[DISCUSSION] Cosmos Hub Charter

Hub Proposals Proposal Ideas
12

The WP set a long term roadmap for the development of the Hub while the Charter role is to make sure the implementation is done with a certain standard of decentralization, ethics and accountability that protects $ATOM holders.

This is why it is crucial for the ATOM community to put sufficient mindshare and thinking into the charter.

I’ve taken some time to review work from one of the most brilliant minds in the Cosmos for governance related matters: @sacha. There are some nuggets out there that I can’t recommend enough. Before interacting with this topic, I invite everyone to get familiar with his thinking so here are a few resources to consider:

There is a lot to cover so I’ll only discuss in this post the soon to be established Community Council, which should be the backbone for governance on the Cosmos Hub for the time being and until a full Cosmos Assembly is formed.

The ATOM 2.0 paper requires us to develop new mental models for governance. The WP is ambitious and its implementation will be challenging, requiring novel governance foundations.

The WP suggests the creation of multiple Councils. The sum of those Councils will form the future Cosmos Assembly.

My suggestion is to adopt a progressive, measured approach when forming those Councils. To initiate this work, I believe the first governance piece we need to establish is the Community Council.

This Council will represent the interests of the ATOM community at large. The Community Council can be used as a platform and launchpad to form the other Cosmos Councils until there are enough Councils to justify the creation of the higher order Cosmos Assembly. Less is more. As such, the Cosmos Council should be representative enough of the ATOM holders.

Regarding the responsibilities of the Community Council, I thought of the following aspects (non exhaustive list):

  • Lead to completion the governance aspect of the ATOM 2.0 vision that ends with the launch of critical Cosmos Councils & the Cosmos Assembly (final step)
  • Enforce public accountability, notably with other Cosmos Councils that will be created further down the road
  • Create a framework for managing the Treasury Pool
  • Act as a bridge to the broader ATOM community.
  • Reduce the information gap and facilitate access to information by making it digestible.
  • Create and maintain reporting on the Hub and its various entities: state of decentralization, work being done in other Cosmos Hub Councils, product feedback.

The composition & funding of the Community Council is as important as its mandate. A few suggestions:

  1. It should be representative enough of the entire ATOM community. As such, it should include a basket of: core developers and contributors + validators + regular ATOM holders + OGs from other Hub aligned Cosmos chains
  2. It should be large enough to avoid excessive centralization and cartelization. I don’t have an exact idea about the number of members, maybe somewhere between 7 and 11 members. Less than 7 encourages centralization while more than 11 makes effective governance challenging
  3. It should NOT be pro bono. Working for free encourages dubious behavior and conflicts of interest.
  4. It should be funded separately from the other Cosmos Councils to avoid competing for the same resources, which again favors dubious behaviors
  5. Members should NOT figure on other Cosmos Hub Councils

Thank you for reading. Looking forward to engaging with other members of the community.

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