I am proposing that should the Zcoin team have funds equivalent to 100k USD above its current budget, that a sum not exceeding 3% of the block reward is allocated to a Community Fund that will be managed by a Community Council.
The purpose of this is to experiment with formal processes and enabling the process towards decentralized governance.
Objectives of Community Fund
Some objectives of the new fund can be:
a) Community meetups
b) Side development tasks or supporting apps (for e.g. BTCPayserver)
c) Merchant adoption
To begin with the core team will have some minimum level of oversight and also to help guide them through their experiences but eventually this will be phased out.
Remember as Core Team’s mandate is only for another two years, if we abuse the process, we will lose the mandate.
Powers of Community Council
- Choose on how to allocate funds from the community fund in line with the above stated objectives.
- Monitor the use of the funds and milestone payments and to make appropriate inquiries.
- Assist to serve as a bridge between the core team and the community.
Community Fund Council
I am proposing to begin with 5 members and later on scale up higher.
Here are my suggestions for eligibility for standing for election:
- Not a member of core team (though if a core team wants to resign and stand for election that is possible) or affiliated to any other cryptocurrency project (team members, advisors or ambassadors).
- Holds at least a Znode? Sign message from znode collateral?
- Has to be a recognized community member. Has a forum account not less than 6 months old (or one year?)and has been active in our community (no hard and fast rule for post count but weighing in on important decisions with good contributions and Telegram/Discord also factored in).
- Shows understanding of our technology and our principles.
- Conversant in English (as majority of our community is in English) though we can later on add additional people with other language support such as Chinese etc. It would be great to actually have one member reserved that can communicate both in English and Chinese.
Election of Council Members
This to me is the weakest part of the proposal since there are ways this can be rigged.
To begin with, candidates would propose their candidacy in the forums. New users in the forums would be banned from voting (maybe require 3 months with some engagement?). This can be refined later.
Once deadline is reached, core team will assign a Zcoin address to represent each candidate that fulfil the criteria. To begin with, core team will have final decision on what it means by ‘recognized community member’ due to its subjective nature.
People will do Sigma spends of a specific denomination to vote for a particular candidate (perhaps 0.05, 0.1 or even 0.5 depending on prevailing price). This means there will be a slight cost to voting but it will be affordable.
All these Sigma spends will go to the Core Fund (not community fund).
The reason why I am worried about having it go to the community fund is to prevent the conflict of interest where someone who wants to take control of the community fund can recoup their ‘votes’ back. This reduces the chances of vote buying.
However there is also a separate risk here where the core team can use this to elect people that they want…so it depends how the community feels about it.
The candidates with the top 5 amounts will be elected into their positions and hold it for 6 months. There may be a nominal payment to them for their time.
Removal of Council Members
As this is an experiment and it is likely that some council members become inactive quite early on, I propose that the initial mandate of these council members be only 6 months. This can be extended to one year later on.
If a council member misses two consecutive council meetings, the other council members can elect to remove him with unanimous decision. If the council member misses 3 meetings (doesn’t have to be consecutive) he will be automatically removed and the spot will become vacant.
Council Member Proceedings
- Council member meetings will be held once a month. Written minutes or transcripts of the meeting will be made available to public.
- All funding decisions and voting must be held at public council meetings.
- Two council members can call a snap meeting where it is deemed required but must give a week’s notice. Best efforts to be made to accommodate all council members.
- Minimum quorum of meeting shall be 3 members.
- Votes are passed by simple majority. In the event of tie, the core team reserves a casting vote.
- Council members are required to disclose if they have any personal interest in a funding proposal. If it’s for a proposal that is being carried out by him/her personally or an entity that he/she has control over, he/she cannot vote on the proposal.
- All of the community funding would have to go through the ZCS for full transparency and the community fund can directly fund the approved proposals (and core team can also decide to contribute).
Change of Rules
For the moment as this is an experiment in introducing formal processes in decentralizing governance, the rules can be changed and tweaked by the core team in consultation with the community (not just Council Members).