Funding Alternative: An amendment to the grants model proposal

The premise of any split fund proposal is flawed. Splitting the funds between the developers of today’s ecosystem forgets one of the fundamental ideals of GRIN: GRIN is meant to be equitable for future adopters. For this reason, a grants model proposal should be preferred to any split fund proposal. The proposal by @joltz is a good start. To quote:

  • All funding decisions pass through the grants platform, with final decisions made by Council++
  • Fund multisig keys are still held by original council (and so do not change) but decision making is expanded to include rotating community chairs
  • 6 fixed legacy council seats: antiochp, jaspervdm, lehnberg, quentinlesceller, tromp, yeastplume (since I am proposing this, I will abstain from inclusion)
  • 5 rotating community seats: dburkett, dtavarez, mcmmike, hendi, phyro (just possible suggestions to start)
  • The 11 seats make up Council++, where 6/11 votes are required to achieve funding consensus (alternatively we can move to 5/9, removing both a legacy council and community seat if we cannot find enough suitable volunteers)
  • In the event that the multisig key holders do not honor a 6/11 consensus agreement for a payout, it would invalidate the spirit of the program and be a great harm to the Grin ecosystem- there are no guarantees here, but it is still arguably less centralized than the current model and does not fracture the community

This grants model is highly promising on two counts. First, the proposal organizes the dispersal of funds by creating a governance structure that considers the sovereignty of both the community and the GRIN council. This consideration assuages the criticism that the current council acts as a unilateral body that enforces its ideals upon the community. Second, the proposal not only solves the dispersal of donations currently held by the community but also the dispersal of all future donations that will inevitably be held by the community/ council.

We must recognize that the failure of the proposal by @joltz is that it ultimately perpetuates the reason for fracture in the community. Given the fact that the council is always able to pass or kill any proposal, unmediated power is still retained in the hands of the council. This must be addressed. We must recognize that the fact of unilateral decision making power by the council is the greatest issue for fracture in the community–past, present, and future. In the eyes of many, there seems to be no real effort to assuage this fracture. It must be extinguished. The council can extinguish this friction by giving the community real decision making power in the creation of a more equitable governance body.

The purpose of this post is to advocate for the grants proposal model and to include an amendment to address the lingering problem of the unmediated power of the council. I will add that this amendment reconsiders the current and proposed governance systems under two fundamental GRIN ideologies:

  1. GRIN is community driven.
  2. GRIN is fair for future adopters.

First, the grants model is preferred because it organizes a system that will be able to deal with this issue as it will continue to arise. We should not assume that this issue will not occur again, so it behooves the council and the community to address the issue most prudently. While providing voting privileges to members of the community ensures that the members would hold a verifiable and documented power, it is, moreover, necessary to safeguard the power of the community voters from the power that the council would hold with its majority. As the proposal stands, the community has no power to oppose the will of the council, whether it be to pass or kill a proposal. This is dangerous.

I suggest an amendment to the current grants model. The amendment is that every vote can only pass by securing at least 3/5 of the votes by the community members. This gives the council and the community roughly equal voting privileges. Under the old proposal, the council would be able to act without the approval of the community members, giving them power in name only. Under this proposal, votes must be secured by both the body of the council and the community. It leaves no room for either part of the body to enact unilaterally and emphasizes the need to galvanize the community, an endeavor that we should all recognize, with the current state of affairs, as the most critical component necessary for the success of GRIN. At the very least, such an amendment would go a long way in mitigating the fracture in community relations as they exist today.

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I agree about giving seats to community members without considering their vote power is useless. Although 3/5 of votes can build a big barrier on decisions being made. I agree more with 2/5 (also 3/6).

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Yes, my amendment wasn’t an-end-all-be-all suggestion. But, yes, approaches to empower the community and a community vote need to be considered.

I kind of agree with what you wrote on the part of more autonomy for the community to make spending decisions. I do not think there is a factual problem in the sense that I never felt spending decisions made by the current council were unjust.
However, it does affect the feeling of empowerment by the community to have official voting rights. Therefore, for the time being I am in favour of starting with the simpler model giving a community council some autonomy to spend some funds on community projects. This was both present in the proposal by @tromp and the proposal by @david. Either of these two could include Grin++, if needed a separate council could be present, either way I think support will be there for any good funding application.
Having a separate body to fund community projects could at the same time provide more peace of mind to the core developers since they do not need to involve themselves in every satellite project.

So in summary:

  • In the short term, I am in favour of splitting of some funds, or better said, splitting the authority to spend these funds like present in both Trumps of Davids proposal.

  • In the long term we move to a unified grand proposal model for more standardization through a unified proposal platform.

For the unified grand proposal model I do not think it matters much if these councils merge in the long run into Council ++, as long as it is clear to the wider community that they have the power to make or block spending decisions. Either of them could make separate decisions or e pre decisions and fine tuning of proposals to make the governance more efficient.

In the long run moving towards a unified grand platform is the way to go since it forces everyone to standardize their proposals as well as the grand approval process.

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