Proposal for Discussion: Formalize the Use of Commonwealth

Governance
1

Vote YES to require that governance proposals be posted to commonwealth for a minimum of seven days before being submitted to the chain for a vote. Security-related software upgrade proposals do not need to use this path. This requirement should be enforced through the use of NoWithVeto on proposals that have been put on-chain without a minimum of seven days waiting period on commonwealth.

Vote NO to reject a seven day mandatory discussion period on commonwealth.

Vote ABSTAIN to express no interest in the matter.

Vote NOWITHVETO to cause Notional to lose the 200 REGEN deposit on this proposal.

2

Thanks for posting, generally speaking it feels like a good informal practice but I wonder if its perhaps a little early to formally codify practices - do you believe that proposals are currently going to a vote too early and without enough discussion?

I also wonder if there are other edge cases we should consider as well outside of security upgrades - what other imperatives may warrant exception? I’m thinking disaster relief initiatives and such where more rapid responses can save lives.

Curious to hear your thoughts @Jacob Gadikian | Notional - do you hold an opinion yourself?

3

So, I do hold an opinion-- as the author of osmosis proposal 188, widely criticized and rejected due to procedural matter, I figure that it makes sense to have clear guidelines.

The guidelines can likely boost the use of the governance module on Regen by providing some clarity around intent.

4

Thanks for opening this discussion. We did include this as a guideline and referenced these updated guidelines in proposal 10:

Decreasing the voting period does not mean decreasing the quality of proposals and the thoughtfullness that needs to go into decision-making. This proposal is accompanied by updated proposal guidelines for community members to take into consideration when submitting and voting on proposals. Proposals that do not follow these guidelines may be voted down on principle.

And then the relevant guideline:

The time between socializing the proposal and submitting the proposal will vary depending on the proposal and community engagement but generally a proposal should be brought to discussion at least one week before submitting the proposal on chain.

It wouldn’t hurt to submit another proposal to make this more formal but this is already the current process for submitting governance proposals.

5

Thanks @ryanchristo, good to raise these guidelines. It seems to me that common wealth discussion and on chain proposals are the end of a socialisation process; the last mile if you will. Before common wealth and voting occur, a number of other steps are probably relevant so I’ve articulated them to make the opaque more explicit. I’ve started running this process in the wild to see if it forms a more robust and trustable process with greater turn out (as are my hopes). @Jacob Gadikian | Notional - any thoughts?

Informal community proposal process

  1. A call for participation is made on a community platform (of any variety)
  2. A date and location for public sense making is shared with interested parties determined by the caller.
  3. A sense making session occurs publicly via community platform with a foundation representation present (e.g. Discord call or Twitter Space)
  4. Parties that find synergy in this public forum who wish to continue working together then start a proposal discussion on common wealth.
  5. Optionally an off chain presentation is created and share in an open public forum (e.g. Community call, Dev call, etc.) This presentation serves to drive discussion on commonwealth before the initiating party deems sufficient discussion has occurred to finalise a written proposal
  6. This written proposal is polished and finalised with a foundation representative before being put to an on chain vote. It should mention various relevant credentials and claims (team, resources, capabilities, talents etc.)
  7. Proposal passes or fails based on validator discretion
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I am generally in favor of codifying practices (which can always be updated) and I really support a minimum expectation of forum discussion of 2 weeks or so…

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I created a pull request on the current governance guidelines that @ryanchristo linked to above: Update with commonwealth window by glandua · Pull Request #10 · regen-network/governance · GitHub