🏛️Governance Basics

Understanding the basics of governance.

Governance is a complex process with three overarching phases:

• Refinement

• Decision

• Enforcement

In order to make effective and efficient decisions DAOs must navigate all three of these phases. The navigation of these three overarching phases is complex and different for each DAO.

Refinement

Refinement is the phase in which ideas and potential proposals are introduced and refined before they go to a more formal vote creating a decision. Refinement is the process that the Crystal Platform is built for because it facilitates participation and idea refinement through community engagement. Other tools often used in the refinement process include twitter spaces, virtual discussions, chat rooms, etc...

To illustrate further, Uniswap has 6 step in their governance process. 5 of them are in the refinement stage. So while the decision and execution phases are extremely important and the true innovation, decisions spend much time in the refinement phase.

Decision

The decision phase is between a vote taking place and a decision being made. In most DAOs cases, the decision phase is when an on-chain proposal and vote occurs to effect the treasury of the DAO. Although, other DAOs can operate on a trust model where off-chain votes occur and the core team members make decision through a multisig wallet. These examples serve to show that DAOs can operate in many different ways within each of these phases.

Enforcement

Enforcement is the phase in while a transaction is made. With the Clarity Protocol, enforcement can come from a smart contract executing after a on-chain vote. Enforcement can also be carried out through a multi-signature wallet or a core trusted group within a community.