• General

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

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.

                                          Disclosure: I'm NOT a core contributors, simply part of the broader community.

                                          Extremely good points were raised in the comment so far!

                                          My two cents on this is that at the pace of the project, markets and Web3 ecosystem, decisions inevitably need to be made swiftly for various reasons (market conditions, new regulations off-chain, new investors, new clients, ...) as stated in this proposal.

                                          Of course providing such power to few people create centralization which is against the whole DAO philosophy in many ways. But, I believe a functional and trustable "by the book" DAO takes time to build around a stable well working protocol and evolving community. Lets not forget we are 6 months old.

                                          We are all working on not only building a sustainable protocol with this immense goal of combating climate change but also building products interfacing with various entities (corporate, individual, contributors, ...). I believe that such endeavor require to be able to adapt quickly and have room to change and innovate without requesting 1 week of debates and voting on each single initiative.

                                          As a community, we simply must trust the core teams to do a proper job with strong accountability and a well defined transparency framework so our trust does not erode over time. There is no way around that else we would all be on the council.

                                          I do understand that the whole point of a DAO here is that holders are ultimately in charge but maybe there is a balance we can all find here which is what is being proposed until the project becomes strong and stable?

                                          In my honest opinion, until KLIMA has a marketcap of 1B$ (arbitrary high number as an image) and is fairly stable in terms of revenue streams and mass adoption, I believe it is OK to consolidate some decision making to the core teams and once we reached that stable point, we can move back to a strong decentralize DAO when fast changes and daily rapid responses become less frequent.

                                          In short, we can stick to psycho-rigid maxims of "A DAO is such and such because that was once written like that" or allow ourselves to work towards "Our DAO is what we want it to be" and it is OK to deviate from the great book of DAOs. This is what essentially I understand from this KIP considering the incredibly unique context and project that KlimaDAO is.

                                          I believe many comments here raise good issues and I would love to see them address such as https://forum.klimadao.finance/d/48-request-for-comment-internal-governance-model-kip-19/2

                                          Once polished and clarified, I think this KIP is something that makes sense in the very unique context of KlimaDAO.

                                          Go KlimaDAO! Go Community! This project is fantastic.

                                          Sirob 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.

                                          This reflects my own sentiments almost perfectly.

                                          Discussing different options and having more clarity over org chart, roles, and decision making responsibilities and processes are, for me, prerequisites for the formalization of any kind of structure. As is a higher degree of transparency around the status quo: who are the contributors, what are their roles and what type of compensation they receive?

                                          I have no issue with (some degree of) centralisation, in fact I think it's much needed for any kind of org with more than a handful of people. (Although probably not absolutely required, as exemplified by how Valve was structured and governed while growing into a giant market leader in a multi-billion dollar industry).
                                          But IME most problems in trad orgs, especially large scale ones, stem from too much concentration of decision making (irt budgeting, hiring/firing, roadmap, etc.) and too much hierarchy and opacity.

                                          As a DAO, I'd love for Klima to not fall into the same traps and, although the text on this KIP is too vague for me to clearly assess that, the description and some of the comments from contributors seem to indicate that we might be heading towards that path.

                                          Hugh A listing of each Core member’s role will be published soon.
                                          I think this (and a bit more tbh) needs to be published before one can meaningful vote for this KIP.

                                          Before I can vote in favour of fromalizing any kind of structure I should at least have clarity over what that structure looks like. And Ideally I would also be able to participate (to some degree) in the discussions that end up shaping that structure.

                                          So while my vote is "Against", it's not a "maintain informal status quo". It's more a "let's clarify what the status quo looks like and discuss a few different options with the community before we formalize anything".