Summary

For Gro DAO to become more robust, trustless and decentralised, it should move towards on-chain governance.

To do so, it must first ensure that its long-term interests are aligned with those of its members. This can be done by only allowing locked GRO tokens (i.e. vesting tokens that are still not vested) to vote. In other words, it is being proposed that a DAO member can only participate in DAO governance if they lock up the tokens they wish to use towards voting, in a vesting contract.

The DAO should also agree on what requires DAO governance, and in particular, ratify what should be governed by who. This table illustrates what is currently governed and executed by who, and proposes how this should look in a future where on-chain governance is approved by the DAO. It is worth noting that even if and when automatic on-chain governance execution is enabled, not all actions can or should be configured for automated execution immediately.

It is also important to ratify the off-chain governance process. This will cover the steps to raise and vote on a proposal when only vesting GRO counts towards votes and where on-chain governance cannot be used to implement the resulting actions (either because it is not approved by the DAO or because the respective proposal would not result in an on-chain action, as illustrated in this table). In such instances, this proposed off-chain governance process would be used:

1. Discuss in Discord at #governance channel
2. Write a Gro Request For Comments (GRFC) on Gro DAO Forum, following these guidelines on writing GRFCs, and use the poll feature to conduct an informal signalling vote
3. After at least [6 days] of GRFC, if feedback has been implemented and there is a general consensus (as determined by GRFC feedback and by at least [15 members] participating in a passing signalling vote) that the proposal should be taken to vote, addresses with [175,000+ vesting or delegated vesting GRO tokens] (~0.5% of circulating GRO Supply), or whitelisted addresses; can initiate the proposal on Gro DAO’s Snapshot, using this Proposal Description Template
4. The vote would be live for at least [5 days] for off-chain voting on Snapshot, and would need to meet a quorum of [350,000 vesting GRO] (~1% of circulating GRO Supply) and a passing rate of over [50%]
5. A successful vote would have [3 days] of timelock for implementation (if applicable), allowing time for emergency multi-sig to act if there’s a malicious attack

A full in-depth description of this proposal can be found here.

Explanation of each voting option

This proposal marks the initial step in a multi-step meta-governance update for Gro DAO. It proposes to:

• Allow only locked GRO tokens (i.e. vesting tokens that are still not vested) to vote;
• Ratify what should be governed by who, and;
• Ratify off-chain governance process

Accordingly, DAO members can either vote:

• FOR: approve the proposal
• AGAINST: do not approve the proposal
• ABSTAIN: no opinion on this proposal

Implementation

On-chain action: allow only locked GRO tokens (i.e. vesting tokens that are still not vested) to vote, by setting the voting weight for liquid GRO on the vote aggregator contract to 0.

Off-chain action: Ratify (the current and proposed distinctions of) what should be governed by who, as documented.

Off-chain action: Ratify off-chain governance process, as documented, by:

• Changing Snapshot proposal threshold from 1,000,000 to 175,000 GRO
• Changing Snapshot quorum from 50,000 to 350,000 GRO

Off-chain action: Add the with-delegation strategy to the Gro DAO Snapshot space.

Benefits (Pros)

Allow only locked GRO tokens (i.e. vesting tokens that are still not vested) to vote:

• Greater alignment between the DAO and its members
• Further incentivises longer-term commitments to the DAO
• Reduced risk of governance attack ahead of on-chain governance implementation which enables the Snapshot proposal threshold to be reduced (from 1,000,000 to 175,000 vesting GRO)

Ratify what should be governed by who:

• Greater clarity on current and future governance processes
• Further streamlining of DAO operations
• Provides context for forthcoming meta-governance update proposals

Ratify off-chain governance process:

• Greater clarity on off-chain governance process
• Easier to meet proposal and quorum thresholds, and increase total voter participation by enabling voter delegation

Downsides (Cons)

• Greater operational overhead
• More complicated processes that need to be understood by DAO members
• Higher quorum threshold (350,000 GRO) to be met for future proposals to be passed on Snapshot
• Gas fees required to lock GRO tokens and to claim vesting rewards

Next Steps

This vote will run for 5 days on a simple majority basis.

If the proposal is not passed, the People Pod will carefully review the proposal and engage in a thorough dialogue with the community to incorporate any further feedback received.