Dear NEAR Community,

We’re pleased to share with you the below draft Mission, Vision & Values (MVV) v0.1.1 for House of Stake DAO and invite you to participate in cycle 1 of community feedback and co-creation.

These statements are a synthesis of pre-work, research, workshop outputs and small group drafting activities focused on articulating a Mission, Vision & Values for House of Stake, distinct and complementary to the overarching vision of NEAR.

As we move rapidly together to launch & operationalize the House of Stake DAO, these statements are intended to form a compelling purpose architecture for us all to rally around.

They should align & focus our energy and activities, while providing sufficient freedom & flexibility for diverse individual contributions.

1. VISION: the powerful WHY articulating the change we want to create in the world
2. MISSION: WHAT we are actually doing to make our vision a reality
3. VALUES: things we care about that guide HOW we operate

An invitation to co-create

This post marks the start of co-creation cycle 1 for House of Stake’s MVV.

The way the statements are articulated below is designed to invite feedback and debate, with each component broken down into distinct elements for your critique.

Alternative options are offered up for your consideration, reflecting the diversity of perspectives we’ve heard and directions House of Stake could choose to focus towards.

Table of Contents

1. MVV for House of Stake, draft v0.1.1
2. Breaking it down: rationale & options
3. What’s next?
   a. How and when to give feedback
   b. Questions to think about to give thoughtful feedback
   c. Poll
4. Addendum: Drafting Methodology

MVV for House of Stake, draft v0.1.1

VISION:

1.1.  Decentralised governance for humanity-enhancing AI

MISSION:

2.1.  House of Stake's mission is
2.2.  to establish a new kind of governance system,
2.3.  co-created, co-operated and co-governed by NEAR owners and users,
2.4.  fully embracing AI,
2.5.  to be incorruptible, uncapturable and sovereign by default,
2.6.  and bring in the era of user-owned, humanity-enhancing AI

VALUES:

3.1.  Credible Neutrality
3.2.  Experimentation with Safety
3.3.  Builder & Business Centric
3.4.  Autonomy with Accountability
3.5.  Adaptive Governance
3.6.  Meaningful Participation
3.7.  Transparency with Dignity
3.8.  AI-Augmented, Human-Governed
3.9.  Public Goods as Growth Engines
3.10. Cultural Stickiness

Note (7 Oct): the above has been updated during co-creation cycle 1 from v0.1 to v0.1.1, removing Attributes to simplify down from VAMP to the more common MVV framework.

Breaking it down: rationale & options

VISION

The VISION is a witness view of what the world looks like 5-10 years from now if House of Stake is successful. It should be reviewed annually, especially at first, but we should expect it to evolve on multi-year timescales.

1.1. Decentralised governance for humanity-enhancing AI

Rationale

• A short and clear articulation of the future we envisage
• A governance system is what we are creating
• It’s decentralised, in constrast to the centralised, concentrated power of Big Tech / Big State AI
• We’re focused specifically on how AI is being manifested
• Humanity-enhancing as a North Star as it is for the benefit of all humanity, present and future

Alternatives

These are presented here on a spectrum from WHY to WHAT:

Questions

1. Should “user-owned” be part of the vision? (d)
2. Or “community-owned”, one of the most frequently-mentioned words in the workshop? (a)
3. Must “NEAR” be explicitly mentioned (d, e) or is our vision for HoS broader than just NEAR? (a, b, c)
4. Is it crucial to have “decentralised” in there? (b, d)
5. Should our vision indeed be strongly centred around AI? (a, b, c, d)
6. Should “stake-weighted” be part of the vision? (it was hardly mentioned in the workshops so not included above)

MISSION

The MISSION is a statement declaring how we will make the vision a reality. This should be reviewed yearly. It serves as a basis for the next step in the ecosystem alignment process - aligning on measurable outcome goals for the next 3-12 months which are most likely to manifest the impacts described in the mission.

2.1. House of Stake's mission is

Rationale

• Important to clarify this is the mission for House of Stake specifically, distinct from NEAR, for example

Alternatives

• 2.1.b. NEAR House of Stake's mission is - if we want to be explicitly focused on NEAR, at least in the first year or so (though 2.3 covers that anyway)

2.2. to establish a new kind of governance system

Rationale

• A governance system is what we are creating
• Emphasises that we are inventing something new, together, for the world

Alternatives

• 2.2.b. to establish a distributed governance system - may be important to qualify that it’s distributed, especially if we adopt a Vision that doesn’t include that word
• 2.2.c. to establish an AI-native governance system - do we want to bring AI more to the fore here instead of in 3.4?
• 2.2.d. to establish a stake-weighted governance system for NEAR - is it important to be explicit that it’s stake-weighted? And that it is for NEAR?

2.3. co-created, co-operated and co-governed by NEAR owners and users

Rationale

• Clarifies who is on this mission and who it is for
• The system is being created and governed not just by owners (like a corporation) but by a multi-stakeholder collective including where all users of the system can have a stake and a say in its workings

Alternatives

• 2.3.b. co-created, co-operated and co-governed by the NEAR community - a more open declaration of who we serve, encompassing owners and users as well as other stakeholders
• 2.3.c. co-created, co-operated and co-governed by NEAR owners, users and AI agents - is our vision actually that AI agents are also first-class citizens in governance, or would that be at odds with “humanity-enhancing”?

2.4. fully embracing AI

Rationale

• We make maximum use of AI to enhance make the system as fair, neutral and efficient as possible

Alternatives

• 2.4.b augmented by AI - making the role of AI clearer (to augment human participants)
• 2.4.c to align incentives and direct resources - more specific about what we’re doing rather than how we’re doing it with AI

2.5. to be incorruptible, uncapturable and sovereign by default

Rationale

All three of these are critical characteristics for a DAO:

• “Incorruptible” because rules and operations must be enforced by transparent smart contracts in such a way that avoids manipulation or subversion by bad actors
• “Uncapturable” because it must be impossible for any single entity or group to seize overall control
• “Sovereign” because the DAO must operate with full autonomy and self-governance, free from control by any authority or intermediary

Alternatives

• 2.5.b to preserve neutrality, legitimacy and resilience - more positive phrasing around what we exist to achieve rather than what we aim to avoid
• 2.5.c to progressively decentralise economic and technical governance of NEAR - more specific and aligned to the mandate in the Interim Constitution
• 2.5.d maintaining legitimacy while creating compounding network effects and growth for NEAR - important to include a growth aspect in our mission?

2.6. and bring in the era of user-owned, humanity-enhancing AI

Rationale

• Aligns the mission to the vision
• Articulates the ultimate objective we are working towards
• Owned by users
• For the benefit of all of humanity i.e. the greater good

Alternatives

• 2.6.b. and usher in the era of community-owned, humanity-enhancing AI - community rather than user-owned?
• 2.6.c. and accelerate the growth of the user-owned AI economy - direct contribution to NEAR’s vision

VALUES

VALUES are things that contributors and users of House of Stake care about, in an opinionated way that actually helps us make decisions and clearly differentiates us from other governance systems.

3.1. Credible Neutrality

Principle: Governance must remain resistant to capture by individuals, institutions, or cartels.
Behavioral Test: Would this decision still hold if only a few top stakeholders coordinated against it?

3.2. Experimentation with Safety

Principle: Governance models, funding mechanisms, and AI tools are tested in lower-stakes environments before being merged into the main system.
Behavioral Test: Can this experiment fail without endangering the ecosystem’s integrity?

3.3. Builder & Business Centric

Principle: Governance must create the conditions for both individual developers and institutions to thrive — from the developer experience to enterprise-scale adoption. This includes funding the infrastructure, tools, and programs that make NEAR the most attractive platform for adoption that scales.
Behavioral Test: Does this decision improve NEAR as a place where developers, entrepreneurs, and enterprises can build lasting businesses?

3.4. Autonomy with Accountability

Principle: Workstreams and contributors have freedom to innovate, balanced with clear success gates and measurable outcomes.
Behavioral Test: Does this program have both the freedom to act and clear metrics to evaluate success?

3.5. Adaptive Governance

Principle: Governance should evolve iteratively, guided by feedback loops, changing ecosystem needs and emerging opportunities.
Behavioral Test: Is there a mechanism to review and adapt this process if it no longer serves the ecosystem?

3.6. Inclusive & Meaningful Participation

Principle: All stakeholders — large and small — must have meaningful ways to engage in governance. Influence at the top may be proportional to stake, but lower levels of governance provide opportunities where every voice can matter, keeping people engaged and invested.
Behavioral Test: Are we creating real roles for smaller stakeholders to contribute value, even if they don’t have significant voting weight at the meta-governance layer?

3.7. Transparency with Dignity

Principle: Decisions, funding, and performance are open and legible, while respecting privacy and personal boundaries.
Behavioral Test: Can the community easily understand this decision without it becoming surveillance or overreach?

3.8. AI-Augmented, Human-Governed

Principle: We embrace AI as a tool for more representative, efficient, and adaptive governance — augmenting human judgment without replacing human values.
Behavioral Test: Does this use of AI improve participation or decision quality while keeping humans in charge of values?

3.9. Public Goods as Growth Engines

Principle: Investment in shared infrastructure, tools, and governance systems is not overhead, but a powerful enabler of compounding network effects.
Behavioral Test: Will this investment increase the resilience, long-term potential and growth of the ecosystem beyond one project or cycle?

3.10. Cultural Stickiness

Principle: The DAO cultivates rituals, norms, and shared ownership that build loyalty across diverse participants.
Behavioral Test: Does this initiative make contributors more likely to identify with NEAR and remain engaged long-term?

What’s next?

The intention is to find broad alignment using the co-creation cycle process and eventually ratify the Mission, Vision, Values through the passing of the House of Stake constitution.

The MVV are the foundation for building a legitimate governance system. They anchor the work ahead (structures, roles, processes) so NEAR can fund real builders and programs in ways that are traceable to shared outcomes. Aligning on MVV is a first step towards enabling effective collective decision-making and resource allocation.

How and when to give feedback

The feedback period for this cocreation cycle 1 runs for 12 days, from Friday, October 3rd until end of day UTC on Tuesday, October 14th.

The easiest way to give feedback is as a comment on this post. We will endeavour to respond to any direct questions posted in comments below within 48 hours.

After the feedback window has ended, we will consolidate all feedback to draft a v0.2, which will be shared on the Forum no later than Tuesday, October 22nd, along with an explanation for how each point of feedback has been considered and addressed.

Questions to think about to give thoughtful feedback

1. Do you directionally agree with the proposed MVV? (please use the poll below to indicate your overall sentiment)
2. Which specific statements do you personally feel most drawn towards and excited by?
3. Do you have a strong opinion about anything that definitely needs to be in (or not in)? (please explain why)
4. Is anything important missing? (feel free to propose your own alternative options)
5. Who else should we engage with to take their perspective into consideration?

Poll

How aligned do you feel with the proposed Vision, Attributes, Mission & Principles?

If you like bits of it, and don’t like other bits, please share a comments to explain.

Being aligned on our Vision, Attributes, Mission and Principles is the start of this journey—let’s begin!

— @dancunningham & @KlausBrave - @hackhumanity

Addendum: Drafting Methodology

First, as a part of Hack Humanity team - you might say I’m a bit biased in my comment!

I was appreciative of my introduction to the NEAR ecosystem during this process which admittedly, took longer than expected. The technology and the teams building behind the scenes are exceptional.

Finding the true “north star” for House of Stake required a lot of listening. Listening to past calls, workshops Hack Humanity hosted, and forum posts from the last half a decade. Additionally, a critical realignment came out of the Lisbon offsite (I did not attend) as mentioned by Lane in his recent transition post. This gave us much needed clarity on the separation of roles between NEAR Foundation and NEAR House of Stake. It provided necessary context and alignment needed to deliver a quality product here.

One thing I saw over an over from different stakeholder groups: There is strong desire to build better governance that maintains political decentralization, and does not make the same mistakes that charaterize community sentiment after the NDC experiment.

I’d encourage anyone to read through this MVV - especially the Principles, and see if the intentions expressed are aligned:

If YES - Clearly it is beneficial to converse with the assumption that we are looking at the same top of the pyramid, but from different sides. Give constructive feedback to be synthesized into this founding document.

If NO - Even if you do assume malicious intent, your feedback can be framed in a productive way. Given there is no way at this time to prove intent, try clearly articulating your feedback like this:

1. Context & Intent Opener

State your relationship to NEAR and why you are participating in giving feedback

Prompts:

• What type of stakeholder are you (validator/community/early team/etc.)?
• What outcome do you hope to see from this discussion?

2. List of Issues

Number each issue and include:

• ISSUE - Highlight (copy/paste) the specific sentence or paragraph in question.
• RISK - Be specific about what problems it may cause.
  • Describe effects — on trust, participation, fairness, or efficiency.
  • Avoid speculating potential outcomes without examples to compare.
• ALTERNATIVE - Offer suggestions for improvement or replacement.
  • Cosider framing suggestions as “How might we…” questions to encourage collaboration.

After all of your Issues have been listed with Risks, and Alternatives, its time for a closing note.

3. Closing Note

Consider Tone & Reflection*: Reaffirm goodwill and shared purpose.*

Examples:

“I’m raising this in the spirit of improving our collective process.”
“I trust everyone’s shared intent to make governance more transparent.”

Using this template can help us to better communicate critisisms in a constructive way.

After carefully reviewing the VAMP draft, it’s clear that the concept of community — the living foundation of NEAR governance — is almost entirely missing. The document speaks in abstract terms about “owners,” “users,” and “stakeholders,” yet never truly acknowledges the community as a central and independent force behind NEAR’s decentralized model. What we see instead is a framework designed around principles and values that could, in theory, apply to any organization, without any clear reflection of how the NEAR community participates, co-creates, and holds this structure accountable.

The vision statement, “Decentralised governance for humanity-enhancing AI,” doesn’t include the community as either an actor or a beneficiary. Even though earlier alternatives like “Community-owned, humanity-enhancing AI for all” were proposed, they were excluded from the final version — effectively removing the very group that made NEAR possible. The mission follows the same pattern: by replacing “community” with “owners and users,” it weakens the collective identity that has historically driven NEAR’s growth. A mission that omits the community cannot represent a truly decentralized vision.

The same issue appears in the attributes section, where the chosen descriptors — “Decentralized & Sustainable,” “Autonomous & Aligned,” “Organized & Legitimate” — make no mention of people, contributors, or local hubs that form NEAR’s real social layer. Without community, decentralization is reduced to a structural claim rather than a lived experience. Even the most relevant part, the principle of “Inclusive & Meaningful Participation,” uses the generic term “stakeholders,” which in practice could mean anything from validators to foundation-appointed delegates. There is no tangible pathway for community members to propose, participate, or influence key decisions. The absence of specific mechanisms for community inclusion — such as transparent feedback loops, elections, or open working groups — leaves this principle without substance.

In its current form, the VAMP reads more like a governance blueprint written about the community rather than with it. There is no recognition of the real people who built NEAR’s ecosystems, who organize, translate, educate, and create value on a daily basis. A framework for governance that claims to be decentralized cannot ignore the collective that embodies decentralization itself. If the House of Stake intends to represent the will of NEAR holders and contributors, the word “community” must not be symbolic — it must be operational, embedded in every layer of governance, from vision to principles to process.

A community-driven revision of VAMP should explicitly describe how the NEAR community co-owns, co-creates, and co-governs the system. It should commit to building participation infrastructure — transparent feedback channels, accessible decision paths, and consistent accountability reporting. Only by restoring the community to the center of its mission can the House of Stake claim legitimacy and move beyond the perception that it is another top-down initiative detached from the ecosystem it claims to serve.

Power to the people!

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, we will take this on board in drafting v0.2 and welcome specific suggestions like these from everyone in the community.

The intention is very much to place community at the heart, and this co-creation cycle is all about continuing to iterate on this document with community.

It would be great to hear from you or others any more specific suggestions for how we can make this reflect the centrality of community and its values.

These could be specific proposed alternatives to any of the numbered statements in the post above, or proposals to add to what’s already there.

If any of the proposed alternatives have greater support, we are by no means wedded to the principle option or limited to only the alternative options already presented here.

To start making community operational and give everyone a voice in the co-creation of our Mission, Vision and Values, as well as the ongoing open invitation for feedback and suggestions here on the Forum (allowing maximum inclusivity to all community members), we will run a Community Co-creation Workshop to further develop the statements and make sure this is reflective and representative of the will of the community.

I will share an invite to that workshop this week, probably for Monday 13 October, early evening UTC to be within the cycle 1 feedback window.

–@dancunningham

We had several points of feedback on the Attributes section.

For reference, the proposed Attributes were:

Decentralized & Sustainable

• We are a politically decentralized organization that rigorously prioritizes sustainable operating through economic, social and technical governance, avoiding wasteful decentralization that can occur when such rigour is lacking.

Autonomous & Aligned

• We are goal-driven and focused, allowing community members (and AI agents) to be empowered with agency to achieve agreed-upon measurable outcomes rather than inefficiently seeking consensus at all levels.

Organized & Legitimate

• We use pragmatically-adapting systems to organize across a diverse and representative group of stakeholders through openness and transparency rather than gatekeeping and rigid structures.

It was pointed out that these three descriptors were somewhat generic, lacking in useful specificity and not as meaningful as other parts of the proposal.

We have therefore updated the text to v0.1.1 (still in co-creation cycle 1) to remove the Attributes section, allowing us to revert the name of this document to the more commonly recognised and originally intended “Mission, Vision, Values” headings. Statement numbering has been updated accordingly.

We believe that what was in the Attributes section is covered more meaningfully and specifically by what is now in the Values section, though we may wish to further elaborate on some of these to capture anything that’s now under-weighted.

Always open to further suggestions!

–@dancunningham

Dacha:

There is no tangible pathway for community members to propose, participate, or influence key decisions. The absence of specific mechanisms for community inclusion — such as transparent feedback loops, elections, or open working groups — leaves this principle without substance.

I believe the intention of the Mission, Vision, and Values is to set the directional aspiration (Vision), how we intend to get there (mission), and guidelines or boundaries for testing alignment to principles (values).

”Specific mechanisms for community inclusion…” is the domain of the constitution, policy, and charters. These will all be going through cocreation as well.

HackHumanity:

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, we will take this on board in drafting v0.2 and welcome specific suggestions like these from everyone in the community.

Thank you for opening this discussion and for inviting community input — that’s exactly what real decentralization should look like.

If the mission of the House of Stake is to build a decentralized governance system beyond NF control, then community must stand at its very core — not as a symbolic value, but as the living force of NEAR. Our strength has always come from people: organizers, builders, educators, and contributors who shaped NEAR’s history and identity long before any governance existed.

The Vision should clearly state that governance is created with and by the community, while the Values should reflect our collective story — one of collaboration, resilience, and diversity. Without this human layer, decentralization becomes just another structure, not a shared experience.

House of Stake can become a true embodiment of community power — but only if the MVV explicitly recognizes that the heart of decentralization is people, not foundations.

HackHumanity:

I will share an invite to that workshop this week, probably for Monday 13 October, early evening UTC to be within the cycle 1 feedback window.

We’ve locked in the time for this and you’re all invited

We’re gathering the House of Stake community to review and refine v0.1 of our key policy documents now in Co-Creation Cycle 1 (HoS Constitution, Mission/Vision/Values, Code of Conduct).

It’s this coming Monday, October 13th at 21:00 UTC (a bit over 24 hours before the feedback window for Cycle 1 closes).

The workshop is your chance to:

• Share your thoughts on what’s working (and what’s not)
• Explore and understand one another’s varied perspectives
• Collaborate on improvements that take us toward an even better v0.2 of each

Your input will help build policies we can all stand behind — rooted in collaboration, transparency, and shared purpose of our community.

Full details and the Zoom link to join the event are in the calendar invite here:

Calendar Event (updated)

And in case you need it, the details for joining the Zoom meeting are:

• Join Zoom Meeting:
  https://us05web.zoom.us/j/88330145819?pwd=aAKpUexHetKDIhOAZwf35nyLT9fFrx.1
• Meeting ID: 883 3014 5819
• Passcode: 113501

P.S. We appreciate the notice is quite short—if you can’t join this time, please do share your feedback via a comment here on the Forum.

We will be hosting similar workshops in each co-creation cycle and will rotate around time zones for maximum inclusivity across the global community.

HackHumanity:

2.1.  House of Stake's mission is
2.2.  to establish a new kind of governance system,
2.3.  co-created, co-operated and co-governed by NEAR owners and users,
2.4.  fully embracing AI,
2.5.  to be incorruptible, uncapturable and sovereign by default,
2.6. 

Numbering should be 2.2=2.1.1, 2.3=2.1.2, 2.4=2.1.3 etc?

HackHumanity:

Should “stake-weighted” be part of the vision?

Not necessary. This could change and/evolve into a hybrid voting power distribution mechanism.

HackHumanity:

2.3.b. co-created, co-operated and co-governed by the NEAR community

This feels like a more direct and easy to understand.

I agree with the proposed MVV. This strives for a balance between decentralization, experimentation, and accountability.

I’m most drawn to Adaptive Governance, Autonomy with Accountability, and Transparency with Dignity. Adaptive governance stands out because it implies continuous learning systems, governance that evolves through feedback loops. Autonomy with accountability captures the right friction between freedom and measurable outcomes, though it’d be good to clarify who sets and reviews those metrics (e.g., rotating councils, elected stewards, or automated review cycles). Transparency with dignity is key for treasury and funding visibility, public data around decisions can help build legitimacy and collective intelligence.

One thing that feels missing is a data-driven governance layer, a way for the DAO to capture and analyze its own decision history. Building that kind of institutional memory could greatly improve both legitimacy and decision quality over time. I’d also emphasize making feedback and outcome tracking more explicit, governance needs feedback and iteration to stay effective. Maybe also ease up on “fully embracing AI” to “AI-augmented” to align with the human-governed tone. Lastly, engaging validators,delegates, builders, and governance researchers from other ecosystems could strengthen the next iteration.

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback @Othman.

A DAO Data Strategy is very much needed imo.

There is a need for structure, process, tooling for data as the infrastructure to enable voters to have the context they need, to be data-informed, for human’s + AI to work together with decision-support systems and tools for data-driven decision making.

You mention institutional memory and you have an approach in a few of your posts, can you supply further reading on this matter? I’m curious to learn more.

KlausBrave:

decision-support systems and tools

The Governance Memory System (GMS) is a decentralized form of a Decision Support System (DSS) purpose-built for validator-governed protocols and DAOs. Where a traditional DSS optimizes decision efficiency, the GMS optimizes decision alignment, legitimacy, and adaptability.

Most DAOs store governance data votes, proposals, and forum posts but very few turn that data into memory. Institutional memory is about structuring that information so future contributors can learn from past decisions rather than start from scratch each cycle.

The framework I’ve been developing, called the Governance Memory System (GMS), treats governance as a living feedback process instead of a series of isolated votes. It’s built around five layers:

1. Proposal Lifecycle Metadata (PLM) — captures authorship, rationale, and proposal evolution so decisions are traceable and comparable.

2. Outcome Review Anchors (ORA) — structured checkpoints (e.g. 3, 6, 9 months or milestone triggers) to assess whether a proposal achieved its intent.

3. Informal Power Mapping (IPM) — surfaces influence dynamics that shape outcomes beyond token-weighted votes.

4. Governance Health Index (GHI) — diagnostic framework measuring inclusiveness, transparency, feedback, coordination, and accountability. (metagovernance)

5. Recurring Themes & Frictions (RTF) — synthesizes repeated governance pain points to prevent the same issues from resurfacing.

Together, these layers form a data-driven feedback loop that allows governance to adapt, learn, and evolve over time. The goal isn’t to automate decision-making but to make it traceable, reflective, and self-correcting enabling humans and AI to collaborate through structured institutional learning.

This framework is from a research paper I wrote, currently under review with the Cryptoeconomic Systems journal, which applies it across multiple DAO case studies. Once it’s publicly available, I can share the full paper.

While the full paper is still under review, I’m also exploring ways to pilot a lightweight version of this system within live governance environments and NEAR could be an ideal fit given its emphasis on adaptive governance.

This sounds great @Othman. What is the timeline / ETA for publishing the paper?

HackHumanity:

2.6.b. and usher in the era of community-owned, humanity-enhancing AI - community rather than user-owned?

Friendlier, gives a feeling of belonging.

What types of vote counting systems does the system cater to? Simple Majority, Instant run off, approved voting etc.

It’s designed to integrate with any voting mechanism (simple majority, approval, ranked choice, stake-weighted, etc.) because its purpose isn’t to determine how votes are counted, but to ensure that whatever system is used produces traceable, evaluable, and learnable outcomes.

Timing is partly out of my hands, I’d estimate anywhere between late Q4 and early Q1 for journal feedback or acceptance.

In the meantime, I’m continuing to refine the practical layer of the framework by tracking proposal outcomes, feedback loops, and overall governance health. Once new proposals start flowing through the system, I plan to start monitoring them and may put forward a proposal of my own to explore support (tooling or financial) for expanding the effort.

Nice. Very important on many levels.

AI is going to need this database.

MVV cocreation workshop - intro1920×1080 766 KB

On Monday, we held the first co-creation workshop to bring community members together to evaluate our draft v0.1.1 Mission, Vision, Values.

In the spirit of inclusivity and transparency, all participants consented to sharing:

• The Miro board we used on the workshop (open for all to view and comment on)
• The video recording on tl;dv for those who want to see the detailed discussion (or read the AI summary)

Purpose and Focus

• The workshop was about alignment: understanding the perspectives of participants about why House of Stake exists, where it’s heading, and how to express that clearly.
• It wasn’t just another presentation; it was a collaborative working session.
• The group was small, but the discussion was focused, open, and constructive.

Participants

• Facilitated by @KlausBrave @dancunningham @HumbertoBesso from @HackHumanity
• 8 community members participated, along with 6 members of the Hack Humanity team.

Overall Takeaway

There was broad support from all participants for the overall direction and purpose, including the vision statement.

The vision and values already capture the right spirit: sovereignty, accountability, adaptive governance, and a connection to NEAR’s broader mission.

Most-supported and most contentious statements

Amongst participants, the strongest support was for:

Area	Statement	Positive sentiment	Questions or critique
Vision	1.1. Decentralised governance for humanity-enhancing AI		-
Mission	2.3. co-created, co-operated and co-governed by NEAR owners and users		-
Mission	2.5. to be incorruptible, uncapturable and sovereign by default		-
Mission	2.6 and bring in the era of user-owned, humanity-enhancing AI
Values	3.5. Adaptive Governance		-
Values	3.8. AI-Augmented, Human-Governed		-
Values	3.4. Autonomy with Accountability		-
Values	3.2. Experimentation with Safety		-

The statements with most contention were:

Area	Statement	Positive sentiment	Questions or critique
Mission	2.2. to establish a new kind of governance system
Mission	2.4. fully embracing AI	-

Key Adjustments

On AI

• Agreement that the phrase “fully embracing AI” should be toned down.
• “Fully” sounded too extreme or even reckless, as if we’d give over everything to unilateral AI control.
• The group preferred wording like “embracing AI to augment humans” or “AI-augmented, human-governed.”
• The main idea: AI should empower people, not replace them.

On Governance

• Instead of saying “a new governance system”, as it will no longer be “new” when successfully adopted, the group leaned toward calling it an “adaptive” or “evolving governance system.”
• This better reflects the idea that House of Stake will continue to evolve — governance shouldn’t freeze in its first version.

On Participants

• The phrase “owners and users” caused some confusion — it sounded too binary.
• Most thought “stakeholders” had a better level of specificity, while “community” might also be too general and open to broad interpretation.
• It was felt important to emphasise that this goes beyond just financial stakeholders, to be inclusive of token holders, validators, contributors, users, and potentially AI agents.
• The idea is inclusivity, but with enough specificity to stay meaningful.

Open Questions

1. How to reference AI agents — should they be explicitly mentioned in MVV, or just covered under “stakeholders”?
2. Defining stakeholders: how broad should this term be?
3. AI governance details: might we need separate principles or guardrails for how AI is used in DAO decision-making?

Process and Next Steps

• This was part of Co-Creation Cycle 1, which is still open for asynchronous feedback on the Forum.
• We’re working on how to get even deeper, broader and wider feedback from the full range of stakeholder groups across the community.
• We’re always open to feedback. We will continue to adapt how we run these processes, informed by the will of the community.
• At the end of Co-Creation Cycle 1, we will create an updated v0.2 MVV based on the synthesis of feedback received from all sources and channels
• The goal is consent, not full consensus — meaning it’s fine if not everyone loves it, as long as no one strongly objects.
• There’s also interest in running a dedicated workshop on AI governance — to go deeper into how humans and AI collaborate in decision-making.

Overall Reflections

The session made it clear that Mission, Vision, and Values aren’t just words — they’re the compass for every decision the DAO will make.

Getting these right matters and is worth investing time on.

A huge thank you to @coffee-crusher @Othman @jlwaugh and all participants for your engagement and collaboration in this endeavour.

The energy was good: thoughtful, experimental, and community-driven.

Call to Action

If this has got you thinking, we want to hear what’s on your mind. Do you have questions or see potential issues with any of the statements? Ideas to share? Weigh in with your thoughts on this thread!

– @dancunningham & @haenko - @HackHumanity

dancunningham:

pen Questions

1. How to reference AI agents — should they be explicitly mentioned in MVV, or just covered under “stakeholders”?
2. Defining stakeholders: how broad should this term be?
3. AI governance details: might we need separate principles or guardrails for how AI is used in DAO decision-making?

1. How should AI agents be referenced — explicitly or under “stakeholders”?

AI agents should be explicitly recognized as core participants in governance, alongside the human community. They are no longer passive tools, but autonomous, intelligent agents capable of analyzing data, proposing decisions, coordinating processes, and reducing bias at scale.

In NEAR, AI agents can be decentralized, open-source, and permissionless — meaning they are not controlled by NF or any private actor. This makes them uniquely suited to act as neutral, community-aligned governance participants.

Recommended approach:

• Explicitly name AI agents in the MVV as a formal governance participant type.

• Treat them as “AI stakeholders” or “AI delegates,” not just utilities.

• Place AI agents on the same level of strategic importance as the human community.

• Recognize them as partners to the community, not replacements.

AI should be a visible and legitimate actor in governance — as long as it remains decentralized and aligned with the community.

2. How broad should “stakeholders” be?

To reflect true decentralization, stakeholders must include all entities — human or AI — that actively create value or influence decisions.

At minimum, stakeholders include:

• Community members (the primary force of governance and identity)

• AI agents (autonomous participants and decision-makers)

• Validators / Stakers

• Builders / Developers

• DAO / Project teams and partners

• Governance participants (delegates, voters, reviewers)

• Contributors (content, moderation, education, local hubs)

• Token holders

In this model, the community and AI agents are the two most important stakeholder groups, because they actively drive decision-making, coordination, and governance intelligence.

Stakeholders should not be defined only by capital, but by contribution, participation, and agency.

3. Do we need AI governance principles or guardrails?

Yes — but the goal is not to limit AI.
The goal is to guarantee AI’s neutrality, autonomy, and decentralization, so that AI can operate as a truly independent governance stakeholder.

If AI agents are:

• open-source

• decentralized

• permissionless

• aligned with the protocol and community (not NF or private interests)

…then they should be able to autonomously participate in governance and even make decisions.

In this model, AI becomes a new class of stakeholder with real agency.

Key principles:

1. Transparency
   AI logic, training data, and actions must be publicly visible and auditable.

2. Open / Permissionless AI
   Any community member can deploy or improve AI agents.
   No single entity should “own” or control them.

3. Autonomy of AI Agents
   AI agents must have the ability to independently evaluate proposals, detect conflicts, optimize resources, and — if the system allows — vote or execute decisions.

4. Alignment with decentralization
   AI must act in the interest of the network as a whole, not individual power groups.

5. Human–AI Symbiosis (not hierarchy)
   Both humans and AI should have meaningful agency.
   AI handles objective, large-scale, data-driven tasks.
   Humans focus on vision, ethics, culture, and complex trade-offs.

6. Accountability mechanisms
   If AI acts, the community should be able to trace decisions, audit logic, and adjust parameters if needed.

Core Position

Real decentralization is not humans vs AI.
It is community + AI vs centralized control.

AI should not be restricted or removed.
AI should be democratized and empowered — just like the community.

House of Stake can become the first governance system where:

• The human community is the heart of decision-making.

• AI agents are autonomous stakeholders that enhance transparency, intelligence, and fairness.

• Both work together as equal partners.

The MVV should clearly state:

• Governance is built with and by the community.

• AI agents are legitimate and essential stakeholders when decentralized and community-aligned.

• The most powerful and future-proof governance model is community power augmented by autonomous AI, free from control by foundations or closed groups.

This is how NEAR can lead the next era of decentralized governance.

House of Stake - Mission, Vision & Values (MVV) v0.1.4

VISION:

Decentralised governance for the user-owned Internet and humanity-enhancing AI.

MISSION:

To establish an evolving governance system,
that is incorruptible, uncapturable and sovereign by default,
co-created, co-governed and co-operated
by an AI-augmented NEAR stakeholder community.

VALUES:

Credible Neutrality
Experimentation with Safety
Builder and Business Centric
Autonomy with Accountability
Adaptive Governance
Meaningful Participation
Transparency with Dignity
AI-Augmented, Human-Governed
Public Goods as Growth Engines
Cultural Stickiness

Principles and behavioural tests behind the values:

1. Credible Neutrality

Principle: Governance must be built by, with and for the community, augmented by community-aligned AI that enhances transparency, intelligence and fairness, ensuring freedom from control and capture by individuals, institutions, or closed groups.

Behavioural Test: Does this action avoid risks of concentrating power, e.g. protecting against a few top stakeholders gaining overbearing control over the rest of the community?

2. Experimentation with Safety

Principle: Governance models, funding mechanisms, and AI agents and tools are tested, via rapid prototyping and iteration, in lower-stakes environments before being merged into the main system.

*Behavioral Test: What’s the worst that could happen if an experiment we are trying fails? Can it do so without risk of endangering the overall ecosystem’s health and integrity?

3. Builder and Business Centric

Principle: Governance must create the conditions for both individual developers and institutions to thrive — from the developer experience to enterprise-scale adoption. This includes funding the infrastructure, tools, and programs that make NEAR the most attractive platform for adoption that scales.

Behavioural Test: Does this decision improve NEAR as a place where developers, entrepreneurs, and enterprises can build great products and lasting businesses?*

4. Autonomy with Accountability

Principle: Workstreams and contributors have freedom to innovate, balanced with clear success gates and measurable outcomes. Community-governed mechanisms should be in place for setting and regularly reviewing these objectives, in a fair and transparent way, keeping human and AI activity oriented towards our mission.

Behavioural Test: Does this program have both the freedom to act and clear metrics to evaluate success?

5. Adaptive Governance

Principle: Governance should evolve iteratively, guided by feedback loops and data-driven continuous learning systems that sense and respond to changing ecosystem needs and emerging opportunities.

Behavioural Test: Is there a mechanism to review and adapt this process if it no longer serves the ecosystem?

6. Inclusive & Meaningful Participation

Principle: All stakeholders large and small must have meaningful ways to engage in governance. Decision-making influence may be proportional to stake, and our governance system must also provide opportunities for all community members to contribute, keeping people engaged and invested.

Behavioural Test: Are we creating real roles for all interested community members to contribute value, even if they don’t have significant stake-weighted voting power?*

7. Transparency with Dignity

Principle: Decisions, funding, and performance are open and legible, while respecting privacy and personal boundaries.

Behavioural Test: Can this be shared with the community to enhance collective intelligence, without compromising anyone’s right to privacy?

8. AI-Augmented, Human-Governed

Principle: We embrace AI as a tool for fair, representative, efficient, and adaptive governance at scale. AI agents can be core participants in our governance processes. We build such agents in a decentralised, open-source and permissionless way, requiring that they operate transparently and in adherence with all of our values, so they can act as neutral, community-aligned governance participants.

Behavioural Test: Does this use of AI improve fairness, participation, efficiency or collective intelligence, while reinforcing our values and providing sufficient transparency and oversight for humans in the loop?

9. Public Goods as Growth Engines

Principle: We invest in shared infrastructure, tools, and governance systems, building out a data-driven governance layer for the use of humans an AI, as a powerful enabler of compounding network effects.

Behavioural Test: Will this investment increase the resilience, long-term potential and growth of the ecosystem beyond one project or cycle?

10. Cultural Stickiness

Principle: The DAO cultivates rituals, norms, and shared ownership that build loyalty across diverse participants.

Behavioural Test: Does this initiative make contributors more likely to identify with NEAR and remain engaged long-term?

Open Community Feedback Cycle Report

1. Executive Summary

This Open Community Feedback Cycle Report documents how the NEAR House of Stake (HoS) Mission, Vision & Values (MVV) evolved from version v0.1.1 to v0.1.4 over the course of Co-Creation Cycle 1 in October 2025, based on feedback gathered from and with the community during a series of participatory design and engagement activities.

This report aims to meet the highest possible standard of transparency, helping to foster healthy and productive decentralised sense-making and governance. Current and future community members can use this report to understand decisions that were made and trace these back to specific points of feedback.

Key Insights

• Broad support for the overall direction and purpose, including the Vision statement.
• Stakeholders consistently emphasized AI augmentation of human governance, rather than autonomy-replacing AI.
• Strong desire to inclusively articulate who participates in and benefits engagement in House of Stake with healthy debate around terms including users, owners, stakeholders and community.

Key Outcomes

The MVV was updated to:

1. Emphasize community-centricity, including recognising the role of the full range of stakeholders in governance.
2. Reframe AI as augmentative, governed by humans to ensure alignment with community values.
3. Elaborate on the values to expand upon important details.

This resulted in 75% of feedback items being addressed, most of which were fully addressed by the changes made.

Next Steps

Based on the evidence and positive engagement we’ve experienced, we believe this Mission, Vision and Values represents a strong and comprehensive foundation with which to continue building and growing House of Stake.

The right MVV should feel like a clear and compelling North Star that serves to:

• Guide and align all of our activities
• Unlock the next stages of operationalizing our governance processes, practices and tools
• Open up inclusive participation pathways towards realizing the full potential of community-led decentralized governance

We will be putting forwards a Sensing Proposal to guage the level of support for this MVV. This is with the hope that you find it as compelling as we do and the openness to listen out for and adapt to any further feedback and concerns from those we may not have heard from so far in this process.

Read on to understand how we got here and where we’re going next…

2. Community Feedback Overview

We are incredibly grateful to those who participated in co-creation cycle 1. You provided targeted, constructive feedback focused on framing precision and conceptual balance between decentralization and adaptability. The dialogue quality was high, with iterative back-and-forth on several focal topics.

2.1 Participation Summary

2.2 Feedback Summary (by Sentiment)

2.3 Feedback Summary (by Theme)

Note: The total count of 44 reflects that many of the 33 distinct items of feedback were related to multiple themes.

2.4 Observations

• Feedback was focused on the content of the Mission, Vision, Values, rather than how it would be used or operationalized, which is exactly in line with what is needed at this stage.
• Thematic overlap shows AI governance, adaptive design, and inclusive community ownership as the three dominant clusters.

3. Resulting Artifact Changes

This section documents every change to the MVV between v0.1.1 and v0.1.4 and the evidence-supported rationale for these.

The columns of these tables reference:

• From – v0.1.1 text | Forum post
• To – v0.1.4 text | Forum post above
• Feedback IDs – from the feedback log
  • F-MVV-*** = Forum
  • W-MVV-*** = Workshop
• Rationale – based on combination of specific feedback and editorial judgement

3.1 Substantive content changed traced to feedback

Vision

Mission

Values

3.2 Editorial changes

1. Removed unnecessary prefix (2.1) “House of Stake’s mission is”.
2. Reordered elements of mission statement to be more concise and improve structure and flow (from what, to how, to who), making it easier to read, digest and remember.
3. Reordered to “co-created, co-governed and co-operated” to reflect the order in which we are focusing on things (first creating; then establishing governance principles and processes; then operationalising).

3.3 Summary

• Total changes: 13 substantive content changes + 3 editorial changes to make mission shorter and punchier.
• Feedback coverage: 100% of substantive content changes mapped to at least one logged item of feedback.

4. Points for Future Consideration

The following feedback points which were either Partially Adopted or Deferred should be further considered following ratification, and could be the subject of additional proposals as we move into operationalisation:

Missing data-driven governance layer / institutional memory

Source: F-MVV-107 from @Othman - Forum Post

Related to: Values 5, 8, 9

Summary: One thing that feels missing is a data-driven governance layer, a way for the DAO to capture and analyze its own decision history. Building that kind of institutional memory could greatly improve both legitimacy and decision quality over time. I’d also emphasize making feedback and outcome tracking more explicit, governance needs feedback and iteration to stay effective.

Decision: Partially Adopted - We’ve addressed this with further elaboration in these three values. A DAO Data Strategy is very much needed. There is a need for structure, process, tooling for data as the infrastructure to enable voters to have the context they need, to be data-informed, for human’s + AI to work together with decision-support systems and tools for data-driven decision making. Full adoption of a Governance Memory System (GMS) could be achieved via a separate Proposal.

More specific policy for principles and guardrails for AI usage

Source: F-MVV-112 from @Dacha - Forum Post

Related to: Mission, Value 8 (AI-Augmented, Human-Governed)

Summary: AI governance details: might we need separate principles or guardrails for how AI is used in DAO decision-making?

Decision: Partially Adopted - We’ve partially addressed this in the revised value. It could be great to create further, more specific policy to articulate our principles and guardrails for how we build, deploy, use and oversee AI. This was also raised in the community workshop.

Iteration times of Experiments

Source: W-MVV-118 from Community Users in Workshop

Related to: Value 2 (Experimentation with Safety)

Summary: Need to be clear about iteration times

Decision: Partially Adopted - We’ve partially addressed this in the revised value by establishing clear guidance for experiments to produce quick results and learnings. Exact cycle times could be covered in more specific policy documents and proposals.

Public Goods

Source: W-MVV-120 from @juankbell in Workshop

Related to: Value 9 (Public Goods as Growth Engines)

Summary: Public goods are growth engines, but they can get very complex and problematic. How to manage public good complexity and avoid falling in the tragedy of the commons?

Decision: Deferred - This will come down to the detail of how we work towards this value, so can be elaborated further through more specific policy and proposals aligned to that.

5. Breakdown of Feedback by Action Taken

Every point of feedback was considered and a decision taken of how to handle it:

The Action Taken and Answer to every point of feedback is documented in the Feedback Log – MVV

6. Conclusion

This Open Feedback Cycle of the House of Stake Co-Creation Process demonstrated transparent, evidence-based, and participatory co-design resulting in a Mission, Vision and Values that we believe the community can confidently move forwards with.

Building on all that got us to where NEAR and House of Stake are now, we started with a set of statements that already had lots of support. Community critique and healthy debate have further moulded and polished it, refining where emphasis is placed and sharpening how things are phrased.

Alignment around this shared purpose is strong:

• a powerful vision to create the future we want to bring about;
• a mission that places community at the heart, embracing AI to augment human intelligence and wisdom;
• and values that give us detailed guiding principles to stay on course as we all continue to build and learn.

Let’s now see if we’ve got enough support to put this to ratification vote and boldly go into the future of House of Stake, with this North Star to guide and align us in creating the future we dream of.

Look out for the Sensing Proposal in the coming days!

Authorship & Acknowledgements

Authored by:
@dancunningham & @KlausBrave & @haenko - @HackHumanity

AI Usage:
ChatGPT 5 was used in drafting this report to (1) synthesise, summarise and draw out key themes from all feedback received; (2) assess overall coherance and readiness to move towards ratification.

All AI outputs were checked for correctness and copy-edited by at least two human team members, editing down the report from ~4,700 words to ~2,700 words.