Birds of a Feather

Hi everyone,

Thanks a lot for that comprehensive post and its interesting questions @lkngtn.

It happens that today is my first day of [almost] real vacations in two years so iā€™m already half away. Thus, I will just clarify a couple of things regarding the second [draft] Aragon Black proposal and give some very generic insight. I do intend to reply more extensively when Iā€™m back from vacations [and got some sleep].

Aragon Black Flock proposal

@lkngtn The proposal you linked to is no longer valid. Here is the last one. Itā€™s basically the same excepts that we removed private comments that was not supposed to be public in the first place :laughing: ā€¦

Note that this proposal is still in a draft stage so everything is open to comments. I would like to discuss two specific points related to your post though.

ANT Package

The way you @lkngtn describe our ANT package request is not totally accurate. Actually [as explained in the proposal] the package we request is meant to replace our previous request that would thus be cancelled [to clarify things and stick more accurately to the new ANT packages rationale that has been discussed in the meanwhile]. We would thus end up with a total package of 800k ANT [accounting for our two Flock period]. This request matches the rationale discussed here where ANT packages are basically halved each year. Of course this can be discussed if the rationale be updated.

Black Blog

The question you raised about the Black Blog is fair and we already had updated its weight into our proposal accordingly. Itā€™s always hard when ranking / weighting initiatives to figure out whether should be taken into account the importance we [subjectively] grant them, the number of people they involve or the budget they require. To make it clear the Black Blog is ran by two people each of them working half-time. Their payroll is compliant with the market [so that they are payed way less than any other member of the team]. In the end the Black Blog accounts for less than 4% of our budget. Given the number of articles published and the effort made to introduce people to other thoughts than the one bloating the blockchain space I think itā€™s fair. We have for instance an interview with James C. Scott to be published soon which is the kind of things which are pretty rare in the space. I personnaly grant a value to this blog which is way higher than the 3% or 4% they take on our budget :slight_smile:

General thoughts

I do agree the status of Flock teams should be clarified [and clarified ASAP]: are they standonalone teams ? are they supposed to be dedicated to one specific product ? are they supposed to come up with an economic model for the product they dedicate to ? etc. As stated by @stefanobernardi the Flock program [as the whole Aragon governanceā€™s process] is pretty unique in the space and I believe itā€™s normal that it goes through some sort of a trial / error process. I do believe though that if we wanna make it work things should be clarified as soon as possible.

  1. It makes it very difficult to hire and maintain a team when the horizon is highly blurry [we have hirings in process: should we postpone them, cancel them, etc ?]
  2. Itā€™s hard to define what should be the scope of our proposal: should we embrace all the challenges that Aragon as a network is facing [devs of course, but also on-boarding, communication, etc.] ? should we keep our proposal more focused and dedicate our efforts to dev ? should this development effort be kept generic or focused on one product [in our case fundraising or pando] ?

In our situation for instance between 25% and 35% of our budget is dedicated to on-boarding [team members payroll and travel]. Iā€™m not the one leading this initiative but it feels like this is still not enough with respect to how much effort it requires to support people in using Aragon, understanding its apps, etc.

Who should account for this efforts if not Flock teams ? should everyone working on on-boarding join A1 ? should a team dedicated to on-boarding be set up ? but then who will pay for it ? Note that I mention on-boarding cause itā€™s a particularly intense effort but the same questions could be raised for communication, core stack contributions, etc.

I really have no answers to these questions but the way I see it for now is kind of binary:

  1. Either each team is meant to embrace the whole Aragon effort [dev, on-boarding, communication, etc.] but then it requires each team to be large enough [with a consequence on their budgets].
  2. Either each team is meant to dedicate to a specific effort [one for on-boarding, one for a specific product such a fundraising, etc.] while being coordinated by A1 / AA. This would lead to smaller teams with smaller budgets and maybe a path to discuss the possibility of team-specific business models.

I think this also raises the strategic issue of what Aragon is meant to be: is Aragon one sole product / effort [the client, the court, etc.], or is Aragon a network of semi-independant initiatives / products aligned with respect to their values, leveraging technical network effects and a common basis [ANT and its derivatives] to support their respective business models [then multiple funding processes should be experimented with].

I canā€™t see which path is the best but I think we should definitely decide and clarify both this strategic issue and the status of Flock as soon as possible [also because this would highly impact the shape / extension of our own proposal :wink: ].

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Thanks for the clarification, Iā€™ve edited the OP to reflect this (and also link to the latest draft proposal)

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I have been thinking about and having conversations about some of these issues quite a bit recently, @lkngtn articulates the problems very well, and itā€™s not an easy thing because there are many facets to it. I agree with most of the proposed solutions, there is a lot to unpack

This should be at the forefront of all discussions with regards to funding proposals. There has been a lot of discussions about sustainability but the issue with regards to the runway is still opaque. Our community prides its self on openness and transparency, and while this information is available it is not easy to find and is not mentioned much. @anteater broke this down a bit in the last Aragon black proposal. But this is very important information. I would like to see this made much clearer.

I agree. A big part of the problem which has already been highlighted is the fact that proposals are monolithic. We only have three flock teams all working on essential components of the network which makes it difficult to vote no.

And

Very much support! In addition, it gives ANT holders much more control over the road map and strategy.

For example in Aragon blacks proposal I05 - Onboarding there is a section on a proposed Aragon Academy and in the notes from the last strategy meeting, there is a bullet point ā€˜Create an ambassador program for Aragonā€™

For me, this is of vital importance and I want to see this prioritised. But it seems to be the focus is on end-users, this is clearly important as we need to get more traction but a greater focus needs to be in training developers. I have been struggling for months trying to get to grips with the stack, while I am not a developer by trade and thus donā€™t represent the typical contributor, everyone I have spoken to all says how difficult it is to learn. I know Iā€™m straying slightly of topic for the thread, I will expand more in the AB proposal thread but my point is ANT holders should have more control over what is being built and shouldnā€™t have to fund things they think provide less value so Iā€™m in agreement with this

however, I echo @luis concerns

I donā€™t know much about how A1 operates internally but this is the direction 1hive has been taking. I think Itā€™s the most exciting project on Aragon because of its forward-thinking on how open collaborative organisations could work. In the few months Iā€™ve been active there Iā€™ve seen the rapid evolution of the project and its really inspiring.

However, having all the projects compartmentalised with everything run as a bounty wonā€™t work for all. I donā€™t see any of the teams building on Aragon working effectively as simply a collection of freelancers. 1hive itā€™s self is much more radical in this regard but still there are functions that donā€™t fit neatly into the bounties box.

Even if we require teams to unbound initiatives and present them atomically, flock teams are still organisations and require administration and some none code contribution across all internal projects. There should still be some base level funding for payroll giving stability to core contributors

I highlight 1hive specifically because im most familiar with this DAO and i think itā€™s the most natural fit for the next team to join Flock

Totally agree. Firstly because competition is good and healthy. It will force teams to focus on what they think the community values the most. Secondly, it is much easier to reason proposals with respect to the runway.

I would go further. IMO itā€™s the Apps that will make or break the project. The iPhone is the perfect analogy here. Apple didnā€™t invent the smartphone, but it created the market we know today. Yes it was slick and had a great design (all things that Aragon dose very well) but what really made the smartphones take-off was the app store

The fact that anyone could create an app and upload it made the iPhone incremental better and expanded the market for the iPhone itā€™s self. Sure most of them were absolute shit, but the sheer number of them gave it utility way beyond a phone

This isnt going to happen magically. The funding system should be geared towards making this a reality.

Clearly, this is the intention behind the architecture and I know @jorge was an iOS developer before Aragon, but as @luis mentioned, we have spent millions of dollars and only A1 have delivered apps to mainnet.

This isnā€™t a strong criticism of Autark of Aragon Black, these are core apps and they take time. Additionally, they have been working on the stack too but my point is, Apple didnā€™t make hardly any apps. They fostered a community of app builders

I say all that to say i donā€™t think we should be spending millions on apps at all. As soon fundraising and open enterprise are on mainnet We already have the core built out.

At the moment there are nowhere near enough developers that understand the stack to do this at the moment (back to my earlier point on Aragon Academy) and the quality of the code will not be up to the same standard, but any changes to the funding system should take these points into account

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Agreed! I approached this from 2 angles in the Aragon Network Token post. First, ANT holders are funding Flock teams so there should be a clear correlation between funding proposals and how that benefits ANT value/price. Second, itā€™s a lot cheaper and potentially a lot more effective to fund lots of small community projects than one monolithic kitchen sink proposal. This is easier said than done, so the second half of the ANT post explores potential solutions to this problem.

To attract top talent, or even any talent, we need to pay competitive rates for grants and give Flock teams the funding they need to pay for salaries. Not everyone can just hop from project to project, and having stability and runway allows people to focus on their work vs being stressed out about financials every few months. You can run a public company on a quarterly basis, or you can run an early stage startup with a runway as you try to find product market fit, but you canā€™t operate on a quarterly basis while you try to find product market fit.

This is why I think we should give Flock teams the stability they need, but we also need to create more vehicles to fund community projects. This can create an organic ā€œcontributor funnelā€ (like sales funnel, but for Aragon ecosystem onboarding). There can be iterative support for general community contributions, hackers building prototypes, projects that aim to ship a specific thing, and Flock teams who are dedicated to contributing to the Aragon ecosystem long term (6-12 months).

Agreed. I have many proposals on how we can run more experiments, get more feedback, and iterate more quickly in the second half of my Aragon Network Token post. A few early ideas are:

  • domain specific DAOs
  • investment DAOs
  • app mining
  • community reward DAOs

More people would have skin in the game if more ANT tokens were distributed to the community. As is, Iā€™ve been contributing to the general ecosystem for about 6 months, but received a grand total of 0 ANT for doing so. Something like the CRDAO could help a lot, but more generally we need to be getting more ANT to more people who care about and contribute to Aragon.

Yup! Itā€™s easy to point out flaws, but itā€™s really really hard to create systems that work. If it was easy everyone would already be doing it. We are in a new design space that includes a publicly traded token, decentralized governance, and a global talent pool. This is non trivial. Happy that weā€™re having this discussion, but it seems naive and presumptuous to suggest that we could change the whole thing in one go.

The system is not perfect, and it has a lot of room to improve, but it has also resulted in Aragon being the world leader in DAO development. ANT is one of the only surviving ICO projects that has a pulse. Letā€™s improve and augment the current system, not radically change the foundation that makes all of this possible.

The struggle is real. If we put ourselves in a position where weā€™re radically redesigning the economic incentives of Aragon on an ANV to ANV basis, itā€™s going to be chaos. Thereā€™s already tons of chaos from decentralized governance and trying to find product/market fit. There needs to be a base line of stability somewhere.

Contributing on a project by project or bounty by bounty basis is fun as an experiment to explore the space, but itā€™s not sustainable long term and itā€™s not fun long term either. If we want to invest in our community, and if we want to retain talent that has taken time to learn about the culture and tech stack, we need to provide incentives that allow people to commit to contributing for longer than just a few months at a time. Considering the onboarding cost of understanding the community and tech stack, and considering how few people are actually here, I donā€™t think bounties or freelancing is really even a realistic option at this point.

Yup! :100: Otherwise no one is going to want to do the unsexy and/or emotionally hard labor that keeps an actual team/community functional and contributes to decision making.

Yeah, so we should fund more community driven application projects. As I said in the Aragon Network Token post, for the same cost as 1 Flock proposal we could fund 2 to 3 $10,000 application project per week for a year. Problem is, we donā€™t have that kind of deal flow, and if we didā€¦ we donā€™t have that talent pool to execute on it. Creating infrastructure to support the Aragon ecosystem (dev UX and financing vehicles) is essential to make the ā€œapp storeā€ thesis a reality.

Building prototypes is easy and fun. Shipping (and maintaining) production ready applications is not. If you look at the broader technology industry (or even the Ethereum space), any of the apps being built by Aragon teams could be their own product that takes millions of dollars of financing and years to perfect before finding product/market fit. Itā€™s a miracle weā€™ve gotten this far. That being said, we can still improve. We can improve a lot actually. Creating infrastructure that makes it easier for teams to build and ship production ready apps will go a long way to making this possible.

Currently, every team has to reinvent the wheel and is navigating this process more or less on their own. While itā€™s good to be self sufficient, none of us would be here if we were living off the land hunting and gathering. Communities and trade allow for more efficiency. Having working groups or expert networks could help teams find talent and get feedback without having to manage everything internally. Also, expanding the security review program to include Nest and community projects would be amazing. Having community driven documentation could help a lot too. Thereā€™s lots of things that would help, but first we need financing vehicles to support these community ideas.

:100: As said in the previous two comments here, it takes a village. We need a strong, engaged, and stable ecosystem before any of this stuff is possible. It takes time to onboard contributors, and once people are here we want them to stay. This means better financing vehicles and more stability.

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I agree, I think payroll is a useful way for teams to organize! But I donā€™t really think that its necessarily the case that unbundling proposals precludes teams from managing their treasury to create internal stability, or from internally organizing their team how they see fitā€“whether that is with payroll, performance bonuses, bounties, etc. I donā€™t think itā€™s strictly necessary for ANT holders to be directly involved in how a team choses to structure itself.

I really want to question this assumption, it is incredibly common for service based organizations to start up and bootstrap without any seed funding and expand their business over time. I donā€™t think we necessarily should be modeling Aragon Network Service providers (like flock or nest teams) as vc backed startups.

I think itā€™s helpful to avoid making judgements like this during ideation. At this point, before there are any formal proposals put forward, itā€™s not really helpful imo to say something is naive or presumptuous.

Iā€™m not sure it matters really, my hope is that flock teams would be diverse. Some may be larger, some may be smaller, some may be laser focused on one thing, others may be more fluid and daolike.

I think more important than what flock teams do or look like is how we ensure that they are well aligned and effective at whatever scope or role they propose to take on.

I think this is a great question and would love to hear lots of different perspectives on this.

Personally I might reframe it slightly and say What does Aragon need to be in order for it realize the projectā€™s core vision, for me that means that we need to find a way for the community to effectively and efficiently (especially before we have established capital inflows) allocate capital and as quickly as possible establish an economy that is both sustainable and growing.

I think ANT needs to be the focal point for that economy and the community, and I care more about maintaining the communities core values and manifesto while growing the community and value of ANT than I do about any specific ā€œproductā€ whether that is the client, aragonOS, or even the Court.

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What would this look like? If proposals are unbundled then ANT holders arenā€™t voting to support a team, but are voting to support a project. I guess that project could choose to allocate funds via payroll, bounties, or anything else, but then itā€™s more like a Nest grant than a Flock ā€œteam.ā€ If you have a larger team (like 1Hive, Autark, or Aragon Black) then there are lots of different projects being worked on in parallel by the team. Thereā€™s lots of cross pollination of ideas, collaboration with other teams, and general Aragon ecosystem contributions that larger teams like that contribute to. How do you measure, manage, and fund all of that as a team if funding proposals are broken down into project specific funding requests?

Yeah, but those service based organizations are not trying to change the way the humanity organizes at scale. Theyā€™re not trying to create a digital jurisdiction that makes traditoinal governments obsolete. Theyā€™re not fighting for freedom. Startups and the VC industry are optimized for exponential growth and innovation. Itā€™s not for lifestyle companies. Itā€™s for organizations that want to change the world.

Agreed! Lots of ideas on how we might do that

Yes! As mentioned, lots of ideas in the Aragon Network Token :eagle: post on how we might start to drive more value to ANT

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When you engage with a contractor on a project you negotiate a rate for that project, in some cases this is done as a fixed bid, in other cases it is done based on a negotiated rate. In either case the payment that is negotiated doesnā€™t just cover the contractorā€™s marginal cost to deliver, because if it did the contractor would never be able to cover operational overhead like rent or support functions like marketing, sales, or HR, let alone make a profit overall.

In the context of unbunding proposals into projects, the expectation is similar. A team would propose a project and an amount, but can and should budget such that they can cover any related operational expenses they feel are warranted. Those operational expenses donā€™t need to be delineated in the proposed scope of work, much like you wouldnā€™t expect to have a line item for ā€œmarketingā€ when you hire a consultant. However, if your proposals tend to have high overhead you may find that you end up struggling to compete with leaner competitors.

I think, it is Aragon that is attempting to change how humanity organizes. Flock/Nest teams are contracted by ANT holders to help accomplish that goal. They may be very aligned in mission and culture, but from a business model perspective my position is that nest and flock teams should (or at the very least could) be operating more like service-based businesses than product-based startups.

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We are so so so early in the gameā€¦ Aragon cannot operate like a public company that farms out work to 3rd parties because ANT holders do not vote! Even if they did, thereā€™s no clear way to coordinate or engage with them! What youā€™re describing is the worst of both worlds, being accountable to a decentralized amorphous group of shareholders while also trying to find product/market fit in a fast growing and new industry. Thatā€™s absolutely crazy!

Flock teams are early adopters in Aragon who are tightly aligned with the mission, vision, community, and values of Aragon. Weā€™re all in this together. If the culture shifts to attract contractors and bounty hunters I donā€™t think Aragon will thrive. First we donā€™t have the resources or infrastructure to quickly onboard new talent. Second, even if we did, onboarding (and retaining) new talent requires a group of core contributors that can engage with and mentor people. Yes, we need to create more dynamic bottom up funding vehicles to experiment and support community endeavors. We cannot, however, clip the wings of the teams that are the cornerstones of this community. We need to support the teams that are here so that they can spread their wings and learn to fly :eagle:

I think what youā€™re describing is the Nest grants program.

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The reality is that what Iā€™m describing isnā€™t any different than how the flock program works today, flock teams are (or are intended to be) accountable to ANT holders via the AGP process.

Flock teams are already contractors, I donā€™t think this changes significantly if you unbundle large year long proposals with multiple initiatives and a broad scope into smaller more narrowly scoped projects.

Currently, the vested ANT package is intended to provide some long-term alignment, but as @stefanobernardi points out it doesnā€™t really replicate the same incentives or behaviors of typical founders.

I would definitely be interested in proposals which seek to improve that situation, but I donā€™t think the current process has necessarily succeeded there, or that the vested ANT mechanism is incompatible with the unbundling approach that I am suggesting.

No, you asked how/what it would look like for a team to work on small well scoped projects and maintain support functions. I just described how that situation is commonly handled.

@burrrata it seems your view is that Aragon should fund more of everything, more (& bigger) flock teams, more experiments, etc. What sort of burn rate are you expecting or advocating for? Perhaps starting at the question of ā€œhow much should the project be spending (each quarter, each year)ā€ and then determining what is the best way to allocate that budget will help us find common ground on this issue, or atleast more clearly indicate where our difference of opinion lies?

Though it may make sense to divert that discussion to the AGP discussion: Aragon Network Budget thread.

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Look, weā€™re on the same page that throwing a kitchen sink full of stuff at ANT holders in a binary fashion is less than ideal. In my opinion Flock teams should still be Flock teams with a core set of goals/projects to focus on. Then in addition to that there should be bottom up funding vehicles that allow Flock teams (or anyone) to get support for smaller or supplementary projects. This allows Flock teams to focus on their core projects with a reasonable amount of stability, but also leaves the door open for other stuff too.

Yeah totally. ANT is the lifeblood of Aragon. If we want to align incentives within the Aragon we need to give contributors more ANT. The budget should be based in ANT, not DAI. This aligns incentives.

No. I do not want to see bigger Flock teams. At least not in their current incarnation. I want to see Flock teams get support to focus on a few core projects for 6-12 months. 80% of that is executing on the projects, and 20% is general contributions to the Aragon community. This would actually result in a reduction in the ā€œmegaā€ Flock proposals that are currently being proposed. This would be compensated for by creating other funding vehicles to support supplementary endeavors. This would reduce recurring overhead for Flock teams and increasing funding for bottom up community endeavors. The problem is that weā€™re not there yet. We need to create alternative funding vehicles first before clipping/modifying the Flock budget.

Also, this whole thing implies that itā€™s the fault of the Flock teams for their bloated proposals. Itā€™s not. Itā€™s the fault of the Aragon community for not supporting bottom up community endeavors and not creating more dynamic funding vehicles to support innovation in the space. Flock teams are just trying to support the community and build cool stuff. Theyā€™re using the tools available to them. We need to make those tools better so that incentives are aligned and capital can be allocated more effectively.

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After getting some feedback from Flock members, I wanted to clarify the following: @lkngtnā€™s position is his personal position and not A1ā€™s. While I (and many A1 members) agree with a lot (most) points, itā€™s not the companyā€™s position.

I also agree with most of @stefanobernardiā€™s points, but also disagree with some presented options such as re-centralizing all development in A1 and dismantling the Flock process. Again, this is my personal position as well.

I unfortunately donā€™t have the time to present all my thoughts during this week for personal reasons, but I plan on doing so in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, the only thing that I want to say is that Iā€™m proud of the Aragon family and Iā€™m sure we will find a way to make Flock serve Aragon, and not the other way around.

Best,
Luis

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I just wanted to chime in here. I have been thinking and processing what has been going on in the forum lately. I honestly do feel afraid to express my more deeper thoughts and analysis publicly. Because I donā€™t know how that will be perceived and then where my future lies in the Network. Iā€™m not sure what to say to build the trust that a team like Autark has severe skin in the game. We might not hold enough ANT as the founders of Aragon, but many Autark members have children and have quit their steady jobs to join this movement ā€“ we donā€™t have the security of knowing our votes will pass, but many of us have still invested 1.5 years of our life on this project, making below market rate pay.

So ā€“ what do you do when you feel afraid of talking? When you are worried that something you say ā€“ maybe a comment, maybe constructive criticism, maybe frustration in a heated conversation ā€“ can halt your life and dreams and turn it upside down? This may be just my own personal problem and I have to figure out how to deal with my mind.

Some thoughts on the budgeting - Is devising a new Network-wide budgeting solution in 2 weeks going to solve the root problem here of how we can improve generally? Why not just directly propose adjustments to a proposalā€™s budget to begin with vs. passively implement a top-down enforcement? I donā€™t think 2 weeks is logical to implement this budgeting change to the AGP process that is being discussed in the other thread. I donā€™t think one more ANV going by without a budget is going to break the network or break the wallet. I think we should spend a few more months talking about whatā€™s going on and discuss the multiple dimensions ā€“ dig more deeply. Talk in video calls. Have town halls. Build environments where we can get vulnerable and not be afraid.

Why donā€™t we admit that there is dysfunction and Flock-team delivery schedule isnā€™t the only thing that is impacting the success of our collective vision. I know that I want to use Aragon to make my dreams come true. To make a vision I have come to life, a vision and strategy towards human autonomy, towards a future that isnā€™t dominated and controlled by megacorps or nationstates. My strategy to get there may be different than other peopleā€™s strategies. I think part of the power of a DAO is to encourage diversity in thoughts and ideas to accelerate innovation. To accelerate collaboration. I think we can be doing better utilizing the tools we are building for tasks beyond quarterly votes. We are learning that as we go along. We will start evolving and iterating. Working groups are forming. Things are changing.

This forum post has been great to spark the conversation. Iā€™ll start to share more as I begin to feel more comfortable digging into other layers. The last thing I want is an AGP to reclaim Autarkā€™s funds in ANV-4. What a nightmare.

I think this article and this pyramid is something we should think about more. It can be zoomed out to ā€œ5 dysfunctions of a networkā€. Is there an absence of trust here?

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A perspective on resource efficiency in Aragon and the Flock program

Thanks @lkngtn for making room for interesting discussions. Sorry in advance for the (too) long post. It can be moved here or a standalone thread if you wish.

It looks this thread, as well as these (1,2,3) are all related in that they express a rising fear within the community that Aragon is on the path to burning all of its resources before it can meet its market.

Before I start disussing concrete strategies (budgeting, unbundling, reportingā€¦) that would address this primary concern, I would like to take a step back and try to frame the underlying need each of us have in Aragon: Becoming more resource efficient while sticking to the principles of the Manifesto

Main actionable areas for Aragon/Flock to become resource efficient

I assume that being resource efficient is a big worry for all organizations. When it comes to Aragon I feel (as @lkngtn pointed out) there are several important areas to consider:

  1. A culture of oppenness and criticism
  2. Clear and transparent accountability
  3. Efficient collaboration
  4. Governance practices that fit the above, and not the opposit
  5. Policies and processes implementing the above

Note: Because Flock burns most of Aragonā€™s resources I will go through these with the Flock program in mind. I will try my best to share some knowledge Iā€™ve acquired, working relatively close to Flock teams.

A culture of oppenness and criticism

Wether on calls or on the forum, most (not all, as pointed out by @stellarmagnet) community members feel confident to debate and participate in shaping up ideas. I think that preserving a safe space for everyone to speak -especially in times of crisis- will be mendatory if the community wants to be able to point out inefficiences.

In order for everyone to feel confortable and participate, providing context is crucial. I feel that we often forget that, and havenā€™t worked enough on implementing tools and practices that make up for asymetries of information. When it comes to this conversation, even some close community members may lack context to participate. Here Iā€™ll try to be inclusive and provide some context to everyone.

This feels especially crucial in the current state of Aragon, where most of the information and context lies in the Flock program, which is in turn pretty siloed in teams.

Debating openly is something the Aragon community is pretty good at doing. But my experience and discussions with Flock teams showed me that it is increasingly challenging to create a common ground for discussions as we grow.

This first point may seem abstract, but in a very generic way, the culture of communicating freely is imho the best way to debunk inefficies and create new value. By creating a safe space for discussion and data about context, only great insights can output.

Clear accountability through transparency

It can be tricky to create accountability in most organizations, but I feel that things are much easier in our space where the code we ship and things we write are just a few clicks away. And I couldnā€™t think of anything more powerful than transparency to generate accountability.

Information is available in repositories or forum posts, it is just matter of shaping it up, and delivering it in the right place to the right audience.

Currently in the Flock program, each team issues transparency reports (1,2,3) as they see fit. It seems easy for the network and ANT holders to ask for a specific kind of report and frequency it wants to feel that teams are accountable.

We also have roadmaps that are approved by ANT holders, and updated over time by some mechanism (for now still the AA approving). We can agree on some process that seems legit to all. We have the tools to implement complex governance schemes using Agent.

I feel weā€™re one step away of being able to properly leverage things to generate accountability. The main problem I see is that we donā€™t have the habit or resources to pay attention what other teams are doing.

In the end, this ends up creating costly frictions for the organization. I personally believe that solving this attention problem by changing our habits and enhancing the way information is presented would help a lot.

Efficient collaboration

Flock in its current state is a several months old program. And it is still quite conter-intuitive for teams to include what other teams are doing or may do as part of their plan. This is a demanding process and requires a special state of mind.

I feel that we have to agree on what we can expect from each other at different levels so this becomes a certitude in a very uncertain space.

My personal conviction is that there are two paths forward:

  • One is to create a cryptoeconomic system of individual teams contributing to the project as standalone units and sorted through competition.
  • Another is create a single complex organization where collaboration has a cost but teams work altogether.

Each approach has pros and cons and some mix of both approaches is probably optimal. But weā€™ll have to adapt our culture, accountability tools, collaboration practices and governance to support this approach.

To illustrate: in the curent state of things, would Flock teams feel confortable having network level coordinators and repo maintainers? would they feel confortable delegating part of their workforce to Working Groups? Whether it is the case or not would be higly influenced by how teams are incentivized, how they are made accountable and under what conditions they are elected.

Governance that take all these into account

The governance rules we adopt are the tip of the iceberg and a reflection of the our assumptions and values.

If we believe that ANT holders are prone to making good decisions, letā€™s:

  • Foster a debate culture to create actionnable information for ANVs, around topics such as budget for example.
  • Have teams provide clear and concise reports
  • Let ANT holders decide on roadmaps so collaboration can happen frictionlessly

But reality seems to be less obvious. As pointed out in some other threads, ANT holders do not always make great decisions. Aslo, very few people pay attention to reports and track teamā€™s progresses. Roadmaps have to be changed multiple times a year so teams can keep working.

I donā€™t know the portion of ANT holders who vote and are not contributors to Aragon. However it seems very hard for anyone not actively involved in Aragon to make an advised decision on resource allocation.

So in the end, the current governance setting is either the wrong one, or has a long way to go before it becomes efficient in allocating resources. How and where do we account for this?

Policies and processes to implement all the above

Finally, policies and processes are very useful to implement an intention. The Flock program has a bunch of policies and arbitrary budget limits or timelines. My experience with these is that they can be tricky to deal with because you always have exceptional situations in this space.

In our case implementing a budget is a valid option to act as safeguards for spendings. Moreover, it is also possible to unbundle proposals and monitor team deliverables more granularly through some network entity. But in our context and pushing my interpretation to the extreme, here is what it would mean to me:

  • We are not able to generate the right information and communicate it
  • The community cannot debate and come to the right conclusions
  • We think giving freedom to teams lowers their ability to deliver
  • ANT holders cannot make the right choices allocating resources

This is a very personal vision and a weakly held, strong opinion. I just feel that we have so much room for improvement withing all the dimensions above, using very concrete strategies. Lessening freedom and flexibility bears a risk of rushing us into a suboptimal situation. Iā€™d rather try other solutions first.

Final thoughts and short term emergency

From my personal experience all Flock teams are working at maximum capacity all the time. Weā€™re still in an early stage and most contributors are so passionate about Aragon that they give their absolute best. I doubt any long term improvement would really come out of solely implementing hard policies.

In the short and medium term a quick overview of what Iā€™d like to push:

  • keep taking risks to create the future of DAOs (CRDAO, CFDAO 2.0, Nestā€¦)
  • do better working as a network of teams (for example using coordinators and catalysts)
  • improve information flows in the whole organization and fight information asymmetry (reporting, auditing, fact checkingā€¦)
  • be careful with spendings, the current burn is high and it cannot keep growing that quickly (transparency.aragon.org, budget forecastsā€¦)
  • But if we have to budget and control, letā€™s do it with great care and evaluate the implications it has on culture, accountability and collaboration

In Aragonā€™s history lots of resources and efforts were spent on the product, but probably much fewer on the organization itself. Building an org is already hard in a traditional setting (say a startup). It probably deserves ten times as much attention and resources in our decentralized setting.

6 Likes

It really saddens me you feel this way. Personally, I have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for the people and work done by Autark Aragon one and Aragon Black. I totally understand the stakes are so much higher for Autark and Aragon Black. Both Autark and AB bring something unique to the network and its culture. There is no doubt in my mind the commitment Autark has to Aragon. Further to this, if this is how we are making some of our core contributors feel, we are doing something very wrong. How many others are feeling like this is silence?

+1 to this

That being said, The burn rate is too high. it has been mentioned elsewhere that ANT holders have not been prone to making good decisions with regards to being fiscally responsible. I disagree this is the case, The fact that these proposals are monolithic makes it difficult to vote no. The core work the flock teams are doing is very important, however, there may be elements and initiatives within these proposals ANT holders may think should be deprioritised. breaking up proposals makes a lot of sense to me, it also means more control over the roadmap.

I agree with ā€œWe are not able to generate the right information and communicate itā€. I really disagree ā€œANT holders cannot make the right choices allocating resourcesā€. when given a binary choice of approving a monolithic budget, the right choice is in my mind is to approve. however given more granular choice somethings would no be approved, or at least the relative strength of conviction in specific items can be ascertained. It is a function of a system that isnā€™t working well rather than.

That being said, we talk a lot about ANT holders and voting which is understandable. But it worth remembering ANT is not well distributed. when it comes to actual participation it is usually one, at most two token holders deciding the fate of any particular AGP. You can see the distribution for all the votes here.

So far as the results are mapping to community sentiment (which thankfully it has so far), we dont have an immediate problem. this is separate discussion its self but I thought it is worth mentioning

This is an important observation. In either path, the burn rate needs to be controlled. However we move forward will have a big impact on the culture of the network going forward, This is something we as a community need to discuss and think about.

6 Likes

Itā€™s been really interesting to see the reactions and discussions (both on here and on other channels) that this post has sparked. While not everyone is in total agreement, and there is not necessarily a clear path forward, I think opening this discussion and working through it is healthy.

With that said I wanted to to clarify some of my intentions behind this post, as some of the reactions have surprised me a bit and I think some of my intentions may have not come across as clearly as I would have hoped.

First I want to be clear what this post is NOT:

  • This is not an attack on any one team or any one proposal, I wrote this as a brainstorming process after starting to see flock proposals come up for this ANV cycle, but the underlying thought process is something that has been on my mind and evolving since the very first ANV.
  • This is not suggesting any particular immediate changes to any process. The ideas presented in the original post are just ideas that I think warrant further discussion, I want and hope for each of them to be challenged, picked apart, and alternative ideas or approaches presented.
  • This is not a declaration that I think things are totally broken and require immediate intervention, this is a call to examine what we are doing and determine what if any changes are appropriate. It is a call for continuous improvement and self-reflection, as opposed to any one specific change.
  • This is not the position/views of any one other than myself. I work for Aragon One, Iā€™m working to nurture and shape the 1Hive DAO, and I have been a member of the Aragon Community since the ICOā€“but I do not have the authority to represent the opinions of anyone but myselfā€“and I do not want the responsibility that would come with such authority because it would limit my ability to simply speak freely.

I also want to provide some additional context, as these issues are not new and not triggered specifically by recent proposals, they are issues that have been brought up and discussed over the history of the AGP process.

The creation of an AGP wide budget was included in the initial ā€œwishlistā€ for AGP proposals. And has come up on a various occasions, including AGP Idea: Formalizing an AGP Budget - Community - Aragon Forum and more recently AGP discussion: Aragon Network Budget.

The desire to unbundle large monolithic proposals is also something that has come up over the history of the AGP process. Myself as well as other people have expressed on multiple occasions concern that they feel they need to approve proposals because itā€™s really important that one part of the proposal passes, despite not wanting to approve of the entire thing. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is in Aragon Oneā€™s initial flock proposal where the most of the budget was based on a desire to double the team size, and imo should have been separated into two proposals so that the community could weigh in on that strategic decision independently of the rest of the proposal.

From my position on Aragon Oneā€™s first flock proposal:

With regard to the call to be more critical of one another, Iā€™ve had multiple conversations, over the history of the AGP process with people related to their engagement in the AGP process and a common sentiment echoed in this thread by Yalda, but also by many others who I wonā€™t name out of respect for their privacy is a fear that being critical will have negative repercussions and so they have avoided being overtly critical.

I donā€™t think that this is an easy problem to solve and I donā€™t think there is a simple solution, but my call to be more critical (and even the fact that I am openly critical of multiple aspects of the AGP and Flock process in this thread) is an attempt start to shift the culture to make critical discourse a more common and acceptable norm within the community. I think it is really important that we create that culture so that we can have important conversations and course correct without feeling like we are personally attacking one another. I personally feel that expressing criticism is one of the most important aspects of productive collaboration, and I would really like to see the Aragon community and especially Flock be a more collaborative process.

So please, anyone who reads anything that I write please understand that my criticisms are meant to be constructive and collaborative, and by being critical my hope is to help find collaborative solutions and not simply point out flaws. Itā€™s also possible that my criticisms are misguided, I will not be offended or get defensive if you engage with me in discourseā€“I will actually appreciate it because I think discussing complex issues is how we can all evolve our thinking and reach better solutions.

Ultimately, I would like to see Aragon grow into a thriving ecosystem with multiple teams working together on shared goals. I believe that the best way for that to happen is to continuously evaluate where we are and move closer to that ideal. I want individuals and teams to be diverse (in size, culture, and organizational structure) to all be able to succeed as contributors and service providers. And I want the process to provide stable and sustainable opportunities, so that teams can build independent businesses that align with the goals of Aragon long-term.

5 Likes

Thanks for noting this @stellarmagnet.

I want to make a few clarifications regarding my post, and specifically address this topic.

My earlier post was not intended to be an attack on non-founding Flock teams, but was rather published to defend them.

As I said above, I see Flock as a very, very alpha iteration of what a decentralized development process should look like, and so itā€™s not fair to penalize, attack or otherwise not acknowledge the contributions of the teams that participate in it - taking on massive risk both professionally and personally (there is a nuance for me as to what constitutes general risk and specific skin in the game though).

With that being said, the reason I added as an option (after stating I didnā€™t have opinions on them) a more centralized (only on the development obviously and not the governance) path forward, is because this stuff is hard, and anyone that has seen organizations scale in people from 0 to 3, 3 to 15, 15 to 40, 40 to 100 etc. knows that the coordination costs are massive.

Currently we are operating without a ā€œNetwork CEOā€ figure (the AA cannot and should not take on that role), and I feel that is a bit the root cause of all the issues. So that option was an easy one to institute that sort of role, but I donā€™t really think itā€™s the best one at all.

1 Like

This is a huge problem, not just in the Aragon community, but with any group of humans. Most people are unwilling to examine, question, and change power structures. Itā€™s scary and thereā€™s often no incentive to do it. The nail that sticks out hammered while everyone else gets rewarded. This leads to conformity and group stink.

Itā€™s easy for someone like me to be contrarian and say whatever I want because Iā€™m just a misspelled piece of cheese with nothing to lose. Itā€™s a lot more meaningful for someone with skin in the game to stick their neck out. I hope that, as a community, we can fix this so that everyone feels comfortable saying what they mean and meaning what they say; not just telling part of the truth, but the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Then Aragon would not just be working towards the vision outlined in the manifesto, but living it day to day. Letā€™s lead by example :eagle:

Iterative improvements are a win for all parties involved. Itā€™s time to focus more on the meta model of the Aragon ecosystem and ANT. The community is very engaged and thereā€™s lots of ideas being explored. Really excited to see (and contribute to) our evolution :rocket:

In the last week or so Iā€™ve disagreed with most of the ideas youā€™ve put forward. This has forced me to examine my own opinions and improve them. Like rocks in a tumbler, we are all polishing each other. The process might be a little contentious, but out of that comes something really beautiful. For example: many initiatives have been proposed that might have otherwise lay dormant! As you said, having open and critical discourse is essential, and Iā€™m really glad we can do that here in a more or less productive manner :slight_smile:

4 Likes
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  style={{ fontWeight: 'bold' }}
  feeling="All these discussions are very demotivational"
  question={'What is the true vision of Aragon ? I don\'t grasp it anymore.'.toUpperCase()}
  rant="Stop saying we haven't delivered to the mainnet yet."
  plan="Fundraising is gonna be released in the coming weeks, in time with the planned roadmap"
  nextMove={() =>
    setTimeout(() => {
      postAragonBlackAnswer()
    }, nextWeek)
  }
  finalWords="I go back to work since I value it more than your own self-absorbed opinions. KTHXBYE"
/>
7 Likes

I want to share my thoughts on this topic. Thank you @lkngtn for starting this conversation. It was much needed. I donā€™t want to go over the high-level discussions about the program (that are important too). I want to point out the things that I donā€™t see are working right now.

We were naive about the initial expectations of the program. Independent teams that could take care of the project, if something would happen to the others. Also, teams that would ease the workload from A1. There is a lot of work. We wanted all these things from day one. These expectations have not been met yet. Because the reality is that building a team takes time.

To put concrete examples:

  • OE apps. We have been waiting for these apps on mainnet for quite some time (Iā€™m excited to learn they will reach mainnet soon). Yet, we approved their last proposal without addressing openly this issue before.
  • Fundraising. We have been waiting for this also. I understand it is hard and it is coming. A1 is involved in important part of the work. The AB team has no UX designer/dev yet. It seems A1 advised AB not to hire a UX dev/designer. I donā€™t understand the reasoning here. This is hard and key work. Also, the documentation is not in good shape
  • Discovery platform. Same as above. A1 will probably have to be very involved as well. It is quite urgent, at least the initial PoC. Has AB the manpower to fully take it? How long would it take for us to expect this?

Iā€™m not talking about collaboration here. We all have to collaborate. This is for sure. But in the context of Flock teams, I donā€™t understand collaboration as having to be directly involved. What is the point of the program then? The issues above are solvable but we need to address them and this is a good start. Iā€™m not pointing them out to criticize but to show that our expectations were naive and donā€™t match the reality. Yet, it is a very expensive program. We are giving huge amounts of money, ANT (vested) incentives included, right from the start.

The Aragon project has a concrete purpose. Build the best governance tools for blockchain-native and community-driven organizations to flourish. You can say that the purpose is subjective. But, applying common sense can help decide if something is aligned with that purpose or not. The main things Autark (roadmap: I01 to I05 and I08) and AB (roadmap: I01 to I03) are building are very aligned with the purpose. They take hard work and need the right people to work on them. Teams should take the time to mature, build a shipping cadence, and then expand from there. But, expand always according to the projectā€™s purpose and current needs. This applies as well for the roles in the different teams. Does the project need 4 community managers, for example? Does it need 4 blogs? We are not just funding a team. We are funding teams that ā€œmatchā€ the project.

The ecosystem needs a lot of things but we canā€™t take everything into the projectā€™s wings. We are pre product-market-fit. Teams need fewer distractions and focus. It has been a process for us (A1) as well.

When we launched Flock, we knew it will need a lot of trial and error before getting it right. None of us have done this before. Clear feedback and performance review processes are key for a program this new. I donā€™t see them established yet. But, we are already approving second proposals by the new teams.

Also, Iā€™m noticing we need more concrete rules on the proposals. What are they? Should they be the teamsā€™ wishlist? Should we require the subjects listed on those proposals to be connected with the current priorities of the project? I would say, yes, please! The AA team can help with this and it should be one of their priorities. I donā€™t consider this centralization. I know you are just 2 people.

I love the say from Theodore Roosevelt that is applicable here. ā€œKeep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the groundā€ Yes, we need to dream, be ambitious, have a shared vision. But, without forgetting to keep reality in check.

9 Likes

It might be a late reply, but this is how I view this issue from ANT holders perspective.
Flock and Nest grants are definitely needed but the amounts allocated are huge and currently, it isnā€™t the best time for such massive spending on projects with an unknown or undefined return.

Aragon, first of all, has to attract user audience - this can only be achieved by providing utility, mainly users should be able to utilize Aragon in their ā€œreal lifeā€. Thus, integrating Aragon in the real economy should be a priority. If you have ever tried setting up a business, you know how painful it can be. Imagine, clicking a couple of buttons in Aragon App and you have a company on a register, automated accounting and tax-stuff, and a ā€œfiatā€ bank account to allow you to buy anything you need and hire anyone you want (not just people from ā€œcrypto spaceā€). I would definitely buy into that. The amount of capital allows Aragon to hire top-tier lawyers and accountants to work closely with governments, financial regulators and tax-offices. And this, in my opinion, should be a top priority apart from the fully-functional App obviously.

When Aragon becomes self-sufficient it can grant more funds to projects that improve the Aragon ecosystem, but there should be a significantly higher degree of control over who is getting the funds and where those funds go. Otherwise, Aragon will burn all capital and will be left with nothing - neither cash nor product.

As I see, right now there are three key issues with these grants:

  1. Abstract amounts are requested with little to no reasoning. Everything has the market value and there should be a fair, most likely tender-based system for common goods and services. Every project should have a clear and detailed budget.

  2. The projects should bring real value measured in money-terms and/or user base. Teams should be rewarded for reaching set targets and penalized for failures.

  3. ANT holders should appoint Members of the R&D Committee who, in turn, screen and select the projects, allocate grants and track the progress and spendings. ANT holders should vote to approve a budget available for those grants and the appointed Members should provide regular reports to ANT holders regarding the efficiency of these grants. Some grants/spendings over a certain threshold may be subject to ANT holders approval.

Overall, Aragon will not be able to survive with a completely decentralized structure. Right now there should be strict control over funds to make sure the resources are being spent rationally and in a way beneficial to Aragon first. Aragon should be getting the best possible services for the lowest possible price with the best possible return.

Currently, personally I have an impression that Aragon is feeding a bunch of grant-eaters with doubtful return and expenditure ratio. Some projects arenā€™t essential right now and some have to be audited. In the current situation, where the voting system is not functioning as it should be due to low attendance, bias and corruption are very likely to occur. The only way to prevent this - is increased control.