This is an excellent proposal and provides much needed clarity regarding SAFEDAO direction and purpose. I support it.
3 Likes
Thanks for the clarification.
We’re in agreement that we shouldn’t create a mismatch between the pass/fail as displayed on Snapshot and the proposal result as defined by the SafeDAO governance process. My belief is that there should not be separate quorum and majority rule thresholds for changes to the constitution at this point, especially since the constitution is not binding and functions more like a statement of purpose.
In the early stages, I’m cautious about defining a governance process that inhibits change, complicates governance, or has high quorum requirements because lack of governance participation is an issue in many DAOs.
SEP #1 reached 14M total votes and SEP #2 has 13M so far, so neither of them would meet the quorum requirement of 20M defined here. It would be comforting to see that we can reach 20M votes on SEPs before requiring that level of participation for certain changes.
5 Likes
Following up here since SEP #2 closed with 32M votes. 
It looks like we can hit the 20M quorum, which is great. I still think we should keep the process simple and hold off on having two sets of proposal passage requirements until the constitution is more consequential–adding this context to qualify my previous post.
5 Likes
Thank you @lukas for taking the time and effort to communicate the principals and purpose of the SafeDAO! This captures the mission and direction the Safe protocol is moving towards. Potentially adding details/examples to the Goals and Principles sections could be beneficial when analyzing future SEPs and comparing their stated outcomes to the goals defined in this constitution.
Constitution quorum
The higher 20mm SAFE quorum seems important for the constitution because it defines the guiding values and mission of SafeDAO. The significance of these guiding principles outweigh the added complexity of a subspace.
Decentralized collectives
The idea of the “SafeDAO as a decentralized collective” makes sense as most “DAOs” are in actuality closer to a Distributed Collective (DISCO) defined by @castig of Console.xyz.
III. Goals
- Foster a vibrant ecosystem
It could be useful to describe metrics that are indicative of a vibrant ecosystem to help define and measure what a vibrant ecosystem is?
E.g.
- Assets under management (AUM) on Safe protocol
- User activity on Safe and apps built on Safe protocol
- Resilience through decentralization
Same point as for 1.. How can we tell if Safe protocol is decentralized?
E.g.
- Can apps on the Safe ecosystem run without Gnosis infrastructure (potentially broken down by infrastructure components)
- SAFE token distribution
- Not voting delegation since users can choose to override their delegate if desired
- Will remain constant in the short-term, but useful once SAFE is transferable
- User distribution across Safe app ecosystem
It may be useful for these items and others that people contribute to be added to the constitution in order to help measure success.
IV. Principles
Any fees that may be introduced do not compromise its public good nature and carefully balance the interests of different stakeholders.
It may be useful to define who the stakeholders are so that way future SEPs can address the impact of specific stakeholders.
E.g.
- Users of safe apps
- Core developers, business, and support team of Safe protocol(s)
- SafeDAO Guardians
- Developers building apps on-top of Safe protocol
- SAFE token holders
- Gnosis team
5 Likes
Thanks for starting this conversation. I feel much detail in missing In you’re proposals current state, ie, vague references and unclear reasonings.
for example…
SAFE does not require fees of any sort nor does it need them. Further details on why fees were referenced and elaboration on what “carefully balance the interests of different stakeholders” is referring to is required.
Aside from that comment, i find that this has set a good foundation to build on and expand upon. Notably the paragraph that mentioned the use of Kleros Court as being a way to dispute disagreements. Community forms, being as widely used as they are, is limited in capabilities and can be chaotic at times. looking for alternative ways to collaborate with community members is important to grow.
1 Like
This is something that I think we should touch on.
I brought up some uncertainty around the large voter addresses earlier in the week— and in another thread.
Here is the link for it: [SEP #2] Community Initiative To Unpause Token Contract (Enabling Transferability) - #244 by raynemang
If you have some time, can you take a look at my analysis? I’d love to get some of my findings cleared up or explained 
Thank you, @lukas!
2 Likes
Thanks for sharing these perspectives.
I saw this article in the website you shared
I think this article serves as a good guide for this proposal.
There is a very detailed explanation about the meaning of DAO and the meaning of the DAO constitution.
For example:
And so, if you imagine a longship, and every token holder as the holder of an oar, the way that I think about it is that something like a constitution is like a coxswain (the person who sits at the front of the boat).
The fact is that among the current Safe token holders, the vast majority of normal users do not have any power in fact, their participation is just wasting time with the whales without even knowing who the whales are 
Many people think that my speech in the forum is only for the transfer of token, and that I am a short-sighted person who only considers self benefits.
I admit, it was like this at first.
And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, I’m not some saint and neither are you.
But when the SEP#2 vote was not passed, I started to think about the significance of my spending so much time participating in forum governance, my comments were actually on the side of the majority of users (as evidenced by the number of likes I got) , but our opinions are virtually worthless.
In fact, in SEP#2, the voting is only decided by about 5 people. I can say unceremoniously that the participation of the remaining 1800 people is meaningless, because they can’t change anything by voting or not voting, even if these 1800 people choose the same voting option (which is what it is, about 90% of people voted yes), nothing will change.
In SEP#2, two voting addresses (at present, it may be held by the same person) hold 12M voting rights, which is almost more than the sum of the current voting rights of all users.
Yet we don’t even know who those two addresses are, and we didn’t know the reason of their vote. NO transparency al all, So what is the point of other DAO members participating?
The team should at least clarify these whale addresses belong to whom, otherwise there is no need for the next vote, just an internal meeting of 5 whales can decide the proposal, please don’t let the remaining more than 1,800 DAO members participate in this meaningless vote.
To be honest, I don’t expect tokens to be transferable right now, especially in this market situation.
I’m just trying to figure out, besides the whales, what’s the point of the participation of the remaining DAO members? Is this opaque minority governance a waste of the majority’s time?
Decentralization is not just a slogan
3 Likes
Fees
Leaving fees open ended seems to make sense. There could be advanced features in the future, or services offered to businesses and institutions that would require fees to fund the services offered.
Dispute resolution
Leaving the dispute resolution more open-ended could be useful
E.g.
…such as using Kleros Court or a similar solution…
That’s fine and all but be it as it may, the constitution is not somewhere to define fees when there are none. Use of different words or additional points may be utilized. This goes back to my comment that the principles are generalized and easy to misinterpret.
Words in bold should be revised as they open up general interpretations and/or is embellishing.
This constitution is very good, but in addition to the constitution, I think we need to formulate corresponding detailed roadmaps for safedao and safe protocol in the future, which will help dao members understand clearly what our common goal is.
1 Like
Generally supportive of the constitution and at a high-level agree with the content. A few thoughts, many of which were inspired by the replies of others:
- I agree with many others on lowering quorum given the difficulties many DAOs have had due to low participation. I’d be open to equivalent to regular quorum or 1.5x regular quorum. 20M feels high, and we can always adjust later if the community feels as if there are too many low-importance proposals to amend the constitution.
- Strongly disagree on adding examples to goals and principles. Examples can fall out of date quickly and can be used too rigorously for pattern matching where we want flexibility. Yes, there is a risk of stretching goals and principles in arguments, but I think this is fairly easy to recognize. In my opinion, there is greater risk that folks will reference the examples to limit changes in the future that we had not considered at this point.
- Clarification on language is something that I think is important here. This goes beyond just the constitution, but this feels like a good place to discuss it as we are defining terms. In this draft, both “Safe” and “Safe Protocol” are used. Are these meant to be used interchangeably? I’d like to strongly advocate not using just “Safe” without a suffix (and rebranding anything that just uses “Safe”). It has been extremely confusing in conversation and I have defaulted back to saying “Gnosis Safe” to ensure folks understand what I’m referencing.
- I agree with the spirit of the third goal (Tokenize Value), however, I’m not sure if the implementation of it makes sense for as staying a document as a constitution. Specifically, I don’t think the SAFE token should be mentioned at all in the constitution. DAO governance processes are still extremely early and it’s unclear if ERC20 token-based governance will be the end state.
- Agree on removing fee language from first principle, both because of the implications around fees and because the term is not broad enough. “Fees” should be replaced with “Changes” as there are non-fee-based ways to compromise Safe as a public good.
7 Likes
Any particular reason you are suggesting the adoption of a constitution instead of the adoption of a charter?
This isn’t the format for a constitution, this is more of a manifesto. I am skeptical of anyone writing a proposal for a constitution that doesn’t actually know what a constitution is. It is a good start to a manifesto however which can often be a first step to drafting a constitution.
Here is a good template for a constitution https://www.law.uci.edu/campus-life/student-organizations/registration/sample-constitution.html
here is a good template for a manifesto, as you can see this post still needs some work. Manifesto template - GO FAIR
4 Likes
I’m not sure if that is clear at all, after all constitutions in web3 are still a young and evolving practice. Metgov gives a great introduction on constitutions in web3, as well as a guide. It seems to me that the current draft does incorporate large parts of best practices and recommendations provided by Metagov.
We don’t need to and shouldn’t reinvent the wheel in web3 when it comes to constitutions (or manifestos), but a constitution needs to be fit for purpose and context-specific. The constitution template you linked refers to student organisations which are quite different from web3 protocols in various dimensions. The linked resources also stresses this context-specificity. Curious to discuss where student organisations and web3 protocol DAOs overlap and which parts of that template may be relevant here.
2 Likes
Thanks for writing this @lukas . I think nailing down the purpose of a purpose-drive org is of high importance, as everything else will inherit from this.
In general I am highly in favour, but have a few questions/comments.
Quorums can be quite tricky for early-stage organizations, because you don’t know if the activity you have now will translate to the activity you will have later. The current 10M quorum means that 60% of delegated tokens will need to vote to make changes to our governance. To make changes to the constitution, you’re suggesting 20M quorum, which is greater than the circulating supply according to this governance dashboard.
These quorums feel very high to me. As some examples, ENS typically has 10% turnout on Snapshot, and Uniswap has 1-3% turnout.
At BanklessDAO, we actually shot ourselves in the foot with optimistic quorums which halted our governance processes. Would not want to see the same thing happen at SafeDAO.
While this mission feels like it technically captures the intent of the community, it feels lacking in emotion. I think that emotional aspect is pretty important, as this mission should be a rallying cry. It should be easily understood by technical and non-technical people alike; those who are part of the SafeDAO community, and those who aren’t.
I think you could keep your existing text, and just add a more catchy title…something like
- To make web3 wallets more usable.
- To create decentralized wallets for all users and use cases.
- To make web3 wallets smarter.
- Wallets for all!
Just riffing, but I hope it illustrates the idea.
These goals almost sound like values! I say this because values are more human, and identifying this list as values could make it resonate more with people.
Goals are changeable. Values to not change. Do you believe we will ever stop wanting to foster a vibrant ecosystem? Will we ever stop wanting to create resilience through decentralization?
Just food for thought.
Thanks again for your effort =)
3 Likes
Whether SafeDAO Constitution should be promoted to the SEP stage? Because the discussion has been going on for nearly two months, and the latest discussion was also 18 days ago
2 Likes
The proposal author @lukas is working on an update and response to feedback. I’d suggest we see whether this response will be controversial. If it turns out to be widely accepted, we can probably move this proposal to phase 1.
As expected, your comment has fallen of deaf ears.
This snapshot is simply a pantomime for the userbase.
@fallingau/@nodeE Stay tuned for this publication on voting weight distribution so that we can have that discussion with a bit more substance.
Let’s also please use the original thread for this conversation.