Authors: Anna Riabokon (RARI Foundation) & Kaf — Anode

TL;DR

RARI DAO does not have a single governance problem; it has several overlapping governance design issues that now need to be addressed together.

First, authority is split across two live governance surfaces: Rari DAO v1 on Ethereum and RARI DAO v2 on RARI Chain.

Second, delegate onboarding remains harder than it should be, especially for new participants trying to understand where and how to participate.

Third, the recent uncertainty around Tally’s future exposed the need for a more explicit infrastructure resilience plan.

This RFC proposes a coordinated governance cleanup process around three goals:

• Clarify one canonical venue for binding governance decisions.
• Clarify the role of RARI Chain in ecosystem coordination, signaling, and chain-specific activity.
• Relaunch delegate onboarding through a clearer, more accountable, and more sustainable delegate track.

The current preferred direction is to re-establish Ethereum Mainnet as the primary venue for binding governance decisions, while continuing to position RARI Chain as an important venue for ecosystem coordination, signaling, and chain-specific activity.

We want to be transparent that this is the direction we currently lean toward, but the governance direction in this RFC is published as a temperature check to be shaped by community feedback. The treasury migration in Section 3.1 is executed on-chain by this proposal.

The delegate program is included here because governance structure and delegate participation are closely linked. However, depending on community feedback, delegate onboarding and renewal may later be advanced as a separate RRC once the broader governance direction is clarified.

1. Why Now

Three things converged in Q1–Q2 2026 that make this the right moment to address governance architecture as a whole rather than in pieces.

Infrastructure resilience came into focus

Tally, the governance UI most of the DAO uses today, announced corporate shutdown.

ScopeLift subsequently took over operation of the Tally governance platform, and by early May the working assumption stabilized around continuity.

While the Tally governance app appears to remain operational under ScopeLift’s stewardship, the episode made clear that RARI should treat the governance UI as replaceable infrastructure, not as the governance system itself.

That argues for standard, portable contracts (OpenZeppelin Governor) underneath whatever UI we use.

The migration to RARI Chain delivered partial results

The Season 1 staking program moved RARI from near-zero activity on the new chain to:

• 196,792 RARI delegated
• 751 active stakers
• 26 active delegates
• 42 unique voters

That is real progress.

It also represents roughly 45% of the 300k RARI migration target, and recent v2 proposals still draw 15–23 voting addresses.

The migration moved some activity, but not the constitutional center of gravity, and we should be honest about that before designing the next phase.

Treasury management evolved

RRC-51 transferred operational treasury management to the Foundation in late 2025.

The Q1 2026 transparency report shows continued treasury diversification efforts, operational treasury activity (including ETH staking and OTC treasury operations), and ongoing separation across Operations, Treasury, and Ecosystem Growth allocations.

As treasury stewardship and ecosystem initiatives continue to expand, the governance venue where strategic oversight is exercised should remain unambiguous.

The cleaner the venue, the more credible the oversight.

2. Diagnostic Snapshot

Two Live Governance Surfaces

What we see today

• v1: 68 proposals, 1.19K delegates, ~$300 residual treasury, last vote RRC-55 (defeated, Feb 2026)
• v2: 9 proposals, 237 delegates, 0 treasury sources, last vote Jan 2026 (ETH staking activation)

What it suggests

Legitimacy is split; new delegates do not know which venue is authoritative.

Electoral Depth

What we see today

• 12–18 addresses on recent v1 votes
• 15–23 addresses on recent v2 votes

What it suggests

The challenge is not only "more voters" — it is that participation is diluted across two surfaces.

Onboarding Friction

What we see today

• Forum thread reports no working route to convert RARI → veRARI for new v1 delegates.

What it suggests

Without a fixed entry path, incentive programs end up rewarding insiders who already know how to navigate the flow.

Documentation Gap

What we see today

• Governance onboarding post still carries TBD fields for submission threshold and quorum after token migration.

What it suggests

The process exists but rests on a moving base.

Infrastructure Dependency

What we see today

• Tally corporate shutdown → ScopeLift takeover → working continuity within ~60 days.

What it suggests

Governance should be portable across UI vendors by design, not by luck.

Delegate Program Evolution

What we see today

• Launchpad (2023) → DIP (2024) → DIP replacement (May 2025) → DIP v2.0 (Nov 2025), covering both v1 and v2.

What it suggests

Good instincts, but the structure has changed often enough that delegates cannot reliably build careers on it.

The diagnostic is not that RARI governance is failing.

Governance is functioning — RRC-51, RRC-53, RRC-54, the staking program, and the Security Council election all executed.

The diagnostic is that we are running a healthy governance through an architecture that fragments its own authority, and the cost shows up at the margins — new delegates, treasury legibility, and infrastructure portability.

3. Direction We Are Leaning Toward

We want to be clear: this section describes our current preferred direction, not a settled plan.

The community feedback in this thread is what will determine whether this is the right shape, whether it needs significant adjustment, or whether a different path serves RARI better.

3.1 Explore Re-Anchoring Canonical Governance on Ethereum Mainnet

The historical argument against Mainnet was cost.

That argument has weakened materially.

Gas Cost

Etherscan recently showed standard gas around 0.107 gwei.

Even under stress scenarios (10–30 gwei), a single vote costs roughly $1.70–$5.10.

With Tally Relay (or equivalent gasless infrastructure) sponsoring votes and delegations, the cost to the participant is zero.

ENS already operates this way.

Standards and Portability

A standard OpenZeppelin Governor + Timelock with a Tally-compatible wrapper over the existing RARI token is a well-understood pattern.

The original RARI Chain migration documentation already contemplated a wrapper approach for multichain governance.

Inherited Legitimacy

Mainnet would inherit:

• The full v1 delegate base
• The full proposal history
• The institutional credibility of the longer-running surface

Rather than asking v2 to rebuild that from scratch.

What Could Live Where

Forum

• Idea generation
• Debate
• Technical review
• Rationale
• Conflict-of-interest disclosure

Nature: Off-chain

Temp Check

• Discourse poll
• Optionally Snapshot
• Non-binding signal

Nature: Off-chain

Governor + Timelock on Ethereum Mainnet

• Treasury
• Upgrades
• Fees
• Budgets
• Charters
• Elections
• Structural grants

Nature: On-chain, binding

Security Council

• Emergency pause
• Hotfix
• Veto of clearly harmful payloads only

Nature: Exceptional

Foundation & Committees

• Execution within DAO-approved mandates
• Quarterly reporting

Nature: Operational

RARI Chain

• Primary venue for ecosystem activity
• Signaling
• Chain-specific execution

Nature: Subordinate to the canonical governance layer for constitutional decisions

Initial Parameter Ideas for Community Discussion

These are starting points, not proposals.

• Proposal threshold: max(5,000 RARI, 0.25% of delegated supply)
• Quorum: max(20,000 RARI, 2% of delegated supply), For + Abstain
• Voting period: 5–7 days
• Voting delay: 0–1 day
• Timelock: 3 days for constitutional / treasury / permissions changes
• Emergency action validity: all emergency actions expire if not ratified on-chain within 30 days
• Review cadence: parameters reviewed at 90 days, then quarterly

These numbers are anchored in the original veRARI design (5-day vote, 2-day cooldown, 5,000 threshold) and standard practice for governance contracts at comparable DAO scale.

Treasury and Delegation Migration

As part of the proposed governance re-anchoring process, the remaining assets currently held in the RARI Chain Timelock are migrated out of RARI Chain to a RARI Foundation–controlled multisig, from which the Foundation bridges them to Ethereum Mainnet (a standard ERC-20 transfer cannot bridge directly).

RARI Chain Timelock

https://rari.calderaexplorer.xyz/address/0x90BeDbEf93120bf7E4AcDdd6171053c3A12903F0

Additionally, governance delegations currently associated with the RARI Chain DAO would be revoked and re-established within the Mainnet governance system.

The intention is to ensure that governance authority, delegated voting power, and governance-controlled treasury assets remain aligned within a single canonical governance venue, particularly in light of the planned RARI Chain shutdown.

This does not change the overall direction of the proposal, but clarifies how treasury assets and governance delegations would be handled if governance is consolidated on Mainnet.

3.2 Narrow the Security Council Mandate

The Security Council approved in 2025 (3/5 veto safe, 4/5 upgrade safe, annual mandate, 60,000 RARI annual cost) is a useful safety net and we are not proposing to remove it.

We would propose to narrow it under the new architecture:

• Three powers only: temporary pause, short-term operational reversal, and blocking of manifestly harmful payloads.
• No discretion over strategy, treasury allocation, or resource assignment.
• Every use produces a public report within 24 hours and automatically opens an on-chain ratification or revocation proposal.
• Sunset clause on the mandate, with renewal requiring an affirmative DAO vote.

Delegate Renewal and Onboarding

This section is included here because governance architecture, delegate participation, and delegation incentives are closely linked.

Depending on community feedback, delegate onboarding and delegate structure may later move into a separate RRC once the canonical governance direction is finalized.

One of the clearest lessons from the current governance structure is that onboarding new delegates remains harder than it should be.

Participation is fragmented across multiple governance surfaces, documentation is inconsistent, and newer contributors often lack a clear path into meaningful governance participation.

At the same time, existing delegates have already built governance history, participation records, and community legitimacy across both Ethereum Mainnet and RARI Chain governance.

The goal of governance cleanup is not to reset participation from zero, but to reduce fragmentation and create a clearer long-term structure.

As part of this process, we propose reopening delegate onboarding through a smaller, more focused cohort-based structure while also clarifying delegation continuity if canonical governance is re-anchored on Ethereum Mainnet.

Initial Direction for Discussion

• Smaller cohorts (for example 6–8 delegates rather than larger intake rounds)
• Delegates selected based on demonstrated governance activity, ecosystem contributions, and relevant expertise
• Temporary delegated voting power distributed by the DAO to help new delegates meaningfully participate from day one
• Public delegate profiles and rationale transparency expected as baseline requirements
• Periodic review of delegate activity and participation
• Clearer continuity between onboarding, delegation incentives, and long-term governance participation
• Clear delegation migration guidelines if governance architecture changes

The goal is not simply to increase the number of delegates, but to create a clearer and more sustainable pathway for capable contributors to become long-term governance participants.

More detailed structures around delegate evaluation, incentives, accountability mechanisms, delegation migration, or long-term delegate compensation can be proposed separately after the canonical governance direction is finalized.