RFC: Initial Draft of Phonon DAO Constitution

Gathering Consensus
1

In order to advance the conversation on our vision, goals, etc, I took the liberty of writing a draft constitution. I stole the format (and some ideas) from the ENS constitution. I found the exercise helpful as I envisioned for myself what the DAO would do. Look forward to your thoughts and feedback. Here is a link to a google doc if you’d prefer to add comments there.

============

DRAFT Phonon DAO Constitution

The Phonon constitution is a set of binding rules that determine what governance actions are legitimate for the DAO to take.

Each article has examples of permissible and non permissible actions. These examples are illustrative and should not be considered a binding part of the text of the constitution itself.

I. Phonon is chain agnostic.

Phonon governance will support the implementation of phonon on all blockchains, and will not take any actions that promote one blockchain’s use or disuse over another.

Examples

Permissible: Phonon DAO may support phonon’s implementation by subsidizing development of a client to interface with specific blockchains.

Not Permissible: Phonon DAO must not block the use of phonons that carry a specific asset for any reason other than the health and safety of the phonon network, as this would incentivize the use of one cryptocurrency over another.

II. Phonon relies on secure hardware.

Phonon governance will act as adjudicator on whether hardware manufacturers are able to issue certificates to enter and stay on the phonon network, based solely on technical merits.

Examples

Permissible: Phonon DAO may authorize and subsequently revoke authorization for a hardware manufacturer to transact on the phonon network based on their capacity to ensure the integrity of their security certificates.

Not Permissible: Phonon DAO shall not allow manufacturers to outbid their competitors for exclusive access to the phonon network, as this would allow unfair competitive advantages for those institutions with larger amounts of capital.

III. Fees are primarily an incentive mechanism.

Fees exist solely as a means of collateral to ensure actors in the phonon network do not act maliciously. A secondary purpose is to provide enough revenue to the Phonon DAO to fund ongoing development and improvement of phonon. Phonon governance will not enact any fee other than for these purposes.

Examples

Permissible: Phonon governance may increase the price of fees if the current fees are insufficient to fund ongoing phonon operations at a reasonable level.

Not Permissible: Phonon governance must not introduce fees to transact a specific cryptocurrency, because doing so would incentivize the use of other cryptocurrencies and be purely an income-generating measure.

IV. Income funds phonon development and other public goods.

Any income generated to the Phonon DAO treasury is to be used first of all to ensure the long-term viability of phonon, and to fund continuing development and improvement of the phonon network. Funds that are not reasonably required to achieve this goal may be used to fund other public goods within web3 as Phonon governance sees fit.

Phonon governance will not allocate funds to a team or individual who does not commit to uphold the same principles outlined in this constitution in their use of the allocated funds.

Examples

Permissible: Phonon governance may offer grant funding for a public good unrelated to phonon, so long as doing so does not affect the long-term viability of phonon.

Not Permissible: Phonon governance must not use the funds to support projects that conflict with the goals of phonon.

2 Likes
2

Comments:

ASFAIK, the PHONON network is entirely trustless. Why would the DAO be able to block any asset from being turned into PHONONs?

Comment:

The PHONON network is open source. Anyone can create hardware for the network. If a hardware manufacturer is not approved by the DAO that does not prevent them from facilitating transactions on the network.

In fact, this open source nature precludes gating of any kind, except if we want to assure consumers that a particular implementation is safe and non-malicious.

The PHONON network itself is essentially free to transact. Fees would be associated with bridges into/out of the network, unless a fee/gas structure was implemented “on-chain”

In other DAOs I have been in this has been a point of contention.

I don’t see any reason for the DAO to provide funds outside of the core PHONON network capabilities, or for education/advocacy on behalf of the network.

So my feeling is that expenditures should be tied to/related to the goals of the network or designed to foster its growth.

2 Likes
3

I agree that some of the examples are impossible and/or over the top. E.g., Why would we do that, or would we even have the technical capability to do so. To me, the point is more that we are indicating our values – should the technical capability become available, we wouldn’t do it.

On fees, I was thinking more of the collateral that a hardware manufacturer would stake.

4

The Phonon DAO should not fund anything outside of areas that will advance the technical prowess and adoption of the phonon protocol. This seems like a very slippery slope for the Phonon DAO to become a political agent. Imagine a scenario wherein some users wanted to fund core devs of xyz chain for some reason. One of those devs makes statements counter to the beliefs of some members of this DAO. That can all be avoided but staying in our lane. Phonon DAO should focus solely on Phonon DAO.

Phonon governance will support the implementation of phonon on all blockchains, and will not take any actions that promote one blockchain’s use or disuse over another.

The wording of this seems problematic. All chains cannot be implemented simulataneously, thus if say polkadot was implemented in the front end of the client prior to cardano one could argue that one blockchain is promoted over the other. Suggested rephrasing to “Supports the implementation of phonon across all compatible blockchains.”

Fees exist solely as a means of collateral to ensure actors in the phonon network do not act maliciously. A secondary purpose is to provide enough revenue to the Phonon DAO to fund ongoing development and improvement of phonon. Phonon governance will not enact any fee other than for these purposes.

Not even sure this section is needed. The DAO may want to charge fees if it has funded applications that people use. There’s nothing wrong with the DAO collecting fees if it has built good tools and services.

Funds that are not reasonably required to achieve this goal may be used to fund other public goods within web3 as Phonon governance sees fit.

Strongly disagree here. Phonon DAO should not pick winners and losers. It should not fund anything outside of the Phonon ecosystem. This is a great way to fragment the community of diverse thinkers who have all come together for this project.

Phonon governance will not allocate funds to a team or individual who does not commit to uphold the same principles outlined in this constitution in their use of the allocated funds.

Disagree here too, unless this constitution is very air-tight with its principles. It seems fine to me to fund a team who builds excellent work if in their day jobs they are working for some banking institution, or some centralized system. We shouldn’t care how people think, and rather we should pay people for the services they are able to provide.

Permissible: Phonon governance may offer grant funding for a public good unrelated to phonon, so long as doing so does not affect the long-term viability of phonon.

This is a very important topic to me. Very strong pushback here. Completely disagree.

1 Like
5

Thanks for the feedback! I understand where you’re coming from, and when I added that section in, my mind was on the future – after the DAO starts generating income and we have a nice surplus in our treasury.

I respectfully disagree here. I don’t think that funding web3 public goods means a slide into becoming a political agent. Second, a healthy and thriving Phonon requires a healthy and thriving web3/blockchain ecosystem. When the time is right, why couldn’t the DAO fund a generic hackathon? Even if Phonon doesn’t explicitly benefit, that’s good publicity and it shows we’re committed to the cause at large. Should someone in the future put forth a proposal that is political or controversial in nature, the rest of the DAO would vote it down (if they so chose).

An alternative question for you would be: When @phonongod’s value predictions come true and our treasury is flush with cash, what are we going to do with all of it?

The intent of this section is to set forth when and how the DAO would increase fees. I would want to make sure that future leaders don’t go on a power trip and increase fees just to pump the treasury.

All said, I would be supportive of completely striking section IV from the draft. I think we’re years off from this being relevant, and the DAO could take the issue up at another time. However, I would not be supportive of explicitly stating in the constitution that the DAO can only fund phonon development – I think that’s short-sighted.

Finally, here is a link to the draft constitution google doc for edits. I agree that this needs more work – it is just a first draft to get the creative juices flowing. Please do swing by and provide edits!

Appreciate the discourse (pun intended)!

6

Disagree. Phonon is a tiny subset of web3/blockchain. We’re talking trillion+ dollars in value locked up in these systems. Phonon does not need to contribute its very small treasury into generic improvement into some web3 project that is not designed to help Phonon.

Phonon DAO should fund hackathons - but only those wherein applications / tools are being built for Phonon. It would be a terrible use of funds to give treasury value to some cardano, polkadot or ethereum hackathon where teams are messing around with building some dumb new NFT. There’s a ton of money out there funding hackathons. ETHDenver is oversubscribed multiple times over. Spending scare resources from the DAO treasury to see random web3 stuff being built that has zero impact on Phonon is a poor use of the treasury. Further, it does get political. Especially when one hackathon is sponsored over another. Now the DAO is picking and choosing which blockchains we are funding random projects for. Much simpler and cleaner to only have a focus on Phonon development.

3 Likes
7

Reviving this convo as we think more about our values and how we make decisions.

1 Like
8

@phononphreak; – ohhh boy but i gotta a plethora of tools waiting for yous twos when y’all get up…
(also A, check you email and the #dao-general. :wink: )