[SCP-TBD] Establish TSSC and formalize TS role at ShapeShift DAO

Summary

This proposal establishes the Treasury Signer Selection Committee which will be responsible for vetting and appointing new Treasury Signers for the ShapeShift DAO.

It also establishes the Treasury Signer role as a full-time paid role of the ShapeShift DAO with formal job description, duties, standards of conduct, and compensation.

Background

The ShapeShift DAO has control of millions of dollars of funds that it uses to further its mission of building and maintaining the easiest-to-use decentralized interface for blockchains. In order to sustain the DAO’s activity, including compensating the hundreds of active users who contribute to the DAO and to reimburse their expenses on behalf of the DAO, the DAO treasury must regularly create, sign, and broadcast blockchain transactions. Treasury Signers fulfill this function on behalf of the DAO.

When the ShapeShift DAO was formed, ShapeShift AG appointed an initial set of Treasury Signers to manage its treasury, however no process was established for what happens when a signer retires, or for appointing new signers to the set.

Abstract

The ShapeShift DAO needs to ensure there are sufficient Treasury Signers (TSes) to protect the ShapeShift DAO Treasury. This can be accomplished by delegating this responsibility to a new committee — the Treasury Signer Selection Committee. This committee will appoint individuals who will fulfill the Treasury Signer role for the DAO. The Treasury Signer role will be compensated with 2,000,000 FOX tokens which shall be issued via a two-year Sablier stream established at the time of the TS’s appointment.

A formal Job Description of the Treasury Signer role is maintained on the ShapeShift DAO Notion site.

Treasury Signer Selection Committee (TSSC)

The TSSC is responsible for ensuring there are enough Treasury Signers appointed to manage the ShapeShift DAO Treasury. If there is not, the TSSC is responsible for researching and vetting candidates in private and appointing new TSes to ensure business continuity of ShapeShift DAO treasury operations. To minimize the security impact to both the ShapeShift DAO and to the Treasury Signers, the identities of Treasury Signers will not be disclosed to the DAO or to the public, and will only be disclosed to members of the TSSC.

The TSSC shall be comprised of current workstream leaders of any ShapeShift DAO workstream, provided that workstream leader has fulfilled their leadership duties for at least eight (8) months.

While it is recommended that no fewer than two (2) and no more than five (5) Treasury Signers be appointed at any given time, the TSSC shall be granted full authority to appoint or dismiss TSes at their discretion to ensure the smooth operation and security of the ShapeShift Treasury.

Benefits

  • The benefits of formalizing this position and offering fair compensation include:

    Ensuring there is a process for continuity of treasury operations for the ShapeShift DAO

  • Ensuring the role is properly defined so that there is clarity on TS duties
  • Ensuring the role is properly compensated so that candidates are incentivized to apply, and existing Treasury Signers have incentives to continue in their role.
  • Ensuring there is a process for vetting candidates without divulging their identity to the public

Drawbacks

  • There is a cost to the DAO to fund these appointments
  • The DAO does not have full visibility into the selection process, so they will have no choice but to trust the TSSC members to make good decisions on behalf of the DAO

Vote

  • A vote of Yes will establish the Treasury Signer Selection Committee as defined above, and formalize the Treasury Signer role as a full-time paid role of the ShapeShift DAO with 2,000,000 FOX compensation issued via a Sablier stream over two (2) years.
  • A vote of No will do nothing.

Doh. I just realized.

The proposed comp of 2,000,000 FOX tokens does not have any duration attached to it. We should define precisely what the salary is.

I propose a term of 1 year.

The 2,000,000 FOX mentioned above would be for 1 year of service, but would be delivered by a 2y sablier stream.

so if a TS serves for 1 year, then quits, they’d continue receiving the second half of their payment for one year after their term of service ends.

Discuss!

Dear Hiring Manager,

I have heard from a land far away, of an amazing opportunity that is almost too good to be true. Lo and behold, it turns out the rumors were true!

As actual laborers of the DAO scramble to make sacrifices,

as leaders are forced to make incredibly difficult decisions in who to keep and who to “pressure” into quitting,

and as I had to muster up the courage to tell a newly assembled team that went through months of DeFi and decentralized concepts training, spending countless hours of research and planning – for the sole purpose of penetrating this stubborn market to spread the spirit of decentralization and the “spirit of the Fox” – that the DAO sees no value in funding their efforts after only a single month, essentially not even giving them a chance,

as families around the world are displaced, starving, gunned down, losing their homes, and as the impoverished are, well, becoming even more impoverished as food shortages ravage 3rd world countries,

and as the DAO’s culture and morale is undeniably at an all time low…

There was hope just around the corner all along! Forget all the arrangements I have already made elsewhere, I would be absolutely honored to have a chance to work as an Official Treasury Signer. I will faithfully and professionally carry out my duties to better this world with the most intense signing you’ve seen!

I have attached my resume, and I assure you that you can count on me every couple days a month to sign whatever needs signing! Considering my top-tier experience in signing shit, I would like to request that the Sablier stream is shortened to one year instead of two. I’m sure that can be arranged, right?

https://global.discourse-cdn.com/standard10/uploads/foxcookieco/optimized/1X/0a47fb5c6feaba95ca08536ee280e4c1c8148014_2_458x500.jpeg

Looking forward to hearing back soon!

P.S. I’m not too keen on using a KeepKey, so please have a golden plated ledger ready for me on my desk when I start. 24K of course. That’s the only way to keep out the bad radio signals from the enemy up North. Kim is always up to his games, ShapeShift is obviously no stranger to that.

I appreciate the push to establish a process and means to transfer this role/task going forward, I am curious about the timing and of the requirements of each of the signers who would apply. If a max of 5 that is 10M FOX a year for this specific task. I can get the availability concerns and the demands of such but having more signers should help alleviate these pressures and make this less of a demanding role. Also I am questioning the assumption that the TSSC is determined already.

discourse-post-upload20231125-65354-zsozg2.png mperklin:

The TSSC shall be comprised of current workstream leaders of any ShapeShift DAO workstream, provided that workstream leader has fulfilled their leadership duties for at least eight (8) months.

This list seriously lacks the capability to have non genesis contributors being determining members, why is it limited so?

Thanks for the replies, guys.

There’s no way to appoint/revoke signers today, so hold any applications until after there is an approved process for our DAO to choose new signers.

First, I want to say that I don’t believe that a static “2M FOX tokens” is a fair comp for this role. There’s a saying on the Internet: “The quickest way to get the right answer is to post the wrong answer on a forum and watch how quickly people correct it”

I don’t know what’s fair to compensate a TS for their necessary work, and after throwing around a few different ideas I realized - it’s not even up to me to decide anyways. I think it would be closer to appropriate if the comp is specified in USD, and the equivalent amount of FOX are assigned to the Sablier stream at the start of the TS’s term. A static amount (regardless of amount) will very quickly become “wrong” as the price of FOX changes.

Next,

  1. you ask a great question about my proposed makeup of TSSC members. Here’s what went into my thinking:

    TSSC members will know the true identities of the treasury signers. For this reason, the group should be small and trusted.

  2. FOX Tokenholders have already demonstrated their trust/faith in workstream leaders by giving them governance over a large budget of funds for their work. This list of people may be a good place to start.
  3. I added the 8mo requirement to avoid edge-cases where a governance proposal establishes a new workstream, but then abolishes it / fails to renew it because the DAO decided on another direction. If you’ve been a workstream leader for 8 months or more, you’ve been “re-elected” at least once (whether your term was 3mo, 4mo, or 6mo) which seemed like a good indicator of confidence.

I hope this clarified some of the details in the original draft I posted.

I encourage you to suggest improvements to any area you feel could be improved. I’m open to any membership of the TSSC as long as it properly serves the DAO, and any comp for the TSes that gathers good consensus.

Thanks for your feedback, frens!

Thanks for tolerating my over the top satirical response 1f37b Best of luck.

edit —

To clarify, this post was not meant with ill will. I was almost certain that mperk was making a satirical post or a post with an angle to test the DAO to see how it would react. In return, I returned with satire. I had a long discussion with him prior to his response to this thread, which was actually pretty pleasant. So don’t get any wrong ideas or assume that I’m on a mission of some sort 1f642

tyvm, I lol-ed and I want a suede KK now.

I do happen to know he’s serious; I don’t think it’s an ideal solution, but I don’t really see a better one at the moment. At the end of the day, it’s an important security property that signers have large enough FOX bags that they’ll lose a bunch of upside if they act maliciously. It’s also problematic to have doxxed signers, since they might get black-bagged at a conference or some such.

Ideally, all proposals would embed the transactions they need to execute to make them happen, but that’s probably not going to happen soon due to some combination of capital inefficiency, inadequate tooling, and laziness (jk, but not really jk). Until then, we’re stuck with a multisig, which needs to be run by people that can be absolutely 100% sure that what they’re about to sign does what they think it does — which means they need to be able to, for example, interpret the execution traces of simulated transactions, not just mash the button on metamask. (And don’t get me started on ledger and “blind signing”.)

One thought on the Doxxed signers, not to argue the point but having 5 or even 7 signers spread out geographically, with the requirements of having 3 to 4 or even 5 signers for a transaction to be recognized is that not one of the purposes of having multi sig to break up the chance of actors acting alone even if they get “bagged” and are forced, as one or more of the signers? I see the utility as you would use a voting committee. It would also as perviously stated lower the demand of a small over taxed group of signers. And one last point the signers now or at least two of them are publicly well known and are traveling the world and attending large crypto gatherings would that not put them at risk or higher risk but is still the case. In any case I can see the point but the conversation may hold more as stated by .

The signers being known, is part of whats being discussed yes. Changing how that works.

–not sure about the geo part. see some benefit there too. however, the knowledge part gets in the way.

and yet, finding those few ppl that can/will do the position is the roadblock.

I think its 3 aspects . Want (user must want to be a signer), Can (user must know the in’s and outs of what it takes), and Trust. (do OTHERS trust that user.) Not sure if there are other aspects, but those are the top 3 that i know of.

Think of a few ppl. and check of the boxes for them. Do you Trust that person with Millions? then its up to them. Will they? and then can they. that’s a short list to start. Then your cutting it down fast. (switch will/can in either order)

  1. Thanks for the comments, all. I can tell you all appreciate the difficulties involved here.

    After consideration, I feel like a good modification to this draft involves the compensation.

    I think comp would be more future-proof if it were stated in $USD terms, but paid out in FOX.

    How’s this:

    TSes will be appointed for one-year terms.

    At the time the term begins, a Sablier stream worth $150,000 USD of FOX tokens will be established at the prevailing FOX:USD rate to stream those FOX tokens to the TS over a two-year period.

    This fixes a few things:

    The static amount of FOX tokens is removed, making it more future-proof as the price of FOX changes over time.

  2. The salary is more in line with other roles in the DAO.

Do you have thoughts on this proposed edit to TS comp in this draft?

–MP