BACKGROUND:
The establishment of the SPS DAO has been a hugely significant achievement and represents a pillar of community ownership for the Splinterlands community. We are the DAO, and if we want to do great things, we need to have a great plan.
Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about how the DAO can be effective at "doing the thing." Unfortunately, one of the DAO's greatest strengths -- the diversity of opinions and perspectives -- also creates one of the DAO's greatest challenges - this ecosystem changes so quickly, how do we adapt and move forward quickly and adapt effectively when no one has responsibility to the DAO? The implementation of a SPS holder proposal system has been a great step forward, but this still relies on the entire SPS community to mobilize and vote on each decision in a vacuum.
The DAO will be more effective if we start to draw some boundaries and create a scope of responsibilities and limits. Splinterlands has recently taken some important steps to create community leadership roles for the DAO. However in a world where anyone can create a proposal, and anyone can weigh in, I feel these community leaders will be undervalued and underused, and we will still be lacking a cohesive plan.
GENERAL CONCEPT:
I would like to explore the idea that the Community Leadership Panel (the "Panel") should be given a small degree of administrative responsibility to coordinate and provide focus, while leaving formal decision making to the DAO community.
So let's get specific...
The Panel should mostly have the duties to coordinate qualified people to make sure that we have well-considered proposals for the important stuff, to help the DAO to be effctive.
First and foremost, we need a clear financial plan, so at a minimum there should be a budget process and I think the Panel should coordinate that process, while the DAO community is responsible to approve or reject it.
1) APPOINT A QUALIFIED FINANCE COMMITTEE, TO MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE COMMUNITY
The DAO needs a budget or financial plan, to help guide our financial path. The Panel has been chosen based on their ability to represent the SPS community broadly, but not necessarily for their expertise in managing a big pool of stuff.
However, the members of the Panel may or may not be best positioned to understand / prepare the budget. The Panel should
- ask for volunteers for a Finance Committee to create a Budget Proposal
- appoint the members of this Finance Committee (including possibly a Committee Chair)
- oversee the recommendations/output from the Finance Committee, obtain community feedback to come up with a clear proposed budget
- put the budget up for a formal SPS vote.
I'll talk a little later about what the Finance Committee should and shouldn't be able to do.
2) IDENTIFY AND APPOINT OTHER QUALIFIED COMMITTEES TO EXPLORE OTHER INITIATIVES
Similar process to above, but purpose-driven. For example, let's say the community wanted to allocate 20 Million SPS to get exchange listings. That doesn't mean we have a plan - who is responsible for it? Who handles negotiations?
The responsibility of the DAO Panel is merely to coordinate some individuals, because there is no way a DAO proposal would be detailed enough to handle all these elements.
So the DAO Panel takes a specific objective, and sets up a committee - it gets people to volunteer, maybe appoints the chair, maybe appoints one person to be the spokesperson. Then it simply checks in to make sure the committee is delivering a reasonable recommendation, gives some feedback, and if the Panel feels it's suitable, it puts THE THING up for proposal. And of course, the community can always submit any proposal independently (including a budget if they so chose).
The DAO Panel should create as many permanent or temporary committees as it feels are reasonable to accomplish our collective goals and objectives.
AS PROMISED - BACK TO THE FINANCE COMMITTEE:
So the budget committee should be a permanent committee, maybe fixed size or larger? maybe the members on it should have revolving terms, or maybe they can be replaced at will (Open to feedback)
At any rate, the main objective is to be a competent body that is equippd to:
- prepare a budget for the DAO to vote on,
- prepare regular reporting or commentary on DAO treasury relative to approved budget,
- provide a committee response on potential budget impact of any DAO proposals or pre-proposals.
This committee can have a dedicated account for PeakD posts for their reviews, and maybe the Proposal aggregators like Splex and Peakmonsters can highlight the official committee response on each proposal.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS:
Giving the Community Leader Panel some administrative responsibilities will allow the DAO to function more effectively, as a group without a leader often can end up directionless. Keeping a limit on the authority is important. So is the Panel too powerful? I don't think so. The Panel can't actually do anything binding on its own. Its primary role remains to communicate with the community. The Panel's administrative powers are limited, simply being the responsibility to establish the right committees at the right time, and to ensure the community gets to vote on a well-considered proposal. Sometimes those proposals might need to appoint someone in an executive capacity if a project needs a decision maker, but that should be carefully outlined in any well-considered proposal of that nature.
[Also, someone will ask it, so I'll mention it here. I would think that the DEC burnt for proposals from these DAO Committees should probably be funded by SPS DAO itself, since it is a reasonable expense, very immaterial, and a critical function for the DAO.]
So that's my idea in concept. I think it probably needs more input from the Splinterlands community to improve it. Please share your feedback, ideas and suggestions.