✖️[Discussion] Consolidating the GrantsDAO with the Community subDAO

General Governance Discussions
#1

Hi everyone,

After a fruitful meeting in the afterhours yesterday with the GrantsDAO, it became apparent that the Community subDAO and GrantsDAO seem to pursue very similar goals in the ecosystem, and that perhaps it might be worth discussing moving the two closer together to streamline the operational overhead for everyone involved, as well as give the mStable Community a bigger say in the decision making process of funding certain activities, and overall governance.

Our initial reasoning behind this in the call resulted from the Community Blog either being hosted by the GrantsDAO or the Community subDAO (Penguin managed this previously), and it wasn’t quite clear which the better option would be, as both carry an important voice in the ecosystem.

Thinking more around this, we started questioning why to even have these two entities be separate, as we regularly did approach the GrantsDAO for funding community-related ventures either way (Designs, Events, Compensations regarding work community members have performed etc…).

It is in this spirit that I would like to propose to merge the 2 entities into one future mStable CommunityDAO, living right next to the ProtocolDAO and the TreasuryDAO, with the same importance and independent status given as these two.

For one, I would ask @stonp89 to present his findings on the last couple of quarters of funding given towards the GrantsDAO as per this proposal as well as ask @soulsby on the operational workload assigned to him for managing the Community subDAO from this proposal and then evaluate the feasibility of stonp becoming the official Cat Herder for this proposed CommunityDAO, merge the signers into this new DAO, remove core contributors that already hold a position in any of the other two DAOs to ensure neutrality on the signing and voting process and consolidate the funding requests from both into one neat quarterly request moving forward.

I’d also like to ask @stonp89 to think about this and propose staffing requirements to effectively meet and tackle the resulting workloads (we’ve been understaffed in the GrantsDAO since inception) in an economic way that doesn’t overtax the quarterly funding. Initially we found that one part time core community member together with @Fungus might be able to match the resulting increased workloads, but keen to hear more feedback and opinions on it.

Regarding the funding, I’d propose to increase the funding to match the requirements of the GrantsDAO and Community subDAO moving forward, based on the findings from @stonp89 and consider grant the multisig the liberty to proportionally liquidate received MTA in order to ensure runway requirements can be met in due time between each funding round.

Lastly, I’d also propose that a certain amount of leftover MTA be used to getting the CommunityDAO more involved in governance, and have them stake in our protocol to receive increasing governance rights over the ecosystem, especially considering that the Community voice is very fragmented in individual decisions, and getting a focused lens on proposals via a shared stash of power governed by community members alone seem like a sensible option to receive neutral stewardship from this part of the ecosystem over time. All inflationary rewards are to be compounded by the DAO at a regular interval.

For the first year, I’d propose to initially allow the CommunityDAO to stake up to 75% of the leftover MTA of each cycle, and then evaluate this number at the end of the year and see if it negatively impacts the operational performance of the DAO (hoarding).

This will effectively utilize unused funding that the ecosystem was happy with giving away either way, and at the same time build a solid voice for the mStable Core Community in governance, even without any individuals that are interested in participating hodling a meaningful stake themselves.

Very keen to hear what everyone thinks about this, and if it seems like a sensible first step in our quest to merge Community with Governance.

Personally, I believe strongly this will become a de facto standard in the business, and avoid governance fiascos like the ones even big blue chip protocols experienced, and ensure stewardship of mStable is moved towards decentralization where each part of the system is equally important.

#2

In principle, very much in favour of creating efficiencies through consolidation. Merging these two DAOs and having one active signer base makes a lot of sense as both are community run and led DAOs. I am keen to understand more about the funding needs this would present. Your staking idea sounds great @mZeroNine

Recommending we discuss this on our next Governance call on discord @mZeroNine

#3

Thanks @mZeroNine for starting off this discussion. I am generally supportive of reducing the separation between these entities and taking steps to streamline operations. I will add a couple of considerations here:

The original motivation for creating a separate multisig for specific community use-cases was mostly around creating a simple way to handle repeating monthly payments for specific areas of community contribution which were not covered under other funding requests, with a focus on being able to pre-approve this spending and handle transactions without addition governance overhead. This seems somewhat different to the way the GrantsDAO operates with each proposal needing discussion and review.

Namely, the areas funding by the Community subDAO include:

  • Coordinape
  • Stipends for community members who act as signers on the Treasury and ProtocolDAO
  • Payment of Discord Moderators
  • Funds for tipping in Discord
  • Community events such as raffles or giveaways

Another consideration to add here is that some of the payments are denominated in USD but paid in the equivalent amount of MTA. With the current MTA price, this will likely lead to a shortage in the Community subDAO given the current funding rates. This should be addressed as part of this wider review. Longer term, I think we should aim to simply denominate all of these payments in MTA as it is more incentive-aligned.

In saying all of that, I do see an opportunity to combine the funding for these two entities as you suggest and include all community funding in the GrantsDAO funding. I’m also open to the name change to CommunityDAO if that makes more sense. However, I wonder whether it would make sense to retain the current multisig structure for the regular community expenses outlined above and simply consider this as a ‘subDAO’ (or whatever we want to call it) funded by the larger CommunityDAO. This could maintain the benefits of using core team members as signers for these relatively small transactions to increase responsiveness and reduce work for the CommunityDAO. I am very happy to continue being the one to set up payments for Coordinape, signer stipends, moderators etc. as that work aligns with my core role of handling monthly payroll etc.

Regarding the idea of having the CommunityDAO stake left over MTA, part of me thinks that it would be better to retain unspent funding in the Treasury (by reducing the next quarterly funding amount), but there could be a nice incentive benefit in your suggestion in that it would give the Community DAO a great way to utilise unspent funds and therefore reduce the incentive to allocate MTA to less valuable grant candidates just because it’s available.

As JS suggested, we could discuss this during the next governance call to come to agreement on a solution that ticks all of the boxes.

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#4

Thanks @soulsby for your comments
-I think making the CommunityDAO a subDAO of the GrantsDAO makes a lot of sense. Streamlines ops and makes the handling of txs still efficient.
-I fully agree the payments need to be denominated in MTA, if only for the reason this creates an incentive for contributors to be bullish on MTAs price: if its in USD then there is an incentive for them to get MTA worth less so they get the same USD payment but more exposure to the asset. It also puts an unreasonable pressure on the Treasury at difficult times in MTA’s price.
-Generally keen to use this as an opportunity to review how these DAOs function and create efficiencies where possible

Thanks for the proposal @mZeroNine

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#5

Thanks for initiating this discussion. Generally, keen on optimising for better efficiency, but I don’t think this would be it.

  • I like the separation of concerns, The grantsDAO is just for grants and should not be used to fund community activities. That is not its intended purpose.
  • We can see already a bit of muddening between grants and the community, this will make it even more so
  • Grants will have to compete with community efforts (I think they shouldn’t)
  • I don’t think grantsDAO can handle the additional workload, and getting more people onboard to solve efficiency is rather defeating the purpose.
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#6

How about we have a discord session (open to community) this week about this topic with the relevant parties? Seems like we need to align

@mZeroNine @dimsome @soulsby

#7

I agree. This has been scheduled for our Governance Call next week in order to decide on the best next steps forward with this.

A few personal thoughts and ideas for the discussion surrounding this, based on all the comments:

@soulsby while in principle I agree, in the end the GrantsDAO also similarly receives a pre-approved spending limit they get every quarter from the TreasuryDAO, and which they then distribute to the ecosystem. While there is additional governance for each grant, ultimately this consolidation is not to remove any of this, nor add workloads to it, but simply consolidate the signer group and retain all other parts as they were before.

I think @stonp89 already has a lot on his plate, and a consolidation would lessen the workloads for everyone, not increase them in my opinion. I think keeping you on the new signer group does make sense, contrary to my first post, if you were able to take over these things, I think stonp will be very happy to hear it! It’s a shame he hasn’t replied here yet, as his findings and thoughts would be very valuable.

Regarding MTA retention, this is definitely a can of worms once opened, and will leave for the call :sweat_smile:

To address @dimsome’s concerns, the GrantsDAO in name would cease to exist and be replaced by the CommunityDAO, which the main responsibility would be the disbursements of Grants, with the exact same amounts as before, with the slight addition of consolidating the Community subDAO transactions into this, so no conflict of interest can ensue.

I actually see this muddening as a big positive, as it confirms that Community equals Governance, and we should let the community decide which projects are good for the ecosystem, and not give yet another portion of the ecosystem into the hands of core contributors to increase decentralization and further inclusion of community into the mStable ecosystem.

I don’t see how they would compete, as both have a pre-assigned funding budget for each sector, which simply gets consolidated into one multisig? Maybe you can eloborate some more on this.

I think the GrantsDAO/CommunityDAO can handle the “additional” workloads very well, as the only added tasks are those that the Community subDAO performs on a monthly basis that Cam already agreed upon handling anyways if this consolidation were to happen (see above). In this way, Cam could simply take on the role of lead signer, similarly to how he is handling the Funding subDAO lead signer role.

So the summarized suggested changes of this consolidation would be:
-Replacing core contributors with core community members, except for Cam
-Consolidate 2 Gnosis Safes into 1
-Only have one quarterly funding tx (including clearly defined budgets for both sectors of the DAO as previously ratified)
-Change the name of the GrantsDAO to CommunityDAO
-Talk about MTA retention/staking capacities of this proposed CommunityDAO
-Increase overall funding due to current MTA price action

Whether or not this is sensible or not or raises concerns would be the the focus of the call next week. I hope I captures everyones feedback accordingly for this to move ahead efficiently.

If you guys want anything else added to the call Agenda regarding this, or see that I have missed any of the above points from others, now is the time to let me know :sunglasses:

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#8

Thanks @mZeroNine, look forward to discussing during the Governance call. The biggest question for me is whether there is any benefit in consolidating the two multisigs into one. If grants and community expenditure have separate budgets then I think having two separate accounts to mange funds could save some accounting work.

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#9

Thanks @mZeroNine and @soulsby all good points

Looking forward to discussing on the community call

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#10

This proposal has been defeated during the call, and we will not pursue any form of consolidation between the GrantsDAO and the Community subDAO.