How many DAOs should an individual be allowed to serve at ONE time?

[Krypto_Kakashi]

Just an observation, I am a newly elected member of Community DAO and am extremely grateful to be given the opportunity to serve the Harmony community, I have my task at hand and feel there is opportunity for others to get involved.

My concern is how much power should a person be allowed to yield?

Please allow this to be an open conversation.

I’ve seen candidates apply for multiple DAOs and don’t see this to be beneficial to decentralization. I am content with holding one position, we do not need power hungry individuals to run for council.

I would personally like to see fresh faces and new groups of people applying themselves to be part of something great rather than one person spread throughout multiple groups.

• One DAO enough
• 2 DAO ok
• Three DAO fine
• As many as available

Yes I am part of a DAO, no, I did not ask my DAO about this, instead I turned to the community because the true answer lies here. Yes we need to fill seats in a DAO, why should we be choosing from the same talent pool at this time ?

[BRUNO]

Hi Kakashi, there´s a misconception saying that governors have “power” or will have “too much power”.
Governors will have “work” not “power”.

I understand your concern if you say that governors will have too much work and could potential not deliver the expected results. yes, this is a valid concern, however nothing related to “power”.

My opinion, is great to have several members in others DAOs to cross easily information.

[Bricktop_One]

So I believe trying to limit how many DAOs someone can be on, goes against Harmony’s vision.

With DAOs, people are free to come and go as they please, this is another reason why Harmony is aiming for 9 governors per DAO. And given that the core team will eventually move across to DAOs, interoperability between DAOs is absolutely vital, and free movement is key.

I believe the issue is that we need to make sure that DAOs can operate whilst missing members and to be full operational, we discussed this in detail’s during our Community DAO meeting yesterday but you weren’t there Kakashi whilst we were discussing this.

Maybe the question is, what is the maximum number of Governors a DAO should be able to have which will soon be a challenge.

[Krypto_Kakashi]

@BRUNO

My opinion, is great to have several members in others DAOs to cross easily information.

This can also be done with open minded individuals and a radical consensus not just ONE closed minded individual across multiple DAOs. Not saying you are closed minded this isn’t an attack on you, I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

@BRUNO

Governors will have “work” not “power”.

Yes, power lies in the multi sig wallet and having deep connections with the core team, which to me come across as centralized.

Yes power, a basic human emotion associated with greed.

@Bricktop_One

I believe the issue is that we need to make sure that DAOs can operate whilst missing members and to be full operational

Thank you for joining in, I agree with this, though we shouldn’t be short members this is where Community DAO comes in and targets people who fit best in a DAO

@Bricktop_One

Maybe the question is, what is the maximum number of Governors a DAO should be able to have

No my question should still be an issue, imagine being a voter and seeing a candidate across different DAOs, I would feel as though my vote is suppressed personally I would want to see a better representation of the community.

@Bricktop_One

but you weren’t there Kakashi whilst we were discussing this

Thanks for calling me out on my attendance on ONE call , maybe future calls can be recorded .

If anyone is reading this I encourage you to call out the elephant in the room, these were my thoughts but came to be a post when members of the community brought it up to me

[Bricktop_One]

I think if people have an issue with Governors being part of multiple DAOs then they wouldn’t vote for them at that point right.

Everything that I’ve seen from Harmony suggests that being involved with Multiple DAOs can only be a positive thing. I still have a lot to learn about DAO’s myself and trying to learn from the greats. It’s so early in the space its sometimes difficult to know whats best for DAOs and i guess time will tell. There’s a lot of participation and then there’s power separate from that. If people have too much power in a DAO then that would be the issue, not the participation.

Harmony core team fully supports being able to move around freely within the DAO ecosystem participating, being governors, helping ect ect. Its discussed regularly on the all DAO calls with Harmony.

And regarding mentioning you wasn’t in the meeting, it was simply to say that we discussed this topic and you happen to miss it. Governors are free to come and go as they please, they do not have to commit to participation, they can do as llittle and as much as they wish. This is also in Harmony’s vision. Life happens around DAOs and personally this is why i find DAOs so great compared to standard organisations.

‘‘My concern is how much power should a person be allowed to yield?’’
Your post misses the point, the governors do not have power, the community does. If a governor gains too much power then that should be addressed I believe, but I don’t think we should be limiting people’s growth withing the protocol in any way shape and form.

‘‘I would personally like to see fresh faces and new groups of people applying themselves to be part of something great rather than one person spread throughout multiple groups.’’
I would personally like to see the best person for the job appointed to the roles that the community decides. I would prefer to see the people that can be a positive drive for DAOs to be associated and not held back by a rule that limits their participation.

[frwrdslosh]

Personally, I don’t see any problem with a single person being in multiple DAO’s.

There’s a limited pool of interested, intelligent, and creative people right now and we will see multiple names popping up to be considered in multiple DAO’s in Harmony’s infancy. As the protocol, community, and native DAO’s grow, so will the interest in governance and becoming a governor.

If elected to the VDAO, I will work within the mandates of the VDAO to ensure it’s success. I plan on submitting candidacy for the CreativeDAO as well. And, if elected I will working within the mandates of the CreativeDAO to ensure it’s success.

You mention “greed”, and I think it’s only greed if we have bad actors in governor positions. And, they will be called out and hopefully not be re-elected.

Thanks for the dialogue as always, my friend!

[Manumix]

I am a bit split here, partially because I don’t understand fully the internal functioning of our DAOs nor how the remunerative system works. As I understood it (please correct me here) the system is meritocratic and a governor gets paid according to its deliverables.

By now these points go through my mind thinking about a multi-dao governor:

• I would hope that members that apply to multiple DAOs have the time and commitment to deliver on all DAOs, however this time can only be full time distributed among all DAOs. I don’t see a governor on 2 DAOs investing 40 hours on each DAO a week.

• Connected to this point, a committed governor fully dedicated to a single DAO seems to be the way.

• A point that mitigates these previous points is, that a multi-DAO governor would be better connected inside the community and the knowledge and experience gained through a multi-DAO governance would have mayor benefits.

• Last point that comes to mind is, that taking two governor seats simultaneously “steals” the seat for another member. Diversity of opinions, inclusiveness, participation and growth come to mind. A simplified example would be: we could have 10 DAOs run by 90 governors (enriching the space with 90 ways of doing things and 90 ways of thinking about things), or only run by 9 governors taking 10 governor seats each.

As a summary I guess, I wouldn’t mind if a few kick-ass governors take 2 or 3 seats but I would have a problem with the idea of having only 20-30 governors running all 10 DAOs.

[Bricktop_One]

Just to clear this up and to help with your opinion Manumix, Governors are limited to 10 hours per week. So that part isn’t an issue.

It’s good to see your opinion on this topic.

[Bricktop_One]

Personally i think you have the right idea about DAOs Frwrdlosh and its great to see you participating and getting involved.

‘‘There’s a limited pool of interested, intelligent, and creative people right now and we will see multiple names popping up to be considered in multiple DAO’s in Harmony’s infancy.’’

^^^ This absolutely nails it. I believe it won’t be an issue when we have more people, and more participation, but currently it seems to be the case.

Best of luck for your time on the VDAO and for you running for the creative DAO.

[Manumix]

Thanks for clarifying that.

In that case, I don’t see a big issue having a governor on multiple DAOs, at least in these early stages as @frwrdslosh points out. At some point it would be awesome to have a huge pool of applications making a double or triple simultaneous governance more difficult.

I think the discussion rised by @Krypto_Kakashi is definitely healthy and it’s important to see how the community feels about it. I guess the important thing here is that nobody takes advantage of the whole thing being just focused on getting paid.

[Sam]

Hello @Krypto_Kakashi - Thank you for raising this issue.

I have prepared a little bit of a rant here. So please, take a seat, let me pull out my soapbox and please understand - this little tirade I am about to go on is NOT directed at you. You asked an important question and what I have to say goes out to everyone who is thinking about DAOs and centralization.

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This is something that I have been talking about on every DAO call, every public presentation, and every opportunity I have because it is something fundamentally different about DAOs than any other organizational structure. (okay, maybe not EVERY other organizational structure… but most that we are familiar with.)

When a DAO is fully operational, Governors are not empowered to do anything but sign the multi-sig contract and deploy funds according to a public vote. Getting the DAO from nothing to fully operational - that takes work.

A Governors Term
I don’t want to pick on anyone here - but the point you raise is a great opportunity for me to talk about something I have been disappointed in. Both the Validator DAO and the Community DAO have changed the terms of the Governors from 3 months to 6 months through their use of a DAO charter. I don’t agree with that and I think it is a mistake. I know they both have their justifications for doing it… but I think their justifications are wrong. One of the core reasons we should hold elections every 3 months is to incentivize the governors to be closely aligned with their constituents.

“But, Sam, 3 months isn’t enough time to DO anything.” Of course not. As a governor you aren’t supposed to DO anything. The DAO is. The community of people who have a material enthusiastic interest in the subject at hand will do the things… the governors simply facilitate that.

From a philosophical perspective - that should answer your question. People can be governors of as many DAOs as they want.

From a practical perspective - I don’t see anyone being a governor of more than 10. If you are fully devoted to your DAOs, you would be working 100 hours a week to support 10 DAOs. I have worked 100 hour weeks…no one should ever have to do that sort of thing.

I refuse to put a limit on the number of DAOs someone should be a governor of… but I can’t see anyone being on more than 4 DAOs and being able to be any good at it.

The Quest for Decentralization
You bring up a word that many people use as an all powerful boogey-man in our space: “decentralization”. A practical definition of decentralization is that there exists no single point of failure. If the Harmony Foundation goes away, does Harmony collapse? Possibly. Which is why Stephen still believes we are still too centralized. If a large validator goes away, does Harmony collapse? That would be hard to see. One complaint I see over and over and over again is that there are too few large validators and we need to force these validators to become smaller so we can be decentralized. This argument does not convince me. Take a poll of the validators and I am sure you will find that a vast majority of them are running servers in the cloud on AWS. That is practical centralization. What would happen if Amazon flipped a switch one day and said “we will no longer sell our service to blockchain validators”? Think it can’t happen? Ask Parler. That one service going away would cripple the Harmony blockchain. That is what I call centralization.

So - my apologies for going on a bit of a rant here. I am normally not that guy. But I am very interested in this project succeeding. For it to succeed, we NEED a different mentality, a different mental framework. There is no room in the DAO-iverse for famine mentality. Just because I have something doesn’t mean you can’t too. There is SO much work to be done. Squabbling over who sits closer to Stephen at the dinner table is a little…well… it’s a little childish.

Productivity, Innovation, Execution
You guys know how screwed we are, right? The core team is less than 25 people. Less than 25 people have created a project that hovers between $2 and $3 billion in market cap. You know who has a market cap in that same range? Xerox. Extended Stay America. Rent-a-Center. Navient. Shake Shack, for crying out loud. Do you know how many employees they have? 24,000. 1,800. 14,500. 6,000. 6,100. If it were a numbers game - we would be totally, unequivocally screwed.

Lucky for us… it’s not. We have better technology, better people, a better community and people who are PASSIONATE about this project. Look, I love me a good shackburger, but no way are those guys “passionate” about setting me up with some shack-sauce.

For generations, top down management structures have improved their operations and their productivity. We can earn MASTERS degrees in administrating business (I know. I have one). The odds of an unruly mob competing with a well run organization and WINNING? Near to zero… unless… Unless we harness the enthusiasm and passion of the mob to out produce, out innovate and out execute those fuddy-duddies in the three piece suits.

That is why I refuse to put a limit on how many DAOs someone can work with. I have said it before - the only way this works is if we are non-monogamous with our DAOs. We cannot be wed to one. We have need of ALL of the passion that all of us can bring to the project. We need these debates. We need these conversations. We need YOUR help to make it all happen.

What we have is money. What we have is technology. What we have is the ability to say “you want to do something for us? Great! Go and do!” I love @BRUNO to death but I am going to pick on him a little. If he works for 10 hours on every DAO he is a part of (Developer, Community, Creative) that will cost Harmony $117,000 a year in compensation. (Love you @BRUNO ). That won’t break the Harmony fund. Honestly… it wouldn’t even make a dent in it.

You know what would make a dent in the Harmony project? Bruno burning out. It has happened before with other valued members of the community and, I am sure, it will happen again. But what I won’t do is tell Bruno that he can’t work harder. Does he want to wake up at 5:00 AM for a call? Does he want to miss his daughters prom? Does he want to skip out on going to the gym or having dinner with the family because he has to work? I hope not. But I am not his mother. When we turn over millions of dollars worth of assets to the governors, I hope we are turning them over to adults who can make their own decisions.

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Okay. This was a rant and it kinda got away from me there. If you made it through my own personal copy of War and Peace, thanks for reading. Please know that I appreciate the passion you are all bringing to the work and I simply want to say, I hope none of us ever stand in the way of someone else’s passion. (wow. my whole post could have been just that…)

[frwrdslosh]

Incredible post, @Sam . You need to write a book. I understand and agree with all your sentiments.

I would like to point out, that the Validator DAO has not changed terms from 3 months to 6 months. VDAO govs still only hold 3 month terms. Which I, personally, am for.

You brought up a good point…burnout. Most of us have other jobs than being in crypto and in DAO’s. It would be a shame if a valued member of a DAO got overworked (in life and in governance) and looked at the calendar and thought, “oh f*ck, I still have 4 months of this DAO work!?” and their work/creativity suffered. 3 months is a way to limit overworking as well as keeping people frosty.

*couldn’t think of a better word than frosty lol but you know what I mean.

[easynode]

We went with 3 months as suggested. The charter can be reviewed at vdao.one

[Krypto_Kakashi]

It has been a pleasure to get this feedback, @Sam your response was not taken personal and is quite enlightening, I feel the consensus is split between ONE and many however we may soon find our limits!

The purpose of bringing this into discussion is, we must trim the hedges as we grow, it is uncomfortable to converse and not take things personal. I’ve noticed several responses from well qualified candidates that I would vote for to be on multiple councils, but when is it enough?

This was much needed to discuss, I am happy to have sparked a fire and hope no ONE feels burned from my question as it isn’t an insult, I would like everyONE to know that these are just thoughts. @BRUNO you are well qualified for multiple DAO’s and the value you bring to serve 3 DAOs at 10 hours a week, we would not like to see you burnt out and hope everyONE knows how to self regulate.

@frwrdslosh

You mention “greed”, and I think it’s only greed if we have bad actors in governor positions. And, they will be called out and hopefully not be re-elected.

As for @frwrdslosh yes this is something Community DAO is working on to ensure strong governance participation as we are proposing changes soon! Thank you for stopping in much love and congrats on VDAO !

@Bricktop_One

This is also in Harmony’s vision. Life happens around DAOs and personally this is why i find DAOs so great compared to standard organisations.

It is so convenient to be part of a DAO, you can commit the time you have available and there is no boss, thank you for joining in!

@Manumix

the important thing here is that nobody takes advantage of the whole thing being just focused on getting paid

Yes, really true its early here so its still room for loopholes and flaws to be discovered ! Thank you for your response @Manumix

I feel the discussion has opened my eyes, instead of looking at a DAO as a business or town council, I now look at it as a book club and for those who really love what they do or impacting those within that DAO should join!

I even feel encouraged to apply for another DAO with this sentence below

@Sam

Squabbling over who sits closer to Stephen at the dinner table is a little…well… it’s a little childish.

Let us get this work done ALL FOR ONE!

[frwrdslosh]

Kakashi my guy thanks for the response. You’re comment is encouraging and enlightening. Keep calling out and pointing out things that don’t sit well with you.