Thanks for this proposal Eugene, it’s a well-written document. We’re in favor of voting for adoption of the Constitution. It could be worth linking to the community code of conduct & the delegate/voter code of conduct somewhere in the document. Also you can see section 8 of the Moonwell Constitution if you want to consider expanding on the Security Council section (e.g. adding a specific nomination timeline)
Thank you all for the thoughtful comments and contributions. I will need some time to respond to all of these but just want to flag that we this is NOT yet ready for the Feb1 vote
Stay tuned on next steps once the comments are addressed
Thanks @eugene for taking the time. It would make sense for the timeframe to align with voting cycles. If a proposal isn’t ready for a vote due to insufficient discussion, it should ideally wait until the next cycle. By defining what the voting cycle should be, we could easily implement a freeze that would prevent proposals submitted too close to one voting cycle from going to a vote until the next cycle. This could be something like a week.
Excellent! @Web3Citizen
Hey everyone,
The Scroll DAO Constitution is a good step toward structured governance, and I appreciate the effort put into making it transparent and adaptable. Thank you @eugene!
I have a few concerns that I believe are worth discussing:
Decentralization Roadmap – While “progressive decentralization” is mentioned, there’s no clear timeline or milestones. A more concrete plan would add confidence. I see this has been discussed already, but wanted to express my support.
Delegate System Risks – Large token holders can consolidate power by delegating votes to a small number of representatives. It could be nice to ratify an aim of the DAO to prevent governance capture over time.
Legal & Compliance Clarity – The role of the Scroll Foundation in governance isn’t fully detailed, especially regarding how its decisions interact with DAO votes. Some clarity here would help ensure long-term alignment.
Overall, I support the direction of this proposal, but refining these areas could make it stronger and more resilient. Looking forward to hearing others’ thoughts!
Sorry for the delay!
Selection process - they’re being selected by the Scroll team initially. I don’t believe the future process has been outlined. That is something that can be addressed initially or as the first amendment to make. I will speak with the team about it this week.
This feels as though it should be a separate convo. Feel free to provide more info in a separate post, which can start a general conversation around governance security.
Happy to have this discussion, though personally, I think it’s a bit premature. I think there is still so much left to do in the coming months on the core operations and activities of the DAO. As a result, it’d be great to focus limited attention to these initial aspects instead of taking on too many things from the start (especially given the current setup risks being inefficient (less urgent) vs insecure (more urgent). Please do feel free to bring up the conversation when it feels appropriate.
Sorry, can you elaborate on your question
This is one of the places I need to make sure to link to the gov docs. The manager is managed by the Foundation and is a 2/3 managed by the gov team and someone on the ops side.
What is the power / control it has that is worth decentralizing? I see the main thing as who has the power to post proposals. That can be adjusted without decentralizing the control of the manager contract to start, which feels like the priority. I will have to double check the other things the Manager wallet controls and then can add more thoughts.
Agreed! I want to make sure we have a discussion on it (and thanks to all who have contributed to the post so far) and prioritize this in the next few months. If you don’t mind copying your suggestions over to that post, that’d be great!
Can you please clarify your suggestion? Are you suggesting that we should add some verbiage to outline the mission or vision or purpose of the DAO?
To be clear, I’m not suggest frequent revisions. I agree that changing it shouldn’t be taken lightly. At the same time, given the specific nature of what we’re doing and now nascent all of this is, we need to have more room for flexibility for DAO constitutions (relative to countries and their constitutions). Personally, I could see us reviewing and refining the constitution once a year in the first years with the intention of it becoming something that doesn’t need to be amended frequently.
Yes, sorry for not doing better in terms of pointers to the current info.
Manager - 2/3, Foundation gov team + one ops person
Admin - managed centrally until the security council is in place/announced, then it’s a 9/12
The address for the Manager is already up in our docs and the Admin will be updated there as soon as the security council is finalized.
Pushing back on the wording a bit. To me, enact would imply the DAO is either exclusively coming up with new laws or putting approved ones into practice. The reality of protocol upgrades to start will involved the engineering team suggesting an update, that update getting shared with the DAO, and once endorsed and later approved, it gets enacted. Based on the most recent discussion with the engineering team, the first proposal that will go to the DAO should be ready by mid-March. We can also have someone from engineering present to the DAO ahead of / around then if that’s helpful.
I agree with you that it’s unlikely at this point but I don’t see the harm. Theoretically, if the DAO is ready to give proposal upgrade ideas that are sound, that would be amazing and very welcome!
Yes, the threshold and process for revision are in our gov docs.
It’s expressed by clearly stating that one would vote for it (as has been the norm in DAO forums and for the first DAO proposal). This hasn’t been clarified yet. The way I would personally approach it would be as follows. If someone puts a proposal in the forum up today (Feb 2) for the Mar 1 voting cycle, and only one person endorses it, I would make sure to bring up the proposal via the weekly calls, the forum, and the chat to gauge interest. If there’s no interest, then the proposal doesn’t go any where. If there’s interest and enough endorsements during Mar, then it goes up for Apr 1.
Do you have any specific suggestions there? Good faith is an intentionally broad term. Open to other ideas if people have them.
The reason they aren’t specified here beyond what’s in Article 3 Section 3 is that if would force us to revise the constitution if we realize we need to adjust it. We will make sure to clarify it in the governance docs. Voting cycles are meant to be monthly starting the first of the month to allow for more predictability for delegates.
As I see it, one benefit is that if token holders who were previously not delegating now know that a topic they might care about is going to vote, so it provides a window to allow for that.
We thought that the higher approval threshold (76% vs 51%) is enough of a barrier.
We don’t have a perfect definition of where the exact line between emergency and non-emergency is so we have this language to provide wiggle room. The general logic is that any protocol upgrades that are seen as non-emergency ones will be presented to the DAO first for feedback.
It’s not that clear when writing these what is the best amount of future aspects to include in the current version (versus leaving it open for adjustment via amendments). This felt like one of those that is important to signal, even if we still have to define the future selection process.
It says that in the next section. If there’s a strong sentiment about this, we can adjust.

Security Council
Thank you for calling out the various potential improvements there, especially in terms of the ‘election mode’. Let me circle back on these

In this early stage the proposal submission is already gatekeeped so adding an extra-layer undermines the delegates agency to seek votes and consensus since currently the foundation already reserves the right to block the proposal.
Clarifying q - would the extra-layer be the 3 endorsements from delegates? I am not clear how much of a difference it would make it in the grand scheme of things.

We definitely share some of the presented concerns regarding votable supply and actioning towards increasing and distributing it. Also we’ve raised the fact that Circulating Supply against Votable Supply should be leveraged when analyzing quorum and threshold requirements.
Fully agreed on the circulating v votable supply. We will be bringing this up in conversation in the coming weeks. Thanks again for the dune dashboard!

However, how will constitutional amendments be formally enacted and governed over the long term?
As of now, the process would be in the form of proposing an amendment (and in turn revised constitution).

Would it be prudent to codify an explicit amendment process within the constitution itself?
For instance, should constitutional amendments require a well-defined supermajority threshold for passage?
Changes to the constitution do need a supermajority vote.

extended voting periods
I think I would default to extending a discussion window vs a voting cycle. Hopefully the combination of extending the time for discussion + the consistent voting cycles starting the first of the month will be enough to get the best engagement we’re able to. Let me know there’s a specific benefit you see to extending the window.

I was referring to the significance of the constitution, whether there are consequences for actions against it. But I see, for the security council and board of directors, there’s already a part about that.
Got it, thanks for clarifying. Let me know if you think we should be adding anything else around enforcement at this stage.

Outside of this proposal draft, we believe it would be good practice to require that all changes—whether emergency or non-emergency—be publicly posted on the forum with a brief explanation from the Security Council, along with the mentioned report if it were a emergency action. The same standard should apply if the Foundation removes any Security Council member.
Yes, that is the goal! The first upgrades post DAO formation are planned for April and we’re coordinating with the engineering team to get the posts up ahead of a Apr 1 vote (so sometime by mid-Mar).

Regarding the voting cycles, for clarity and transparency it would be beneficial to define them either within the constitution or through a separate proposal. Once the process has been tested and refined, it could then be incorporated into the constitution through an amendment.
I’d personally suggest not including it in the constitution until we know that it is working well for us. The point of leaving it out was to allow for flexibility and minimize the need for more amendments. I do agree that I need to write something, both on the forum and in the docs, to make the cycle clearer

Regarding the majority and supermajority quorum, was there any discussion around potentially increasing the supermajority threshold to require greater participation in protocol upgrades, governance parameter changes, and constitutional amendments?
As in, increase it beyond 76%?

Which proposal threshold does it refer to?
The one outlined here.

It could be worth linking to the community code of conduct & the delegate/voter code of conduct somewhere in the document.
Yes, thanks for the call out. I will do another pass through the doc to add relevant links.

It would make sense for the timeframe to align with voting cycles. If a proposal isn’t ready for a vote due to insufficient discussion, it should ideally wait until the next cycle.
I agree that we should postpone things that don’t get enough discussion. Can you please clarify your specific suggestion?

It could be nice to ratify an aim of the DAO to prevent governance capture over time.
Yes, this is something that is on our minds. If you have any suggestions or references to examples where it’s working well, please do share

The role of the Scroll Foundation in governance isn’t fully detailed, especially regarding how its decisions interact with DAO votes. Some clarity here would help ensure long-term alignment.
The gov docs, particularly the 'Who Are We’ portion is meant to address some of that. Can you please share if there’s any specific clarity you’re hoping to get? I’ll review again and see what improvements come up from our end.
Next step
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I will review the constitution and the feedback here, discuss internally, and propose a new one ASAP. Will keep an eye out for any new feedback as well.
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Top 1 @pedro “My first comment is regarding the content: this Constitution outlines the governance principles and processes of the DAO. However, it makes no reference to what the DAO actually governs. The organization exists for a purpose—to decentralize the governance of the technology that aims to be decentralized. Why does the DAO exist?”
Top 2@danimum “We believe the gradual decentralization approach outlined in the Scroll DAO Constitution is a healthy strategy to align both the Foundation and the DAO, ensuring sustainable growth while mitigating potential governance attacks in these early stages.”
Top 3 @Chris_Areta “We suggest modifying the proposal to require an endorsement from the foundation for progression to voting rather than making progression to voting a discretionary power of the foundation. The foundation will clearly be playing a key role in governance (in keeping with the objective of progressive decentralization), and structuring the voting process this way seems less arbitrary than in its current form. DAO contributors should simply understand that they need an endorsement from 3 delegates + the foundation to automatically progress to voting instead of being subjected to an added layer of uncertainty.”

- After passing the temperature check the Foundation’s Governance Team may choose to include the proposal in the next voting cycle, in their sole discretion and acting in good faith.
I have concerns regarding the final step where the Foundation’s Governance Team has the discretion to decide which proposals advance to the voting cycle. This setup could potentially lead to a bottleneck or gatekeeping that might not reflect the wider community’s interest.
To address this, I propose implementing a check-and-balance mechanism where if a proposal that has passed the temperature check is not included in the voting cycle by the Foundation, there should be an alternative path. For example, if a proposal garners a higher number of endorsements from Top Delegates (say 10 or more) it could automatically qualify for the voting cycle regardless of the Foundation’s initial decision. This way, while the Foundation can still filter proposals for alignment with DAO’s goals and legal compliance, the community has a more substantial say in matters that garner significant delegate support, ensuring a more democratic governance process.

Clarifying q - would the extra-layer be the 3 endorsements from delegates? I am not clear how much of a difference it would make it in the grand scheme of things.
Actually was referring specifically to the foundation endorsement. It makes sense to have delegates endorsement for a proposal but since with the current design the submission is already gatekeeped by foundation that extra foundation endorsement might be redundant. In other words, the discretionary power of moving a proposal to a vote would also apply to endorsing a proposal or not.
Anyhow, the approach of rising the delegate endorsements somewhat balances that power so we’d be confortable on supporting that modification.
Intro
@Eugene and governance team, thanks for putting out the effort to draft this document. The number and quality of comments within this post is a clear signal of the value that Delegates and the community see in Scroll.
I’ve read the whole post and would like to emphasize into some comments as well as add new ones. Everything below is categorized for readability.
Proposal drafting:
Re

After passing the temperature check the Foundation’s Governance Team may choose to include the proposal in the next voting cycle, in their sole discretion and acting in good faith
I agree with @Chris_Areta that the above paragraph gives a feeling of uncertainty. It could be drafted with transparent criteria on how a proposal would pass, which could be a combination of what you, @Chris_Areta, @Web3Citizen, and @0xDonPepe said, plus some of my thoughts:
"A proposal shall pass a ‘temperature check’ mechanism, which requires at least 5 endorsements from Verified Delegates + the Scroll Foundation within a post at the Scroll DAO forum, in order to proceed.
The Foundation’s endorsement becomes optional when 10 Delegates from the top 100 also endorse the proposal.
A proposal’s endorsement is understood as a reply in the forum to the proposal in regard. The reply should contain the reasoning behind the support and the following phrase: ‘I am a Scroll Verified Delegate[Link to Delegate’s profile], and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.’"
Re Endorsement timeframes. There could be proposals that take from weeks to months to discuss. A Delegate could find it good enough to pass in the first discussions, but then the proposal could get delayed. I suggest that no-timeframe is put, but the actual count of endorsements.
The author should seek for the endorsement as mentioned by Eugene.
Re After the proposal has been selected
I support @Pedro’s below comment because sometimes even changing a comma can alterate the agreement.

It would be helpful to clarify that the proposal cannot undergo modifications from the moment it is selected until it is voted on, and that if modifications do occur, it will return to the drafting and creation phase and thus require new endorsements.
Security council:
Council members’ election. The Socriocratic approach could help answer the concerns placed by the community. As a TL;DR of the approach:
Sociocratic Election Process
The sociocratic approach to electing members involves a transparent and inclusive process that prioritizes consent and open discussion. Here are the key steps and principles:
Definition of Role: Before the election, the role for which members are being elected is clearly defined. This includes the tasks and responsibilities associated with the role.
Nomination: Members can nominate themselves or others for the role. Nominations are made public, and each nominee is given a chance to explain why they are suitable for the role.
Discussion and Feedback: Members discuss the nominees and provide reasons for their nominations. This discussion is open and transparent, allowing everyone to learn more about the candidates and the role.
Consent-Based Decision: The election is based on consent, not majority vote. Each member must give their consent to a nominee for them to be elected. If any member has a reasoned and paramount objection, the group must address it before proceeding.
Acceptance: Once a nominee receives consent (no significant objections by the community), they are asked if they accept the role. This ensures that the elected member is willing and able to take on the responsibilities.
This process ensures that the elected members are well-suited for their roles and that the group’s decision-making is inclusive and collaborative.
The above could be combined with voting so to follow the governance process we have now or could be directly elected by the Foundation. The important note here is that the community can object on people so the collective intelligence and experiences can emerge.
Decentralization roadmap:
I agree that having an ideal of the decentralization roadmap would help. However, seeing the time and effort the co-creation cycles are taking, I support focusing on the initial co-creation cycles. Those are already part of the decentralization goal. We are collectively creating value. With value co-created will come more “skin in the game” as time and resources have been put, therefore the will to participate in preserving and growing tha value co-created will be more organic and make more sense than focusing on the early-stage governance of only a technology.
If resources are available, then advancing both simultaneously will be ideal.
Good practices enforced through a regulation doc:
Finally, the Constitution is one document, and a set of Regulatory policies (docs/contracts) would complement, as traditional law works.
For example, what @Web3Citizen said should be included in a Regulatory Policy document related to the topic of the Security Council, so that the defined rules are also enforced:
“it would be good practice to require that all changes—whether emergency or non-emergency—be publicly posted on the forum with a brief explanation from the Security Council, along with the mentioned report if it were a emergency action.”
Regulatory policies are easier to modify as they do not embed the risk of modifying the whole Constitution.
Conclusion
Thanks again for setting up this document and for the time invested in reading and replying to everyone. Looking forward to seeing how this initial draft evolves.
Hey eugene! Thanks for the response. Awesome to hear about the upcoming upgrades too. Agreed on the voting cycles and specifying guidelines for that whenever we decide the procedure is tried and tested.
We were actually referring to the section in the post about the threshold for the voting quorum and differentiating the percentage of total supply that must participate in a standard and supermajority vote proposal. But got our answer here:

We thought that the higher approval threshold (76% vs 51%) is enough of a barrier.

The structure and overall layout of the council seems standard. Is there any link where we can learn more about the 12 signers selected? Is there any overlapping between other signers for the Gov manager and admin?
On the question above, after reviewing the governance docs we see that these will be listed there when finalized.
Thanks for sharing @maets23

I have concerns regarding the final step where the Foundation’s Governance Team has the discretion to decide which proposals advance to the voting cycle.
That’s a fair concern and is something that is top of mind when looking forward to the decentralization roadmap we’ll be working on later this year. At this early stage in the DAO, there are some concerns with a process to automatically get a proposal up for vote (from the perspective of alignment), especially while we navigate a low delegated supply. The goal of having this in place is as a safeguard, not as something to be used regularly (ideally there is enough alignment and collaboration that it would never need to be used).

that extra foundation endorsement might be redundant
I see, sorry for misunderstanding. I hear where you’re coming from. Even if it’s not technically required, I do imagine we’ll jump in at least a bit on the forum so it’s not a unreasonable expectation overall.

"A proposal shall pass a ‘temperature check’ mechanism, which requires at least 5 endorsements from Verified Delegates + the Scroll Foundation within a post at the Scroll DAO forum, in order to proceed.
This is very similar to the proposed revision (coming soon)

The sociocratic approach to electing members involves a transparent and inclusive process that prioritizes consent and open discussion
Definitely hoping to see certain aspects of this come up. I think the first councils will be grant related, so it will be interesting to see what comes up in the co-design there.

set of Regulatory policies
We can also add them to our gov process doc as it feels relevant there. If there’s strong desire for a policy doc, we can explore that.

On the question above, after reviewing the governance docs we see that these will be listed there when finalized.
Hopefully that will be finalized soon and we can announce it and will link to it in the gov docs.
Will follow up with a revised proposal. Thanks y’all!
Dear friends,
I come with a dissenting opinion, but great love.
As far as constitutions go, @eugene, I think this represents fine work.
One structural point first: the amount of nits in this thread is likely not because you didn’t draft a solid document, but rather because something about the underlying political architecture is unsound.
So, what is the architectural issue? Here are the three quotes which reveal it most clearly (emphasis added):
“After passing the temperature check the Foundation’s Governance Team may choose to include the proposal in the next voting cycle, in their sole discretion and acting in good faith.”
“Thereafter, after it has been in the timelock for three days, it will be executed manually by the Governance Manager.”
"The Governor Manager has the ability to create proposals regardless of whether its voting power meets the proposal threshold. "
That is, despite all of the noble words in the rest of the document and the first principle of gradual decentralization, sole discretion is maintained at all times by a small and exclusive set of people. The performative contradiction cannot be resolved.
I point this out not to attack @eugene (whom I adore) or Scroll (who I respect). I point this out because the whole space needs to do some serious reflection on what good governance actually looks like.
We have known since 2018 that onchain voting schemes are fundamentally flawed. Some heroic figures continue to beat this unpopular drum today, 7 years later.
I continue to hope that we can internalize the lessons of this research and craft mechanisms that do not have votes at all, which do not need a natural language constitution, and which do not need me to perform the role of disempowered delegate.
I have proposed one such mechanism here for those who are interested. It is specific to that context (as all good mechanisms must necessarily be) and so is not directly applicable to what Scroll Governance could one day become.
I look forward to watching this document hopefully live into the potential I know its authors seek to imbue it with.
Thanks for joining the discussion and flagging this. On the one hand, I directionally agree with the criticism and we are definitely thinking about and working towards a future that is both not centralized on a small group and that relies less on token voting given the challenges of that approach.
At the same time, I do want to respectfully push back on some of what is being stated here.

sole discretion is maintained at all times by a small and exclusive set of people
This statement implies in perpetuity and that is neither the desire nor will it be the case. Yes, we are not pretending to have taken the full onchain voting structure day 1 (and have had feedback from many of the delegates that this is appreciated). I think it’s important to acknowledge the distinction between where we are, where we are headed, and what are our goals. This statement, to me, implies that the goal is to always have a small and exclusive group overseeing, which is counter to our objectives (and I would personally see as a huge failure on my part).

I have proposed one such mechanism here for those who are interested.
I would love to discuss this in more detail. Happy to dedicate a future call to this. To be explicit, are there specific elements of that design that you think we should be discussing here? Are you more generally signaling that we should be shifting towards minimizing governance?