Introducing the Collective Feedback Commission

Governance Design 📐 Metagovernance
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Introducing the Collective Feedback Commission

The Optimism Foundation stewards the development of the Optimism Collective’s governance system. The process by which the Collective takes on more responsibility for the system is iterative, and facilitated by the Foundation, based on community feedback. The Collective will gradually take on more governance responsibilities over time until the full system is maintained and managed by the Collective. It is at this point that the Foundation becomes just one of many “Core Delegates” proposing design changes to the system (metagovernance).

As outlined in The Path to Open Metagovernance, the path to open metagovernance will occur gradually over multiple phases.

  • To date, we’ve been primarily in Phase 0: community informed design. The Optimism Foundation open-sources our internal research and proposes designs based on active feedback from governance participants. We receive feedback on late-stage drafts from high-context stakeholders informally, usually after designs are complete.

  • Now we are ready to start entering Phase 1: Community consulted design process. That means will we continue open-sourcing more of our design principles, process, and goals to the community to build shared context while also consulting community members earlier in the design process.

  • We will do this via two primary mechanisms:

    • Frequent polls on low-context design parameters, open to any community member’s input.

    • Higher context feedback requested of an experimental Collective Feedback Commission. The Commission mostly formalizes what has, to date, been an informal process of collecting feedback from high context governance participants such as Council Leads, top delegates, engaged Citizens, external teams, and Retroactive Public Goods Funding (Retro Funding) recipients.

  • Please note all existing avenues for community feedback will remain in place, allowing any member of the community to share their input for incorporation by the Foundation, as always. The goal of Phase 1 is to bring more people into the design process, not keep anybody out. The Feedback Commission is an addition to the existing feedback channels, not a replacement for any of them.

Collective Feedback Commission (CFC)

How it Works

  • All CFC members must opt-in to participate. Any open positions as a result of someone choosing not to opt-in will remain unfilled. There is no official resignation policy as resigning members will not be replaced. The Foundation will reach out to qualifying members with additional information. Opt-in forms must be completed by March 31st.
  • We will experiment with the Commission for an initial trial period of 6 months, beginning April 1st, 2024. That means Token House delegates will consult on the design of Season 6. Citizens will consult on the design of Round 4 and Round 5.
  • It is expected that CFC members will spend an average of 5 hours per Round/Season providing feedback. The CFC will be allocated 750 OP per Token House member and 1,500 OP per Citizens’ House member by the Foundation. The Feedback Commission is also a good candidate for Retro Funding in Round 6: Governance Contributions.
  • Commission feedback will be shared with the Foundation and other Commission members, but may eventually become viewable by the entire community via a read-only public channel.
  • Please note that the Foundation will use feedback from Commission members as an input into designs but is not obligated to incorporate any individual piece of feedback or idea.
  • As outlined in The Path to Open Metagovernance, there will be multiple phases in the transition to community led metagovernance. The Commission is part of Phase 1, and may evolve into a metaNERD contribution path in later phases, open to anyone who completes the required training or steps required to participate.
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Thank you, how do we Opt-in? Is there a form to do so?

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The foundation will reach out to candidates to avoid form spam.

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Those are great news; best of success!

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This is a rationale from the SEED Latam delegation that we have been evaluating with @Joxes, @Pumbi, @AxlVaz, @delphine, and @habacuc.eth , which we are sharing below.

We are looking forward to the CFC, a step to strengthen and improve the processes of collecting qualitative feedback from the community, which is important for the iteration of Measure & Analyze. Given its novelty, we have some questions about how it will function:

  1. What types of commitments do CFC members have towards the community? Should they be engaged in initiatives, such as calls with other OP stakeholders and members, or will they solely act as isolated observers of public feedback? For example, will there be operational procedures, communication threads, or public instances?
  2. Is the roadmap considering the addition of new participants, such as new active delegates or organizations? If so, what are the expectations for incorporating new active members?
  3. Currently, vacancies left by members who decide not to participate will not be filled. What is the rationale behind this decision? Will any guidelines be defined for their renewal?
  4. How will the polls be conducted?
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Thanks for the questions!

  1. What types of commitments do CFC members have towards the community? Should they be engaged in initiatives, such as calls with other OP stakeholders and members, or will they solely act as isolated observers of public feedback? For example, will there be operational procedures, communication threads, or public instances?

Good question! The CFC are not public representatives in that they do not take on responsibilities that would otherwise by directed by tokenholders, and therefore they do not uphold commitments to the community. This is an important design principle.

These types of commitments are important when we have representatives entrusted (via election or delegation) to take actions on behalf of tokenholders or when a group of people are being rewarded/delegated to by the Governance Fund. In this case, the CFC are simply carrying out activities in addition to, but not on behalf of, tokenholders.

  1. Is the roadmap considering the addition of new participants, such as new active delegates or organizations? If so, what are the expectations for incorporating new active members?

Please see above regarding the transition of the CFC to an open contribution path, outlined in more detail here.

  1. Currently, vacancies left by members who decide not to participate will not be filled. What is the rationale behind this decision? Will any guidelines be defined for their renewal?

Vacancies were not filled on a rolling basis as there is no optimal number of participants in this experiment. We’ve used such a method in the past with delegation programs as there was a fixed amount of delegation that needed to be spread over a minimum number of participants. In this case, there is no such dynamic, and filling spots on a rolling basis creates additional overhead and operational complexity.

Importantly, design can actually suffer from “design by committee” when there are too many participants. Part of what we are experimenting with in the outlined path towards open metagovernance is how to involve more people in the process while avoiding the pitfalls of “design by committee.” It is a hard problem that will require us to iterate, which is why we are taking a gradual approach to establishing the infrastructure required to enable more and more people to effectively contribute (but that is definitely the end goal!)

Regarding renewal, the CFC will be re-evaluated at the end of the initial six month trial but the goal is not to renew it but rather evolve it into an open contribution path as soon as practicable. We will need to collect and incorporate learnings from this initial experiment before we can know exactly how this will work.

  1. How will the polls be conducted?

Polls will be conducted on the forum, when relevant. At a minimum, all reflection period proposals will now include polls to collect feedback from the community on different aspects of the proposal and/or whether the community believes it is ready to move to a vote.

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Thanks, Lavande, for the clear answers! If we have more questions, we’ll reach out again.

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Like happens with delegates, each one is free to share details of their own eperience in OP gov spaces. I think it could be be valuable generate a report (by individulas or including all collective) to know the feedback provided by each requering. In addition to have a more transparent process it coulbd be like a learning guide for future members in the collective- Good vibes to all candidates reached out by the foundation =)

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