XXX The Voice of the Community on the Cardano Foundation Board XXX

English General Discussions
21

I don´t think you understood the proposal in it´s entire context. Please read it again.

Anyone from the Community should be allowed to apply for the board membership if one finds enough support from the Community. You as well! Let people campaign and show themselves, their ideas and personality, what values they could bring to the Board and how they would represent us. It could be also a nice Know-Your-Community experience to see / meet the people of the Cardano Community.

You could say anyone from the 6097 people of the Community who signed the petition OR just really anyone who has a Cardano Wallet Address (100k+) or whatever other eligibility rules the Community would prefer. I believe there would be likely some minimal requirements on education, language skills and professional experience.

That´s the most important things said here that it´s not the Guardians who should be exclusively considered but the very wide Community. The likelihood that anyone of the 11 of us out of the entire Community is the ideal fit is very low. The Community should vote (maybe in several rounds) for whoever it finds to be the best for the role.

Please also note that the Guardians who decided to expose this opportunity for the interest of the Community, decided not to participate and withdraw their applications.

I disagree that having Community member(s) in the Council would have no influence and it´s “meaningless”. First of all the board decisions are carried out by voting, so the influence would be quite significant. Second a member of the Community would have the dedicated task to collect, filter and aggregate the Voice of the Community.

Note that most board members have other professional duties and hold other singificant roles they have to care about. The non-profit board membership is in many cases something “on the side”. So having a Community Member who is fully focused to mediate, serve as a bridge between the Cardano Community & Board is something truly special.

It could also be organized in a way over time, that for each continent or strategic geographical location there is someone who represents the Community. But in this case it would be important to revise the governance system of the Board, not to end up with more then 11 peope unless decisions are carried out with weighted votes to keep a lean decision making capability.

Why this is brought up now is because the Foundation is considering the option to bring a Guardian, so if there is such willingness to appoint member(s) of the Community, why not do this as the first Community Governance Project for Cardano?

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22

How would you define ‘community member’, @bercinho? What does that term mean?

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23

Hi, many thanks for the initiative. This could be a great way to start including community in the entire Cardano project, test voting system, etc. The structure and rules of voting should be 100% unbiased and without any selfish agenda pushed by any member. This is the only chance for all of us to win.

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24

Belowsearcher I think you should also ask that question to yourself. It is not my job or Bercinho’s job to decide what is a community member. I also sense in the question critisism that you cannot possible make such a selection. For me this is a sort of binary question where it is either perfectly correct or not at all, but that is definitively not how representation works. You try to get a good enough candidate as possible. So for me anyone the community see fit and the largest part of the community agreed upon would be such a candidate. One model would then be to apply say top 10 and for the board to select among these applicants. So who could vote ? This is the most tricky question - should it be ada holders - how do we counter movement of ada betwen accounts or spreading of accounts for more voting? Then again I am sure we can figure something out here so it is only a matter of time. Not the first time humans have voted on something ^^ And frankly I do not want MY solutions. I want the information to be available and the community in full to discuss and find a solution. And my part of it being only as part of the community.

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25

This is not something I should define, but requires a consensus.

But if you ask my personal opinion from top of my head.

A member of a Community requires some sort of presence, some sort of activity with some valued qualities and meeting certain quantitative & time based metrics.

Presence in terms any combination of:

  • being subscribed on any social media channel (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.)
  • being in any Cardano TG channel
  • being member of the Cardano Forum
  • having a Cardano Wallet Address
  • having participated on a Meetup
  • having signed the Liberate the Cardano Foundation petiton
  • …

Activity in terms of any combination of:

  • having commented on topics
  • having created topics
  • having liked topics
  • having created any relevant content
  • having organized any meetup
  • having contributed to the Cardano venture in any tangible way
  • …

Then of course you can add things like timeline, frequency and all sorts of quantitative and time based KPIs for the above.

Also you might add knowledge, positivity, care, helpfulness, constructive and other qualities.

But this is just my personal view, I am sure there are subject matter experts in this field who have much better definition for a “Community”.

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26

So to be perfectly clear here, we are releasing this information / idea but we only want the community to discuss and if they see fit act upon it and we do not want any board position ourself. We do not want to make the rules we only want to provide the information. So do not ask the rules from us - ask what the rules should be or if needed at all. I am happy to discuss what the rules could be but I am not happy to dictate or implement my own solutions here. I hope after the lull xmas period we will get a healthy debate going on this :slight_smile:

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27

The reason I asked that question that IMO the semantics related to it define both who gets to run for the hypothetical board position and who gets to vote.

Like you pretty much described yourself, depending on the adopted definition of ‘community member’, it could be pretty much anyone with some sort of interest in Cardano.

When it comes to the ‘who gets to run’ part, that’s not necessarily bad. We need qualified board members with a diverse set of skills and knowledge.

When it comes to the ‘who gets to vote’ part, it actually becomes more complicated.

The Cardano community counts well over 100k+ members just based on just the number of social media account followers, but I would argue that the number of people that have actually really know what’s going on is likely a much, much lower number. This could be because it’s over their head and they choose not to do a deep dive themselves (rational ignorance) or for istance because they just care about the short-term ADA price. If a ‘one person, one vote’ type system is used and pretty much anyone can vote, whoever can entice the silent mass to vote for them is the most likely to win the election in this situation. In this scenario, that is not necessarily the most qualified person or even the person that necessarily represents ‘the community’ in the best matter.

Particularly because Cardano is in such an early state and the community is also still relatively small and just learning about the complexities of everything that is happening, I’m not convinced having a community vote for board members is already a wise decision.

In the type of liquid democracy that IOHK envisions for ADA, some of these problems would be solved, but that system is clearly not ready yet.

Btw and don’t forget; the question how to give ‘the community’ and ‘the stakeholders’ a say in who gets to be on the board is actually one of the most important tasks of the Cardano Foundation. Discussing how to do this within the community is incredibly important, but let’s not force them to make premature decisions and actually hold them accountable for transparency and progress on this very important task.

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28

I want the community to decide if it is wise or not. Not me or you alone nor any small group. Particularly during the starts of new epochs and new governance systems we have seen some great law history being made. What you see as weakness in a start I see as a strength and opportunity in that there are very few to force you to agree to current rules and mindset. But it is not a binary yes or no. I see some limits also in the start but I believe Cardano will be fine either way and I also believe it is a great opportunity. The benefits outweights the cons.

Yes the voting part is tricky (as I also discussed some aspects of). We will need the full wisdom of the community and CF on this. But it is not more tricky than any voting that have been done before. We just have to agree upon some valid and measurable and quantifiable metrics. There is also a language barrier in this and there is also a cultural barrier here with different cultures that we know from law history will cause it hard to make agreements. But if it is impossible? No. And for sure there would be needed to be guidance. I am clear on the fact that CF holds the power to decide whoever is in the board. So if they want the community in they would have to have a say as well on who gets in.

I agree with you however that the liquid democracy will make more things possible. I would also call it a computational democracy (because only computational power is required as a 3rd party verification) and that I believe it will open up an exiting new law governance field. So the future is bright and we are only now taking baby step. But it will reflect very well on the history of Cardano if the community was involved and could get a position in CF. I think it is possible in the future for the CF to work in making itself not needed by developing new legal methods that can drop a 3rd party “watchdog” or as a method of allocating founds (already a plan here with treasury system.)

I also agree that CF has to have the say here as it is a task given to them. But it will be an easier task if not only know by a small group of the community and will certainly open the talent pool quite significantly if we can draw from the larger community. With 2 master degrees in psychology and in law I certainly was interested in a board position but I realized that who am I to decide that I can represent the community. I question why guardians would think so the more I think about it myself. But I think it is also human nature. It was the petition voting holders we represented when we had a mission on Parsons and yes this was a very raw and crude “voting” mechanism but it worked for the situation, so guardians represented the community. I hope we can find someone in the community that is far more talented than say for example me in the board and whom the community by some mechanism have shown support for.

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29

I don’t think this is premature and I believe the Community is big enough, it’s just a bit passive and needs an incentive & inspiration like this to wake up. For sure it is 6097 people big :slight_smile:

I am pretty convinced we could have easily between 20-50 serious and highly capable candidates for the Board from the Community.

And it would be awesome to see these candidates campaign and create some valuable content on the way. I would love to see intelligent and bright people with great personalities that show themselves from the Community. The Know Your Community experience.

Regarding the voting part you could define some criteria to be eligible for voting. For instance as part of voting you would have to fill in a random questionnaire that would check if you are a bit knowledgeable & up to date about Cardano and the candidate(s) to have your vote valid.

By the way what you mention is the same issue we have with the democracy in countries with leading populist parties (Hungary, Poland, Romania, etc.).

I will also confess that being aware and having 3 months of “close working relations” with all the Guardians (including myself !) I am pretty convinced we have better fit candidates in the Community for this particular position. Man it’s not easy to revoke an application for such an opportunity (ego & ambition are strong companions), but is it right to apply by knowing that others would fit better? And why not go for the better?

3 months ago we were fighting to get Parsons out, now some of us (the ones in topic description) are fighting to get the right guy (whoever it will be) from the Community in.

We can make this, there is absolutely no rocket science needed here to make it real. We only need the Foundation Board to give their Amen. Execution is possible, challenges we will overcome.

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30

Did you Guys think about the media sensation such a Community Board Camapign would create?

If Cardano can innovate on so many different aspects & levels, why would it be this one where they won’t?

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31

I realize this is affecting my judgement a bit and that frankly I wish there is a larger talent pool to draw from. But I will stand behind anyone the community and CF think is a good fit for a board if that chance becomes available. I think if we separate these things the governance debate in itself is healthy and thus it is a good thing the community discuss it.

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32

Replace “community” with “Social Council” representing the concerns or interests of the members of the body when the Governing Council have their minutes. That helped me.

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34

Actually that´s a very good idea you have there.

To have a Social Council body with 7-11 members from the Community from all the strategically important geographical regions . Then have an elected representative from the Social Council participating on the Cardano Foundation Board for a recurring period (elections every 1 - 2 years?).

Just indicative for 11 members of the Social Council you could have: Central & South Africa (1), West & North Africa (1), East-Africa (1), South Korea (1), Japan (1), APAC (1), Europe (1), Latin America (2), North America (1), Middle-East (1).

All this driven from a pure Bottom-Up approach, having Social Council members voted by the Community , and having the representative from the Social Council on the Cardano Foundation Board voted by the Community and / or the Social Council members.

The importance we emphasize is to have this Voice of the Community representation managed via a democratic bottom-up approach / movement and NOT in a top-down way (like for instance the Cardano Ambassador model). We do not need another top-down governance body for the Community, we finally need a bottom-up one. Anytime there is a top-down appointment of governance roles (like a board position), it might not be considered authentic and legitim to represent the interests of the Community. You need the Community to elect, empower and legitimize it´s governance representatives, which also enforces them to be loyal, accountable and controled by the Community.

These Social Council members could also represent all the Cardano Hubs operating in their region, bringing their voice to the Social Council panel.

Important thing would be to provide certain incentives to the Social Council members, but this could be done by having the Foundation commit a yearly 100-500k USD budget dedicated to the operations (infrastructure, travel, expenses, membership reward, etc.) of this Council. So the Foundation would assure the funds, but not have any governance authority or influence over the council not to interfere with it´s independence.

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35

I like the idea of having a Social Council and out of this one member at the Foundation board. But I think your territorial distribution of the Social Council members is to strict. I suppose, APAC means Australia + Pacific? So where’s China, India, Russia,…? I would rather propose to have at least one member of each continent (ok, no member of Antarctica required…) and have the rest of the Council just determined by the result of the vote. And if we end up having five councel members from Japan, Ethiopia or Switzerland, so be it.

I wouldn’t like to have money involved in the Council, at least at the beginning. Maybe this may change in former years but right at the start I would propose that noone gets a financial incentive to become a Council member.

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36

Smart words!

Geographical distribution of positions was indicative, requires more in depth thinking, but I do agree with your reasoning.

Financial incentives maybe no, others IMO yes. Maybe an annual social council meeting with expenses covered where the members may meet also in person for 2-3 days.

I really hope the Cardano Foundation Board is reading this sometime in the near future. We can really do this Guys, for once trust your Community with such a project. We have great & motivated people to pull this off.

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37

Thanks for your words Rossi. Constructive feedback makes me optimistic in our community in a time when my own moral is not at a peak. Hope we get more of this healthy discussion after the xmas periode.

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38

Soon it will become like UN :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl: hey, but that’s a good thing! :+1::+1::+1::+1:

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39

I felt this is a much better community model than the ambassador model. Especially, each region and each country has different community culture and government laws. Right now our community strategy is using one and hopefully it will fit all, this is simply unrealistic.

I always felt we are in a dark period that ada holders don’t have a great way to express their thoughts and concerns (it’s lucky enough if you can speak english) and these are simply unfair, because these are real investors we are taking about here, and they deserve to have a greater care! Obviously the CF is doing a very poor investor relationship job (or none?).

We need people from different regions to speak up and raise their local community awareness, let iohk/emurgo/CF know what’s the situation like in their area, and what they need and what they would like to see. Instead of let the people who never step onto their soils blindly decide these people’s future.

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40

Yes this is a big point. It is crazy to think we can agree universally to everything when law system for thousands of years have been layered in universally accepted (example human rights) or local (national / regional ) laws and you need both for effective governance to adapt for different cultures (among other things).

41

Hey guys wish you all a happy Christmas period for those of you into that. I have been discussing this with Bertalan previously (he suggested name bitlaw instead of bytelaw for example) but also think that I want to discuss with the community at large on the topic. I truly wish to empower the community and I know Bertalan wish the same. Possible a bit crazy ideas but hear me out and know that I come from a place of wanting to try to make the world a tad bit better place :slight_smile:

Bitlaw
I want to share one of my thoughts with you all on future governance and on legal issues. I call it bitlaw. Unlike common law or civil law systems of today it creates some new efficiencies that can only be found when you digitize not only the representation of law but the interpretation of law.

In a common or civil law system you the user of such rules are required to figure out when does this rules apply to me or you are enforced to make these rules apply to you by a great state apparatus costing society huge sums.

In a bitlaw system assuming it is dualistic (coexisting with common or civil law) many fields of law can be quarried by the computer itself. For example in contract law there is many cases where users can simply agree on standards or what rules they will enforce onto contracts. Some laws are more absolute (most contracts in modern ages for example ban any form of agreement for slavery) and will still need interpretation. However many legal agreements and laws are straightforward yes or no or can be agreed upon to be straightforward yes or no and can then fit into a binary system of quarry. Also suddenly it can be computed and visualized for a user when a law apply to a said condition and it can be automatically enforced if users agree to this. Obviously this has many ethical issues but if done well I am sure it can be a good thing for society.

Tip of the iceberg law cases or database law cases?
Suddenly instead of having a professional class who interprets and theorize about law outcomes you can in many cases create databases of knowledge through millions or billions of contracts for filled. This is a far cry from tip of the iceberg type of law interpretations where only a small amount of cases ever reach the courts or other interpretive authorities.

A law for everything with AI?
It could possible also open an age old question if it is possible for a law for everything. Many have tried this historically and failed because it was simply not possible and out of this emerged the current law theories of interpreting laws based on an agreed upon system or standard and for even high courts to fill in the blanks where there was a legal void. But what if AI could in the future calculate all outcomes or even calculate on the fly outcomes. Ethically this still should be controlled by humans but the efficiency and scale of this would probably allow such a new way of legal thinking.

Layered law approach
Another aspect would be to have local laws vs universal laws on any such system. We know from human history it is very hard to agree to everything with everyone. So it is far better to agree on what we can agree with whom we can agree. With bitlaw suddenly it is far easier to organize such layered approaches where you can instantly say that only portion X of rule Y applies for this transaction or this contract Z. This seems a better approach than trying to make universal laws for every single subject and to every single user. Obviously still some rules needs to be national or even transnational like human rights but a layered approach allows for all of this and is certainly nothing new as this already is happening in paper form of law. The difference is in efficiency and potential ease of use of creating such rules.

Visual contracts in real time and developing over time
The baby steps of this would for me be contracts over time a new legal field in Contract Law. Contracts are no longer statics and are often updated. But this never happens in real time and there is no current system to quickly visualize and then formalize said agreements. Bitlaw combined with blockchain makes this possible. Suddenly you can both visualize Peder Aas agreeing with Marte Kirkerud on transfering X amount if Y condition and change this on the fly based on other parameters like for example previous contracts (because now we can build huge databases of this with all transactions) and due to blockchain there is no need for a 3rd party to verify. Also you can learn from contracts and gradually evolve them over time in a much faster and better rate than what we can do with current legal systems.

Computational Democracies
This again opens what I call computational democracies. In computational democracies humans are still the representatives but in many cases the need for a 3rd party is removed. Voting can instantly be verified creating a lot of voting opportunities previously not within human reach and creating huge efficiencies in the voting process itself. Combined with bitlaw governance can happen and change at a much faster rate where users agree upon change or scope of changes (only x in contract terms y) and we can build a much bigger database of governance history thus making us learn faster what is more optimal ways to governance.

In any case these are only some of my ideas so far and I know it is far out there but do think these things are possible. I welcome any criticism also as I want to see if these are realistically possible ideas or not?

And believe it or not I believe a baby step in all of this is actually if we can get the community on board as a say on these governance issues I am sure we will run into with the treasury system. We also need to accept that we need a layered approach and accept that with decentralization and globalization we will need different rules for different groups. But for sure the community needs to be part of this

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