[Discussion] Radicle Governance Working Group

[derek]

Radicle Governance Working Group

In a previous post about the Radicle Treasury, we talked the potential formation of a Treasury Working Group. Along those same lines, we think it’s worthwhile for Radicle to form a more generalized working group to discuss all things Radicle governance, which a Treasury Working Group could be a part of.

What is it?
We propose the creation of a Governance Working Group to discuss all things Radicle governance. The group will meet once a month to discuss the various things happening in Radicle’s governance process, including areas like overall strategy, treasury management, and more. The motivation is to encourage a lively discussion about governance proposals made by the community, as well as to create a space for active discussion for any stakeholders in the community. As the working group grows in size and scope, specific focus areas and workstreams can be created as well to create a streamlined process.

Who is part of the working group?
The initial group will include a small number of Radicle governance enthusiasts: Jenny, Larry, Abbey, and myself. We’d love to expand the group. If you’re interested in joining, respond to this post with a little bit about your background and interest in Radicle governance! We welcome users and stakeholders of all kinds.

When will it meet?
We will host a public call on Discord once a month. To kick things off, we will have the first call at 10AM EST on 8/11/2021. We encourage everyone who is interested in getting involved with Radicle governance to join.

[jennyp]

The first Radicle Governance Working Group meeting will be tomorrow (August 11) at 4pm CET/GMT+2

We’ll be chatting on Discord in the monthly-wg-hangout stage channel https://discord.gg/j9Zv68e8 come join us!

[larry]

Thanks to everyone who joined the first Governance Working Group call!

To keep a public record of the discussion, we’re sharing the call notes below.

Treasury Management Framework

• Derek and Larry gave some background on themselves and their company Reverie. Derek was previously an investor at Blockchain Capital, while Larry was an investor at Digital Currency Group. Reverie is a company they started to help DAOs scale.

• The Radicle Treasury has roughly ~50M RAD. The treasury has a substantial amount of financial firepower, and it exists to fund contributors working on Radicle.

• Reverie discussed several approaches to using the Treasury. Broadly, the proposal put out by Reverie recommends setting up a (i) grants program (for grant requests <$250k), and (ii) a process for using on-chain governance to receive a more significant amount of funding (for grant requests >$250k).

Radicle Governance Working Group

• The Radicle Governance Working Group will discuss all things Radicle governance. It keeps all contributors working on Radicle accountable for the work they are doing.

• Abbey and Larry spoke about how to measure the success of workstreams: which initiatives are most important, how do they get stack-ranked, and what is the process of evaluating the success of governance initiatives? For example, how will the community gauge the success of growth programs (e.g., liquidity mining initiatives)?

Rabbithole (Ben Schecter)

• Ben is the operations lead at Rabbithole. Rabbithole helps crypto projects find users and contributors. Ben spoke about how Rabbithole quests work and encouraged Radicle’s community to think about how to use Rabbithole for growing usage of Radicle.

Galaxy Digital (Jon Kol)

• Jon said Radicle’s goal should be to get every DAO in the world on Radicle.
• Awareness is the first step to getting every DAO to use Radicle. As a result, it’s going to be important to find ways to grow the “top of the funnel.”

Q&A

• Q1: how will conflicts of interest be managed?

• A1: conflicts of interest are unavoidable. The best thing to do is to be transparent about conflicts and disclose them to the community.

• Q2: what are growth initiatives Radicle’s community can work on?

• A2: (i) Treasury to subsidize the creation of Radicle orgs, (ii) matching programs for once “community tokens” launch, and (iii) incentivization program for running sync nodes

Where You Can Get Involved

Want to join Radicle as a contributor? Currently, there are several workstreams being formed. Each workstream has a lead or co-leads who are responsible for taking ownership of the workstream and championing it forward.

If you are interested in joining any of the workstreams below, respond to this thread!

• Treasury Management. The Treasury Management workstream is led by Derek and Larry from Reverie. The goal for this workstream is to discuss how to manage Radicle’s treasury and establish formal processes for doing so.

• Grants. The Grants workstream is co-led by Abbey, Jenny, Derek, and Larry. The goal of the Grants workstream is to design and form the Radicle Grants Program.

• Growth. The Growth workstream is co-led by Abbey, Jenny, Derek, and Larry. The goal of the Growth workstream is to design and implement initiatives that grow usage of Radicle.

[TylerEther]

Great to see you contributing to this project @larry ! I’m interested in joining the Growth workstream.

The best way to reach me is Discord: TRiLeZ#8944

[larry]

I recently posted a temperature check on the grants program to gauge community feedback.

Adding a link to the temperature check to this thread for continuity.

Would love to hear feedback from the community on the topic!

[derek]

Governance Working Group Call #2 Notes

A full recording can be found here.

Grants Programs

• Derek and Abbey presented the Radicle Grants Program temp check and feedback.
• The Grants program should fund things that grow Radicle’s core product + ecosystem.
• The program’s goal is to get the largest open source projects (e.g. Linux, Apache) on Radicle, including every DAO.
• Examples of funding opportunities:
  • Detailed onboarding/migration developer documents.
  • Video tutorials.
  • Devops tooling.
• How do we structure grants priorities?
  • The Grants team should work closely with the core team to create a living list of high leverage objectives and RFPs/challenges.
  • Grants and bounties have overlap, but can be distinct concepts. Grants focus more on bigger scope, long term things whereas bounties are for very specific targeted tasks.
  • Bordhumb expressed interest in creating a list of open RFPs/challenges.
• How do we use Radicle’s core infra for running the Radicle Grants Program?
  • One idea is a version controlled repository of RFPs and funding requests that anyone can submit to and prioritize.
  • Radicle Funding Protocols can also be used to communicate bounties, grants, etc.

• To-Do: Form a committee with a full-time lead.

Growth

• How do we incentivize and steward growth of Radicle ecosystem?
• Nassar presented on growth ideas for Radicle.
  • The focus should be on activating Radicle usage to leverage growth; onboarding new users is the priority.
• The current blockers to using Radicle are gas costs and onboarding (education)
  • Current gas cost for starting a Radicle Org is $300+, so a subsidy fund to refund gas fees is a good idea. This makes it easier to startup + maintain Orgs.New users and contributors should be rewarded for learning about Radicle Orgs and developing processes on it.
  • Make it easier for people to mirror repositories on Radicle, could go hand in hand with grants-funded onboarding documents and guides.
• Should Growth be its own workstream or part of Grants?
• To-Do: Nassar and Abbey to work on a temp check for an Radicle Growth Initiative Program.

Treasury

• Derek gave an update on the treasury framework temp check + feedback.
• No major need to diversify or manage asset allocation at this point, given Radicle’s healthy USDC + RAD balance. This is an ongoing discussion, and should be revisited should circumstances change.

[abbey]

Update on the Radicle Governance Working Group

After six months of operation (and a full year of governance activity!), we’ve decided to transition the community-led Governance Working Group to its own Core Team! It will be merged with the Community Core Team, managed by myself, with its core contributors being @shelb_ee and @bordumb. The new Core Team designation will allow the team to steward governance and lead Radicle’s transition to the DAO. We see the Core Team being one of the first funded via the DAO and are excited to start putting the organizational scaffolding in place to make it happen!

It’s also been exciting to see the Growth workstream transform into the Growth Core Team led by @nas, which just successfully passed the Ecosystem Growth Fund through on-chain governance.

Huge thanks to the earliest contributors to the working group, @larry @derek @jennyp and the Radicle community members who have been here since its formation (@phil_h @yorgos @bordumb and more )

The Community & Governance team will share progress on objectives monthly with the Radicle community. Stay tuned