[RFC] Head of DAO Governance and Operations Role

🗳Meta-Governance
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DAOs can be chaotic due to their unstructured nature but there are DAO service providers who create governance frameworks and push along the day-to-day operations for the benefit of the respective DAOs. Hop DAO has had help from several groups since its inception. GFX Labs was the first to help with DAO operations given their extensive experience in governance and ops. When they exited the DAO, StableLab took on the role of helping the DAO with operations and governance initiatives. Unfortunately, StableLab has decided to refocus their resources elsewhere during this prolonged bear market and have recently exited the DAO.

While it is hard during this extensive bear market to retain talent…. the show must go on. With that in mind, I propose creating a new role titled Head of DAO Operations where an individual is responsible for the day-to-day operations acting as a liaison between the different participants and subgroups of the DAO such as; core developer team, grants committee, ambassadors, delegates, multisig signers and more.

The Head of DAO Operations is not to be construed as a central figure of authority but more like the glue that connects different aspects of the DAO and makes sure there is cross collaboration and communication and helps propagate personal responsibilities for each of the DAOs subgroups. It is imperative for the Head of DAO ops to be fully aligned. Therefore, to qualify for the role one must have been materially active in the DAO for at least 6-months, having attended community calls, posted on the forum, used the hop bridge, held hop).

The Head of DAO Ops will be in charge of community calls, the governance forum (pushing proposals from start to finish with the respective author), and pushing along the grants committee, ambassador program and multisig signers.

Additional responsibilities:
⁃ evaluating and defining compensation for existing and new committees and their members
⁃ Assigning budgets to committees
⁃ Verifying the data posted each month for the delegate compensation thread
⁃ Providing an overview of DAO ops at a regular cadence
⁃ Oversee and manage the transition from old committee members to new committee members when appropriate
⁃ More rapidly iterate on HIP amendments when they are needed
⁃ Help reform the grants committee and handle some of the ops side
⁃ 30 hours a month (1.5xday)
⁃ If a good faith effort to accomplish the tasks set forth as the Head of DAO ops is not made, the DAO will not pay the compensation.

This role should go through a 6-month initial term to make sure DAO operations continue to run smoothly in the short term while preparing for a long-term solution regarding ongoing operations. Since this role requires constant participation and time commitment, I believe compensation for this role should be $3k/month with a 1-year vesting period.

Compensation to be made in HOP token. Vesting starts the day after the election when the role officially begins and the work is to commence. Payment to be made retroactively every 3-months.

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I agree that defining and electing a Head of DAO Operations would be a great asset for Hop DAO.

Will nominations be taken in this thread, or will there be a separate post and vote for the election itself?

If it’s the former, I will edit this comment to include my nomination. Answered here.

I nominate @fourpoops.

Rationale

@fourpoops is arguably the most active member of this forum (by replies posted and “time read”) and also is the most frequent Snapshot proposer (source: acemasterjb/proposers: Snapshot proposal stats (github.com). Note: pending audit).

I think these traits make them a strong candidate for this role.

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Hey @francom nice to see this formalized after being discussed over the last few community calls!

Some initial questions about the role:

  • Can you provide some examples of where this role would have helped in past Hop DAO operations? More streamlined grants and a better-formed ambassador program come to mind, but are there other examples you can share?

  • The work on committees seems valuable, especially at scale. What other kinds of committees do you think might benefit the DAO and do you see this role scaling to be able to handle new and not-yet-defined committees?

  • Are there examples of this (or a similar) role in other DAOs you can share here as a reference?

  • What technical abilities (if any) do you expect this role to require?

A few more questions on the implementation side of things:

  • In the spirit of avoiding the ambiguity of the end of the Ambassador Program, can you give some high level thoughts about how the participants of the DAO can think about what a “good faith effort” looks like? Specifically, can you talk to the case where this role expects payment even though there was not much work to be done for a specific 6-month period so they didn’t have to do much, yet they “checked all the boxes”?

  • Can you clarify the vesting terms a little more? Does “Vesting starts the day after the election” refer to the first month’s pay? Or a 6-month lump sum?

Overall, I believe this would be a valuable role given past experiences and learnings.

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Great questions, Shane!

In addition to your examples, I believe this role could have helped with the delegate incentivization program by helping new delegates join the DAO and monitoring voting and communication on a monthly basis. Furthermore, this role aims to help the DAO’s subgroups better communicate internally and share the DAOs progress externally.

I believe there should be a marketing committee and risk management committee given the DAO’s maturity. The head of DAO Ops role can help establish these committees, monitor their development, and share their progress.

GFX Labs and StableLabs provided some of these services previously. Several DAO service providers inspired the creation of this role

Technical abilities are always useful but I do not think they are required for this role. I believe this role necessitates strong communication skills and a deep understanding of DAOs, especially Hop DAO.

Since feedback is crucial for any evolving role, I would suggest a bi-monthly retroactive feedback session for the head of dao ops by the community where the head of DAO ops’ actions, experiments, and ideas are analyzed and discussed.

A 12-month vesting period could really help align this role with the DAO therefore while the payment is earned after the 6-month period it will still vest for another 6-months. At this point the funds would be available to the DAO service provider.

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Feel free to add your nomination to this thread.

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I would like to nominate myself and believe I am a strong candidate because I have been a member of the DAO since inception and am always looking to add value to the DAO.

Regardless of my nomination I invite anyone to apply for this role because a wide candidate pool will be better for the DAO.

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There have been extensive discussions on this matter, and I fully support it.

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I would be for a role of this type. I think there have been a few lingering DAO-related items that haven’t gotten resolved over the last few months, and having a central coordinator for these types of things is worth exploring… as I’m not sure relying on the altruistic actions of delegates is a sustainable model and some of these roles are asking a lot of an unpaid position.

If a good faith effort to accomplish the tasks set forth as the Head of DAO ops is not made, the DAO will not pay the compensation.

Of the two people who have been nominated so far, I’d trust either with this role. So while I don’t think we will have a problem with this, I think part of the discussion should be defined objectives for what makes a “good faith effort”. They don’t have to be super strict to the point of creating a ‘gameable’ checklist, but I think there needs to be some accountability.

With that in mind, I feel it would be a near mandatory ask to have some type of written periodic update in the forum, even if it’s as little as bi-weekly / monthly ones. This is coming from the lessons learned with the ambassador program. I don’t think it has to be a full blown report, but simply a half-hour write up of key events so delegates can be kept in the loop with the projects. In this it can highlight key achievements and alert the group to open projects, as well as confirmations that recurring tasks (community calls, verifying delegate compensation posting) were completed.

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The idea of having a single person accountable for driving the project forward, especially as we scale and establish more committees, makes a lot of sense. Thanks to @francom for bringing this up. It’s the kind of focused leadership we need to keep things streamlined and effective at this size of Hop!

I totally get the intensity of this role, both for the delegates and the DAO itself. The proposed six-month term seems just right for testing out this setup, and it’s perfectly timed with the upcoming launch of V2. I would even fill it out ASAP to make sure we don’t lose this precious time.

Agree with @Bob-Rossi on tracking on a monthly basis; I see it more like checkups that will help the DAO learn faster so we can use these learnings to take in/out initiatives proactively with eg. RFP…

Here are my initial questions:

  • How will this role integrate with the multisig signers? Can you elaborate on this aspect?
  • If you’re considering stepping into this role, what would be your first steps upon selection?

Looking forward to seeing how this unfolds and ready to support in any way I can!

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I’m supportive of this role and believe it will add a lot of value. Some comments:

  1. in terms of nominee qualification, is having held Hop sufficient, or should there be an ongoing minimum holding, similar to the delegate threshold, that would help align incentives.

  2. in terms of responsibilities, is there room to add a Hop bridge quarterly review? I feel we’re lacking data-driven discussions around the performance of Hop relative to previous quarters and to the market. If the DAO Head could compile and discuss performance on a quarterly basis, this would be a useful first step. It would give the DAO a communal sense of whether it needs to consider taking any tactical actions. I’m aware of the different data sources from DefiLlama to Token Terminal, and Hop owns metrics, but i think the first step could be getting a consensus view on what metrics are relevant.

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Awesome, thanks for the response!

What would next steps (and timeline) look like for this proposal?

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Bob-Rossi. I agree in that ongoing communication is crucial to create a feedback loop that will strengthen this program. With that in mind I’ll update the proposal with a requirement for periodic reporting to the DAO.

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Thanks for the comments, 0xLev1!

  • How will this role integrate with the multisig signers? Can you elaborate on this aspect? One of the responsibilities of this role is to be up to date on the activities of all subgroups within the DAO, including the multisig signers, and share periodic updates.

  • If you’re considering stepping into this role, what would be your first steps upon selection? My first step would be to create and share an initial report of all activities of DAO subgroups. Additionally, I would work on kickstarting the grants committee and ambassador programs as soon as possible.

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Thanks for the response, thegreg.eth!

  • I do not think this qualification should include a minimum amount of HOP held so that a larger pool of aligned individuals can qualify for this role. Having held even a small amount of HOP for a long period I believe indicates support for the DAO

  • I like the idea of consistent communication with the DAO and will add a reporting requirement for this role.

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Thanks Shane!

Regarding next steps I will post this proposal on Snapshot later today to see if it is approved by the DAO. If it passes, there will be a 5-day period where anyone that qualifies can be nominated. This will be followed up with another Snapshot vote to determine the election for the role.

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The general idea sounds good and it’s probably a useful role to have.

Thought you answered to shane I am still confused a bit with the payment + vesting terms.

If the payment is denominated in monthly dollar terms ($3k) but vests for a year then what is vesting? Let’s say 1 HOP is $1 at first payment. So candidate get $3k HOP. But by the end of the year when they can access it, it’s at $0.5 then that means that they get paid half the agreed dollar amount.

Seems a bit of a weird and unfair payment arrangement (for the candidate).

I get it that it can very well be the other way around and the vesting is supposed to incentivize this, but as a salary I don’t think such risks should be taken with someone’s salary.

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Agreed, and I can see the importance of the role to improve DAO efficiency, the stable reward for the good service from the candidate should not make too much impact to rise and fall of HOP price.

I think $3k worth of HOP per month shouldn’t impose much sell pressure to HOP, and the payment is to be made retroactively every 3-months. I think the vesting period can be reduced by at least half or even lifted.

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Thanks for your input @lefterisjp ! You bring up a great point. The way I viewed this is the work is to take place for a 6-month trial period where the money will be earned after each 3-month period of work. At this time, I believe the amount of Hop tokens earned should reflect $3,000 USD a month with a weighted average price for the period where the funds were “earned”. While the money is earned at this time the funds are still locked and won’t be distributed until the 12-month vesting period expires. Therefore, the person in this role will take HOP token risk during the vesting period and will have earned less or more depending on the price of HOP after the vesting period.

What I am trying to achieve is have this role be aligned “long-term” with the DAO as hopefully this person will continue holding HOP and participating in the DAO. Your point is very valid because if the person in this role needs their compensation to pay living expenses and other things then this payment structure is not adequate. Happy to make any adjustments that you and other community members suggest. I am trying to balance aligning this role with the DAO while also inviting a large talented candidate pool to apply and for the person in this role to be adequately compensated.

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I voted for to this proposal. I like the idea of this Head of DAO Gov&Ops trial and I think this role could provide great value to the DAO. As an example, conversations regarding how to streamline and enhance the delegate compensation process have been going around for quite some time, and one idea that floated was that someone takes on this as part of a role at least until it can be automated… and it has already started happening on the last delegate thread, so great work!