GIP-99: Should Gnosis Guild steward GnosisDAO Governance?

Executive Summary

Gnosis Guild proposes to steward GnosisDAO governance, guiding a new phase of innovation, experimentation, and growth. As GnosisDAO continues allocating resources to Gnosis Chain, Gnosis Pay, and other mission-aligned ventures, our team will drive the DAO's governance strategy and operations through dedicated R&D, technical implementation, and ongoing stewardship.

While Gnosis Guild has been actively contributing to the maintenance and improvement of GnosisDAO governance since its inception, this proposal will formalize a long-term partnership that prioritizes the following objectives:

• Improve, maintain, and secure GnosisDAO governance infrastructure.
• Foster the growth and further decentralization of the Gnosis Ecosystem.
• Position GnosisDAO as leading innovators of DAO governance.

Through these guiding stars, Gnosis Guild will also address the challenges currently faced by GnosisDAO’s governance. Initiatives includes: (1) designing a new governance architecture and roadmap to tackle the operational inefficiency of its monolithic governance patterns, (2) introducing novel funding mechanisms to address its inefficient capital allocation and lackluster ecosystem development, and (3) progressively decentralizing DAO processes to increase governance activity, transparency, and participation.

The proposal will begin with an Initial Trial Period (ITP) that, upon successful completion of its deliverables, will transition into a two year workstream outlined below.

Our funding request is $38k USDC + $38k GNO (priced at the time the proposal passes and locked for one year), paid monthly to Gnosis Guild.

About Gnosis Guild: Gnosis Guild is a web3-native venture studio with the values of conviviality, co-ownership, and experimentation at its heart. For over three years, our team’s modular tooling and needs-driven development have secured and operationalized the GnosisDAO’s governance and treasury asset management. These include: Zodiac Reality Module for decentralized Snapshot governance; Zodiac Roles and bespoke tooling for karpatkey's non-custodial asset management; custom strategies for delegation; token locking and distribution systems for CoW and Safe; and support and development for other GnosisDAO initiatives like Hashi and Gnosis Pay.

Service Description

Gnosis Guild will guide GnosisDAO’s governance through strategic R&D, technical implementation, and ongoing stewardship. In response to community feedback and motivated by our commitment to needs-driven development for the GnosisDAO, we have outlined objectives that will inform our overarching governance strategy and initiatives that address key areas for improvement.

Objectives:

1. Improve, maintain, and secure GnosisDAO governance infrastructure. Indicator: Increased utility and adoption of GNO as a governance token through enhanced voting participation and token utilization.

2. Foster the growth and further decentralization of the Gnosis Ecosystem. Indicator: A thriving ecosystem with multiple transparent funding mechanisms and active engagement from top-tier external contributors.

3. Position GnosisDAO as leading innovators of DAO governance. Indicator: Novel governance infrastructure and ongoing initiatives to integrate emerging tech.

Key Performance Indicators:

1. Improvement in annual total vote weight utilized
2. Improvement in annual total voter turnout
3. Increased allocation of annual total resources per approved proposals

We will use the consistent evaluation of these variables on an ongoing basis to measure our impact on our outlined objectives. By measuring vote weight utilization, voter turnout, and resource allocation, we can explicitly measure governance engagement and implicitly measure proposal quality. While resource allocation is inconsistently documented across proposals to date, we estimate that an increase in the ratio of total proposed funds to allocated funds would correlate with an increase in proposal approvals and quality. We will evaluate each proposal individually, but due to the historically significant variation in engagement between proposals, our KPIs will be measured on a yearly time period to reflect macro trends. For example: from 2022 to 2023, there was a 73% decrease in proposals generated, a 66% decrease in total voters, and a 79% decrease in total vote weight utilized. While the causes of changes in governance engagement are speculative, our intuition is that market dynamics, major events (xDai merger), and governance stewardship were contributing factors.

Initiatives:

A new architecture and roadmap for governance

• Problem: GnosisDAO's monolithic governance pattern limits operational efficiency and innovative potential.
• Solution: Develop a new architecture and roadmap to enhance agility and innovation, focused on multiple types of roles, organizational units, and parallel governance processes.

Novel funding mechanisms to foster the Gnosis Ecosystem

• Problem: Opaque ecosystem funding mechanisms hinder capital allocation and ecosystem development.
• Solution: Implement novel funding mechanisms to scale and grow the Gnosis Ecosystem, fostering transparency and capital efficiency. Experiment with, and implement, mechanisms like futarchy or conviction voting as parallel allocation methods.

Progressive decentralization of DAO processes

• Problem: Low governance participation reflects a perceived lack of value in committing resources.
• Solution: Facilitate progressive decentralization of DAO processes for greater resilience and trustlessness, creating a more automated, efficient, and permissionless functioning for the DAO.

1. Key aspects

A new architecture and roadmap for governance

The current governance process only allows one path for DAO action, namely GIPs. This monolithic structure can be very time consuming and involve significant risk on both the contributor and DAO sides, along with implying high voter bandwidth. Creating multiple types of roles, organizational units, and parallel governance processes within the DAO will serve to decentralize decision-making, reduce bottlenecks, improve bandwidth, and diversify the DAO’s ability to adapt and respond. Safe Guardians, OP Badge Holders, and ENS working groups are a few examples. By effectively delegating clearly scoped responsibilities to autonomous groups, GnosisDAO can improve its organizational efficiency while reducing the governance overhead of its top layer governance. We will develop an evolving architecture, with ongoing innovation and experimentation, to remain agile to dynamic needs.

Novel funding mechanisms to foster the Gnosis Ecosystem

To scale and grow the Gnosis Ecosystem, we will design and implement novel funding mechanisms for maximum capital efficiency. Multiple paths to ecosystem funding would enable more autonomous contributions, with clear directives and expectations. Optimism and Arbitrum have set an excellent example here, and their ecosystem growth is a clear reflection. Frameworks like RetroPGF, ARB’s STIP + multiple grants programs, and Safe’s OBRA are all promising directions. Similarly, innovation in futarchy and conviction voting has shown potential as emerging allocation mechanisms. Based on their successes and pitfalls, we will develop our own mechanism suited to the Gnosis Ecosystem.

Progressive decentralization of DAO processes

By developing modular, composable DAO governance processes, we will increase decentralization and transparency. In reducing any single point of failure, the DAO will have greater resilience and trustlessness. With the development of new onchain mechanisms, we will create a more automated, efficient, and permissionless functioning for the DAO.

2. Service Scope

This proposal is solely for our work stewarding governance of GnosisDAO. Any additional work, such as our contributions to Gnosis Pay, Hashi, and DAO treasury management, would be out of scope.

3. Service delivery

Immediate Improvements

• Modernize the GnosisDAO’s Snapshot strategy to correctly account for a greater diversity of GNO holders.
• Enable key delegation features for the DAO: split delegation, transitive delegation, and delegation term limits.
• Implement spam proposal filtration

Research, Architecture, Design

• Extensive research of successful DAO governance architectures
• Continuous gathering of GNO stakeholder feedback
• Iterative design of novel mechanisms for the DAO’s operations
• Experimentation with parallel, tightly-scoped governance mechanisms
• Development of a collaborative roadmap for the DAO’s evolution

Technical Implementation

• Full-stack and smart contract development of governance tooling
• Implement novel governance technologies

Continuous Stewardship and Operations

• Management of DAO governance processes
• Coordination of calls, feedback, and calendar
• Active engagement in forum to foster transparent, efficient dialogue
• Rapid response to emergent issues and risks

4. Support

Gnosis Guild will provide community technical support and ensure we have a rapid response process to any high-risk issues related to GnosisDAO governance.

Pricing and payment

Our funding request is $38k USDC + $38k GNO (priced at the time the proposal passes and locked for one year) paid monthly to Gnosis Guild.

This would ensure we have a stable fiat payment to sustain the pod through any downturns, while still providing Gnosis Guild with a long-term incentive alignment for our work. The GNO portion would also have a 1-year lockup from receipt.

The duration would be for 24 months, able to be terminated at any time.

The team would be comprised of 3.5 guild members including senior full-stack engineers, solidity engineers, mechanism designers, governance leads, PM, researchers, comms, and ops as-needed. The typical team will include 2 senior engineers, one PM/governance lead, and part-time comms/ops, adjusting based on current projects. The total cost to GnosisDAO will remain competitive with other top protocol DAOs.

Payment Frequency	USDC Allocation	GNO Allocation
Monthly	$38k	$38k

(using the price of GNO on the date of proposal approval)|

Service Terms and Exit Strategy

If applicable the duration of the service agreement. Please outline the terms and conditions for exiting the service agreement, including the circumstances under which a party may terminate the agreement, and any other important details.

The agreement between service provider Gnosis Guild and organization GnosisDAO will take effect immediately upon this proposal passing. The terms within the agreement will be valid for two years, unless terminated by either party or updated with mutual consent by both parties. GnosisDAO will assign specific permissions to Gnosis Guild within their treasury utilizing the Roles Modifier to enable Gnosis Guild to autonomously collect payment. Either party may terminate the agreement at any time without cause by giving 90 days of written notice to the other party. Upon termination, all outstanding payments shall be made by GnosisDAO to Gnosis Guild prior to agreement on termination date.

Team/ Organization

Gnosis Guild will act as an Autonomous Core Contributor for GnosisDAO. Through mutualistic partnerships and activist R&D, our team of engineers, designers, and researchers will foster the long-term development and sustainable growth of GnosisDAO’s network. See our contributor list here.

Initial Trial Period

The proposal will begin with an Initial Trial Period (ITP) that, upon successful completion of its deliverables, will transition into the ongoing workstream outlined above. This modification aims to offer more concrete test projects, addressing the feedback from Martin and Thomas. The ITP will last 3 months and will carry out the following projects:

1. Split and Transitive Delegation

Integration, support, and maintenance of our improved Snapshot delegation dashboard and strategy, enabling split delegation, transitive delegation, and delegation term limits.

• Split Delegation: Accounts can delegate their vote weight to any number of other accounts, along with assigning a specific percentage of their voting power to each. For example, Alice could delegate 80% of their vote weight to Bob and 20% to Charlie. Voters could also partially delegate to new mechanisms, like futarchy or agents, as a test-site for new forms.
• Transitive Delegation: Accounts can delegate not only their own vote weight, but also any vote weight delegated to them. For example, if Alice delegates to Bob, and Bob delegates to Charlie, Charlie’s total vote weight is the sum of the vote weights of Alice, Bob, and Charlie.
• Delegation Term Limits: Accounts and Snapshot spaces can optionally set time limits on how long any given delegation remains valid. Spaces can also choose which, if any, term limit to respect when calculating vote weights.

2. GnosisDAO Treasury Dashboard

There is currently no live view of the DAO treasury and its wide range of investments. In order to increase transparency and better communicate the value behind GNO, we will develop a dashboard that aggregates and tracks the DAO treasury and its actively managed positions. This will include analytics, charting functionality, open TWAP order tracking, metrics on yield, growth, spending, revenue, and private investments that belong to the DAO.