The Cosmos Hub 3 launched with enhanced governance functionality, but without guidance for creating or assessing proposals. We’re preparing to launch a proposal to improve Cosmos Hub governance, which you can read in full here. This proposal is intended to fund the development of the Cosmos Governance Working Group.
I wrote this article to give more context about what I have in mind for the governance working group and about the funding we’ll seek in our proposal.
Quick Takes
Governance proposals are hard for everyone
We want the Cosmos community to fund us to lead a governance working group
I would like to suggest an idea for the proposal to be initiated from multisig account. This way there will be some accountability to funds and they could be sent back to the community pool if the efforts hault
Hey Mira, interesting idea, particularly for large, multistage proposals. If this proposal was for a period greater than a single quarter, i would be exploring a multisig option. My preference is to push the proposal without multisig since the amount and time period seem small enough that I think the voting community will trust me and my team to deliver.
Would you be interested in working on exploring how future proposals could benefit from a multisig option? We would first need to explore how to create a secure multisig. I imagine that we’d need to explore selection criteria for trusted signatories, potential processes for deciding to release the funds or not. There should be a process for returning the funds if need be, since my understanding is that funds cannot currently be deposited into the community pool. I envision the GWG lobbying protocol developers to design and implement this particular functionality.
The GWG is the name of the community, which should not be limited to the Telegram channel that I’ve created.
My plan is:
a) to encourage high quality discussions to happen here, on All in Bits’ Cosmos Discourse forum (which is currently a somewhat centralized option), and I’d love to encourage other, more decentralized platforms. For now I’m trusting the employees at All in Bits to safeguard our discussions.
b) to use the Telegram group for real-time chat (and alerts to nee forum replies). I’m making a published list of participants so that everyone involved can reorganize in another channel that I don’t control if needed.
I will update the proposal to reflect this plan clearly, since I overemphasized the Telegram group. Thank you for pointing this out.
I think the GWG community component of this proposal is one of the most valuable parts, so i’m not prepared to remove it from the proposal. Please feel free to openly engage with me further about this, though.
Is the only reason that you’re asking us to reduce the amount of our community spend proposal is prevent future community spending in excess? My prior understanding was that you agreed that this was a reasonable amount. Would be grateful for a more detailed explanation.
I can see a need for a committee to make value-judgment-based recommendations about proposals, but I think it’s too soon for this. My initial position is that the basic framework for governance should be developed first. I would love to explore this further with you and others, and I could see it as a potential deliverable for Q2. Thoughts?
Figment should not cut down on the hourly payment. Gavin’s time is being valued at $1000 per day for an 8 hour working day (assuming atom exchange rate of $4.25). That looks well aligned for contract work.
In a different post, BHarvest mentioned they were proposing to take a loss on some project. That is the wrong approach - work should be profitable for every grantee. If we establish a culture where work is expected to be unprofitable, the best teams won’t come forward with proposals.
My bias is to fund well thought-out, high value (to the Hub), properly compensated work.
I agree with you that our approach was too conservative for its price. That is partly caused by relatively high risk of governance proposal rejection loss on deposit. We compare the pricing with ours, which is 1/4 of Gavin’s pricing. If we double our pricing, it is still twice expensive than ours.
So this makes us feel quite unrealistic about the grant pricing. Maybe I am not quite familiar with US grant pricing standard. Hope other 3rd parties can provide more opinions on pricing.
Hi. Reorganization of Telegram discussion is a heavy job, so it should be paid to do that. I think it would be wonderful if you can reorganize such communication and share it on forum. I think it should be core reason why community pass this grant, rather than just opening a telegram chatroom because most of us will not read entire threads, and a lot of community members will not be in the telegram chatroom.
Thanks Hyung. This does raise an important question: Global rates for contract work are different.
$1k a day is fine for the US. My other experience is in India where $200 per day is an amazing offer. What kind of rate is admissible for the Cosmos Community Pool? Do we adjust geographically?
My thinking is that we should evaluate the proposed work and also the reputation of the recipient. Doesn’t make sense to me to pay organizations and their people differently based upon where they live.
This is currently how I plan to evaluate community spends when I vote: is this proposal worth the cost? If so, vote yes. If not, vote no. If very much the latter, no with veto. No idea? Abstain.
I guess US is good enough for standard pricing. Because it is global community without any national barrier, geographical adjustment is not necessary.
Accepting Meherroy’s reference on US consulting pricing, I now can accept the pricing on this governance. Also, we would like to vote yes on this governance to not block high quality contribution intention.
But I still hope Gavin does some summary work from discussions on Telegram and posts on forum, to prevent centralization and intransparency of governance discussion. Definitely nobody can do it without funding.
The Telegram channel is only there to serve as real-time, fluid chat. I think that anything substantial should be detailed on the forum, and I’ll encourage participants to do that. If they don’t, I will endeavour to on their behalf. Really appreciate your feedback.
Participating discussion itself is enough contribution. We cannot ask them to write down in forum for free. Some might do for free, but I think rest is the responsibility of who is funded. Could you clearly state the respond because it will affect my vote.
Detail explanation is to read All threads in telegram chat and reorganize opinions in forum post.
It is what dogemos has been done to community for entire topic for about a year with much less funding.