SIP-111: Enable Spartan Council voting on Synthetix Improvement Proposals (SIPs)

Author	Andy T CF, Kaleb Keny, BigPenny
Status	Implemented
Type	Governance
Network	Ethereum
Implementor	TBD
Release	TBD
Created	2021-02-07

Simple Summary

This SIP proposes to transition the Synthetix Improvement Proposal (SIP) voting process from discord #governance-polls to the current Spartan Council voting process.

Abstract

This proposal will enable proposed SIPs to be voted on by the Spartan Council. This SIP will transition the voting process from the #governance-polls channel to https://gov.synthetix.io. Voting power is delegated to the Spartan Council from tokens holders who stake their SNX via SIP-104. Council members hold a Spartan Council NFT and use this to vote for proposals through the official Spartan Council Governance process, identical to how SCCP voting was previously delegated to the Spartan Council.

Motivation

From SIP-93 the Spartan Council was established, during this initial phase, they were proposed to vote only on low-level governance SCCP changes. At the time of this SIP proposal, the Spartan Council has successfully voted on more than 20 SCCPs and has shown positive engagement with the community and other stakeholders in debating and responding to issues that have arisen in the protocol.

As a result of this positive outcome, it is proposed that the Spartan Council should start voting on SIPs as the current SIP process is still carried out in a weaker version of governance within the #governance-poll discord channel which still possesses many of the issues explored in SIP-93.

Specification

Overview

If this SIP is implemented, all proposed SIPs will be created within the https://gov.synthetix.io IPFS snapshot space and governance discussions within the #council-chambers will include these SIPs.

Rationale

There have been a number of discussions around when to transition SIPs to the Spartan Council, this SIP has been proposed as a standalone vote as opposed to SIP-93/SIP-104 which tied this decision into other changes to the protocol. Given the importance of this change, it is ideal to isolate it from any other decisions and address it as a separate SIP. The changes proposed to the governance process in SIP-104 are still approved but would no longer be a dependency for this change.

Technical Specification

All SIPs that are created on the SIP GitHub repo will need to be accompanied by a snapshot proposal on https://gov.synthetix.io/.

In addition, prior to a proposal being uploaded to gov.synthetix.io a SIP presentation must be held and attended by the SIP author, core contributors assigned to implement the SIP and at least 50% of the council. This presentation will use Discord voice chat to allow anon members to participate. It will provide a forum for any considerations and issues arising from the SIP to be interrogated and raised prior to a formal vote by the Council.

If this SIP is successful, it will be the last SIP to be voted via the legacy discord governance system. This means that this SIP will still be voted on the #governance-poll discord channel.