KIP Draft: Updating Rook's Governance

KIPs Inactive
1 
title: Updating Rook's Governance
category: governance process 
authors: @JasonW <jason@rook.fi>, @Wes2 <wes@rook.fi>
created: 2022-11-28
replaces: KIP-0
dependencies: KIP-8

Proposal

Ratify an updated format for ROOK’s proposal governance according to the specified guidelines below.

References

[1] Governance Beigepaper
[2] Governance blog post
[3] KIP-0
[4] Writing a KIP for Rook governance
[5] KIP-8

Background

Proposals, and the process they go through in order to reach consensus, are two of the most basic elements of DAO governance. Like other DAOs, Rook is continuing to evolve its governance process as its technology and community evolve, though it also remains committed to the philosophy and broad outline established at the outset of Rook governance [1, 2, 3].

Building on this foundation, this proposal defines the following central aspects of Rook DAO governance:

  • The roles and functions of participants in the process
  • The governance lifecycle for a proposal

Roles and Functions

Proposal Author(s)

Authors are empowered to bring ideas before the community, and also have the responsibility to participate in the process of review and revisions.

Sophons

Sophons are actors empowered by the DAO to review, analyze, and publish non-binding recommendations on KIPs. Their role is to ensure that every KIP has been given adequate attention before it is put in front of tokenholders for a vote, that the process of building social consensus is informed by Sophons’ expertise, and that tokenholders are provided with the opinions of qualified stakeholders for proposals that reach the voting stage. In the case of significant disagreement, the Sophons are expected to coordinate the process of reconciliation toward a final decision in the best interests of Rook DAO.

Tokenholders

The governance process is designed to provide tokenholders with multiple opportunities to gather information on new proposals, to express concerns to authors and the larger community, and finally to have final veto power over proposals that reach the voting stage.

Governance Stewards

Stewards are individuals who maintain the integrity of the governance process, and collaborate with every other role in the process by editing proposals, moderating the governance forum and Github, coordinating with Sophons, and running Snapshot votes. The Stewards are also be responsible for maintaining dashboards tracking governance progress.

Governance Lifecycle

  1. Idea and proposal development

    1. Authors should develop their ideas as fully as possible, ideally in collaboration with others from the community.
    2. In preparing their proposal, authors are expected to work with Stewards to ensure the use of the correct proposal template and adherence to KIP guidelines [4]. Failure to do so will only slow a proposal’s time to reach community review.
    3. Once prepared and in the correct format, the author will post the proposal as a KIP Draft (without a number) to the KIPs section of the Rook forum.
    4. When a new KIP appears on the forum, the Governance Stewards will post a notification and summary to the Governance channel on Discord.

  2. Community review and soft consensus

    1. New KIPs posted to the forum will go into community review for an initial period of roughly 14-21 days.
    2. The author will make a best effort during this period to reach rough consensus with the community about the content of the draft proposal. During this period:
      1. The author will be responsible for making a best effort to address the concerns of the community and the Sophons, while the DAO will provide opportunities for the author to do so on some combination of the forum and regularly scheduled open community discussions via Discord.
      2. The DAO will provide at least one public AMA dedicated to the proposal at which the author will be given the opportunity to present their proposal, and to answer questions from participants.
      3. The community review period may be extended beyond 21 days in one of two ways:
        1. The author(s) can choose to wait beyond the allotted 14 days to initiate the next stage, subject to the proposal being moved the “Inactive” category if there is no activity or update for 28 days.
        2. The Sophons can initiate an extension of community review of up to seven days, conditional on providing a rationale in a comment to the original post on the forum
        3. In cases of urgency, the Sophons can initiate their review earlier in the process.
    3. After the end of the community review period, the author(s) can signal that the proposal is ready to progress to Sophon review. While there is no requirement that the author do immediately this at Day 14, the proposal will not progress without this signal.

  3. Sophon review and rough consensus

    1. During this period, the Sophons must make a best effort to review each KIP in order, and to achieve rough consensus, expressed in terms of a recommendation of “Object” or “No objection.”
    2. The Sophon review period will typically last up to 7 days, though the Sophons can extend this period with written notice on the forum and Discord.
    3. Once the Sophons reach rough consensus, the Stewards will announce this result and set up a vote in Snapshot and will announce the timing of the vote. Scheduling the vote will be subject to Rook’s preference to avoid voting periods that span weekends, as well as other KIP-specific factors that may alter the optimal timing.
    4. If Sophons cannot initially reach rough consensus on their own, it will be their responsibility to consult with the proposal author regarding points of disagreement until they are able to reach rough consensus. If they are subsequently still unable to reach rough consensus, then the measure is returned to Draft status. Any changes made to the proposal during this process must be communicated to the community. Upon reaching rough consensus, the proposal will proceed to a vote as described immediately above.

  4. Tokenholder voting and apparent consensus

    1. Per KIP-8 [5], off-chain voting will run for a period of 3 days, with the exception of matters that present a clear, imminent danger to users, protocols, or the DAO.
    2. Each vote will have two options, ‘No Objection’ and 'Object.” The outcome of the voting will depend on the degree of alignment between the tokenholders’ votes and the recommendation of the Sophons.
    3. If Sophons’ expert consensus is aligned with the tokenholders’ voted consensus (e.g. the Sophons recommend “No objection” and tokens voting “Object” do not exceed the quorum), the proposal is either adopted or rejected in keeping with their joint decisions. The result in such cases will be publicly announced at the end of the voting period.
    4. If the Sophons’ expert consensus conflicts with the tokenholders’ voted consensus, the Sophons will announce a period of Reconciliation. If this occurs, the Sophons will announce that the proposal is moving into Reconciliation, and will announce the starting time on which discussion will happen.

  5. Reconciliation

    1. Reconciliation is a process of 72 hours. During this period, the Sophons will look to tokenholders who voted in opposition to the Sophons’ recommendation to surface their rationale and concerns, and will make a best effort to work toward consensus. The DAO will make this process open, but will also emphasize addressing voter rather than general community opposition.
    2. To that end, opposing voters will be asked to articulate their objections and sign them using signator.io and the same wallet they used to vote on Snapshot. There are three possible outcomes:
      1. If no voters come forward during this period to articulate their opposition to the Sophons’ recommendation, then the DAO will consider the objecting votes to be spurious signals unsupported by material objections. The proposal will move forward per with the recommendation of the Sophons.
      2. If opposing voters do come forward and are able to reach soft consensus with the Sophons, that consensus will then become the final outcome.
      3. If the Sophons and opposing voters are unable to reach consensus, then the Sophons will determine the final outcome.

Specifications

  • On ratification, shift to new governance process
  • Document process for Rook DAO’s Gitbook
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