Simple Summary:
We need Hashflow Guardians, who have the veto power on any DAO proposal, to be more engaged with the community to explain/defend their decisions. This is the way to build trust and ensure that the DAO is acting transparently.
Abstract:
2 out of 5 guardians (Batux & Sid Venkateswaran) have rarely (maybe never?) engaged with the Hashflow community. They haven’t taken any time to build trust with the community as well as are very opaque with their decision making process wrt DAO proposals. Being a trusted guardian requires time and effort to engage with the community and present/defend your positions. These 2 guardians haven’t made any effort to do this.
Brian and Memento on the other hand have been very active guardians and even though there are disagreements, the community appreciates them taking the time to explain their thoughts and approach.
This proposal makes an exception for Rahsan who even though hasn’t been active with community discussions comes with significant legal experience and can provide recommendations accordingly.
This proposal seeks to replace 2 inactive guardians with #hashgang members who have been active members of the community as well as understand and care about the product deeply.
Motivation:
The main motivation here is to introduce transparency in how the DAO operates. Right now, it is not clear how the Guardians are making decisions as they haven’t spent any time with the community to engage with them and get their feedback.
We need to ensure that proposals adhere to minimal standards before they are put up for voting. Several recent proposals (such as the one which proposes to terminate unvested HFT rewards for NFTs without explaining what “termination” means) have missed the mark on this.
DeFi protocols like Hashflow thrive if the community is active and feel they are being heard. It is critical it is served by Guardians who are the shepherds of the community and bring everyone together.
Specification:
Remove 2 Guardians (Batux & Sid Venkateswaran) immediately based on the results of the poll
We will run polls later, via Governance, on the #hashgang members who want to replace the 2 Guardians. Till the Guardians have been re-elected, we will keep DAO proposals in abeyance
Guardians will be expected to dedicate their time on the Governance section of Discord to engage with the community and defend their povs. This is not an hour/week type of role. We should discuss if compensating Guardians for their time is needed to keep the quality of output high.
Benefits (Pros):
More transparency and predictability on how DAO operates
Bring the community together by having trusted #hashgang representing diverse point of views
Downside (Cons):
More debate could create slowness
Team may have lesser control over DAO decisions
Voting:
Yes → Implement the above proposal of replacing Hashflow DAO Guardians
I disagree with this proposal in its current form. Rahsan Boykin has much needed legal experience, and the other two guardians have extensive experience with DeFi, hence providing a less biased point of view.
What I could stand behind is augmenting the current set of guardians with an even number (could start with 2) of guardians from the community. In that world, the proposal would have to mention who those people are.
In its current form, I am against this proposal. It can still go to vote, but I encourage the community to vote against it.
I agree with the point of that guardians should participate on the governance discussions, but as ser victor said , some of those guardians have some legal experience in real world that we need them in DAO!
I agree with this proposal if it is modified as Victor suggests. I think adding an even amount of guardians (lets say 2) that were submitted and elected by the community via a new process is a good idea.
I want to be clear. I personally instructed guardians to not participate in community discussions or activities. Guardians are not supposed to govern this protocol. Therefore, given they are a small group with a significant amount of responsibility and power, their scope must be limited by design or they could inadvertently undermine the power of the community. THIS PROTOCOL IS GOVERNED BY THE COMMUNITY…NOT THE TEAM, NOT THE FOUNDATION AND NOT THE GUARDIANS. A guardian’s power is limited to only reviewing proposals to evaluate accuracy and systemic risk…not to dictate the direction of the Protocol. I think that allowing guardians to comment in forums creates a bad precedent which must by checked (not to mention increased regulatory risk). This is also why I believe guardians should not submit proposals.
I would like to suggest the following: Can we resubmit this proposal to say:
a. Instruct the Foundation to modify the Guardian appointment process to allow for community nominations and voting. Additionally, the Foundation should detail specific guidelines for guardian behavior to ensure they do not violate any relevant applicable laws or undermine the power of the community and
b. Instruct the Foundation to implement this process within days from notification to the community such that the community may elect 2 new guardians.
In its current form…I respectfully request the community vote no to this proposal. However, if it is agreed that we can modify this proposal as suggested, I would encourage the community to vote yes.
Hi, I mentioned guardians selection in Discord too. We need to have 1 or 2 members from the community.
I want to share what I’ve seen in Galxe for choosing community treasury key holders (9 members)
Every nominate posted a biography about him/her self and their vision and attitude.
Users showed their upvote with like.
Then the most liked users went to voting. (about 20)
top 9 voted users got selected. (multi-select voting)
We can do this too, but I want it to be effective, so if we choose 2 new members then we’ll have 7 guardians and these two guardians from the community aren’t really important because majority will be 4 persons only!
Can we replace 2 current members with community members? 7 members for checking 2 criteria is too much.
Thank you @RBesq for your points. I feel your point #2 could be reflected on more as the community currently feels unclear on how the Guardians are making their decisions. There are no thoughts shared and discussed with the Community which creates distrust and it ain’t obvious how some of Guardians’ actions are helping the protocol.
I appreciate the legal experience with Rahsan brings but that should not come at the cost of zero participation with the community.
@RBesq - just to understand your proposal, are you suggesting re-electing all Guardians with inputs from the community or are you recommending adding 2 more guardians (in addition to the 5 we already have) for a total of 7? I feel 7 might be too much given how early we are into this DAO.
I support the idea of adding 2 more Guardians. I do not support the idea of replacing the current Guardians. @megawhiz are you amenable to changing the proposal in favor of adding 2 instead of replacing? If not, it should go to Purgatory as is.
Currently: we have 5 guardians
Remind: Adding 2 more guardians to raise them to 7 changes nothing at all! Majority(60%) will become 4 members. so whether the 2 new members disagree or not, any proposal with previous members can proceed.
Another example to make it clear, having 20 guardians and adding 10 new from the community, then the majority(60% of 30) becomes 18 which is also possible with the old 20 guardians.
@gxmxni - why are you resisting the idea of replacing the Guardians. Lets keep Rahsan who has necessary legal expertise but why are we so keen to hang on to Sid and Batux who haven’t participated in any governance discussions and taken time to build trust with the community?
I feel the community needs to have a larger say in these Governance decisions. We can’t be operating as a DAO which is operated based on HFT votes (that is what gives HFT value) but have a veto council that is all appointed by the team - and are keen to keep the majority.
So I do agree with @0xZZ here. I will edit the proposal to reflect this.
We choose 2 new gaurdians whose presence are not important :)))))) their yes or no won’t change anything.
They think they are clever but they aren’t unfortunately
I am not entirely opposed to making changes to the Guardian set. However, changes can be of the following nature:
Replace Guardian X for Guardian Y
Add an even number of Guardians and they should be A, B, C, D
Essentially, each proposal should represent a concrete change.
Guardian changes are generally very sensitive, and I believe they should be rolled out slowly. I see no reason why BatuX, Sid, Brian, or Memento should be replaced as Guardians, given that:
Sid, BatuX have extensive industry experience
Brian has built this community
Memento is part of the community
My general recommendation is to keep adding 2 extra Guardians slowly and observe their involvement in voting. Changing the entire system by turning it upside down is generally very risky.
Still propose to remove Sid and Batux and replacing them with 2 active community members
I agree that Brian and Memento have been very active members and thus my proposal never referred to removing them.
BatuX: This is his Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/crypto_han. 6 tweets. Very few, if anyone, in the Hashflow Discord knows who he is and what he has done. There has been little thought leadership examples. I am open for considering other DeFi experts (who hopefully are active on HF Discord too) but BatuX unfortunately doesn’t cut it in my opinion.
Sid Venkateswaran: At least he has an active Twitter profile but he has very few followers (no where near the influencer status). Unclear why he is an expert in DeFi apart from being a VC in crypto.
One thing I have noticed is that both Sid and BatuX are seed stage investors with Hashflow - which is a huge conflict of interest given their incentives are aligned with Hashflow team’s (given the vesting structure is similar). We already have Brian and Rahsan in the Guardian council who are already members of the team. As such, I recommend we choose a more balanced council of Guardians with aligned incentives between the team and community - and we can do that by replacing BatuX and Sid.
I understand and respect your reasoning. However, for a proposal to be relevant, you’d have to nominate their replacements. Otherwise, the proposal itself is a no-op. I don’t think we should remove Guardians and have vacant spots. More Guardians means more decentralization.
I do get your point and I agree with it!
but guardians better to be diversified, for now I like to give them time cause it so soon to judge them!
we can add an even number to them before removing any of them!