Title: New_Social_Governance_Layer_for_Ethereum
Category: Magicians

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-04T15:18:36.915Z

This forum is dedicated to discussing the development of a new application that can be used as the main medium for Ethereum community members to discuss, debate, and vote on proposals that affect the entire Ethereum network.
Problem:
Right now, there is no formal governance process that quantitatively seeks community input on major protocol changes.
Currently, core devs make decisions on significant protocol changes. While they do seek out community input, this community input comes in the form of GitHub comments, Twitter, surveys, and medium posts. The current mechanism to gauge community input is incredibly amorphous and non-standardized. Furthermore, many ETH holders/Ethereum community members do not even know this process currently exists.
Even more concerning, this process does not involve quantitatively gauging the sentiment of the community. For example, in the ProgPOW debate there was no “vote” taken for the community and respective stakeholders (miners, dapp developers, etc.) to truly voice in their opinions in way that is comprehensive.
While a petition was made, a petition is not necessarily the best medium for gauging the sentiment of an entire community. A formal debate and voting process, where people could transparently see and vote on all the arguments that are being made in writing, would have been more productive.
Solution:
What if there was a new application that became the main medium for community members to voice their opinions on major protocol changes? A place for people and entities building on top of Ethereum to debate ideas and even vote on those ideas so core devs have a more accurate quantitative understanding on what the community desires; an application that is developed solely to serve this need.
A sort of legislative branch to the core devs executive branch. Skin in the game (i.e. ETH holdings) could be required to participate and vote in these debates in order to align incentives around seeking out the best solution to the topics being discussed.
My name is Mattison Asher, and I am incredibly interested in working with other community members to build this new Ethereum social governance medium. Would love to hear everyone’s thoughts. My email is mattison.asher0@gmail.com.

Author: lrettig
Date: 2020-04-05T12:16:32.860Z

The Decred community uses a pretty cool platform called Politeia. Do you think it could/should look something like this?

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-05T17:36:29.502Z

@lrettig thank you for pointing Politeia out!
I think Politeia is a terrific start, though could be significantly improved upon and adapted to better fit the Ethereum community.
What Politeia Does Well


Host effective votes on where treasury funds should be allocated


Facilitates productive debate


Requires a user to have DCR to participate in voting


Standardizes times for voting (ex 1 week for voting)


What Could be Improved Upon


Hosting debates and voting on not only topics that pertain to where treasury funds should be allocated, but also key protocol changes that dramatically affect the entire network such as ProgPOW implementation


Publicizing these debates and discussions in order to increase community participation through social media and crypto publications (like get out the vote campaigns)


Having a standardized time for how long discussion can occur before a vote (i.e. 2 weeks, 1 month, etc.) rather than having the proposal maker arbitrarily choose when the voting period should begin


Making the UI of the application more gamey/accessible rather than sterile


Categorizing discussion topics (ex. scaling, BD funding, consensus algorithm changes, etc.)


Allowing users to make social media profiles on the application that display more of who they are/what interests they represent (i.e. indications that they are/representing miners, applications like MakerDAO, core devs, etc)


In short, I think something like Politeia is a good base/example to start from, but believe this new social governance layer for Ethereum could be a far more effective tool for aligning the Ethereum community.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-05T17:46:49.804Z

This new application could even have a time slot at devcon where some of the most pressing topics in the Ethereum community can be debated by key leaders. The conversation can then be uploaded onto the application so people can watch it as they continue to debate the topic prior to voting.

Author: GridTechs
Date: 2020-04-09T00:19:44.672Z

I see, that can be definitely discussed upon. I appreciate your feedback. Updates regarding the concern will be posted here.
Brent

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-09T00:35:13.040Z

@GridTechs thanks Brent!
Let me know if I can be helpful in any way, as I am incredibly passionate about seeing something like this be developed for the Ethereum community.

Author: adamschmideg
Date: 2020-04-09T15:03:29.212Z

I like your proposal. As I see governance-related topics don’t receive much attention in general until a hot topic comes up like ProgPOW.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-09T15:22:05.656Z

@adamschmideg thank you!
I couldn’t agree more. Having this sort of application in place will give the Ethereum community the tools it needs to reach a more comprehensive social consensus around governance topics that deserve attention.
Having a process for people voicing their opinion on a topic effectively would make the community feel an even stronger affiliation towards Ethereum.
Additionally, better to have this application in place before the next contentious debate (whether it be on ProgPOW or something else) so that the community has a way of effectively voicing their opinion on these contentious issues that can be quantitatively measured.

Author: adamschmideg
Date: 2020-04-09T16:50:27.321Z

Maybe @souptacular could chime in here  He’s worked a lot in this department.

Author: souptacular
Date: 2020-04-10T22:55:09.588Z

Thanks for tagging me @adamschmideg!
I think ths is a great idea @masher. There have been many people come up with ideas of this sort who either lose interest or get too busy to pursue it so I’m happy to connect you with others who have brought together similar ideas so we can collectively work on execution once things are fleshed out.
I sent you a DM, but feel free to also email hudson@ethereum.org (that goes for anyone interested in being connected to the people I reference in the previous paragraph). I will also send them to this thread to keep things open and neat.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-10T23:17:50.533Z

@souptacular perfect! Thank you

Author: GridTechs
Date: 2020-04-14T05:08:10.218Z

https://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/5478500/1f69646b9156 Hi everyone please take a moment to take this survey. It will help out greatly. Thank you

Author: edsonayllon
Date: 2020-04-15T00:05:45.676Z

This would be very useful.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-15T16:53:05.932Z

@edsonayllon thank you for the affirmation! Couldn’t agree more

Author: jpitts
Date: 2020-04-15T17:35:24.002Z

@masher this is a great write-up! It is important to very clearly describe the problem, which I often describe as a protocol decision process which lacks coordination and full representation from stakeholders (perhaps more a qualitative problem than quantitative).
Such a governance layer has been discussed widely (usually it is on Twitter in recent years). Often efforts get hung up 1. age old and somewhat circular discussions of the nature of governance, and 2. apathy.
Formal democratic governance of the protocol and related tech is not likely at this point, but something more than what is accomplished in the EIP process and core devs calls is needed for legitimacy and representation. Still, the current process, particularly for advancing the protocol and maintaining the health of the network, is functioning fairly well IMO.
What can happen “now” is to organize people and build structures for gathering logic and measuring sentiment, and to do this around key issues. Such a process can then iterative gain legitimacy.
@lrettig makes a very good suggestion w/  Politeia.
Another one being looked at by some in the community is kialo.
We should also very closely examine pol.is.
This software is being used for civic participation in Taiwan by Audrey Tang (an open source dev and government minister who spoke at Devcon5).



The Christian Science Monitor – 8 Apr 20



The web’s a threat to democracy? Think again, Taiwan says.
Taiwan’s digital minister Audrey Tang is leading a charge to make technology strengthen democracy, not undermine it.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-15T17:50:52.112Z

@jpitts absolutely! I by no means was criticizing the EIP process at all, as I think that process is functioning extremely well.
I see this new application as complimentary support for the core developers overseeing the EIP process. It might be useful for them to have ways to measure sentiment, as you mentioned.
Agreed that formal complete democratic governance cannot be fully implemented at this time.
Agreed that one of the core functions of this new application will be to organize people and build structures for gathering logic and measuring sentiment around key areas, which will then lead to an increase in legitimacy.
Those are some great options you presented with Politeia, Kialo, and Poli.is. That being said, I think creating a stand alone app that’s completely devoted to this function would also be a terrific option.
We could integrate applications such as Metamask so that we know that the people who are participating have some sort of stake in Ethereum (i.e. skin in the game). This requirement would be one way to deter nefarious actors.
Maybe, as @souptacular suggested earlier, the next steps are to formalize a working group devoted to this? There might be one already and I just don’t know about, which would be my bad!

Author: edsonayllon
Date: 2020-04-24T00:31:10.868Z

@masher That link doesn’t seem to work.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-24T00:58:43.123Z

@edsonayllon Thanks for pointing that out!
You can click this new working link in order to join the discord working group on constructing the new social governance layer:


Discord



Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games
Discord is great for playing games and chilling with friends, or even building a worldwide community. Customize your own space to talk, play, and hang out.





Let me know if there continues to be issues

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-24T15:52:17.578Z

Thanks @edsonayllon and @juliensongbell for joining the discord group!

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-24T15:58:59.571Z

@evabeylin I see that you have worked on a lot of governance related issues through reading through your posts on other Ethereum Magician forums.
Do you have any interest in joining this working group? Think you would be an excellent member

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-25T15:22:22.326Z

@econoar just saw your frustration via Twitter regarding ProgPOW being put back in the agenda for the next ACD call.
One of the benefits of having this sort of layer I described above is that there can be more clarity regarding the community’s perspective on big decisions, such as ProgPOW, since community input will be better quantified.

Author: CanonizerJim
Date: 2020-04-27T21:20:45.533Z

We’ve been researching methods to do precisely this, and we’re very interested in helping. Sign me up!

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-27T21:24:49.675Z

@CanonizerJim awesome!
Feel free to join the discord working group by clicking here



Discord



Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games
Discord is great for playing games and chilling with friends, or even building a worldwide community. Customize your own space to talk, play, and hang out.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-04-29T21:31:52.035Z

Just realized the Discord join link was set to expire after 1 day
This one won’t expire:



Discord



Discord - Group Chat That’s All Fun & Games
Discord is great for playing games and chilling with friends, or even building a worldwide community. Customize your own space to talk, play, and hang out.

Author: gcolvin
Date: 2020-05-01T15:34:05.056Z

What is consensus decision making?
Consensus decision making is a creative and dynamic way of reaching agreement between all members of a group. Instead of simply voting for an item and having the majority of the group getting their way, a group using consensus is committed to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with.  This ensures that all opinions, ideas and concerns are taken into account. Through listening closely to each other, the group aims to come up with proposals that work for everyone.
…
In this guide you’ll find lots of information to help you make decisions using consensus, including why you might use it, the basic principles and process, how to apply it to larger groups of people and ideas for dealing with common problems. We also have a short guide to consensus, and our guide Facilitating meetings contains lots of tips for making your consensus meetings run smoothly.


Seeds for Change



Consensus Decision Making - Seeds for Change
Consensus is a decision-making process that works creatively to include all persons making the decision. This briefing includes sections consensus in large groups and consensus troubleshooting.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-05-10T19:38:56.424Z

I know Tezos is different because they have on-chain governance, and their solutions is not what is envisioend for Ethereum, but check out thier newly updated Agora App
Very user friendly. While the “votes” that take place are more binding (and represent on-chain voting) than the debates that would happen on this prospective new app for the Ethereum community, I think the real takeaway is that they have built an attractive app where the Tezos community can congregate.

Author: gcolvin
Date: 2020-05-14T20:47:48.736Z

jpitts:

Formal democratic governance of the protocol and related tech is not likely at this point…


I’ve argued before that it is likely infeasible for legal reasons.  Many developers are working independently or as contractors – even the Foundation teams.  That means we are facing personal liability for our actions – even possible jail time.  Unless an organization can and will shield me from that liability I will only take their opinions of what I should do as advice.
And beyond liability, I’m only likely to do as I’m told if you pay me.
And even then, I can hardly imagine an engineering team in industry making decisions about the security and reliability of their software based on opinions – even their management’s opinions.  Only rational arguments matter.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-05-14T21:29:41.346Z

@gcolvin One thing that would be interesting is to start a sort of PAC for Ethereum as a whole that would lobby legislators to ensure developers are not viewed as culpable under law.
CoinCenter sort of does this for cyrpto as a whole, but an Ethereum spacific one could be very interesting.
Could even be a branch of the Ethereum Foundation.

Author: gcolvin
Date: 2020-05-14T21:57:52.921Z

The Internet Society promotes and supports the Internet in many ways, and is a corporate-level organization with paid membership and formal voting.  It takes on liability for the IETF engineers, who remain self-organized, acting by rough consensus.
It generally doesn’t pay the engineers.  These are generally people who want to make a contribution to open work and are supported by their employers – whose industry relies on that open work.

Author: gh1dra
Date: 2020-05-16T18:01:37.515Z

What do you think are the barriers to create a similar entity for the Ethereum space? I see more of the apathy come from the fact that any mechanism that’s implemented or suggested above would have an accountability that extends beyond capital interests.
From my point of view, there is a huge conflation in this discussion (and the meta) about what is rational from a technical perspective and what is rational as defined by economic game theory. It is technically sound to implement ProgPow (no matter how many iterations it takes, what vulnerabilities are uncovered from the current implementation etc. to fulfill the original security guarantees in the yellow paper, the core devs seem to agree with me), but in this current impasse, economically infeasible to some of the largest shareholders in the space who fund client teams and operate Dapps.
The closer we get to 2.0 the less there is an incentive to actually resolve the issues that caused this contentious debate in the first place. And those that benefit the most from obfuscating how the process actually works will continue to force poor technical decisions onto smaller shareholders.
Ruling by committee by those who do not have enough context to actually make educated decisions is worrisome, but I argue that outcome would be less likely if it was clear who was speaking to what types of changes to the protocol as purely social reputation and technical credibility matters more than we’d like to admit, especially since this discussion has its roots in trying to engineer our way out of this political problem.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-05-18T13:49:34.526Z

@gh1dra I am in the process of building an app that will effectively track and gauge community sentiment on Ethereum’s biggest questions (such as ProgPOW, scaling solutions, etc.) as we speak!
Your input on this app will be invaluable, as you have clearly thought about these issues deeply.
I personally have no opinion on the ProgPOW debate, but think there needs to be a better way to deabte and gauge sentiment on the issue.
The app that I am building will give more context to the committee that is actually making decisions, which will lead to more informed decision making.
There will further be a reputational system tied closely with this application to ensure people know about the debaters social repuation and technical credibility

Author: gh1dra
Date: 2020-05-18T16:56:48.466Z

I’m super aligned with your approach, and would like to contribute in any capacity that makes sense! I was responding more to the comment about creating an Internet Society-like organization and what role that would play contrasted with EF.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-05-29T15:00:04.267Z

Just as an update for everyone, I have assembled a team and we are in the process of building out this application 
Can’t wait for everyone to see it!
Please reach out to me if you would like to be involved in anyway.
Right now, we are looking for ambassadors from the miner, defi, dapp, educator, wallet provider, researcher, and exchange communities.
If you think you would be a good fit (or know someone that would be a good fit), feel free to email me at mattison@theether.io

Author: masher
Date: 2020-06-04T00:26:14.011Z

Enter The Ether, a new social governance experience for Ethereans
Sign up to get notified when it launches! 
https://theether.io/

Author: jpitts
Date: 2020-06-30T21:45:42.319Z

I read this interesting article by kvark / Dzmitry Malyshau from the Mozilla organization: Missing structure in technical discussions
In the article he explores the difficult issues in technical decision-making and the need for structure, naming several usual suspects for using software to guide the decision-making process.
The amazing gem he points to is Argdown, a Markdown-style syntax and display framework for complex argumentation. Of course this is only one piece in the puzzle, but as an artifact it can do wonders. A common format enables facilitators to maintain a mental map of the key arguments and findings in any discussion. This helps ensure that key information is not overlooked, that concerns from relevant stakeholders are more likely to be “on the table” as the decision is being made.


github.com




GitHub - christianvoigt/argdown: a simple syntax for complex argumentation
a simple syntax for complex argumentation






@masher, perhaps this can be used in The Ether. Perhaps we can try to use it in those community discussions which become epic, taking the big arguments and assembling an argument summary document in the same vein as @souptacular did for ProgPOW in the Arguments pros and cons section.
Lastly, there is already built-in visualization, check it out in the documentation.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-07-09T16:31:35.577Z

Agreed! We are using a similar argument structuring system

Author: masher
Date: 2020-07-31T17:38:35.109Z

Just published a new primer on social governance. Can also re-post the text here people are interested.
https://medium.com/@mattison_84961/a-primer-on-ethereum-social-governance-fde47d678de9

Author: masher
Date: 2020-08-17T20:21:53.430Z

https://medium.com/coinmonks/ethereum-social-governance-shouldnt-be-left-to-the-birds-8ae8436d5255

Author: masher
Date: 2020-09-11T17:19:34.073Z

We are live 
https://theether.io/

Author: natesoo
Date: 2020-09-24T07:33:58.913Z

Congratulations on The Ether.  That is truly a huge step forward in the advancement of governance tools.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-09-24T13:51:39.234Z

Thank you very much

Author: mudgen
Date: 2020-09-29T18:42:32.205Z

When implementing on-chain decentralized governance I suggest using EIP-2535 Diamond Standard as is being done by DerivaDEX and planned by BarnBridge:



DEV Community



Ethereum Diamonds for On-Chain Decentralized Governance
A great use-case for Ethereum diamonds is decentralized on-chain governance.  People vote on-chain on...

Author: kladkogex
Date: 2020-10-02T18:15:40.742Z

Totally agree with many things people said here.
Ethereum governance is NOEXISTENT and totally centralized.
WE SIMPLY CANT CONTINUE  LIKE THAT!
Ir is the fucking opposite of Linux or other sane opensource projects!

Author: masher
Date: 2020-10-02T18:38:36.728Z

@kladkogex You should really consider joining The Ether!
Our goal is to increase community agency in the governance process and also give Core Devs an easy way to gauge community sentiment 
Would love to talk to you about it if you are interested in learning more

Author: gcolvin
Date: 2020-10-04T21:17:05.044Z

I find this whole notion of Social Governance problematic.
If anyone who doesn’t indemnify me can to tell me what to do as a Core Developer I will have to quit that role.  If I wind up in a courtroom I’m willing to argue that I acted on my best technical judgement to support the health of the network.  I’m not willing to argue that I followed the sentiments – feelings – of an ill-defined community.
That doesn’t mean I don’t care about the community.  Just that in the end the core developers alone are responsible for their decisions and their consequences.  If the community wants to get organized enough to collectively make decisions about the protocol they will have to get organized to enough to take responsibility for those decisions and protect the core devs from their consequence.
Better, I think, that the community get organized enough to provide useful guidance to the core devs, and mature enough to respect our decisions.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-10-04T21:28:26.788Z

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
We at The Ether are not at all advocating for anyone telling you what to do.
Social Governance in our view is more about gauging what the community thinks about various topics so you as a Core Developer have that data set at hand about why the community thinks a certain way when making your independent decisions.
That data set is just one piece of a larger framework Core Devs use to make a decision.
The process already exists right now, it is just inefficient because it stems from eyeballing Twitter conversations, which isn’t effective.
Furthermore, the way we envision social governance is exactly what you have outlined.
We are trying to better organize the community so they can provide useful guidance to the Core Devs, but also always understand that it is the Core Devs’ decision.

Author: kladkogex
Date: 2020-10-05T11:21:01.546Z

Hey Masher,
I joined thanks!
By the way the github signup seems to have a bug - it does not work at least on Chrome/Ubuntu 18.
I tried to sign up with github first and then moved to twitter sign-up which was successful

Author: masher
Date: 2020-10-05T16:49:26.994Z

Thanks for letting me know

Author: gcolvin
Date: 2020-10-06T14:21:28.171Z

Thanks.  Note that “what the community thinks” means much less to me than “why they think it.”   A million bad arguments don’t add up to a good one.  For EIPs we have this forum already where people can engage with the substance of proposals.

Author: masher
Date: 2020-10-23T00:32:32.195Z

We just submitted a project relating to The Ether for ETHOnline
We turned our native reputation system (XP) into a non-transferable NFT. Reputation is essential for social governance to work effectively.
Want to check it out?
You can see our ETHOnline submission here: https://hack.ethglobal.co/showcase/the-ether-xp-non-transferable-nft-that-acts-as-reputation-rec9dE04i23aCH4aq
Why did we do it?
Read this medium post: https://medium.com/coinmonks/take-back-your-digital-reputation-98c94d68ef60

Author: masher
Date: 2020-10-27T14:00:26.306Z

twitter.com



Mattison Asher (@TheEther2077) on X
@TheEther2077

Our integration with @BrightIDProject is LIVE 🥳

Now you can post claims on The Ether that only BrightID verified members can participate in, ensuring Sybil resistance 

We are the 1st social app to integrate with BrightID 🦾 

Authenticate via your profile page on mobile now

Author: sachayves
Date: 2020-11-01T19:00:10.794Z

Social Governance in our view is more about gauging what the community thinks about various topics so you as a Core Developer have that data set at hand about why the community thinks a certain way when making your independent decisions.

If this is the intention, then I strongly suggest you drop the term governance. It is at worst a very dangerous error, and at best both confusing and misplaced.
The term governance is usually understood as implying far more than just gauging sentiment. It is tied to the authority, decision-making and rules of a social system.
(fyi: the term legislative branch, is equally misleading, since this layer, as you propose it, does not have the power to do anything)
cc @gcolvin

Author: masher
Date: 2020-11-01T20:05:40.335Z

@sachayves thank you so much for the feedback! I agree that the legislative branch portion in the original post was not the best comparison to use.
The reason why we used the word “governance” is because this sort of building community support and gauging sentiment for EIPs is outlined as part of Ethereum’s governance process in EIP-1.
EIP authors are supposed to invite “the community to give feedback” and should “try and gauge whether the interest in the EIP is commensurate with both the work involved in implementing it and how many parties will have to conform to it.”
Furthermore, EIP-1 states that “negative community feedback will be taken into consideration and may prevent your EIP from moving past the Draft stage.”
Finally, according to EIP-1, there is language that suggests that “various stakeholders are well-represented” in providing input to EIPs.
According to EIP-1, gauging community sentiment is part of the Ethereum governance process.
We are not trying to change Ethereum’s governance process at all, but merely desire to fulfill what is outlined in EIP-1.

Author: sachayves
Date: 2020-11-02T07:17:07.582Z

@masher perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I’m not taking issue with the fact that this proposal is part of the governance process.
(Having said that, I’d question the utility of anchoring on that term. Being part of the governance process has such a wide scope that it’s an almost meaningless clarification. This message is part of the governance process. As is almost everything we do.)
The issue is that this is not a governance layer. A governance layer is usually thought of as encompassing the authority, decision-making and rules of a social system. As such, it concerns the distribution and exercise of power.
As far as I understand, what you are proposing is a sentiment gauging layer to aid in the governance process. This layer, by itself, has no power to do anything. As such, calling it a governance layer is at best inaccurate, and at worst dangerously misleading.
(To be frank, what worries me even more is your use of the terms legislative branch and power structures. This suggests to me that you either have ambitions that go past a sentiment gauging layer and encompass reforming and/or formalising existing power structures, or you haven’t thought clearly enough about the scope of this proposal)

Author: masher
Date: 2020-11-02T15:43:18.633Z

Thank you again for this feedback, you bring up many points that need to be clarified.
Yes, you are exactly right. We are trying to create a sentiment gauging layer to aid in the governance process, and this layer by itself has no power to do anything.
I admit that my diction in the original post was not always on point. The first post more reflects the initial burst of energy around the project, and I agree I used metaphors that don’t make sense and also could be interpreted in ways I did not mean.
As the project has developed from the initial post in April, we have moved away from terms like “layer” and never utilize the “legislative branch” metaphor. In fact, in all of our official public facing materials (i.e. medium posts, tweets, etc.), we never use the words “layer” or “legislative branch” in reference to what we are creating.
Our Medium is here and our Twitter is here if you would like to do a quick word search.
We are definitely not attempting to reform or formalize existing power structures. Our goal is to provide whatever power structure that currently exists a tool to gauge sentiment that they can then utilize when making decisions.
Note that the current power structure of course does not have to go with what the sentiment shows, but we do believe having a more comprehensive sentiment gauging tool is better than the current process of eyeballing Twitter to gauge sentiment.