KIP-35: Decentralizing KIPs & Snapshot

khyezr

Summary

Form a Klimate Review Committee (KRC) with authority to advance Requests for Comments
(RFCs) to formal KIPs, and open Snapshot permissions to token holders.

Motivation

In the current governance process, contributors from Policy act as a de-facto Review Committee for KlimaDAO: evaluating the community’s feedback on RFCs, drafting KIPs that will be put to a forum vote, and escalating passed forum proposals to Snapshot.

While anyone can post a Request for Comment (RFC) on the governance forum, KlimaDAO Improvement Proposals (KIPs) and Snapshot votes are curated by Policy contributors. This prevents spam and ensures a smooth, orderly governance process, but also limits the ability of high-value aligned community members in being able to contribute directly to the growth of the protocol. This proposal clarifies the path by which proposals may advance through KlimaDAO governance, and further decentralizes the protocol’s operations.

Proposal

Formation of Klimate Review Committee (KRC)

a) Create a vetting process for identifying aligned actors from the community, in order to grant forum permissions to community members that will add value to the protocol.

Proof of Participation: Aligned community members will have:
Demonstrated history of meaningful engagement on the forum and/or Discord (of the past 5 KIPs, engaged with 3 or more).
Voted on past proposals via Snapshot (of the past 5 KIPs, voted in 3 or more)
Long-term commitment, as demonstrated by at least a 50% meaningful engagement rate (excluding generic responses like "I'm for this KIP") on governance proposals (forum and/or Discord) over the past year (May 2022 - May 2023).

Proof of Value: In order to grant an individual forum permissions, they will need to demonstrate value. This can be done in a multitude of ways. One way to demonstrate value in this context is to have your own idea for evolving the protocol, discussing that idea publicly in Discord, and gaining the support of the community or contributors. Another way could be to have insight into existing RFCs and proactively assist in vetting proposals. Proof of Value is a creative step that anyone can approach with their own skill set, and will require a Functional Steward or member of Core to sponsor.

b) Community members who successfully demonstrate both Proof of Participation and Proof of Value will be inducted into the newly formed Klimate Review Committee (KRC) and given the opportunity to advance RFCs to KIPs.

c) KRC will have the authority to advance an RFC to a KIP proposal via a shared account that requires a majority consensus to post. To ensure transparency and accountability, discussions by KRC will have a public, read-only channel in Discord where deliberations and voting outcomes will be visible to the community. This channel will provide a degree of oversight, ensuring that any actions or decisions made by the KRC are visible and accessible to the community.

d) KRC members will serve 3-month terms, can serve multiple terms, and require a majority vote of the KRC to be removed prematurely. This ensures that the KRC remains a dynamic and accountable body that is responsive to the needs of the community and the overall governance goals of KlimaDAO.

Broaden Snapshot Permissions

Any token holder with 20 wsKLIMA (~$915 USD at time of writing) will have the ability to advance a passed KIP proposal to Snapshot.

Implications

Increasing decentralization always comes with risk. While it is essential to act with integrity and progressively increase decentralization, each step towards this goal must be taken deliberately and with careful consideration. This proposal provides a framework for opening up the latter stages of the KIP proposal process to the community, and hopefully incentivizes greater participation in KlimaDAO governance.

KIPs advance based on “one account, one vote” polling on the forum. If a KIP proposal passes with a 3/5 majority vote (60% minimum), it is escalated to a token-weighted Snapshot vote, where one KLIMA or KLIMA-equivalent (e.g. sKLIMA) counts as one vote. Under the current governance process, KIP proposals that pass the forum vote will be advanced to a Snapshot vote by a Policy contributor. In the new proposed framework, any token holder with at least 20 wsKLIMA can advance KIP proposals that pass the forum vote to Snapshot.

Furthermore, advancing proposals directly to Snapshot without going through the informal forum vote should only be considered under extreme and urgent circumstances. Any proposals that skirt or avoid the governance process should be viewed with extreme skepticism by Snapshot token voters.

Implementation

Assuming this proposal passes, any community member who demonstrates Proof-of-Engagement and Proof-of-Value will be eligible to apply to join the KRC. A community member must have a Core member or Steward vouch for their Proof-of-Value claim and sponsor them until the KRC has enough members to be formally established. The lower bound for a functional KRC is 5 members; the upper bound is 11 members.

Once the KRC is formally established, future addition and removal of members would be determined within the KRC itself via a majority vote, subject to the specified upper and lower bounds of headcount. The application process and required qualifications outlined above would remain in place, but with final admission decided by KRC members.

The KRC will operate in public. A channel will be established in the KlimaDAO discord server, writable by KRC members, and readable by the community. Each KRC cohort will elect an administrator that is responsible for carrying out the will of the KRC and operating the KRC forum account accordingly i.e. posting passed RFC proposals and rejecting failed RFC proposals.

A Snapshot strategy will be configured allowing addresses holding 20 wsKLIMA or more to advance KIP proposals on the forum to Snapshot. A Snapshot setting will be enabled creating a 24-hour voting delay to deter any unexpected proposals.

Polling Period

The polling process begins now and will end at 18:00 UTC on 16/05/2023. Assuming the forum proposal is approved, it will advance to Snapshot.

optima

Further decentralizing governance & snapshot permissions are great steps towards a self-sufficient, autonomous organization.

This is the direction we want to be trending. Fully support.

TheLawyer

Totally agreed about moving towards decentralization, but in my opinion, the minimum holding should be higher, such as 200 or even 1000 wsKlima.
This merely to avoid spam.
if we want to keep it low, such as 20wsKlima, it should also need an NFT system of proof of value/participation

optima

TheLawyer "Participation trophy" ERC-721+ something like a "Valued Klimate" ERC-721 is an interesting idea for formalizing the proof criteria.

Proof-of-participation & proof-of-value are intended to be gating criteria for entry to the KRC, but they could be expanded to be additional gating criteria for Snapshot posts as well if we build out a POAP system or Hats tree around this.

Will require a bit of tinkering, minting, and managing the ERC-721's -> but a Snapshot strategy could be expanded upon to check for a balance of {atleast 20wsKLIMA (or more, if we change this minimum), corresponding ERC-721's}

The main considerations on my end are:
a) minimizing friction in the system,
b) we likely wouldn't have a functional system in place prior to KIP-35 passing

That being said, it certainly could be implemented and added as additional snapshot gating criteria.

In terms of implementation - maintaining a bespoke POAP system is intuitive and something other DAOs have done in one shape or another, but also perhaps this is something that could be more easily implemented as a branch of a Hats Tree.

optima

TheLawyer We can also provide options on the Snapshot poll for 20 wsKLIMA/200 wsKLIMA/2000 wsKLIMA
as a more direct approach to gating future snapshots

MarcusAurelius

optima agreed, I don't have a strong sense for what a reasonable cutoff should be that prevents spam or abuse but still allows greater involvement in governance and a mechanism for emergency proposals to go straight to Snapshot

wegklima

I agree with the proposal KIP-35.

Alanos86

Will there be remuneration for the committee members or some other additional costs for DAO?

optima

Alanos86 No direct remuneration. In terms of benefits to participants, I'd think of the KRC stepping-stone to get more involved in the DAO, and as a pool of talent that Policy & DAO could pull from in future hiring rounds.