Governance
TEC was, above all, a governance experiment. It tried to translate governance theory into working mechanisms, and then to live with the consequences. This section gathers how the TEC made decisions, the rules and processes it governed itself by, and the working groups through which its labor was organized — with the underlying documents available for download from the data repository (see For Researchers).
Mechanisms
- Conviction Voting — the signature funding mechanism, where support for a proposal accrued over time. Used to allocate the common pool, it was later sidelined (2023) in favor of more operationally managed funding programs.
- Dandelion / Tao Voting — the “hard” governance layer for upgrades, permissions, parameter changes, and high-stakes constitutional actions, including ragequit-style exit protections.
- Hatch DAO — the initial governance body formed by the Hatch, which voted on the Commons Upgrade parameters.
- Guardians — a security/governance role introduced around the OP Migration (late 2023).
See Definitions for any unfamiliar terms.
What’s in this section
- Working Groups Overview — how labor, stewardship, and operations were organized, plus the record (Forum Timeline (Detailed)) and the Praise contribution culture. (General)
- Policy & Agreements — the rules and norms the community governed itself by: the Community Covenant, Code of Conduct, Communication Guidelines, Mutual Accountability Methods, and Proposal Terms — each summarized here, with the originals in the data repository.
- Process & Operations — how the organization actually ran: proposal, call, onboarding/offboarding, and working-group processes — summarized, with originals in the data repository.
- Working Groups — a page for each working group: its function, what it accomplished, and where to find its documents.
Culture as governance
TEC treated culture as part of its governance infrastructure — the Community Covenant (2021), the Code of Conduct, onboarding and offboarding processes, and mutual-accountability practices. Its conflict-transformation system lived in the Gravity working group.
The chronological account of TEC’s governance is in the Timeline; the primary deliberation record lives on Discourse. Full proposal records and meeting notes are preserved in the data repository.