Introduction

The current social vote corresponds to the Conflict of Interest Disclosure Policy and the Responsible Voting guidelines sections, as well as their subitems, of the Code of Conduct draft. If approved on this proposal, they'll be included in the final Code of Conduct draft which will be then submitted to a final vote.

Abstract

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Motivation

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Rationale

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Specification

The following wording shall be included in the Code of Conduct final draft: 

Conflicts of Interest

Disclosure and Transparency Policy

If a conflict of interest exists, it is expected the delegate discloses the nature and extent of the conflict in writing on the forum before voting. Additionally, a COI section will be added to the recommended proposal template as outlined in the Everclear governance docs and The Incomplete Guide to Submitting a Proposal to the Everclear DAO. This section will provide delegates that author a proposal a place to include a short COI disclosure if necessary. The Everclear Foundation will be responsible for making the update of the governance docs. While it may not always be clear if an individual stands to gain "directly" or "indirectly", it is recommended to lean on the side of over-communication in the name of transparency.

Delegates who disclose a conflict of interest are not expected to alter their voting in any way. Self-voting is not banned, however, as explained further above, a delegate that repeatedly fails to disclose a conflict of interest before self-voting or if a single instance is deemed to be severe, risks being removed from a DAO-elected position.

Responsible Voting

The Responsible Voting policy is an effort to strike a balance between preventing delegates from unfavorably electing themselves into a position of power and compensation while allowing them to still effectively represent their communities and tokenholders. In a normal election with multiple seats, the policy is simple: candidates may vote for themselves as long as they also cast votes to fill all the remaining positions. With token and weighted voting, there are additional nuances and guidelines that must be set in place to address edge scenarios:

• Candidates can abstain or vote neutrally to effectively abstain, i.e., voting or splitting their vote equally across all candidates.

• If a candidate self-votes, they should to the best of their ability make the weights as equal as possible and spread among the number of candidates necessary to every seat.

• A buffer of 0.1% is acceptable to account for rounding in the Snapshot UI.

• A candidate's self-vote percentage should always be less than 100/n, where n = number of seats.

  • Non-compliant Example: In an election with 7 seats, a candidate's self-vote exceeds 14.286%.

• A candidate's self-vote weight should not be larger than any of the weights for other candidates. Both of the following examples would be considered violations:

  • Non-compliant Example: In an election with 7 seats, the candidate votes 94% for themselves and 1% for 6 other candidates.

  • Non-compliant Example: In an election with 7 seats and a total of 15 candidates, a delegate votes 10% for themselves and 6.43% for all other candidates.

• Candidates may vote for less or more candidates than the seats available as long as they adhere to the above restrictions. This allows delegates to retain the power to express a certain level of preference but does increase the risk of collusion. Any suspected instances of collusion will be investigated by the Everclear Foundation and will be grounds for disqualification.

  • Compliant Example: In a 7-seat election, a candidate self-votes for themself with 14.286% and 85.714% for another candidate.

  • Compliant Example: In a 7-seat election, a candidate splits their vote equally across 10 candidates, each getting 10%.

Delegates not participating in the election are free to vote however they wish, but if a conflict of interest exists, it should be disclosed on the forums before voting. Responsible voting is only effectively enforceable for elections held on Snapshot and the Security Council elections.

Voting Procedure

In order to give the delegates the possibility of being simultaneously in favor and against any of the policies to be implemented, Approval Voting will be used in this vote. In this way, a delegate who is in favor of the CoI Disclosure Policy and against Responsible Voting can express this by not voting for the second option. A delegate who supports both policies should vote FOR both (each choice will receive 100% VP). Either policy will be eliminated from the final proposal if it does not reach a quorum of 15M.