Community Proposals

Interacting with your community and its members, other communities on Catalyst, or other communities on other DAO platforms (e.g. Sputnik DAO) happens in the form of proposals.

One of the open web principles on which Catalyst is built is one of decentralization.  To that end, while you can run a community as the centralized autocratic all powerful dictator, the appeal of DAOs is the ability to eliminate that kind of centralized management and give each member of the community more of an equal voice in the community's direction and how its resources are used.

As such, getting things done in a Catalyst community (and many other DAO based frameworks) is a matter of:

• Having an idea, recommendation, or suggestion
• Submitting a proposal for it
• Providing detail for that proposal, planning out how you envision it to get completed along with timelines, payouts, and quality of work expectations (milestones)
• Discussing that proposal and its plan with the community until it reaches a stage where it seems apparent it will pass a vote
• Sponsoring the proposal to send it to voting
• Voting on it
• Finalizing it

Proposal Submission

All proposal types on Catalyst can be created by visiting the desired community from the Explore Communities page, and selecting the Submit Proposals menu. The proposals available to users in this menu will depend of their member status. Members of community have access to all proposal options, while non-members have access to the Funding Commitment, Payout, Member, and Donation options.

Upon selecting the action to create a proposal, a small dialogue box will appear requesting the user confirm a deposit of some NEAR. This amount is required to prevent the spamming of proposals, and will be returned to the user’s account upon finalization of their proposal, whether or not it passed.

Details and Discussion

Upon creation of a proposal, it moves into the Proposals Tab of the community. Here, it will be accompanied by an ‘Edit Details’ option available to the creator. Before a proposal is eligible for sponsorship, the creator of a proposal must fill out some Proposal details. The minimum amount of detail required for a proposal to be eligible for sponsorship deviates depending on the type of proposal.

Proposals in this section also include the discussion feature. By clicking on the proposal, users can leave comments, and discuss the proposal amongst one another.

Sponsorship

Once a proposal has been discussed, and one of the community members decide that they would like to move it through, they can sponsor the proposal by selecting Sponsor.  This action ensures that only proposals that have been discussed, and are of interest to the community members enter the voting stage.

Voting

In the voting stage, members of the community can vote to either pass or reject a proposal, using a thumbs up or thumbs down. A proposal remains in the voting area for a set amount of time, which varies from community to community, and is established upon creation of that community.

Rage Quit

After the voting period ends, the voting functionality disappears, and is replaced with a red Rage Quit button. This button allows users to cash out their voting shares in the event that they disagree with the direction that a community is going, with respect to a particular proposal. In the event that a user selects the rage quit option, their shares will be converted to their equivalent value in NEAR, and returned to their account.

Finalization

The final action required to finish the lifecycle of a proposal is its finalization. This step is required to record the proposal on the NEAR blockchain, and simply requires that a user select the ‘Finalize’ button listed on proposals in this section. Any user can finalize any proposal, including the creator of the proposal.