• Proposal
  • OIP-50: How the DAO Should Handle Charitable Donations

Summary

OIP-50 provides three possible frameworks for how OIPs dealing with charitable donations (using DAO controlled funds or yields from DAO controlled funds) should be handled moving forward.

  1. Framework 1, Carte-Blanche Ban: A complete ban on any charitable use of DAO controlled funds moving forward. If it’s not explicitly being used to build something for Olympus (whether engineering, marketing, or education) it cannot be funded with DAO controlled funds period. To be clear this would not include cooperative building, marketing, or education efforts with specific and measurable mandates to create products/materials explicitly designed to benefit Olympus.

  2. Framework 2, Near Total Majority Approval Requirement: An increased approval requirement for any charitable use of DAO controlled funds moving forward. If an OIP or TAP allocates funds as a charitable donation (again, excluding cooperative building efforts) it must:
    1) Be the subject of at least one ‘temperature check’ Forum vote, said poll to not last less than seven days.
    2) Be taken to Snapshot in the exact same form as it was proposed on the Forum, with a voting period to not last less than seven days.
    3) Pass said Snapshot with over 95% approval, from at least 100 different wallet addresses.

  3. Framework 3, Do Nothing: Don’t change anything from the way the system works. If this is chosen I will not attempt to pass any further OIPs on this subject, and would encourage others not to attempt to either.

Motivation

Background Materials for Reading:
[https://forum.olympusdao.finance/d/443-oip-49-olympus-give-lighthouse-partnership-with-gitcoin/58>
[https://forum.olympusdao.finance/d/461-oip-49a-olympus-give-lighthouse-partnership-with-gitcoin-amendment/32>
[https://twitter.com/proof_steve/status/1462672351707820032?s=20>
https://twitter.com/proof_steve/status/1463035528790511619?s=20

OIP-49 was a proposal to authorize $500,000 of donations paid for using yields from DAO controlled funds to several charitable organizations in the fields of;

  • The fight against climate change.

  • Longevity/anti-aging research.

  • Open source software/infra development.

OIP-49 was a very controversial proposal. Many in the DAO, myself included, did not want DAO controlled funds used for these purposes. Criticisms included but were not limited to:

  • Climate change and longevity research are not within Olympus DAO’s purview.

  • Funds put towards software/infra development should be used to compensate Olympus devs instead of third party devs.

  • Allowing for DAO controlled funds to be used in this fashion opens the door to further abuses by setting the precedent that DAO controlled funds can be used for things that have nothing to do with Olympus’ mission or operations.

  • Charitable donations should come from Ohmies themselves, not from Olympus.

After much debate, OIP-49 was voted down. 35% of forum voters voted for the “For: as proposed” option, 4% of forum voters voted for the “For: with amendments” option, and 62% of voters voted for the “Against: Do nothing” option.

Yet, less than 24 hours later (before the poll for OIP-49 had closed), an amended version of OIP-49 (titled OIP-49a) was proposed on the Forum. This proposal included the following changes from the original OIP-49:

  • The donations were narrowed in scope. No money would be put towards climate change or longevity research based charities, and instead donations would only go to Gitcoin (open source software developer).

  • Instead of a single donation amount, multiple options were provided ranging for $100,000 to $1,000,000.

  • The donation to Gitcoin was rephrased as a ‘strategic partnership’.

These changes did not address the concerns that DAO controlled funds were being used instead of creating systems allowing Ohmies to donate their own gains/yield and they did not address concerns that DAO controlled funds should not be used for charity at all. Additionally, given that this was an amended version of the proposal being put forward after the forum had (with a large majority) expressly voted for “Against: Do Nothing” and not for “For: with amendments” OIP-49a was seen as a slap in the face to all the Ohmies who took time to vote against OIP-49, and disrespectful to the very idea of decentralized or DAO governance.

Accordingly it comes as no surprise that as of the time of writing this, OIP-49a has an even lower approval rate than OIP-49 did. There are many Ohmies who might have been ambivalent to the idea of a charitable donation, but are certainly against what is so obviously an attempt to disregard the results of a vote. While forum votes are not binding, to proceed with an amended OIP so quickly after the previous attempt was handily voted down (with Ohmies explicitly choosing not to move forward with an amended proposal) was what could reasonably be referred to as a “dick move”. And it got many of us thinking that we need to not only set a strong precedent against this kind of abuse of the voting system by voting down OIP-49a, but we must also set in place rules to prevent further efforts at siphoning funds from the treasury using charity as a cover ever again.

In sum, two things must be decided. 

  • First, what changes should we make to the OIP/TAP proposal process to prevent governance abuse? This will be dealt with in a later OIP.

  • Second, what should the policy of the DAO be moving forward with charitable efforts? That is what this OIP deals with.

In deciding this we must consider two factors, abuse prevention and optionality. 

Banning charitable donations outright will be the strongest move that the DAO can take to prevent abuse. There will be no opportunities for ‘grifting’ or for donating to causes that Ohmies do not feel represents them personally, or why they came to Olympus. However, it also limits ‘optionality’ and may prevent the DAO from taking actions which would benefit it later.

Alternatively, requiring a very high bar for approval of charitable efforts does leave room open for treasury abuse. Many Ohmies have expressed a strong conviction that Olympus should not be in the business of making donations to charity, period, and this would enable donations to happen so long as they had near unanimous consent. However, while it sacrifices some abuse prevention, it also leaves the DAO with more flexibility or ‘optionality’ moving forward.

Please consider these factors when evaluating the below options for this OIP.

Proposal

Pass one of the two following frameworks for charitable donations moving forward, OR do nothing.

Framework 1: Total ban on all charitable donations. Neither DAO controlled funds, nor yields from those funds, may ever be used for charitable donations.

Framework 2: Require that all charitable donations coming from either DAO controlled funds or yields from those funds be proposed and ratified through the following process/standards:

  1. First an OIP must be drafted and proposed on the Olympus DAO forum for a “temperature check” vote. As Forum votes are non-binding and can be participated in by individuals/entities who do not hold Olympus, this process is more to provide a period for easy public commentary. The poll for this Forum vote must last no less than seven days.

  2. A Snapshot vote which is completely identical to the original Forum post must be posted, again with a polling period of no less than seven days. If the Forum vote leads to the author thinking they should amend the post even one word, they must scrap the process and start all over again from step 1. Remember that this process is intended to be onerous and difficult to pass, so yes even if the change is just one word or some punctuation it must be completely redrafted and restarted.

  3. That Snapshot vote from step 2 must pass with at least 95% or more approval at the end of its seven day voting period, and with at least 100 separate $OHM (or $sOHM or $gOHM or any other derivative) wallet addresses participating.

Framework 3: Do nothing, the current process is fine. I will not take this as an invitation to post a later OIP or an amended one.

As one final note, it’s important that we provide some sort of guidance for what is a legitimate ‘strategic partnership’ vs what is simply a rebranded charitable donation. There are no perfect answers here and it will be up to Ohmies to be skeptical yet fair. Here are some things to keep in mind:
- If a project is building something, is their mandate specific and measurable? In other words can they say “We will be building X technology capable of achieving Y result. Olympus DAO will be able to use this for Z.”? If so, that is evidence it is a legitimate partnership. If not, that is evidence it is a charitable donation.
- Are the funds being given to an organization that has a ‘cause’, be it political or social? If so, that is evidence it is a charitable donation.

**
Polling Period**

The polling process begins now and will end at Nov 30th, Noon UTC. A snapshot will be put up to vote (if Frameworks 1 or 2 are chosen) on Dec 1st, Noon UTC. It will last 5 days and end Dec 6th, Noon UTC.

Poll

For: Push Frameworks 1 or 2 to Snapshot Vote.

Against: Do nothing (no duplicate proposals).

Framework 1, 2, or 3?

This poll has ended.

    Well-written! I'll address the comments of "dick move" to explain OIP-49 and OIP-49A as a time-bound opportunity to support Gitcoin (both as a co-marketing and development activity). I recognize the process is not well-defined, but amendments and modifications should be welcome (even in the event of an AGAINST vote). I look forward to a better-codified version of forum proposals!

    Once again, we are on the same team, and I appreciate everyone's enthusiasm - I find Framework 2 to better support strategic efforts in the future. I welcome all the new active voices to join alongside us in the DAO to continue building together - it's quite nice to see a volume of activity.

    Agree, very well written & feels like an improvement is on the way!  This is my 1st active participation in a forum proposal, so please go easy on me if there’s any n00b fundamentals I miss as I attempt to gain clarity w/ some questions & commentary…

    Might be stating the obvious, but seems pretty clear that #1 & #3 are both untenable…

    Re: #1 Outright ban.  Does this actually align with the DAO’s purpose & intentions?  Or even the concept of a DAO.  If I understood the resistance OIP-49/49a correctly, one primary concernn was (govt) over-reach & “what drove ppl to crypto in the first place, looking for an escape”

    • Put simply: how is an outright ban of anything forever in the future any different than the same over-reach that we are concerned about in the first place?

    • Seems likely this would have the inverse effect than intended, and really like suppression of speech/ideas.

      • Last one: If someone were to propose an outright ban on say - bug bounties, or participants from a certain country/heritage - there’s no way that would fly, right?

    We’ve probs agreed on the need for change so I’ll skip #3 and move to the double click on #2….


    • It seems like a very important point in this thread is “if I’m wrong in the OG OIP, I vow never to post another proposal”.
      • Said differently: Are we anti-iteration?  Feels like we should welcome amendments & improvements regardless of whether or not we agree w/ the topic of discussion, otherwise how do we get better?

    Ried Hoffman famously said “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late” & I don’t think that’s too controversial w/r/t launching a Product, and seems applicable to proposals too.


    1. Would people be willing to accept the conditions of Framework #2 for all proposals in the future? 
      • If you strip away “charity” and replace with OIP-____ initiatives but keep 95% approval/temp check/# wallets/etc does that feel like a good way to approach proposals & voting? 
      • If not, I fear that is also a really bad precedent to set.  

    • Before we vote on any of these, can we try to get more fidelity on what classifies as “cooperative building efforts” & actually put down some KPI ground rules for any investment of DAO funds?  
      • Put simply: Knowing the goalposts & specific metrics needed to hit (ROI/timeline/voting %/etc) will give all of us a roadmap for effective DAO governance & streamlined processes so we don’t start lagging in innovation.

    Worth re-emphasizing to close: I really appreciate this proposal, the concerns that were brought up, the energy behind it & how much I've personally learned about this community in such a short time.  I also know that in times of heated debate (duress) are oftentimes when rational long term decision-making from all actors is at highest risk.  

    So, I’d love if we all could collectively pause, take a deep breath, and continue iterating on something which is very clearly an important topic to many of us.

    <3,

    Billygoat

      I personally would lean more towards option 1. We all got involved and became OHMIEs as we saw a vision of what this could be. This goal brings all of us together from all walks of life and social/ economic backgrounds. The thought that we use funds from the treasury for pet projects and ideological leanings will for sure start causing a rift in our tight knit community.

      The Gitcoin many saw as just a slap in the face. But others see it as a precursor of things to come. What is to stop the next proposal to want to fund Liberal or Conservative politicians because someone thinks they are more Crypto-Friendly or instead of Climate Change it slides to matters of Abortion, Gun Rights, Freedom of Speech? There will always be people on both sides of the issue and I only see this as a slippery slope that will cause contempt and bad emotions between the community.

      Climate Change should have never been brought up at all. And that it was, shows that there is already people in the community that will try and push whatever project they feel represents their own opinions and beliefs.

      By choosing option 1, we stop this from becoming a bigger issue in the future and everyone can stay focused on making Olympus Dao the powerhouse we all believe it can be. I reiterate the fact that if it does not benefit Olympus as a community then it has no place being put forth.

      Even outside of the community for people looking to get involved, they may see we are spending money on various projects that have no benefit at all to us ( outside of someone stroking an ego under the guise of BRANDING ) and decide that they will put funds elsewhere. Which slows growth and popularity and could tarnish the DAOs reputation as being goal oriented and staying true to our mission.

      I will vote 1.

      ProofofSteveGM this is a well considered and balanced proposal. Kudos to you!

      I'm hoping that this initial proposal lends itself to further comments/suggestions and refinement.

      I'm of the opinion that Framework #2 is the right approach, however i do think that we need to consider the thresholds a bit more. I think the 100 independent wallet threshold is too low. For any movement of funds out of the Dao for charitable donations, should require a minimum 500 wallet threshold, with an 80% "for" vote. If it is THAT important to use Dao funds for purposes not directly benefitting the Dao itself, it is incumbent on the author of the Proposal to convince ohmies and build enough consensus and agreement to garner the 500 minimum independent votes.

      I also believe there should be a maximum cap for donations with each Proposal submitted. If the specific recipient of a successful Proposal requires more than the maximum amount, there should be a submission outlining what was accomplished with the original donation, and what the additional request would be used towards.

      This additional request should also be put to vote.

      I think you did a great job with this OIP…. thank you!

        Jawed I agree with this as well. I think the 100 unique wallets is way to low. The top 100 wallets will outweigh the voting power of the bottom 10k or possibly more. We need to redistribute the weight of voting power. If we kept it at the top 100 wallets there is no need for everyone else to vote since the vote would not matter if it was in opposition of the larger wallets.

        I vote for option 1. Outright ban on donations.

        It's too risky of a slope, its akin to why there is no dev emission in the protocol layer.

        #1 seems too obstinate

        Donating could be +EV in many ways, so if ever the community wants to do it, banning outright now would be a huge mistake.

        Ohmies are smart. Don’t handcuff

        good job OP, thought this was well written. Similar to some other opinions, Framework 2 is more ideal but would also prefer higher minimums 500+.

        Good conversations so far from everyone. A lot of talk on bumping the minimum wallet number for framework 2 up to 500. If that is a highly popular suggestion, I will submit OIP-50a with two frameworks, one for a 100 wallet minimum and one for a 500 wallet minimum, and I will take that one to snapshot. But only if framework 2 wins and there is obvious and significant interest in the bumped up minimum wallet number standard in the comments as a proportion of overall interest.

        I would feel more comfortable with a higher wallet count. 100 is way to low since one wallet could have a thousand votes.
        I would possibly be on board with a 500-750 range for unique wallets.

        Thank you for the great proposal Steve!

        Personally, I'm not against charitable donations/helping reduce human impact on climate change/facilitating longevity researches. I personally have donated to charitable causes, hold some Klima, and would love to live a long healthy life. However, I feel that's perhaps more suited to be done on an individual level (either via Tychee, or as a small collective). If there are charitable causes that the dao and/or the community feel strongly for, we can easily have a charity drive, using Olympus' social media accounts to rally the ohmies. (Perhaps similar to how we promoted 3,3 together on PoolTogether.) Those that agree and feel the same way about said charitable causes can choose to donate the amount they are comfortable with, at a time of their choice. With the large, passionate community that we currnetly have, the influence of Olympus will definitely be noticed if any such charity drives were to happen. Alternatively, there are charity oriented ohmie sub-cultures already existing in examples like FrenDao, where a group of ohmies pool money together and vote on which charities to donate to.

        I feel that as the reserve currency of the crypto community, OHM can and will be used for charitable donations. But it's better suited for individuals or collectives besides OlympusDao itself. If OHM is the reserve currency then many would see OlympusDao as the proverbial central bank of crypto. As such, I feel the focus has been and should continue to be on monetary policies - to establish and solidify OHM's position as the reserve currency of crypto. Charitable donations can be positive marketing for Olympus, the same positive marketing can be done through a charity drive I stated above as well - similar effect, less cost to the protocol, more freedom of choice to individual ohmies.

        As Olympus grows, our Dao team is also growing very fast. So many talented and passionate contributors are joining every week. We should really be focusing on attracting and retaining talent - competitive & fair pay is one key component of that. I'm not part of the dao contributors, but I feel strongly about this - the success of Olympus depends on its dao contributors. That's why I feel this would be a much better use of the dao treasury funds.

        Based on the above reasons, my vote goes to option #1.

        option 1 + allocated marketing budget for 'charity' (the you help me I help you type for exposure) - a group of elected committee members (yearly or half yearly election) to research and decide which 'charity'.

        billygoat Re: #1 Outright ban.  Does this actually align with the DAO’s purpose & intentions?  Or even the concept of a DAO.  If I understood the resistance OIP-49/49a correctly, one primary concernn was (govt) over-reach & “what drove ppl to crypto in the first place, looking for an escape”

        A DAO is just a way of coordinating humans. I don't think charitable donations are in the purview of this particular DAO though individual members should be free to allocate their own funds as they desire.

        quick note to say i pressed option 3, but would choose option 2 if went to snapshot (didn't realise you can't modify your vote on the forums!)

        I'll start with what I think at the top and then see how the 3 frameworks measure up.

        I think that arriving at shared mental model across the growing population of ohmies will reduce the intersections of a common ground that we can all agree with. I've agree with those who've come before me that one way of looking at Olympus is as an operating system (OS). Within this model then, the OS's which I admire most, and which are most widespread throughout the internet infrastructure we all rely upon (linux, devuan, early debian, freebsd) the governance for what makes into the kernel is, or historically has been (for the most part), extremely conservative. With these two perspectives in mind, my personal opinion is that strategies which decrease surface area, which do one thing and do it well is a sound approach.

        OTOH i have a radical opinion that optimizing for minimizing the chance or avenues for siphoning funds, preventing free riders etc are optimizations and energy usage along a lower order priority than racing against deflating value of DAO owned OHM (i expanded on that a little in OIP-49). I understand this is likely a contentious take - but I would personally rather see ohmies paid extremely well for any work they do in the DAO, and see experimentation happy with an openness to failure, with less of a restrictive focus on ROI. That's not to say a free for all - that's to say that with the humans we have congregated around Olympus, with the systems which we already have in place, that any loss from free riders, or siphoning would be minimal compared to expanded bandwidth of not trying to implement systems which come from a scarcity framework. I would rather 99% of dedicated ohmies be free'd up to 100% focus on value creation and making bold advances, then worry about small change loss. Dilution of DAO owned OHM far outweighs the pace of any bad actors could survive in a DAO which is humming along in an increasingly coordinated fashion.

        With all that being said, and back down in reality. I think in reality that a conservative approach with the DAO owned OHM/ treasury is probably more pragmatic/practical with where people are coming from. I think we should aim to move towards permissionless everything. i think the future is permissionless curation. so something like rari fuse pools, but where curators build a rep for assembling pools of recipients and then people can redirect yields to the curators/pools which align with their priorities. i imagine if a different set of worldviews had informed the selection of a different set of charity donations then a different segment of ohmies would have put up a level of resistance. historically these governance discussions/debates have been nessecary but we now have permissionless technicques and tools which allow the grassroots emergence of a plurality of priorities to emerge, and in our case with olympus as a base stem cell operating system.

        Specific feedback about the frameworks

        My feeling about framework 1 is that it's a response to the threat that people would be implicated in decisions/value flows which they don't agree with and don't have a meaningful way of opting out of. I feel like framework 1 would leave another group of people feeling like there's a decision that, if it went through, they don't have a meaningful way of opting out of.

        My feeling is framework 2 is the best of the three options. I think having deliberation and a slower process and requiring a higher level of buy in (number of unique wallets voting) is a good precedent.

        My feeling on framework 3 - i would rather have seen this be something like a pause / moratorium with some process for finding where the common ground is - if any, with a decision that he widest number of people could agree with.


        All this can be summarized as permissionless tooling FTW

        Well written! Too many gray areas open up if we attempt to use the DAO for charitable giving or "Strategic Partnerships". Let's vote to outright ban use of DAO funds to put this to bed.

        This doesn't mean that we can create a marketing effort for "Ohmies giving back" and even create a game out of it. I think drumming up community support is a better use of time/effort rather than using the DAO.

        I'm tired and annoyed with the uneducated and outright bullshit proposals posted to the forum and snapshot. It takes way too much time now to sift through the crap. While I don't like the idea of taking away smaller investor's opportunity to bring valid proposals, I feel that setting a bar at xxx OHM/sOHM would weed out a good portion of the noise. We could create a Discord channel for smaller investors to funnel any proposals through and the internal team could decide if it is worth posting or can educate the OHM holder as to why it isn't worth posting. I like setting the bar (tagged for inflation) at 100 OHM to submit a proposal in the Forum and Snapshot.

        I'm also very glad to see such a diversity of minds applied to olympus, in earnest. i find it yet another green flag that there are people with such wildly different perspectives that i couldn't even imagine where they are coming from without speaking with them directly and asking to try and understand. i think there's great strength in this and that by taking the time to find where the shared ground that we can all live with is a great strength.

        thanks steve for taking the time to write this up at an already busy time for you, and also having the fortitude to call it as you see it and the humbleness and generosity to explain your reasoning - and that goes for everyone else in the mix also.

        I am glad we have a mix of mad scientists, cautious pragmatists, dreamers, sceptics, detail oriented, operationalisers, shipooors, so many ooooooors. To many types to list. It's great.

        I'm going with framework 1 for now but I'm still open to possibly changing it in the future.

        My thinking right now is charitable efforts are better off as a separate DAOs so people can group with others who have aligned values. I think there is going to be massive governance overhead for every proposal. Every proposal will end up being controversial due to the diversity of people in the DAO.

        I could be wrong, but I'd rather see someone else take the risk on it first and reevaluate later.

        At this early stage I lean more toward option 1. Crypto time goes fast but let’s not forget that this protocol and community is less than a year old. Treasury funds are what make this while flywheel work. The fact that there is a growing treasury is what gives ohmies confidence in their investment. It’s what attracts new ohmies. Siphoning off funds from that flywheel, no matter how small, even for great efforts (I love Gitcoin) seems unwise at this time.

        I’d prefer an option 1 with an automatic review/revote in 3-5 years. But I’ll take option 1 for now, assuming that in a future time of stability this could be revisited.

        For now, charitable donations “through Olympus” could take the form of individuals directing yields of their own toward a community organized address.