Objective: Design and implement a strategy for distributing non-financialized governing power within the Radicle ecosystem

Deliverables/SoW

To truly be a self-sustaining, community-owned & governed, free and open source project, there must be an additional governance mechanism that allows for a non-financialized form of influence that can be distributed and earned. The reason is that influence in the project is currently disproportionately distributed among early team members & supporters, i.e. RAD holders. While a plan to distribute tokens to contributors is in development (see Workstream #2), participation within the DAO must be increased by designing a way to distribute non-financialized governingpower.

• A new mechanism/system/tool for distributing influence that can be deployed in the current Radicle governance system
  • Guiding Questions:
    • What is the design of a layer that interoperates with our token voting system?
    • Who should have influence in the RadicleDAO? Why and what kind of influence?
    • What is the design of a dynamic & decentralized system that will scale as the ecosystem grows?
    • How is the system managed/controlled? How can the DAO ensure it can upgrade/change the system?
    • What tools/primitives should be used (e.g. NFTs, Coordinape etc…)?

Notes from Kickoff

• Will this be separate or integrated into our current token voting system?
  • Abbey: Ideal if we can integrate with the on-chain voting, but we will probably be introducing new off-chain processes that will require influence as well
• What decisions will be made by the holders of this forms of influence?
• bordumb:
  • intraDAO influence
    • could use badge categories as a way of classifying types of influence.
      • might have differenet categories of badges that represent different roles & responsibilities.
        • can be permanent, can be time-limited.
  • What does it mean to have different roles & badges with Radicle? What kind of governance powers do each confer?
• matt:
  • need to distribute influence to active stakeholders. who are the stakeholders? what % do we want to distribute to stakeholders?
  • token voting seems like a broken model. how do we move towards being controlled by a diverse set of stakeholders?
  • first step is good to start working with the system and then move away to move control.
  • how could we use delegation to start moving control?
  • how do we best represent the views of the community?
• emily:
  • otterspace is defining a primitive called badges. badges = new standard of nontransferable NFTs
  • can create different types of badges for different roles within an organization. right now, permissioned distribution (a group of people distribute badges), future enabling permissionless distribution (contributors can mint their own badges when they meet criteria)
  • nontransferable makes it more sybil-resistant (not buying votes/tokens).
  • integrating with snapshot to support off-chain voting with the badges
  • how are badges distributed?
    • set up an org/multisig. create badges and add people to mint list to claim badge (consent based)
      • can set expiration dates
    • badge creator can distribute them
• how could we use badges in the grants team?
  • six community-approved badge holders. would want these badge holders to be able to go out and recruit other people. would want to confer power to make decision to do something.
  • what power would be assigned to badge?
• how could badges be used?
  • managing access to channels
  • managing permissions to multisigs
  • reputation
• ange
  • influence is very tied to role
    • influence in terms of voting, influence in term of content (roles & responsibilities)
    • putting a badge system into place requires us to be more explicit with responsibilities which would support our decentralization
    • important for changing roles and re-aligning as the DAO grows and matures
• bordumb wants to move to pay out grants in USDC & RAD
  • reason is that when a grantee becomes a contributor, they also become vested.
  • core contributors get these badges, have the ability to confer x number of badges over time, which then could relate to receiving X amount of RAD.
• what are the categories of decisions that need to be made
  • financing & budgeting: how does $$$ make its way from the DAO → contributor
  • who is best fit to make decisions? that will define roles