[Phase 2] HIP 48 - Removal of Clement Lesaege as mission board member

[ludovico]

Link to Phase 1, since that post was no longer editable.

This HIP will formalize a request to the dao for removal of Clement Lesaege as a Mission Board member and admin of Snapshot, given the latest and past events of anti-dao and anti-democratic maneuvers. To give a proper rationale and to clarify proper reasons for this, I created another post explaining what is my personal motivation to write this hip.

HIP: 48
title: Removal of Clement Lesaege as mission board member
author: ludoviko.ETH 
status: Phase 2
created: 2022-01-06

Simple Summary

This HIP proposes the removal of Clement Leseage from the mission board and the snapshot admin.

Abstract

Given the latest events regarding the actions of Clement as an admin for the Snapshot polls, and the overall attitude of constantly delaying any advancement or progress of any proposals that obstructs his own agenda, I am proposing the removal of Clement Lesaege from the mission board, based on the premise that he is not aligned with the values of Democratization and Decentralization and respect for privacy of individuals being registered in the DAO.

Motivation

• Obstructing normal governance procedures. There is a recent incident in which the proposers for HIPs on Snapshot was unilaterally deleted, against the advice from the other admin of the platform Santi Siri, because it was being done without proper consultation with the DAO.
• This later issue, along with the creation of HIP-34 itself (which dramatically decreases open participation for proposals), created a situation that now requires two different and new HIPs to solve the issue.
• An unsuccessful attempt to remove a valid admin from the Telegram group (for the record, I was the admin asked to be removed).
• Disregarding serious security threats to the registering process (metadata issue): When warned about this issue, Clement lowered the priority of a huge security threat in which personal georeferencing data was being leaked into the registry profiles. In a forum post he mentioned that having personal data leaked was “a nice thing to have”
• Systematically obstaculizing any process that helps humans register (352, vouchallengers, etc) sometimes suggesting that challenges are good and vouch-and-challenge attacks are part of the normal mechanism:
  • Example 1, stating against better explanation of proper vouching Incentivize better, more responsible vouching - #2 by clesaege
  • Example 2, stating that the only way to keep deposits low is keeping the challenges high Challenges and removals - ¿it's always fair? - #10 by clesaege
  • Example 3, falsely accusing of being “undemocratic” a democratic poll [Hiring] Product Manager - #68 by clesaege and this is critical for someone holding veto power in snapshot.
  • Example 4, saying that it is “perfectly fine” and having the opportunity to withdraw from a mistake is a “courtesy” and not a right.
• Following the previous point, making Proof of Humanity a dispute-creating machine.
• Sabotaging or lack of respect to proper procedure
  • Arguing about voter fatigue in proposals that he disagreed with, creating voter fatigue in proposal cloning in order to match his own individual standards.
• Under-specifying regulations so that he can later interpret the normative as he unilaterally thinks (basically all the hips he authored, including HIP-34)
• Lack of proper spirit of collaboration with the community, evidenced by lack of participation in main groups.
• Stalling the hiring process to the point that the actuall hiring was put in hibernation [Hiring] Product Manager.
  • It is worth also noting the contradiction with other comments in which he stated that hiring should be done fast [Hiring] Developer - #5 by clesaege
• Taking decisions in the background without proper consultation to DAO members, or disregarding alternative perspectives.
• Not acknowledging the issues regarding the concentration and dominance of a priviledge few in the Kleros Humanity Court and not doing anything to prevent such an abnormal degree of centralization.

Rationale

This HIP was left on hold since its creation, but recent events regarding removal of dissenting members of the DAO from telegram channels have sparked the interest of the community to move forward with this proposal.

Implementation

If Phase 3 binding vote is approved, the position that Clement Lesaege is occupying as a Mission Board Member will become vacant. (for Phase 3 it could be debated if he can re-apply for the position in the next term).

[clesaege]

I had already to defend myself on this previous post.

In between we had an election that Luis lost. He is now trying to change the result of the election.

But I will try to answer as best as possible all the concerns put there:

@ludovico

Obstructing normal governance procedures. There is a recent incident in which the proposers for HIPs on Snapshot was unilaterally deleted, against the advice from the other admin of the platform Santi Siri, because it was being done without proper consultation with the DAO.

This isn’t true. I never deleted any HIP.
Someone had created a “proposal” which didn’t allow people to vote against.
HIP-5 specifies some requirements for proposals and this was clearly not a proposal.

@ludovico

This later issue, along with the creation of HIP-34 itself (which dramatically decreases open participation for proposals), created a situation that now requires two different and new HIPs to solve the issue.

I don’t really understand what Luis is pointing out there. I proposed HI¨P-34 which was voted 234 votes against 62. It has been shown to have successful at removing spam (previously we were getting people using the proposal functionality for spam for ads and scams) from the snapshot while protecting the DAO from potential malicious snapshot administrator.

@ludovico

An unsuccessful attempt to remove a valid admin from the Telegram group (for the record, I was the admin asked to be removed).

Luis is talking about the English telegram that we had created. I effectively believe that Luis behaviors is not that of an admin which should try to resolve conflicts and not be inflammatory.

@ludovico

Disregarding serious security threats to the registering process (metadata issue): When warned about this issue, Clement lowered the priority of a huge security threat in which personal georeferencing data was being leaked into the registry profiles. In a forum post he mentioned that having personal data leaked was “a nice thing to have”

This is completely false. I never said that having personal data leaked was a nice thing to have. I said that removing metadata was a nice thing to have. Here Luis is inverting the sense of my speech.
Note that at the moment of the issue PoH was very early and there was a lot of bugs and it was not possible to record video from within the interface. My stance was that we should focus on allowing videos to be recorded from the interface (as the interface doesn’t create metadata for those).
On the topic of issue prioritization I made a tokenlog which allows the community to vote via quadratic voting in order to signal devs which issues should be a priority.

@ludovico

Systematically obstaculizing any process that helps humans register (352, vouchallengers, etc) sometimes suggesting that challenges are good and vouch-and-challenge attacks are part of the normal mechanism:

@ludovico

Example 1, stating against better explanation of proper vouching Incentivize better, more responsible vouching - #2 by clesaege

That is not what I said, see the thread.

@ludovico

Example 2, stating that the only way to keep deposits low is keeping the challenges high Challenges and removals - ¿it’s always fair? - #10 by clesaege

@clesaege

Note that the loss of deposits should be enough to incentivize people to watch the list for incorrect submissions.
If the rate of challenge is lowered, the deposit will need to be increased to keep compensating people guarding the list (like 1% challenge and 1 ETH deposit would bring the same revenue to challengers than 10% challenges and 0.1ETH deposit). I think it’s better to keep the deposit low instead of the challenge rate low.

I never said it was the only way. I believe supporting cheaper platforms (Gnosis chain or a rollup) is the way to lower deposits. I however pointed out that to keep the same level of incentivization of challenger, if there are fewer challenges, deposits needs to be higher for it to still be worth it for challengers to verify the submissions (as those are only paid on successful challenges).

@ludovico

Example 3, falsely accusing of being “undemocratic” a democratic poll [Hiring] Product Manager - #68 by clesaege and this is critical for someone holding veto power in snapshot.

This is true that the poll was not following HIP-5 and thus had nothing to do on the main snapshot. Note that there is now a poll snapshot for those.
Also note that thanks to HIP-34 that I proposed, I don’t have veto power of snapshot voting.

@ludovico

Example 4, saying that it is “perfectly fine” and having the opportunity to withdraw from a mistake is a “courtesy” and not a right.

Sure, the withdrawal functionality was created to allow people to get back their deposit if they don’t find vouchers, not to allow for correcting mistakes. If people can uses it for that purpose that’s great.

@ludovico

Following the previous point, making Proof of Humanity a dispute-creating machine.

This is not true, we worked into clarifying some rules and we proposed to lower the amount of jurors in HIP-17 in order to lower deposits and the amount paid to jurors during a dispute.

@ludovico

Sabotaging or lack of respect to proper procedure

• Arguing about voter fatigue in proposals that he disagreed with, creating voter fatigue in proposal cloning in order to match his own individual standards.

Yes, I believe the DAO should focus on important votes or use systems where a full DAO vote is not required for small issues.
The HIP-18 that I proposed actually had most of its changes included in the phase 3 of HIP-16 thus has been useful for governance.

@ludovico

Under-specifying regulations so that he can later interpret the normative as he unilaterally thinks (basically all the hips he authored, including HIP-34)

That is obviously false and I always prefer to have everything clear. Moreover I’m not the only one interpreting as we have a board of 5 people for that.

@ludovico

Lack of proper spirit of collaboration with the community, evidenced by lack of participation in main groups.

I obviously spend more time building (and collaborating with other builders) than talking on channels and forums. However, I spend a significant amount of time on this forum and in the telegram group (a proof being that Luis managed to find a lot of things I said there to disagree with).

@ludovico

Stalling the hiring process to the point that the actuall hiring was put in hibernation [Hiring] Product Manager.

• It is worth also noting the contradiction with other comments in which he stated that hiring should be done fast [Hiring] Developer - #5 by clesaege

This obviously false. I am the one who proposed to hire people (see this proposal, note that it was before HIP-5). I also put offers on a job board, talked with people interested and even contacted people having a similar idea to try to get them to be hired by PoH instead. However those attempts were unfruitful, most people dropped of the application process when they had to go on the forum, the people with the similar idea ended up doing their own competing project (which has now failed).
I definitely thing hiring is very important, but with current amount of funding it’s quite hard to find good candidates.
I am still trying and have a talk with a potential worker in a few days, but due to ETH price DAO holdings are very low and we may need to find a solution for the funding.

@ludovico

Taking decisions in the background without proper consultation to DAO members, or disregarding alternative perspectives.

“What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” (see Hitchen’s razor )

@ludovico

Not acknowledging the issues regarding the concentration and dominance of a priviledge few in the Kleros Humanity Court and not doing anything to prevent such an abnormal degree of centralization.

The proof of humanity court is quite decentralized (see repartitions there). For example it is more decentralized than Ethereum mining.
Even with that we discussed about making a PNK airdrop to people registered to increase the amount of people registered in the court.

@ludovico

This HIP was left on hold since its creation, but recent events regarding removal of dissenting members of the DAO from telegram channels have sparked the interest of the community to move forward with this proposal.

Luis actually removed 2 board members (myself and Shin) from the administration of the telegram. After that Federico removed him and gave admin rights to board members.
The board then agreed to nominate moderators for this channel.

[0xjean.eth]

The accusations shared were already responded on a previous post, and clarified by many DAO members including me. I recommend anyone to observe this pattern of taking quotes and actions out of their context. I believe it’s a shame to use the DAO as a platform for any personal crusade. I’ve been bringing attention to this since the accusations started, on June 2021.

[juanu]

Being in favr or against Clements or luis points of view, clement was democratically elected, so I’m against this HIP

[avilches.eth]

I am in favor of this hip. Clmenet has abused his power as a mission board member and his last act was to take over the DAO communication channels and censor dissenting voices.

[clesaege]

En medio tuvimos unas elecciones que Luis perdió. Ahora está intentando cambiar el resultado de las elecciones.

Pero trataré de responder lo mejor posible a todas las inquietudes planteadas:

@ludovico

Obstrucción de los procedimientos normales de gobierno. Hay un incidente reciente en el que los proponentes de HIPs en Snapshot fueron eliminados unilateralmente, en contra del consejo del otro administrador de la plataforma Santi Siri, porque se estaba haciendo sin la debida consulta con el DAO.

Esto no es cierto. Nunca he borrado ninguna HIP.

Alguien había creado una “propuesta” que no permitía votar en contra.

El HIP-5 especifica algunos requisitos para las propuestas y esto claramente no era una propuesta.

@ludovico

“Esta cuestión posterior, junto con la creación del propio HIP-34 (que disminuye drásticamente la participación abierta para las propuestas), creó una situación que ahora requiere dos HIPs diferentes y nuevos para resolver la cuestión.”

No entiendo muy bien lo que señala Luis acá. Yo propuse el HIP-34 que fue votado por 234 votos contra 62. Se ha demostrado que ha tenido éxito en la eliminación del spam (anteriormente estábamos recibiendo gente que utilizaba la funcionalidad de la propuesta para el spam de los anuncios y estafas) de Snapshot, mientras protege la DAO de un potencial administrador malicioso de Snapshot.

@ludovico

“Un intento infructuoso de eliminar a un administrador válido del grupo de Telegram (para que conste, yo era el administrador al que se le pedía que eliminara).”

Luis se refiere al grupo de Telegram en inglés que habíamos creado. Efectivamente creo que el comportamiento de Luis no es el de un admin que debe intentar resolver conflictos y no ser incendiario.

@ludovico

"Despreciando graves amenazas de seguridad en el proceso de registro (problema de metadatos): Cuando se le advirtió sobre este tema, Clemente bajó la prioridad de una gran amenaza de seguridad en la que se estaban filtrando datos personales de georreferenciación en los perfiles de registro. En un post del foro mencionó que el hecho de que se filtraran datos personales era “algo bonito” "

Esto es completamente falso. Nunca he dicho que tener datos personales filtrados fuera algo agradable. Dije que eliminar los metadatos era algo agradable. Aquí Luis está invirtiendo el sentido de mi discurso.
Ten en cuenta que en el momento en que issue fue creado PoH era muy incipiente y había muchos bugs y no era posible grabar vídeo desde la interfaz. Mi postura era que debíamos centrarnos en permitir la grabación de vídeos desde la interfaz (ya que la interfaz no crea metadatos para ellos).
En cuanto al tema de la priorización de temas, hice un tokenlog que permite a la comunidad votar a través de una votación cuadrática para indicar a los desarrolladores qué temas deberían ser prioritarios.

@ludovico

"Obstaculizar sistemáticamente cualquier proceso que ayude a los humanos a registrarse (352, vouchallengers, etc) sugiriendo a veces que los desafíos son buenos y los ataques de vouch-and-challenge son parte del mecanismo normal:

@ludovico

Ejemplo 1, declarando en contra de una mejor explicación del vouching adecuado Incentivar un vouching mejor y más responsable - #2 por clesaege"

Eso no es lo que yo he dicho, véase el hilo.

@ludovico

Ejemplo 2, afirmando que la única manera de mantener los depósitos bajos es mantener los retos altos Retos y eliminaciones - ¿Siempre es justo? - 10 por clesaege

@clesaege

Ten en cuenta que la pérdida de depósitos debería ser suficiente para incentivar a la gente a vigilar la lista en busca de envíos incorrectos.
Si se baja la tasa de retos, habrá que aumentar el depósito para seguir compensando a la gente que vigila la lista (por ejemplo, un reto del 1% y un depósito de 1 ETH reportaría los mismos ingresos a los retadores que un reto del 10% y un depósito de 0,1 ETH). Creo que es mejor mantener el depósito bajo en lugar de la tasa de desafío baja."

Nunca dije que fuera la única manera. Creo que apoyar plataformas más baratas (cadena Gnosis o un rollup) es la forma de bajar los depósitos. Sin embargo, señalé que para mantener el mismo nivel de incentivación del challenger, si hay menos retos, los depósitos tienen que ser más altos para que siga valiendo la pena que los challengers verifiquen los envíos (ya que éstos sólo se pagan en los challenges exitosos).

@ludovico

“Ejemplo 3, acusar falsamente de “antidemocrática” una encuesta democrática [Contratación] Product Manager - #68 por clesaege y esto es crítico para alguien que tiene poder de veto en Snapshot.”

Es cierto que el sondeo no seguía el HIP-5 y por lo tanto no tenía nada que hacer en el Snapshot principal. Tenga en cuenta que ahora hay una Snapshot de la encuesta para aquellos.
También hay que tener en cuenta que gracias al HIP-34 que propuse, no tengo poder de veto de la votación de Snapshot.

@ludovico

“Ejemplo 4, decir que está “perfectamente bien” y tener la oportunidad de retirarse de un error es una “cortesía” y no un derecho.”

Claro, la funcionalidad de retirada fue creada para permitir a la gente recuperar su depósito si no encuentran vouches, no para permitir corregir errores. Si la gente puede usarla para ese propósito es genial.

@ludovico

“Siguiendo el punto anterior, hacer de Proof of Humanity una máquina de crear disputas.”

Esto no es cierto, trabajamos en la aclaración de algunas reglas y propusimos bajar la cantidad de jurados en el HIP-17 para disminuir los depósitos y la cantidad pagada a los jurados durante una disputa.

@ludovico

"Sabotaje o falta de respeto al procedimiento adecuado

Argumentar sobre el cansancio de los votantes en las propuestas con las que no estaba de acuerdo, creando un cansancio de los votantes en la clonación de propuestas con el fin de ajustarse a sus propias normas individuales."

Sí, creo que la DAO debería centrarse en las votaciones importantes o utilizar sistemas en los que no se requiera una votación completa de la DAO para cuestiones pequeñas.
El HIP-18 que propuse en realidad tenía la mayoría de sus cambios incluidos en la fase 3 del HIP-16, por lo que ha sido útil para la gobernanza.

@ludovico

Subespecifica la normativa para luego poder interpretarla como le parezca unilateralmente (básicamente todas las HIPs de su autoría, incluida la HIP-34)

Eso es evidentemente falso y yo siempre prefiero que todo esté claro. Además no soy el único que interpreta ya que tenemos una junta de 5 personas para ello.

@ludovico

“Falta de espíritu de colaboración adecuado con la comunidad, evidenciado por la falta de participación en los grupos principales.”

Obviamente, paso más tiempo construyendo (y colaborando con otros constructores) que hablando en canales y foros. Sin embargo, paso una cantidad importante de tiempo en este foro y en el grupo de telegram (prueba de ello es que Luis se las arregló para encontrar un montón de cosas que dije allí para estar en desacuerdo).

@ludovico

"Estancando el proceso de contratación hasta el punto de poner en hibernación la contratación propiamente dicha Hiring Product Manager.

• Cabe destacar también la contradicción con otros comentarios en los que afirmaba que la contratación debía hacerse rápidamente Hiring Developer - #5 by clesaege"

Esto es obviamente falso. Yo soy el que propuso contratar gente (ver esta propuesta, nótese que fue antes de HIP-5). También puse ofertas en una bolsa de trabajo, hablé con gente interesada e incluso me puse en contacto con gente que tenía una idea similar para intentar que fueran contratados por PoH en su lugar. Sin embargo, esos intentos fueron infructuosos, la mayoría de la gente abandonó el proceso de solicitud cuando tuvo que acudir al foro, la gente con la idea similar acabó haciendo su propio proyecto competitivo (que ahora ha fracasado).
Definitivamente creo que la contratación es muy importante, pero con la cantidad actual de fondos es bastante difícil encontrar buenos candidatos.
Todavía estoy tratando y tengo una charla con un trabajador potencial en unos días, pero debido al precio de ETH las tenencias de DAO son muy bajas y es posible que tengamos que encontrar una solución para la financiación.

@ludovico

Tomar decisiones en segundo plano sin consultar debidamente a los miembros de la DAO, o despreciar perspectivas alternativas.

“Lo que se puede afirmar sin pruebas también se puede descartar sin pruebas”. (ver la navaja de Hitchen)

@ludovico

No reconocer las cuestiones relativas a la concentración y el dominio de unos pocos privilegiados en el Tribunal de la Humanidad de Kleros y no hacer nada para evitar ese grado anormal de centralización.

El tribunal de pruebas de la humanidad está bastante descentralizado (ver reparticiones allí). Por ejemplo, está más descentralizado que la minería de Ethereum.
Incluso con eso discutimos sobre hacer un lanzamiento aéreo de PNK a la gente registrada para aumentar la cantidad de gente registrada en la corte.

@ludovico

Este HIP fue dejado en suspenso desde su creación, pero los recientes acontecimientos relacionados con la eliminación de los miembros disidentes del DAO de los canales de telegrama han despertado el interés de la comunidad para seguir adelante con esta propuesta.

De hecho, Luis removió a 2 miembros de la junta (yo y Shin) de la administración del Telegram. Después de eso Federico lo removió y dio derechos de administración a los miembros de la junta.
La junta entonces acordó nombrar moderadores para este canal.