FIP-57: Guidelines for DAO governance

Forum Discussion:

https://tribe.fei.money/t/fip-57-guidelines-for-dao-governance-procedures/3751

Motivation: In light of the recent controversies due to confusions over the governance process, I’d like to propose some governance guideline practices to ensure that future governance votes would proceed in an orderly manner that is satisfactory to everyone.

https://docs.fei.money/governance/fei-improvement-proposals-fips is the currently standing rules of FEI governance, This proposal is meant to supplement the above proposal and incorporate some of the best long standing practices observed by the community. This proposal is meant to aggregate and codify the best of such practices and it is meant to serve as a reference for the future combined TRIBE DAO as well. Since TRIBE DAO is still in its early stages, these draft measures, if approved, are meant to serve as “official governance guidelines” rather than immutable “written laws” for the future operation of the DAO.

Proposal:

1. All forum proposals should engage in a 48 hour (as described in the original FIP document) last call before proceeding to snapshot. The last call should be announced in the discord governance channel for publicity; enlisting the aid of a mod if need be.

A notable exception would be technical rollouts, or routine contract upgrades such as FIP-48, which can be forwarded straight to On-Chain voting/OA timelock if there are no dissensions. Other measures which are already approved in principle by a DAO vote such as individual LaaS funding, can be allowed to move forward directly to OA/snapshot.

2. During the “Last Call”, each FIP should clearly state what every voting option would be. The last call post should also indicate any edits which have been made from the original due to the discussions in the forum. If the proposal is significantly amended during last call, the author should respect the flow of the discussion and delay the snapshot accordingly.

An exception can be carved out for proposals that see no dissensions or edits from the original document. In which case the last call is simply a 48 hour countdown announcement.

3. Only the author(s) of the original forum discussion post should make the snapshot for that particular motion, or allow somebody else to do so with explicit written permission in that original thread.

4. Upon the passing of a snapshot vote, the poster should announce in their original discourse post, or on discord governance, the specific time they intend to forward the proposal for on-chain voting/Optimistic Approval. If a particular snapshot is a “temperature check” and not meant to be executed directly, it should be clearly indicated by its authors.

Routine protocol upgrades can be exempt from these requirements.

5. If a proposal outright fails, the author should indicate whether they intend to repost the FIP after editing its contents with community input. A failed FIP should go through the entire process of a new FIP, including another last call, etc.

6. If a proposal passes, but the authors feel that an edit to its contents are merited before proceeding with onchain voting/OA; the authors should clearly indicate so as soon as possible. The authors should clearly outline every edit from the proposal that has passed the snapshot. This is particularly relevant for the Fei-Rari merge snapshot, and I encourage the community to comment on needed changes for the Fei-Rari merges.

7. The DAO guardian should be able to veto existing votes if they satisfy the following criteria:

• The proposer or payload is unknown.
• Proposal which distributes PCV or incentives to voters on the basis of their vote (bribery proposals)
• Proposals which add admin control to untrusted accounts
• Any veto authorized by a TRIBE snapshot that reaches quorum and has at least 24 hours duration (mostly applicable to OA)
• A proposal which contains a security vulnerability, either disclosed by core team or community member, and verified by any third party such as audit firms, security researcher, or community members. …………………..

If successfully passed on snapshot, these guidelines would be pinned on the discourse forum and written into the snapshot website for Fei. They would serve as official guidelines for the governance process.

Proposals that blatantly disregards these guidelines should be rapidly informed as such by community members. If the authors do not respond to valid inquiries of procedure, and outright circumvents governance practices, the proposal could be subject to sanctions such as non execution by OA approval, or veto by guardian/DAO.