Shimmer Governance in Action

Your Turn to Contribute to Three New Shimmer Governance Proposals

TL;DR:
Three important Shimmer Governance proposals need the participation of the Shimmer community. The following proposals are up for debate and ask for your opinion: 1) Community Treasury Grant Committee 2) Community Treasury Grant Committee member selection 3) Growth Committee as part of the Tangle Ecosystem Association. The first decisions on these proposals are scheduled in the Governance Forum, and Shimmer Community Members are invited to give their opinion.

Important decisions are coming up for the Shimmer community. After months of preparation, the Shimmer Community Governance Group presents no less than three fundamental decisions for the community in the Governance Forum.

The first two proposals focus on a community-driven Committee to manage grant distribution for ecosystem projects; the third is a Growth Committee to speed up the marketing and adoption of Shimmer. These will have a major impact on Shimmer’s future direction and the community's role in it – and we need your input!

The time to inform yourself is now so that you can use your governance rights as a Shimmer community member to help shape the three proposals.

This is Phase 1 of the decision-making process for the three proposals. If the proposals gather enough support in the discussion, it will lead to a governance forum vote on a final version of the proposals in Phase 2. Succeeding this will lead to a final Phase 3 vote by all SMR token holders in Firefly.

Here we’ll give you a brief overview of the proposals and the steps that require your participation.

Proposal 1: Establishing the Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee

With the launch of the Shimmer network, the community decided to allocate 20% of the supply to bootstrap a flourishing ecosystem around Shimmer. This amount has been split equally between the community and the Tangle Ecosystem Association, the newly formed Swiss entity established to oversee the development of the IOTA and Shimmer ecosystem.

To manage the community’s half (181,362,051 SMR) of this ecosystem fund efficiently and independently, the first proposal is to establish a Community Treasury Grant Committee of community members, which will use 27,204,307 SMR to give out grants to ecosystem projects and initiatives in the first year.

What you can do:

Read the full Community Treasury Grant Committee proposal, which describes how this entirely community-driven organization should be set up, how it should operate its grant-giving program, which rules and guiding principles it should follow, and how it should use its budget.
Leave comments and suggestions and show your opinion at the end of the proposal by voting in the poll at Step 7 of the proposal (see below for a screenshot of the poll).

Give your opinion at step 7 of the Community Treasury Grant Committee proposal.

Proposal 2: Member Selection for the Shimmer Community Treasury Grant Committee

The Community Treasury Grant Committee outlined in Proposal 1 will need dedicated individuals with the right skills to handle grant applications and give out grants from the Treasury budget.

It’s up to the community to select the members of this committee. The community seeks

One full-time employed Community Treasury Grant Committee Lead (apply here).
Four part-time contracted Grant Reviewers (apply here).

Read everything about the selection process here. The application process is open until at least November 26th.

What you can do:

If you’re interested in taking on one of the above roles, please submit your application to our Governance Forum and win the support of the community to be voted onto the committee.
For everyone else, please vote on the applications for committee members: You can review the applications for Grant Committee Lead here and Grant Reviewer here and show your opinion in the poll at the end of each application (see screenshot, below).

Example of the opinion poll at the end of each application.

The five individuals will be responsible for the grant system and be employed or contracted under a legal entity to work for the community. They will operate in a strict and transparent framework, and all decisions and spending of the Community Treasury Grant Committee will be made public. Should the proposal be accepted, the Governance Working Group and the Committee members will set up this committee and all necessary legal frameworks throughout Q1 2023.

Proposal 3: Speeding up growth – Establishing a Shimmer Growth Committee as Part of the Tangle Ecosystem Association

The above measures are great examples of how our community has started exploring governance and ownership independently from the IOTA Foundation. But these processes can move very slowly: small steps are taken, and trial and error is (understandably) part of the learning process in our community.

Because we see an immediate need to support the ecosystem and onboard strong partners, Shimmer needs fast and dynamic decision-making as soon as possible.

Therefore, the Tangle Ecosystem Association proposes to establish a Shimmer Growth Committee. In the Growth Committee, members of the Community Treasury Grant Committee and the IOTA Foundation would work together on initiatives and decide on proposals that enable the maximum rate of adoption and marketing outreach for Shimmer.

Through this collaborative approach, the Growth Committee could implement measures much faster and more effectively than the Community Treasury Grant Committee and ensure that we do everything possible to boost the Shimmer ecosystem, Shimmer’s utility, and its positioning in the market. The Growth Committee is to be set up alongside the Community Treasury Grant Committee and does not seek to replace community-driven efforts but speed things up and act effectively for the benefit of Shimmer.

The Committee Lead and the two most-supported Grant Reviewers chosen in Proposal 2 will also be part of the Growth Committee and decide on using a more significant amount of community treasury tokens in the best interest of the Shimmer community.

What you can do:

Read the full proposal: Establishing a Shimmer Growth Committee as Part of the Tangle Ecosystem Association. Ask questions, make suggestions, and complete the yes/no poll (screenshot below).

Give your opinion on Establishing a Shimmer Growth Committee as Part of the Tangle Ecosystem Association.

The next steps

Combined, these three proposals would create robust funding pillars for Shimmer and use all possible opportunities to grow Shimmer into one of the most attractive ecosystems for Web3 applications and builders.

We invite you to take your time and read through the three proposals in the Governance Forum; feel free to ask questions if you need clarification. If you don't yet have an account in the forum, please follow this easy guide. You are also welcome to join the discussions in the #governance discussion channels on the IOTA Discord.

For more background on each proposal, please watch recordings of the weekly IOTA Discord governance calls, where all those proposals have been discussed and prepared. The Shimmer community has also developed a governance framework for all governance matters, including the proposals described here, which serves as the Shimmer “constitution”. You can find it here for reference.

Should this current Phase 1, in which the proposals are presented to you, lead to positive outcomes for the proposals, you’ll be asked to make a second decision in the Governance Forum in about two weeks – this is Phase 2 of the governance process. The final votes on the proposals will be taken in the Shimmer Firefly wallet in Phase 3, which we plan to launch shortly after.

Happy reading, and welcome to the wonderful world of governance!

Links included in this blog post