On-chain Governance

DAO governance process is managed through by governance forums (https://discuss.ens.domains/) at and ratified through Improvement Proposal (https://ethereum.org/en/eips/).

A set of steps are taken during the governance process from the inception and definition to the actual approval and implementation.

Steps in a proposal governance

1. Forum Discussion - Anyone can sign up and set up a thread on any topic on DAO governance forums often hosted at the community page. Community members are often required to register using an email address or a protocol supported wallet. Medium - Offchain.

2. RFC creation - A request for comment (RFC) creation is the first step in the governance improvement process. Anyone can participate in the Governance Forum, create off-chain RFC, and discuss improvement ideas. Medium - Offchain.

3. Discussion & feedback - Once posted on the governance forum, all questions and comments should be addressed & taken into consideration, to further improve the improvement proposal. Medium - Offchain.

4. Snapshot polling - Snapshot polls serve two purposes: sentiment signaling for future on-chain Improvement proposals and binding votes for variables controlled off-chain.

   Once an off-chain RFC has a consensus, a community member can create an off-chain vote for the RFC. Snapshot. Snapshot is a simple voting interface that allows users to signal sentiment off-chain. Votes on Snapshot are weighted by the voting power of the address used to vote. Medium - IPFS (Proposals and votes are just signed messages, stored on IPFS)

5. IP creation - When a consensus is reached, an on-chain Improvement Proposal may be submitted (triggers a smart contract ) by a community member who holds enough proposition power for the type of proposal (initiated via a smart contract ). The proposal should be based on the winning outcome of the off-chain Improvement Proposal voting on Snapshot and can consist of one or multiple actions. An improvement proposal creation is subject to a minimum number of tokens held/delegated required for an account. A Timelock executor must be specified when a proposal is created. Medium - Onchain.

6. IP Voting - Once an onchain Improvement proposal is created, it enters a pending state for a period defined by the Voting Delay, often confined to a number of blocks or days. For example, user snapshots are recorded 1 day after the Improvement proposal is created, at which point the proposal transitions to an active state. After the Voting Delay, the Voting Period is activated. The voting period length depends on the proposal type and can be modified through governance. Medium - Onchain.

7. Proposal Queuing & Execution - After the Improvement proposal has passed, any address can call the queue method to move the proposal into the timelock queue. An Improvement proposal can only be queued & called if it has passed. Medium - Onchain.

8. Proposal Cancellation - At any point in the governance process , the proposer can cancel the improvement proposal. A proposal can be cancelled by anyone before it is executed if the proposer does not have sufficient proposition power at the current block. Medium - Onchain.

Good to know: DAO's governance process are also subject to change from time to time and that change is also agreed by the community through the DAO proposal and voting process.