Our Governance Philosophy

Scroll’s vision is to provide egalitarian access to a global distributed network of applications and services, ensuring security and scalability for everyone, everywhere. As part of that vision, Scroll’s governance philosophy centers around a few core tenets including Progressive Decentralization, Inclusive Participation, Accountability, and Staying Curious.

Progressive Decentralization

Decentralization is about minimizing the reliance on any single actor to build a resilient, trustless protocol. It helps increase security and transparency while solidifying an individual’s sovereignty.

Progressive decentralization is an intentional and planned evolution that can help transition the community from a passive consumer role to an active participant role. This transition does not happen with a flip of a switch or by simply claiming a token. This process should be viewed as a spectrum with many shades in between.

One of the reasons we are taking this approach is to help establish clear roles, responsibilities, and processes, as well as to co-create the future of the Scroll DAO and Scroll protocol together. Taking a more progressive approach towards decentralization increases the chance of developing strategies that maintain a long-term focus across stakeholders.

We see the co-creation cycles as foundational in making sure that our community is engaged and is able to provide input throughout the various stages of decentralization. Additionally, Accountability (see below) is a key factor for staying on track on the path of progressive decentralization.

Inclusive Participation

From the beginning, we understood that a protocol designed for human coordination is only as strong as its social fabric. That’s why we have been deliberate about connecting with communities across the world and nurturing a wide range of perspectives.

Building an intentional global community doesn’t come solely from aspirations. It comes from spending the time with individuals, listening to them, and empowering them. At the core of this value is inclusive participation and a deliberate intention to make sure that people across the world are able to drive the future direction of where Scroll DAO is collectively headed.

We want to support builders, both technical and non-technical, with the necessary tools and resources, and help them create innovative applications. Our approach towards co-creation is grounded in the desire of hearing from our existing and potential users about what is needed to maximize collaboration within and across regions.

We also recognize that when it comes to this kind of work, actions speak louder than words. This is why we are focusing on Community as one of the first priority areas for co-creation. We are excited to see the ideas that emerge as we find the best ways to activate communities around the world.

Accountability

As anyone who has spent time in DAOs knows all too well, sense-making is an activity that can take up a significant amount of time, especially when just joining a DAO. We strive to create regular voting cycles and want to work with our community to lighten the load of sense-making for DAO members, while providing the appropriate level of context. Higher context transparency makes it feasible for delegates and DAO members to hold all relevant stakeholders accountable.

We seek to prioritize collaborative decision-making that is fair, transparent, and accountable whilst upholding the protocol’s best interests. We want to clearly articulate and maintain elements of accountability to the Scroll community at large.

Community members should always feel they have the right to hold each other and Scroll Foundation accountable. As we work on exploring new ideas and co-creating plans with our community, we need to all remember to retain humility as we give each other constructive criticism and work together on enacting the mission and vision of Scroll.

Even at times when the community does not own certain decision-making, mechanisms are in place to hold Scroll Foundation accountable, as outlined in subsequent documents.

Staying Curious

We need to not be afraid to push boundaries and try bold new ideas while still making empirically informed decisions. We will not rush to move fast and break things when it comes to governance. We will, however, have a mix of efforts to map what is known and to surface the experiments that can help Scroll DAO become a leader in decentralized governance.

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