Request For Comment - Give Me Sovereignty or Give Me Death

Proposal: Give me Sovereignty, or Give Me Death

Author: Pindar Van Arman

Status: Proposal

Type: Increased Sovereignty for Artists

Implementer: ? SuperRare Labs and SuperRareDAO

Sponsor(s): TBD

Created Date: October 8, 2022

Summary:

In addition to the already indexed manifold.xyz contracts, SuperRareDAO should begin process of incorporating more sovereign contracts based on popularity and usage. One popular example are sovereign contracts based on the open-zepellin standard.

Abstract:

SuperRareDAO has given artists increasing amounts of autonomy from its inception. A recent example of this was allowing artists to index contracts that they created on manifold.xyz.

This was a great first step. The next one is to allow artists to add completely custom contracts to their dashboards. In the exact same way that artists can index and include their work from manifold.xyz contracts on SuperRare, this proposal would like to make it possible for artist to index and include their own custom sovereign contracts from as many sources as possible.

Specification:

Ask:

Requesting funds from SuperRareDAO and resources from SuperRare Labs to enable the indexing and inclusion of custom sovereign contracts on SuperRare.

It is suggested that the first contracts to be included are open-zeppelin based contracts, followed by other standards as the community requests them. The ideal scenario is to incorporate as many custom sovereign contracts as possible so that all of an artists work can be viewed in one place, SuperRare.

Benefits:

  • Collectors will eventually be able to find all of an artists work in one marketplace.
  • Artists will eventually be able to control all of their contracts in one marketplace.
  • Nothing is more crypto native than completely custom sovereign contracts. By supporting artists that use them, SuperRare is supporting the sovereign movement.

Drawbacks:

  • Will be difficult to incorporate ALL sovereign contracts.
  • Some curation will be needed to decide on best contract models to include, and order in which they should be included.

Outcomes:

  • Ideal outcome will be a SuperRare experience where:
    1: Collectors can 1 stop compare and look at all of an artists work.
    2: Artists can control how their variety of contracts are organized and seen.
3 Likes

Similar to the SIP on filesizes. I suspect this falls outside of the DAO?

As I understand it, all NFTs as long as they fit the ERC721 standard are currently supported by the SR network’s marketplace contract. (the bazaar).

For example I don’t think there was any DAO involvement for adding Manifold or Async contracts to the UI on SuperRare.

I support the idea and I think the .com UI should include all of a whitelisted artist’s works regardless of how anything was minted. This could be controversial when it comes to editions, since we’re famously about 1/1s. But SR should probably be less opinionated as a platform over time and leave those choices up to individual creators.

But primarily my comment here is that we need to develop more clarity around when a proposal is necessary for inducing change, what jurisdiction the SR DAO has. vs what SR Labs admins.

The Shatter contract is an interesting test case here. Since it’s not so much about adding new artwork as it is adding entirely new on-chain functionality. I think there’s still some ambiguity as to whether including the shatter contract needs to be a SIP at all? I think I could argue either side of the line on it.

1 Like

I see the DAO acting in a manner similar to a traditional Board of Directors. They direct SR Labs on what is important, and then it is up to SR Labs to decide how to get it done.

With respect of the SR Labs admins, this proposal specifically leaves it up to them which contracts are added in which order.

If SR Labs is completely independent of DAO influence, then what is the purpose of the DAO? But that is a different question beyond this specific proposal which leaves most the decision making with SR Labs.

I’d encourage greater and greater distinguishment. That the DAO continue to define itself explicitly as something independent of SuperRare Labs (because it is, legally). That will be hard to do from a position where it is overseeing SuperRare Labs. And difficult to defend the DAO foundation’s status if we don’t.

And also- if the idea is to function more like a board of directors. Then SRL could have just designed to have a board of directors and not complicate things with a DAO.

By choosing to go the DAO route we are choosing to command a framework with some other set of alleged strengths. Like freeing the DAO to engage with any number of other companies, without conflict of interest problems regarding SRL.

then what is the purpose of the DAO?

Good question. Defining the DAOs purpose is probably a great first step in understanding or defining its jurisdiction.

I don’t mean to hijack the thread or poo poo this proposal. But I do mean to put a little pressure on us to be clear about these kinds of things sooner rather than later.

1 Like

Will be straight with my thoughts here.

If SR Labs works for the DAO, but the DAO can not direct SR Labs to do things, we are just pretending that the DAO has any authority in the direction of SuperRare beyond rubber stamping what SR Labs wants to do.

So are you suggesting DAO can give no direction to SR Labs which works for it?

Not at all. First, I don’t believe it’s a binary thing. Stating where the line is drawn is my main question.

It seems clear, and I think i’ve seen it stated that the DAO’s fundamental governance is of the treasury and curating spaces, or other yet to be invented forms of artist curation.

But beyond that I think it is still an open question.

1 Like

Can you point me to where this is stated and by who?

GM Pindar, You know I couldn’t find what I was remembering exactly :-/

But I did look through just about everything and found some guidance.

The “Governance and Curation Parameters”. Which lays out three specific parameters governable by token holders.

And also the initial “SIP Parameters SIP”. Which provides some examples but also says “theoretically no limit to a SIP.” Which adds some contradiction.

I looked through the Master Service Agreement and while it lays out a bit about SR Labs responsibilities- fails in describing any governance relationship between the two organizations in a real way. Same with the council by-laws. Which describes the council’s relationship to the SR DAO, not the relationship to SR Labs.

1 Like

Theres a lot being discussed here.

Bringing it back to the original RFC I think supporting arbitrary 721 smart contracts is a must for SuperRare.

As @VanArman points out we’ve already begun this process manually and the natural progression is to support any sovereign contract . Maybe can chime in on the level of difficulty for arbitrary contract support. This would allow any artist to import any smart contract that was 721 compliant :fire:

Additionally these are good points around what exactly should be an SIP vs a feature request. Sounds like we should to further articulate what should be an SIP, RFC, and maybe also introduce a feature request system.

1 Like

Thanks for the post @VanArman and to @Keegan for introducing some pointed questions around the proper subject matter of SIPs and the relationship between the DAO and SuperRare Labs.

Regarding the Request for Comment, I don’t see a big issue with submitting this up for community comment because this is a request for comment and NOT a full-fledged SIP that needs to be put up for a vote. While I believe SIP subject matter could be more narrowly related to the curation of the network (i.e., decisions around the method and manner of authenticating new Artists and Curators), the protocol, policies & standards, and general use of the community treasury, I do think that the decision of whether to index or not index something could possibly be seen as curation- and protocol-adjacent since their is at least some implied support for protocol elements or metadata standards underlying the indexed contracts. I think it’s reasonable to gauge the community on what types of contracts are preferred so that SuperRare Labs, as an independent service provider, can make the best decisions around which contracts the community cares the most about. But I don’t think that that the DAO can literally control this decision making since cosmetic changes to the superrare.com likely fall outside of the DAO’s control, and to @Keegan’s point, the protocol already natively supports settlement of any ERC-721 tokens.

It’s probably in everyone’s interest for there to be a targeted forum/polling mechanism so that the most important contracts in the eyes of the community are flagged for consideration. More broadly, there should be definitely be a general feature request mechanism so that people’s “wishlist” of features can be understood by the community of developers/service providers that will eventually start to form around the DAO, and so that the SIP governance process can be more focused on network curation, the protocol and activities stemming directly from the DAO-multisig.

To @SuperRareJohn 's point, if the natural tendency is to eventually allow Artist’s to manually select whichever contracts they want to appear on their Artist dashboard on superrare.com, then that is a design choice that is up to SuperRare Labs but that still fulfill the principles of sovereignty and decentralization sought in @VanArman 's post - all without changing the underlying protocol.

I hope this offered clarity to anyone, but we are indeed due for some more clear guidelines on SIP subject matter. I would encourage people to start proposing RFC’s instead of SIPs if there is any doubt as to whether it falls within the subject matter of SIPs.

1 Like

Ah, okay. I was imagining that RFCs were like a preliminary step in SIP development. But it sounds like we should encourage their use for general commentary.

Agree that feature request / wishlist gathering would be of good value. Especially in the context that they might lead to RFPs or Bounties.

Hey all,

The goal of this is to actually become a SIP, and not just sit as an RFC.

And I agree with Elo, that this does fall under curation.

That said, I also believe that the SR DAO community should have influence over what SuperRare labs does with SuperRare. Please reread the SIP (edit: Proposal) and recognize that nowhere in it does it direct SR Labs on what to do, or how to do it. It simply aims to make the point that this is a priority to the community and that something should be done.

How it is done is outside of DAOs scope. But I definitely believe that if the SuperRare DAO wants to say it is truly SuperRare’s governance body, that should include a strategic say in the future of SuperRare.

I think they need you as an advisor to clarify legal terms…

Great proposal VanArman! I have been dreaming for the day SR takes reigns and becomes THE place to go see an artist’s full spectrum & artists have ultimate control over what is shown and how it’s displayed on the pages… Perhaps we ONLY can add contracts that hold 1/1s… that way we keep the theme of SR away from the editions craze