Marinade DAO Constitution

[repe]

Hello fellow Chefs,

as the Marinade DAO enters the final stage of the DAO infrastructure migration to Realms, it felt like the DAO could benefit from a set of guiding principles for governance.

Having a Constitution laying down the shared goals for the DAO will create alignment between Marinade holders, governors, and the team.

I propose this version below for starters and would like your feedback. It touches on product focus, delegation strategy, control separation, fee usage, and MNDE distribution goals.

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Marinade DAO constitution

The Marinade DAO constitution is a set of binding rules that determine what governance actions are legitimate for the DAO.

1. The Marinade DAO builds a censorship-resistant layer of Solana

The DAO builds the risk-management infrastructure to provide improved security and capital efficiency for the Solana network and the users through SOL liquid staking. Marinade governance will support development connected to the censorship resistance and liveness topic. It will support the ecosystem to build on top of Marinade but will not pursue building its second-layer DeFi primitives such as lending protocols, stablecoin, DEX, options, etc.

Examples

Permissible: Marinade governance may decide to fund the research to implement slashing on Solana.

Not Permissible: Marinade governance should not fund building its lending protocol since that does not directly support the goal of building a censorship-resistant layer of Solana.

2. Transparent and principled delegation strategy

To maintain Solana robust and censorship-resistant, the DAO understands the risks and responsibilities of governing the stake and securing the network. Marinade aims to delegate to validators that demonstrate good long-term performance and are decentralized from multiple factors. Marinade governance should support initiatives to make the delegation strategy accessible and predictable and allow the ecosystem to form a consensus on how to delegate staked SOL responsibly

Examples

Permissible: Marinade governance may decrease the control of the algorithmic strategy at the expense of the mSOL voting strategy to counter-balance the rigid data-driven strategy with the human factor—and invite the factual liquidity owners for collective risk management.

Not Permissible: Marinade governance must not remove the performance-based algorithmic strategy as it goes against the network decentralization goals.

3. Separation of powers

To allow flexibility and predictability, the critical system parts are owned by the Marinade governance, and the operational control and funding are granted to the core team.

• Marinade Governance (MNDE token holders + ecosystem council): main program upgrade, MNDE treasury
• Marinade Core Team (team council): main program params, DAO program, fees

Examples

Permissible: Marinade governance may grant and transfer part of the MNDE treasury to the Marinade Core Team to further develop the protocol and achieve the goals set and communicated by the team.

Not Permissible: Marinade governance must not transfer the MNDE treasury ownership to the Marinade Core Team.

4. Fees usage

The primary usage of fees is to fund the team operations and further protocol development. The excess of fees accumulated is governed and decided by the DAO.

Examples

Permissible: Marinade governance may decide on excess profit accumulated by the protocol.

Not Permissible: Marinade governance must not direct all protocol fees for non-protocol development purposes unless there is a reasonable reserve to fund the operations.

5. MNDE distribution goals

The incentives should be aligned with the objectives of the DAO. Starting with the fair launch, the Marinade governance plans to keep continuity in its objective for the DAO ownership to be well-spread in the ecosystem to benefit all the actors powered by secure Solana.

Examples

Permissible: Marinade governance may decide to launch MNDE grant program that would reward all Solana projects based on their contribution to the new staked SOL in Marinade.

Not Permissible: Marinade governance must refrain from using the funds to support projects that conflict with the goals of Marinade.

6. Amendments to this constitution by majority vote

Any change may be made to this constitution only by a two-thirds majority and at least 1% of all tokens participating.

[defivan]

interested in the 4th point and appreciate it a lot. the most common income flow is fee earning ofc, so deciding on where it will be utilised by the DAO - is crucial to build trustful and reliable relationship with holders and governors.

[lj1024]

I think establishing a set of guiding principles for governance of a liquid staking protocol is a fantastic idea! Clear and concise principles can promote transparency, efficiency, and trust among token holders, which is crucial for the overall success of Marinade in the defi ecosystem. These principles could also help to attract more participants to the protocol.

[defivan]

fully agree with u. principles are like regulations, but made before things has been created, developed, implemented, etc. reasonable and considerable ones are the basics for trustful, reliable and attractive projects, because they have system and rules to operate with

[Cerba]

I believe that the Marinade DAO would greatly benefit from having a clear “rulebook”, that sets the responsibilities belonging to the Team from the ones belonging to the DAO, all while setting objectives and guidelines to move forward.

I like all the points and would support them as they’re written.

I also like the possibility of changing something in the constitution by having a two-thirds majority, making sure that this constitution can only change with full community buy-in.

[defivan]

i am supporting your point here, and follow the idea of creating special “rules” for the DAO. This will not stricten some opportunities. On the opposite - will bring new attention, because they will have clear boundaries for everyone.