# Governance Workstream Introduction

## TLDR - Key Information

The Governance Workstream for Evmos DAO is focused on protecting and improving the Evmos network and community with neutrality and transparency. The primary duties of the Governance Workstream include:

- A) Governance Framework Improvement & Implementation, where the team will work to continuously improve processes and ensure adherence to the Constitution.
- B) Continuous Efforts in Increasing Governance Participation & Engagement, where the team will promote and increase engagement by stakeholders and provide access to resources necessary to participate.
- C) Facilitating Communications and the Flow of Information, the team will improve access to resources and establish a consistent and unbiased communication strategy to facilitate effective governance.

The overall goal is to evolve Evmos DAO into a fully decentralized and self-sustainable organization.

## Primary Duties and Ongoing Initiatives

Decentralized governance is a double-edged sword with constant challenges to overcome and is often burdened with inefficient processes. It is also the beauty and soul of a DAO, with the ethos of decentralization and equality at the very core. The Governance Workstream exists and operates as a neutral party with allegiances only to the Evmos network and the guiding values of the Evmos Constitution. While the workstream is tasked with various duties, our mandate is simple: to facilitate and protect the integrity of Evmos' governance processes and, to the best of our ability, create a fair and transparent environment in which the network and the community can prosper and thrive.

**Mission**: Protect, improve, and serve the Evmos network and community with neutrality and transparency.

**Vision**: To see Evmos DAO evolve into a fully decentralized and self-sustainable organization that is capable of propelling the growth of the network.

**Values:** Progressive Decentralization, Continuous Improvement, Hybrid-Governance

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### Primary Duties (Ongoing & Planned)

**A. Governance Framework Improvement & Implementation**

The Evmos Governance Framework serves to empower each member of the community by providing clear and standardized methods of interacting with the wider DAO, thereby defining its future shape and trajectory. It is crucial that we strive to continuously improve our processes, we intend to facilitate that by adhering to the following.

- The Constitution must be completed and amended as committed in Proposal 51, which ratified the Interim Constitution of Evmos DAO.
- Governance proposals that have been passed by the community must be implemented and enforced, as long as they adhere to the Guiding Principles of our Constitution.
- We must be diligent in listening to the community's feedback on governance pain-points, shortcomings, and inefficiencies.
- We must strive to fix or improve inefficiencies and shortcomings when a viable plan is ideated or presented.
- We must continue our research and observations into other DAOs and remain up to date with evolving DAO philosophies, tools, and scientific research.

**B. Continuous Efforts in Increasing Governance Participation & Engagement**

The strength of our governance relates directly to the participation levels in both on-chain and off-chain governance. Decisions and proposals can only be as well-rounded and well-defined as the number of participants that played a role in contributing to the ideation and feedback process. Similarly, a decision or proposal is only as credible as the consensus surrounding it.

- Continue to promote and increase engagement by stakeholders in all aspects of the governance processes.
- Work to improve and provide access to the resources necessary to participate in the governance process — for all members of the community.
- The Governance Workstream should be in constant engagement with the community, in as many mediums as possible.

**C. Facilitating Communications and the Flow of Information**

Effective communication is a crucial strategy that must be used by the Governance Workstream. Transparent and effective governance requires an effective, reliable, and unbiased communications strategy. Without communication and information flow, it is extremely difficult to facilitate an effective and efficient governance.

- Work to improve and create easier access to the resources necessary to understand and stay up-to-date in our governance — for all members of the community.
- Establish a more consistent, high-quality information feed of all issues and proposals for the community at large to digest.
- The Governance Workstream, when requested by the community, will act as a liaison to the Evmos Foundation and attempt to seek information and clarity into concerns or issues brought up.
- Remain in constant communication with the Foundation to ensure the alignment of the goals of the DAO, the community, and the core members.
- Work with the Community Moderation & Support team in the ideation of better communication initiatives, as well as pinpointing areas that are in need of improvements or clarifications.
- Host community meetings, project introductions, and public forums when requested.
- Continue to attend, participate in, and — if requested — take on the responsibility of hosting the weekly Governance meetings on Discord

**D. Governance and Proposal Assistance and Feedback**

- The Governance Workstream will continue to provide assistance to individuals, teams, and projects that are seeking to submit a proposal. This includes all phases, from pre-Commonwealth ideation to the final on-chain submission, assuming that all procedures are being followed properly and in good faith. Our assistance in drafting proposals should not be seen as an endorsement or guarantee.
- Strive to voice all thoughts on an issue or proposal from a neutral, rational point of view.
- Continue to work on improving governance documentation and begin building tools and resources for a more effective, transparent, and user-friendly governance.

**E.** **Onboarding of New Workstreams and sub-DAOs**

The Governance Council will assist in the creation of new workstreams. When focusing on accelerating the progress of the DAO, the goal is to grow horizontally via more sub-DAOs (vs. growing vertically). Through more sub-DAOs, the entire org can increase the number of teams trying new approaches to solving and innovating on existing problems and focuses while maintaining the same level of meta-organizational admin/overhead required to run. Our general stance on workstream or funding proposals will be:

- Support funding proposals that presents a decent chance of driving forward KPIs
- Explore funding proposals that may have a chance of bringing value and test the waters
- Support the allocation of more resources to sub-DAOs that are producing results and are looking to expand
- Investigate and potentially look into de-funding teams or initiatives that are not producing any results

**F. Protocol & Cross-Chain Collaboration**

- The Governance Workstream will continue to engage with and act as a community liaison with protocols and projects seeking to build or collaborate with Evmos.
- Continue to engage in outreach to projects and protocols for potential collaborative initiatives that could be beneficial to the overall Evmos ecosystem.

**G. Treasury Management, Diversification, & Growth**

At the moment the treasury will be managed by a Gnosis Safe with a 5-8 signatory composition as described in the proposal.

Additional funding requests for other initiatives will be made through separate proposals when ready.

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### Projects and Initiatives (Ongoing & Planned)

> **Note:** Most of the deferred projects and initiatives can be found in more detail in the [litepaper released last month](https://www.evmos.community/litepaper) and the initial draft of ECP-3. It has been determined that the best course of action would be to separate funding requests for these initiatives from the Governance Workstream's funding request in order to have a more focused discussion with the community about these initiatives and potential funding associated.

**A. Governance Engagement Initiatives**

The Governance Council is constantly looking into ideas or tools that may help with participation rate pre-voting on chain.

We strongly believe that the best way to reduce failed proposals is to address all community concerns during the early stages of a proposal. Increased participation in these early stage proposals would greatly benefit Evmos governance, and is an initiative we are taking seriously.

Some projects we are strongly considering in this area are a much comprehensive governance dashboard, engagement tracking analytics, on-chain and anonymous data research, and more.

**B. Proposal Summary and Risk Assessment Reports**

The Governance Council is looking to provide proposal summaries, context, and our risk assessments for all proposals that go on chain.

Talks of potentially integrating these reports and other valuable metadata around a proposal into popular block explorers have been initiated and may be considered.

**C. Decentralization of Liquidity Incentives Programs**

Although we have begun the "manual" Liquidity Incentives Program with our recent "Kickstart Evmos DeFi" proposal, our goal is to ultimately have this process determined by the community on a merit or milestone-based system.

In order to achieve this in a truly transparent and permissionless way, an Off-Chain Governance Framework is required. A democratic gauge system is currently being explored and will be presented in a future proposal.

**D. Increased Community Governance**

Off-chain governance is often required for decisions in which the ultimate result is unknown and cannot be derived from on-chain data, thus requiring some human input. These decisions should be made with the mission, vision and goals of the DAO in mind.

> DAOs work best when the governance burden related to curation, security, and risk can be reduced faster than the natural increase in coordination costs that accompanies the need to have members involved in voting on every decision made. - Tarun Chitra

Off-Chain governance, **in the context of Evmos DAO and the Cosmos ecosystem,** in simplified terms, can be explained as governance decisions that do not need to commence a network-wide vote through the utilization of the Cosmos SDKs \`gov\` module.

Off-Chain governance, **in the context of Decentralized Governance and DAOs in the Ethereum ecosystem**, can be explained as all governance decisions that utilize decentralized data and DID protocols like Ceramic and IPFS to allow for gas-free voting, encouraging the participation of more token holders.

DAO operations will likely be governed by contracts and tooling that are battle-tested and available on the EVM side of the chain. This opens up a new realm of possibilities for governance, trustless contracts, incentive alignment, and community collaboration.

A more detailed proposal will be presented in the future.

**E. Perpetual Bounty & Network Decentralization Fund** (In Progress)

The Perpetual Bounty Fund is a perpetual, self-replenishing bounty fund that is designed to minimize community spending while helping with network decentralization efforts.

The concept of a perpetual bounty fund is very straightforward and the establishment of the fund would only require a one-time spend request from the community pool.

1. The initial funds are delegated to a distributed set of validators that are in the mid-low ranking.
2. The authz module from Cosmos SDK is utilized to re-stake a minimum “maintenance” amount (to account for decreasing APY rates)
3. Utilizing authz, the remainder of the rewards are sent to a multisig wallet.
4. The daily rewards are then utilized to fund bounty programs for the community.

When compared to a normal community pool budget request, this model would A) take the initial funding amount out of the unbonded circulating supply; B) align with the community goals of striving towards more decentralization; C) provide a steady stream of a workable budget to be bountied out responsibly and methodically.

This project has been deferred to be explored more in-depth for its own separate proposal in the future.

**F. Validator Fairness Initiative**

- The VFI Group was created in an attempt to get consensus on a Code of Conduct for Validators.
- Although currently at a stalemate, there has been great discussions and is now over 135 members strong.
- We must reach a consensus, as the Interim Constitution was proposed on the premise that these difficult but pressing issues would not be forgotten.