Oversight team - (internal codes and conduct authority i guess)

[furiousanger]

We need to create an OVERSIGHT TEAM - Please stop flagging this, it is just a discussion, I have not made any direct accusations in this topic.

We need to create a process that can deal with issues of inappropriate behaviours, worrying trends, outright bias behaviours, a point of contact for DAO members and public to report concerns and information, dealing with complaints, and this needs to have powers across the board relating to the the COUNCIL [if needed], APECOIN TWITTER, DISCORD and all other influential and related services the DAO operates [now and in the future] and its teams. I guess I see it as a kind of internal codes and conduct team with the powers to act fast.

We need to hold people accountable for their actions and have a dedicated team monitoring and protecting all of our interests, stopping collusion, a place for complaints and reports of inappropriate behaviours etc, as I am shocked at what I am seeing lately and how easily people can be sidelined and ignored or totally shut down, a DAO should not do this, it should not be run by the few.

The team should be elected, have final say, have powers, be easily contactable for everyone and have timelines in place for replying and dealing with inquiries and reports.

This is not a thiefdom for people to do as they please, it is and should be an opportunity for all those that want it and want to do something to better the community. Our DAO should be just and fair and deliver services unbiased and correctly always, and if not then they will be stopped by the OVERSIGHT TEAM.

We need this, as any large organisation with a large amount of funding would. I have no idea of costs and am not qualified and would not like to take on the responsibility for creating this proposal, but it needs to be done ASAP and get it in place and elected, fully operational, quickly. I also feel the team should be changed every 12 months, to stop collusion etc and they should be well paid positions.

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Proposals submitted to the AIP Ideas category can be vague, incomplete ideas. Topics submitted here are not required to be submitted as a formal AIP Draft Template, however, you may still use the template if you wish.

[furiousanger]

Side notes:

I have never and most likely will never put in an AIP for funding as I am not a creative, but should I ever encourage another to do so etc then I want to know that their ideas will be treated the same as other AIPs, and currently this is not the case.

We cannot help that almost all DAO voting is a lot of the time a popularity contest, but what we can do is during the build up make sure that all proposals get the same attention and exposure and that no major conflicts of interest are occurring [collusion and corruption basically].

I have not put this forward to be discussed because I have had an active AIP or a rejected one etc, I want this discussion to take place in the hope that someone can run with the idea and make the DAO a better place for us all, and the only way I think we can do this well is if we have checks and monitoring in place at key points within the DAO structure.

Again, this is not a funding proposal, it is a topic for discussion that I hope leads to someone creating a full AIP funding proposal.

[furiousanger]

My topic has now been hidden - surprise surprise - I feel someone or some people are not liking this one bit and I understand.

[BoredApeG]

I do understand the idea for more centralized control early in the life of the DAO, but I am unsure if setting up a group as you’ve described with this collective power is going to be reasonable at accomplishing your goals in the near term. It is difficult enough to achieve consensus amongst the general membership on what they’d like to see from the present Special Council members and their duties, time commitments, etc. - imagine throwing in another election for not simple working group leaders, but for individuals who are expected to wield the powers you have laid out…IMO it would be a very difficult and drawn out process.

However, please note that within the ApeCoin DAO’s governance any member is free to make a proposal that conflicts directly with another approved proposal after three months since the original proposal was implemented.

ApeCoin DAO Governance

Therefore, if you are seeking to make changes to any past approved AIPs or future approved AIPs, this is likely to be a quicker option and it will not have a cost attached to it. This makes the DAO members through their votes effectively the ‘oversight team’ - the power is ultimately in the hands of the DAO members. Arguably, this is better than relying only on a small group of individuals to have the final say.

For example even if the ApeComms proposal was approved, it can be subject to being discontinued in three months’ time - a point that they have mentioned on their spaces as well.

Individuals and working groups will inherently need to constantly prove themselves for continued election and funding. Oversight and accountability are important, and the DAO structure provides us with an opportunity to address these issues in a unique way vs. traditional organizational structures.

I hope that helps.

-G

[furiousanger]

As I’m sure you understand it is not my intention to setup anything and I clearly state this - it is merely to discuss the blatant bias collusion and far from impartial behaviours I have seen. My opinion is that the power is centralized already, by the few, and they are regularly abusing their positions and influence to unfairly give advantage to friends and themselves.

Let me remind everyone:

TWITTER FEED:

This should be impartial. Should show no favor to any AIPs and imho we either tweet all AIPs or none at all. Currently I am seeing many people unhappy with what is occurring. Agendas pushed, AIPs and ideas being aggressively retweeted, and it is unacceptable.

DISCORD PROPOSAL:

This one is extremely worrying. Looks like under handed foul play went on and an earlier DISCORD proposal was ‘SHELVED/HELD BACK/PUT ON A SLOW BURN’ as another team, linked to members already in DAO positions or actually involved members with DAO positions, had a similar AIP in the process of being submitted. I actually believe this may, if proved true, be illegal. If not illegal, then certainly unethical and inappropriate to say the least.

NEWSLETTERS

Newsletters are supposed to report impartially on the facts. Who, what, why, when and how basically, yet we are seeing these means of communications used to FIRE DOWN AIPs that are in opposition to their own interests - this is shocking, not right, in contradiction of the guidelines we’ve all setup and unethical at the least.

I see favoritism, bias actions, collusion, worrying trends, no impartiality, rule breaking, self-serving BS that is sickening; blatant actions right in front of my eyes and it has to be addressed.

I know we have a few new council members being elected and this will hopefully calm some of this down, but unfortunately, we are seeing continued abuse of powers and bad judgement and bias towards AIPs, aggressive promotions that are all self-serving. This view has been brought up by many apes, apecoin holders and crypto and nft people in the past and it is getting worse.

QUESTIONS:

Why is @apecoin TWITTER aggressively retweeting @apecomms?
Why was an opposing DISCORD proposal held back for months?
Why are certain AIPs retweeted and others not?
Why would we outsource a main service [discord] to an already formed team and not elect and keep in-house?
Does anyone else feel that power is now centralised and being regularly abused?
Without oversight or audit will there be any monies left in a few years, or will it all have been given to friends and family of those in control or to themselves in some fashion?
Are certain members already in positions of power within the DAO’s structure trying to create a monopoly, aggressively creating AIPs, to line the pockets of friends, family and themselves and then helping in any way they can, including abusing positions of power to influence the results?

We have to do better, increasingly I’m seeing so much stuff the more I look it makes me actually ashamed, but at the same time determined to call these bad practices out and bring them to the attention of other members.

[furiousanger]

I wanted to reply again and ask some questions to you perosnally:

How do you feel about conflicts of interest? Do you feel we need to setup some guidelines and prohibit certain appointed members of the DAO partaking in certain activities? And maybe if there isn’t any guidance on conflicts of interest should there be some monitoring or ‘spot checks’ carried out at least? And if not why?

Just to add, if a team is submitting an AIP, but the members within this team are also in control of powers of position of let’s say one of our main sources, or several of our main sources of relaying information to the DAO members, for example twitter feeds, discord, forums etc, and they heavily use such outlets to add exposure, influence and favor to their own AIPs, is this ok with you? And if not what is in place to stop it happening currently?

Thanks

[BoredApeG]

Please note that I have no insight greater than any other community member who also has the same public information available to them.

How do you feel about conflicts of interest? Do you feel we need to setup some guidelines and prohibit certain appointed members of the DAO partaking in certain activities? And maybe if there isn’t any guidance on conflicts of interest should there be some monitoring or ‘spot checks’ carried out at least? And if not why?

Presently, there are no appointed members of the DAO aside from the initial Special Council. Even the Cartan Group, as the management team/administrators, was approved by the DAO via AIP-1

Would I prefer that we were a mature DAO with a full governance structure (organization structure and policies) in place? Absolutely. But I am realistic of where we are as a DAO today: presently, there is barely anyone working for the DAO - it is effectively only the Special Council and Cartan who we could even claim are potentially “in-house”. Developing additional guidelines for our DAO would be terrific, but that will need to come from people in our community. That’s not my expertise - likely best to be initially developed by attorneys from the community.

This highlights the issue that we simply do not have people working in the DAO. My Special Council Nomination profile is anchored by our need to build out our operational infrastructure. There are plenty of great ideas in our community, but they get no where when we do not have people around to execute them. When we can accelerate people working within our DAO, then we can have the capacity to tackle more issues.

In the meantime, IMO the present DAO structure is sufficient to address where we are as a DAO. Is it ideal? Likely not, but the fact that anyone can present an AIP to amend/reject any past AIPs is far better than a spot check. We don’t have a centralized authority that can just force decisions down to the DAO to accept; everything is effectively a recommendation which the members need to approve.

ApeComms - Much of your frustration appears to be centered around the ApeComms team, but at the end of the day these people are just members of the community who have worked months for free. Anyone else could be working for free, facilitating election spaces, inviting AIP proposers to speak when they are up for vote, etc. - is it their fault that no one/no other group in the DAO is doing it? I’m glad ApeCoin RTs their efforts particularly for this election because without it, we’d have zero exposure for candidates to reach the broader community. I think the points being missed here are a) the foundation literally has no one working for it to scope these service, and b) no AIP has been approved for a group to work on these communication services.

Furthermore,

ApeComms team - Their first AIP failed; there’s no guarantee that their v2 passes either.

AIP-77 - to set up an APE Coin discord is also being outvoted presently with 94% of the vote against

Just illustrating with the above again that we do inherently have checks and balances in the DAO, and ultimately, the power evidently lies with the broader ApeCoin community.

[furiousanger]

I have further thought about my idea and simplified it into a request to approve a CONFLICT OF INTERESTS DECLARATION PAGE.

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts and also reply.

[badteeth]

A clear COI policy is a must have for the next iteration of the DAO, especially at the SC level. I’ve spoken a bit about it, appreciate you articulating it here.

[Pearson]

Hi @furiousanger,

Your topic will be automatically closing in less than 24 hours. Are you content with the feedback received, or do you wish to extend community discussion for a further 7 days?

If we do not hear from you within 48 hours after your topic closes, your topic will be moved straight to the AIP Draft process.

We look forward to hearing from you.

-Pearson

[Pearson]

Thank you @furiousanger for your ideas and the ApeCoin DAO community for the thoughtful discussions. A moderator will get in touch with the author to draft the AIP in the appropriate template. Once the AIP is drafted and meets all the DAO-approved guidelines, the proposal will be posted on Snapshot for live official voting at: Snapshot

Follow this Topic as further updates will be posted here in the comments. @furiousanger please see your messages for the next steps.

-Pearson

[Pearson]

Hi ApeCoin DAO Community,

@furiousanger has requested to withdraw their application. This AIP will be moved to and remain in the Withdrawn AIPs category.

Kind Regards,

-Pearson