[Temp Check] Amendments to Working Group Rules

[ENSPunks.eth]

@estmcmxci

That’s putting the cart before the horse.

I agree with you, and I agree with this immediate stopgap approach from Alex’s proposal for a CoI, I just wanted to acknowledge some of the objections I saw were reasonable and should eventually be addressed, but perfect should not be the enemy of good (progress).

@5pence.eth

some delegates raised concerns about potential “self-dealing” in votes where stewards didn’t abstain.

To quote myself from the 2022 post:

@ENSPunks.eth

moving forward I think one of the biggest concerns, both legally and ethically, is conflicts or appearances of conflicts where someone has a direct financial interest in a given vote, in many jurisdictions failing to abstain on such votes may result in actionable claims of “self-dealing” (see the current Musk/Tesla lawsuit re the solar city acquisition). For example, if the DAO were voting on a compensation package for the Directors or Stewards I think most would have expectation the respective parties would abstain from those votes. Or if the Stewards were approving/voting on a subgroup budget where they would also receive a financial benefit as a member of the subgroup, again I think we would expect they abstain on that vote.

@5pence.eth

For those that don’t agree with the wording in Amendment D above, can we work together to find something that we can agree on?

I think the Alex’s proposed verbiage is fine, though I’ll provide a potential alternative for consideration. In my own quote above I reference the Musk/Tesla/Solar City lawsuit, to put that in perspective there is a 106 page decision which includes, among other issues, conflict of interest and bad-faith (which includes self-dealing). It’s difficult to reduce down but taking 1 part of the Conflict of Interest legal test and 1 part of the Bad-faith legal test:

"Stewards are required to abstain from any decision-making processes, including voting, within a working group when:

1. They have a personal or financial interest in the transaction, decision, or vote; or

2. Their actions could reasonably be perceived as motivated by personal gain or self-dealing, rather than their duty to act in the best interests of the ENS DAO."