[Mission Request] Developing DAO Sensemaking Capabilities

Mission Grants 🏹
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Delegate Mission Request Summary: Implement robust sensemaking framework and tooling to increase participation in governance and legitimacy of decisions made.

S6 Intent: Progress Towards Decentralization

Proposing Delegate/Citizen: @zhiganov on behalf of RnDAO

Total grant amount: 90k OP

Should this Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants: Multiple (ideally 2-3)

How will this Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?:
This mission directly contributes to the “Progress Towards Decentralization” intent by enhancing the quality and effectiveness of Optimism decision-making. By improving sensemaking capabilities, we aim to increase meaningful participation in governance and citizen confidence.

Sensemaking is the process by which individuals and groups create shared meaning and understanding from complex, ambiguous, or uncertain environment in order to facilitate effective decision-making and action.

Sensemaking is crucial for DAOs due to their decentralized nature, which often involves participants with different cultural backgrounds, motivations, and levels of engagement. Some key aspects of sensemaking that are relevant to DAO governance include:

  1. Surfacing and synthesizing diverse perspectives: DAOs need mechanisms to gather input from a wide range of participants and to identify patterns and insights that may not be immediately apparent.
  2. Facilitating dialogue and deliberation: Sensemaking in DAOs requires creating spaces for participants to exchange ideas, clarify assumptions, and build shared understanding, even if they don’t always reach full consensus.
  3. Balancing scale and context: As DAOs grow, they need sensemaking processes that can operate at scale without losing the richness and nuance of individual experiences and local knowledge.
  4. Navigating power dynamics and reputation: Sensemaking in DAOs must account for the influence of informal power structures, reputation systems, and the potential for exclusion or marginalization of certain voices.
  5. Enabling distributed action: Effective sensemaking should not only lead to shared understanding but also enable participants to take coordinated action in a decentralized fashion.

Implementing advanced sensemaking in Optimism can significantly enhance the quality of deliberation, ultimately contributing to more robust and effective governance processes.

What is required to execute this Mission Request?
The selected teams or individuals will be expected to:

  • Conduct research on existing sensemaking frameworks and their applicability to DAO governance.
  • Develop a sensemaking framework tailored to Optimism’s governance structure.
  • Create a solution to implement this framework, emphasizing:
    • Increasing citizen engagement and participation
    • Enhancing understanding of complex governance proposals, especially upgrade vetos
    • Facilitating informed deliberation (between delegates as well)
  • Integrate the solution with existing governance processes and tooling.
  • Provide comprehensive documentation and educational resources for the community.
  • Collaborate with core developer teams to ensure that sensemaking tooling can adapt to evolving governance structures, including potential onchain execution of governance outcomes.
  • Maintain and iterate on the solution based on community feedback and observed impact for a minimum of 12 months.

How should governance participants measure impact upon completion of this Mission?

  • Milestones:

    1. Research phase completion and framework proposal (2 months)
    2. Initial tool development and community testing (4 months)
    3. Full implementation and integration with existing governance processes (3 months)
    4. Comprehensive documentation and educational resources creation (2 months)
    5. Ongoing maintenance and iteration based on feedback (12 months from full implementation)

  • Metrics:

    • Increase in votable supply of OP tokens towards the 100M OP target
    • Percentage of Citizens who report feeling confident when voting on upgrade vetos
    • Increase in the number of active delegates and delegation rate
    • Improvement in the quality of governance proposals as measured by community feedback and successful implementation rates
    • Reduction in the time to reach consensus on complex governance decisions
    • Growth in the number of unique addresses participating in governance discussions and voting

  • Impact:

    • Enhanced clarity and understanding of governance issues, particularly complex topics like upgrade vetos
    • Improved ability to synthesize diverse perspectives and reach well-informed decisions
    • Increased engagement and satisfaction of DAO members with the governance process
    • Contribution to the development of a comprehensive framework for mapping decentralization beyond technical properties

Has anyone other than the proposer contributed to this Mission Request? No

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Hey ziganov! The MR submissions ended yesterday at 19:00 GMT. Let’s hope that there is another opportunity to present your MR soon (if a 2nd round opens mid-season, for example); fingers crossed!

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