(Note that this is a draft and you can comment there)
Context
When Kleros was initially created, DAO tooling was almost non-existent, so a cooperative entity was created to conclude token sales, hold the treasury, develop the protocol and find integrations. Now the Kleros DAO is way more mature, we have better tools to evaluate proposal impacts (futarchy) and there is a desire within the community to be more involved.
This will of the community can be seen with the failure of “KIP-81: Strategic PNK Sale to Kleros Cooperative” and the numerous requests from users on telegram to give more power to the DAO.
We therefore propose that the Kleros DAO would be able to provide instructions to the Cooperative. Of course, the cooperative is never legally obliged to follow the instructions of the DAO, but we think that it can be pushed to do so with two levers:
If the cooperative were to significantly disregard the DAO wishes, the DAO would commit to stop the PNK grants to the cooperative (and possibly give those to another entity or decide of funding directly).
There should be some goodwill of the cooperative to follow community wishes. We can expect that a significant number of Cooperative members are also PNK holders and they could vote in the cooperative assembly to uphold the DAO wishes.
Proposal
We propose for the DAO to make requests to determine large cooperative orientations. Those requests should account for around 70-80% of the cooperative net spending. The remaining 20-30% being left for fast or discretionary decision making.
The DAO commits that if those requests are mainly fulfilled, the DAO will provide more PNK grants to the Cooperative in the future. The DAO also commits that if those requests are mainly not fulfilled, the DAO will stop further PNK grants to the Cooperative and either fund one or multiple entities or spend its treasury directly.
In case it is not obvious whether those requests are mainly fulfilled or mainly non fulfilled, this proposal shall have no effect.
By itself, the proposal has no direct execution and establishes a governance framework. Further proposals would consist of requests to the Cooperative.
Aligned on the spirit, but not on most of the specifics, which feel overall quite vague to me.
A few points where I see real gaps:
No diagnostic. The proposal sets an abstract framework without documenting what’s actually wrong today (declining disputes, drift toward internal products, rising costs, transparency gaps, lack of community input on strategic decisions). Without diagnostic, it’s hard for the community to assess what “requests” the DAO should even make.
No transparency requirements. Nothing on salaries, spending by project, or treasury reporting. The DAO would be asked to evaluate compliance without the data needed to do so.
The 70–80% threshold is too loose. Who decides what falls inside the 70–80%? Who decides what counts as “mainly fulfilled”? The clause “if it is not obvious, this proposal shall have no effect” creates a built-in escape hatch.
No explicit scope. Leadership, hires, project launches, the framework should name what the DAO is expected to weigh in on, not leave it fully open-ended.
No public traceability on Cooperative member votes. The reputational lever you mention only works if the votes are actually visible.
PNK grants should pause now. The Cooperative already holds significant ETH reserves. Continuing to mint PNK, diluting holders, while sitting on ETH that could fund operations doesn’t make sense. The Coop should spend its ETH treasury first but ultimately, whether to mint PNK or use ETH is a DAO decision.
You can put a “diagnostic” in comments. If the “diagnostic” put in the proposal is too opinionated, it will lead to people rejecting the entire proposal (because they don’t want to support the “diagnostic”) despite agreeing with a plan of action.
This can be done in another proposal. Good proposals should be like good code, do one thing but do it very well. If we end up mixing guidance and what the DAO would want to do with this guidance, some people will reject it because they disagree on what to do with this guidance despite agreeing that guidance is necessary.
I think it is good because:
We do not want the coop to be fully controlled by the DAO due to legal reasons. DAO should be client, not a controller.
If there is full misalignment between the DAO and management, that could lead to drama (as some people would have “nothing to lose”. Keeping some control to management ensure that it still have residual power no matter what.
There are times where we need to be opinionated and fast if we want to take opportunities.
Not all the treasury come from PNK grants, a huge part come from government grants and fruitful investments by the Coop management.
Left to other proposal, so that this one acts a minimum agreed framework. Other points should be discussed in individual proposals.
Votes (outside of elections) are public by default. The assembly can ask for secret votes.
This doesn’t seem to be in power of the DAO to change that.
Those grants are already paused for quite sometime, but obviously if price goes way higher it would make sense to provide more funding.
I’d appreciate if you could assign its own number to avoid confusions between the two proposals which do quite different things.
Overall I feel that you mainly agree on the proposal, but want extra things. Those extra things can be their own proposals. That is what this proposal does, open the gate for other guidance proposals.
Could it be legal from Coop standpoint to have DAO representation?
Here are some different ways it could be defined, numbers are reference points
DAO College, with 1 seat, and 20% of voting power
Whenever there are Coop meetings, since all meeting need warning with a certain amount of days, it gives enough time to formulate the question to the DAO, and create a Snapshot vote to establish the DAO’s vote on the topic. These votes are launched on any meeting, be it Extraordinary or Regular.
DAO Representatives College, with 3 seats, and 25% of voting power
DAO elects representatives for its interests on the DAO, who decide discretionally and are elected every 12 months via Snapshot vote, similar to representative democracy, and would act as a counter force to Coop workers and Coop leaders, as some kind of DAO Mission Board. But, these representatives could have their own agenda, and would be replaced if not acting towards the interests of the DAO.
DAO not represented officially, but voluntarily, some voters, making up 28% of the Cooperative vote, delegate to the DAO
A group of users, workers and maybe leaders, decide privately and voluntarily, or maybe according to extrinsic incentives, to delegate their vote to whatever the DAO decides in Snapshot votes. The DAO does not legally have representation, avoiding problems with the Cooperative legal situation.
Good point. the tension between decentralization and execution speed is real. Most successful DAOs seem to land on a delegate model where token holders can delegate to specialists. It keeps things moving without sacrificing community ownership.