[RFC] Nance Governance Automation

Shutter DAO DAO Proposals
1

Summary

This proposal intends to begin an engagement between Shutter DAO 0x36 and Nance, a governance automation platform. Nance will implement automated voting cycles to organize the process, increase member participation with timely alerts, and provide an open and transparent place to store proposals. In order to build the Nance integrations for Shutter DAO 0x36, the Nance team will require a setup fee and subsequent monthly payments to cover service and maintenance costs. Specific pricing will need to be determined based on the desired level of automation (to be discussed in this thread!).

Motivation

Shutter DAO 0x36 is now required to implement Voting Cycles according to the recent proposal on Snapshot (discussion here). This can be tedious for individual proposers and uncomfortable for governance stewards to enforce. Nance is a governance automation platform built around the concept of Governance Cycles. Originally born from Juicebox’s concept of a funding cycle, a Governance Cycle is a set amount of time that a DAO has to propose, discuss, vote, and execute proposals. Nance currently serves DAOs that utilize Discord as their main communication platform including JuiceboxDAO, MoonDAO, DAOSquare, and Aleo.

Nance is made up of the following components:

  1. Proposal content editor

    • WYSIWYG or markdown mode editor for creating and editing proposals
    • Pure markdown output for portability across platforms, no more Google Docs
    • Attach onchain actions with function selector
    • IPFS integration for storing images and attachments

  2. Proposal storage system

    • Built on Dolt, a version controlled MySQL database
    • Full access to your own database, no CSV exports or vendor lock-in
    • Proposal content search capabilities
    • IPFS data backups

  3. Reminder bot

    • Current version supports Discord only
    • Adaptable to Telegram, X, Discourse, etc

  4. Scheduled Automations

  • Sends proposals where they need to go, when they need to go

  • Based on a configurable calendar system

  1. Proposal executor
    • Compiles passing proposal actions into a single Safe transaction easing the burden on your multisig team
    • JSON export compatible with Safe Transaction Builder for manual addition of other actions

Nance is a modular system; any or all of these features can be integrated into the Shutter DAO 0x36 process. There are many different platforms that Shutter DAO 0x36 is currently using which has lead to information segmentation. Nance can be the unifying system for Shutter DAO 0x36, providing a Schelling point for governance that will promote member engagement and order.

Specification

The Nance team consists of developers jigglyjams and twodam with previous support from Zeugh and Nicholas.

To begin implementation, the Nance team needs to meet with key contributors of Shutter DAO 0x36 to analyze the current proposal process. From there, the team will be able to produce a block diagrams of both the current process and optimal automated process. With the ideal automated process outlined, the team will begin adding each feature to the Express backend API and Next.js frontend repositories. Any new Discourse plugin requirements will be implemented as necessary.

The Nance team is also capable of integrating the system directly into a DAO’s frontend as we did with the MoonDAO governance portal: All Proposals | MoonDAO. This is a great way to keep your DAOs branding while gaining Nance’s automation features.

Being an RFC, this proposal is meant to establish preliminary discussions in order to determine the specific implementation that Shutter DAO 0x36 is interested in pursuing with Nance.

Rationale

Nance app provides a modular system in order for DAO’s to use features that suit their governance process. The Nance code base is nimble and composable, allowing new features to be reused across DAOs.

Next Steps

  1. Receive feedback on this RFC to guide the automation goals
  2. Meet with key contributors of Shutter DAO 0x36 to analyze the current proposal process
  3. Block diagram the current proposal process
  4. Block diagram the optimal automated proposal process
  5. Create a Github project board with major features outlines
  6. Break down features into smaller sub-issues and assign them to individual code repositories
  7. Assign and implement issues to fulfill features
  8. Continuously provide updates on implementation and actively work with proposers to test the system

Conclusion

Please reach out with any feedback, questions, or comments. The Nance team would honored to take on accountability for the organization and timely distribution of the DAO’s proposals.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0 1.0 license.

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@Loring @Baer_DAOplomats @zeugh looking for some feedback so we can find the best way to get Nance in here. I see a ton of potential proposal flows.

Here is my loose idea from the Introducing Voting Cycles thread:

  1. A DAO member goes to nance.app/s/shutter (or we can embed the editor into your own homepage as we did for https://moondao.com/propose ) and creates a proposal
  2. Proposals that require on-chain voting can be marked as such (and automatically load the correct template), off-chain proposals can use that specific template
  3. Nance bot creates a topic here in Discourse, linking to the proposal (or showing the complete text of the proposal) and displaying metadata for it
  4. The proposal ID number is automatically added so members do not need to manage that
  5. Fellow DAO members provide feedback in the topic
  6. The proposal author(s) can make edits
  7. At the scheduled time, a simple :+1:/:-1: Temperature Check poll here in Discourse takes place
  8. At the end of that polling period, approved proposals get sent to the next phase for formal voting
  9. Voting in each respective place takes place and Nance bot accumulates the results for viewing
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gm @jigglyjams, if I understand correctly, a proposal author should go to Nance, a layer on top of our current tools like Snapshot and Discourse.
Regular users can still use Snapshot z.B to vote or Discourse to continue the discussions.

If that’s the case, how can we ensure that this process will take place trustlessly?

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gm @Baer_DAOplomats! We could have the data go direct from Discourse to Nance if that is preferred, like I stated before, very adaptable!

re trustlessness: Nance can operate in 2 ways,

  1. adding it as an author to your Snapshot space and allowing only Nance and other authors to upload
  2. authors sign proposal data in the same way they do through Snapshot, Nance stores their signature and uploads it through the Snapshot API at the appropriate time in the Governance Cycle

All data for an organization is stored in its own Dolt MySQL database which is continuously pushed to Dolthub (example for MoonDAO nance/moondao). Dolt, being the git MySQL power house that it is, can show you diffs on any changes to the database.

I hope this clarifies things! Let me know if you or anyone else has questions about the system.

5

Thank you, @jigglyjams, for this proposal! Nance appears to be a valuable tool for DAOs, as having multiple platforms can add complexity. However, some contributors might be accustomed to traditional platforms like Discourse, Snapshot, and Decent.

I’m also curious about the costs associated with such an implementation ?

Given that ShutterDAO is relatively small, the return on investment might be limited. Have you observed increased participation in the DAOs that are now using Nance?

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Thanks for the reply!

However, some contributors might be accustomed to traditional platforms like Discourse, Snapshot, and Decent.

Agreed! The advantage of going to the Nance platform is that we can encode hard rules around when a proposal should go to which platform for the next stage. Currently there is no way to enforce things like ShutterDAO Season Schedule (already not being followed) and as a new comer to these forums here, it was not straight forward where I should start if I have an idea.

I’m also curious about the costs associated with such an implementation ?

We would need to see what kind of features you want to integrate. For full transparency, here is our proposal to MoonDAO for $13.5k (Google Docs because they weren’t using Nance yet :laughing:) and we currently charge $1k/month to JuiceboxDAO for proposal and multisig managment.

Have you observed increased participation in the DAOs that are now using Nance?

Yes having a clear proposal flow increases participation and prevents proposal form getting stuck in an unknown state

Happy to answer any other questions!