Giveth Governance benefits from a robust design and utilizes several platforms to aggregrate and foster advice, consensus, signalling, voting and all the other wonderful actions enabled by Web3 decision-making systems.
We can divide governance participants into three categories based on their possible actions and the platforms they can use to participate. They are GIV token holders, rDAO members, and the greater community (or simply, the community).
The Community
Being part of the community has no requirements. If you know about Giveth and want to get engaged then we welcome you openly with our highest of vibes and spiciest of memes.
The best place for formal conversations around Giveth take place on our Discourse forum. Our forum invites a wide variety of topics for anyone to introduce in-depth discussion, however more importantly, this is the quintessential launchpad where any legitimate governance proposal must start from.
Anyone in the community can create a proposal, however there are some considerations to make:
- Proposals ideally have a clearly defined intention that outlines actions to be taken, potential consequences and funds requested (if applicable).
- We adhere to a Community Covenant which is our main reference point for any disputes or contentions.
- We use Advice Process to gather feedback and refine proposals.
- Proposals must remain on the forum, open for Advice Process, for a minimum of 5 days.
If all conditions have been met, including time requirements for Advice Process, proposals can move on into Snapshot for voting. In order to participate in these DApps you must hold either GIV or rGIV, respectively.
If a proposal desires to skip or shorten the Advice Process, in the case of financial urgency for example, they may do so while providing a written disclaimer and a reason for doing so on their proposal. Skipping or shortening the Advice Process decreases the chances of a proposal passing, do so with great discretion!
Soft-Consensus
We often use polls inside the forum or on Discord to get soft-consensus for preferred outcomes. It’s acceptable to use these same methods for informal or low-impact decisions. However, for formal proposals they must indicate a clear intended outcome to keep objectives as clear as possible. The on-chain voting systems we use do not support multiple-choice voting.*
rGIV Tokens
This is the Giveth reputation token. rGIV DAO members hold rGIV and use an Aragon DAO deployment to create and vote on proposals using simple Yes/No voting mechanics. Only rGIV holders can vote or make proposals. Proposals will remain open for voting for 5 days and must adhere to the Quorum and Support Required percentages or else it will fail.
Snapshot Voting
Snapshot allows all of a users rGIV & GIV holdings, including GIV staked in GIVpower to be counted and calculated towards their total voting power used on the Giveth Snapshot Snapshot is gasless and chain-agnostic and is a magnificent tool to capture community sentiment on proposals and issues that do not directly request funds from Giveth.
Our Quorum is the total amount of GIV tokens that need to participate in a vote in order for it to be considered valid. The Quorum is set to 1 Million GIV
Working Group Proposals
Giveth Working Groups operate in Seasons, which are either 3 or 6 months in length.
Every 3 or 6 months GIV holders have the opportunity to vote on which Working Groups should be prioritized and funded. Working Group Leads will post Proposals outlining what they have achieved in the previous season and what they plan to achieve in the next season. The next season goals are divided into 3 scopes - SHRINK, SUSTAIN and GROW - each more ambitious than the next and thus requiring more funding.
After minimum advice process is met for all proposals a vote is created on the Giveth Snapshot using weighted voting to gather preference for in what order should Working Groups be prioritized with the available budget.
To learn more about Working Groups check out our DAO structure documentation
Informal Decisions
Not all decisions require formal on-chain votes. There is room for making low-impact, agile decisions via a range of platforms that Giveth’s community utilizes. For the most clarity we refer to the Covenant’s section on off-chain decision making:
Giveth uses Advice Process as its primary practice for flat decision making to empower contributors with agency to move their cultural proposals forward. Advice Process is written in the Giveth documentation and promoted verbally in community calls. When a non-financial, no-code decision will likely affect a large part of the community, the use of off-chain voting using polls in the Discord or Forum is implemented. A decision is considered legitimate when it respects this covenant, is promoted to the awareness of the community and its results aren’t challenged within 2 weeks.
Giveth community spaces, including the Giveth Forum, GitHub and Discord, as well as other off-chain forums that may emerge in the future, are expected to adhere to this covenant.