Grape DAO/DAO Board Restructuring

DAO
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I would like to propose a restructuring of the DAO and DAO Board. It is important to remember that we are sailing in uncharted territories. We need to be flexible and open minded in our exploration of an effective structure that will be able to operate autonomously for years to come.

The Board elections along with the emissions discussion has become an opportunity for me to retrospect the DAO Board’s role in our community in the past 4 months.

I am grateful and thankful of the amazing cooperation I have had with my fellow Board members, I believe, however, that there is a need for a change of what it means to be in the DAO and in the Board.

I have come to believe that the DAO Board, in the current setting we have defined, is extremely broad and ambitious, involving too many tasks for ANY 5 members of any DAO to handle. The functional components the Board has tried to initiate and support include:

  1. Setting strategic direction
  2. Managing operations (Discourse, Additions/Removals) etc
  3. proposal Creation
  4. Proposal execution
  5. Community bounty generation
  6. Agendas
  7. subDAO communications
  8. Team communications
  9. Emissions
  10. Documentation
  11. New process creation
  12. Recaps
  13. Metrics

To me, it is clear that these responsibilities are too many to handle, especially when considering that a board is a flat structure with lack of specific accountability internally.

I definitely do believe that having a DAO Board is better than not having one but at the same time I realize the potential limitations.

I am actually extremely happy I made these realizations because I feel like have seen what has not worked as expected. I am also confident that there is a clear direction we should take to improve the DAO structure and functioning.

Here are my propositions:

In the Realms vote pushed to confirm the results from the elections I would also like to add the option of a dissolution of the board (as it is now) and the immediate formation of the DAO Operational Team (DAO Core).

This is the team that should be handling ALL the functional components outlined above . Each member of DAO Core should be responsible and accountable for at least one of the functions they have taken on, for at least one epoch. This is a way to introduce emissions to DAO members which I think is the correct step to incentivize and reward executors with more voting power.

Let me share some definitions to clarify a few things:

DAO Members: Gorillas, active on discourse/discord and Realms, able to push and discuss proposals

DAO Core: A subset of DAO Members that are accountable and responsible for every DAO related functional category. This may even be a team of 10-15 people. Deserves Emissions.

So who oversees the DAO operational team?

I think this is where a DAO Board can come into play. A 5-member council that oversees and organizes the operational team. This should be a rotational role within DAO Core. Deserves Emissions.

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Please note, this is just a proposal where I outline the course of action I deem appropriate at the current stage of our evolution. Happy to discuss this further.

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This is well thought out. A few questions/thoughts for consideration.

  1. DAO Core - would consider making this a position of say maybe 4 or 6 months which then goes up for re-election again (similar to how the Board is rotational). The same member can obviously serve for longer than [6] months as part of the Core, but its important to have an on/off ramp.
  2. How would emissions be determined for DAO Core? If its determined by the DAO Board we may want a few members in DAO Board who are not part of DAO Core.
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I understand where you’re coming from since I also experienced a lot of situations where I asked myself what the real expectations and responsibilities of the DAO Board really are and how others see them. It feels like, whenever there is an operational issue, it is automatically perceived as the DAO Board’s responsibility. But that’s not how I understood the role initially.
Sometime at beginning of our term, I proposed Skill Roles for the DAO itself since there are a lot of operational tasks, as you laid out and Arximedis initially enumerated:

Skill Roles for the DAO basically would have a similar effect as introducing what you are calling DAO Core but it wouldn’t require us to dissolve the DAO Board or change its primary focus on facilitation in terms of establishing processes while having an overview and auditing function.
It’s basically what Dean often criticizes, and that rightly so, I might add. We need to assign responsibilities to specific people that are in turn compensated for doing tasks reliably. We as a DAO Board should’ve pushed for that and I asked myself, where we failed with that. My answer is simple: we didn’t delegate enough and that in turn is quite understandable, since there weren’t any people to delegate DAO tasks to. Therefore: Skill Roles for the DAO.
Skill Roles could also potentially solve an issue that we discussed during our talks of switching to a more project focussed setting. A Project and Product Manager Role could very well be such a DAO Skill Role.

We learned a lot in the last months and gained some valuable experiences in the subDAO on how Skill Roles work and whether it’s a feasible concept. Since no subDAO (to my knowledge) complained about the Skill Role system so far, I’d suggest that we introduce those to the main DAO. I love the flat structure of Grape and try to keep things as simple as possible as long as it’s efficient and effective. Plus with the DAO Core concept, I feel we would elevate the DAO Board even further. For me, the DAO Board is nothing special, and shouldn’t have any special privileges. It should make things easier and help out wherever possible, but the overall responsibility lies with the DAO; and we’re all equally part of that.

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Excellent write-up.
For me, the DAO Core would have the same rotation as DAO Board. Only makes sense.

The scope of what a DAO Board is and does has taken on a different role than I initially expected. No concern, but as you have outlined, there is an avenue to better define its structure along with the DAO.

It is clear that accountability on various areas is needed. Potentially, a DAO Board member facilitating/assisting with each individual DAO Core (skill roles) and their respective tasks ( edit: I now see Pawz said this as well)

With the restructuring of emissions, we can better allocate voting power to individuals that assist with these.
Again, as Pawz mentioned there weren’t any people to delegate to. But I can think of several people now that might fit some of these tasks after these last several months, especially once emissions and strucure are clearly defined.

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Love the initiative of taking the time to articulate your thoughts and feedback, while actually proposing something new.
The way I see this, you basically speak of a “DAO SubDAO” (= Dao Core) that will be the executive part of the DAO Board.
I do tend to think that approx 20 people (10-15 people of Dao Core + 5 of Dao Board) is a tad too much, then again, this could be a solution to mitigate stalling from discussions => decisions => execution where we currently suffer.

As for DAO Core having the same term as DAO board that @DyNite mentions, I think I disagree. People that will be executing decision, the go getters and the ones that get the tasks done should not be affected by the defined term of the DAO board. Executive employees are not dismissed whenever an administration changes (except in my country, haha) and provided they get the job done, they should hold that DAO Skill force role until they stop performing.

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Thank you for your questions. Just brainstorming out loud here:

  1. IMO for these positions there should be an internal monthly reevaluation. I believe we should not set a timeline for enforced rotations for Core. I also do not think we need elections for DAO Core. Whenever there are rotations of the Board, its members should be able to propose a restructure of the DAO Core through recommending adding/removing members and functional categories.

I think in case of many interested members for a particular position the Board should make a decision or allow for them to work as a group and share the relevant emissions. I understand the need for an on/off ramp. But I see these positions as super dynamic. Every member of Core is accountable for their functional component they are handling. At the point where their tasks are not being fulfilled to a sufficient extent they can get replaced by the Board (or there could be a vote?).

  1. I think anyone on the DAO should be able to propose emissions for Core. I also think that handling different components deserves different emissions. (doing skill role emissions is harder than handling DAO removals)I can see why the Board, or any DAO Core member would be in a more informed position to push a relevant proposal. Nevertheless, the emissions should be voted upon and confirmed by the DAO via an on-chain vote.

These are the right questions to ask. Happy to discuss further to be ready to implement this if we do make a transition to this governance model.

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Maybe it’ll help if we try to make a proper example. Let’s take the first quarter of 2022 or last month or so and really figure out in detail how this could’ve worked out if we had introduced the new structure at the start of 2022.

Let’s take real figures, metrics, and tasks and find out what it would’ve looked like. Because, let’s face it, at some point we’d need to do it anyway so we might do it now and evaluate it before we change everything. What do you guys think?

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Let me start with a little story. I became aware of GRAPE in the summer of last year while exploring Solana. Then in winter I decided to get some GRAPE and become a part of the community. While I saw that many different things were going on in the discord it never seemed to me like there is some central structure and overarching direction to things. This changed recently with the formation of the DAO Board and all the endeavors that came with it.
The DAO Board is the central reason why I decided to join this DAO and put my time into writing posts and listening to calls.
And now you want to dissolve it because… because there are too many tasks assigned to it?

It is well known that many tasks that are not central to the DAO Board are currently assigned to it. I think that’s something we can agree on. At the same time the DAO Board is the only strategic entity this DAO has. So I checked and “strategy” roughly means a general plan to achieve long-term goals under conditions of uncertainty. What this proposal is doing is the opposite. It is abandoning the progress we - as a DAO - and specifically the DAO Board have made towards longs-term goals. This proposal wants to start from square 1, just because some things are not optimal.

Like DyNite and CryptoPawz have also mentioned the situation now is different than the situation when the DAO Board was first set up and that is good. We are moving forward.
Now is the time to start delegating tasks, operational and otherwise, away from the DAO Board towards DAO members and subDAOs. And whos responsibility should this be? For me it is clear that the DAO Board must be the one to start this process.

Dissolving the DAO Board now when we are making progress is like deciding to scratch the moon landing when the rocket is taking off. Do not fall prey to iillusions and think that dissolving the DAO Board would give us a clean slate, no it would erode trust in future DAO entities and make it more difficult to rebuild what was willfully destroyed - so we won’t be starting from square 1 but rather square 0.
At this point I will stop and not go into further details.

This proposal is a step backwards and I am disappointed that it is coming from you as a DAO Board member, Dim_Selk.
To be clear, I strongly oppose dissolving the DAO Board and will vote against any such proposal.

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Thank you for taking the time to share an elaborate response and being so direct. This is how the best discourse can take place.

I do feel that I have not conveyed this restructuring idea clearly to you. Perhaps I have used words like dissolution that do not really fit with the plan I have outlined and makes it seem as if I am pushing for a radical change.

To the contrary, I think we are in agreement in most things here.

So let me just clarify a few things:

  1. In the Realms vote pushed to confirm the results from the elections I would also like to add the option of a dissolution of the board (as it is now) I am not proposing that we remove the DAO Board, I am simply stating that we should redefine what being a DAO Board member means (something you clearly agree with). As the graphic shows, the Board will remain at the center of all DAO Activities. It only feels right that the newly elected board serves as the first rotation. There is no need for a clean slate.

  2. We are moving along well but there is room to improve operations and execution. The introduction of DAO Core, effectively skill roles for the DAO, will allow the delegation of tasks. As you also point out here: Now is the time to start delegating tasks* , operational and otherwise, away from the DAO Board towards DAO members and subDAOs. And whos responsibility should this be? For me it is clear that the DAO Board must be the one to start this process.*

Hopefully this has clarified things and highlighted the fact that we agree on most things you have brought up in your response.

Will rediscuss this in the call today. Happy to have you join us on stage and get your perspective.

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