Over the past few months, we have been closely listening to feedback from our community. One of the places we recognized a need for improvement, was that it was not clear what Octant aimed to achieve. Because we have responsibilities to the GLM ecosystem, and we additionally feel that public goods funding is extremely important, that this presented a very unique opportunity for Octant's mission:
Our goal is to become the first self-sustaining PGF ecosystem to financially empower both public good projects and its users.
Already we have redesigned Octant's reward mechanism to more closely align with this mission. But even if this change fully accomplishes its intents, this only solves the extrinsic motivators of Octant.
We also recognize that the current governance structure of Octant, with its limited scope for community impact, does not strongly incentivize our community engage. In a DAO, user engagement and growth are often driven by the sense of ownership and influence users have over the platform. Long term, the core Octant team envisions a community driven structure for Octant governance. But governance is hard, and if you add a large treasury, it becomes even harder.
We’re looking to create something that evolves to grow within the framework of our existing system. One that could eventually become strong enough to either replace, alter, or strengthen our prevailing structure. We feel now is the right opportunity for this evolution to take place.
Big changes for rewards are coming for Epoch 3, and part of this change includes a community fund, where 5% of Octant staking rewards will be allocated. With community ownership over this fund, we need a governance framework for this to become possible.
So how can we get to a place where the community can govern this fund? The approach I see now that we have a clear mission, is to bring in a diverse group which has experience and interest, so that they, and the core team, can collectively design a structure that both empowers our community while pragmatically taking a path of progressive decentralization.
One of the superpowers of decentralization is diversity. Over the past few months, we at Octant have been paying close attention to individuals who have shown both an interest in Octant's evolution, but also sharing valuable information and perspectives with us and our community. We have asked these individuals to join us on a journey of collectively designing a governance structure.
We are building a governance council for Octant. The main intention of this council is to start at the base of our governance decision tree, with the goal of designing a framework for community fund. Early on, members will be learning the nuances of Octant & the broader Golem ecosystem so that we can level set before jumping into this work. Once this context is established, we will map out our path, and take each element of this process on, one by one.
The design though is not going to be exclusively driven by the core team and the council. Additionally, any community member wishing to participate can have their voice heard. Other than a call once a month with this group, the vast majority of this conversation will be taking place on this governance board. Our Discourse Forum is open to anyone, and we welcome the diversity of opinions that our ecosystem offers!
We are outlining a document so that anyone who wishes to understand the context and nuances of where Octant comes from, can feel confident in doing so. You can find this doc (still a work in progress) here: https://octantapp.notion.site/octantapp/Gov-Council-Level-Set-Context-a380712567fe4e1fb24a15299ece6199
As we move forward with Octant's governance, we're focused on a few key questions that will shape our framework. These include understanding what successful decentralization looks like for Octant, identifying the roles of our key stakeholders, and figuring out how our governance model will operate, including the decision-making process and how votes will be counted.
A key aspect that is overlooked is how we can design for the social layer that will provide sustainability for engagement. Many DAOs design something that finds excitement early on, but then people lose interest and they ultimately fail. Sustainability is a key feature for Octant, we're in this for the long run.
We're also looking into how to prevent power from becoming too centralized and ensure everyone's voice is heard. This process is about opening up a dialogue with our community, inviting everyone to help shape a governance structure that aligns with Octant's mission and values.