Clarifications are provided below
I assume the Foundation isn’t required to report on how it spends the budgets it proposes for The Foundation treasury
- The Foundation was allocated 30% of the initial token supply. The Foundation posts regular budget updates outlining how those tokens are used. The next update is being prepared and will be posted shortly. This report was not published alongside the Season 8 materials, as the Foundation is not currently requesting more tokens.
The Collective is now being asked to optimistically approve (meaning if someone is not paying attention it passes) the Futarchy mission again
- Butter’s analysis of the futarchy experiment should be available later today
- The Foundation analysis of the futarchy experiment is expected to be available by June 26th
- The Foundation’s analysis of the Grants Council in Season 7 is expected to be published by June 19th
It takes some time to do rigorous analysis (the Season ended less than 48 hours ago) but this information is expected to be available to the community before votes on any of the Missions occur. Given the need to understand longer term impacts, like retention, the reality is that we will not fully understand the efficacy of different programs immediately after they conclude. We will post links to all the analyses mentioned above in the Missions as they become available.
All token allocations (Mission budgets), including the Grants Council Mission, will be optimistically approved in Season 8. This is for a few key reasons:
- The experiments we ran in Season 7 indicated that most participants, even non-experts, tended to align with budgets proposed by an “expert group.” (See Season 7 Guest Voter Selection Experiment Outcomes)
- The Budget Board has the relevant expertise to make informed and comprehensive proposals about budgets. Governance participants still have the ability to veto these proposals if they disagree.
- Optimistic approvals allow the decisions to be outsourced to high context decision makers while ensuring they remain accountable to governance participants that retain a veto. Insufficient monitoring is a known failure mode of optimistic systems, which we will prevent with email notifications, etc.
It’s unclear whether Citizens have any say in the future of Retro Funding
- Citizens will have a say in whether or not Retro Funding receives token allocations, meaning Retro Funding is ultimately accountable to the Citizens’ House. Citizens will not be involved in the day-to-day decision making involved in running the Retro Funding program, as that increases platform risk and is, therefore, outside the governance surface area.
As someone analizing a proposal for the Grants Council S8, with a clear vision and the expectation to be held accountable six months from now, I’d really like to know if that same mentality exists across the board.
- Yes. The Foundation is bootstrapping the infrastructure required for all token allocations to be compared in as standardized a manner as possible. You can see that in standardized success metrics, public analyses, and increased transparency around the Foundation’s roadmaps and budgets.
- In the future, the Foundation may need to request more tokens from governance, in which case the Foundation will go through the same process as anyone else requesting tokens.
There’s no public accountability. If I had failed in any of the five seasons I’ve served, Token House wouldn’t give me a second chance to get elected.
- The Foundation is similarly accountable to the Token House, as outlined in the Operating Manual.
Retro Funding is on its seventh iteration with no indication of being sucessfull during S7
- OSO is expected to share this analysis by June 20th. They have shared many such analyses for previous seasons (for example.) As stated above, all such analysis are expected to be available before Missions are voted on in Voting Cycle #39b.