Improving the Proposals' Process

đź—‚ Proposals đź“‘ Formal Proposals
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I’m definitely proud to see this vibrant participation in the Forum, and we’ve already seen great ideas and proposals coming through it. We are all grateful to see such involvement and healthy conversations among the community.

We wrote the Governance Guides taking inspiration from an ideal and theoretical process, but things in real life might go a bit different and we noticed a couple of aspects that might improve the current process.

This post encourages debate and brainstorming on the Community Governance Process.

No consecutio temporum has been specified in our Guide and the following observations could help improve the process in complex scenarios:

  • The timeframe between the Idea Post and the Temperature Check is not clear. Can I create both at the same time? Which outcomes will I get by doing so? As in the case of @8bitporkchop post, creating both at the same time does not let people think and discuss the idea because the time is running. In that specific thread, many meaningful concepts went over the initial idea and the discussion brought the community to agree upon a more effective incentives mechanism.
  • Launching a Temperature Check when the idea is just released may invalid final assumptions and the outcomes could not be used to bring the proposal to the next step. We strongly advise launching a Temperature Check at least 2 days after the first idea post. This should increase the efficiency of the process, as voters are called back only for Snapshot polls that are really useful.

A similar misunderstanding of the timeline might happen when a Proposal doesn’t come with executable code. Proposers could have great ideas but if they are not developers, someone will have to provide quotes of the needed efforts and code the implementation. In this case, we think that the process has to be detailed a bit more:

  1. The Idea Post and the Temperature Check are referred to the feasibility of the proposal. Once the Temperature Check approves the changes, what is the next step? Well, the community should start a new Idea post “Provide quotes/budget for XYZ development”.
  2. We would then enter into the “Team Formation” phase, where developers can post their candidature for the grant, specifying the economic request, the scope of the work, and the time required to deliver the code.
  3. A new Temperature Check allows the community to choose the best candidate and the developer is entitled to code it. The choice “None of the above/Discuss further” must be added to the shortlisted candidates.
    When the executable code is ready, it’s time to wrap up the idea and create an IIP (Idle Improvement Proposal).
  4. The IIP also includes the developer grant, and should last at least 2 days to let the community audit the code. This proposal might go through Consensus Check to confirm the positive community sentiment (if additional changes are required) and then it’s ready for the on-chain voting phase, as described in the Guide.

EcosystemMap_DetailedFlow
EcosystemMap_DetailedFlow2421Ă—1037 143 KB

As a side note, Temperature and Consensus Check are phases inspired by Uniswap, but in our iterative process, they may evolve and do not represent the initial definition.

This guidelines change proposal does not require an on-chain phase, but we would like to know the community feedback and how you would further improve the Proposals process.

Let us know what you think! :mega:

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The post above described in detail situations that might happen at the early stage of a new proposal, and this framework is working perfectly for the Smart Treasury.

We noticed that a further update should be done for the “Team Formation” phase of the next Proposal (and in general, must be applied whenever the Governance has to choose on many options).
The choice “None of the above/Discuss further” must be added to the shortlisted answers, as listing only eligible items might misrepresent the will of the Governance.

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