The primary focus for the past year was finalizing the transition to the DAO. The Governance Committee played a key role in facilitating the Radworks community throughout this transition.

Not only did we lay the necessary groundwork for advancing our governance system in 2024, but also set new foundations for the ecosystem as a whole. This post summarizes key governance proposals & milestones in 2023 and outlines our plans for 2024!

Governance Proposals: A Summary

The year 2023 saw our highest activity yet in terms of successfully approved proposals. The passing of the 2023 Org proposals established a new organizational structure, where core teams became their own autonomous Orgs within Radworks.

With RGP-16, Radworks became the first organization to fund its dependencies via Drips, allowing $1M of the Treasury's funds to be streamed to critical dependencies over the next year.

The community also approved the Governance Improvements proposal to upgrade our governance process and documentation, as well as RGP-17, which initiated our first governance contract upgrade.

Finally, the passing of the 2024 Org proposals secured another year of funding for each Org, and validated their proposed strategies for the coming year.

On-chain Proposals

• [RGP-12] Start the Foundation Org - Established and funded the work of the Foundation Org, including its three Committees (Operations, Governance & Marketing) through the rest of 2023

• [RGP-14] Start the Radicle Org - Established and funded the work of the Radicle Org through the rest of 2023

• [RGP-15] Start the Drips Org - Established and funded the work of the Drips Org through the rest of 2023

• [RGP-16] Fund Radworks Dependencies with Drips - Allocated a total of $1 million in RAD and USDC to fund Radworks’ critical dependencies over the course of a year, allowing for consistent and reliable support to the projects that are crucial to Radworks’ operations.

• [RGP-18] Radicle Org Proposal 2024 - Funded the work of the Radicle Org through 2024

• [RGP-19] Drips Org Proposal 2024 - Funded the work of the Drips Org through 2024

• [RGP-21] Foundation Org Proposal 2024 - Funded the work of the Foundation Org, including its three Committee (Operations, Governance & Strategy) through 2024

Formal Reviews

• Governance Improvements Proposal - Improved our off-chain governance process to make it easier for community members to follow proposals discussions, participate in governance, access governance documentation and understand the ecosystem’s operating model.

• [RGP-13] Start the Grants Org - Established the Grants Org, confirmed strategy & goals for remaining funding through 2023.

• [RGP-17] Upgrade Governance Contracts from Compound Governor to Open Zeppelin Governor - Gained community consensus around upgrading our governance contracts from Compound Alpha to OpenZeppelin Governor. Once the upgrade is ready for execution, an onchain vote will be required from the community to execute the new contracts.

• [RGP-20] Grants Org Proposal 2024 - Attempted to fund the Grants Org through 2024. This proposal did not pass Formal Review. It has been resubmitted in the January cycle to include feedback and adjustments from the community.

A Year of Governance Optimization: Key Changes

🔄 Introduction of Monthly Proposal Cycles

The implementation of monthly cycles as part of the Governance Improvements proposal made proposals easier to follow and plan for. Voting happens on the same schedule every month, making it easier for token holders to follow and proposal authors are able to prepare their proposals with a clear timeline for being passed.

✍️ Version-controlled Governance Manual

The governance process was previously documented as a forum post and was maintained by the Governance Team. Now, the process is documented in the Governance Manual, a living, version-controlled document outlining all processes, cycles, and rules related to governance of Radworks and its treasury and is managed by the Radworks community. (see contributing.md).

📚 DAO & Governance Docs

Previously, our community and governance resources were scattered across various platforms and links, causing challenges in accessing crucial information. The introduction of docs.radworks.org streamlines the search and discovery process, serving as a hub where individuals can easily locate the community-driven purpose, ecosystem overview, project history, and all governance resources in a cohesive space.

📝 Proposal Templates

We created a proposal template library for proposal authors to use to create their proposals, making it clearer both for the authors what was needed in each proposal and for the community to know what to expect from each proposal.

🧹 Forum Clean Up

In an effort to enhance the user experience on the Radworks community forum, we made some upgrades to community.radworks.org. This involved the implementation of more discernible category titles and refined category descriptions to provide users with a clearer understanding of content organization.

👾 Discord Reorganization

Following the transition to the new DAO structure and Drips and Radicle teams opting to establish their respective chat servers, we embarked on a mission to enhance the Discord experience by decluttering and improving navigation. This included archiving redundant channels and introducing additional features to assist members in tracking information and updates relevant to their interests. We attempted to standardize moderation, yet additional efforts are needed to effectively handle trolls and FUD.

Foundations for the Future: Radworks

You can read the full Governance Committee Retrospective here.

The most significant accomplishment of 2023 was completing our “transition to the DAO” and evolution into Radworks. This marked a massive milestone for the community, as we witnessed Radicle and Drips successfully spin out into their own, autonomous entities and our community come together to form a new purpose and identity to take the project into this next chapter.

In preparation for the transition to the DAO that took place earlier this year, we collected contributor feedback in the form of both interviews and org model design sprints. This work ultimately led to the “Org”-focused model we have today, and shaped a new relationship with governance.

After conducting a detailed community insights analysis with Apiary in early 2023, it became clear the community was lacking a clear shared purpose to rally around after all of the organizational changes. This led to the creation and ratification of the Radworks shared purpose. This purpose acts not only as a North Star for the community to turn to for clarity in times of change, challenge, confusion, or conflict, but also acts as a guide for how we should be developing and designing governance.

With the brand transition from RadicleDAO to Radworks, we also helped create and update a multitude of community resources.

• Radworks Website radworks.org

• Radworks purpose

• Consolidated all community documentation on docs.radworks.org

• Updated the community forum community.radworks.org

• Launched new social channels

• Defined new visual identity for Radworks.

Using the newly defined purpose and feedback from the community, we feel that we are in a good place to start developing a more mission-aligned approach and strategy for evolving ecosystem governance. While a complete strategy is still in development, the foundation for this work is finally in place.

Looking forward to 2024

In 2024, the Governance Committee will refocus on governance-specific initiatives, with higher-level strategy and organizational development shifting into the hands of the newly formed Strategy Committee. We think this will greatly increase our capacity for delivering on our 2024 objectives and completing the work of our two unfinished initiatives from 2023.

Our main focus will be on incubating proposals and research to mature Radworks’ decentralized governance system, while also maintaining documentation, improving governance processes, and establishing best practices for the ecosystem, as seen in the following priorities.

1. Increase diversity of token holders & votable supply.

2. Increase governance engagement & participation.

3. Refine Radworks’ governance processes (e.g. budget disbursements, requirements & expectations, proposal templates) for 2025 proposal cycle.

4. Formalize governance risk management processes.

5. Incubate an initial treasury management strategy to implement in 2024.

(To go even deeper, see our 2024 governance initiatives.)

That’s a wrap! As you can see, it was a big restructuring year that required a lot of community facilitation. We are excited to refocus on governance in 2024, and of course, to have you along for the ride. We appreciate your feedback, guidance and advice, please keep it coming!

Yours truly,

Shelby & Abbey