I appreciate your up-front declaration regarding the differences between Layer 1 and Layer 2, with Layer 1 being the 'critical infrastructure' upon which all else is built.
If Layer 1 is robust, Layer 2 can quite literally be anything and everything (or, more precisely, a plethora of options from which every individual can choose to support, with time and treasure, whichever Layer 2 manifestations best satisfy his/her individual preferences).
As such, Layer 1 governance must be continually subject to the kind of critical analysis you've presented.
I, too, like both the improvements you "agree with" -- the time-delay for governance decisions to take effect and the creation of an 'emergency fund' that could be invoked by prior witnesses if faced with an attack.
I have been trying to crystalize some meaningful thoughts about the DAO, though, because it strikes me as awkward and 'decentralized in name only' in its current instantiation. What I mean by that is that it suffers from "the tragedy of the commons among small-holders" that Vitalik mentioned -- very few small holders know about it and scant few would care about it even if they knew about it. In fact, I've even heard larger holders criticize it as being inept.
As a minimum, I think there should be some sort of 'trustee' set up when each new proposal is funded, with the trustee being appointed (e.g. by the witnesses), with the trustee being paid a management fee (e.g. 5% to 10% of the proposal's funding amount), and with the trustee being tasked with establishing performance milestones and publishing periodic reports regarding the recipient's progress towards those milestones, along with periodic financial analyses (i.e. reporting of how the funds are being spent). I've had some random thoughts about other ways to improve the DAO, but the 'trustee' improvement is the most salient and the easiest to explain.
The DAO is still relatively new and novel in how it operates, IE the return proposal vs. the proposals seeking funding. I would defend Hive DAO here because it has shown to have the smaller stakeholders reach funding. To point out one (there are others) to get funding was a marketing budget to lordbutterfly. LB is not a "whale" and certainly does not have "inside connections" he has actually had lively debates with many large holders and is seen as a "straight up" kind of guy and, over time, has earned trust to get a six figure marketing proposal funded.
If you provide value, you will get DAO funding. Other forms of "DAO" funding that isn't directly related to the Hive DAO is our PoB. You'll notice post about live hive meetups and marketing can get some nice votes. People can earn by proving the value they brought to the community regardless of stake.
Now we are talking stake based voting, and this is skin in the game to the fullest. So you can't negate the fact smaller stakeholders might get lost in the trees from time to time, but they still can and are heard.
With that said SPK network is working on a new form of DAO, more like a upwork style front end. The great part is this is all very new, and we have plenty of ways to improve.
Your idea of a trustee can work great just as a community DAO prop, where someone steps up, look at the props and does due diligence, and digs to make sure things are being done. We had a much simpler form of this back on before Hive on Steem in various forms, the "Steem Business Alliance," and then there was the group formed to help Ned fund the community with his ninjamined stake. Oddly enough, after this was formed, he kinda disappeared, then did the midnight fire sale to Justin Sun.
What we need to avoid is placing any more work on the witnesses. We want the witnesses to have as simple a job as possible. I think of it this way, if the job can be delegated to another, then it must. Somethings witnesses just have to do; they cant delegate the task, such as producing blocks. We want them as lean mean and easy to run as possible for overall network security. But we can always move these things to robust layer 2 governance.
The exciting thing is, layer 2 is where the majority of the action will go down; improving our layer 2 govs will take the burden off layer 1 and make it so we can lean on the human element of the community and find all kinds of ways to increase human participation in layer 2 governance which then can increase layer 1 participation as well.
Yes, I think the DAO has funded some great stuff and has great potential. Lots of room for improvement, though, imho.
Here's one idea that need not be a replacement, but could be supplemental: something like a KickStarter model, where folks can stake-weight vote for projects (and their stake-weighted vote portion of the DHF daily distribution goes into a holding account, earmarked for the specific projects that have their active vote), then when a given project gets its full funding, the funds start paying out. If the project doesn't get the necessary funding before the deadline, the funds are returned to the DAO (with maybe a limited number of extensions if the funding is close, but not quite complete).
Could also provide alternative ways for folks to contribute to their projects of choice (e.g. via setting projects as beneficiaries, and maybe a certain # of weekly upvotes can go to projects instead of posts).
Still thinking this through, though.
Ya, pretty cool idea imo. It's similar to what is being built for spk dao. Basically, you'll set a task you want to see on Hive, can be marketing or coding or whatever. Set the price, any milestones, etc., then post. If the community bids this task up above the return prop threshold, it is now eligible for funding and people can now bid on the task. It's a reverse auction style setup where bidders now compete among one another for a job they know is going to pay. One of the biggest barriers in the current DAO system imo is just ease of use. First, you have to create a job then you need to go around promoting it, so people know to vote and get funding, and people think it may not get funding so not worth the effort. It's not like you can write a quick prop and push it out without it being detailed. Just the very time sink it cost to write a proper prop, get it marketed for a chance it may get funded.
WIth the SPK DAO, it's now as easy for a developer or anyone to just submit a bid and compete vs. all the other bidders without the need to worry about anything else. This will also bring more competition to tasks because you now have a open competition where bidders can undercut others.
From there, the community will vote on which persons bid they like the most, the bidder that passes yet another return prop for x time will be awarded the task.