This post will walk through a proposed format for making a governance proposal on ShapeShift.
A ShapeShift Community Proposal (SCP) is a formal mechanism for making decisions about how our community grows. The goal of governance is to create a more inclusive and empowering system for all stakeholders. We encourage proposal creators to center their ideas around how a proposal helps ShapeShift users, partners and team members better interact with one another, and how these changes create a more fluent ecosystem for all those interacting with the protocol.
When you’re ready to submit a proposal, please follow this format to the best of your ability.

SCP Format:

1. SCP # and Title - The title for your proposal should be clear, relevant, and consistent across the forum, ideation, and SnapShot proposal. Proposal titles in the Ideation and SnapShot stage must begin with “SCP#”, where the # for your proposal is 1 more than the # for the most recent ideation post (ie. SCP11: [Proposal title]).
2. Summary - 2-3 sentences on what the proposal is and what changes are being suggested without going into deep detail.
3. Abstract - Expanded summary introducing the proposal, what it entails and details around what would change should the proposal be implemented.
4. Motivation - Describe the motivation behind the proposal, the problem(s) it solves and the value it adds. This is your chance to show why this proposal is necessary, and how the changes would benefit ShapeShift if implemented.
5. Specification - Describe the “meat & potatoes” of the proposal. Go into deep detail around the changes that will happen both on a technical and social level. The more detail, the better.
6. Benefits - Point out core benefits of the proposal implementation and how it will affect the system.
7. Drawbacks - Highlight any drawbacks from implementing the proposal and points to consider regarding the upgrade.
8. Vote - Clearly outline what voting “for” and “against” entails. During the ideation stage, include a poll in the forum post and configure the poll to calculate voting power with SnapShot, weight user's votes by the number of tokens the user holds, and to not have a quorum limit.

When mapping out a vote, remember the following:
For - Formalizes the community is “for” the details outlined in this proposal including xyz…
Against - Formalizes the community is “against” the proposal including xyz…


For questions, comments or concerns on any of the above, please comment below or ask in the #Governance channel of the ShapeShift discord.