Just my 2 cents as a builder and xGov proposer.
Besides the points described above, I think it would be a good improvement to update the ARC to at least cover:
No self-voting/double participation
Not saying it happens or not happens. But in general I think the ARC should rule out double participation. So you either are a proposer or an xGovernor. But cannot be both. Hard to control, for sure. But as long as there’s no rule for it, there’s also no morality clash. Plus once it’s defined, it could be leveraged by the community if they find out. This means, the entire team and affiliates are ruled out for voting on their own proposal. Let’s keep it fair.
One proposal per entity / team
In my opinion, creating multiple proposals is something that should be prevented from Q4 onwards. Many people think they have to create multiple proposals because of the uniqueness of their proposal. But if they want to create multiple things at the same time under their brand, they either propose in multiple periods or combine it in one proposal. If a person have multiple brands/companies: please don’t. There’s only one elon musk who’s capable running multiple companies at the same time. For all of us mortal beings, hardly possible to create multiple things of massive value at the same time.
xGov should fund projects with at least a MVP or some form of market validation
There’s one big rule in the startup ecosystem. If you are not willing to put down your own money and time at your idea/project, why should others?
I don’t think xGov is the platform to build out entirely new ideas from scratch. Meaning, crazy new ideas that sounds great on paper but are difficult to become sustainable in the long run. It would be sad to see xGov becoming the new AlgoGrant, where the platform is keeping certain open-source/closed source projects on life support. And once the funding stops (or skips a quarter) the building is put on hold. If the proposer thinks her/his idea is the next big thing, at least spend time yourself to build or pay for a MVP. Or get some market validation for the necessity of your OSS/product. Otherwise we risk funding a graveyard of unused OSS products or closed source projects.
None of this should be managed by AF of course. But maintained and guarded by the community.
Last point is the voting on basis of the ALGO’s a person hold. In my opinion blockchain opens up to financial inclusivity and fairness. But voting on basis of amount of ALGO, only shows that the votes with the biggest pockets mostly decides what gets passed. xGov should be about votes on basis of expert knowledge (what’s best for the ecosystem), not a way to buy yourself in to decide or compound your investments in any way. We have 10 periods of governance votes and 2 on basis of xGovs. We should be able to build a better committee on basis of the on-chain data rather than on ALGO’s held(?).