Proposal: Governance Council (GC) Formation

Governance Iterations
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Summary

Requested Budget: 1,500,000 SCR
Timeline: 6 Months

This proposal would establish the Governance Council (GC) - a dedicated body responsible for overseeing experimentation and research relating to the future directions of governance at Scroll DAO. The creation of this council would enable much more active research and experimentation towards the dual goal of growing the Scroll network while advancing on the value of progressive decentralization.

Motivation

As Scroll DAO matures, governance processes must evolve to be more resilient, transparent, and participatory. Thus, it is important to have a dedicated to funding new research and experiments that can help define the tools that the DAO will use the, as well as the future direction of the governance architecture overall.

However, a dedicated, representative council is needed to:

  • Develop an initial research and development roadmap that the DAO will pursue in regards to governance.
  • Work with the governance team to develop a decentralization roadmap.
  • Develop and oversee any governance Requests for Proposal, as well as any one off proposals for a grant, experiment, or investment.
  • Maintain relationships with and ensure reporting from all relevant projects supported by the Governance Council.

Execution Plan

Council Size

  • 3 Members
    • 2 Scroll Foundation representatives
    • 1 delegate or governance professional with strong relevant experience

Term

  • 6 months

Time Commitment

  • 10 hours/week per member

Selection Criteria

  • Track record in governance participation (e.g., proposal authorship, delegate voting)
  • Familiarity with onchain/offchain governance tooling
  • Awareness of the landscape of governance research and what can help address the challenges that Scroll DAO faces
  • Understanding of DAO legal/regulatory environments
  • Cannot be an active member of a budget-disbursing council

Core Responsibilities

Core responsibilities would include:

  • Produce a governance research & experimentation roadmap, initially for ~6 months
  • Produce any relevant RFPs needed
  • Provide regular updates on the forum (at least once every two weeks)
  • Publish a summary report after at least 3 months

Initial Focus - Research & Experimentation

The initial focus of the council in terms of domains of research & experimentation could entail, but is not limited to:

  • How to make it as easy as possible for projects building on Scroll to partake in governance.
  • AI + governance (e.g. an RFP for tools such as Event Horizon or x23ai to help ease the cognitive load of governance, building out a KOI instance for Scroll, producing a ‘manifesto for the use of agents in AI’, etc.).
  • Exploring the deliberative tooling landscape to better understand which tools can be most helpful to experiment with and for which outcomes.
  • Use of futarchy style solutions for specific governance and/or funding decisions.
  • Alternatives to Discourse as the primary knowledge base for Scroll.
  • Research roadmapping to both articulate the problems we want to work on and to better understand the state of research more broadly.
  • How to most effectively operationalize progressive decentralization.

The GC would be responsible for review and, if appropriate, expanding this list and turning it into an initial roadmap.

Approval & Veto

The GC would be able to use it’s budget to approve new growth initiatives. The council would need a 2/3 vote to pass any proposal that uses less than 25% of the total budget, and a 3/3 to pass any proposal that would use more than 25% of the budget. Requests for more budget for the council would need to be put to a full DAO vote.

Once votes conclude, a 3 business day veto window kicks in. During this time, delegates are able to call for a veto on a GC decision if they see fit.

The veto would require a simple majority vote (either in the form of an off-chain vote that can be audited by the community or a formal on-chain vote)

Budget Request

Total Budget: 1.5m SCR

  • 10k SCR per month * 6 months = 60k SCR [this assumes an SCR price of $0.3 - to be revised once approved to reflect market rates]
  • Remaining funds can be used for grants, tooling, or other relevant expenses to support the initial goal of the Governance Council.

Evaluation

The primary focus for this council is to:

  • Produce a roadmap
  • Produce a charter for the council going forward
  • Review relevant proposals to fund research and experiments
  • Support at one relevant research project
  • Conduct at least three relevant experiments
  • At least two forum posts a month with short updates on activities
  • At least one in-depth report on activities in the first 5 months
  • Produce a proposal to extend the GC, as appropriate

Conclusion

This proposal puts forth the idea of forming a Governance Council (GC) with a budget of 1.5m SCR. This council would be require a commitment of roughly 10 hours per week over 6 months. The GC would have the ability to review and then approve or reject proposals directly without requiring a full DAO vote, though the DAO will be able to veto any decisions.

The formation of the GC would ensure that Scroll DAO can become a place for innovative governance, which itself would both attract top talent and make it easier for relevant stakeholders in Scroll (especially projects building on Scroll) to partake in governance.

7 Likes
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Thank you, @eugene for another well thought out proposal. I do have a couple of questions:

Does “not an active member of a budget-disbursing council” mean that the candidate cannot be a current member of any council or working group?

Your proposal mentions one delegate or governance professional, does that imply that this will not be a ‘split seat’, if so, I would suggested making that more explicit.

For core responsibilities, I would like to see recommendations/next steps for future committee members (if this council continues after 6 months) and if it does not continue, then execution/implementation plans for the roadmap.

And finally, the proposal doesn’t implicitly state it, but I would like to see the inclusion of the selection process (i.e. application process, interview by the Gov team, etc.) for candidates.

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Appreciate @eugene for this thoughtful proposal, we’re excited to see its implementation within Scroll DAO! Love to see innovation that helps shape Scroll governance.

Could you clarify how proposals will be formally categorized as “within scope” for GC decision-making to prevent overlap with other councils or broader DAO governance activities?

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Yes, we want to limit people to one council for now. Especially considering the sociocracy convo that’s happening, there will likely be structures that bring folks across councils and working groups together. So we are thinking that it makes sense to avoid one person being on multiple councils for now

Thanks for calling that out, will make it more clear. We are open to this also being a split seat.

We will make this more explicit in the revised proposal as an expected outcome / how to evaluate the council

Apologies for the omission - this will follow the same recruiting process as the other councils/working groups for now. That is to say, the Foundation will lead a transparent hiring process where applicants will fill out a form where applicants are asked if they are comfortable sharing their full application or at least their name. The results, along with the data we have consent to share will be shared in the post announcing the decision. The DAO will have a 3-business day veto begin once the forum post is made.

This will be part of what the GC will define with the research roadmap, which is meant to outline the specific areas of focus for research and experimentation. There may be ad hoc considerations as well.

Ultimately, the scope of this council relates to researching and experimenting with ways to fundamentally improve how governance functions at Scroll DAO.

When it comes to, say, educational efforts, the GC would only oversee governance related educational efforts (such as developing more materials). As currently written, the GC would NOT have the ability to approve a new delegate accelerator as that would entail approving funds to delegate, which is not in scope as written.

Let me know if you have specific scenarios or clarifications you’d like to have added

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Generally, I am very pleased with the DAO’s overall council structure so far. Could you throw more light on why there are two seats for the Scroll Foundation and one seat for the DAO?

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Same logic as with the CC - as of today, the Foundation team has the highest context for current plans and where we’re coming from.

Additionally, whoever sits on this seat will have to be someone who will not be pushing their own governance proposals / be involved in other groups, so it would be easier to start with one person who works closely with the gov team, which makes it easier to roll off one of the gov team folks sometime in the future for a second external person.

Let me know if you had other concerns not being addressed here.

1 Like
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The rationale makes sense to me, thanks for the clarity.

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Thank you for the clarification, Eugene. That makes the GC’s scope much clearer. We appreciate your explanation and don’t have any further questions at this time.

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Hi Eugene,

Overall, I think this is a good step forward.

The Delegates above have asked good questions and I think your rationale has been soun. Ill save my questions for the refined proposal.

Cheers

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Hi, As mentioned in the Gov call: It would be good to add a standard Conflict of Interest paragraph like:

Candidates and members agree to avoid any situations or relationships that could create a conflict of interest during the duration of their mandate.

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Hi!

Definitely exciting to see the GC proposal in the forum and shaping up! We had some questions that have already been adressed by other delegates and wanted to say that we’re overall aligned with the expected composition and internal process of the GC so far.

We do have some thoughts regarding what the potential scope based on this initial list. As we see it, the council has three high-level depicted verticals: Research, Experimentation and Operations.

We support having those three verticals but we do want to point out the particular focus on governance operations, something that the latest bullet refers to. In that sense, we think that the GC should act as a key stakeholder behind the governance process while providing live-operational support, something that could translate into some non-exhaustive tasks such as:

  • Liason between the DAO and the Voting UI provider (Currently Agora) in order to have an integrated feedback loop to adapt to the DAOs needs.
  • Exploration of secondary UIs: For Voting and Optimistic Governance
  • Exploration of on-chain endorsements as per Scroll’s Constitution
  • Ensuring alignment of on-chain proposals, Gov Docs and forum posts
  • Providing support and guidance for proposal drafting and ideation
  • Provide and innovate on governance metrics in order to contribute to data-driven decisions (Supermajority votes, Capture, VP monitoring, Whale behaviour, Auto-Abstaining wallet analysis, Airdrop, etc.)
  • Overseeing decision-making / Governance processes within the DAO
  • Fostering delegate activations and communities

Although these items might be included in the potential roadmap to be put in place, we didn’t want to let by the opportunity to mention them explicitely and build on top of the research and experimentation tracks since, as we know, governance as such comprises a very wide set of responsabilities. We are also particularly glad to see the project governance onboarding item, something that should be tackled thoughtfully.

In such case, we are hesitant on the expected hours to settle at 10-weekly hours given that this is a 3-seat council, therefore we’d suggest to increase those up to 15 at least.

Happy to keep discussing this proposal!

1 Like
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Thank you very much for this proposal @eugene

This reply makes much sense, thanks for clarifying it. I get why Foundation context is crucial at this stage, especially since governance at Scroll is still in that “laying the tracks while the train is moving” phase.

My only lingering thought is more about optics and trust-building than immediate function. Even if Foundation-heavy makes sense now, signaling a clear path toward shifting the balance could help reassure contributors that this won’t become a permanent default.

From a legal/governance perspective, the current setup works fine short term, but it’s always stronger when councils that hold funding/approval power build in gradual decentralization milestones. It reduces any perception of capture and sets a precedent for fairness if tough decisions ever come up.

Another point I would love to state that i couldn’t mention in the call today is that since this council will be funding experiments (possibly with service providers), it might be smart to include a basic disclosure + conflict policy for GC members. It doesn’t have to be heavy, but some lightweight guardrails could help avoid reputational blowback if members end up approving grants to people/projects they’re affiliated with.