This proposal offers a minimum “SuperRare Improvement Proposal” framework to enable community governance over decisions affecting the SuperRare DAO. This updated framework empowers the SuperRare community to make changes to the network in a transparent and efficient manner.
Background
What are the SIP Procedures? These SIP Procedures are the official mechanism to create community discourse and steer Council decision making regarding the SuperRare DAO.
What is a SIP? A SuperRare Improvement Proposal (“SIP”) is a document describing a potential improvement to SuperRare for the network’s consideration.
What Can Be Proposed in a SIP? There is theoretically no limit to a SIP, but here are some examples:
A proposal to establish incentives using tokens from the SuperRare DAO Treasury.
A proposal to change a curation parameter or governance method.
A proposal to hire services providers to help develop, decentralize, or otherwise enhance the SuperRare DAO.
A proposal to change the number of Spaces that can be whitelisted in each Space Race
A proposal to add, remove or replace one or more Council member(s) or SuperRare Space(s)
How Does a SIP go up for a $RARE Token Holder Vote? All proposals that follow the SIP Procedures, have high engagement, and that receive a formal endorsement from at least one Council member are eligible to be voted in and implemented through $RARE governance.
The SIP Procedures
The proposed SIP Procedures follow a four-stage workflow to ensure that high quality proposals with significant support are heard and implemented. This system is designed to strike an effective balance between pure community self-governance and transparent, decisive Council decision making.
I. Temperature Check
Before a proposal can be voted on, it must survive a community “Temperature Check.” Soft signalling methods are deployed within governance forums to discover the highest quality proposals with the most community support.
Temperature Check Requirements
The draft Proposal must be formatted based on the SIP Template at the bottom of this proposal.
Once your proposal is out, internal moderators at SuperRare Labs will review. If the proposal has been sufficiently drafted, a moderator will post it to the SuperRare Discord, under the #| temp_check channel. Here, the community will give a thumbs up or down to your proposal as is, with supporting discussion taking place in # | dao_chat.
The Proposal must be actively discussed for a minimum of five days.
The Author must meaningfully consider and respond to any reasonable feedback, questions, or suggestions from the community.
II. Proposal Intake and Optimization
To incentivize direct collaboration between individual Council members and other community members, all Proposals must be formally and publicly sponsored by at least one Council member in order to go up for a final $RARE token holder vote. Council members who submit Proposals must receive a sponsorship from a different Council member.
Proposal Intake
The intake process begins when one or more Council member(s) publicly sponsor a Proposal after a Temperature Check.
The Proposal is assigned a number
The Proposal is assigned an estimated Consensus date
The Proposal is posted by the Sponsor in the #governance Discord channel as a Request for Comment.
Proposal Optimization
Any big idea requires detailed analysis and discussion before it can be implemented. Sponsored proposals that prove to be of great community interest during the Temperature Check are further debated, discussed, and optimized before being put forth for a $RARE token holder vote.
Community members (including Council members) scrutinize and discuss the feasibility and implementation details of the Proposal during a community comment period established by the Council.
The Proposal Author must respond to questions, feedback, and suggested revisions offered during the comment period.
The Proposal Author must deliver a final Proposal with an explanation for any edits made to the original draft.
The Proposal must satisfy all feasibility and logistical requirements or conditions established by the Council
III. Consensus
Any Proposal arriving at the Consensus stage must have undergone community optimization, addressed all Council and community concerns, and be in final condition to be voted on by $RARE token holders. The Council Sponsor(s) will create a simple “YES” or “NO” vote on Snapshot for the final Proposal.
Voting Requirement: 51% Majority Vote “YES” to pass
Quorum Requirement: 5,000,000 $RARE
Minimum Voting Period: 7 Days
IV. Implementation
When a Proposal passes a community vote, the Council shall work directly with the Author to execute the Proposal. During implementation the author and sponsor will post updates in the forum and share details on the forum once fully executed.
VI. Emergency Proposals
The Council has virtually unlimited discretion to bypass ordinary governance or SIP procedures to implement emergency proposals and actions necessary to preserve the safety or security of the SuperRare network, its users, or the DAO’s assets. Examples of emergencies include but are not limited to security breaches, violations of core principles, network attacks, etc.
The SIP Template
What belongs in an SIP? A successful SIP should have:
Title - Simple and informative title. Suggested word limit - 10
Preamble - Headers should include; Author, Status, Type, Implementor, Sponsor(s), Link to Temperature Check Poll, Created Date. Suggested word limit - As Needed
Summary - A short 2-3 sentence description of the SIP. Suggested word limit - 50
Abstract - Detailed summary that touches on technical aspects and how the network will change. Suggested word limit - 250
Motivation - Explain why this is being proposed and what the outcome of implementation will be. Suggested word limit - 100
Specification - Describe full technical details of how this improvement will function and what will be effected. Suggested word limit - 1000
Benefits - Explain what the explicit benefits of this proposed change are. Suggested word limit - 100
Drawbacks - Analyze explicit and potential drawbacks of implementing this update. Suggested word limit - 100
Outcomes - Explain how we will know whether the proposal was successful or not. Please provide specific metrics that will be tracked, the timeframe for those metrics and how you they will be made available to everyone in the community. Suggested word limit - 100
This looks great and the spec is clear. One of the key things will be to make sure all SIPs follow the pattern laid out and any that do not, should be edited until they do in order to be considered. One of the core reasons for this is to get clear, valuable information in a non time taxing manner so that discussions and decisions can easily progress unhindered.
Thanks and I completely agree. We don’t want the process to be overly bureaucratic, while at the same time we need a well defined structure so when ideas are put forward everyone can easily understand what is being proposed and what benefits and drawbacks it has for the community.
Regulations and policies live forever, unless repealed– but are historically much harder to repeal than to enact. This despite many policies going bad on a long enough timeline.
Expiration dates would be a preventative way of making sure that the DAO doesn’t become bloated with all manner of policy, or ideas that while good at the time– might not be relevant anymore– or are even maladaptive in a new landscape.
This means that proposals should include a sunset provision or a length of time they take effect for, or an interval where it should expire. Or something that initiates that they be reviewed and reconsidered in order to continue in effect.
I would include something in the template to the effect of:
Sunset Provision: When will the proposal, if passed, automatically terminate unless the DAO reviews and revotes to renew it?
I can imagine there would also be cases where this is inapplicable. But that could also be stated why.
I agree with this point generally, but I also worry that this could have the inverse effect in that sunset provisions could create more overhead as a schedule will need to be kept for sunset dates. From what I’ve seen in other DAOs most improvement proposals are for protocol upgrades and one time use allocation of tokens.
Maybe requirements like this should be included in the specification
These procedures look great - very well laid out and detailed.
The biggest line that stands out is the Temperature Check and this wording:
I’d love to see SIPs all come with a “Vote” poll option at the end of the forum post, allowing people to soft-signal Yes/No on the forum, in addition to the token-gated #governance channel.
It may seem like overkill, but giving as many people the ability to soft-signal is probably better than only counting for voting from those who have jumped through the hoops to get into the #governance channel on Discord.
This ability to judge engagement based on a forum poll should help serve as a clear indicator as to whether or not something has traction.
As a Council member myself, I’d like to publicly nominate myself to help any interested parties with their SIPs. The best way to reach me is on Telegram - @coopahtroopanew - where I’d be more than happy to assist those interested in creating new SIPs.
This proposal is concise and to the point. A great example and has my support as is.
However, one thing I would encourage is a word or length limit on the different sections of the SIP proposal. I imagine it would that be easy to write a long winded SIP without much thought that would be cumbersome to review and understand. With length limits, if they can be enforced, a burden would be put on the creators to get to the point in as concise and understandable manner as possible. The only challenge is that I do not know what exactly the word limits should be.
I am going to work on it a bit on it and come back with a soft suggestion.
It would be advantageous even if the the limit is suggested, and not strictly enforced.
Realizing it might be impossible and counter productive to implement strict length requirements, I would just include the following suggestions to encourage that SIPs be as concise as possible. These numbers are based on liking the length of this Proposal, and thinking future proposals should not be much longer.
By the numbers the SIP Proposal by @SuperRareJohn comes in just at around 1,000 words.
Title - (Suggested Limit - 10 word maximum)
Preamble - (Header Information As Needed)
Summary - (Suggested Limit - 50 word maximum)
Abstract - (Suggested Limit - 250 word maximum)
Motivation - (Suggested Limit - 100 word maximum)
Specification - (Suggested Limit - 1000 word maximum)
Benefits - (Suggested Limit - 100 word maximum)
Drawbacks - (Suggested Limit - 100 word maximum)
Outcomes - (Suggested Limit - 100 word maximum)
The proposal is well outlined and comprehensive of all the stages needed for a SIP. I am in favor of this version and I second the points raised by other Council members.
My only feedback is about the voting time which I would suggest extending to 10/15 days (or at least include 2 weekends in case there are reviews ongoing during the temperature check period/proposal implementation).
On another note, if someone would want to contribute to the SuperRare DAO but don’t own any $RARE tokens, are we thinking about ways in which the community could take part in the SIP?
Thanks for the feedback! Good point on the voting window. The current proposal being voted on suggests a minimum of 7 days so we test out longer ones and see what fits best.
Great question, in this model anyone in the community will be able to create SIPs without needing $RARE. Then to go up for vote they will need to fit the SIP format and be sponsored by at least one council member.
This SIP fails to mention how many RARE is required to write a proposal.
Also the sentence that says "Before a proposal can be voted on, it must survive a community “Temperature Check.” Soft signalling methods are deployed within governance forums " is confusing. What does soft (sp) signalling mean? and how is deployment achieved in the governance forums? What are the “governance forums”?
Is this saying that we are supposed to submit the SIP in this website forum.superrare.com? Is soft signaling using reasonable arguments in replies to the proposal in this tool and on discord?
The idea with this model is that anyone can propose something in the form, even if they don’t have RARE. Then to go up on Snapshot they will need one of the council members to work with them.
The temperature check is outline in the SIP procedures as follows: Temperature Check Requirements
The draft Proposal must be formatted based on the SIP Template at the bottom of this proposal.
The Author must conduct a “YES” / “NO” Temperature Check poll in the token-gated #governance channel in the SuperRare Discord , and edit the Proposal with a link to the discord poll.
The Proposal must be actively discussed for a minimum of five days.
The Author must meaningfully consider and respond to any reasonable feedback, questions, or suggestions from the community.
Temperature checks are simply to gauge sentiment, and do not directly determine whether a proposal will be sponsored by a Council member. Council members must consider all of the facts and circumstances surrounding a Proposal in its decision to sponsor or not sponsor a given Proposal.
Thank you John.
I am not sure where that idea of needing RARE to propose something came from but the community seems confused about it.
Do you have an FAQ for the DAO somewhere to answer questions like this?
100,000 $RARE (or 0.01% of the total supply) must be held by an address (either individually or through delegation) in order to submit a proposal to the Council. To be accepted, a proposal must have at least 10,000,000 $RARE voting (or 1% of total supply) to achieve quorum, and pass with a 51% majority.
Thanks for the notes on the governance procedures. The most recently passed SIP did not provide for minimum $RARE balance to submit a proposal, overriding the previous statements about a 100,000 $RARE balance requirement. This means that ANYONE can submit a proposal to get the community’s eyes on fresh ideas. But in order to take that proposal through the “Temperature Check” phase, you need to enter the token-gated discord channel which requires 1$RARE. This de minimus 1 $RARE requirement hopefully shouldn’t prevent anyone from participating in governance.
Temperature Check Requirements
| dao_chat.
Proposal Intake
Proposal Optimization
Temperature checks are simply to gauge sentiment, and do not directly determine whether a proposal will be sponsored by a Council member. Council members must consider all of the facts and circumstances surrounding a Proposal in its decision to sponsor or not sponsor a given Proposal.