Committee Formation Criteria

Author(s): Britt - Across Community Lead

Status: Proposed

Related Discussions: This proposal would result in an update to the operating manual, found here, and is inspired by the conversation started by this post.

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Summary:

This proposal introduces a recommended set of criteria for creating a new committee. This is a concept that was introduced in the Across Governance Operating Manual but needs to be expanded upon before it can be implemented in a meaningful way.

Motivation:

In our current Governance Operating Manual, you can see that we introduce a proposal type called “Committee implementation or replacement (future)” but did not provide any further details. It was decided that the criteria of this proposal type should be voted on by the DAO. We define committees as “Subject matter experts that consider and pursue goals specific to their domain, acting in the best interests of the Across DAO.” Whenever we’re granting a group or person permission to do things on behalf of Across, we should seek to be aligned in the conditions in which this persists. This proposal recommends a starting set of criteria for committee creation. Presently, the Risk Labs foundation is set as the “universal admin for the protocol.” The introduction of committees will eventually allow some of those responsibilities to be divided up accordingly, which is another step in the direction of decentralization.

Specification & Implementation:

The following is what I’ll recommend as an amendment to the current Governance Operating Manual under the “Proposal Types” section. If adopted, the changes should be reflected on the forum and the docs site (if applicable).

|Type|Description|Submission Requirements|Vote Duration|Quorum|Threshold| | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | |Committee implementation, removal, or replacement|A vote to introduce a new committee or replace an existing committee|Forum + Snapshot|7 days + time required for steps 1 and 2 in voting cycle|6M|51%|

Composing Committee Proposals:

This proposal type should include the following components in addition to those required in the current proposal template:

• Purpose of the committee. What is the value added for Across?
• Scope of the committee. What work will they be responsible for?
• Reporting requirements and frequency. How can tokenholders assess the quality of work done by the committee? What time interval is appropriate for their job?
• Intended lifespan of the committee. Is this a special purpose committee, or will it fulfill a role that the protocol needs continuous support on?
• Composition of the committee. Include a link to bio of each member and outline their participation in Across up until now. Share any relevant experiences or qualifications they have. At minimum we'd like to see discord handle, twitter handle, an Across active wallet, and a bio for each member.
• Starting monthly budget breakdown. Committees may manage a small amount of capital to meet the needs of their operational purpose. If applicable, include information about the address that is intended to be used for operational funds. This budget does not include committee compensation. Committees will receive their budgeted funds at the start of each month from the Across DAO Treasury. Whenever possible, this amount should be limited to 1 month of operating expenses at a time.
• Brief overview of committee operations (general workflow, communication channels, expected outputs, etc.)
• If the proposal is to remove or replace a committee, it should still address the above components.

Committee - tokenholder relationship:

By voting to form a committee, tokenholders are voting to entrust and delegate a specific set of decision-making responsibilities to the committee. It is, therefore, ACX tokenholders that each committee is accountable to. If a committee fails to perform, it is the duty of ACX tokenholders to replace or remove the committee from service in a reasonable amount of time.

Committee Membership:

Committees should include no more than 5 and no fewer than 3 members, each of which should have relevant experience and/or qualifications to support their presence in the committee. It is recommended to designate a committee lead, who would be held responsible for the coordination and reporting on behalf of the committee.

All committees are compensated by the Across DAO Treasury in the same way. Upon approval, a committee will receive a base level of rewards in the amount of $10k equivalent in $ACX. This amount is meant to last for a 3-month period. It is up to each committee to determine the distribution of these tokens, the details of which must be included in the snapshot vote. This should include wallet addresses and amounts for each committee member.

At the end of each quarter of service, a committee will be given an additional $10k equivalent in $ACX, except in the case of a committee being removed from service by tokenholders during that quarter, in which case there will be no additional rewards. The distribution of these funds will be determined by the committee members by way of a peer review score. This is to be paid out by the Across DAO Treasury.

Committees that are composed of Risk Labs representatives will not receive compensation from the DAO.

Note: the peer review process will be found in more detail in a new "committee" section of the forum after this proposal is passed. The template for peer review (TBD) should be evaluated regularly and updated as needed to meet the needs of committee participants. Because this process only effects the distribution of funds amongst committee members and does not change the amount of funds designated to a committee, this template can be updated whenever there is a soft consensus that it's necessary (no formal vote required).

Committee Tools:

• Discord - to be used for general communication between committees and tokenholders.
• Forum - to be used for more formal committee reporting, and committee peer reviews.

Rationale:

The decision to use a committee format was chosen because DAOs tend to suffer from over-centralization or over-decentralization. Not every decision should require a tokenholder vote, and systems that follow this path tend to be prevented from making timely progress. For example, most people do not need to care how the community is moderated - only that it is done well. On the other side of things, It makes sense from a collaborative standpoint to have a committee of individuals involved in community oversight that report directly to ACX tokenholders (rather than having the entirety of this responsibility fall on Risk Labs).

The suggested compensation model is inspired by the one used in Optimism (see here). The flexibility within a committee to determine distribution allows members with different needs to be taken into consideration by their peers. Critically, this setup requires committee members to come to an agreement on compensation. If they fail to do so, it will be visible to all tokenholders, and the likelihood of that committee remaining in service at such a time is not high.

Some of the required components above were included so that when oSnap is implemented, funding steps can be executed in a way that can function within that system. For example, including committee compensation details in a proposal would allow anyone to cross-check that an optimistic funding transaction from the DAO is legitimate and has passed governance.

Downside (Cons):

One possible failure mode here would be that we vote in a committee that is unable to perform. In such a case, the DAO would have sacrificed about $15k in ACX. Fortunately, in that case, there are learnings that could be harnessed to improve upon the requirements for starting a new committee.

Voting:

A “yes” vote will result in an amendment to the Across Governance Operating Manual that details the process by which a committee is formed.

A “no” vote will result in no amendment to the Across Governance Operating Manual.