The OASA network and its partnership with the Closer platform provides some basic governance structures which TDF can utilize. We have the ability to add additional primitives to our governance, so long as we continue to operate in the spirit aligned with the OASA Principles and in maintaining the best possible outcome in ecological, economic and social terms for the Project, our Members, our neighbors, our broader ecoregion, our planet and future generations.

Proof of Presence

Proof of Presence (PoP) is a measure of a member’s physical presence on the Project that can be used as a governance primitive. Project DAOs may elect to give higher voting weight to Members based on their PoP score so that effectively the more time an individual spends at a Project, the more they get to influence how the project evolves. It stems from the assumption that the longer a Member stays, the higher the level of guardianship, care, and work they put into the project.

<aside> πŸ’‘ John spends 3 years at TDF but then leaves and isn’t seen much after that (he is no longer active in the project). Julie spends 6 months at TDF every year. In year 6, they would each have spent the same amount of nights. However, Julie’s voting power will be higher because the Proof of Presence accumulated in later years would weigh more.

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PoP is produced through an on-chain booking mechanism (developed by Closer.earth) that tracks the number of nights a Member stays in TDF. The voting weight is calculated by adding together all nights spent, but the weight of each night decays over time so that more recent stays have higher voting influence than older ones.

Proof of Sweat

Another governance primitive developed by OASA for Project DAOs to determine the Members voting weight is Proof of Sweat. This is a measure of contribution accounting representative of the total amount of work provided. The Project DAO may issue a Proof of Sweat token in addition to their native utility Token to represent special governance rights conferred by work put into the project.

<aside> πŸ’‘ Julie spends 3 months on a project as steward and is rewarded 15 Tokens for her work. The DAO can issue 15 Proof of Sweat tokens in addition, which may confer additional voting weight.

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Voting Weight Formula

Each DAO may decide to evolve how it weighs the different governance primitives while taking into account each of its stakeholders - Members, Locals, Nature, Token holders, etc. For example, Tokens may count for 1 vote, Proof of Presence for 5, and Sweat Tokens for 5. These weights are set in the DAO’s voting protocol (i.e., Snapshot). A suggested formula to calculate the voting weight of a member could look like:

<aside> πŸ’‘ Julie earned 15 Proof of Sweat tokens for her work, and she purchased 30 Tokens. She used all her tokens for each of the last three years, so her Proof of Presence balance is currently 70 (90 total nights that decayed over time). When voting on DAO decisions, Julie's voting power is 30 + (70 * 5) + (15 * 5) = 455.

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$$ π‘‰π‘œπ‘‘π‘–π‘›π‘” π‘Šπ‘’π‘–π‘”β„Žπ‘‘ = 𝑋 π‘‡π‘œπ‘˜π‘’π‘›π‘  * 1 + π‘Œ π‘ƒπ‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘œπ‘“ π‘œπ‘“ π‘ƒπ‘Ÿπ‘’π‘ π‘’π‘›π‘π‘’ * 5 + 𝑍 π‘ƒπ‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘œπ‘“ π‘œπ‘“ π‘†π‘€π‘’π‘Žπ‘‘ * 5 $$

We have put a lot of thought and resources into our governance mechanisms, however we acknowledge that there is a wide space for improvement: nights spent at a Project do not necessarily translate into a Members meaningful contribution to it, and sweat contributions are both hard to quantify and to reward. Nevertheless, we have to start somewhere. Regeneration is about creating life and accepting death, as it takes many years, many seedlings and many dead trees to grow a forest. We welcome feedback in this iterative process of creating new collective and decentralized forms of governance.