[Phase 1] HIP-52: Change POH Governance

[juanu]

@santisiri

If we don’t lose the 1p1v component and this helps onboard resources from other DAOs, the debate is definitely worth it.

We could make it a requirement that any DAO that wants to JOIN, they must implement any improvement proposals that would impact the proof of humanity DAO voting, to use a 1h1v mechanism.

Eg: If Kleros DAO votes, their voting should be the result of their DAO using 1h1v, same for all daos.

POH already does this, UBI too, but includes the voting power of quadratic. Both are good examples of what could be required for DAOs to participate on the governance.

It would still be 1 DAO 1 vote, but we would be certain that those votes were democratically decided by humans

[forgeron.eth]

DAO networks and alliances

A board of aligned DAOs is interesting, it is an emerging governance pattern used by some successful DAOs. It encourages network effects among them, creating a network of DAOs structured like economies.

DAO alliances are an important piece of building the DAO economy. These alliances are closer to nation state alliances than corporate M&A.

A significant DAO-2-DAO token swap is like the NATO agreement, which partly serves to protect each other and not step on each others’ toes.
- Shreyas, Llama Community founder

Mission, objectives, priorities

It is easy to get distracted by the agitators of the moment with too much free time on their hands and no skin in the game while the ones with skin in the game are busy building and executing. The PoH DAO would benefit from setting explicit objectives for itself to keep the community focused on the PoH mission, especially if there are other DAOs involved. These objectives could be set typically by quarter.

The DAO will need to identify and rank the immediate priorities for PoH:

• Decentralization?
• Inclusiveness (maximally supporting every minorities as a top priority)?,
• Composability/interoperability (many integrations with other protocols as an identity protocol, cross-chain) ?,
• Sybil-resistance hardening (bounties for getting duplicates registered? cf. this MolochDAO Grant Proposal from last November).
• else?

[forgeron.eth]

To me PoH’s mission is to provide the best sybil-resistant identity solution as a primitive for other DAO’s to use in a way that increases fairness of their own protocol or community.

To achieve this mission, the DAO does not have to be 1p1v maximalist. There is no practical reason for it apart from idealogy. Vitalik himself has said that he does not believe that direct 1p1v is a good way to make governance decisions for a DAO (loosely paraphrasing).

[ludovico]

Two possible consequences if this HIP passes:

1. It would quickly make everyone loose interested if the voters are not playing in a leveled field against larger interests.
2. It would de facto make the DAO a mercenary to some other DAOs. Selling the DAO to the highest bidder is not the way to mature a democracy.

[Dez689]

Add DAOs to your governance in exchange for funds? when a HIP is being discussed about being more descentralized? (sorry meant “… being more autonomous”)

Maybe it is not the right time to get this going.

We should look for ways to open the doors to the ecosystem but not the doors of its own governance.

PoH governed by PoH.

[juanu]

@ludovico

It would quickly make everyone loose interested if the voters are not playing in a leveled field against larger interests.

I think we can think of mechanisms that the DAOs MUST implement in order to be part of the governance.

@ludovico

It would de facto make the DAO a mercenary to some other DAOs. Selling the DAO to the highest bidder is not the way to mature a democracy.

Large DAOs would still have 1 vote, no matter their size, or maybe I’m not understanding the statement.

[fnanni]

Thanks everyone for joining the conversation.

@berty

the registry is legitimate because the development is chosen by its participants.
If this changes it will no longer be attractive for me, and I think for others either.

What development? Which participants? What could happen with democratic consensus and development when POH reaches 1M humans? As an external project (e.g. UBI), I’d trust POH if sybil resistance and adoption look good now and moving forward, and that has nothing to do with governance itself. Note that you can use a successful POH to build as many democracies as you want.

@ludovico

First, I would first wait to what HIP 49 has to say about Kleros involvement in Proof of Humanity before putting them into a board.
Second, this basically kills the 1p1v that made Proof of Humanity proposals, unique.

1. I think it makes sense to prioritize this HIP. HIP 49 would go through if UBI DAO and POH DAO vote in favor of it. I think it’s actually better, because both DAOs can expressed themselves independently. Kleros, if member of the board, might be more willing to keep contributing and participating, as they are planning to use human courts in v2 and third party projects using POH and UBI might still use Kleros services (like Yubiai using the Kleros escrow). If not, maybe the UBI DAO and POH DAO can vote to remove Kleros from the board?
2. Saying that it is “unique” is not an argument against nor in favor of this, it’s just a romantic statement, isn’t it? The important question is whether 1p1v governance will be safe and sustainable in the long term or not. I’m pessimistic about it.

@juanu

I wouldn’t want ONE to pass before the other, but comparing both and deciding on the best solution for POH.

Note that HIP49 and HIP52 are compatible.

@green

Extra concerns: why give all DAOs 1 vote? aren’t some DAOs more important than others?
A way could be to give more weight to DAOs depending on their importance. Or even sell a PoH governance token that DAOs can use? (but, this creates new issues)

I don’t know how we could quantify importance.

Something that I thought about when I wrote the proposal, is normalizing votes of each DAO instead of the less expressive binary vote. I’m not sure which is better so I chose the simplest model.

@green

Just be wary because it could cause irreparable damage, make sure to study the edge cases.

I absolutely agree. We should also be aware that irreparable damage can also happen in full 1p1v governance. Perfection does not exist.

@santisiri

I won’t support a proposal that goes against the democratic decision making process that makes our DAO unique

Do you think this is important for every single DAO decision? This HIP could fragment governance if it makes sense. For example, let the board of DAOs handle de governor assets but changes in the policy or social media decisions (telegram groups for example) must be decided with 1p1v (just thinking out loud).

@ludovico

It would de facto make the DAO a mercenary to some other DAOs. Selling the DAO to the highest bidder is not the way to mature a democracy.

Mercenary is an unfortunate word to use in this context. It’s like saying that democracy is the equivalent to selling the DAO to the most charismatic politicians. Making sure that you are building something valuable for as many players in the ecosystem as possible looks like something very healthy to me.

@Dez689

Add DAOs to your governance in exchange for funds? when a HIP is being discussed about being more descentralized?

Not only funds. We should make sure that they have genuine interest in POH and are committed to its success (that’s the curate + board approval for). This is not a HIP about less decentralization.

[juanipose]

(English version below)
La governanza de la DAO de PoH en manos de los protocolos que “usan el servicio” de 1wallet 1humano?
Me suena muy raro.

Comprendo que dichos protocolos pueden estar interesados en mejorar la calidad del registro, y que sería interesante e inteligente alinear los incentivos. Pero no creo que sea el modo correcto, para nada.
Sin embargo me parece una idea interesante de debatir, para ver que nuevos conceptos aparecen tras el debate.

Estoy en contra de esta HIP, pero me interesa seguir debatiendo estos conceptos. Sobre todo, buscar formas de involucrar otras comunidades en la mejora del registro. Pero no dándoles la governanza de este protocolo.

-------- (automatic translation) -----------
PoH DAO governance in the hands of protocols that “use the service” of 1wallet 1human?
It sounds very strange to me.

I understand that such protocols may be interested in improving the quality of the registry, and that it would be interesting and intelligent to align the incentives. But I don’t think it’s the right way at all.
However, it seems to me an interesting idea to debate, to see what new concepts appear after the debate.
PoH DAO governance in the hands of protocols that “use the service” of 1wallet 1human?
It sounds very strange to me.

I understand that such protocols may be interested in improving the quality of the registry, and that it would be interesting and intelligent to align the incentives. But I don’t think it’s the right way at all.

I am against this HIP, but I am interested in further discussion of these concepts. Mainly look for ways to involve other communities in improving the registry. But not giving them the governance of this protocol.

[clesaege]

I think that this proposal is interesting and points out to a particular issue, only one group of stakeholders is represented.

• End user (people registering) get all the votes.
• Team members and developers are not represented.
• People building applications on top are not represented.

Here we could get inspiration of the Kleros Cooperative where founders, workers, intermediate users (people building applications on top) and end users are represented.

We could have a system where different college could be given a different share of the vote. I would still give most of it to end users, but we could do something like:

• End users (registered people): 50%
• Intermediate users (people building on top): 25%
• Team members (people working on the project): 25%

We could still have a 1 person = 1 vote DAO used for other purposes.

[santisiri]

After the governance challenges we faced during the last week, I’d favor this HIP and debates around how we can improve the governance of our DAO moving forward in the future.

@clesaege

• Team members and developers are not represented.
• People building applications on top are not represented.

How can we properly attest who is a developer, team member or builder should be described in detail on the proposal.

[ludovico]

The “governance challenges” were related to the attempt to centralize control of PoH to another DAO, and it is a pretty serious event. This would again replicate the elites of governance we have IRL. We have the chance to make things right for the first time and we seem to be taking a wrong step towards re-centralization in Governance.

The unique characteristic of PoH was the ability to gather the human power, let’s not ruin this because any particular member is overzealous over the protocol.

And particularly, let us not blame voters for the inability of properly communicating their intents and plans. The solution is more voter education programs, not a regression towards more and more centralization.

[manuelgirbal]

In favor of this debate, but would probably vote against it. Although these kind of bicameral models are getting more popular, POH had (has) a unique and democratic governance system (based on its own protocol characteristics: a registry of unique humans), and would be kind of lame to replicate other DAOs governance systems.

[herniadlf]

First of all, I think that it’s extremely valuable the 1h1v in this DAO. I don’t wanna lose it.

@fnanni

Do you think this is important for every single DAO decision? This HIP could fragment governance if it makes sense. For example, let the board of DAOs handle de governor assets but changes in the policy or social media decisions (telegram groups for example) must be decided with 1p1v (just thinking out loud).

With this idea I can surely take another look. But it’s no easy to define which topics this DAO-Board should vote and which don’t. I think that it’s a long but possible way, maybe the DAO should vote this definitions first. Just to trigger ideas:

• Policy modifications → 1h1v
• Grants ($$) to build/adjust some technical thing → DAOs-board
• DAO process definition → 1h1v
• Breaking technical changes (upgrading some contract, changing some parameters, etc) (this is hard to decide xD maybe slice it better)

[federicoast]

This proposal looks very sensible to me, at least, as a starting point for a discussion of the Proof of Humanity DAO governance which has really been struggling so far.

In the discussions we had at the time of the launch of PoH, I advocated for a high level of decentralization from the start (even though successful models seem to be more about progressive decentralization).

In my view, that “early decentralization” resulted in key stakeholders (team and projects building applications on top) being underrepresented.

The lack of clarity in decision making rights also seems to result in high inefficiency of the governance process.

I think HIP-49 was a very clear example.

This HIP proposed changes in a highly technical matter. There was a lot of discussion about general ideals (which might or might not be relevant). But it turned out that the submitters didn’t conduct a feasibility analysis nor had a technical expert with some understanding of what the change meant or how to implement it.

This resulted in lots of time wasted in abstract discussions that were not connected to the practical implementation of the proposal.

In traditional politics, before a proposal is put to vote, it goes through a feasibility analysis in different commissions. This is also approximately how the governance system works at DAOs with more experience in community governance (though they are still struggling with it).

Otherwise, when anyone can make proposals and anyone can vote about anything, we end up wasting time of all community members and a general feeling of exhaustion.

I’m not sure what is the right governance structure but I believe it needs to have some combination of token vote and 1p1v, and expert input for highly technical matters.

I also wonder if the Mission Board should have a higher degree of control over the development process. Maybe as a body “filtering” which HIPs have enough quality so to be put to vote on a basis of technical quality and/or relevance? This would probably result in less wasted time in pointless discussions.

I believe the DAO really needs a “Constitution” with some clear governance rules where all the relevant groups are represented.

Nobody really knows what’s the right way to do it. But the current situation is unsustainable.

I think Fede Nanni’s proposal is a good way to start thinking about this.

[juanu]

@federicoast

I also wonder if the Mission Board should have a higher degree of control over the development process. Maybe as a body “filtering” which HIPs have enough quality so to be put to vote on a basis of technical quality and/or relevance? This would probably result in less wasted time in pointless discussions.

As a Mission Board member, I don’t think we should have higher degree of control. We already have the power to notify authors when an HIP is not compliant with the HIP definitions.
I think the DAO needs to improve the definitions of how what makes a High Quality HIP, without giving power to the MB to make that call.
Eg: This HIP aims to make Phase 3 more detailed when it requires on-chain submissions that must go through the governor: [Phase 1] HIP-?: Include submission details on Phase 3 HIPs

[forgeron.eth]

Ryan Coordinator, a contributor and delegate to Gitcoin DAO, ENS DAO and Developer DAO has commented on this HIP on Telegram.

The conversation idea is good, but the proposed implementation is undercooked. DAO to DAO governance is extremely early today, from a historical perspective. I haven’t seen it work effectively. It doesn’t address the fundamental issue, which is that governance is a serious difficult skilled job. All our nations have a professional political class for a reason - without which we find organizations effectively ruled by the sentiments of whoever shows up.

The component ideas are good! Bringing in funding, creating alliances (the idea of having other DAOs pledge to use PoH registry for their voting procedures is very sharp, credit to @Juanumusic et al) shaping up governance, and maturing community processes - but mixing them together as it appears in the proposal seems like the beginning of a discussion more than a realistic path forward

Finding a DAO to work with, having them pledge some small funding in return for support from PoH and use of the registry, seems like it would be a great initiative.

It would take real work, time and effort to get it done. Supporting a contributor economically to undertake that work is an unresolved challenge for PoH.

Even getting clear on near term priorities seems unresolved.

Has the Mission Board issued a public statement of the x month/year roadmap they see for PoH execution priorities?

Shin replied:

Not yet, the new Mission Board was elected a month ago, and then we got into the current situation. This would be great.

[forgeron.eth]

If we are contemplating a Constitution, this report from Metagov has just come out. They have analyzed 19 extant DAO constitutions and talked to the authors of the ENS, TEC, and DAOhaus constitutions. They dug into the values, goals, and rights articulated by DAOs in their constitutions. They wrote up these results in a research paper that contextualize the recommendations. Finally, they put together a guide + template + a code repo that DAOs can use. They are working on adding more tooling + a dashboard via a Jupyter notebook.

Constitutions of Web3

[echildsplay]

@ludovico

The “governance challenges” were related to the attempt to centralize control of PoH to another DAO, and it is a pretty serious event. This would again replicate the elites of governance we have IRL. We have the chance to make things right for the first time and we seem to be taking a wrong step towards re-centralization in Governance.

Respectfully, you may be missing the point. No one here is trying to centralise PoH, but we need to strike a balance between democracy and meritocracy in order to protect the development of the protocol’s use-cases going forward. Other projects may be reluctant to integrate PoH if governance is strictly 1p1v, as this increases the likelihood of irrational and ill-informed voting that could result in irreversible damage to the protocol.

@green

One interesting switch on the idea is doing mixed governance. The following parties have the following weights:

50% Humanity (1p1v, as before)
50% DAOs

Extra concerns: why give all DAOs 1 vote? aren’t some DAOs more important than others?
A way could be to give more weight to DAOs depending on their importance. Or even sell a PoH governance token that DAOs can use? (but, this creates new issues)

But, I gotta say, giving one DAO 1 vote is an interesting concept. Just be wary because it could cause irreparable damage, make sure to study the edge cases.

Another way is, just give the DAOs some hardcoded weight values. (Examples, dont take them at face value). Kleros 15%, Yubiai 5%, DemocracyEarth 10%…

@clesaege

We could have a system where different college could be given a different share of the vote. I would still give most of it to end users, but we could do something like:

• End users (registered people): 50%
• Intermediate users (people building on top): 25%
• Team members (people working on the project): 25%

We could still have a 1 person = 1 vote DAO used for other purposes.

In practice, the compromises mentioned by @clesaege and @green would be much better to align the interests of the registered humans, DAO partners, and core team members.

@ludovico

And particularly, let us not blame voters for the inability of properly communicating their intents and plans. The solution is more voter education programs, not a regression towards more and more centralization.

This is an overly-altruistic view point, and while I agree that voter education will be very important to the industry going forward, it would be very impractical to entrust the early-stage development of a protocol to a 1p1v mechanism. Case in point, if HIP-49 were to have passed, PoH would have no reliable arbitrator and infrastructure in the immediate term, thus slowing down the progression of the protocol dramatically.

@manuelgirbal

In favor of this debate, but would probably vote against it. Although these kind of bicameral models are getting more popular, POH had (has) a unique and democratic governance system (based on its own protocol characteristics: a registry of unique humans), and would be kind of lame to replicate other DAOs governance systems.

Again, the point isn’t to replicate other DAOs, but we also can’t deny the fact that skin in the game leads to more productive governance decisions. It’s all well and good to envision 5-10 years down the line when the majority of governance participants are well-educated on matters of technology and policy, but if we’re being realistic, this is far from true currently.

[green]

@echildsplay

It’s all well and good to envision 5-10 years down the line when the majority of governance participants are well-educated on matters of technology and policy, but if we’re being realistic, this is far from true currently.

Instead of needing a well-educated majority for 1p1v, you can have technical people get a big amount of delegated votes. In practice, this is neither a safe assumption, as technical people are not necessarily popular.

Skills that makes someone an interesting delegate

• just being technical.
• actively developing (for this skill, being technical is not enough without field knowledge. a big part of assessing cost is feeling it. useful for figuring out fair grant amounts, or feasibility.)
• incentive design
• policy writing

You don’t need all the skills to be an interesting delegate. Also, if a skilled delegate is getting many votes, it’s good to delegate to someone else, so that different skilled opinions can be weighted.

I didn’t consider “moving crowds” as an useful skill for delegates, because moving crowds without anything to back it is just populism. There’s no value in that (I think it’s even net negative to just move crowds in governance, because then skills are not guiding the decisions)

[fnanni]

@clesaege

• End users (registered people): 50%
• Intermediate users (people building on top): 25%
• Team members (people working on the project): 25%

@santisiri

How can we properly attest who is a developer, team member or builder should be described in detail on the proposal.

While I like the gist of the idea, I have the same question as Santi. What do you suggest? It seems like a difficult task. Before discussing percentages, I think it’s better to discuss how we can recognize these parties. This was one of the reasons I focused this HIP on successful DAOs rather than individuals.