are the requirements for being a candidate to become elected as a multisig signer?
What are the term lengths of multisig signers?

5. Proposal validity

What are the criteria for determining if a proposal is valid for Snapshot voting?

6. Snapshot parameters

Should there be a quorum, and if so, what should it be?
What should be proposal duration be?
Should there be a cooldown period, which applies to a proposal's enforcement?
For single choice votes, what approval percentage is required to pass?
For multiple choice votes, what approval percentage is required to pass?

7. Voting cycles

Should AssangeDAO have a rolling voting process, where proposals can be submitted any day, or should AssangeDAO vote on a cyclical basis (e.g. every month)?
If cyclical, should there be a limit to the amount of proposals valid for voting per voting cycle?
If rolling votes, how much advanced notice should community members have before a proposal is open for voting on Snapshot?

The First Series of Votes

For the first series of votes, AssangeDAO needs to ratify a governance model. We call this AIP-0001. To do this we will have a five step process to ratify a governance model.

1. It will be important to first have discussions on the topics in the previous section and surveys to measure community sentiment

2. Next, we will encourage the community to break off into working groups to develop governance proposals for how this DAO can work. If the proposal includes electing new members, the elections should come in a subsequent vote after the model itself is ratified.

3. Working groups should submit the proposals to the forum for review.

4. Vote #1 - Includes all governance models submitted on forum as options

5. Vote #2 - Includes the top 2 governance models from Vote #1 as options. (Vote #2 will occur if there were 3+ governance models in Vote #1. If not, then Vote #1 will select the governance model. ) The option with greater than 50% will be the winning governance model.

(Note: We had to invoke an earlier version of AIP-0001 to make some decisions before $JUSTICE voting was enabled, but the goal now is to replace/upgrade AIP-0001 with a community-voted model.)

Second set of votes

The next set of votes will be related to establishing the core team that satisfies the governance model that was ratified. This may include:

Electing an operational lead
Electing a community lead
Electing multisig signers
Electing AIP editors
Electing members of any other governance organisms, such as the advisory council or a community governance panel

Initial Snapshot Parameters

To be able to vote in an initial governance model, the following Snapshot parameters will be used:

Vote duration: 72 hrs
Quorum: 20% of circulating $JUSTICE supply
Two choices: Winning option needs 50+% of $JUSTICE that voted
Multiple choice: TBD (let's discuss)

After these series of votes have taken place to determine the community governance model, new parameters will be executed by the current Gnosis Safe to adhere to any possible changes.