Framework for New Committee who decides when to revoke grants -Updated proposal

by 0x858343382132b9ab46c857a7d52fdbafc039f784 (Zino)

Linked Pre-Proposal

Who should make the decision of revoking grants?

Summary

This proposal aims to create the structure and guidelines for the New Committee who decides when to revoke grants, to function effectively

Abstract

Following a nurturing discussion on a previous draft, the community saw it necessary to split the creation of a New Committee into two steps:

• One with the structure and guidelines for the New Committee who decides when a grant should be revoked.
• Another after the framework is designed, to propose the Committee members. This is a next step towards defining this framework.

To unify criteria we´ve used this Governance Proposal as a starting point to include the procedure to create this new Committee and to add and remove a Committee member. Due to the character limitations, you can find more information about this framework here.

The New Committee will have the sole responsibility to order the revocation of a Grant provided by the Decentraland DAO. This New Committee is important to decentralize the decision-making process of determining which grants should be revoked and to take care of the DAO treasury. If this draft proposal passes, the path to revocations would be the following:

1. The Grant Support Squad makes a recommendation to the New Committee to review a case when the grantee doesn't comply with the terms and conditions and the Grant Framework.
2. The New Committee of 5 members will study each case and will have the opportunity to request extra information regarding the case presented, and has the responsibility to provide a resolution to the community, either to revoke a grant or not to revoke a grant.
3. If a grant should be revoked, the DAO committee will execute the revocation.

The New Committee will be constituted by 5 members and 2 substitutes. This committee selected by the Decentraland DAO Community is expected to be in office for twelve (12) months and the members could be re-elected only for one consecutive period. Each committee member will be compensated with 200 USD in MANA per grant case, paid by the DAO treasury and executed by the DAO committee once the verdict has been posted on the Grant Proposal page.

Motivation

During the 5 months that the Grants Support Squad has been active, we got to know the grantees on video calls, spent time with them, listened to their needs, provided support in various forms, and have seen successful grants. Walking through those 58 grants that finished ($3.5MUSD) before the Grant Support Squad existed, we detected that 17 grants had some concerns regarding what they had first stated in their proposal and the finished projects. This represents 1,3M USD, almost 50% of the funds provided.

In the current active grants, we found cases where those grants were not able to complete the project that the community had voted on, and some other projects that were delayed on the proposed roadmap. The difficulty in these cases is that the contracts of these grants were still vesting, without clarity regarding their ability to complete them successfully.

For that reason, we recommended the DAO Committee (who has the ability to stop the vesting contracts using the contract action “revoke”), should execute the only technical mechanism that the DAO has to make sure those vesting contracts were stopped, as a preventive action. As soon as the grantee delivered according to their proposed roadmap, the DAO Committee also took the commitment to create a new vesting contract for the funds remaining.

The Grant Support Squad has started to work on the improvement of the Grants Program, particularly finding tools to mitigate the negative impact that the revocation has on the grantees.

This New Committee proposal would give an opportunity to the grantees to argue during the “revocation process”. This would mitigate the “centralized power” of the DAO Committee to judge the case, and execute the decision.

Specification

To create this New Committee and to add a member:

1. There will be an open application period in the forum (like the community has done in the past and is doing with the new DAO Committee member). Applications will be submitted by the prospects as posts on the forum and applicants should answer the questions mentioned in the complete framework document - art. 3.
2. The Grant Support Squad interviews the candidates and makes a final selection of 5 members and 2 substitutes. For the creation of this committee and its renewals, the final selection will be presented to the community in a poll.
3. There will be a final poll for the community to vote to accept or decline this selection. This process will be repeated when the committee is renewed. Once this committee is created, the process for adding a new committee member if there is a vacancy will include these 3 stages: I) An Open Call is published in the forum in charge of the Grant Support Squad, II) The committee in office interviews the candidates for the vacant position and makes a final selection of the potential member from the applicants, III) and the community votes in a poll for the best fit.

To remove a member:

Following the DAO Committee framework, the DAO should add a REMOVE COMMITTEE MEMBER proposal category with the required parameters mentioned in the complete framework document - art. 3.

1. A member could be removed by an Internal decision of the Committee members.
2. A member could be removed by the community creating a proposal, and a simple majority vote would be needed to make it effective.

Procedure

1. The New Committee starts to act when there is a formal request from the community through a form.
2. The Grant Support Squad will request the grantee to respond to the concerns raised within 4 days.
3. After that, The Grant Support Squad will send, in the course of following 4 days, the arguments for the New Committee to evaluate the case. This triggers a preventive revocation, later to be executed by the DAO committee.
4. Then, the New Committee has 6 days to discuss the case among the 5 members.
5. During the period of 6 days, the New Committee has the ability to request further information to the Grant Support Squad or the Grantee about the case presented, not exceeding 30 days.
6. After that, the New Committee has 5 days to publish the final resolution.

Conflicts of interest.

Any member of the New Committee should be prevented from participating in a case according to the cases that are mentioned in the complete framework document - art. 7

Execution.

The New Committee will reach the final decision by simple majority. The resolution should be clear and public with the committee’s arguments on why the grant should/should not be revoked. The Final decision will be notified on Grant’s proposal page as a comment and on Grant’s dedicated discord channel.

Conclusion

With this draft proposal we aim to gather feedback and inputs from the community regarding this proposed framework with the objective of creating a final governance proposal that includes the vision and needs of our grantees and the community. Please feel free to add any comments and suggestions to the complete framework document.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO