(Deprecated) HSP-006: House of Stake - Mission, Vision & Values

Frontmatter

hsp: 6
title: House of Stake - Mission, Vision & Values (MVV)
description: Agree on the Mission, Vision & Values (MVV) to guide all of NEAR House of Stake’s activities
author: Hack Humanity (@HackHumanity)
discussions-to: (Deprecated) HSP-006: House of Stake - Mission, Vision & Values
status: Review
type: Sensing
category: Legitimacy & Engagement
created: 2025-11-21
requires: No dependencies

Abstract

This proposal seeks to put in place ratified Mission, Vision & Values (MVV), guiding all of NEAR House of Stake’s activities:

• A Vision that is a powerful and motivating articulation of the future we are creating.
• A Mission that guides concrete and directed activity towards that vision.
• And a set of Values that give us detailed guiding principles to stay on course as we all continue to build and learn.

House of Stake Mission Vision Values
Version: v1.0
Audience: NEAR Community
Archive: Version.0.1.1

Mission Vision Values Policy

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:

1. Credible Neutrality
2. Experimentation with Safety
3. Builder and Business Centric
4. Autonomy with Accountability
5. Adaptive Governance
6. Meaningful Participation
7. Transparency with Dignity
8. AI-Augmented, Human-Governed
9. Public Goods as Growth Engines
10. Cultural Stickiness

Context & Alignment

This Mission, Vision & Values (v0.2.0) proposed above was Co-Created with the Community in October 2025, as documented in the Open Community Feedback Cycle Report, including a Community Co-Creation workshop.

This process built upon workshops with endorsed delegates in June 2025 and synthesised context from the evolution of NEAR’s Mission/Vision/Values (2019–2024).

Situation

We are currently in Phase One (Assembly) of the Governance Transition Program to progressively decentralize House of Stake.

A significant risk of decentralization is that different contributors, coming from a broad diversity of backgrounds and perspectives, might have very different ideas of the direction we should be going in. This can lead to lack of clarity of how to contribute, disparate initiatives heading in opposing or contradictory directions and necessity for excessive levels of re-work.

To progress with legitimacy to Phase Two (Alignment), a ratified Mission, Vision & Values, co-created by and for the community, will align the activities of all House of Stake contributors, so that effort, attention and resources are focused on complementary and reinforcing initiatives that maximise our momentum and progress towards shared goals.

This should be flexible enough to create space for different ways of thinking to achieve those goals, and foster innovative approaches, realizing the full potential of the diverse set of stakeholders in the House of Stake community.

Mission

Objective: A broadly-supported Mission, Vision & Values, ratified on-chain, that motivates passionate, purposeful and aligned activity from all stakeholders contributing to House of Stake.

Expected Outcomes:

1. MVV helps motivate and create clear opportunities for a growing number of existing and new contributors to meaningfully contribute to House of Stake.
2. MVV alignment is used as one of a number of key criteria for assessing new proposals e.g. by the Screening Committee, by delegates, and by AI tools and agents, including the Proposal Dashboard and Delegate Agent.
3. Clarity of direction aligns activity, resulting in a high proportion of proposals being successful and a high rate of those proposals achieving their objectives.

Approach

We have used a participatory design methodology known as Co-Creation Cycles to engage the community in crafting and refining the Mission, Vision & Values, taking it from v0.1.1 to v0.2.0, which this proposal for v1.0.0 is based upon.

Running this process during October 2025, with contributions via the Forum and a Co-Creation workshop, we gathered and responded to 33 individual points of feedback.

Key themes that were surfaced included:

1. Broad support for the overall direction and purpose, including the Vision statement.
2. Stakeholders who consistently emphasized AI augmentation of human governance, rather than autonomy-replacing AI.
3. 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.

In response, the MVV text 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.

What are the risks and limitations?

Not all stakeholder groups participated in the co-creation process, which creates a risk of incomplete representation of perspectives. While the Sensing Proposal cannot fully resolve this limitation, it will validate broader support, gather critical signals from the community, and identify any elements that may require clarification before moving to final ratification.

Technical Specification (Implementation)

Once ratified, implementation of the Mission, Vision, Values is quite straightforward:

1. Update the Mission, Vision, and Values page on the House of Stake website with the agreed text, clarifying that this has been ratified.
2. Work with House of Stake Product teams to integrate the agreed MVV into products, tooling and AI agents.
3. Over time, we could also create additional materials and run interactive sessions to introduce new and existing contributors to the MVV in thoughtful and engaging ways to embed these into the community ethos.

Backwards Compatibility

1. This MVV aligns with and refines the Interim MVV v0.1.2 currently on the web site, as of 20th November, 2025.
2. This MVV aligns with and adds greater depth and clarity to the House of Stake Mandate, which is included in the Interim Constitution.
3. This MVV aligns with and complements the Values & Standards in the proposed House of Stake Code of Conduct.

Milestones

Budget & Resources

Implementation will be carried out by @HackHumanity, under contract with NEAR Foundation.

This proposal does not request any additional budget or resources for its implementation, beyond what has already been agreed under the terms of that contract.

Team & Accountability

• Responsible: @HackHumanity
• Accountable to: House of Stake, HoS Head of Governance, NEAR Foundation

Security Considerations

No security risks have been identified associated with this proposal.

Conflict of Interest

The authors of this proposal work for @HackHumanity, which is under contract with and being paid by NEAR Foundation, including for the implementation of this proposal.

Hack Humanity’s engagement is aligned with and includes facilitation of the Governance Transition Program, therefore this does not represent a Conflict of Interest.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0 1.0.

Authorship & Acknowledgements

Authored by: @dancunningham and @klausbrave from @HackHumanity
Review and feedback from: @HumbertoBesso, @juankbell @disruptionjoe, @haenko, @lane, @AK_HoG

1. This Sensing proposal has been submitted to House of Stake’s Proposals GitHub Repo.
2. It has been assigned an HSP number by the HSP Editor role @AK_HoG.
3. Detail: HSP-006
4. This Forum post has been update to reflect the HSP number
5. The Mission Vision Values proposal has been submitted to gov.houseofstake.org for vote and is pending Screening Committee approval.
6. It is visible in the pending proposal list here: HSP-006
7. Once approved it will be live for voting at NEAR Proposals | House of Stake Governance

For the record - HackHumanity delegate profile, and HackHumanity team members will not vote for this proposal.

I’ll be voting in favor of this MVV. It’s clear and straightforward, and it gives the House of Stake a solid place to start from. We dealt with something similar when we were putting together the Token Engineering Commons, where the MVV worked as an anchor for decisions. In the TEC, it was designed together by the community during the initial formation of the Commons, and even though it never did go through any future revisions.

It’s a good enough for now but the DAO SHOULD PLAN to update it. It would be nice if there was a clear plan to revisit it after a couple years… otherwise it might be hard to motivate evern changing it.

I’ve seen a lot of broken systems in DAOs persist simply because they were set up early and changing cost is real. Setting a sort of expiration date here would help.

Having a solid, transparent, and open governance structure is absolutely fundamental and necessary in an ecosystem like ours, and this proposal moves us in that direction.

It was also vital to formalize the principles of HoS.

I appreciate the emphasis on decentralization, creating value for us stakers, and the clear definition of roles.

Other considerations:

While the voting process is simple and user-friendly, I suggest simplifying the lock-in process (currently too many steps to obtain veNear).

The rewards scheme should also be clarified as soon as possible to encourage participation. Investors and stakers appreciate transparency .

‐———————————-

I hope this proposal serves as a base to continue growing and advancing.

Why HoS have to do anything with AI? It should be focusing on governing NEAR Protocol. Voting against it

I’m excited to support ratification of this MVV!

The values “Builder and Business Centric” and “Transparency with Dignity” really stand out to me.

Prioritizing sustainable incentives for developers, entrepreneurs, and enterprises will help drive real adoption and growth in the NEAR ecosystem. At the same time, pairing transparency with dignity fosters healthier, more inclusive discussions without the toxicity we’ve seen elsewhere.

This balanced, forward-thinking framework feels like exactly what HoS needs as its North Star. Great work to everyone involved.

The purpose of any blockchain and its governance is shared ideas and moving forward together.

The key point here is to move forward in the same direction. I believe this proposal should be approved, because it will effectively align the community under a single path and give us a clear direction — instead of being distracted by things that don’t really matter.

i would be voted “for” to the mission, vision & value proposal.

Currently I do not see anything wrong the current proposal. If anyone has any feedback or things that they want see changed, please join the cocreation workshop and provide feedback moving forward.

I would vote in favor of the proposal. I don’t see anything wrong with it; as far as I’m concerned, it will only improve things. Everything should be transparent, and the direction should be clear.

I supported this initiative because it focuses on credible neutrality, transparency, and long-term growth, which are all important for building a fair and resilient governance system on NEAR. I also like that it encourages safe experimentation and includes both builders and regular users in the process.

Griff:

It’s a good enough for now but the DAO SHOULD PLAN to update it. It would be nice if there was a clear plan to revisit it after a couple years… otherwise it might be hard to motivate evern changing it.

This is an important point that we should further consider, thanks.

“Good enough for now, safe enough to try” is a mantra that has come up a few times as we put in place the foundational policies for House of Stake. Though I think we are aiming for a slightly higher bar than that!

While working on the MVV, we did take certain decisions with the aim of having it stand the test of time. For example, saying “evolving governance system” to emphasise it would continue to evolve, rather than “new kind of governance system” which sounds like once it’s invented, we’re done

I think the Vision and Values should probably have the most longevity, but the Mission in particular could shift and transform over time, at least on timescales of years.

How might we hold ourselves to account as a DAO to revisit policy on a periodic basis? Has anyone else seen examples of this done well (or not so well!) elsewhere?

For example, could we set a “revisit-after” timeframe on all our policies? So when that timeframe passes, it could trigger us to put up another very simple sensing proposal along the lines of “Is the Mission, Vision, Values still serving us well or is it time to revisit it?”

Of course, by design, anyone could put up a proposal anytime to propose a change, but would a more explicit mechanism to remind us to revisit be a good thing?

And if we did, what feels like a suitable timeframe for revisiting the MVV? Every 2 years?

Hello everyone!
The risks of decentralization described in the proposal are indeed very dangerous.
For HoS, this will be more coordinated, with clear guidelines and distribution, which will inspire user confidence.

By voting YES, I hope this decision will allow decentralization to work effectively.

Thanks for the feedback. I want to respond to these two points.

ramgor:

While the voting process is simple and user-friendly, I suggest simplifying the lock-in process (currently too many steps to obtain veNear).

I agree. It’s too complicated and involves too many steps. We intend to fix this, and we’ll get there, but it involves redesigning the smart contracts, so I want to be honest that it will take some time. If you have any more specific feedback here, e.g., on specific steps that can be eliminated or combined, I’m all ears.

ramgor:

The rewards scheme should also be clarified as soon as possible to encourage participation. Investors and stakers appreciate transparency .

More information on this coming very soon!

L

Thanks for the great feedback @Griff!

What about a blanket “expires after” that defaults to something like a year or two? Defaults are powerful, and in general I think governance would be better if policies all expired by default if not renewed.

Granted, in the case of “living” documents such as these, it’s unclear what it would even mean for such a document to “expire.”

I see ‘good enough’ as safe to try at this point in time or a way to say i dont see anything clear that could broken. What I believe is that the MVV needs a follow-up roadmap document on how to achieve those goals, especially the mission. In my opinion, action > perfect plan.

Zeptimus:

a follow-up roadmap

thank you for this feedback, about “roadpam” I forwarded below a message from the Telegram chat from @AK_HoG - Head of Governance.

" Review a comprehensive HoS DAO Ops roadmap, with priorities and budget, coming Q1 2026 "

Voted FOR this proposal.

The Mission, Vision, and Values are grounded, well-articulated, and community refined — establishing legitimacy in HoS governance. Ample opportunity was provided for the community to engage with the MVV and Hack Humanity incorporated feedback throughout the revision process.

At this point, the MVV is sufficiently mature and ready for ratification.

Voted for this proposal! We’re headed in the right direction.

lane:

What about a blanket “expires after” that defaults to something like a year or two?

Yeah I like categorizing these sorts of governance policy votes some how and then requiring a retrospective and upgrade in 1 or 2 years time. Sort of like how Monero schedules a hardfork every 6 months. Making feedback cycles naturally part of the design will be a huge move.

lane:

Granted, in the case of “living” documents such as these, it’s unclear what it would even mean for such a document to “expire.”

It means there should be space given to debate, modify and vote on a new version of this MVV, or in general, this policy.

Seeing our governance framework as a product that could benefit from regular retrospectives will avoid a lot of issues. The chances we get things right the first time is very low, no matter how hard we try.

I support the MVV.

I also like the clear stance that AI should help people, not take over decision making. Which is also an indication that the direction of HoS will stay people driven.

Overall, it aligns with the kind of inclusive and balanced community we need in the eco system .

A job weldone

I voted in favor of this proposal.

Having an community edified MVV is needed for our next steps of building this DAO and provides the foundation of what we stand for. I agree with some other comments that we should revisit this in the future, but my recommendation is to allow the community find it’s voice and then review if these MVV’s are still relevant after at least a year from now. As the community grows, so will the voices, experiences and opinions of this community and having the flexibility to review on a semi-regular basis (maybe in a CCC in the future) to ensure that all it’s points are still important to the community.

We are aligned with most of the proposed texts as we appreciate all the works done by @HackHumanity team and community members who have contributed to the MVV through co-creation workshops. However, we believe the Vision and Mission are missing a critical component for its purpose; “what to govern?” We believe they have focused too much on “how” (mainly too much on the AI usage), which would make them obsolete in a few years. We believe the Mission and Vision should include “what”, which should be NEAR Protocols, therefore we vote against this proposal at its “sensing” phase.

Personally, I found very interesting and important the part that concerns the “Adaptive Governance and Experimentation with Safety”! Why? Because it means creating a system that is flexible and open to try new ideas but in a way that also protects the community and the network. I believe that it can balance the innovation with caution, allowing the governance model to learn, adjust and evolve as circumstances change!

HackHumanity:

HSP-006: House of Stake - Mission, Vision & Values

I’m comfortable voting FOR after joining the community call to further refine some the suggestions. This is an evolving agreement that we can iterate on over time - this version is a solid start.

I don’t agree with the vision, my personal vision is a fast and reliable blockchain for user adoption and DeFi. Not proposing this to be the general vision of everyone, but I don’t feel like everyone needs to have the same vision, we’re all different people with different values and goals on near, NF has chosen endorsed delegates who are builders, traders, businesses, people interested in defi, ai, etc., pretty sure they wanted all communities to be represented, not just AI.

I don’t agree with the mission, why in the world would the community be AI-augmented, we already have 40 million active agents (“users”) which didn’t help one bit, get this out of my screen. My mission is $NEAR price, trading volume, DeFi TVL.

I don’t agree with the following points of values:

• 1: With and for the community, augmented by community-aligned AI. What “community” is this? Intear community is token traders who probably don’t want to be augmented by AI. Hot community wants TGE. Pumpopoly community wants yield on their virtual real estate. Does house of stake have its own community? Only a very small one, governance people interested in governance things, who don’t account for even 0.0001% of all active near users. There is no “the community” in 2025, blockchains are big networks, and even if there was, it would probably not want to be augmented
• 6: Some stakeholders are completely talentless people who can’t do anything useful, I think “All stakeholders — large and small — must have meaningful ways to engage in governance” is just mockery of skill. Imagine some random guy who joins near and asks how he can contribute, despite being bad at absolutely everything, but owns 3.5 NEAR. If you refuse, he claims that you don’t respect this value. If that’s not what you were expecting, please rephrase this before the actual non-sensing HSP. All values definitions can be used against you
• 8: Get AI out of it, humans who run AI should be fully responsible for their use of AI, as if it’s their own work. If someone runs a wild AI that does something stupid, the human who is running that AI should be treated as someone who did something stupid
• 9: I don’t really understand what you meant, grammar is hard, but I refuse to acknowledge AI as a powerful enabler, if I’m reading that right

Overall, I feel like AI is mentioned 20 times more than it should’ve been. I get that near foundation desperately wants to have AI everywhere, but near is not an ecosystem where AI is valued as much by “the community” as NF, I’m not aware of any AI projects in the ecosystem that have more than let’s say 5 DAU, other than maybe near ai’s official private chat, which only launched this month, and maybe LNC which gives points for use of their free AI and is not really a commercial project.

Staying active like this is such a strong motivation — love the dedication and energy