AGP Positions

As a member of the Aragon Cooperative I’ve already signaled my voting intention for all of the Q1 AGPs (see above). I wanted to use this post to give a bit of context about my decisions and share with the community.

AGP-5 Aragon One Flock Proposal

Position: Yes

Justification: While I’m a bit apprehensive about the amount of funding and would have preferred the proposal be broken into two parts, one with modest team expansion, and one with additional funding to double the team size over the next year so that the community could make a more granular decision in the AGP process. As it stands there is just one proposal to approve or reject. The A1 team has worked really diligently to get us to the point we are at now, and you can literally create an on-chain organization for a few bucks in transaction fees on mainnet today. The proposed scope of work for the next year includes delivering the Aragon Network and Court which will make on-chain organizations much more compelling and extend the scope of ANT utility beyond just voting on AGPs. Based on the track record of the Aragon One team so far, I expect that expanding the team will result in similar quality of work and an ability to deliver even more, even more rapidly.

AGP-10: Community Funding DAO

Position: Yes

Justification: Even though I feel like this will be a failed experiment due to lack of a clear process for how people would request funding, how approvals would happen, how long votes would last, whether work must be completed before submitting a funding request or after, and many other smaller logistical details have not been detailed or discussed at all during the proposal process, the ammount of funding is small enough that I think as a community such a failure will still provide a lot of valuable insight into the coordination challenges associated with funding a bounty program. Hopefully those insights will lead to a more thoughtful proposal and discussion around community funding initiatives in the next AGP cycle.

AGP-11: Aragon Association Budget

Position: Yes

Justification: As much as it should not in the future, the Association plays a critical role in the Aragon projects operations today and I like the fact that the Association put forth an AGP to transparently define and get their budget approved, even though their privileged position in the current AGP process does not make it strictly necessary.

AGP-12: Aragon Holiday

Position: No

Justification: this feels silly and like a waste of time, while there really is no downside, I think rejecting this sets a tone as to the types of AGPs that should reasonably be put forth in the future.

AGP-14: Improved Voting Logistics

Position: Yes

Justification: These improvements seem like reasonable and minor tweaks to the AGP process that were driven by lessons learned after the initial AGP-1 ratification vote and leading up to the Q1 vote. Nothing seemed particularly objectionable, and I hope we continue to improve and refine our community governance processes.

AGP-16: Extend AGP Vote Duration

Position: No

Justification: This was a common request after the initial AGP-1 ratification, that the vote duration was too short. Personally I think 48 hours should be sufficient time for anyone to cast votes. The period is not intended to be for discussion or making up your mind–that should be happening continuously. I would much rather see us work to improve the quality of discussion/discourse/awareness prior to the vote period starting, then to extend the process in the hopes that more people will see the vote is happening and vote.

AGP-17: Nest 2019 Budget

Position: Yes

Justification: The nest program has been quite beneficial, and while the scope and focus of the program has changed a bit due to market conditions, it still feels like an important program to continue, as it has been responsible for incubating some of Aragon’s most significant community contributors. Eventually I would like to see it replaced with a more direct (and decentralized) community funding initiative, but I think we should start experimenting on a small-scale with those efforts through things like the Aragon Cooperative, and Community Funding DAO before discontinuing the Nest program.

AGP-18: AN Security Partner Authio

Position: No

Justification: I think the Authio guys have submitted a good, well thought out proposal, but I think the timing is bad. We just completed multiple expensive audits so the initial overall audit, while important for Authio to do to prepare for smaller ongoing audits is a bit poorly timed for the project. I would like to see this proposal rejected and resubmitted in Q2, as I think that may be a more appropriate time and would allow for more thorough community evaluation, and perhaps competing proposals from other auditing teams to be submitted as well. That being said I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and engagement that the Authio team has shown engaging with the community around their AGP.

AGP-19: Autark Flock Funding

Position: Yes

Justification: Autark is an extension of the TPS nest team, which although has been somewhat delayed, I think adds a specific set of functionality that is necessary for operating an organization on a day to day basis, where as the existing set of apps produced by A1 provide a strong foundation for securely managing an organization at a high level, being able to use the the planning suite to efficiently come to consensus on assigning work, evaluating completed work, and paying/rewarding contributors will be important for early adoption. If this proposal is not approved for flock, I would also be happy to see the TPS nest grant extended to support this teams continued development of the application suite.