Beginning Discussions for the ApeCoin Board Nominations and Elections Process

[Amplify]

Hello fellow Apes, I’ve started this topic with advice from @Marklar to help get the conversation going around what people would like to see in the upcoming Board Nominations and Elections process.

I’ve included a very basic AIP Draft with some generic outlines and instructions for the ApeCoin Foundation Administrators to create a governance.apecoin.com dashboard for users to nominate themselves and leave a campaign pitch for themselves.

Proposal Name: Ratify ApeCoin Board Members Nomination and Election Process

Proposal Category: Process

Abstract

This AIP Idea attempts to establish a formal yearly Nomination and Election process for members of the APE Foundation Board in accordance with guideline #1 approved in AIP-1.

Motivation

Guideline #1 approved in “AIP-1: Proposing the DAO - Process”(LINK) states: “Every year, there is a DAO-wide vote to determine which DAO members will serve on a special council on the APE Foundation (the DAO’s “Board”). The purpose of the Board is to administer DAO proposals and serve the vision of the community.”

This AIP Idea attempts to ratify the Nomination and Elections process for the ApeCoin Foundation Board. It includes process and action items for the ApeCoin Foundation Administrators to design and construct a dashboard for candidates to self-nominate for positions on the Board that will be hosted at “governance.apecoin.com”

If this AIP passes there will be a subsequent AIP which defines the roles and responsibilities of individual members of the Board, as well as specifying the number of seats that will be open for elections during this first election cycle.

Rationale

As per “AIP-113: Extending AIP-1 - the DAO Process” “An extension will provide continuity and stability: the Foundation doesn’t just execute what the community wants - it enables us to ensure we are compliant with the necessary legal, regulatory, and compliance laws and guidance so we can operate effectively.”

In order for the DAO to function and remain stable according to our Guiding Principles there must be a system in place for continuous governance.

Key Terms

https://boardroom.io/ - A governance aggregator which allows users to better visualize improvement proposals across DAOs. Boardroom allows candidates to connect their wallet, fill out their profile and include a campaign pitch for elections.

Specifications

This proposal establishes an election cycle which occurs every year starting October 1st until the end of January.

From October 1st until January 1st, anyone can self nominate themselves for a position on the Board through the official “governance.apecoin.com” dashboard.

The dashboard will be integrated with Boardroom.io to allow candidates to fill out their profile, include a pitch for their campaign, and nominate themselves for the Board.

Within a voting epoch, votes are liquid, so voters can remove or change their votes at any time.

All currently serving APE Foundation Board members will automatically be up for reelection and will be included in the snapshot vote during the Election process.

Voting for the Board will be quadratic according to the snapshot specifications here: Voting systems - snapshot

The Election process will begin with an AIP published by Cartan within the first week of January listing all of the nominees, following the regular cadence of published AIP’s, every Thursday, and will last for a period of 2 weeks.

After the Election cycle is over, the top 5 nominees selected based on the results of the election will become the new members of the Board until the next election cycle.

Platforms to be used

Snapshot.org: Each voter may spread voting power across any number of choices. The results are calculated quadratically, so the number of individual voters matters more than the voting power contributed: Voting systems - snapshot

Boardroom.io: The Cartan Group will need to create a project space for ApeCoin on Boardroom where users can fill out their profile and join the nomination process.

Steps to Implement

The ApeCoin Foundation Administrators are equipped to implement all necessary actions in this AIP.

Yearly Tasks to be performed by the APE Foundation Administrators:

Every year in the first week of October, the APE Foundation Admins must announce the upcoming APE Foundation Board Nomination Process starting in October, as well as the subsequent Election process beginning in January on Discourse, Medium/ApeCoin blog and the ApeCoin Twitter account.

Send the AIP list of APE Foundation Board Nominees to Snapshot for a vote using the Quadratic voting mechanism within the first week of January, following regular AIP publishing cadence. (First Thursday in January)

Timeline

Project start date: TBD

Governance Dashboard completed by: TBD

First voting epoch starts: TBD

Project completed by: January 1st 2023.

Overall Cost

This AIP only establishes the process and Dashboard for Nominations and Elections for the APE Foundation Board. Cartan Group LLC will need to provide an estimate for the costs to create this dashboard.

The AIP implementation is administered by the Ape Foundation. Implementation may be immaterially or materially altered to optimize for security, usability, to protect APE holders, and otherwise to affect the intent of the AIP. Any material deviations from an AIP, as initially approved, will be disclosed to the APE holder community.

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Please continue conversations here around what you like or don’t like about the proposal, as well as any changes or steps you would like to see added. Thank you everyone!

The ApeCoin Foundation Administrators should have a working document soon detailing their outline for Nominations and Elections to the Board, and hopefully this thread can serve as a sentiment gauge from the community to help them determine what we would like to see from their proposal.

Thank you everyone!

[ssp1111]

Thanks for the write-up @Amplify - just a few initial thoughts:

• I’m thinking the election process you propose ought to begin in December 2022 so that the transition is in place by January 1, 2023

• Also thinking that we keep an existing Special Council member on so that there’s someone on the “new” council with institutional knowledge – someone to help new members learn and understand the role – I recall a proposal that suggested we keep @maariab on board which I supported

• Now that I think about it, couldn’t the elections be for 3 new members only (not 5) to minimize the risk of “having to start all over”?

• Or maybe we ought to expand the number of seats – wonder what the pros and cons are with that?

• Finally, I think @bc and The Cartan Group were gonna propose a formal process for nominations and elections themselves, right? Maybe you could coordinate if that’s the case, to avoid a duplication of efforts

That’s all I got right now - thanks for getting things rolling, we as a community definitely need to be discussing this sooner than later - peace

SSP

[Amplify]

Thank you @ssp1111 for the thoughtful feedback.

• To address your last point first, yes the Cartan Group will propose a formal process for nominations and elections. I’m waiting for their working document which should be coming early October.

• Thank you for highlighting the need for no lapse in governance, my concern was we would not give candidates enough time to nominate and campaign prior to the election. We would require another AIP to extend further for the elections.

• I am 100% on board with not sending all seats up for elections in the first round. There needs to be some room for existing board members to teach their peers how to maintain the necessary legal, regulatory, and compliance tasks involved with the position.

Thank you again SSP, I look forward to continuing to explore our options as a community. This forum post is mostly building upon @BoredApeG 's post here:

Nomination & Election Process: Strawman Proposals for YOU to build upon!

First, I want to state that there are so many terrific ideas here. We have such a great community contributing to help lay the groundwork for the ApeCoin Foundation/DAO’s long-term success. The ApeCoin Foundation will be in great hands over the next decades, however, collectively, we need to focus on the immediate needs. I’d like to keep our eye on the prize here fellow Apes; don’t get caught up too much on how we got here, Cartan, past Board compensation, contracts, etc. The primary need we ha…

[0xMarcella]

Thank you @Amplify for starting this conversation. I believe it’s a top priority right now to talk about the election process and to be prepared at the end of these 3 months of extension. I also think this should be coordinated with the council as suggested by @ssp1111.

This @maariab thread on Twitter should be considered and contains many interesting aspects to think about:

Staggered elections would help with continuity and knowledge transfer.

Special council members have 6 months of knowledge around regulatory, legal, and structural challenges and new members shouldn’t have to start from 0.

(i'm not joking there's so much s*it to know) https://t.co/d48lzynZZ2

— maaria.eth (@maariabajwa) September 9, 2022

• Voting system: I agree with the idea of using Quadratic Voting system. It’s the best option to give everyone’s vote an appropriate weight and the chance to support more than one candidate.

• Number of seats: it’s fundamental to give time to the new board member to learn from the predecessors how to manage technical and legal aspects. We should better understand which roles do members covers and how much time is needed to handover. This should be taken in account when we decide the timing of elections and, most important, the starting date of the new roles as well as the ending date of the old ones.

@Amplify

Boardroom.io: The Cartan Group will need to create a project space for ApeCoin on Boardroom where users can fill out their profile and join the nomination process.

I didn’t know Boardroom before and it’s a pretty cool platform! It also has an integration with Discourse APIs: ApeCoin Discussions on Boardroom
Though it’s not clear to me in which way it’s better than Discourse to handle nomination process: do you know any example or found any feature that I didn’t notice?

Thanks again for posting this. Looking forward to continue this conversation, there’s a lot to think about.

[Amplify]

Thank you so much @0xMarcella, I can’t agree more with this being a priority. Thank you for pointing out that twitter thread and providing a link for others. Sometimes it can be difficult to keep track of all the information floating around Web3.

Given the feedback I’ve heard from the community, I think most people are on board with a rolling election where we can avoid having to “start over” every year.

And yeah my inspiration for using Boardroom comes from Synthetix and their governing bodies. From my understanding the Synthetix governance dashboard plugs into Boardroom for their “Governance Pitches.” You can check out their dashboard here:

https://governance.synthetix.io

[Marklar]

re-posting for visibility

Foundational investments now, vertical investments later

A few thoughts for consideration: To prevent multiple votes, there should be a snapshot of wallets eligible to vote as of the start of the Voting Period. Eligibility should be opt-in for everyone. Otherwise, as-drafted, automatic re-entry should have an opt-out. Not immediately clear, but if this is an extension of AIP-1 it should explicitly state as such. Specify time zone. Specify and define each discrete period: Nomination Period, Voting Period, Elected Term. The phrase “electi…

[Mantis]

I’m all for quadratic voting, but as the snapshot says, it must be “accompanied by a Sybil-resistance mechanism.” What is the actual mechanism, and is it in place?

[Amplify]

Hello, and thank you Mantis.

This discussion is mostly to get us to start thinking about these solutions. This proposal is far from complete, and would require some engineering to create the sybil resistant voting mechanism. Personally, I think a quality delegation system and the normal 1 APE = 1 vote style elections would work for our purposes.