The Path to Open Metagovernance

[system]

The Path Towards Open Metagovernance Design

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, 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 the system’s design must be adaptive, with the Foundation just one of many contributors proposing design changes to the system (metagovernance.)

We’ve heard your feedback regarding more transparency and involvement in the path towards open metagovernance design. This post outlines our current approach to governance design as well as an experimental path to community led metagovernance design.

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Overview of Governance Design (Illustrative)

1. Hypothesis: Based on learnings, community feedback, and/or internal milestones (4), a hypothesis is developed for how a change in governance design could help us further achieve our governance system design goals (to be open sourced at a later date.)
   1. A hypothesis is informed by a number of factors, including governance goals & design requirements that have been identified following our governance design process (to be open sourced at a later date.)
2. Experiment: The hypothesis is tested via a time-bound, and ideally isolated, experiment (if/when possible).
3. Measure & Analyse: The performance of the experiment is analysed and measured. Right now, much of this occurs qualitatively (via surveys, informal feedback, retrospectives, etc.) but we strive to incorporate more quantitative measures as the system evolves.
4. Learnings & Iteration: Based on the synthesis of qualitative feedback from governance participants and analysis (3), the hypothesis is proven/disproven. Learnings are then documented and shared, informing new hypotheses.

Community involvement in Governance Design

1. Hypothesis: Hypotheses are developed using several inputs that feed into our governance design process, which is informed by our design principles and the full context of the design goals of the governance system.
   1. Inputs include:
      1. Learnings from previous cycles (4)
      2. Community ideas
      3. The Foundation’s governance milestones and goals
   2. The Foundation uses these inputs to develop a hypothesis and proposes an experiment to test it; these hypotheses may come directly from community members.
   3. The proposed hypothesis and experiment are published to the forum and governance participants provide feedback.
      1. Examples: Guide to Season 5, Retro Funding 3 Round Design, Moving to a Grants Council
2. Experiment: (If possible) The hypothesis is tested via a time bound, and ideally isolated, experiment.
   1. The Foundation will propose an experiment to be run for the length of a round or Season. Sometimes a longer trial period is proposed. Subsequent extensions are subject to governance renewal, following retrospectives
      1. Example: Protocol Delegation Program Renewal
   2. Experiments are tested on the smallest scale practical to start
      1. Example: The concept of a Code of Conduct Council is being tested only in the Token House, before any possible extension to the Citizens’ House
3. Measure & Analyse: The performance of the experiment is measured and analysed.
   1. There are several sources of feedback that inform (3)
      1. Community-led Quantitive Analyses: The community leverages quantitive data to analyse the performance of the experiment
         1. Example: Retro Funding Voting Simulations
      2. Community Sourced Qualitative Feedback: The Foundation conducts feedback surveys to evaluate all programs; Councils, Boards, and Commissions must conduct retrospectives at the end of their terms; informal feedback is documented by the Foundation and collected on an ongoing basis via feedback threads
         1. Example: During Retro Funding 3, the Foundation documented 300+ pieces of feedback
      3. Foundation Measurements against Desired Outcomes: The Foundation aims to share these ahead of experiments this year as we’ve hired a Research and Experiments Lead to bring more rigour to this part of the process
4. Learnings & Iteration: Based on the synthesis of step (3), the hypothesis is proven/disproven.
   1. Learnings are documented and shared
      1. Example: Retrospective on Retro Funding 3, Retrospective on Missions v1
   2. The Foundation develops new hypotheses based on these learnings, utilising our governance design process, informed by the DAO Design Principles and our governance design goals

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The Path to Open Metagovernance

The Foundation’s approach is to develop the governance system gradually, learning and adapting over time. The path to open metagovernance will, similarly, occur gradually over multiple phases. The phases outlined below are likely to change in accordance with our design process. Even so, open sourcing this outline is itself an important step towards Phase 1 (below).

Phase 0 (Current state):Community informed design process

• The Optimism Foundation proposes designs based on active input from governance participants, as outlined in the graphic above.
  • Examples: Token House Seasons are designed and iterated on based on delegate feedback. Retroactive Public Goods Funding rounds are designed and iterated on based on Citizen feedback
• Feedback from high context stakeholders occurs informally, usually after designs are complete. Council Leads, top delegates, engaged Citizens, external teams, and/or RetroPGF recipients may be consulted on late stage drafts.

Phase 1: Community consulted design process (Launching soon!)

• As we open source more of our design principles, process, and goals to the community we begin to build the shared context necessary to move into Phase 1.
  • ethDenver 2024 presentation
  • The Collective DAO Archives
• In Phase 1, community feedback will be incorporated during design process, not just after.
• Frequent polls on low context design parameters will be open to any community member’s input.
• Higher context feedback will be requested from a Collective Feedback Commission (CFC.) The Commission mostly formalizes what has to date been an informal process of collecting feedback from high context governance participants.
  • About the Commission: The Commission will include 10 highly engaged Citizens and 15 high context delegates, selected based on qualifying criteria and opt-in requirements, to be published at a later date. The Foundation will request input from the Commission on early design drafts requiring a high degree of context. Commission feedback will be shared with the Foundation and other commission members, but may eventually be viewable by the entire community via a read-only public channel. We will experiment with the Commission for an initial trial period, evaluating its efficacy like any other experiment, using the process outlined above. More details will be posted to the forum shortly.

Phase 2: Community directed design process

• If continued, the Feedback Commission may evolve into a metaNERD contribution path, that would train and enable metaNERDs to design discrete components of the governance system. Imagine a bounty board of governance design components that can be completed by MetaNERDS.

Phase 3: Collaborative design process

• Finally, if successful, the metaNERD contribution path may evolve into a Core Delegate program.
• Core Delegates are our vision for the group of high context governance participants that maintain, contribute to, and evolve the core Optimism governance system, similar to Core Devs, which maintain, contribute to, and evolve the core protocol.

Meta Meta

Today is an exciting day for the Collective as we take the first steps towards a more open, and ultimately more collaborative, metagovernance design process.

As more of the Foundation’s governance design thinking is shared with the community, the shared context necessary to move into Phase 1 is built. To that end, today we’ve open sourced several of our DAO design resources as additions to the Collective DAO Archives.

• The Collective DAO Archives
  • DAO Design Principles
  • DAO Function Guidelines
  • Governance System Design Goals (to be open sourced at a later date!)
  • DAO Design Process (to be open sourced at ethCC!)

As always, your feedback on all of the above is welcome below.

[brichis]

I’m SO excited!

[criptomommy]

After carefully reviewing each document, I would like to extend my sincere congratulations to the Optimism Foundation team for the excellent work they are doing in developing the governance system. I find the iterative and community-based approach they have taken to metagovernance particularly admirable, and I believe that open sourcing the DAO design resources is a fundamental step towards transparency and active community participation.

I would also like to thank the Foundation for their commitment to transparency and accessibility. The publication of the documents in the Collective DAO Archive is an invaluable resource for those of us who, like me, are interested in learning more about the design and evolution of the governance system. I am committed to continuing to learn and share this information with others, so that together we can contribute to the development of a more decentralized and self-governing future.

Congratulations again on the great work and I wish you all the best in your next steps.

[parkienator]

think this is a great structure. foundation’s background in corporate governance and structure lays a good framework and best practices for the nascent DAO, and the transition towards citizen-led DAO can happen slowly as engaged stakeholders increase both in quality and quantity.

[latruite.eth]

Great ! It’s ambitious. We’ve already demonstrated the value of collaborative construction with the diverse contributions to the OP Stack so why not extend this approach to governance as well?

Yet, a few reflections come to mind:

Adding this new paradigm of metagovernance also brings complexity to an already very rich collective governance framework, (already challenging to navigate for many.) The need for education and patience will be huge as we embark on this road. We shouldn’t underestimate this part.

Drawing insights from the DAO collective archives and the 12 Design principles highlighted from studying OG DAOs on Ethereum is invaluable. These could serve as a guiding North Star ensuring we don’t repeat past mistakes or reinvent the wheel. But it’s also essential to remain open to experimentation and innovation, especially in an era where AI assistance could become a game-changer for DAOs (which was not the case during the early development of those studied daos).

As for the panel and Core Delegates, the critical question is how to establish their legitimacy and trust within the broader community. I’m curious to hear about the selection and eligibility criteria.

[KarlaGod]

Expectant to see how this pivots, particularly interested in the collaborative design process.

[lavande]

Thanks for the feedback @latruite.eth!

Adding this new paradigm of metagovernance also brings complexity to an already very rich collective governance framework, (already challenging to navigate for many.) The need for education and patience will be huge as we embark on this road. We shouldn’t underestimate this part.

Absolutely! That’s why this will be a gradual, multi-phase approach that occurs over many months, not a few weeks The idea is to gradually increase the number of high context contributors participating more actively in design while we iteratively refine the process, principles, frameworks, and training we use to facilitate a more collaborative process (all adapted based on contributor input, as always.)

Drawing insights from the DAO collective archives and the 12 Design principles highlighted from studying OG DAOs on Ethereum is invaluable. These could serve as a guiding North Star ensuring we don’t repeat past mistakes or reinvent the wheel. But it’s also essential to remain open to experimentation and innovation , especially in an era where AI assistance could become a game-changer for DAOs (which was not the case during the early development of those studied daos).

Agree! These are some tools that we use, which we wanted to give everyone access to; it doesn’t mean they are the only tools that we should use. As you pointed out, in many cases they can help us avoid failure modes but it will still be up to us to use that as a starting point to build upon as we define what a “success mode” would look like. This will likely require creativity and experimenting with things that haven’t been tried before.

As for the panel and Core Delegates, the critical question is how to establish their legitimacy and trust within the broader community. I’m curious to hear about the selection and eligibility criteria.

For now, we’re only focused on Phase 1 and will provide more information on what that looks like shortly. The concept of a Core Delegate is a longer term vision that will be informed by the things we learn in earlier phases. This is a much longer term plan than we usually share publicly, but that is an important part of Phase 1: open sourcing our design thinking much earlier in the process. That necessarily means you’ll get a preview into things before they are fully defined, which is what also allows contributors to be more involved in their definition It’s going to be fun!

• Separately, some people have asked why we are using the term “Core Delegate” as the concept would include Citizens. “Delegate” can have a specific or general definition. It can signify a Token House delegate or anyone who is delegated responsibilities by governance participants. We mean it in the generalized sense and have decide to use this term, for now, as it helps with association with the concept it takes inspiration from: “Core Developers.” This term may change over time

[dmontesb]

I understand that the Optimism Foundation is outlining a clear path towards open and collaborative meta-governance. The gradual approach, based on iterations and active community involvement, is critical to ensure effective adoption and strong governance over time.

The proposed structure, from community consultation to eventual evolution to a collaborative design process, demonstrates a genuine commitment to decentralization and equitable participation. I am particularly interested to see how the Collective Feedback Panel will develop and how MetaNERDS will be integrated into the evolving governance system.

[eugenia]

Just had the chance to review the path and the documents. A great way to open source, ensure future informed participation and start getting the community up to date before involving them in the design process.

Curious to see how the path will develop and more information next steps!

[charlesfreeborn]

The key takeaway here is the intentional efforts by the foundation towards achieving a more open and collaborative governance system with the larger community.

Highly commendable move and the detailed road map is top-notch!

[ismailemin]

Both the post and work are perfect. Congrats on a new path, clearly Optimism leading the DAO space in these days

[Antoine]

Congrats on the very smart metagov approach!