Public Assembly (PA) is an experimental practice around empowering independent creators with unique perspectives to actively coordinate on ideas with the goal of creating templates to hyperstructures with iterative value. The group FF89DE who submitted "Flexible DAO Interfaces" is the founding team of Public Assembly. There have been misconceptions about their proposal which won 25 ETH and to address this FF89DE has reallocated the funds to increase transparency and set a precedent for future behavior.
In summary the founding team of Public Assembly FF89DE submitted a proposal called "Flexible DAO Interfaces" for BuilderDAO's first official Prop House. It was a proposal for the design and development of a customizable web template for Nounish DAOs and it was part of the "Custom DAO Websites" round. Initially the proposal was supposed to be submitted through Public Assembly under the address "publicassembly.eth" but could not be submitted through a DAO proposal or a multisignature wallet due to technical restrictions of Prop House. tranqui.eth submitted the proposal on behalf of PA which did not win. Members of BuilderDAO advised FF89DE to resubmit the proposal onchain directly to the DAO. FF89DE decided to proceed and "losingmyego.eth" (a BuilderDAO and FF89DE member) proposed it eventually leading to a 25 ETH award. The funds were transferred to the FF89DE multisig instead of the Public Assembly treasury and production began on January 9th with a public sprint.
FF89DE has engaged in extensive discussions in recent days regarding the wisdom of this recent decision made on behalf of the larger community as well as its potential impact on future growth and the overall integrity of the experiment. In this section we talk about discrepancies and points that have been thought about since the first transaction that went through to fund the FF89DE.eth multi sig
The reconsideration was based on the points discussed below.
Headlessness
FF89DE has established borders around ourselves and signaled our intent for PA to be a headless brand that is not subject to a single leading force although we recognize we will still have leadership influence in the short to mid term. The decision to route the funds to FF89de.eth as a working group was initially intentional as it was a way to communicate the importance of the headless nature of Public Assembly it’s subgroups and its ability to collaborate with other communities.
Onchain Provenance
The methods of funding for Public Assembly (PA) onchain is important for defining cultural standards. The proposer of the development sprint onchain was losingmyego.eth who operates autonomously as a creative within BuilderDAO FF89DE and PA. As a result the PA DAO address has never submitted a proposal and hence never received an award and there is no onchain history associated with the PA name interacting with external DAOs. The FF89DE multisig wallet is prominently featured among onchain acts with external DAOs as of this date. We found that It will be harder to track how Public Assembly's brand credibility and collective mission are affected without a definition of working groups such as FF89DE based on internal proposals.
Speculation
In some situations routing funds through the PA DAO wallet may be more or less desired and expected. In the case of the "Flexible DAO Interfaces" proposal where the reputation of PA was used to influence voters we think it makes sense that that PA should be the organization in charge of and in possession of any ETH awarded as a prize. In a future scenario where an external DAO token is awarded under the reputation of PA we also think it also makes sense that PA treasury should also be considered the organization that owns and manages the token.
The reroute of funds by FF89DE was a decision made with oversight from all parties to set a precedent for other PA working groups. The option to route funds through PA was always considered but the contributors could not begin working on the Flexible DAO Interfaces sprint due to the strong policy of not encouraging work without pay. Members of FF89DE are the only active participants in the Flexible DAO Interfaces sprint working group and they spent time scoping out this proposal for the BuilderDAO community.
Moving forward the idea is for specific proposals made on behalf of Public Assembly to call for PA to serve as the primary handler of any assets acquired for additional transparency oversight and alignment checks. This will protect against potential exploitation and misuse as more working groups submit external DAO proposals. As Public Assembly grows we suspect that more people in the sub PA group will want to move in this way.
Completed actions
25 ETH was sent from BuilderDAO treasury to FF89DE multisig.
5 ETH sent from FF89DE multisig to Public Assembly treasury.
19.8 ETH sent to contributors for work to begin.
15 ETH sent to PA treasury from non-ZORA ff89de members
After Proposal Executes
15 ETH sent from Public Assembly treasury to FF89DE multisig to resume the production of Flexible DAO Interfaces.