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Dispute #7

Dispute link: https://celeste.1hive.org/disputes#/disputes/7

Disputed proposal: 1Hive Harvest🌼 - Season 1 (Proposal 2 of 5)

Creation date: July 22, 2022

Outcome date: August 30, 2022

Dispute platform: Gardens, 1Hive

Dispute outcome: Blocked Action

Dispute summary

Proposal #110 in the 1Hive Garden sought to get a 2nd round of funding for 1Hive Harvest Season 1 - a retroactive funding initiative proposed by user paul2.

The proposal sought 1,575 HNY for value created between May 18, 2022, and August 18, 2022. This amount of HNY was well above the 1Hive Spending Limit at the time of the proposal and was therefore impossible to pass in 1 proposal, so the funding was split into multiple proposals. Season 1 received an allocation of 315 HNY through a first unchallenged request; then request for funding 2 of 5 was challenged on the ground 1Hive covenant’s policy would require the Harvest to remain smaller.

The dispute went through the entire resolution process of Celeste, being appealed 4 times and ruled on 5 times, ultimately being blocked by a 71% majority of all Keepers in the final round of Celeste, where all Keepers are called on to vote.

In the end, despite arguments on economics and having active participants, the key issue that stood out in Discord chats was that proposal splitting bypassed how conviction voting works, and the Covenant required keepers to enforce the intention to use this mechanism.

The dispute catalyzed changes at 1Hive to the Covenant and to the Conviction Voting parameters. Conversations on Covenant changes focused on making it more useful for Celeste Keepers when arbitrating on a dispute, and conversations on the parameters changes focused on increasing the Spending Limit to allow for more flow of the Honey token.

Perhaps most importantly, Dispute #7 established a cultural precedent on how 1Hive uses its Covenant to handle high level disputes in the community. In the conversations after the dispute, the community passed on the idea of updating the Covenant with specific rules for what is prohibited in the DAO, in favor of a more values-based Covenant that gives the community flexibility in interpreting whether proposals are in line with community values on a case-by-case basis. The goal of this was to avoid needing frequent changes to the Covenant, and instead to give more weight to community culture which can better apply 1Hive’s shared set of values to new situations and changing environments."

Parties involved:

Why proposal was disputed:

The challenger believed “a consideration of the 1hive covenant’s policy requires the Harvest to remain smaller.” Extended arguments started to take place on the 1Hive forum. The challenger emphasized that, in the circumstances, the ultimate funding goal would impede the intention to foster a healthy community economy.

After the challenger’s initial focus on the intention to foster a healthy community economy by allocating a steady stream of Honey towards common goods, seed (akin to co-founder) user Luke submitted an argument as “friend of the court” emphasizing conviction voting circumvention.

Summary of arguments against the dispute:

The proposer answered that proposal splitting is not expressly prohibited by the Covenant and had not been challenged in the past. The proposer also argued that the funding goal is healthy and necessary to encourage contributions and governance participation.

Factors that played a role in the outcome:

In the first round, only one keeper voted and decided to block the proposal. However, in three subsequent rounds, the majority decision was to allow the proposal. Keepers voting to allow the proposal were more closely following 1Hive than others who failed to vote, so those voters might have been more interested in Harvest distributions or the ability to fund reliable contributors. For example, consider a strong advocate’s position (source):

In the fifth and final round due to a limitation on appeals, more extensive deliberations taking place on Discord clearly had an influence on blocking the action (71% of the votes). Thoughtful questions and answers were discussed. See, for example, Luke’s response to mrtdlgc’s position (source):

Outcome precedent and impact:

The main precedent set with Dispute #7 is the consensus that splitting a funding proposal into multiple smaller proposals for the purpose of making them more likely to pass is bypassing the intent of Conviction Voting and should not be allowed.

Some keepers voting to block the proposal recognized an insufficiency in the proposal’s ability to foster a healthy community economy. However this did wind up as a focus of the deliberations on the final round of voting, so it's unclear if this argument will affect the future of the 1Hive community.

Revisions and reconsiderations are an immediate impact of the dispute, along with the essential intent planning discussion which aimed to define 1Hive's high level intent as a DAO. During the dispute, the community started reconsidering parameters for the 1Hive DAO and potentially Celeste. Potential improvements of Celeste were also observed during this first dispute that reached a supreme round with all keepers. These discussions take place primarily on Discord, then on the forum where proposals can and are ongoing.

Resource Links:

Main arguments:

Resulting discussions:

Keepers raising the point of a healthy community economy:

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