Collective Feedback Commission: The Next Iteration
The Collective Feedback Commission (CFC) was piloted beginning in Season 5 as part of the path to open metagovernance. As outlined in the Collective’s Working Constitution, the Foundation’s role is to bootstrap the governance system of the Collective over multiple years, gradually bringing more governance rights online until the system can manage itself. Metagovernance refers to the ability to propose changes to the design of the governance system. Given the importance of this responsibility, metagovernance is the last governance responsibility that will be transferred to the community.
The CFC serves as an experimental training ground to develop a “Core Governance Program” that will allow the Collective to take on metagovernance responsibilities in the future. The inspiration for this program is Core Development Programs. The goal of the CFC is to enable the Foundation to become just one of many Core Governors proposing metagovernance proposals in the future (similar to how OP Labs is just one of many Core Developers proposing protocol upgrades.)
This will require a multi-year, gradual, and iterative process. The CFC began with an initial six month pilot in which members were primarily “consulting the Foundation on early design drafts requiring a high degree of context.” You can see the full pilot retrospective here.
Based on the impact of the pilot, the Foundation has decided to continue iterating with the CFC. Iterations of the Commission will gradually increase the set of member responsibilities over time as well as increase the number of members the Commission can support.
The next iteration of the Commission will launch on November 4th. Qualifying participants will be notified by October 28th and will be required to opt-in and KYC by November 1st.
Please note that while we will continue the Commission, we will be postponing the launch of the open contribution path component until we have further refined the best format to accomplish the longer term goals of the Commission. It is one full workstream to design how the Commission works and another workstream to create the contribution path that supports it. We are still committed to supporting this path in the future, but need to focus our efforts on the refinement and development of the core workstream first. We will continue to invest in the many opportunities outside the Commission for the broader community to provide feedback to the Foundation.
Season 7 Collective Feedback Commission Charter
Season 7 CFC Goals
The next iteration of the CFC will begin on November 4th and run through the end of Season 7.
- Goals:
- Allow members to gain more insight into the Foundation’s approach to governance design, building shared context around the how and why
- Create a more collaborative working process between the Foundation and the Commission, involving Commission members in the earlier stages of our design process:
planning and research - Allow for member specialization based on level and type of expertise, accomplished via the distinct tracks outlined below
- Allow members to have more agency over lower stakes design parameters
- Non-goals:
- The pilot made it obvious that we need to further refine the Foundation’s working relationship with the CFC before we can ask members to develop the lower levels of the contribution path and mentor new participants. We are still committed to the development of this contribution path in the future and would recommend joining the govNERDS contribution path to build up relevant knowledge and skills in the meantime (join the wannabe-govnerds channel in Discord for more info!)
As always, after each version, there will be a participant survey and retrospective workshop to inform the next iteration. You can find the pilot retrospective here.
Season 7 CFC Structure
Participants
The Collective Feedback Commission will be split into three different tracks to allow for different levels of engagement and to accommodate different types of expertise.
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Optimization: Members will refine, optimize, and adapt existing processes or programs they have first hand experience with
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Operational (Governance Processes)
- Focus areas: Token House Process, Citizens’ House Process, User Testing
- Membership: 3 members; based on demonstrable knowledge of processes
- Foundation Track Lead: @op_julian
- Expected Hours per month: Up to ~3
- Level of agency:
Write access - Informed about Organizational work; attends all Commission meetings
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Organizational (Governance Structures)
- Focus areas: Onboarding Flows, Autonomous Operations, Evolving Mandates
- Membership: 5 members; All Council, Board, and Commission Leads
- Foundation Track Lead: @maxwell
- Expected Hours per month: Up to ~5
- Level of agency:
Edit access - Informed about System Design work; attends select Foundation meetings
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Design Research: Members will work directly with the Foundation via “Project Partnerships,” supporting the Foundation in one of the earlierst stages of the design process: Research
- Focus areas: Research, Evaluation Algorithms, Selection Algorithms, Voting Design, Decentralization
- Membership: Up to 10 members; based on demonstrable expertise
- Foundation Track Lead: @lavande
- Expected Hours per month: Up to ~8
- Level of agency:
Read + research access - Work directly with the Foundation team via “Project Partnerships”
Each track will have a Foundation Lead. Simona Pop, a Foundation Advisor, will serve as the Commission Lead. Foundation Leads will facilitate context sharing between the Commission and the Foundation. The Commission Lead will manage Commission operations and hold the Foundation accountable to executing on this Charter.
*There will be 18 eligible members. Qualification of members will based on demonstrable contributions/attestations relevant to each area of required expertise. All members must opt-in to participate. The full list will be added as a comment to this post on October 25th. The CFC is an experiment and membership models are subject to change with each iteration. We will continue to invest in the many opportunities outside the Commission for the broader community to provide feedback to the Foundation.
Note: Pilot membership was determined via delegation rankings in the Token House and via demonstrable contributions in the Citizens’ House. This led to a high degree of overlap between members of the CFC and other leadership roles in the Collective. The current iteration experiments with selection based on expertise. We are likely to continue experimenting with different selection methods in future iterations.
Season 7 Responsibilities
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Individual members of the Collective Feedback Commission will:
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Provide feedback on early Foundation design drafts, roadmaps, frameworks, etc.
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Participate in broader design discussions with the Foundation via monthly meetings
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Provide feedback on community authored Mission Requests to ensure they align with Season 7 Intents and/or other strategic initiatives
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Execute on contributions as scoped by the Foundation (members of the Design Research track will do this via Project Partnerships)
Note: The Foundation will use feedback from Commission members as an input but is not obligated to incorporate any individual piece of feedback or implement the recommendations in any contribution. Commission feedback will be shared with the Foundation and other Commission members, and may be made publicly viewable by the entire community at the end of the Commission’s term. The Foundation will provide summaries of the impact of all contributions.
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Foundation Track Leads will:
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To the best of our ability, request feedback on regular feedback cycles. Project Partnerships will be scoped with clear deliverables and deadlines.
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Host monthly calls with the Foundation governance design team to share context and facilitate a two-way dialogue with Commission members.
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Propose a selection mechanism that determines which members claim specific pieces of work, subject to simple majority approval by members at the start of the term.
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The Commission Lead will:
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Onboard new Commission members, ensuring they are familiar with the CFC’s processes, mission, and operational structure. This includes providing any necessary documentation or training to help them contribute effectively from the start.
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Propose the evaluation algorithm by which rewards will be distributed to individual members at the start of the term, subject to majority (51%) approval (see “Rewards” section below).
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Ensure members of each track are executing on their responsibilities in a timely manner and flag any blockers to execution to the Foundation.
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Facilitate feedback loops and coordination between Commission members and the Foundation, when needed, holding the Foundation accountable to this Charter.
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Organize regular Commission meetings, as desired by members. The frequency of internal meetings is at the discretion of the Commission Lead but should be aligned with governance minimization.
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Authoring, or coordinating authorship, of any regular communication reports circulated to the broader community.
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Conduct feedback survey, facilitate peer reviews, and host retrospective workshop at the end of the Commission’s term to inform the next iteration
Note: Leads are operational roles, meaning they do not engage in the day-to-day activities of the team but rather manage the operations of the team. This means Leads don’t review, vote, or sign but they may exercise decision-making authority in the event that the commission cannot come to consensus on a matter (ie. serve as tie breaker). Leads may also draft any applications for impact evaluation of the Commission, although we don’t expect Retro Funding to be applicable to the Commission’s work in Season 7 (see below.)
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Season 7 Rewards
- The CFC will be allocated 100,000 OP by the Foundation. The Commission Lead will be compensated separately, via an agreement with the Foundation. These tokens will come out of the Unallocated Portion of the treasury, managed by the Foundation, since the CFC provides a valuable service to the Foundation. We are providing these rewards as we believe the work of the Commission is difficult to evaluate retroactively and therefore the CFC’s work should not depend on being eligible for Retro Funding. Retro Funding is best suited to evaluating measurable and permissionless impact, whereas the Commission’s work is hard to measure and is currently permissioned to members selected by the Foundation. The level of impact generated by the Commission might also be higher or lower in a given season due to factors outside the Commission’s control, such as the Foundation’s experiment design.
- Members will vote via simple majority to approve an evaluation algorithm, proposed by the Lead at the start of the term, via which rewards will be allocated from this budget at the end of the season.
- The Lead will calculate individual rewards based on the approved evaluation algorithm at the end of the Season and rewards should be allocated accordingly. The Foundation recommends a minimum 48 hour dispute window to allow members to verify the correct application of the evaluation algorithm before contacting the Foundation to deliver rewards.
Season 7 Success
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Number of new ideas proposed and implemented as a result of Commission input (> 8)
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% of drafts in which feedback was ranked as “high value” by the Foundation (> 70%)
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NPS score from Foundation governance team (= > 5/7)
The below measures will be used to evaluate the success of the Foundation in managing this program:
- Member ranking of clarity of role 8.5+ (up from 7.7/10 in v1)
- Member ranking of clarity of responsibilities 9+ (up from 7.6/10 in v1)
- Member ranking of Commission efficacy 8.5+ (up from 6.9/10 in v1)