When will Polkadot Governance be fully implemented?
Hello all,
I have been using the Polkadot platform for 7 months now, and I couldn't help noticing that there is still a strong focus on technicalities or techies' inputs at the expenses of real (read: "decentralised") governance.
What do I mean by that?
Well, let us have a look at the governance tab: Who has the final say on the suitability of proposals for democracy? The Council. Who manages the treasury? The Council. Who oversees tipping? The Council. And who are the members of the Council? The majority are Techies/Founders, meanwhile most of the validators and grant recipients who have applied are still stuck in the runners-up waiting room.
I might be wrong, but it seems to me that there are not many representatives from the multiple meetup groups/communities that Polkadot has set up around the world sitting at the Council table. This is a missed opportunity because on-chain governors could be working much more closely with off-chain governance team members.
The biggest issues I see with the current governance setup are:
- Inefficiency: nobody is good at everything. Someone might be qualified to review 10000 lines of code, but unqualified when it comes to judging a promotional campaign on Twitter or YouTube. So why set them up to do the second task, if there are high chances they won't know how to approach it in the first place?
The criteria for council membership could be reviewed to become more inclusive and representative of the various parts of the Polkadot ecosystem at large. This would help flag a wider range of problems in advance and allow more time for delivering solutions as the number of on-chain and off-chain participants increases.
- Fatigue: Nobody can deliver optimal performance 100% of the time. After undertaking multiple governance-related tasks over a long period of time, there is bound to be some exhaustion at play. This is particularly true because not all members of the council are engaging with the governance process de facto, thus leaving their duties to the few that do make the commitment to be consistent.
Council members should have some incentives for participating in the governance process in deeds. This could be something as silly as a system of colourful badges (i.e via Substrate's Front-End), or as serious as funding Council members' on-chain identity registration (i.e the deposit of 20.258 DOT).
I understand that everyone is getting geared for the upcoming Parachains auctions, but at the end of the day, Governance sits at the core of blockchain projects and is as essential as the code on which it is built. If users and early adopters do not think/believe/feel that their input is being acknowledged or valued, they will not engage beyond "to-the-moon" narratives nor hang around the platform long enough to discover its hidden treasures.
My question is therefore: is there a concrete roadmap for fully implementing governance on Polkadot?
I hope to hear from some of you PolkAssembly folks.
Cheers,
Anaelle.
Comments (5)
Comments (5)
Hey @anaelleltd glad you're sharing your thoughts!
I think it's a timing thing where the network is so nascent that the core devs have most of governance sway. That said, you bring up a good point that ultimately the most resilient, interesting/fun, and successful network is one governed by a wide, diverse, and participatory elected body. Carrying the ring to Mt. Doom requires a fellowship!
If non-tech people already have insights to add from a seat on the council, it could be fruitful to think of a path for them to get there.
One way could be to organize a mini-DAO that represents the non-tech segment and from there elect a representative(s) to run for council. It would be interesting to see what ideas come out of such a group. For instance, there may be folks who are skilled in developing businesses, designers/artists, philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, even fiat politicians interested in participating.
For now the DAO could just use a centralized platform like discourse or discord, but when a high-level (read newbie-friendly) DAO platform is live on Polkadot we could move to there and do everything through smart contracts. What do you think?
Thanks for the suggestion, @windylion. That certainly gives some perspective for future developments to all the Polkadot ambassadors out there.
That said, I'm much more concerned about what is hindering decentralised governance in the current setup. That is: the number of validators has been rolling up for the past few months (from 100 -> 297); but the number of councillors hasn't.
What is preventing Team Polkadot from gradually increasing the number of councillors from 13 -> 24, as original envisioned? That's what I would like to know.
Hey @anaelleltd glad you're sharing your thoughts!
I think it's a timing thing where the network is so nascent that the core devs have most of governance sway. That said, you bring up a good point that ultimately the most resilient, interesting/fun, and successful network is one governed by a wide, diverse, and participatory elected body. Carrying the ring to Mt. Doom requires a fellowship!
If non-tech people already have insights to add from a seat on the council, it could be fruitful to think of a path for them to get there.
One way could be to organize a mini-DAO that represents the non-tech segment and from there elect a representative(s) to run for council. It would be interesting to see what ideas come out of such a group. For instance, there may be folks who are skilled in developing businesses, designers/artists, philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, even fiat politicians interested in participating.
For now the DAO could just use a centralized platform like discourse or discord, but when a high-level (read newbie-friendly) DAO platform is live on Polkadot we could move to there and do everything through smart contracts. What do you think?
Thanks for the suggestion, @windylion. That certainly gives some perspective for future developments to all the Polkadot ambassadors out there.
That said, I'm much more concerned about what is hindering decentralised governance in the current setup. That is: the number of validators has been rolling up for the past few months (from 100 -> 297); but the number of councillors hasn't.
What is preventing Team Polkadot from gradually increasing the number of councillors from 13 -> 24, as original envisioned? That's what I would like to know.