Admissions Committee Proposal

Context

In order to address the issues of (1) soaring membership prices (5,000 PRINTS ~ US$80k), (2) lack of screening for new members acquiring PRINTS from liquidity pools and DEX, and (3) lack of a formal procedure for whitelisting talented contributors who can’t afford to purchase a membership, this document presents a proposal for the formation of an Admissions Committee, who will be in charge of deliberation and approval of new members applying to Fingerprints.

The formation of a committee intended to strike a balance of speed and fairness in admission decision making within the community.

Proposal

  1. The holding of PRINTS tokens and membership to the DAO (i.e. access to the private discord channels, discourse and any other private or confidential governance channel) will become entirely separate;
  2. The admissions committee will be formed by 15 elected members of the DAO who will be in charge of reviewing and deciding upon the admission or rejection of new applicants. These members will be selected via Snapshot vote;
  3. Applications can have only two origins:
    1. by any person who has acquired at least 1,000 PRINTS;
    2. by recommendation of an existing member of the DAO.
  4. Applicants will have to fill out a standardized form answering basic questions about their background, skills and potential for contribution to the DAO, so as to inform and facilitate the appraisal of the committee;
    1. This procedure is optional for applicants vouched by committee members, who can volutarily provide the information required for the committee’s appraisal themselves.
  5. For an applicantion to be approved, it needs to achieve a simple majority of votes within the committee (>50%), with a minimum quorum of 10 votes;
  6. The maximum window for appraisal of an application by the committee is 14 days, after which, not having achieved the necessary votes, the application will be considered rejected;
  7. Approved applicants will only be allowed to join after acquiring at least 250 PRINTS;
  8. Anyone holding at least 5,000 PRINTS will be granted direct membership to the DAO;
  9. Anyone with membership to the DAO prior to this reform will retain their membership;
  10. The committee can vote to withdraw membership of any member, which will require a unanimous vote from all members of the committee;
  11. DAO members outside of the committee can appeal for a decision to be reconsidered, granted they provide relevant additional information for the committee’s consideration.

Extra Remarks

  • the committee will be in charge of drafting and maintaining the standardized form used in the appraisal process, which shall be designed to respect applicants’ right to anonimity;
  • applicants’ data must remain confidential, accessible only by committee members;
  • any DAO member can inquire upon the status of any application to the committee;
  • periodic shareouts of aggregate decisions made by the committee (total applications accepted/reject) will be made within the governance discord channel;
  • trust is bestowed upon committee members, who are expected to make unbiased and consistent decisions, maintaining a high bar and preserving the high quality of the member base we currently enjoy;
  • the committee is expected to promote the formation of a diverse member base, which will expand the plurarity of skills and perspectives within the DAO, enriching our decision making, creativity and overall inclusivity.

Please comment on this and I will draft a final version for voting later.

3 Likes

I’m in favor of an admissions committee, especially as pointed out, to serve as a “people curation” filter beyond holding simply X number of PRINTS. As PRINTS become more accessible via liquidity pools, I believe the quality of our community should not only be determined by financial means, but by other high standards of quality. A couple of questions/points to consider from my end would be:

  • how long is the admissions committee tenure? Should they be up for reelection once a year?
  • I didn’t understand point #7 about 250 PRINTS. Doesn’t any prospective member need at least 1,000 PRINTS AND approval from the admissions committee?
  • Does this process apply for all potential members including artists?
  • Should we aim to have a diverse admissions committee reflective of our community? I know it might be difficult due to some members anonymity, but shouldn’t we strive for gender, geographic and financial inclusion (meaning members who joined at full cost of entry AND members who joined at lower entry points)?

Thank you Lucas for putting this together!

1 Like

Hi,
I’m just facing this issue, please check :

Takawo has not enough funds to purchace a membership, but he has great talents and experiencies.

Please check and leave your comments :+1:

Thanks @lucaspon! Should we change Admissions Committee members from time to time? E.g. 1/3 of member every X months?

1 Like

Great idea, drawing inspiration from how the Senate works. We could have recurring elections. Will add this to the final draft.

Yes I think we could perhaps refresh it (or part of it) every 6 months.

No; any member can recommend any person to be appraised by the committee regardless of how many PRINTS they hold. However, once approved, they will have to acquire at least 250 PRINTS.

Without this recommendation, random people can apply by first acquiring 1,000 PRINTS.
So, in a way, this lowers the bar from 1,000 PRINTS to 250 PRINTS for people who are vouched for by existing members.

Yes we should, the problem is that our community apparently isn’t very diverse, with only 2 women in 42 survey replies. So perhaps we should strive to make it not representative of our community and elect these “minorities” into it. Regarding financial inclusion, I completely agree.

Again, they will have to be elected too. I think we will invite a few key active members but there should be plenty of space for members to apply. You think we should have quotas?

Would like to note that I am participating in this discussion via Notion. Will now keep an eye on both this forum and Notion.

Thank you Lucas! I’m ok with a rotation every year to create some consistency and give those people an opportunity to drive an impact. Regarding the diversity piece I would agree with a quota requirement, meaning minimum X number of committee members have to be Y…

1 Like

one suggestion I’ve seen work well for other DAOs is for every new member to have a 10-15 minute call with an existing member. Would do a lot to build relationships and set the tone early on.

1 Like

Thanks for putting this together @lucaspon. A very good draft.

I’m still a little confused on the PRINTS requirements. If I’m reading your draft correctly, then there are three levels:

  1. Purchase 5000+ PRINTS and you bypass the process altogether and are granted direct membership
  2. Purchase 1000+ PRINTS and you can apply to become a member – you may or may not be granted membership
  3. Get recommended by an existing member and if you are approved then purchase 250+ PRINTS and you become a member

Have I got that right? If so – I think I’m in agreement!

A few further comments:

  • I don’t like the idea of enfocing diversity on the admissions committee itself. I believe we should be able to trust all members regardless of their personal characteristics to make fair deicisons on applicants.
  • I would prefer all applicants, even those vouched for by committe members, to complete the standard form as it promotes fairness in evaluation of applications. I’d also say that if an applicant has been forward by a committee member then that member should excuse themselves from voting on that applicant (i.e. avoid any way of committee members abusing their position).
  • Rotation every 6 months sounds great.

Yep! Very nice summary, I think I will explain it that way in the final draft.

Yeah I think trying to enforce diversity might be a can of worms that doesn’t need to be opened at this point, for the sake of speed in approving this.

Completely agree. Great idea.

I will try to incorporate all comments in an updated draft this week.

1 Like

First of all, thanks so much for putting this proposal together. I think being thoughtful about membership is very important. I also like lowering the exception threshold to 250. If we want people for their skills, 1000 seems high.

I’m not sure I like the idea of the 14 day window with a default to rejecting if there is no action. One of the things that started this discussion was feeling like it’s hard to think about these applications piecemeal. I also would hate to lose a potential member just because folks were busy and we couldn’t get committee quorum in a 2-week period. I think a better approach would be to collect applications for a period of time (2-3 months?) and then look at the applications and select who to admit/reject/defer. This also gives some space to think about how many members we are onboarding, and what skill sets the DAO needs in that window.

On another note, one method for rotation I’ve seen in other organizations that works well is to have staggered commitments. So for a 15 person committee, you could sign people up for 18 months, and rotate 5 people off every 6 months. This gives fresh perspectives, but you have some continuity and don’t have to form a new committee from scratch every 6 months.

I’m also a bit wary of the vote to withdraw membership of a member. It might make sense to have a mechanism for that, but it seems like a much larger discussion. For instance, how do we enforce it? Can we configure snapshot to stop someone from voting on a proposal if they have PRINTS? If we do, then are we really decentralized?

Hi and thanks for the comments!

I thought about this, but sometimes we need to get people in ASAP, and in general I don’t like the idea of keeping people waiting for a big amount of time, as things in crypto move way too fast. When signing up for FWB I was approved within hours by their committee.
Maybe some sort of prioritization mechanism should be put in place, but I think the committee can figure that out once it’s formed. The 14 day period is more to pressure the committee to decide fast, rather than dropping people off randomly.

I think some sort of compensation for committee members for their work here might be appropriate and expedite things. Of course that will depend on how many applications we get.

Yes that is a good idea and I will add to the final proposal. It’s similar to how senate elections work.

1 Like

My two cents:

  • Lucas I love the idea of making sure the admissions committee moves fast, thats huge
  • 250 seems like a good minimum amount - so folks will have to BOTH own 250 PRINTS AND be approved by admissions committee for entry, correct?
2 Likes

Yes that’s correct. I will submit the updated proposal here later this week.

1 Like