RFC: Protocol Constitution

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Almost 1 year ago @mkkoll kicked off a discussion on creating a constitution for the protocol. I want to re-start this discussion and hopefully bring it to conclusion.

My draft below pulls heavily from Mkkoll’s original ideas.

The purpose of the constitution is the following:

  • The constitution should be a document that breaks out the vision and other foundational principles of the protocol.
  • The constitution serves as the highest level north star guiding governance and strategy as the protocol and community grow.
  • The constitution should be living but hard-to-change document that puts PoolTogether’s ethos into writing.
  • The constitution should be ratified by POOL holders with any future changes ratified in the same way.

I’d love feedback both on the content as well as the structure itself.

Protocol Mission - Making the world wealthy

Protocol Vision - The decentralized global prize savings account run by POOL

Protocol Core Values

Wealth Creating

PoolTogether is a prize savings protocol helping people build wealth. It does this by making saving money fun, accessible, and financially rewarding. The protocol is no loss and positive sum leaving everyone better off for using it.

Secure

Savings is a serious business. The protocol design optimizes for security of deposited funds. Perfect security can never be a guarantee but ensuring the “No Loss” mantra remains true is the highest goal.

User Owned

The protocol is governed by the POOL token which has been freely distributed to users of the protocol. These token holders make up the heart of the community guiding and contributing to the mission of the protocol. POOL holders are tasked with stewarding the protocol making decisions for the long-term benefit of the protocol and its users.

Autonomous

The PoolTogether protocol is designed to live forever. The protocol follows the ethos of decentralized finance (DeFi) seeking to improve the financial system by replacing humans with immutable software. Control is as minimized as possible. Where control is needed, it is decentralized to the POOL token holders.

Open Source & Fair

The PoolTogether protocol is a set of smart contracts. The code is publicly available and open source for everyone to verify, validate, or adopt. It can be copied and re-used by anyone. It is globally accessible, provably fair, and free to use for anyone without permission

Sources:
Mk: PoolTogether DAOs purpose - #7 by mkkoll
Tjark: Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

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Great idea and full support!

This „Constitution“ helps especially when people have well intentioned ideas but they don’t fully allign with the core principles of PT.
(Like, „Hey, why don‘t we use yield source XY?“ or „why not centralize things to make them quicker?“)

Especially like these 2 things:

Secure because we could get a higher yield somewhere else but PT always chooses the well known trusted yield sources!

Decentralized and immutable because it could be easier to just „upgrade“ the contract or use some centralized authority to make decisions but that would be against the true spirit of DeFi.

After some time, these things seem „obvious“ but writing them down like you did can be helpful!

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Want to think more deeply about what has been written, but overall I love it! It has my vote (in general) sir.

Would be great to have people who support the POOL constitution sign with their wallet’s too. Perhaps even “enshrine” the original signatures in digital constitution or maybe even physical one.

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Looks Great, Leighton! Agree with all of the above.

As far as content goes, would this be a good point to identify a DAO in this constitution?

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That’s a good question – I thought a bit about that as I was writing it.

At this stage, I think the discussion on creating and funding a formal DAO is separate. That will need a vote of its own and is a separate decisions set I think.

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I realized that “we are a non-custodial protocol” is missing from the constitution. This is something we’ve basically always enforced (with the exception of V2 upgradeability).

We never wants user funds to be accessible by developers or the POOL token holders. That’s a rule that we build by.

Enshrining it in the Constitution will make that rule transparent, and ideally help shape the narrative about PoolTogether.

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The content and structure both seem great. To address @Brendan’s comment, that might fit under Autonomous:

Autonomous
The PoolTogether protocol is designed to live forever. The protocol follows the ethos of decentralized finance (DeFi) seeking to improve the financial system by replacing humans with immutable software. User funds will never be accessible to developers or POOL token holders.

I think,

“Control is as minimized as possible. Where control is needed, it is decentralized to the POOL token holders.”

Is repeating a bit from the User Owned section so I dropped it to keep things short.

I would propose adding Accessible to the list of core values. Although mentioned in Wealth Creating, I think it is critical in supporting the mission. Crypto and Defi have had large barriers to entry, especially for people who haven’t had consistent access to technology or the ability to save or invest:

Accessible
PoolTogether aims to help everyone, regardless of background, technical experience, or current wealth. The technology and finance sectors are complex. Keeping things simple and clear, yet engaging is critical to PoolTogether’s mission.

Probably needs some rewording to fit better with the rest, but hopefully something to work from.

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With our first quarterly voting cycle coming up on Team Budget Requests, the timing seems perfect to ratify PoolTogether’s protocol constitution. Doing this will help us make decisions and verify that our actions as contributors add value to the cause. The Pooler’s mindset is real already, so let’s finally manifest it!

The TBRs are expected to go live for on-chain voting on Tuesday, Oct 18th. At the same time, I will create an off-chain Snapshot containing the constitution. Signing it will signal your pledge to the constitution.
The Snapshot will last for a year, reminding us to re-review.

Please review the constitution below one more time before we move to Snapshot. All feedback is encouraged! :clap:

Mission

PoolTogether helps people build wealth in a fun and engaging way.

Vision

PoolTogether will be the global infrastructure for prize savings.

Protocol Core Values

Wealth Creating

PoolTogether is a prize savings protocol helping people build wealth. It does this by making saving money fun, accessible, and financially rewarding. The protocol is no loss and positive-sum, leaving everyone better off for using it.

Accessible to All

PoolTogether aims to help everyone, regardless of background, technical experience, or current wealth. We aim to make financial security globally accessible and help people build wealth around the world.

Secure

Savings is a serious business. The protocol design optimizes for security of deposited funds. Perfect security can never be guaranteed, but ensuring the “No Loss” mantra remains true is paramount.

User Owned

The protocol is governed by the POOL token, which has been freely distributed to users of the protocol. These token holders make up the heart of the community, guiding and contributing to the mission of the protocol. POOL holders are tasked with stewarding the protocol and making decisions for the long-term benefit of the protocol and its users.

Autonomous

The PoolTogether protocol is designed to live forever. It follows the ethos of decentralized finance (DeFi), seeking to improve the financial system by replacing humans with immutable software. User funds will never be accessible to PoolTogether developers or POOL token holders.

Transparent and Fair

The PoolTogether protocol is a set of smart contracts. The code is publicly available and open source for everyone to verify, validate, or adopt. It can be copied and re-used by anyone. It is globally accessible, provably fair, and free to use for anyone without permission.

Fun and Engaging

We’re here to have a good time building wealth. Our protocol brings people joy and excitement!

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Thanks for pushing this forward!

I’m only going to nitpick on the word choice of the following phrase:

“is the highest goal” makes sense if you’re envisioning a list of goals and it being on the top, but to be a little clearer (and avoid memes of our goals high on drugs) we could use “is the goal of most importance”, just “is of utmost importance” or “is paramount”.

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you are absolutely right - I have edited that part!

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Big thanks to @mkkoll and @Leighton and @Tjark for this! I’m excited to see POOL holders officially unified in mission, vision, and values.

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The snapshot to signal your pledge to the PoolTogether Protocol Constitution is live!

Sign it here:
https://snapshot.org/#/pooltogether.eth/proposal/0x1934365725b98f908ae1de42a637c618301d2fd0167eac455478fb74bf3f101b

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Proud to Sign and be a part of this wonderful project.

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