README: GnosisDAO Governance Process
GnosisDAO is a living entity that will evolve over time. This post provides an overview of the current GnosisDAO governance process.
To learn more about the vision of GnosisDAO, read the blog post Announcing GnosisDAO. If you have any questions about how to use GnosisDAO platforms, please take a look at the Governance Tutorial or reach out to the community via discord or post your question in the support category.
The Governance Process
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Proposal Creation: Community members can draft proposals for allocating funds, changing the governance structure, or making decisions related to the operations of the organization.
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Proposal Specification: Once the proposal is posted, community members can discuss and provide feedback on the proposal. This discussion is carried out in the forum.
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Voting: After a first feedback cycle is consolidated, a forum poll can be created. This serves as a temperature check. Subsequently, the proposal moves to the snapshot phase where a formal GNO weighted vote is conducted. Note: The proposal can also move to phase 3 without community approval, however, it is likely to fail if the first temperature check was not successful or skipped. The snapshot vote passes if a majority votes YES AND the quorum of 75k YES votes is met.
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Proposal Execution: If the proposal receives enough votes to pass, the attached DAO transactions can be permissionlessly triggered by anyone and will be executed.
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Follow-up: The teams behind the proposal are required to give updates on the progress and impact of the proposal. This should be done via regularly posted updates.
Overall, the governance process of the Gnosis DAO is designed to be transparent, open to new contributors, and decentralized.
The Governance Process in detail
For a proposal to be accepted, it must successfully pass through three phases:
Phase 1-Creation
Community discusses and shapes the proposal.
Optional - However, we recommend going through phase 1 to get a temperature check on your proposition.
As a first step a post should be created on the Gnosis Forum in the Governance > GIP category. In order to understand which proposals qualify as a GIP please see section - What Proposals qualify as a GIP?
The GIP should give a detailed overview of the planned Gnosis Improvement Proposal (GIP). The following discussion should help to get a temperature check for the planned undertaking and help to finetune the proposal via the community feedback. This phase allows proposals to gather community insight for refinement before opening a formal poll.
Duration: Open-ended
Form: There is no formal requirement, however, we encourage you to use the following template. You can initiate a proposal in Phase 1 by posting your idea in the Governance category with the phase-1 tag. By adding the GIP subcategory your draft post will automatically be populated by a GIP template for you to fill in.
Passing Requirements: For proposals to successfully pass from Phase 1 to Phase 2, there is no formal requirement. However, if a Phase 1 proposal discussion fails to gain momentum from the community, it is unlikely to become a successful proposal.
Phase 2 - Specification
A proper Gnosis Improvement Proposal (GIP) should be generated and a forum poll is opened.
Duration: 7 days
During that period the community can vote on the proposed GIP.
- In favour of the proposal
- Against the proposal
Form: Create a new topic in the Gnosis Forum in the Governance > GIP category.
By adding the GIP subcategory your draft post will automatically be populated by a GIP template for you to fill in. Please note that the template consists of different GIP types. Please choose the one that matches your proposal type and remove the other parts. You can move a proposal to Phase 2 by posting the GIP-# with the phase-2 tag.
The GIP template requires all proposals to fill applicable fields, such as Executive Summary, Specification, and Milestones. For funding requests higher than $50k or that run longer than 6 months, milestones need to be defined.
Passing Requirements: For proposals to pass from Phase 2 to Phase 3, we recommend getting a majority of ‘in favor’ votes for the poll. However, proposals may pass to phase 3 even if the feedback during phase 2 was mixed or negative.
Phase 3 - Consensus
The final step requires to get the quorum with an absolute majority for yes in the Gnosis snapshot space.
Duration: 7 days
Form: A GnosisDAO Snapshot poll must be created that contains the proposal text as well as a link to the GIP post on the Gnosis Forum, it must include the option ‘For’ , ‘Against’ and ‘Abstain’, and it must have a duration of at least 7 days. In order to be eligible to participate in the poll, community members must hold GNO.
Next , a link to the corresponding GnosisDAO Snapshot poll must be edited into the original GIP post.
You can move a proposal to Phase 3 by editing the GIP post from the previous phase to reflect the forum poll result that received a relative majority of votes and by updating the proposal’s tag to phase-3.
Passing Requirements: For proposals to be accepted in this final phase, there must be one outcome with a relative majority of GNO used for signaling on the GnosisDAO Snapshot poll accompanied by a ‘for’-voting quorum of a minimum of 4% of the circulating supply of GNO. If the relative majority of GNO used in signaling on the Snapshot poll indicates the result ‘Against’ or ‘Abstain’, the proposal will not be accepted and considered closed.
If you need any help during one of the phases please contact the Gnosis team via Discord or the Gnosis Forum.
Once a GIP passes it will be executed. Funds will be transferred, partnerships established or changes in the DAO will be implemented. For funding requests the payout will be performed according to the payment plan and/or the set milestone. Bigger proposals will have staggered payouts and payouts for maintenance proposals will be streamed.
All GIP authors are requested to give updates on the progress and impact of the GIP. The teams are required to update the community on a regular basis. Please see our update guidelines here.
What Proposals qualify as a GIP?
The proposal suggested to allocate a larger amount of GNO tokens to fund various initiatives that can help drive the growth and adoption of Gnosis Chain, including the following initiatives:
- Venture Fund & Studio: Support and incubate projects through funding, governance participation and advisory.
- Grants Program: Fund public-goods research and open-source development.
- PR/Marketing: Promote awareness of Gnosis Chain and ecosystem projects.
- BD and Partnerships: Cultivate value-creation through collaborations and partnerships in the ecosystem.
- Developer Experience: Enhance the developer experience with better tooling, education and technical support.
Thus some proposals that were previously posted in the forum should now be addressed directly to the Gnosis Builders team.
What does that mean in detail?
Investments, partnerships, grants, and events proposals should be directed to the Gnosis Builders team. Please submit your applications here.
The funding decision of those proposals will be made by the Gnosis Builders team. However, rejected applicants have the chance to challenge the decision in the GnosisDAO forum, a contesting GIP should be clearly labeled as such.
All other proposals such as reward programs, reimbursements, service agreements, and meta topics are part of the GnosisDAO discussions and should be posted in the forum. They will undergo the governance process outlined above.
