# <center>Stars Align</center>
---
*NOTICE: This is a living document subject to change. Nothing in this document should be considered ‘finished’.
This tag will be be removed after approval*

Stars Align is a design for a Steem-based foundation with a primary goal of mainstreaming the Steem token. The on-chain foundation built in Discord will be comprised a Board of Directors, an Executive Board, and 5 Topical Boards. The system is designed to allow the public to request funding on projects that support the mainstreaming of Steem. Any funds given to projects will be overseen by experts at particular fields, and the overall strategy will be managed by Steem Power and community stakeholders.

By involving Steem Stake Holders as management, experts to oversee the work, and community members as participants we’ll push Steem further into the world, attract new people and new businesses, and develop the code faster than ever before.

## Seven Boards of Stars Align

Stars Align has seven boards; five Topical Boards, an Executive Board, and a Board of Directors. Each board follows the rules and requirements set out below, with specifics set out at the end of this document in sub-headings for each board.

#### The Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is a volunteer board designed to be inclusive of the largest stakeholders on the platform.

Stakeholders can be those with large Steem Power holdings, top 20 witnesses, bloggers with large follower counts, app designers with high daily active user counts, and steemd developers.

This board is a representation of the stakeholders of Steem, and is elected as such. While all who meet requirements to vote on budgets can, the Board of Directors is an elected body from these ranks to streamline and fine-tune the process and the Foundation.

There will be account threshholds to be eligible for a board position and then stake weight will determine board membership for 21 spots.

#### The Executive Board

The Executive Board serves as the bridge between the Topical Boards and the Board of Directors. The Topical Boards prioritize their Board's purpose and send these funding proposals to the Executive Board. The Executive Board evaluates, organizes, and synthesizes proposals from all five Topical Boards into a budget proposal based on the current circumstances, and sends the budget proposal to the Board of Directors to be voted upon.

#### The Five Topical Boards

* Community Success - To ensure the community has a good experience and is engaged with the Foundation.
* Incubator // Delegation - To attract businesses to the blockchain.
* Investor Relations - To find investors to fund great projects and communicate progress to them.
* Marketing - To spread the word of Steem and manage Steem & Foundation public image.
* Product & Development - To improve the code to allow it grow sustainably while reducing costs and adding features, and help dApp projects develop on the blockchain.

### Board Membership

Each of the Topical Boards will have eleven (11) members, elected by the Steem community.

The Executive Board will have eleven (11) members, five appointed by the Topical Boards, one from each, and six appointed by the Board of Directors.

The Board of Directors will have twenty-one (21) members, each elected. These elected members will be broken down by category, to ensure that every type of stakeholder is represented at the Board, e.g. only two people running in the 'Whale' category will be on the Board. You may run in multiple categories, but obviously can only win in one.

Each Board will have specific requirements for their own memberships, but the following shall apply to all Board Applicants:

1. Verifiable engagement on Steem for at least six months
2. A general understanding of Steem, including economics, history, and protocol (code not required)
3. Ability and willingness to register Board Membership legally (information will not be shared unless legally required, e.g. Non-profit documentation)

### Structure of the Board

The Board will include four offices within it, elected into their positions. Each Topical Board will also have a Liason appointed to the Executive Board.
> Did we decide to make these elections community or board elections?

#### Chair of the Board

* The Chair shall be required to set appropriate meeting times for the committee.

* The Chair shall be the arbitrator of opening and closing each meeting.

* The Chair shall only vote in case of a tie on simple majority matters or in matters requiring a larger majority.

* The Chair shall be required to publish an agenda prior to each meeting.

#### Vice Chair of the Board
> Referred to as Vice

* The Vice shall assume any and all roles of the Chair in case of absence of the Chair for any reason.

* The Vice shall maintain a repository of all requests to the committee. Said repository should be available to the general public upon request.

#### Secretary

One member of the committee shall be designated as the Secretary. Duties will include keeping track of correspondence and decisions. The secretary shall further keep minutes or be in charge of recording of all formal meetings. If recordings are kept, an accompanying document with referenced documents should be kept, also keeping track of when each document was referenced.

#### Treasurer
> Only for Executive and Directors?

One member of the committee shall be designated as the Treasurer. Duties will include all things financial pertaining to the board and its responsibilities.

#### Liason

One member of each Topical Board shall be designated as the (Topical Board Name)Liason. The Liason sits on the Executive Board to support and explain proposals coming from their Topical Board, as well as being a full voting member of the Executive Board.

This Liason must temporarily recuse themself for another member of their Topical Board, if they are in charge of or too close to a proposal sent to the Executive Board.

### Voting Rights

Each member of the Board is afforded one (1) vote.

On the Board of Directors, the board itself only votes on business non-related to the budget proposal. For the budget proposal, the following voting rights apply to the Steem community at-large:

* By default any of the top 20 witnesses is provided a vote.
* By default two members of steemit are provided a vote.
* By default anyone with 150,000 Steem Power is provided a vote.
* By default one vote for any dapp owner with 1,000 daily active users.
* By default one vote provided for anyone with an accepted change to the steemd repository.
* By default one vote is provided for accounts with 20,000 followers.

These votes are only available to approve or disapprove a budget proposal. They may not vote on any other business, allowing their representatives elected to the Board of Directors to represent them in these matters. Each community member is required to sit in on a Topical Board meeting within the last four (4) weeks if they wish to use their vote.

### Responsibilities

#### Topical Boards

The primary responsibility of each Topical Board is to evaluate and vote upon proposals from the community, as well as agreeing upon a budget for passed proposals. They will then present successful proposals to the Executive Board.

Evaluation of the projects must be free from bias and prejudice. Board Members must work with the applicants to get a deep understanding of their projects.

The Board will initially meet every two weeks to review proposals. This is subject to change based on the number of projects submitted and will be reviewed each quarter.

The requirements and responsibilities will be up for review every quarter.

### Rules

Stars Align and its constituent Boards will not only promote fairness, but also the appearance of fairness. To this end, all Board activities will be conducted on public channels. Boards may have a Members-only channel, where the general public is muted, but they must be open channels. Each Board must also have an open channel for comments and concerns if this is the case.

Board Members are required to recuse themselves from votes on any proposal that involves them, and participate in debate as a petitioner, not as a Board Member.

Board Members will be held to a high standard, as we are meant to be advocates for the platform. Griefing, harassment, discrimination, vote brigading, accepting bribes or kickbacks, dishonesty, etc. are not acceptable behaviors for Board Members. This list is inclusive, not exclusive, and more specific rules may be set out.

### Conflicts of Interest

Due to the nature of these Boards, it will be more likely for conflicts of interest to arise. Rules concerning this will be set out at the first Board meeting, but should include, at minimum, the following:

* Witnesses may not campaign while acting in an official capacity as a Board Member (e.g. do not campaign in meetings, in board posts, Q&As, etc.)
* Witnesses may not campaign on their spot on the Board; it may be a note as something they do for the community, but not as a way to ask for votes (e.g. implying favorable proposal evaluations in exchange for a witness vote)
* The other Board Members may ask a Member to recuse themselves from a vote based on perceived bias; if they refuse to recuse themself, a simple majority vote of 6/10 (excluding the questioned Member), will force their recusal.
* Consistently causing a vote to force a Member to recuse rather than voluntarily recusing themself can be a cause for a removal from the Board (the rules below still apply).

### Removal From the Board

Board membership is a privilege, not a right. Members can be removed at any regularly scheduled meeting of the board, due to representing the board in an ill manner, failing to fulfill the responsibilities of the board, or bad faith.

Removal requires a quorum in the meeting, and a motion with 3 people willing to second. The member may give a statement to defend themselves. The motion requires 7/11 of the members to pass.

### Procedural Rules

Each Board shall adhere to this document and a Board-specific document, being allowed to amend them when necessary. When there is no procedural rule otherwise stated, Robert’s Rules of Order will apply.