Below is an explanation of the MonkeDAO voting and governance process.
MonkeDAO
Vote Proposal Process
Mission:
Increase governance participation
Encourage high-quality, meaningful proposals
Prevent proposal fatigue
Protect MonkeDAO from bad-faith governance attacks and legal risks
Changes to the Vote Proposal Process (VPP) can be proposed by the Community, Executive, or the Board. As per the Bylaws, any modifications to the VPP, or disputes about its implementation, are subject to Board review. The Board will follow the above Mission guidelines and Bylaws in any decision-making and be transparent with its decisions.
Summary:
Any Gen2 or Gen3 holder can submit a proposal, provided they have had the “Verified Monke” MonkeDAO Discord role for at least the last 30 days, uninterrupted.
Proposal stages:
Workshop
Lower TreeHouse
Review
Upper TreeHouse
Proposal Formatting:
Proposals should be posted in the #proposal-workshop channel, following this format:
Proposal Name:
Author(s):
Summary: (One or two sentences max)
Proposal Details: (Outline your idea here)
Who will execute the proposal: (Will you be doing the work or a team?)
Goals / Evaluation Metrics: (How will we know it succeeded?)
Benefits to DAO & Individual Members: (Outline both)
Risks & Concerns:
Timeline/Roadmap:
Treasury Spending & Impact:
Disclosures***
***Conflicts of interest relevant to a proposal must be disclosed. This includes, but is not limited to, working relationships, close personal relationships, and/or having financial stakes in other entities included in a proposal. Authors are encouraged to proactively discuss potential conflicts with the Board, to ensure they are communicated adequately
Stage 1: Workshop
The Workshop stage #proposal-workshop is designed for authors to collect feedback and make edits to their proposal. Meaningful edits are not permitted at later stages. The author should create a new thread for discussion. Proposals will be open for seven days for discussion, editing, and voting.
A proposal is eligible to advance to Stage 2 when either of the following conditions are met:
At least 25 upvotes from the community, with more upvotes than downvotes
At least one upvote from an Exec or Board member
Once eligible, the author can opt to stay in the Workshop and make edits, or they can advance to Stage 2 – Lower TreeHouse. Authors should communicate their preference with the Exec.
Stage 2: Lower Treehouse
Proposals will move to #lower-treehouse-vote, with a corresponding thread for discussion. Discord-based upvote/downvote will be added at the end of the post, and voting will commence.
All proposals will remain active and polling for seven days*. The voting method used during this period will enable members to change their votes up until the deadline. Authors are encouraged to interact with the community and be accessible to answer questions. At the end of seven days*, if the poll passes with a simple majority and at least 3% of the DAO Discord members supporting, it will progress to Stage 3 – Review.**
Planned DaoVote upgrade
As per the Bylaws (Article 4, Section D), the Lower TreeHouse stage will eventually vote on-chain. Automatic quorum and approval thresholds will also be implemented. Until the DaoVote site can support these changes, current VPP processes (Discord voting and manual adjustments to thresholds) will be used.
*The MonkeDAO Executive team retains the right to alter the voting period for any proposal (with documented reasoning presented to the DAO) e.g. if there is very clear support in excess of the quorum, the vote could be moved to Step 3 sooner; or if the proposal is very contentious, the proposal period could be extended
**At the end of the polling period, if the proposal has reached the requisite support, but the author/s are not in the DAO, another eligible member may sponsor the proposal and advance to Stage 3. New sponsors must be made known within two days after the polling period. Without a new sponsor, a proposal will be considered to have failed.
Stage 3: Review
During this stage, all proposals will face a policy review by MonkeDAO leadership. While the goal is to gradually reduce the need for this stage, there initially needs to be a human level of checks-and-balances while our voting methods and requirements are developed. The vast majority of the DAO is focused on our shared success, but we always need a plan for potential bad actors abusing our nascent voting tools.
Amendments
When a proposal passes Stage 2 - LowerTreehouse, it will move on to a brief review by the MonkeDAO Executive team, Board of Directors and, if necessary, MonkeDAO legal counsel. These teams have two (2) days* to review the proposal and note any concerns. The author has 24 hours to respond and may either amend the proposal to reflect the concerns of the relevant teams, or the proposal will be amended by the MonkeDAO Executive team to reflect their concerns.
Objections and Veto Process
At any point before Stage 4, any member may submit to the Board an Objection to a proposal, as outlined in the Bylaws (Article 4, Section C). The Board will rule and share commentary from each Board member within two days on that Objection, potentially resulting in a Veto. The Board’s ruling on an Objection shall be final and binding.
*The vote can immediately proceed to the next step if there are no Objections or concerns from the Executive team
Stage 4: Upper TreeHouse
The successful proposal will be announced as a binding Upper TreeHouse vote to the DAO via appropriate channels and posted to #votes. All MonkeDAO members should be able to view and discuss these votes. The voting duration, minimum quorum, and minimum passing vote requirements will be based on the below categories:
Proposal Categories:
All decisions that require spending from the MonkeDAO treasury, or which could have a major impact upon the DAO treasury, will be subject to Board review on an ongoing basis. This is to protect against unforeseen exploits, bad behavior, or legal concerns.
All proposals will be reviewed by Execs to determine if they are possible for the DAO to complete, both prior to execution, and on an ongoing basis. If the DAO is unable to fulfill a proposal, those concerns will be raised with the Board, who may intervene.
Proposal categorization is the responsibility of the Exec. In the event of a dispute, categorization decisions are subject to Board review.
General
Minimum vote duration: 7 days
Minimum quorum: 5%
Minimum passing vote: 51% (if within the existing budget and duties of MonkeDAO)
Minimum passing vote: 66% (if significant changes to the budget or duties of MonkeDAO are required)
Major Partnerships/Endorsements
Opportunities for collaboration with specific people or projects that include major asks of the DAO such as co-branding, public endorsements, shared projects/development/costs, etc.
Partnership opportunities that include minor asks such as a single tweet or a DAO hosted twitter space can be approved by the “Marketing and Partnership” or “Community and Communications” Executive, or the MonkeDAO Executive team, without the need for a DAO-wide vote.
Minimum vote duration: 7 days
Minimum quorum: 6%
Minimum passing vote: 66%
Governance Proposal
Proposals that alter the fundamental systems of the DAO (e.g. voting rights, governance structure, elections, etc.)
Minimum vote duration: 7 days
Minimum quorum: 7.5%
Minimum passing vote: 66%
NFT Metadata Change Proposal
These proposals include anything that requires changes to SMB Gen2 or SMB Gen3 collection metadata or on-chain data (e.g. changing royalties, changing traits, changing images, etc.)
Minimum vote duration: 7 days
Minimum quorum: 7.5%
Minimum passing vote: 66%
Executive Election
The Executive election process as per the Bylaws includes a voting element with the following rules, which doesn’t follow the standard proposal process. Rules copied here for clarity:
Minimum vote duration: 7 days
Minimum quorum: No quorum requirement
Minimum passing vote: The top vote recipients equal to the number of available positions will each be considered winners (e.g. 4 seats available means the top 4 vote recipients win)
Revotes
Stage 1 – Workshop
Proposals defeated in the Workshop Stage must wait a minimum of one month before a very closely related* proposal can be introduced.
Stages 2-4
Proposals defeated in Stages 2-4 must wait a minimum of three months before a very closely related* proposal can be introduced.
*requires a vote of at least 80% of Execs to reject on this basis. Disputes may be elevated to the Board for review. All parties will follow the Mission guidelines (see: beginning of this document) and any actions will be disclosed to the DAO in writing.
Governance Threshold Adjustments
Based on governance activity, adjustments to quorum and voting rules may be necessary.
Changes to quorum percentages, vote duration, quorum requirements, passing vote requirements, or the addition of new voting categories will be allowed under the following conditions:
The change has at least 80% of Exec support
The change is communicated to membership and to the Board
There must be a seven day period before the change goes into effect, and the change cannot be applied to existing proposals
The change must be noted in the Changelog
All Governance Threshold Adjustments must be made with Mission guidelines (see: beginning of this document) in mind, be made in writing and communicated to the DAO, and are subject to Board approval.
Proposal Tracking
MonkeDAO executives will maintain a log of proposals. This document will track advance/no-advance outcomes. It should be viewable to all members, in order to make proposal deadline and threshold information easily accessible.
Rule Changes
All rules within this Vote Proposal Process can be changed via vote. Simply follow the existing process and propose any changes that seem important.
