DXdao Decentralized Organizational Structure

[Powers]

Hello everyone,
Over the last month, there have been several discussions in the community about the future and direction of DXdao. With the release of Mesa and soon-to-launch Omen, attention is quickly turning to managing these projects and planning for more.

Hot topics:

• Budget and resource allocation
• Treasury management
• Worker compensation guidelines
• Governance processes
• Product Roadmap
• Updated whitepaper

These are all complex issues that cannot be answered by any individual. They require research, input from the community, and ultimately, consensus and approval of the DXdao.

There have been threads and community discussion on almost all of the items, but – stating the obvious – there isn’t any type of organization to drive these initiatives forward, so it’s hard to conceptualize how the community can resolve them.

It’s also challenging because these issues are intertwined. It’s hard to have a treasury management strategy until it’s known what the budget looks like, and you can’t know what the budget looks like without worker compensation guidelines or the product roadmap. And that’s before getting any of this to a proposal that REP holders could vote on.

So, I guess the question is where to start?

While it’s important to move quickly on items and products currently in production, the structures and processes put in place now will have a huge effect on DXdao in the future, so I think it’s worth discussing the long-term implications and how they fit into the goals and values that DXdao espouses.

It seems that the worker compensation guidelines are the furthest along and the least dependent on other issues. Augusto’s proposal has been through several iterations and once there’s consensus, it will be easier to move project proposals further. And then, it would make sense for the community to discuss what to prioritize (products, markets, decentralization areas)

These are brand new issues, requiring new types of coordination that use our friendly blockchain, Ethereum. It would be great to hear other opinions on how to move forward.

[kwiz32768]

I’d like to throw in the question of communication and education on a presentational layer.

To keep it simple:

I like several aspects of this projects. I know people, I am sure who will be interested into various aspects of the project(s). My problem: I do not have a vehicle (rather vehicles) to introduce new people effectively.

What could this vehicle be? An updated whitepaper? An introductional video?

What should it focus on? Technical aspects? Financial aspects? philosophical aspects?

This is diverse, depending on the person.

How to solve this and see what is needed?

Define potential acteurs into roles.

(what quickly comes to mind: developers, writers, investors, users, …)

define what is important, educational information for that role to give a proper introduction to the project and how to transport it.

quick spontaneous list of things that come to mind:

technological challenges to be solved, compensation, history of how things were done until now, perspectives, short introduction to processes used (a lot of developers are ot familiar with governance aspects of the dao), philosophical and economical aspects of the the dao itself als with the projects it governs, …

basically, to keep it very simple, it would be nice to have a selection of some educational material that can be used to introduce various potential new acteurs.

this material could be just some written paragraphs, some educational videos, a flowchart, you name it, but I think it is a diverse topic, because the motivations why people would be interested is diverse, so the solution must be diverse.

The process to accomplish this could be:

• define acteuers and their questions/topics (some will definetly be shared amoung acteuers)
• answer the questions, topics, etcs (written form)
• combine them in packages
• create a materialzed forms (whitepaper, flowcharts, videos, articles)
• make accessible

I think to go through this in cycles could benefit the project.

TLDR: From my personal experience it is hard to get ahold of the dao, its motivation, its projects, its goals, etc. It is important to win new acteurs/players. Some might have limited attention or motivation to get good grasp of everything. (No need to be arrogant here and condem this). -> Individual (to a degree, see “roles” above) educational material can be beneficial.

[ezra_w]

I support the importance of better “sense-making” in the DAO. Here’s a few simple thoughts / ideas:

1. In my experience with larger DAOs, specifically Genesis Alpha, managing the “social consensus” of a DAO is pretty hard. In Genesis, there were a number of efforts to establish new social norms by passing proposals, and I would say all of them failed, because there was nothing binding in the proposal and it was easy to ignore them. Passing a proposal alone does not mean a strong social norm has been created – it’s much stronger if the proposal has a concrete effect, like changing the text of a published whitepaper, updating a website, etc. That way, at least people involved in the DAO will really see the effects of the proposal.

2. We’ve talked to Pepo from Underscore protocol about the possibility of creating a generic system for the DAO to manage data, which could be used for a wiki, website landing page, role descriptions, and so on. Would people be interested in seeing something like that added to the governance platform?

3. I’ve also talked with John and some others about an off-chain signaling system – basically like polls but linked to the reputation distribution of the DAO. A pretty generic tool, but it might help develop these internal management ideas more quickly. How would people feel about us trying to add something like that?

[kwiz32768]

in this thread there are some nice and relevant thoughts too: On Governance- a DxD Thread

[papa_raw]

(3) is absolutely needed. I’ve mentioned it in another thread, but (3) can mitigate “member fatigue” and operational overhead by reducing the uncertainty of investing resources into proposal creation at the earliest stages.

Providing early signals as often as possible is how current REP holders build relationships of trust with the DAOs potential workforce (future REP holders).