Proposals are, from my understanding, are currently going through four stages, which have each some pros & cons:
Preparation
An idea is being documented in written form.
Everyone can create a Proposal, unfiltered.
It can be either a generic idea or a function call.
Function calls are easily executed while free written suggestions can either fail acceptance criteria, be impossible to execute or miss relevant information.
Temperature Check
Supporters of a proposal can lock their VOT3.
The locked VOT3 can be reclaimed when a proposals temperature check ends.
Locked VOT3 does not count towards the weekly snapshots, removing it from the voting power in the following week. Especially the proposal voting.
Voting
Users vote yes/no/abstain according to their voting allocation.
The DAOs rewards are split by allocation vote + number of proposals.
Execution
If Quorum is met (>=51% voting participation) and yes votes dominate, the proposal is wanted into action.
If the proposal is missing acceptance criteria, is malicious or missing important information, its impossible to execute.
I believe this structure is too permissive and too simplistic. We need better guidance on how proposals are setup, a way to organize and discuss their potentials is missing.
Also locking VOT3 during temperature check might be a good way to check for support, because value is put on the line, it is hurting the proposal itself, because these votes are removed from voting on the very same proposal afterwards.
I don’t have a certain solution at hand, but would like to suggest that we learn from established DAOs. As a starting point we might learn about other DAOs handling, for example MakerDAOs weekly & monthly government cycles (MIPs Portal) and their requirement of bringing a proposal into a certain format.
How can we improve this process and what are your thoughts on it?
Previously MakerDAO seems to had a quorum requirement that was interesting:
The Executive Vote (FAQ) will continue until the number of votes surpasses the total in favor of the previous Executive Vote
Meaning that each vote requires at least as many participants that have voted “yes” on the previous proposal. Making it easier to go into quorum, which we failed at first.
Yes. We need to think about this. Great start @favo
I also like uniswaps model of request for comments and temperature check. They use snapshot for that. Its not composable with VeChain as far as i remember.
We could just do it onchain as gas price is low anyway.
At first it reads good too. What I like is that it enforces a discussion with the first phase and iterating on it before going to a full vote.
My thoughts after reading it: It allows (and enforces) time to discuss, which is what we miss.
Maybe we can adopt from project /issue management some processes, especially requirements to the proposal input. Like templating with questions similar to “what is the problem?”, “the expected outcome?”, “how to measure it?”, etc. – disconnected from a solution.
So we can think freely about the problem to solve, instead of the solution to realize.
Suggestions for solutions can be multiple, so allowing different suggestions from different people and finding a way to prioritize or prefer one via voting too. This could also work as an alternative of a temperature check, by checking the participation level.
Iterating until a certain point is reached, where it moves to voting stage. The proposal must be realizable, tangible and measurable.
In general I think that a proposal should be a lot like a change request to an application. I am not so used to DAOs and their decision making processes, are there more “good” examples out there? Where people are active and happy with the process?