[EP4] [Social] Proposal: Creation of Foundational Working Groups and Working Group Rules

I am so impressed by your work @alisha.eth

I love having the True Names crew in there… excited about the elections! It is a great experiment!

I am in full support of this proposal and have a few things that we want to watch out for.

  1. Space for Feedback and Conflict Management: I hope there is space made for feedback and conflict management in each working group, team building is an art and just electing 3 -5 people and having them work together won’t always work out well and there will need to be space for hard conversations around interpersonal issues and directional differences of opinion. :smiley:

  2. Expect Working Groups to Splinter: I would expect these working groups to break up and specialize more than it seems in this post… Some elected stewards and/or important contributors will want to focus on one piece and splinter off into a smaller “sub” working group for easier coordination… maybe eventually becoming their own working group. This should be easy socially… the on-chain side isn’t so important.

  3. What is Each Working Group’s Mission? Ideally each Working group will have a Manifesto of sorts that should be revisited on a regular basis… bonus points for OKR type sessions and regular checkins on progress.

  4. Transparency as a value Coordination is hard, but it is important that there are recorded calls and convos in discord channels and this sort of thing… Mutual Monitoring! It’s an Ostrom principle for a reason. It will have a lot of positive second order effects (new people being able to jump in & get up to speed, members will stay more professional & accountable, etc etc).

  5. Cross WG coordination A lot will be figured out after the new year by the working groups starting and i think this will be natural since its starting with 2 people from True Names already… but there should be a way for the WGs to share their upcoming plans with everyone else… and all hands meeting or something every 2 weeks to a month… I assume this is part of the Meta-Gov WG’s work

Honestly… the TEC does this better than any DAO I have seen and its because of the systems Tam and Livia have built and evolved… Come to a Retrospective call (we do them with all the WG leads and stewards every 2 weeks). It will be really fun to watch!

https://calendar.google.com/event?action=TEMPLATE&tmeid=MW81bGIzdmVwaWtndGUzajluZHU2cGZraWlfMjAyMTEyMjNUMTcwMDAwWiA1bWtlcDFhZDFqODYwazZnN2k3ZnI4cGxxMEBn&tmsrc=5mkep1ad1j860k6g7i7fr8plq0%40group.calendar.google.com&scp=ALL

Or they are all on our Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TokenEngineeringCommons/videos

Here is a random one from a month ago: TEC Sprint 21 Retrospective - YouTube

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This is an amazing work from @alisha.eth !

Based on my own exp from GitcoinDAO, there could be an emerging working group like cross-group cooperation/communication including some functional team (e.g financial, legal, etc)

Maybe we can borrow some knowledge from GitcoinDAO.

I’d love to support you, and start some meetups in China, not sure if there are language group except discord.

I have a telegram group for the ENS users → Telegram: Contact @ENSChina

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This is good work Alisha. I’m not sure this is the perfect model but it’s a good balance for an experimentation, to have smaller focused groups within a budget.

I will vote Yes without conditions, BUT I think we should consider making a rule that any steward compensation should be announced as part of the steward candidate application, so that they can only pay themselves what they had agreed beforehand. Budgets should be more flexible, as we don’t know exactly what the stewards want to do.

Personally I am interested in working on either the meta-governance or public goods working group, as a steward or not.

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This definitely seems sensible once we have more of an idea of the exact scope of work and the time commitment expected of Stewards. We should have a clearer picture of everything in a few months. It is highly likely that Steward compensation will vary across working groups. For instance, the Meta-Governance and ENS Ecosystem working groups will be very active, and may require more of a time commitment from Stewards in those working groups.

In drafting this proposal, I was conscious of the potential for stewards to exploit access to working group funds. As such, I created a process that requires DAO-wide approval twice before Stewards can receive compensation — first through the approval of a Social Proposal, which sets out Steward compensation (Rule 6.1), and then in an Executable Proposal which includes Steward compensation, if any, that was approved in the aforementioned Social proposal (Rule 6). Based on this process, Stewards will only be able to “pay themselves what they had agreed” in the Collective Proposal set out in Rule 6. If there is a breach of this rule, a Steward may be removed under Rule 9.1.

How budgets are allocated is less about “what the stewards want to do” and more about what the working group, as a collective, wants to do. Stewards are in place to ensure the effective allocation of resources and keep the intention of the working group aligned with its outcomes. I don’t expect Steward compensation to be particularly high. The Stewards themselves are responsible for creating the environments for work to take place within working groups. They are not responsible for carrying out the work itself.

To the extent that compensation is paid out within working groups, I expect most of that to go to contributors themselves. Stewards who participate in these subgroups will be doing so in their capacity as contributors, rather than Stewards, and should be paid accordingly. The point is that Stewards aren’t the leaders of working groups, but rather the organizers of working groups.

I don’t expect Steward compensation to be particularly high. The Stewards themselves are responsible for creating the environments for work to take place within working groups. They are not responsible for carrying out the work itself. If a Steward in a working group does contribute to a subgroup, they may be compensated for their role as a contributor. I expect most of the compensation that is distributed in working groups to be paid out to contributors, not stewards.

I have started a list of possible amendments to these working group rules that can be considered by the DAO at a later date. Everyone can view the Figma file here. For write access, any other community member is welcome to send me a message, or tag me in Discord, and request an invite. I have emailed you an access link. Unless there is anything urgent, I think it is a good idea to take note of these suggestions and put forward a proposal once there are a few more ideas and we can try to get everything passed at once.

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This proposal has passed.

A total of 542 Delegates voted on this proposal with 4.48m ENS, with 99.92% voting ‘For’ the proposal. You can view the Snapshot vote here.

Next Steps

Given the time of year, Steward nominations and elections for the First Term of 2022 will be delayed until the beginning of 2022.

The Nomination Window for the First Term of 2022 will be open between 9am UTC on January 5, 2022 and 9am UTC on January 8, 2022.

The Election Window for the First Term of 2022 will be open for 120 hours, commencing at 9am UTC on January 10 2022. Following the election, in accordance with rule 7.3, newly elected Stewards will assume the responsibilities of stewardship within working groups at 9am UTC on January 16, 2022, for the remainder of the First Term.

To stay up to date on developments regarding working groups, please follow the DAO-Bulletin channel in the ENS Discord Server and follow @ens_dao on Twitter.

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