# Towards a New Accountability Primitive for DAOhaus DAOs
*Initial Notes by TW November 14, 2023. Your comments are welcome!*


## The Problem

This outline proposes a solution to introduce an accountability mechanism into the DAOhaus Yeeter flow. The central issue lies in the limited interaction between project teams and their communities during fundraising. Presently, project teams lack a standardized format to be held accountable for their promises and work. Furthermore, there are minimal fail-safes to verify the completion or necessity of their work. The existing feedback loop between the project team and economic contributors is predominantly negative, manifested through the blocking of proposals via negative votes and the option of 'rage quitting'. This 'rage quitting' essentially undermines the project team, whereas approving funding proposals without accountability disadvantages the contributor community. Additionally, economic contributors have limited means to express feedback or sentiment outside of direct governance voting. All communications are currently outsourced to unsatisfactory third-party apps not designed for governance purposes, leading to an overflow of irrelevant information that reduces transparency and accountability between the involved parties.

## Hypotheses

1. **Accountability and Transparency:** There is a direct correlation between accountability and transparency within DAO operations.
2. **Encouraging Low-risk Fundraising:** Project teams might be encouraged to initiate fundraising campaigns with minimal risk if the total amount they can raise is restricted.
3. **Standardization of Accountability:** Formalizing and standardizing the accountability of project teams in fulfilling their promised work can be achieved using tools available in the DAOhaus SDK.
4. **Increased Contributor Voice:** Economic contributors desire more influence than currently available. Introducing textual feedback to their actions (which are also transactions) will benefit both contributors and project teams. Contributors will feel more involved in steering the project's direction, while project teams will receive critical feedback tied to community actions.
5. **Public Communication for Transparency:** Making all communication between economic contributors and project teams public could increase the overall transparency of the DAO.
6. **Reducing "Rug-pull-ability":** By formalizing these processes across all DAOs, the potential for both economic contributors to undermine project teams and for project teams to deceive their community can be greatly reduced.
7. **Setting a New Precedent:** Implementing these changes will set a new standard for all decentralized autonomous organizations across the ecosystem, extending beyond Moloch-style DAOs.

## Speculative Features

### Project Team Persona

In general, we will put limits on the total autonomy of the project team by codifying clear points of communication with the DAO loot holders regarding what they intended to do. We will also empower loot holders to veto decisions that they find unsavory.

1. **Fundraising Ceiling Mechanic:**
- **Initial Setup:** Any project team can initiate a Yeeter crowdfunding campaign with a modest fundraising ceiling.
- **Increasing Fundraising Limit:** To raise their fundraising ceiling, project teams must provide a detailed description of their work. This is submitted through a modified DAOhaus signal app, using a Token Curated Registry (TCR) signal vote.
- **Submission Requirements:** The submission must include a clear description of the project's high-level goals relative to the funding requested. A minimum of three submissions (steps, topics, or priorities) is required for validity.
- **Loot Holder Voting:** Only loot holders can vote on this signal to prioritize or curate the registry of topics, aligning with the project team's ambitions. Successful voting outcomes allow the project team's fundraising goal to be raised accordingly, either in preset increments or a variable amount to be determined later.
- **New Button: Obstain to Deny Request:** If the loot holders disapprove with the premise of the signal vote, they can obstain from voting and motion to deny the request. If a majority of loot holders obstain, the request to raise the fundraising ceiling is denied.

2. **Veto Function for Economic Contributors:**
- **Funding Proposals by Project Team:** The project team can create funding proposals to draw funds from the Treasury.
- **Loot Holder Veto Options:**
- **Veto at Sponsorship Stage:** Loot token holders can veto the sponsorship of a proposal, requiring their approval to make it live.
- **Majority Downvote During Voting Period:** Loot token holders, collectively possessing a majority stake, can downvote a proposal during its voting period. This "godmode" feature enables them to reject any proposal made by core contributors.
- **Execution Approval Requirement:** Project team cannot execute fund release without loot token holders' approval.

### Economic Contributor Persona

In general, we will empower economic contributors with more **voice** to increase their agency and generate valuable context for the (trans)actions they make while participating in the DAO.

1. **Comment Feature for Yeeting into Projects:**
- **Initial Interaction:** When economic contributors 'Yeet' into a project (submit tokens in exchange for Loot shares in the DAO), they can add comments to their transaction.
- **Visibility:** These comments will be displayed on the Yeet campaign page, adding context to the contributor's support.
- **Status:** This feature is currently being implemented and we can continue to iterate to further align with the other ideas in the document.
2. **Enhanced Participation in Signal Proposals:**
- **Voting with Context:** When voting on signal proposals (part of the Token Curated Registry that describes project team work priorities), contributors must add comments to their votes.
- **Purpose:** This allows contributors to provide additional context for their voting choices, moving beyond simple upvoting or downvoting to introduce more social nuance within the DAO interface. When the signal TCR is complete, the comments will serve as an archive of the decision.
3. **Interactive Involvement in Funding Proposals:**
- **Multi-faceted Engagement:** Economic contributors can engage in various aspects of funding proposals, including sponsorship, execution, or veto, using their collective voice as Loot share shareholders (outlined above).
- **Comment-Enabled Voting:** When voting on funding proposals, positively or negatively, contributors' votes will be accompanied by comments. This new feature could be expanded across the entire suite of proposals to allow for comments for every vote.
- **Report Generation:** Proposal comments across the whole history of the DAO can be pulled to generate a report for the project team at any stage, offering insights into why Loot holders voted in a particular way, enhancing transparency and communication. For the Yeeter use case, this report will be generated at the end of a fundraising campaign to help evaluate the health and maturity of a project.

## Next Steps

1. **Develop User Stories and Flows:**
- Craft detailed user stories and convert them into user flows.
- Create a prototype to test and validate these assumptions.
- Begin testing within our community, with potential expansion to the broader DAO ecosystem, especially targeting DAOhaus users.
2. **Scrutiny and Specification by DAOhaus Core Developers:**
- Have DAOhaus core developers review and scrutinize the proposed mechanics.
- Work with the developers to elucidate how these mechanics will function in practice.
- Collaborate with them to draft specifications for the required builds.
3. **Design and Execution of Components:**
- Partner with a designer to develop and implement the necessary components and additional functionality. TW volunteers!
4. **Integration and Documentation in DAOhaus SDK:**
- Submit the developed features and mechanics to the DAOhaus SDK.
- Generate comprehensive documentation for these additions.
- Create demonstrations showing how this functionality can be utilized across any DAOhaus DAO or Yeeter campaign.
- Ensure the entire DAOhaus ecosystem can observe, scrutinize, and benefit from these innovations.