Since nobody is responding I’ll throw in my feedback. Citizen’s assemblies are interesting and potentially effective in the right context. I’ve participated in them locally to some benefit. That being said, I’m not sure they are right for Cosmos nor that this proposal is beneficial to the ecosystem. My comments might seem harsh, but I’m just laying out my visceral reaction while reading through your post. I’d never heard of your group before, so it was new territory looking into it.
“As a recognized neutral third party”
— are you tho? Recognized by who? I looked into it a bit, but there wasn’t a lot of information about group not published by yourself.
“it must not end with a proper constitution even if this would be a world’s first and would represent a revolutionary precedent for Cosmos and its ecosystem, the Blockchain world itself, and even further for the future of governance”
— really? Not one single blockchain project in history has had a constitution? Not to nitpick, but this just seemed strange thing to say!
“We will survey Cosmos members on their current views, who shares those views, and who has different views through the means of short interviews and analysis of past public discussions and governance channels.”
— Which Cosmos members? The loudest ones on twitter? The most active ones on Commonwealth? Randomly selected ones from this pool of potentials? What about all the voting Cosmos members who don’t fit this criteria, but still currently have a voice in the current system of chaos? How will you survey with transparency so that the results are known to not be manipulated or obfuscated, whether intentionally or unintentionally?
“The Cosmozens’ Convention Part 1: Deploy the deliberative process on the Future of Atom. We will convene a convention of 50 to 150 randomly selected cosmozens, working on a draft of governance architecture through a deliberative process inspired by the very successful model of Citizens’ Assemblies. The process will alternate synchronous and asynchronous moments and may include 5 non-consecutive sessions of 12-14 hours each”
— Wait, what? You’re going to get 150 ‘random’ Cosmosians to all meet up in a physical location and do 12-14 hour jam sessions for 5 days straight? That alone demands that it won’t be random at all, because very few contributors will be able or interested in committing to that. Even if it was remote sessions, that is just not reasonable. Not even remotely!
“Ratification: The final version of the constitution will be submitted for ratification through onchain voting”
— So, after 5 days of bleeding every ounce of life out of these unicorn contributors, and only 2 days of community feedback mind you, you’re gonna push it through on-chain governance. Pretty sure it’ll need more time for ppl to properly review. Everyone isn’t just sitting around waiting for bombshell proposals to drop so they can immediately review and vote.
— I’m not even going to get into the budget for this project as it is pointless with all the other unknowns and questionable suggestions. It seems really high, but if it actually delivered on what it promises then it could be worthwhile I guess!
I agree with many of your statements about the disorderly nature of the community and governance in general. Delegative solutions aren’t always the best. But my analysis of this proposal seems to me that essentially we would just be trading those downsides for the centralization risk of letting you, an unknown third party with absolutely no transparency (other than just your word) to control the future of the Cosmos. That’s as anti-cosmos as it gets, IMO. It seems you’ve had some success with previous projects, but I didn’t do a full-dive of anything yet. I wonder how those experiences translate to something like the Cosmos, however.
I think there are better solutions to address the issue of Cosmos Governance than just paying some unknown third party to arbitrate solutions for us. I’m intrigued to hear more about your proposal and why you think you provide the right kind of solution to meet the needs of the Cosmos.