Creating Cosmos Governance Proposals

At Figment, our primary focus is to be the best legal and compliant token staking service. When thinking about and participating in governance proposals, our process will be a bit different from conventional legal practices, because a cryptogovernance framework for the Cosmos Hubhas yet to be established. These are our governance goals:

• to be explicit about our intended outcomes;
• to define the stakeholders potentially impacted by a decision;
• to account for the potential impact that a decision may have on each stakeholder;
• to justify our decisions based on the potential impact of the decision, and
• to consider how we may improve our governance process

We think that best practices and community standards for Cosmos governance will be valuable to the stakeholders of a burgeoning community. Subject to revision (and we expect much revisioning), we’d like to suggest some initial guidelines for thoughtful Cosmos governance proposal creation.

When drafting a new proposal, the Figment team will begin with this template:

1. Context
   An informal description of the past, present, and potential future of the issue(s) being addressed by our governance proposal.
2. Decision(s)*
   The formal and informal terms of the article being voted upon.
3. Justification
   An informal description acknowledging
   a) the stakeholders likely to be impacted by the decision(s);
   b) how the decision(s) will likely impact the stakeholders; and
   c) the weight of the impact on the stakeholders, such that it supports our decision.
4. Notes and/or Future Considerations
   Anything observed in the process of developing the governance proposal that may be important to consider for future governance proposals (ie. potential revisions to the governance proposal template and/or process).

*One important note is that we should avoid double-barrelled decisions(or worse, omnibus decisions) whenever possible. Try to delineate different potential decisions into individual proposals so that our community can make clear decisions. Please adopt our template, and please discuss and make revisions to this initial iteration.

Once our governance proposal is drafted, we’ll follow these steps to formalize and submit our governance proposal to the Cosmos Hub:

1. Begin the proposal using the template
2. Identify and consult directly with key stakeholders
3. Finalize and publish in full on blog & Comos forum for feedback
4. Publish summary on Twitter with links to the forum & blog article
5. Last-minute revisions, with the possibility of repeating Steps 1–5
6. Publish formal proposal via IPFS and submit link to the Cosmos Hub

We think that following these steps will be an important part of establishing legitimacy for our governance proposals. If others adopt and improve upon our process, our hope is that it will lead to a robust equilibrium for reliable and effective decentralized decision-making.

Don’t be afraid to participate in the process — governance shouldn’t be exclusive to lawyers. Figment wants the Cosmos community to establish best practices and community standards for Cosmos governance. We need diverse voices and perspectives, so join us via the following channels:

• Cosmos forum governance topic
• Cosmos main Telegram channel & governance channel
• Cosmos subreddit
• Figment Medium
• Figment Twitter
• Figment subreddit

Hopefully you found this useful. Feedback is welcome.

? I’m on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ether_Gavin