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Proposal types

In the DAO, a proposal is a place to vote on the solution to a particular issue. This may also include voting on general ideas and concepts, or changing the parameters of the DAO (more about the parameters of the DAO and what they mean can be found in the following section).

There are two fundamentally different proposal types. First, there are proposals that all members (token holders) can vote on, and Second proposals that relate to a specific Expert Panel, which consequently only the experts of such panel can vote on.

For proposals that all members can vote on (DAO Member Votes), the voting weight of each member is based on the Tokens they hold and lock for voting. If the membership is based on an ERC20 token, each token that is locked will be counted as one vote. For NFT-based membership (including soulbound tokens), each member (represented by their unique wallet address) will have one vote, independent of how many NFTs they have locked or how many soulbound tokens they hold.

All DAO Members can create proposals which in the Governance section of the DAO HQ (Dashboard) can be done in the tab “DAO Token Holders”. In this tab, you can see the following proposal types:

  1. Constitution Votes can be used to change the Constitution that will be the basis of the DAO. The current version of the constitution document is indicated by setting the document’s hash as a parameter on the blockchain for every DAO Member to see. The constitution voting can be used for just updating the document and it’s constitution hash, or also to change other constitution parameters (like the DAO’s treasury address, or the required majority for DAO voting to pass). If your DAO does not have a constitution, the constitution hash will be the “Zero Hash (0x00…)”. The Constitution Vote can also be used to add a new parameter to the constitution and store it on the blockchain, for example, if you want to add a treasury to your DAO because you started without one.
  2. General Votes do not change anything on the blockchain. They only enable providing a link to an external reference and thereby voting on any topic. It will be up to the DAO to describe which decisions shall be made that way in their DAO Constitution. With General Votes, the difference between DAO Members and Expert Panels comes into play. The DAO could define decisions that can be made by all members, or such that can only be made by a specific Expert Panel. Consequently, there can be General Votes for DAO Members and optional General Votes for each Expert Panel.

For Expert Panel (EP) related voting types, there are three options on who can vote on a proposal and who can propose it. These options of who can propose and who can veto can be changed through an “EP Configuration Vote”. The options are 1. "Only experts can Vote and only experts can propose", 2. "Only experts can propose, but all members can vote" and 3. "Every Member can propose and vote". The last option makes a DAO Member Vote out of an expert-related decision.

  1. For each Expert Panel, there will be an EP Membership Vote. By default, this vote will be of Type 3: Every Member can propose and vote. This means, that with an EP Membership Vote, the DAO Members can elect someone to, or remove an Expert (an address) from the Expert Panel. To make sure nobody can be forced to be an Expert, the newly elected Expert will have to confirm their eligibility to become an EP Member.
  2. EP Configuration Votes can be used to change the settings of the Expert Panel. An example would be the Required Majority for Expert Votings. In that way, the Configuration Parameter Vote is similar to the Constitution Vote of the DAO Members, but it does not change the Constitution Hash. By default, this vote will be of Type 3: Every Member can propose and vote.
  3. The EP Parameter Vote can be used by an Expert Panel to set arbitrary parameters on the blockchain. It is in that way also similar to the Constitution Vote and the EP Configuration Vote, but it’s focused on unique Expert Parameters. By default, this vote will be of Type 1: Only experts can Vote and propose.
  4. The EP General Vote does not change anything on the blockchain. The EP General Vote enables providing a link to an external reference and thereby voting on any topic. It will be up to the DAO to describe which decisions shall be made by the Experts that way in their DAO Constitution. With General Votes, the difference between DAO Members and Expert Panels comes into play. The DAO could define decisions that can be made by all members, or such that can only be made by a specific Expert Panel. Consequently, there can be General Votes for DAO Members and optional General Votes for each Expert Panel. By default, the EP General Vote will be of Type 1: Only experts can Vote and propose.

Remember that experts will always have one vote per expert.