As mentioned above, I want to provide more detailed context about the changes we wish to make to the governance process. First and foremost, most of the changes we'd like to see will need to come as a PR against FIP0001. This document provides foundational rules and workflows for FIPs, and has never been meaningfully updated. As a first step, we will propose: - **The introduction of 5 FIP categories**, which meaningfully define the intent of the FIP and describe how it ought to be governed. - The five types of FIP include: - Network standards (FRCs), non-consensus proposals to document network best-practices and signal key recommendations. - Technical FIPs, for consensus -bound changes to the core protocol stack. - Cryptoeconomic FIPs, for FIPs that seek to affect economic policy on the network, or which will introduce changes that are likely to substantially affect existing token dynamics and/or network incentives. - Community FIPs, which introduce structural or programmatic policies to the Filecoin community, including changes to its governance process. - Security FIPs, for emergency technical changes to the core protocol in instances of attack, capture, outage, or other immediate and tangible threats. - The above list of FIPs is also ordered in order of increasing complexity and/or risk to the network. - FIPs of different complexities will have different pathways for reaching consensus. - Doing so will allow us to better align 1) the scope of the FIP and 2) the complexity of the change, with 3) the proper amount of community diligence and participation. - It will also allow us to set more appropriate thresholds for acceptance for different kinds of FIP. In other words, the current soft consensus threshold is too damn high! - **The introduction of on-chain voting** for FIPs that require it and/or FIP Authors that want it. - We are working to spec an on-chain voting tool that allows community members to directly vote to accept/reject FIPs. - For simple Technical FIPs that don't receive much community engagement early on, FIP Authors will still have the option to achieve acceptance through soft consensus/last call. - For more complicated Technical FIPs, a vote will be optional, depending on community feedback and FIP Author preference. - For Cryptoeconomic and Community FIPs- which represent the high-risk, highest complexity changes made on the network- a vote will be mandatory. - **The creation of a guild of community working group representatives** to operate as an expert governing body for complex FIPs. - In order to protect community interests and guard against vote capture on high-stakes proposals, a guild of community stakeholders will be asked to help make governing recommendations for FIPs. - The goal is to give the expertise and participation of working group members an opportunity to contribute meaningful decision-making in the FIP consensus process. - The creation of this Guild will replace the 'expert body' role that Core Devs have long been asked to play, opening up that role to a broader cross-section of Filecoin stakeholders and allowing Core Devs to function primarily as a technical advisory group (rather than a governing body). - Complex FIPs would be asked to reach complex consensus, a combination of Guild votes and community voting. - **The standardization of emerging norms and preferences**, to help drive greater consistency around FIP management practices. - Aside from large, procedural pieces of documentation, there are many other things that we have long wanted to amend to include in FIP00001, including: - Updated FIP templates corresponding to FIP type. - Articulated standards for FIP review and audit. - Updated FIP workflows and visual process mappings. - Resource links to specs, doc sites, and other key repos that contain critical information for governance wayfinding. In order to support the above, the Filecoin Foundation has committed to providing support by... - Coordinating the design of on-chain voting tools, and providing financial support for their development, auditing, and long-term maintenance. - Providing more targeted resources- both funding and staff- to support the establishment of new community working groups and subgroups. - Providing resources and support to establish a Community Guild, a governance body that will give a representative voice to WGs on critical FIP topics. - Developing GovDocs, a documentation site for governance workflows and resources. - Building, deploying, and maintaining new tools to help inform community priorities on early-stage FIP drafts and complex proposed changes. - Deploying an interactive UI that will enable community members to contribute the values that inform the [Filecoin mission](https://github.com/filecoin-project/FIPs/blob/master/mission.md). - Communications, marketing, and event support to help community members participate, contribute, and understand the role of governance supporting the vision of Filecoin. The purpose of the above is to ensure the successful roll-out and long-term support of systemic changes that will make Filecoin governance more open, more responsive, and more decentralized in the long-term. Openly coordinating governance changes at this scale is a difficult task, and we welcome any community members who are interested in supporting this work. To participate, please see above for the various in-person and async channels for sharing thoughts, getting connected, and staying up-to-date.