Commonwealth Governance: DAOs, Feminism, Futarchy

Transcript

foreign what's going on guys welcome back to the roll up it's one of our first episodes as part of the roll up uh we are now fully refined fully focused on roll-up Solutions and scaling ethereum in more ways than one not just in throughput but also in governance in gaming in D5 in all these uh applications that blockchain Solutions are are here to help us uh accomplish so today we are talking with Rhys from Commonwealth super stoked to have reason the uh Channel today we're going to talk about governance what Commonwealth is doing to

increase voter participation and what's new and exciting in the world of governance on uh on several chains so reasons uh it's great to have you on how you doing awesome yeah thank you for having me doing great um excited to be here sweet so maybe you could tell us a little bit about what Commonwealth does and like what what you do at Commonwealth for sure yeah so uh Commonwealth is a all-in-one uh governance platform building out uh the one place that any web3 Community needs to coordinate socialize and govern uh govern their the project um so right now what we uh the core the core product I guess is

um uh a web 3 native Forum uh that links to uh off-chain voting uh so we have a bi-directional integration with snapshot um as well as a UI UI for um on-chain uh governance contracts so um really hosting the the heart of um the the governance process um yeah and the main goal is uh consolidating uh the governance process um the the entire thing uh whether it's uh private um whether it's private or public facing as well as in in Discord um we're looking to uh to tighten the loop there as well um but uh what I do in in particular is um I help uh all of our partners uh with

their governance platform uh making sure uh their Community um is uh participating and uh really getting the most out of um both their uh the project and uh and Commonwealth um yeah three yeah man that that's great I I think we've seen a lot about like kind of lack of voter participation so it's important work you guys are doing um there's a lot of like delegates especially in the proof of stake networks we've seen like um delegated kind of decision making um is particularly in snapshot um and then as well as like uh kind of the combination of off chain and on-chain uh governance

is still kind of fragmented like you know there's conversations that happen on Discord and then an idea goes from Discord to like more of a structured forum and then ultimately there's some proposition that's made on Snapshot but then it you know you have to revert back for the multi-sig people to actually execute whatever the decision that's made and you know all of these pieces kind of happen on on different platforms one of the things that I I saw that I'm particularly excited about is uma's release of osnap um and and it's helping to decentralize the governance framework like end to end so that when a snapshot uh proposal is executed it automatically sends a transaction to uh the treasury or the

gnosis safe um and executes that that transaction that's only like one piece of the governance process where it's more of the back end after a proposal is made and confirmed um they're able to execute it with this osnap tool but what Commonwealth does is more on the discussion side before a proposal is made so what are some of the tactics that you guys use to consolidate a lot of that discussion and in incentivize or promote some engagement with the entire Community to you know really really get the the goals of the community uh felt through some of these proposals mm-hmm yeah um I guess first off love osnap as well

I think it's important uh two different uh two different uh main reasons uh you mentioned the decentralization of the of that piece of the governance process is awesome um as well as I think it also uh will see an increase in uh voting participation um because it decreases the need for uh on-chain governance to be truly decentralized in most cases um so on chain governance historically has been pretty uh you've had to pay for it there's fees tied to it um and now you need to just use Snapshot um and then it's it's pushed to unchain after that so obviously off chain voting free

um and uh yeah I think overall that'll it'll be just great for the for the entire space but I guess in terms of what Commonwealth is doing for um participation we do focus a lot on the discussion piece as well as as the voting and proposal creation what we've seen that has been really great I guess overall um what we've seen is Commonwealth an average of seven to ten percent of uh token holders join the governance platform um other platforms uh similar to Commonwealth there's like a three to five percent of token holders join so we we have seen uh I guess almost 30 30-ish and not too great at math but 30-ish

percent uh increase in participation overall um with token holders joining which is great um but I think the uh main thing uh the main value add is uh increasing transparency uh for the through the entire governance process by uh kind of consolidating and linking each of the main I guess the core of the governance process together so uh you can discuss have a full threaded discussion uh link that to the snapshot proposal and then when users are casting their vote um on on the snapshot they can go back and see what the entire discussion is um who

um uh who said what what key stakeholders um where the where they're positioning themselves in terms of the decision are there what they're going to vote on um and it's just really easy to get informed um I believe and we we do uh approach this in a web free way so it's really easy to kind of figure out what stakeholders are saying what um and yeah all about transparency and uh we really just built this platform out to align with the with the web3 ethos and I think that's uh that's it's been it's been great so far so yeah well like discourse you know is is the one that comes to mind that a lot of projects are using but it's not built like web3 natively

um and it's it's an important piece that's missing like um being able to hook it up directly to snapshot um I take it we'll even see like notifications um you know coming up sometime in the future just to increase the visibility of a lot of these snapshot proposals um yeah like the the inclusivity you know is something that we preach a lot about like you know building a very a very inclusive community trying to get like a lot of representation but it's it's not like the numbers are just not lining up you said something like three to five percent of of token holders are voting what are joining discourse Forums on average why do you think it's so low they just don't care

um well that's where that's not where the Voting is happening um so I think a lot of people just uh just follow snapshots um and then it's really hard to like see what they did they don't really there's extra steps to see uh what the discussion is you kind of have to like go search for yourself to see to see what discussion is had and I guess where the snapshot proposal came from and that's pretty difficult um yeah so I think I think uh for Frank when when the governance process is fragmented uh across a couple platforms um you just see people following snapshot proposals and not truly making informed decisions uh when they do vote because uh they don't really have the

full contacts going into the The Proposal okay okay yeah that that makes sense like you know when people have limited time you know they're not going to trace the threat all the way back um and educate themselves necessarily on like what is what are what are the nuanced stances uh as part of this proposal they'll just kind of blindly you know blindly vote maybe someone will tell them like which which way they voted and then they'll just they'll just kind of follow um with with their tokens um and you know I think ethereum has seen like you know obviously the most activity but not the most voter participation as you

know compared to like some of these other chains um that are also proof of stake and lean more into like the delegate philosophy that we started to see on Arboretum optimism types of governance what are you seeing are some of the more active governance communities and what do you think they like what first like what what are some of the more active ones and why do you think you know those have more participation than others um I think the uh just ecosystem overall that's kind of in nuts with with governance is uh Cosmos it's been really great to see I believe it's like average 80 Vote or turnout rate um I believe that's for two different reasons

um there are validator mechanism that they have as well as uh their the overall just ethos of decentralization and uh just governance in in Cosmos so a lot of people um the whole token um in uh Cosmos are more inclined to participate um that's yeah that's kind of what you sign up for that's why you join uh Cosmos um and uh they're the staking mechanisms the validators uh that's the delegation uh piece so a almost like all a large majority of validators vote on like every single proposal uh which is really great to see I do think delegation is part of the solution for

um uh for governance participation what I really do like in Cosmos is uh you you stay too validator and if you don't vote they will they will vote on your behalf so you can you still have the option to to vote on on a proposal um but if you don't you can stay to a validator that kind of aligns with your uh with your values um and and that they will they will vote on your behalf if you um don't vote I think that's a really cool um version of of uh delegation um but yeah there's a lot of stuff um I I guess yeah overall Cosmos is great um osmosis is a really interesting one they have a really large governance Community evmos super efficient

um really um strong Community um and uh Stargate as well uh they're they're the kind of the crazy outlier um over in evm world where um they have 25 000 um people um in their governance platform which is pretty massive um yeah um I would say what's what's a theme that I've seen um to increase participation along with delegation is um uh sub-dials so what sub-dials for one of the biggest value as for sub does for me is decreasing a lot of the noise because I do think part of the reason um why participation is so low is a lot

there's a lot of noise just in general across like Discord I think that's been talked a lot uh but what subdials does is kind of delegate certain responsibility decision making uh responsibility to a select group of people that actually care uh you can like sign up to these subdos and kind of align uh what you like um to participate in the Dow um a classic example I give is uh one of our communities um they have some a couple hundred proposals a week and there's one uh not sorry not a couple hundred balls a week couple hundred overall but um uh in one week they had a proposal uh

proposing for a five thousand dollars to plant trees in Brazil um and in the same week they had a major chain upgrade proposal um so there's like really that that first five thousand dollar proposal obviously uh increase the noise leading up to that massive proposal that needed a lot of participation and eyeballs on it uh maybe not not so much with the five thousand dollar stipend but I think a solution for reducing the noise for proposals and decisions is definitely sub-dos so okay yeah like though those proposals are both like they sound great but they're just not of the same magnitude of importance let's let's let you know the environmental sub-dow handle the trees

and and you know the development some doubt handle the chain upgrade um okay yeah that makes total sense and and it just kind of it reminds me of like communities on you know like you know that we see at like national government scales like they break they break up you know the entire country's governance into particular committees the those who are knowledgeable about that topic vote on that committee they make those decisions and um even even like you know other Representatives May delegate their vote to the people who are representing them on this particular committee so that there is still participation across the entire governance Spectrum but the

actual decision-making power is kind of concentrated uh into those who are most knowledgeable about a certain topic mm-hmm yeah I think that's really important um knowledge on a certain topic is really great that's that's a huge reason why I I'm bullish on subdials also it allows people to only participate in things they care about and it just decreases noise overall uh which also increases participation so I think there's like two points that increase participation and um that that knowledge factor that you mentioned increases the just overall efficiency of the doubt yeah yeah what are

what are some of the the main like things that get people going like is there any topics you see that are like divisive or that are particularly controversial in some of these governance forums you know like like what are you know you obviously have your your eye on like quite a few you know Dows at a time what are some of the proposals that you've seen that have like really caught your eye like as of recently um the I think the ones just in general the ones that um are divisive obviously are the larger proposals like the those like chain

upgrade proposals uh ones that are asking for a decent amount of Treasury spend um those are very divisive and the let the uh less transparent they are the more divisive uh they are uh is what we've seen so that is something we've been focusing on is how can we increase transparency into the overall governance process that is a product thing and is obviously like a a community uh process thing as well but um I a specific proposals I would say Grant programs uh in general are pretty divisive um it is I think it's an important uh

piece to to any doubt it's a great way to um allocate Capital to to just like grow the the Dao's ecosystem uh but it does again uh require a lot of Treasury spend it's a relatively uh New Concept I think it's relatively unique to uh I guess the structure of it is relatively unique to web3 um yeah I would say Grant programs uh in particular are are super divisive but there's a lot of really great work being done in that um reveries is one of them we've seen a lot of um people specialize in that just because it's super super valuable um but it's uh it's a super it's very difficult area I would say to uh to

specialize in yeah yeah I think um our community you know has certainly voted on on quite a few proposals um have even made some proposals depending on how deep they are in in a couple Dows um and you know the these are these types of proposals are the ones that normally gather the most participations when there's you know something some treasury spend that that's happening or there's some major upgrade that's going on a lot of like intercompatibility between protocols I think normally generate some some engagement from like you know uh one dial combining with the other you know those usually are are a diverse mix

of ideas that that uh you know usually gets people talking and um a lot of this conversation I think you know it happens away from the visibility of the community in general um and and it sounds like Commonwealth is doing something that you know like you started at the beginning this call talking about consolidation of a lot of this discussion um we can bring to the Forefront like what are the particular ideas that have weight in the community um to maximize kind of like the education of a certain proposal for the community in general by bringing some of those some of those particular topics that people bring up to the top those will rise to the surface and kind of

educate the rest of the people in the room about what are the most topical things to understand by voting you know that you want to understand before voting in this kind of proposal um so I'm curious like for you know anyone who's listening that may have voted uh you know who's probably voted in a few proposals may have made a proposal on on a dow you know what what is it the right approach for using Commonwealth like how should they get started um you know maybe that someone is more of a thought leader and a dow how should they integrate Commonwealth into like their governance strategy um you know like let's say you were you were a member of you know some Dao that

is focused on uh like allocating funds for the environment or something like how how would you best use Commonwealth for uh maximizing uh your governance strategy yeah uh great question I guess you you brought up a lot of uh want to address the previous thought you had was the a lot of decisions are being made like privately um I just want to give a shout out to uh a really cool Dow work uh product that I was chatting to yesterday called Avenue place where a lot of these they host a lot of these private conversations whether it's lobbying or just Dow contributors thinking next steps what's what's the best uh next steps for the Dow um and then uh kind of conduct that in a web three-way uh wallet login and then

after uh all these conversations they kind of Consolidated into one outcome um that you can just public uh publicly publish which I think is really cool looking to uh integrate that into the the Commonwealth governance flow but I think that's a great um way that you can increase transparency into these private conversations while obviously still having them private but uh Commonwealth um I would say the uh how to how to best Leverage the um uh Commonwealth for your governance process um really just plug in all of the different uh existing tools you have I guess pretty modular

um buzzword I guess that's a buzzword uh recently with uh uh but yeah Commonwealth is is pretty modular can uh plug in snapshot as I mentioned um the UI for on-chain governance if you have it um I would say um just consolidating that's how you can best leverage Commonwealth as I mentioned consolidating the governance process with Forum off chain on-chain voting um it kind of increases participation there but what I recommend for anybody uh starting on Commonwealth is yeah just set up obviously the the on the product side but it's really important to set the form up for success to drive the

most discussion and um one of the the first first one the first pieces of um of uh content that I recommend like any Dow to use when launching it or to publish when launching a Dell platform is uh creating like a mission and values post uh what this does it uh well I guess not creating co-creating with all of the different stakeholders of the Dow um so what that does is it aligns all the stakeholders um into one with One Vision one uh Direction forward um I think that is super important and we've seen that a lot on Commonwealth and really drives participation

um and it's super easy obviously to transition um all of that um great discussion into actionable items uh via like the consolidation of the governance process on on Commonwealth but yeah I don't know if that answers your question but it does it does yeah like that that gives me like a sense of like okay as a down member like this is how I should use it um to push forward the coordinated efforts that you know it are based on like the Dallas mission and vision um and those always provide like a a basis of like you know how the Dow should vote on certain proposals there's always going to be disagreements and and different strategies about how to best execute all those values but

um setting those guidelines first and foremost I think give a pretty holistic strategy about you know what what the mission of the Dow is and and even determining that you know is is a matter of discussion and maybe a vote on its own um that that someone can have and it it uh it's kind of like this this article that I saw is put forth way way back but it's on futurarchy and it's like you should vote on values and you should bid on beliefs and it's kind of like outlining the system for prediction markets as uh as our governance strategy um but even even determining like what that mission statement is and those values is a matter of interpretation uh

when you get a bunch of people in in a room you know setting those out and voting on what these values are um I think is is really important to uh Dow's overall strategy um I'm curious like what like what are your some of your you know I would be remiss if we didn't talk about like political values and in like uh in a governance chat but like what what are your web three like political values um you know if they include futurarchy or not you know it's uh it's fun to kind of learn about like what other people see as like the the overall mission of of web3 um kind of as it relates to like what what our values are common to like all blockchain apps

yeah um without getting yourself in trouble of course I you don't need to expose you know anything like that um I guess what I'm most interested in uh I guess in terms of values is the equal distribution of uh uh wealth generation and uh decision-making power that web3 enables um that's why I am so um interested in um kind of working in the governance and community space to push that Vision forward I guess um that if that yeah that's uh that is what I'm most interested in

um for sure and I think it's really powerful um so yeah totally like like you're saying I mean Distributing equitably like all of not not just the wealth and wealth equals decision making power and a lot a lot of decisions but like Distributing that in a more decentralized way I think is is a common mission that a lot of these communities in Dallas have decentralization so core to like the ethos of of cryptocurrency and blockchain that we see these these like elitist groups making decisions you know as part of like a representative democracy or even more centralized depending on you know where where you are in the world um and decentralizing the power of those

decisions into more of the Community Driven delegated uh type of decision-making format it's something that you know Dows are pioneering in the web 3 world and I hope to see it kind of seep into um the you know Trad non-internet based world as well um and go from kind of like the representative democracy that we see all over the world into more of like the liquid democracy that we seem to experiment with on on Dows yeah I agree with that I think um the decentralization of uh decision making that I guess web3 and blockchain enables is a more accurate representation of uh how the populace

feels uh on certain issues um and I do think um obviously the more Equitable um wealth distribution of uh that web3 enables and I guess that ties to ethos also um increases accessibility to um obviously yeah increases accessibility to this wealth and uh allows a lot more people to participate in the upside of uh the wealth generation that's happening yeah totally totally like I I just you know I I hear all the time I'm sure everyone hears on social media and stuff there's people making the decisions that like the decision doesn't impact them at all um

and without getting two devices I mean like abortion in the States was a huge one I I was in I was in Paris for ECC last summer and it was like right around the time that like Roe Vue got overturned so there was like when people realized that I was American like I was with my girlfriend also like around the conference and they were like oh like you know that thing that just happened over in America like why did they why did they do that you know like why did they overturn that thing um and there was it was just like the the immediate response to them learning that we were American brought them to like this this kind of like controversial political outcome that that was recently made um by people who didn't really have a

strong impact and like like it didn't really impact them too much you know like um and that that seems to not really align with the populist uh common uh belief of of what that decision should be so yeah decentralizing the power and the decision making kind of from the top down I think it's something that we're pioneering on on web 3 decision making and um we're you know we're starting to see more intersection between the web 3 and the traditional world so um we'll we'll continue to see kind of how that plays out both in the web 3 world and and uh you know the in uh real life the physical world as well uh with

like municipalities and governance decisions yeah yeah I think a lot of interesting progress Innovation is being made in in governance powered by blockchain and yeah I I as a uh I recently moved uh to to the States from uh from Canada so I I've been I was in that position I guess of people in uh in France that you're chatting with just looking outside in but it's been uh pretty interesting I guess um uh being actually in the states when when all this all this all these crazy events are happening uh politics wise kind of last question as we wrap up this is nothing to be like nothing I'm not

trying to create like political divides here but like do you do you feel like you have more decision-making power in America or did you have more decision-making power as we put it in in Canada um well another way to phrase it is maybe like which country decentralizes their power grid more effectively um um I think there is pros and cons like the I guess an example of Roe v Wade uh that is that's not an accurate representation of the

populace um that is obviously not decentralized um so that piece of the American government is not uh not super decentralized uh but I think overall um I mean Canada um in terms of our federal election I would say the Western half of Canada did not like they won zero writings we call it um like our prime minister one zero writings like in the entire half west of Canada so uh interesting like the Electoral College kind of points yeah similar similar to that yeah besides BC

obviously but um at the the West Coast our California but uh yeah that that's interesting I would say um it's not there there are certain instances especially in uh the province that I'm from uh Ontario where we have like an all-time low voter participation right I think it was something like 30 of registers voters voted um so the um Premiere that was elected uh to represent um Ontario um is not a accurate representation of uh of of the province's values um but yeah I I there there's pros and cons of both I know that's a cop-out answer but um I

know the there has been some uh the states has gotten some Flack with their like District um how they draw the lines for um I think talks of like gerrymandering or whatever that's been a topic um but I think both countries are uh faced with faced with issues um different issues but yeah and it's common issues that both countries are faced with as well as web 3 Dows that are faced with you know like this voter participation problem is a problem not just in Dows but also in like countries and Nations um yeah so the the problem that you know we're trying to solve this problem on many fronts um and I I like the freedom that web 3 does give us to to experiment solutions

to this voter participation problem so that ultimately we can take the solution that works at a at a scale of dows and hopefully apply it to a scale of of Nations yeah and I think the beauty of uh a web 3 less less bureaucratic in general um I think that well the ethos of web 3 is just more efficient at decision making than I guess web 2 uh political structures but yeah I think uh a lot of uh a lot of great real value ad real world value ad um Concepts and uh structures uh will are being created by web 3 for uh governance and decision making yeah yeah

totally um by the people for the people you know it's uh happening on a small scale we'll we'll bring it yeah yeah I I'm excited to uh to be in this space and uh working towards that goal awesome man this has been a pleasure we're uh where can our community find you um yourself as well as Commonwealth you know shout out your twitters and and how uh how people should uh find yourself in Commonwealth for sure yeah um so my Twitter is Reese FH um so r h y s uh FH weird weird spelling um but uh you can find uh you can follow Commonwealth on Twitter at high

Commonwealth uh we post a lot of um I guess what we're working on um where we uh the conferences we attend if you wanna you wanna meet up in person um and if you want to get involved with uh building up the product I guess this is like some some Alpha but uh we are launching a community of people interested in in Dows and creating working groups on I guess building out um governance processes um so yeah if you want to get involved hop into our Discord you'll see a lot of uh a lot of great discussions uh happening there so we thanks for joining Reese it's a pleasure yeah thanks for having me