Summary#

Refine the CryoDAO governance process by integrating Nance, a governance automation platform. Implement a 14 day Governance Cycle providing DAO members a set amount of time to discuss, temperature check, vote, and execute proposals. These changes will streamline the proposal process and reduce the DAO Steward's workload such that they can focus on higher level strategy and execution.

Governance Cycle#

Utilizing cyclical governance has many advantages over ad-hoc or asynchronous governance:

1. Predictable - organization members know when they need to propose and vote
2. Less voter burnout - voters have preset days they know they will need to vote, no need to constantly check for new proposals
3. Batched execution - grouping proposal actions by cycle allows for more efficient execution
4. Time to refine ideas - organization members can refine their ideas if they are rejected on an initial vote

We are proposing a 14 day cycle for CryoDAO:

Temperature Check (suggestion: 4 days)

• DAO members provide feedback on proposal content
• proposals can be edited based on feedback
• simple 👍 👎 poll is taken
• proposals that achieve a configurable threshold of positive feedback by the end of this stage are moved to the Vote stage

Vote (suggestion: 7 days)

• organization members vote on proposals
• off-chain signature based voting, built on Snapshot
• proposals that achieve a configurable threshold of positive votes by the end of this stage are moved to the Execution stage

Execution (suggestion: 2 days)

• signers of the organization's Safe assemble to execute proposals
• if using a Juicebox treasury, proposals must be executed before the edit deadline Nance allows multiple proposal actions to be rolled into a single safe multicall transaction, easing Safe signer burden

Delay (suggestion: 1 days)

• downtime between Governance Cycles
• organization members can propose new ideas during this time for the next Governance Cycle

For more details on the stages of governance check out the Nance docs

Proposal Lifecycle#

A draft proposal can be created at any time by any member of the Discord in the #⁠📝ㆍdraft-proposals forum channel. A draft proposal lives outside of the Governance Cycle, can be less structured, and used as a place for members to ideate without having all of the details finalized. Once the idea is refined and deemed proposal worthy, any Steward can run /propose in the Discord forum post.

This will cause Nance to generate a post in the #📄ㆍproposals forum channel, attach pertinent metadata, :thumbsup: :thumbsdown: reactions, and a link to the Nance proposal editor. From the editor The original author can formalize their proposal within the CryoDAO template and attach onchain actions to the proposal. This proposal is then included within the upcoming Governance Cycle.

During the beginning of the Temperature Check phase, Nance will post in the #📖ㆍgovernance listing all of the proposals that need to be Temperature Checked in the current Governance Cycle.

At the end of the Temperature Check period, all proposals that received 10 :thumbsup: and 50% of total reactions from @Contributors will be moved to the Voting stage of the process. All other proposals will be marked as cancelled.

Once the voting period begins, Nance will upload proposals to Snapshot for token weighted voting and send an alert to #📖ㆍgovernance.

Contributors will have 7 days to vote on the proposal. All proposals that receive 60% Approval will be marked as Accepted and moved to Execution.

See the block diagram below or interactive version here

Execution#

Nance.app builds Safe transactions based on the proposals that have passed the Vote stage. When a proposal is submitted, the author can specify its execution in different ways:

1. Immediate - to be queued and executed during the next Governance Cycle
2. Future - to be queued and executed at the specified future Governance Cycle
3. Delegate Gated - to be queued and executed after a poll by the Stewards, this can be used when any legal or offchain affairs need to be addressed before execution

All of these transactions can be queued for execution by any Safe signer. The integration between Nance.app and Safe is done through the Safe API (via the @safe-golbal/protocol-kit npm package) and if anyone that is NOT a signer of the Safe tries to a submit a transaction, it will be rejected by the Safe API. We DO NOT recommend adding Nance as a signer to the Safe as it would be a security risk.

Nance recommends OnChainDen for alerting multisig signers to sign and execute proposal. This is a free tool that will send alerts to Discord and allow for signers to attach additional information to the transaction, providing a clear audit trail.

About Us#

Nance is a governance automation platform originally built for Juicebox. We are a team of 3: jigglyjams (backend/frontend), twodam (frontend/backend), and Zeugh (pm/bizdev/strategy). We are excited to bring our expertise in governance to the CryoDAO community and are looking forward to working with the community to refine the governance process.