Context

One of the main goals of RAW DAO is to curate the world's best collection of photography.

In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to have a reliable curatorial process that consistently produces good acquisition decisions.

We already have a traditional, committee-based curatorial process in place. In the spirit of Web 3.0 and decentralization, we'd like to explore a broader and more democratic curatorial model, which could eventually dethrone the traditional model, while engaging more members and building a stronger community.

There are many challenges and obstacles to overcome in such a model, such as conflicts of interests, frontrunning, assuring fairness, maintaining decision quality and cohesion, as well as many operational hurdles.

Achieving this vision would mean successfully pioneering a new model for global, collaborative and decentralized curation --- a major achievement both from a cultural, democratic and organizational point-of-view. A stronger and more engaged community with a better collection should come along as results of this achievement.

The purpose of this proposal is to present the first iteration of this curatorial process in an attempt to fulfill this vision, for which we believe the effort to be worthwhile.

Proposal

General Process

• The general curatorial process consists of the following steps:

1. Objective Setting: defining a desirable outcome for the curatorial process;
2. Nomination: listing alternatives;
3. Decision Making: choosing/ranking alternatives;
4. Acquisition: executing on decisions.

• Each cycle of this process is called a curatorial season;
• Each season will take place over a period of 1 month, begining on the first day of each month;
• A season can be paused or postponed by the community via a simple majority vote by at least 20% of the current authenticated member base, or via a snapshot proposal;
• A season shall begin only if all the operational tools required to make it happen are in place and working reliably;
• A season shall begin only if all the teams and roles required to make it happen have been properly filled;
• The budget of each season shall not exceed 5% of the total yearly curation budget (i.e. 20ETH, for 2022), and will be set by the community at the start of each season.

Objective Setting

• The main objective of this curatorial process is to select for artworks that:

  • are innovative, have artistic substance, relevance and depth;
  • engage with other communities, expanding our DAO's reach and relevance;
  • produce virtuous social impact, such as improving inclusivity and diversity in the space;
  • appreciate in value;
  • withstand the test of time, as opposed to being trendy and shallow;
  • are cohesive additions to the existing collection.

It is clear that no artwork will meet all these requirements; members should instead aim to choose works that meet as many of these criteria as possible, in their opinions.

Nomination

• During the first week of the month, an open call for Community Collection nominations will be available via an online form for members to nominate specific collections, requesting enough information for members to appraise the nomination;
• The maximum number of nominations to be gathered in the form for each season will be 20;
• Each member will be limited to1 nomination;
• Nominations will be available live for members to query;
• Nominations will be considered in chronological order;
• Duplicate nominations will be coalesced;
• Nominations from the immediate preceding season won't be considered;
• Collections without any pieces available for acquisition won't be considered;
• The nomination window closes at the end of the week.

Decision Making

• The decision making window will be open for the following 2 weeks;

• Members will vote on their preferred nominations via an approval voting system, in which members will be able to vote for as many collections as they like;

• this election will not be token-weighted, instead treating all members' votes as the same.

• Campaigning for nominations is prohibited. Members aren't allowed to solicit other members or attempt to influence their decision making in any way without their request;

• violation of this rule will result in a member's suspension from the curatorial process for 3 seasons.

• All information concerning the curatorial exercise is confidential (with the exception of this proposal), available only to authenticated members of RAW DAO, and in no way shall be shared with third parties;

• violation of this rule will result in a member's suspension from the curatorial process for 6 seasons.

• At the end of the voting window, nominations will be ranked by the number of votes they've gathered by members;

• Selected works from the top 3 collections ranked by this method will be acquired by RAW;

• The incumbent curation committee will be in charge of choosing which specific artworks from each winning collection shall be acquired;

• alternatively, a team can be formed by the curation committee to handle this task.

• If a collection from the top 3 has already been acquired by RAW in the past, the team-in-charge can choose to acquire another piece from it or skip it in favor of acquiring an extra piece from the other collections in the top 3;

• If the budget isn't enough to acquire works from each collection, then as many works shall be acquired as possible while respecting the season's budget, in order of most voted collection to least voted;

• If there is any remaining budget after a single work has been collected from each winning collection, the curation committee shall choose to acquire more pieces from the winning collections as they see fit, up to the approved budget for the season;

• Any leftover budget after that will remain in the vault.

Acquisition

• The incumbent curation committee will be in charge of negotiating and executing the acquisition of the elected works;

• alternatively, an acquisitions team can be formed to handle this task with an appropriate compensation budget.

• Acquisitions can be timed to take advantage of favorable market conditions, but shall be settled at most within 1 month of the closing of the voting window, and ideally during the last week of the month;

• If a colletion has varied in price less than (or equal to) 20% during or after the voting window, an acquisition must still be made;

• Any price variation greater than 20% will make proceeding with the acquisitions subject to the team-in-charge's judgement;

• If it becomes clear/known that an artist has tinkered with their price during the season in anticipation of their work being acquired, then the acquisition must be cancelled.

Communication

• The same team tasked with handling announcements from the curation committee will be in charge of announcing the acquisitions chosen by the community;
• All acquisition announcements should be treated the same, regardless of if the work has been collected via a community vote or by the curation committee;
• Announcements must be scheduled in a manner that does not overload the team or the attention of RAW DAO's followers.

Closing Remarks

Given the experimental and complex nature of this process, we should expect hiccups and imperfections along the way. It will be very important that the community adopts a supportive and patient attitude as we attempt to rollout this new mechanism, in the event that it is approved.

Lessons will be learned and we shall amend and update this proposal accordingly.

Thank you for your attention and let's get moving!