In Part 1, we explored the objectives and intentions of the FreeDAO Foundation as it moves towards a fully-fledged DAO.
While in Part 2, we explained the benefits of the sortition model, and how FreeDAO intends to improve upon it for modern governance at a global scale—particularly suited for world-spanning blockchain projects.
As the FreeDAO Foundation intends its governance to migrate to a fully-featured, blockchain-based DAO on the Proton and Internet Computer blockchains, this article will outline the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) version of such a system.
NOTE: Much of this is still evolving, and may be subject to tweaks and changes. The general principles should be well represented, however.
Elements of FreeDAO’s Governance Structure
Essentially, the early FreeDAO structure will consist of three councils, with accountability governed internally, and by the Freeos Participants.
These councils are:
- The Executive Council: This group will be a minimum of three individuals to start. The roles will be, President, Vice-President and Treasurer. Their job is to vote on resolutions coming from the Advisor Council—via the Protector Council— to be ratified and enacted. This Executive Council will later expand to include more specialised roles (and budgets!) beyond these initial three (eg. marketing, technical, communications, operations).
- The Protector Council: This group is mostly a watchdog entity, that ensures that the objectives of the FreeDAO charter are followed, that any resolutions meet the objectives (reasons must be provided), and to shortlist any candidates for the Executive Council, or the Advisor Council that might then be randomly selected via sortition. This council will also have three members to start in the MVP (early version of FreeDAO) but will expand in size as the rest of the organisation expands and evolves.
- The Advisor Council will be composed of specialists that have experience in various roles (e.g. legal, accounting, marketing, business, operations, technology) to present resolutions to the Executive Council—that have passed the oversight of the Protector Council as per whether they violate, or meet the objectives of the FreeDAO charter.
Selection of Delegates
Any verified, registered participant of Freeos may submit their application for any of the three councils. To be selected, however, they may need to be shortlisted into the final selection pool.
The Executive Council— having the power to enact resolutions—will be shortlisted based on their experience leading, and operating organisations and teams. Former Advisor members—who hold the skills and experience for the job—will have a higher weight in the sortition process, as these candidates have existing FreeDAO experience.
The Advisor Council, representing key specialised fields and experience, will be shortlisted to ensure any prospective candidates have the skills and experience they profess. This is critical, as this is where well-crafted resolutions are drafted with experience and wisdom in mind, that are sent to the Executive Council to be ratified into action.
The Protector Council, will allow open candidates, with weighted selection leaning towards those that hold significant FREEOS tokens—or have participated in the Freeos Economic System for a long time—or have been Advisors for a full term. This helps ensure that the Protector Council are likely to be aligned with the overall benefits of FreeDAO, the Freeos Economic System and its participants. Since FreeDAO receives a portion of the weekly FREEOS token mint, it is also vital to have the DAO’s economic interests aligned with the Freeos Economic System and its participants.
Each council member’s position shall have staggered and offset term limits to help ensure that delegates enter and leave, individually, at different times to ensure there are smooth operations in the entire organisation.
Accountability
Any council member from each of the three council bodies may present a petition for the removal of any council member (delagate) from office. This vote will need to pass a majority vote from the Freeos Participants.
Additionally, Freeos participants may also present a petition with a certain threshold (to be expanded upon later) to trigger a vote to remove any FreeDAO delegate.
As all council decisions shall be recorded transparently, on-chain, it will be possible to see if any misuse of funds, power, influence is happening within FreeDAO—and the Freeos participants can then push for accountability. Even a petition, or vote, that fails will be a warning shot, at least.
Once a delegate is removed, this triggers the events leading to the next sorition event that selects a new candidate to fulfil the role.
With this version of “Qualified Sortition”, a combination of meritocracy, Athenian-style sortition, and direct democracy combine to create a new form of governance that can be efficient, inclusive, transparent and highly accountable.
Unlike other DAOs that lean towards plutocracies—where those that have the most tokens equate to the most power in the governance structures—FreeDAO intends to create a system that leans towards having capable, experienced, leadership that remains—at all times—highly accountable to the people.
The FreeDAO Foundation will start with a more simple version of this structure, based in the legal framework of a classic foundation entity to start, then migrate to the MVP version discussed in this article. But even this is only the beginning.
In the next article in this series, we will hint at some of the ideas on how to evolve and scale this structure to manage various projects in the FreeDAO umbrella as it grows, expands—and commands a greater budget.
For more on Freeos, please check our webpage for more info, or join us in our Telegram Community where you may ask more questions about how Freeos is intended to work.
