StarkNet Builders’ Council - Mission Statement

🏛 Governance Governance Proposals
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Hi everyone! I’m Sylve, co-founder of @briqNFT, the NFT building protocol on StarkNet. I’m a former product manager at Ledger and I’ve been part of the StarkNet ecosystem since October 2021. As such I’ve organized a couple of things, like the first StarkNet Hacker Building at ETH Lisbon 2022 and gave a few talks like A Folk History of StarkNet. My goal is to keep StarkNet strange (and flourishing)!

Today I’m extremely happy to tell you about the Builders’ Council, which I will be helping out as a Governance Facilitator. This post explains what the Builders’ Council is and how it will work.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment on this post or reach out to me via Twitter at @sylvechv.

TL;DR

  • The StarkNet Foundation is delegating a portion of its voting power to the Builders’ Council.
  • The Builders’ Council is comprised of 17 builders from the StarkNet Ecosystem, chosen by the Foundation on merit of their expertise and deep knowledge of StarkNet.
  • The Builders’ Council will vote on behalf of the Foundation during the First Phase of StarkNet Governance.

Background

The StarkNet Foundation has been set up as an independent community structure to support and develop the StarkNet Ecosystem.

The StarkNet Foundation will (i) foster research & development, (ii) foster expansion of the StarkNet network and supporting technology, (iii) promote use and adoption of the StarkNet network, and (iv) fuel StarkNet community participation and project governance. The Foundation will help fund and organize user and developer conferences, and coordinate cooperation with allied and related communities.

The Builders’ Council will give opportunities to builders from the community to help shape StarkNet. This is good for the network, as the greater the wisdom available to it, the better. It’s also the right approach for a community where tokens are not yet widely distributed.

The role of the Builders’ Council

  • Carry out an in-depth learning and discussion process for each proposed decision, with the aim to lead to well-founded decisions that will benefit StarkNet and its long-term vision.

  • Take an active part in encouraging discussions and votes during the first phase on behalf of StarkNet community members.

  • Ensure transparency of the Council’s discussions, decisions, and activities.

How the Builders Council works

  • The StarkNet Foundation will delegate a portion (23.3%) of the total first phase voting power to the Builders’ Council.

  • The Builders’ Council will hold an in-depth discussion on issues proposed by the Foundation and make a decision on how to act, based on a simple majority vote.

  • All calls will be recorded, meeting notes will be written, and posted on this community forum and a dedicated Github repo for everyone to see, to uphold transparency and accountability.

  • The council’s mandate will be reviewed by the Foundation’s board after the end of the First Phase of the StarkNet Governance.

Members of the Builder Council

The members of the Builders’ Council were chosen by the StarkNet Foundation board, upon recommendation of the Governance committee & Starkware Ecosystem team, in order to create a balanced, well-involved council with deep knowledge of the platform.

My role will be to help the Builders’ Council members have informed discussions, gather votes, herd cats, and post all the results of discussions on the StarkNet Community Forum.

Confirmed members of StarkNet’s first phase Builder Council (in alphabetical order):

  1. Jon, co-founder of NFT marketplace Aspect and StarkNet explorer StarkScan
  2. Chee, Software developer and co-founder of StarkNet Malaysia
  3. Federica Moletta, Software developer at Lambda Class
  4. GuiltyGyoza, co-founder of Topology
  5. Jonathan Lei, co-founder and CTO at zkLend
  6. Julien Niset, co-founder of Argent
  7. Ivan Pavicic, Engineering Manager at Space Shard
  8. Martin Triay, Cairo Lead at OpenZeppelin
  9. Mentor Reka, Cofounder at DeFi platform Alpha Road and community platform StarkNet Ecosystem
  10. Motty Lavie, co-founder of Braavos wallet
  11. Nnam Darlington, Software developer and dev community lead of StarkNet Africa
  12. Nicolas Bacca, VP Innovation Lab and co-founder of Ledger
  13. Orlando, developer at Snapshot working on trustless voting app Snapshot X
  14. Rohit Goyal, co-founder of DeFi protocol JediSwap
  15. Sylve Chevet, co-founder at NFT procol briq, acting as Governance Facilitator
  16. TobbyKitty, co-founder of Fibrous Finance and StarkNet Turkey
  17. Tarrence van As, co-founder of StarkNet Gaming Console Cartridge.gg and on-chain game DopeWars

FAQ

  • What kind of voting system is put in place?
    • simple majority
  • Where does the discussion happen?
    • Discussions will take place in this Community Forum and in community calls. All discussions will be posted on the StarkNet Community Forum.
  • Where will the votes take place?
  • Where is the decision posted?
    • The decision will be posted on StarkNet’s Community Forum.
  • How were the Builders’ Council members chosen?
    • They were chosen by the StarkNet Foundation, recommended by the StarkWare team, and StarkNet community members (including me)

Any questions?

Should you have any questions please comment on this post or reach out to me on Twitter at @sylvechv, or through my profile in this StarkNet Community Forum.

Links

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how can we vote in a future? with what tokens or NFTs or any other assets? :grinning:

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In the future anyone will be able to vote provided they possess StarkNet tokens which, at the moment, can’t be bought or generated. Once the network progressively decentralizes, the StarkNet token will be generated just like ETH is, and will be used to pay for transaction fees, etc.

The StarkNet token is currently locked for a year, so there’s no way to buy it.

More information about the StarkNet token:

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Will there be compensation for these 17 individuals? Additionally, how would one apply/become a council member. Or is this solely for the first cycle of Starknet votes and after the first cycle, the council will no longer steward the 23.3% of the votes and be dissolved?

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Hi, is the number of consuls limited? I mean, will there be new members in the future? Will they be chosen by the StarkNet Foundation or will there be an opportunity to nominate candidates from the community? :slightly_smiling_face:

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You’re correct, the current mandate for the Builder’s Council only applies for the First Phase of governance. Compensation isn’t finalized just yet.

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Anyone can apply to become a StarkNet delegate! More information here.

  • StarkNet’s Governance mechanism implements Delegation of voting power
  • Delegation enables a system in which where token-holders who take economic stake in the network, elect Delegates who take social stake in the community
  • All are welcome to receive delegation and participate in governance as a StarkNet Delegate: to signal your willingness to receive delegation, please post your delegate profile on the linked Delegate profile thread
  • Token-holders are encouraged to select a delegate from the Delegate profile thread to delegate to if they do not plan to vote themselves
  • Information about delegate responsibilities can be viewed on the Delegate expectations post

About the number of members in the council: we tried to keep it low enough so it’s actually manageable. Someone has to herd those cats, and that’s me :sweat_smile:

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I like the Geographical diversity and the talent of the Council members. I would love to see a few CEO’s of Traditional Web2 companies in future in this Council so that we can learn how best to onboard web2 companies into this space. Real world utility will be a key success factor. Polygon Team has taken the lead but there is a lot more space to capture for other L2s & L3s

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Would there be interest in opening up 3 more spots to the council? There seems to be a decent amount of interest, including us, in running. 20 total members would not only just look more “appealing” it would give some community members a vote into a very important process, and also provide some more transparency to the whole process, as these 17 pre chosen members seem to be very qualified, but the selection process was a bit invisible.

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Council members hold no additional governance rights than other Delegates. Applying as a delegate here is the best way for community members to contribute to governance as of now.

From my understanding the Builder’s Council 6-month charter is meant to:

  • Grant voting power to a distributed set of StarkNet application developers to ensure their input is considered in network upgrades
  • Discover a relationship between a Voting Council and the DAO

We’ve had consideration about how the Builder’s Council will look like after this charter: potentially some forced cycling of members through ranked voting, potentially dissolving the council entirely if the delegate role fills our needs. These 6-months are meant to be a pilot for us to test this interaction to best understand how we can open up participation and expand responsibilities.

As for the selection process- there may have been just as many people debating who should be on the builder’s council as there are people on the builders council. If you check out this list, it’s pretty considerate of many different actors in StarkNet. Not perfect, but approaching representative. I think @s0lness is confident in the group.

Just as the builders council, we expect the role of delegates to evolve as well. One note is that more voting power will be available for delegation as more of the Foundation’s token allocation is distributed. There will be a calculated introduction of tooling following major decentralization events to ensure Delegate’s are able to receive significant voting power based on their good faith contributions to StarkNet governance.

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Do you think its safe to delegate to someone ?
Could they still some tokens or it working only for voting power activities ?

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It is safe to delegate. The StarkNet Token contract implements standard delegate and delegateBySig functions from the Compound delegation module. These functions are standard and do not transfer tokens, they only delegate the voting power.

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Who are able to make proposals? What will happen when community rejects council’s proposals?

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it is totally true, if you want someone represents your interests you are able to delegate him/her your tokens. If you trust the delegated person, you can do it without any doubt

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will be sessions of the Builder Council public or private?

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I dont get how to participate in governance
It is neede to hold The StarkNet token, but it is not distributed yet, so as i understand, token distribution will be firstly and after that we can participate in governance module

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As explained in the Medium post, only the Foundation itself is able to propose topics for now. These topics, during the First Phase of Governance will only be about protocol upgrades.

Should the community decide not to go forward with a protocol upgrade, it will not be implemented on StarkNet Mainnet.

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We’ll hold meetings, record them, post them here and on the dedicated Github repo. Finishing out the final details soon.

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Delegates, token holders and members of the Builder’s Council can participate in governance at the moment. When the StarkNet network decentralizes its consensus the StarkNet token will flow and anyone will be able to get tokens and vote.

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Good job Starknet, good luck team and devs

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