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  • Request for Comment: Internal Governance Model [KIP-19]

Honestly I hesitated to write this. It's evident in the Contributor Server from the lack of a widely inclusive and transparent preparation of this KIP; the sudden nature in which it was revealed to us (barely 1 week ago); and the absence of objective data warranting this KIP, I regret the Core & Council's agenda is to pass this KIP no matter the reasoned objection. Should it pass, I chose not to continue contributing in KlimaDAO (for reasons explained below). But if we dissenters don't speak up, I think we are doing a disservice to the community, and if Core & Council won't listen to us, maybe they will listen to you.

I love KlimaDAO. I've been neglecting my IRL job for a few months, working mostly 7 days a week. I've been so impressed at the positive contributor work culture; how much talent and energy there is; and how relatively organized and efficient we've been as a mostly self-managed DAO. But don't take my word for it: in debriefing with Eco, their number one feedback was how blown away they were at our professionalism, organization, and delivery.

You may or may not know the DAO is currently organized in several "departments", including Engineering, Policy, Operations, Partnerships, Marketing, Creative, and Community. Each of the departments have leads, and most all the departments are broken out into areas of focus, which ordinary contributors have taken subsidiary responsibility for. Most of the departments also have weekly syncs/agendas, KPIs, project management systems, and work flow processes in place. This was all achieved organically and consensually. Frankly, its natural emergence was inspiring in both its relative smoothness and effectiveness.

All material decisions at the moment go to the community for approval. Internally the groups decide collectively which these include (apart from those that come from the community). And we continue to ship, whether its several partners signed up to KI and in the pipeline; one marketing & creative campaign after the other; a new website, offset dApp, and beta climate dashboard; community events and bounties; and policy that is among the best in Web3.

KIP-10 set out the historical compensation expenditure for contributors, along with average and top earners. For now, ordinary contributors' compensation are decided by their department leads estimated based on their monthly work portfolio, although any contributor can discuss with their lead if their pay hadn't aligned with expectation. Ordinary contributors' pay was published inside the Contributor Server last month, although the Core's and Council's are yet to be disclosed.

So this is all to say, the DAO is organized, we have a strong culture, and we get stuff done at high quality. And this has all manifested on a relatively decentralized basis. I think that's beautiful.

Suffice to say, a number of contributors are scratching our heads why do we need this KIP-19? It's not because we're disorganized or inefficient.

Hugh wrote that we need to find product-market fit. Great, we are all for that! He linked a description of our Klima Infinity goals, which can go for a dedicated KIP and delegate the discretion to Product to develop and iterate.

Unfortunately, there is no reason for this KIP as is, which is too vague without empirical justification. It passes far too much authority to the Core & Council, centralizing KlimaDAO into what will essentially become a company (aka KlimaCorp). But with less compensation to attract talented contributors, less accountability by the new "Board" and "C-Suite", and increasing risk of contributors' personal liabilities instead of limiting them & failing the Howey Test (i.e. whether KLIMA is a security). And contributors lose the independence and agency that brought us together and gave the DAO our creativity and dynamism. We should be lowering barriers in the DAO, not stratifying it further.

Left unsaid in this KIP anticipating its newly gained powers is that a number of contributors are already being suddenly cut without real explanation or prior warning. These include people who left their jobs encouraged (by Core/Council) to come work full-time for KlimaDAO. The operating budget had mostly been overseen by Core & Council and last month we came close to a DAO wallet runway (used to pay contributors/advisors, seed liquidity, etc.) of less than 2 months. Putting the DAO first, these difficulties if anything show we need to devolve recruitment/compensation to the contributor teams, who themselves should be empowered to prepare quarterly budgets to propose for the validation of the community.

I joined KlimaDAO to drive forward climate action and democratized coordination. We do not have to sacrifice the latter to achieve the former.

Accordingly, I am voting against this KIP-19 and suggested it be broken out into:

1) Validation & delegation of Klima Infinity product go-to-market
2) Immediate & long-term plan to improve DAO wallet runway
3) Endorsement of mission, vision, values for KlimaDAO
4) Detailing KlimaDAO working organization & governance

in that order with a reasonable few months' pre-defined & consensual timeline.

I would also form a governance council responsible for shepherding this through with equal representation from Core, Council, Ordinary Contributors, and Select Community Members, with as much of the work done in public as possible.

In terms of hierarchy/prioritization of stakeholders in preparing 1-4 above, to me we should prioritize: 1) Community; 2) Contributors; 3) Investors; 4) Partners; 5) Public Good (I realize 1 & 3 have overlap, but Community I'd define as active Klimates, versus 3 are more hands-off speculators).

Long live KlimaDAO! I love you all, and it's been an honor contributing to the DAO. Thank you for the opportunity <3.

P.S. I would post to the public KlimaDAO Discord for the community's information the recordings of the Contributor AMA calls discussing the reorganization document leading up to this KIP-19.

P.P.S. For full disclosure, until last week, I was proposed (although not yet formalized) to join Council for Partnerships, so am not opposing this KIP having been among those planned to be "let go", but on merit and principle, in that it'd make the DAO more fragile rather than resilient.

    rittaaka you are quoting the (controversial) former CTO effectively pushed out from Sushi, who I think is among the last people our DAO should take advice from. Sushi succeeded initially because it was community first, whereas Uni was centralized. Then the Core of Sushi (old and new members) gradually centralized powers, and increasingly Sushi became more erratic, shipping various products scattershot. Eventually Sushi contributors started speaking out, despite alleged silencing and repercussion internally for doing so (like bullying, reduced pay, and/or getting fired), while Sushi Core became more secretive and accrued more compensation. Finally, large VCs like 3AC and Alameda dumped SUSHI after 0xMaki left and its network value crashed, having not recovered since, and I understand some/other Sushi jumped ship.

    If anything, Sushi is a cautionary tale of what not to do!

      pitbullish I am working as a foot soldier, and I want to be rewarded according to the impact of my output.

      My output will become more impactful when I am able to work in a focused environment, that is enabled by good organizational structure.

      The Roman army was so effective specifically because of the organizational structure and hierarchy that enabled it to run as a machine.

      I think KlimaDAO contributor org should be meritocratic. I believe Core should also get more benefit of trust to uphold the meritocracy based on how the org has evolved so far.

        GolanTrevize That’s a straw man argument, could pick any other one of thousands of case studies and examples to illustrate why good, moderately hierarchical organisational structure leads to the best outcomes in accelerated, high impact org building.

        Fundamentally I believe in progressive decentralization, we should not get ahead of ourselves in considering how early and small KlimaDAO is when looking at the overall roadmap and vision.

        rittaaka

        I don't know how it is in your working group, but many of the road blocks at that me and my peers have faced are because of people who got into the DAO before us telling us we could not do initiatives.
        One example of that was Poker Night, the Community team was told by someone, who had no proven credentials and was only in a position of power because he got in earlier than the organizers of the event, not to do the first Poker Night. We did anyway, it was a smashing success and was the foundation for much community and partnership building to this day.
        The folx that pushed that initiative showed more merit IMO. For meritocraticocracy to work there needs to be an even playing field.

        Rome may not have lasted last long as it did if the army/workers did not challenge the satus quo once or twice.

        BTW the tag lines one the voting options are clearly bias. In a fair election it would just say For/Against without any connotation. Saying "maintain informal status quo" is misleading. I would like to see a new system based on actual meritocracy.

          rittaaka if you are for meritocracy, you should be against this KIP. This is aristocracy “straw manning” superior efficiency (like all authoritarian org), and it’s misleading our community if not false that what is described in the KIP is at all the status quo. Management of the DAO should be determined openly bottom-up, starting with our community at the center, not exclusively top-down by an illuminati at its head.

          If BTC & ETH modeled their protocol governance on 2,000 year old empire and 100 year old industrial organizations, they would have utterly failed. We are a network, not a government or business

            GolanTrevize hmm I think the proposed model is anything but authoritarian. Core itself is extremely diverse with 10+ members, who are holding themselves accountable to the 2 other leadership groupings (policy and the functional stewards). The KIP framework also remains in place.

            I see this on the flip side: this new model shields contributors from unstructured workflows, conflicting priorities, and burnout.

              I have quite similar concerns about this as others and I don't even know which option to choose.
              I'm all for the formalization of roles, responsibilities, I'm interested in the discussion about delegating decisions.
              But this RFC includes one solution as well which I'm not in favour of, so I'm going to vote against.

              I haven’t work for the DAO even though I applied. I feel clearly defined roles, projects, tasks and timeframes are entirely a good thing. If contributors or ‘employees’ are underperforming and underdelivering then it makes sense for higher responsibility contributors or ‘managers’ to be able to review this and make a decision on those team members futures. That’s in the interest of the community as a whole for efficiency and growth. The DAO model is a great one but I have noticed a lack of transparency in tasks, clear definitions and accountability. It’s idealistic at present. Again, emphasise on a great model but needs some tweaking. Organised management and people with a higher level of responsibility/weight still remaining within a decentralised architecture doesn’t seem like a bad thing. And appreciate this has been put to public discussion and vote.

              GolanTrevize If BTC & ETH modeled their protocol governance on 2,000 year old empire and 100 year old industrial organizations, they would have utterly failed. We are a network, not a government or business

              ETH and BTC don't have protocol governance as you say. Why is this? The governance system (or lack there of) was designed to support the intended purpose of the platform: providing a neutral layer 1.

              What is the purpose of Klima? To accelerate decarbonization in an effort to combat climate change. Its very nature is a goal which one could argue is not neutral in nature. Klima is a protocol built on the application layer that is biased towards an outcome.

              Comparing these two is rather akin to comparing apples and oranges, particularly when you leave out inconvenient details like how tight the purse of the Ethereum Foundation was/is and how many have argued this would kill Ethereum. I am here to tell everyone that Ethereum is in fact not dead today.

              GolanTrevize and it’s misleading our community if not false that what is described in the KIP is at all the status quo.

              I strongly disagree with this statement and denounce your accusations of deceit.

                ChazSchmidt

                This is not deceit to say that adding headers to voting option is creating a biases, I learned that in middle school. I denounce your denouncement of deceit. Please don't call people liars, some of use are trying to have a civil debate here.

                Eth and Klima both have goals and governance, I fail to see why this argument is relevant. TBH Eth is far more successful and decentralized than Klima. Please elaborate on how KlimaDAO can better reflect the Eth governance model, there may be some insight on how to resolve this contention in this discussion.

                pitbullish

                "In a fair election it would just say For/Against without any connotation. Saying "maintain informal status quo" is misleading. I would like to see a new system based on actual meritocracy."

                This is a fair point, but writing KIPs in a neutral manner I do think is a learning process. What I've been seeing is a move towards more neutral language over previous KIPs, and I have nothing but confidence weighted language will gradually be less of a problem as we professionalize even more than currently. Minor nitpick, I'm all for letting the larger questions get debated here and see where the sparks that fly when people think together takes us.

                rittaaka

                KIP-19 is a way to achieve this, but not the way. It is very telling that the KIP includes no hard data on why this is needed. Core is essentially saying, "We messed up by creating a DAO and organizing it wrong and hiring too many people, but trust us we got it from here."

                I believe in KlimaDAO contributors and I believe in the KlimaDAO community. There is no reason to concentrate power for the organization to be well run.

                It's disappointing that centralization is the solution KlimaDAO's leadership settled on. I thought we all shared the values of Web3.

                Everyone understands that we need better goals alignment in order to speed up work and decision making.

                The question is how? I am the first to admin that I don't have a silver bullet with a ready solution. This is a DAO so experimentation is a good thing, not a bad one.

                What bothers me is that we are not experimenting. We basically have ONE option, which is not super creative. I understand that things have been chaotic and hyped since October and with the market downturn, a certain level of panic started earlier this month. I get that, but the opportunity to fix things should not be wasted. It makes no sense to vote for this KIP and then work on a different structure and vote for it in 2 months.

                Instead of turning 180 degrees to a structured, centralized hierarchy (I understand this is a knee-jerk reaction to chaos), I would like to also see additional options explored.

                Not later, now. Otherwise we are kicking the can and risk that not much will change.

                I would call for the decentralization journey to start with the approach on this very issue. Right now, we get 1 option to vote yes/no for. I'd like to see 2-3 alternative options per section (product, org chart, general roadmap) with their pros and cons, which will steer the debate towards the ideas instead of people's subjective opinions.

                Yes, it will take more time.
                Yes, it will require more work.
                But it will lead to a much better ultimate result and organizational learning, which the current proposal won't yield.

                The most critical issue - the DAO runway has now been somewhat relieved with the current market movement, which gives us some room. I don't think anyone opposes budget cuts when they are needed, but let's figure out a way to both save the financial aspect of the DAO AND the people aspect. Instead of pushing people away as it happens in traditional corporate structures when things are not well, let's debate how we keep them and even figure out how to expand the teams within the limited budgets via self organization, incentives and self-initiative.

                This way, we will turn outwards to the 60k community and lay the fundamentals that anyone who wants to help out, can do so and there is a way for the DAO to support it. Right now, we risk creating a structured silo and put a gap between DAO management and the community.

                This works with trad orgs. However, as I've often written, the community is the DAO. The community has funded the majority of the DAO's treasury, DAO wallet (hence contributor and other expenses), LPs and are holding the financial risk and reward in the DAO.

                Naturally, all of us want it to succeed. The same way that Klima is at the cutting edge of refi and innovating on products and services in the carbon market, let's be on the cutting innovation edge of community and contributor involvement. The risk reward looks much better to me.

                Thanks all

                  KlimaDAO is a startup, and being successful at one is insanely hard. This comes from having built multiple startups before, and having worked in multiple DAOs professionally.

                  To do this, we need to be hyper organized, ruthlessly prioritize, and execute flawlessly. Trying to move too quickly on our decentralization journey will slow us down and put our ability to succeed at risk.

                    100% in favour. A modicum of a structure is needed. completely flat organizations simply don't work at scale. As for decenteralization, that can only be achieved through complete on-chain governance and then different Organizations/individuals can fight for implementation of their ideas using their capital. DAO doesn't necessarily mean the org has to be flat and with no top-down guidance, imo, it just means the control is fluid based on who can command the most votes. Right now it may be this particular "DAO" lead by this Core. tomorrow a proposal by someone else can be passed even if this particular DAO opposes it, as long as the vote is in favor.

                    GolanTrevize "I regret the Core & Council's agenda is to pass this KIP no matter the reasoned objection." If they can convince the community to vote for it, isn't that the whole point? in decenteralized governance, if your proposal can garner the most votes, you get to implement that proposal, right?
                    The obvious solution is, if you love the project, but disagree with the DAO as it stands, start your own governance org and try to push proposals through that are modelled along the lines you think things should work.

                    PS no matter the result of the vote I hope talented people like you continue working for the DAO. your contribution has been phenomenal imo.

                    Hugh I don't think anyone is disputing the second paragraph. On treating Klima as a high speed startup, let me ask you this: do you find a DAO to be an appropriate structure for achieving this and how would you use the current structure to amplify the goal you stated above? thanks

                    In order for me to vote in favor of this KIP I would need to see actual quantifiable evidence/examples where not having this centralized power has hurt progress and I would like to see some sort of an expiration date or milestone where we can terminate this centralized power and go back to a DAO.

                    Otherwise this only proves the point that DAO's don't work.

                    I can understand the need for this level of control, only if you are saying that the DAO is in a state of chaos and this is time for "Marshal Law". But this needs to be justified by evidence and a timeline needs to be established for abolishing this "Marshal Law".

                    If no timeline or not plans to do so, this needs to be clearly explained with quantifiable benefits to the Klima holders.