Great initiative @dudesahn! But I think the first comment in this thread is very important. I’m all for a more formalised YIP process, the proposed process is good but the proposed timings are too short.
The time frames indicate a lot about the what kind of YIPs are expected from the community. Short timeframes → proposals for smaller issues and potentially even micro management. Nothing stops innovation as much as micro management! As I wrote in the strategic framework for Yearn under efficient governance:
In most democracies we have a four year voting process. What happens in between is delegated. Four years might be overkill for Yearn But I would say absolutely minimum one week of forum discussion, followed by at least one week of Snapshot voting. If it was up to me, I would propose one month of discussion and then maybe 2 weeks of voting.
Things that go to voting should be so important that it requires contemplation, and if the vote swings one way provide time for the other side gather votes. Voting should be for important strategic questions, not operations imho.
I don’t think so. I think it boils down to the question of what we want to enforce by formal YIPs and voting processes, and what should be considered part of ongoing operations.
Governance is a hard question. I don’t think there is a right answer My starting point is that I think the most important thing for governance is to elect the right people for important operational roles, and provide limited resources to the people and teams that provide the best value to Yearn. At the same time, governance can also provide high level direction, so that initiatives and actions support each other.
The YIP that ultimately passed included 3 days for discussion, and 5 days for voting.
Reasons behind the choices
3 days discussion: this is a minimum, and realistically discussions should last for much longer than 3 days. Primarily, proposals would only be moved to a vote after 3 days if there had already been substantial planning beforehand and it is very well accepted (minor changes or good, positive consensus), or if it is a proposal that has been previously discussed and refined.
5 days voting: We want to keep this relatively short, so as not to unreasonably delay enacting of well-received proposals, but also wanted this to be long enough to prevent malicious or poorly-constructed YIPs from being passed through. This was also a compromise on removing the quorum requirement. Realistically, I would argue that the support for or against a YIP that we will get in 5 days of voting (after it has already been discussed for at least 3 days) is pretty much everyone who is at least remotely engaged in governance.
As governance/Yearn is currently structured, the core team and the community has broad authority to upgrade the protocol as they see fit—it’s one of the wonderful benefits of being an open-source project. YIPs are targeted to ideas and proposals that require feedback or may be controversial, but realistically for Yearn to be able to iterate quickly and fine-tune our system, there needs to be a lot of leeway on what the team and community can do without needing a YIP.
Thanks for providing more reasoning behind the timelines. I think we have a very similar point of view. We should embrace the organic development in an open source movement, voting and formal governance is best for proposals that need feedback or can be controversial.
My point with the timings are just that 3 days is a very short time. No matter how well planned a proposal is, how can you know it is well received after only 3 days? I think the majority of people with a potential interest in Yearn governance are like me, at best we check up on things during the weekends
My main point is that with short timings like this, I think that governance on smaller issues are encouraged. Personally I just think longer timings would naturally filter out a number of proposals that should not be made into YIPs, but should be part of ongoing operations or the open source movement.
As this vote has passed, there is no point in arguing around the specific time periods. It’s fine, timings can always change later if a change is needed.
It’s definitely something worth considering. I think if you or others notice that there are proposals that you feel like you didn’t have time to interact/engage with, then it might be worth revisiting in the future. Again, I’m hopeful that most proposals will naturally see a discussion period of around a week or so, but we’ll have to see moving forward.
But I would say absolutely minimum one week of forum discussion, followed by at least one week of Snapshot voting. If it was up to me, I would propose one month of discussion and then maybe 2 weeks of voting.
My starting point is that I think the most important thing for governance is to elect the right people for important operational roles, and provide limited resources to the people and teams that provide the best value to Yearn. At the same time, governance can also provide high level direction, so that initiatives and actions support each other.