Recently we shared our intention to upgrade Pocket’s governance with an introductory piece around 3D Governance . This upgraded governance model is about creating a more representative voting cohort on top of the powerful governance primitive that we pioneered: Proof of Participation.
One challenge with implementation of this model is that we are innovating again, and pushing web3 tooling to the edge of what has been done before. We recognise that this technical complexity, along with the composition of various features, makes the overall model somewhat hard to understand. Pushing forward on something so large without shared understanding creates a risk that the whole governance upgrade could get derailed due to some single detail. In short, there’s a lot that needs to go into this to make it successful, and we want to tell you how we plan to bring our vision to life.
The answer is that we plan to modularise this proposal and unbundle each “module” into a set of specifications that can be reviewed and understood independently.
Not only will this make it easier for everyone to understand how we plan to execute technically, it’s likely to build up a shared understanding of how it all fits together and help us take the necessary steps to transition (somewhat) seamlessly to the new model. In a way, what we are doing is creating a new type of modular governance, where an organisation can create it’s own custom and composable governance model. We actually think this is the way all governance models should be designed as we laid out in our original governance thesis in 2020:
Successful future-proof governance requires a balance between flexibility (optionality of
future system designs) and legitimacy (conformity of new system designs to the
underlying rulesets of previous system designs), which can be achieved using
modularity
We will expand more on this idea of modular governance as we move through implementation.
Below I’m sharing two important pieces of information about the path to approval and implementation:
- The modules we will present
- The directional implementation plan, with timings
1. The modules of Modular Governance
The modules that we will present to the DAO, and which we think are critical in (most) good governance systems are:
- Personhood (A digital identity that represents a person/user)
- Citizenship (A foundational membership of our DAO and community)
- Reputation (References of building and impact that drive our project forward)
- Stake (The way capital is deployed to support the network in its intended purpose)
- Voting & Execution (Making decisions and executing them on and off chain)
- Metagovernance (How the DAO controls parameters around these modules and deciding who decides)
Each of these will be presented independently, with the Metagovernance proposal tying everything together and being the full proposal that will allow us to make the updated governance system go-live.
2. Implementation plan and timing
With this post we plan to start the process and present a first specification and proposal for Personhood by the end of this week.
We will start the onboarding process for each new module on the assumption that ultimately this will be successful and allow the timeline to evolve as we allow debates to fully run their course. We roughly anticipate that we will deliver each module in a 1-2 week sprint that includes:
- Posting the module specification and a “statement of intent” proposal in the forum for discussion and improvement
- Begin the process of onboarding new users, and migrating existing DAO voters, to the new systems (where needed)
- Provide a thought leadership piece including a blog post and twitter thread for our community and external stakeholders interested in our governance
- Run a twitter space with our technology partners and other thought leaders around each module to help illustrate what we are doing and how to participate, and why we think this is interesting in the context of the wider web3 ecosystem
- When ready, we will put the statement of intent proposal up for a vote
In sum, this means we expect to have all modules shared, approved and implemented for a go-live in 8-10 weeks from now.
We hope this provides a helpful overview of how we plan to steward and implement the upgrade to our governance model, and we look forward to sharing the Personhood module with you soon.
Many thanks, PNF