Roadmap to Progressive Decentralization
How will FDD progressively decentralize?
FDD is currently balancing the need to provide proper funding to the mission-critical functions while giving a voice to the contributors.
While GitcoinDAO is fully decentralized in the way that it can deny funding if a stream is no longer values aligned or dysfunctional, the FDD stream needs to ensure its own existence at the start to best perform its mandate.
The funds which FDD receives are split between the “initiatives” of the stream. These initiatives then split the budget between the working groups or “squads”. Squads then split the funds to the individual contributors each weekly “epoch”.
The contributors to GitcoinDAO choose to participate in the stream by commenting on the stream homepage. Participation in the workstream, its initiatives, and any squad is based on mutual consent. The stream says yes to the participant and the participant agrees.
Stream Structural Governance
Contributors in a squad are each a subset of the contributors of an initiative. So how are the decisions made on who can participate in a squad or an initiative? You could ask the same question about the workstream as a whole. How does the workstream decide on what initiatives are accepted and how much funding they will receive?
The fundamental problem is that there is no mechanism for self-governance of the participants at the workstream, initiative, or squad level because there is no history of participation yet.
This is okay for a stream without mission-critical functions, but we could not risk an inability to defend GR11. The decision was made, with the support of the multisig keyholders who act as oversight, to appoint “leads” for each stream.
The Role of a “Stream Lead”
The current stream leads are empowered to:
- Decide yes/no to a squad or contributor joining the stream
- Decide allocation of the weekly epoch amount (They discuss with participants first)
- Higher level lead can veto
- Create an experiment to mock a decentralized governance scenario
Our goal is to progressively decommission the stream lead role as we find mechanisms for squad, initiative, and eventually workstream governance which elicit the best results. The autonomy of the stream leads enables experimentation which maximizes our possibility of finding successful models (mutations).
Phasing Out the Stream Lead Role
The stream structure guides how value flows within the workstream. These will be progressively decentralized across five phases.
- Exploration (Q3 2021 - Q4 2021)
Leads are appointed to make the decisions with autonomy at each level of organization. The higher level leads and multisig protect from bad actors.
- Workstream
- Participation Decisions = Joe (Multisig veto)
- How budget is split between initiatives = Joe (Multisig Veto)
- Initiatives
- Participation Decisions = Lead (Joe veto)
- How budget is split between squads = Lead (Joe veto)
- Squads
- Participation Decisions = Lead (Joe veto)
- How budget is split between contributors = Lead (Joe Veto)
- Family (Q4 2021 - Q2 2022)
Self governance experiments start in the squads. This means squads will track a mechanism design model via excel or use of a tool and act “as if”. Payments are still sent directly from FDD payment wallet to contributors.
- Workstream
- Participation Decisions = Joe (Multisig veto)
- How budget is split between initiatives = Joe (Multisig Veto)
- Initiatives
- Participation Decisions = Lead (Joe veto)
- How budget is split between squads = Lead (Joe veto)
- Squads
- Participation Decisions = Self-Governance Experiment (Joe veto)
- How budget is split between contributors = Self-Gov Experiment (Joe Veto)
- Community (Q1 2022 - Q4 2022)
Squads use algorithms to guide payments and manage governance decisions using non-transferrable governance shares. The initiatives aggregate squad contributions and experiment with self governance.
- Workstream
- Participation Decisions = Joe (Multisig veto)
- How budget is split between initiatives = Joe (Multisig Veto)
- Initiatives
- Participation Decisions = Self Gov Experiment (Joe veto)
- How budget is split between squads = Self Gov Experiment (Joe veto)
- Squads
- Participation Decisions = Self-Governance
- How budget is split between contributors = Self-Governance
- Ecosystem (Q3 2022 - Q4 2023)
Squads with individual sustainable goals are ready to release tokens which may or may not be linked to governance decisions. This allows the market to find the balance between labor and capital and for the squad to have permissionless operation.
- Workstream
- Participation Decisions = Self Governance Experiment (Multisig veto)
- How budget is split between initiatives = Self Gov Exp (Multisig Veto)
- Initiatives
- Participation Decisions = Self Governance
- How budget is split between squads = Self Governance
- Squads
- Participation Decisions = Permissionless
- How budget is split between contributors = Permissionless
- Metaverse (Goal State)
Every level of the FDD is fully permissionless, open, transparent, modular, composable, and autonomous. All initiatives and the workstream itself either disolve or become permissionless catalysts of specific impact & collaboration goals.
- Workstream
- Participation Decisions = Permissionless
- How budget is split between initiatives = Permissionless
- Initiatives
- Participation Decisions = Permissionless
- How budget is split between squads = Permissionless
- Squads
- Participation Decisions = Permissionless
- How budget is split between contributors = Permissionless