AIP-464: Future Election Leadership Requirements

PROPOSAL NAME

Future Election Leadership Requirements

TEAM DESCRIPTION

@SmartAPE // Derek Smart, DAO member and writer-of-many-words

I am an indie software developer who has been in the games industry as a gamer and game dev for over 40 years. I have designed, developed, and published over a dozen games during my career.

My first game, Battlecruiser 3000AD (aka BC3K), was a ground-breaking game that was ahead of its time. Published by Take Two interactive in 1996, it was one of their portfolio titles when they went public in 1997. So, you could say that I helped the company succeed to where it is today.

Over the decades, I have worked with some of best software developers and publishers around the world, and my works have been featured in various online and print magazines around the world.

You can learn more about me on my professional LinkedIn page.

PROPOSAL DESCRIPTION

All election candidates and nominees for Special Council or Working Group Steward roles must fit the following criteria:

  1. Must have demonstrable, verifiable, historical experience, and qualifications suited for the role
  2. Their full name (first, last) must be disclosed publicly
  3. Must have been Discourse members for at least six (6) months prior to the date of their nomination.
  4. Must have achieved a minimum Trust Level 2 on Discourse prior to the date of their nomination.

ABSTRACT

During elections we tend to see an influx of candidates who were neither previously active in the DAO nor have any familiarity with the community. This leads to much consternation whereby not only do new candidates fail to engage with the community to any meaningful degree, they usually ignore (in some cases, they never even come back!) questions related to their proposals.

BENEFIT TO APECOIN ECOSYSTEM

Requiring candidates to be have prior and engagement and experience in the community, ensures that they are familiar with the community, and thus can better understand its many nuances, personalities, and processes.

STEPS TO IMPLEMENT

These requirements are to go into effect on the next (2025) election cycles for Special Council and all Working Group stewards.

  1. Must have demonstrable, verifiable, historical experience, and qualifications suited for the role

During nominations, candidates usually input some of this info. This AIP requires that experience, expertise and qualifications described by the candidate be reviewed as you would a candidate’s job resume. In other words, the candidate must provide a format similar to a resume and which displays their experience, expertise and qualifications for the role being applied for.

  1. Their full name (first, last) must be disclosed publicly

This needs to be a requirement in the nominee profile so that the voting public knows who they are.

This should be added in the nominations requirement and verified during the approval process.

  1. Must have been Discourse members for at least six (6) months prior to the date of their
    nomination.

This should be added in the nominations requirement and verified during the approval process.

  1. Must have achieved a minimum Trust Level 2 on Discourse prior to the date of their nomination.

This should be added in the nomination requirement, verified during the approval process, and evaluated by The APE Foundation or Governance Working Group team responsible for the verification of similar nominee info.

REPORTING EXPECTATIONS

The expectation is that this proposal would be implemented by the DAO’s administrative team.

The community should regularly review the impact of this proposal.

If accepted, the administration and the community should review the impact of the updates after the 3-month period for conflict ends.

OVERALL COST

Total amount requested from the ApeCoin Ecosystem Fund = 0

2 Likes

D-man, stoked to see you getting active again.

But important to note that Steward terms are for one-year. That being said budgets are (currently) set for six-months :muscle: :muscle:

AC

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Thanks, fam! Yeah, I noticed that I didn’t change that; and was waiting for the post to be active so that I can make the change.

As always, thanks for the support!

3 Likes

Got you always!!!

AC

3 Likes

I would definitely support this! It would be great to have more valuable activities on the forum. I’m not sure if six months is enough to get it right, but it would certainly be a good starting point :apecoin:

5 Likes

I would argue that all WG budgets should be proposed at the same time every year (e.g. Fall) and should cover the following calendar year (inclusive of pay for any paid positions). This gives the WGs time and freedom to execute on their objectives and allows for the operational time for funds to be released to the respective wallets in time for the calendar year to commence.

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I agree.

Please propose a format based on this suggestion, and I will just copy and paste it into my draft as another requirement.

All are welcome to make similar suggestions. If ApeChain is to be a success, not only do we need continuity of leadership, but we also MUST ensure that they’re not regularly distracted by things like elections, budget shenanigans etc.

I have a lot of other process related ideas (e.g. AIP funding times) that I am working through for other proposals because I don’t want to shove too many things into a proposal, only to see it fail.

1 Like

I went for 6 months because it’s a reasonable amount of time to engage. e.g. I joined in June 2023, and I was TL3 by Sept 2023. I lost that and went back down to TL2 when I caught a ban (over the Polygon AIP fiasco) in Oct that didn’t expire until Jan 11, 24. I didn’t return until this past Jun 14th due to the Banana Bill. So, I expect that I would be back up at TL3 in no time at all because I’m usually very active in the DAO.

I am open to changing it to 12 months if there’s a general consensus for doing so.

At a high level, here’s the visual I had in mind. Just a standard calendar that still allows for overlapping SC and WG membership to help with continuity but formalizes the budget process and approval to allow each WG to operate more effectively.

Would love feedback from anyone on this thought process.

4 Likes

OK. That looks good. I will wait for additional feedback and any additional suggestions before I incorporate it. Hopefully GwG will also chime in since they are also more in tune with schedules and challenges than we are. @AllCityBAYC @12GAUGE @Lost

1 Like

Hey guys,

Appreciate the convo. My take is that as far as budgets go, I don’t see the need for Working Groups to lock into any specific time frame for funding requests, and here’s why:

  1. The GWG was able to take AIP-317: ApeCoin DAO Governance and Operations Budget and extend that from a six-month financial plan into eight. We were also able to allocate loans for the new WGs to begin their legal structuring, and without this, we could have gone nine or more with it.

  2. We are currently nearing July, with the August funding window approaching. Due to a lengthy (and necessary) KYB process for the GWG legal entity, AIP-408: Q2/Q3 2024 Governance Working Group Budget hasn’t yet been received. This is a $1,271,900.00 grant where quite clearly, there is no way we’ll be burning through between now and August. Therefore to me, it makes very little sense for groups to be asking for more from the community when they simply don’t need it.

On the other side of the fence, there may also be unforeseen circumstances that would require WGs to ask for more sooner.

Also, another concept I’ve been considering is for WGs to establish a set of fixed costs tied to a set of base duties that the community expects from them, and adding additional initiatives to their core role as separate AIPs, as they go.

Either way, this is a topic we are looking deeply at right now and as always, love seeing everyone’s input, so do keep the feedback coming as we are always stronger together :muscle: :muscle:

AC

My thought was more long term. No need to start it in 3 months if all WG’s are funded, but at some point I assume funding an organization on a 6 month by 6 month basis with no guarantee of predictability isn’t the most sustainable approach (that or you spend all your time asking for money that you don’t get to spend time using it).

Just food for thought as we all seek to continue to evolve the DAO.

I feel you…

There may also be a little human psychology to consider as well. With four Working Groups, upwards of a twelve Steward roster, service providers, initiatives, and other expenses, putting all of these budgets up at once could adversely affect people’s rationale when determining how they want to vote.

Nonetheless, this is a great conversation that helps the GWG gauge sentiment and do what DAOs do best – which is enabling everyone to be a part of the decision-making process.

AC

1 Like

Nice you have put this in a doc. Can you send me the excel of this or share in a google doc.

It is important to map our current Operating Rhythm and develop a 2 year cadence. As though most cadence is 1 year, we do have a maximum period elected roles can serve as 2 years.

Thanks,

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I mentioned this before but I think this is the perfect post to say it again.

To attract new talented people or pry them from the “real world” into one of our apecoin roles we have to make the WG positions themselves more attractive.

One year terms are never going to do that.

Lead roles within working groups are imo the most important roles we have. We should look at making them more appealing by making terms two years, increasing salaries with possibly bonuses locked up tokens (voted on).

No one is quitting a “real world” position with security, sickness/maternity/paternity pay, paid holidays, health/dental/car etc etc, for one year posting at best, potentially no budget so could end up with no pay, and a “salary” that’s not even competitive.

Although it is a great ideal to have people here applying who are familiar with us and the makeup of the DAO I don’t feel it is a necessary stipulation for WG applications. For SC sure we need that familiarity and I love seeing active community members aspire to be in those roles. However, for WGs the roles are pretty open, they are to be built from the ground up in some cases, and to exclude talent because they haven’t spent six months on the forum or thrown in a few posts seems to be yet another barrier to entry and limits the pool of talent we can access for these important roles.

Glad to see you back Derek. :handshake::handshake::handshake:

1 Like

But they already are, though. That being, every 6 months.

I get the gist of the 6-8 month funding requirements, but is still doesn’t offer adequate flexibility - which is seemingly what you just pointed out as well. That’s why I felt that with the budgets aligned with the terms, it offers max flexibility; while removing the need to do AIP funding requests during a term.

It appears to me that, correct me if I’m wrong here, there is the concern that since a 12-month budget is higher than 6 or 8 months, then it may struggle to pass. Outside of that, I can’t understand why matching the budget to a term - which is standard procedure - is almost all cases, is problematic. I am probably missing something.

I believe that tying stewards duties to a “set of fixed costs” is just going to open a can of worms while adding the same [unnecessary] pressure that doing weekly performance reports brings.

Yes - this was precisely the impetus for my adding this requirement to the AIP because having to do the funding request song & dance every 6 months is disruptive and largely counter-productive.

Right. So it’s an issue of optics and voting, then. That said, I still believe that doing “one and done” budgets which match the [yearly] term of the roles, is vastly more efficient. At the end of the day, it will be up to the same voters to determine whether or not we should continue with the status quo or vote to change it and streamline it.

2 Likes

I think @bigbull 's “Operating Rhythm” comment is a good one. This isn’t something you just do overnight, so implementation details will matter.

My thoughts were more what the end game looks like.

Understand @AllCityBAYC 's comments re: human psychology and size of ask, but I’d argue that’s something we need to figure out how to normalize in the DAO if we want to get to a more efficient operating model.

It’s not that the current system doesn’t work, I just think that it could work even better; but I realize I say this not being on a WG so maybe there is something I’m missing from my perspective.

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I agree. But I think the 1 yr term is adequate for the DAO because, as you know, more often than not, due to our voting system, we don’t always tend to have the best people for the roles being voted for. Imagine if we had someone who was voted in, but lacked the experience and fortitude - then stuck in the role for, say, 5 yrs. Especially since the Special Council has said that we can’t fire anyone from any role due to contracts. Now that I am back, I do plan on re-visiting that particular issue.

I disagree. If you are in any role that serves the DAO community, familiarity with the members, processes, activities etc. is important, for the same reason that you’re not going to hire a baker to run a power plant. The DAO, by its very nature, is an eclectic community with people from all parts of the world. It’s bad enough that with some of our Chinese community, we definitely won’t be able to interact with them at the same level as our English speaking counterparts. e.g. I communicate with Jason Au and other Chinese frens regularly, even though I have to piece together some of what they’re saying/writing. Now, imagine what will happen if we just end up always slotting in people e.g. in GwG, who we can’t even communicate with - and not because of the language barrier, but also because they are not familiar with the processes. For as much grief as I give the GwG guys, I’ve never once tarnished their ability to do their jobs. In fact, amid all the bluster and angst, I regularly say that they’re doing specifically what we tasked them to do. And so, dealing with Lost, AllCity et al, they’re all familiar with the DAO. Now imagine when their terms end - and we are stuck with members who have no insight into our community. This is the problem that I am trying to address - specifically because of what I just happen (again) with the now concluded elections.

We need continuity, familiarity and consistency. We’re not going to get that by churning through people just because they won a vote. ApeChain is coming - and, to me, it’s the one last chance that our DAO has left to regain our rep, show that we’re not just a group of harebrained PFPs bumbling our way to zero, even as whales, knowingly or unknowingly, help grifters pillage our treasury. In fact, it’s the only reason why I returned to DAO active duty because to me, though I don’t [yet] have any technical contributions to offer to ApeChain, it’s an “all hands on deck” sort of thing. Just because I wail and make fun of our DAO regularly, doesn’t mean that I don’t care about what happens to it. If I didn’t care, I would spend my time on other worthy social activities. e.g. my involvement in the $265 Arbitrum GCP, including behind-the-scenes assistance, discussions etc. is no different from what I do here - in our DAO. I am all about community and gaming - I always have. It’s the one thing - outside of dev - that interests me. And so, this is my last attempt to help address some things here because, as I said before, money isn’t going to automagically make ApeChain a success. It just isn’t. And so, it starts with our DAO, and the people that we have running it for us.

Thanks, friend! :handshake::handshake::handshake:

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Right. Though in my head I referred to it as “synergy”, and is why I decided to write this AIP. We have a lot of moving parts which aren’t synergistic in their construction, execution, or continuity. That’s what I aim to address via this AIP. Even if it fails to pass, at least it would have served as a talking point for the future in case someone else determines that some of these things are needed, even if a future AIP takes a different form.

With this discussion, I am now left wondering if I should make the issue of budgets a separate AIP. Thoughts?

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Possibly.

One item addresses the type of people we want to have be eligible for the leaders of the DAO, which is a complex issue in and of itself.

One item addresses how we equip those people to successfully execute the jobs they are elected to do.

Both of these are worth debating on their own merit.