Dear community,
We are happy to share the fourth community governance update for Merit Circle DAO. This community governance update will seek to provide the wider community with a summary of the latest, and most notable governance related events, within the DAO since 16 December 2022 and until today.
Updates on our DAO’s operations, including various information on our four verticals, can be found in our bi-monthly DAO progress update newsletters via Substack.
Our latest February 2023 monthly treasury report which provides a breakdown of the DAO’s financial activities can be found here.
In order to avoid overlap between newsletters and updates, these community governance posts only focus on the governance and community aspects of the DAO, and will only be posted on the governance forum.
We hope that the DAO’s community members, and other stakeholders, will continue to find these community governance updates of interest, and that our post will encourage further discussions relating to Merit Circle DAO.
Merit Circle grants - MIP-21
On 7th December @DAOCoreContributors put forward a proposal named “Merit Circle Grants”. Our DAO consists of large quantities of talented individuals all having their expertise in their respective fields. For the purpose of stimulating these individuals to step up and contribute to the DAO, the proposal therefore proposed that the DAO implements a grant system with a committee consisting of DAO community members that may be altered through governance from time to time.
At the time of our previous community governance update, this proposal was up for a vote, which was subsequently concluded on 16 December 2022. 92.51% of the votes cast were in favor of the proposal. Following the proposal, the grant program went live on 13 February 2023 and applications can now be submitted here.
Please see more information in the Gitbook and Twitter threads created by the Merit Circle DAO official account and Sad Cat Capital (one of the current committee members of the grant program). The Gitbook and Twitter threads include an overview of the key criteria that need to be met in order to have a chance of having your grant proposal approved. We encourage enthusiastic community members to make use of the grant system to get a chance to help contribute towards the development of the Merit Circle ecosystem.
MC Tactile, the first Merit Circle merchandise project - MIP-22
On 15 December @daandegreef proposed for Merit Circle DAO to decide on how Merit Circle merchandise could be distributed to the Merit Circle DAO community. In the proposal the author mentioned that he had, for the past few months, been working with the Merit Circle DAO’s contributors on a merchandise project named MC Tactile.
The proposal was well-received by the community and put up to a vote on 22 December 2022 - timely in terms of Christmas and the festive holidays at the time. A clear majority of 99% of the votes were in favor of the proposal.
Following the proposal, the DAO community merchandise was presented through the website tactile.meritcircle.io, where each person whitelisted (either through the criteria set out in MIP-22 or through a public raffle) could mint a MC Tactile NFT. As part of the launch of the said website, it was informed that each owner of the 650 available NFTs will have the option to redeem such NFT for one merchandise box containing seven various items of merchandise.
As communicated by the contributor team behind the idea, the merchandise is anticipated to be available for distribution and shipment within Q1 2023 and more information regarding the details in this respect should be expected within the next few weeks to come.
Changes to the multisig signers and structure - MIP-23
On 20 January 2023, @DAOCoreContributors proposed changes to the multisig signers and structure. The proposal firstly sought tokenholder approval for a change and addition of a few signatories in Merit Circle DAO’s multisig team and to change the 4 out of 7 multisig into a 5 out of 9 multisig. Secondly, the proposal sought to ratify continued delegation of certain powers already granted to the multisig team, together with an additional authorization. Thirdly, it sought to to require that the multisig signers enter into a simple multisig participation agreement in order to formalize the multisig signers’ participation in connection with the multisig arrangement.
After discussions, the proposal proceeded to a vote on 27 January 2023. The vote ended on 29 January 2023, with all voters voting in favor, apart from one voter with voting power equalling 84 MC tokens.
Proposal for domain name + Merit Circle contribution tooling
On 16 February 2023, @hobajons put forward a proposal that proposed to introduce a platform and a set of tools for DAO community members to receive rewards for contributions that benefit the DAO. This proposal has been subject to lengthy discussions between community members within both the governance forum and Telegram.
The proposal is still subject to discussions and everyone is encouraged to share their thoughts on it.
Three discussion threads
During the month of February, three different discussion threads have been opened, as summarized below.
- Constitution of Merit Circle DAO
On 5 February @DAOCoreContributors and @Cryptolawyer opened up a discussion thread that suggests that Merit Circle DAO adopts a written constitution. The proposed MC DAO constitution can be found here.
The draft constitution will be subject to review and discussions for at least one month counting from the opening of the discussion thread, providing each community member sufficient time to review and weigh in on the idea of a constitution and its content. After the review and discussions period, the authors will review the suggestions provided and consider whether any revisions should be made to the constitution before submitting it as an official proposal.
We encourage every community member to review the proposed constitution in detail and to provide any input to it. All input will be reviewed by the authors and responded to. The constitution draft is not a “take it or leave it” offer, and every community member therefore has the ability to influence the content of the constitution which is intended to be presented in a subsequent proposal. Thus far, a few community members have provided valuable input that will be taken into consideration by the authors.
- Twitter sales bot service for Merit Circle projects
On 8 February 2023, @dmgdata opened a discussion thread announcing that the author’s team had created and deployed a Twitter sales bot for Edenhorde. See here edenhordesalesbot (@lily_ehsalesbot) / Twitter. The ambition of the author is for this to support Edenhorde with its brand building and broadcasting, in addition to benefit the Merit Circle ecosystem as a whole.
The author also informs that the product and service described in the discussion thread will be submitted to the Merit Circle grants program (see MIP-21 referred to above). The discussion thread has been subject to some discussions, and all community members may still engage with the author and share their thoughts on the products and services described in the thread.
- Edenhorde moving forward
On 27 February 2023, @asam0oo published a discussion thread for the purpose of brainstorming how the Edenhorde community should progress going forward. This discussion thread was created following recent discussions in various community channels with regards to how Edenhorde should best proceed and be structured as a NFT project within the MC DAO umbrella. The thread has already rendered notable interest by the DAO community (including Edenhorde community), both on the governance forum.
All community members are, as always, encouraged to share their thoughts on the relevant topic for discussion.
Closing remarks
The above illustrates that our DAO and community members have engaged in discussions, proposals and voting rounds with respect to a variety of topics in recent months. Looking back at the period since 16 December 2022, it is fair to say that our DAO has continued to have an active governance platform, despite the turbulent markets.
As part of our closing remarks, we wish to remind everyone in the community of the important Transparency & Accountability section of the forum, where various forum threads from early stakeholders can be found. An overview of forum threads posted to date (with links to the respective forum threads) can be found here.
We hope that the wider DAO community appreciates these updates concerning Merit Circle DAO. Please feel free to leave a response to address any information that you believe was lacking or that you wish that we shed more light on. As we intend to continue to provide such updates going forward, let us know if there is anything you want done differently in the future. We are as always happy to receive your feedback.