Necessary Features of a Scalable & Resilient Governance System
People need to understand and respect the rules of the game, even if they don’t agree with every decision. In this way they buy into the game. Then they can focus on playing the game vs figuring out what the game is. This is very important. We don’t need consensus on the decisions themselves. We need consensus on the way we make decisions. If you respect the game you respect the scores that arise from playing, even if you wish your team won.
— AraCred
Getting governance right for a crypto project is a tricky undertaking. We have to balance the interests of a diverse group of stakeholders; liquidity providers (capital), project contributors (labor), and current & potential future users (consumers). And getting this balance right in a space that changes faster in one week than most do in a year is especially tricky.
We think a decent starting point to building a governance system that is fair, scalable, and resilient to changing conditions is to list some principles & criteria that such a system must meet. However, if Food Pyramid is truly to be community built, ran, and owned from day one then this document can only be a jumping off point. Further discussion, debate, and input will be needed for the community to have true ownership over these ideas.
A List of Necessary Governance Features & A Few Ideas on Meeting Those Needs
(not all of these ideas are planned or even compatible with each other, this is just a big list of potential solutions to spark discussion & further research)
Governance Should be Democratic, not Plutocratic
Should be easy to participate in / low friction
- off-chain / no gas fees (Snapshot possibly with Aragon)
- user experience should be good
Should be resistant to capture by whales
Should be resistant to bribery & coercion
- secret ballots (Vocdoni ?)
- multisig holders a mix of anon & real name accounts
Should be resistant to Sybill attacks
- community decides & votes on new members & NFT is issued which is required in order to vote with one’s FOOD tokens
- max percentage increase in voting members per week
Should be resistant to entrenchment
- issue voting tokens from one’s staked FOOD but these tokens decay over time (perhaps through rebasing)
- transition over time from FOOD being the source of voting power to CRED (within the SourceCred system)
- define a minimum level of community participation, FOOD ownership, and or CRED and randomly elect multisig holders from this grouping (sortition)
Governance Should Be Scalable
Should be easy to participate in / low friction (see above)
Should be resistant to spam
- minimum amount of FOOD staked in order to cast a proposal to a formal vote, refundable if passed, burnt if rejected, proposals can be sponsored
- only vetted, community members can make proposals
Governance should be appropriately rewarded
Recognition & Gamification
- badges / NFTs
- call-outs / mentions on project twitter, blog, etc.
Actual Money / Assets Paid
What does it mean for the world to be fair? Rights access paradigms are a way to explicitly model and reason through these things. We need to map out rights and access controls to show who can do what and how people can move through the system. This is important because meritocracy and democracy are dependent on rights access controls. If we want to make it so that the rules apply to everyone equally the rules need to change slowly in a participatory way. We have to collectively buy into and accept the trade offs. Everyone can engage in the process and have agency in that process. You should be comfortable being dropped into a random role in society because there’s a path towards the role you want.
— AraCred