Summary

VitaDAO has reached a point in its growth where the size of the organisation and the volume of governance activity has made it impractical for all but the mostly full-time contributors to keep up with the volume of governance as well as the nuances of the proposals.

To overcome this, and align the community for what is expected to be considerable growth for the remainder of the year, this proposal seeks to strengthen the governance development and review process leading up to community voting to ensure relevant concerns are documented and addressed.

This proposal has changes, or otherwise impacts VDP-1, VDP-59, and VDP-60.

Team

Todd White, Gavin Singh

Motivation

As VitaDAO has grown, the complexity of managing governance activities has increased substantively. Most governance proposals are worded through the eyes of the authors to achieve specific intent and, up to this point in time, VitaDAO’s active contributors have been able to balance all the differing perspectives through informal conversations.

Meanwhile, ecosystem risks have increased both in the wider macro-economic and regulatory environment which require that proposals be considered through differing, and often specialised, lenses.

While the current process of allowing all members of the community to propose governance must be maintained, the process to reach a Phase 3 (Snapshot) vote must involve some checks and balances to ensure that awareness of potential risks are communicated to the community, and that decisions by the community are made with the full scope of issues in mind.

Firstly, we propose to standardise the VDP designations of specific proposals into series such that subsequent changes to a proposal be (re-)designated as an amendment of the original.

Secondly, we propose to improve and increase the due diligence of Phase 2 governance to include a higher level of transparency and risk assessment to be applied to all proposals through the application of a gated workflow to ensure risk assessments are available to token holders prior to Snapshot voting.

Thirdly, we propose to clarify the gating of Phase 2 proposals to Phase 3 based on resolution of issues brought up during Phase 2.

Specification

Standardised VDP Nomenclature and Versioning

While active proposals follow the VDP-XX nomenclature, we propose to supplement the DAO Constitution Category with specific categories of versioned proposals to simplify the ability of the community to find the latest and most current governance on a specific topic. Namely:

000 Series - VitaDAO Multi-sig and Tokenomics

100 Series - Governance Framework and Processes

200 Series - Operational Policies

300 Series - Funding Portfolio

400 Series - Non-Profit Initiatives

500 Series - Budgeting and Finance Reporting.

As each active VDP proposal is passed, the proposal will be added to the appropriate Category above, and if the VDP is a material change to a previous VDP, the previous VDP will be annotated as “DEPRECATED - VDP-xx : Valid Until [DATE]]”. If the changes to a previous VDP are considered minor or housekeeping in nature, the previous VDP may be amended in-line with References to the VDP that was passed requesting its modification.

Revised Phase 2 Proposal Workflow

1. Proposal Formation

1. We propose that as part of the Phase 1 (Ideation) phase, the proponent(s) of a new proposal should submit their draft proposal via the governance channel on Discord for intake.

2. Clarity Review

1. The Governance Squad will then invite the proponent(s) to give a brief presentation on the proposal to ensure the Governance Squad understands the intent of the proposal and informal feedback / coaching on the proposal content may be provided.
2. This is not an opportunity to gate the proposal, except for situations where a proposal is a clear violation of the VitaDAO Code of Conduct. The Governance Squad is intended to provide support to the proponent(s) to ensure their proposal is properly structured and their intent is clear - independent of the opinions of the Governance Squad members on the substance of the proposal.

3. Feedback and Resolution of Comments

1. Once the Governance Squad presentation is done and members provide their initial feedback, and the proponent(s) have made any changes as a result of that feedback, the proponent(s) can add the proposal to Discourse for initial community review.
2. During this process the proposal may require additional changes to reflect community feedback and may iterate several times.
3. When a proposal receives comments, the proponent(s) is expected to respond to the comments by either making the suggested changes, providing further information, or stating the reason for not wishing to accept the suggestions.
4. When a comment or suggestion has been resolved, the commenter should indicate resolution using the checkbox in the response from the proponent. If the commenter has already voted on the Phase 2 poll, and their concerns overall have been resolved, they are encouraged to re-vote to reflect the resolution of their comment(s).
5. For clarity, if a proposal does not have a majority between Agree + Agree with Revisions (that have been resolved), the proposal may not proceed to the next stage.

4. Validation Stage

Each proposal will then be circulated as follows:

1. Budget Review: If the proposal requests funding, the Coordination Working Group must confirm that a budget exists for the project taking into account other commitments and provide any guidance or impact on the operations of the squad/working group budget whose budget is being impacted.

Gate: Analysis to be provided and a budget statement appended to Phase 2 draft.

2. Resource Review: Where a proposal requires people to execute specific tasks, the proponent(s) must either provide all the resources to execute, or where resources from elsewhere within the DAO are requested, those resources need to confirm their availability and any impact on other DAO initiatives.

Gate: Availability and Impact Sign-off from other resources, appended to Phase 2 draft.

3. Legal Review: All proposals shall be reviewed by a member of the legal squad to confirm the wording of proposals are consistent with the regulatory and legal environments the proposal may be impacted by.

Due to a high degree of cross pollination within the ecosystem legal review shall be provided only by members of the legal squad where it is confirmed that they have no pecuniary interest in the subject matter of the proposal and are operating at arms-length to the subject matter.

In cases where this cannot be achieved within the active members of the legal squad, this proposal authorises the Coordination Steward to engage with arms-length outside legal counsel to perform the review as needed.

Gate: Legal to provide a concurrence statement that indicates agreement with the proposal as worded, or if changes are required, the proponent must make the necessary changes to achieve legal compliance. The concurrence statement from the Legal Squad / external counsel shall be appended only upon approval with the proposal.

5) Transition to Phase 3 Stage (Snapshot)

The proposal shall be published to Snapshot and shall include the final approved text from Discourse, as well as the Budget Statement and Legal Statement. The Governance Squad may only use the existing summary from the Discourse proposal and any change which may need to occur for presentation purposes on Snapshot shall be pre-approved by legal. All links to external documents shall point to copies on IPFS.

Implementation

If this proposal passes, the above processes will occur with immediate effect. All governance currently in process will require submission to 4) Validation stage prior to publishing to Snapshot.

Success Metrics

• Reduced Operational Risks.

• Improved Governance Workflow.