Community Fund DAO being curated and/or managed by the Cooperative DAO

Julian · May 9, 2019, 3:28pm

Hi everyone,

Building on this previous thread’s proposal: with the Coop being asked to curate the Community Fund DAO, and in preparation for the next AGP round, perhaps it’s a good time for us to consider what we think the available options are for making this work in practice.

Here’s a list of possibilities to discuss, please propose any further options that spring to mind:

Coop curates the proposal process, votes ratified by ANT holders, funds managed by current CFDAO.
Coop curates the proposal process, votes ratified by ANT holders, funds managed by Coop DAO (in distinct/separate vault) after Coop applies to CFDAO for transfer of overall budget (same process as now but we receive the funds via current DAO).
Coop curates the proposal process, votes ratified by ANT holders, funds managed by Coop DAO (in distinct/separate vault), all funds sent directly from the AA to the Coop’s CFDAO specific vault for direct management of budget.

All the above requires modifying the original/current CFDAO AGP, during the next AGP voting round.

I think a 5% fee of both the overall quarterly budget, as well as 5% of each proposal (paid in advance when submitting) is a fair remuneration for the Coop – though this would require final membership ratification on our side and community agreement from the CFDAO side that that is acceptable for everyone.

It’d be great too if the Coop’s curation process could think a little more widely regarding the CFDAO, and we should be considering how to follow up and document funded projects, as well as coordinating the proposal submission preparations. E.G. The recently funded Swarm Hackathon event is asking for someone from Aragon (or affiliated) to run workshops and DAO introductory events for them. For me, this should have been written into the original proposal (with appropriate funding for expenses and time reimbursement for ‘someone’). This ties nicely into an idea I have for there to be a Coop-managed global list of Aragon Thunderbirds (working title) who’ve got the ‘chops’ (skillset) to run such events, and we send whoever is available and nearest.

We offer the complete package

That there isn’t a large queue insistently knocking on our door about the CFDAO is also something we’d intend to do something about.

Be great to gauge the community sentiment, and I’m cc’ing a few people too.

Look forward to discussing this in more detail, thanks for reading.

cc @anteater @light @stellarmagnet @lkngtn @sepu85 @LouisGrx

LouisGrx · May 10, 2019, 9:57am

Hey,
Always cool to see the Coop regaining activity since last AGP round.

Could you detail what curation means here?

In case the Coop is granted all the CFDAO funds through a vote from ANT holders, I don’t really get why ANT holders should still be ratifying fund allocation afterwards. I think Coop members voting with their tokens would be more appropriate, but this would imply thinking more about it.

Interesting proposal there in the long run. Nevertheless I think this fee structure is adding friction at a time where we want to kickstart these bounty initiatives. (Maybe that’s part of the reason we do not have fees implemented in the whole Aragon ecosystem )

What are you referring to here?

Agreed! I think that’s a point to clarify even before proposing a vote to move the funds to the coop or anything like that. Tbh that’s the main point where I could see coop workers adding value.

Nice idea, although I personally would prefer to take things one by one and clarify the CFDAO things first. I think there were ideas for similar initiatives among Flock teams, so maybe we should have a more network wide discussion on how we want to implement this, just my 2c.

Totally agree!

Final note: I was reminded by another coop member that for now I’m not perfectly clear on how operations run at the coop level since AGP40 vs. how the coop used to work before. Do we have a single place with information in a succinct format on: what the coop is, full-time/part-time workers and their permissions, membership tokens and their permissions, operational processes, the functions of the Coop to this day, ongoing projects, the DAO/DAOs we use, governance processes etc… ? I have seen some of this here and there but not 100% sure. This sounds like a must have

Julian · May 10, 2019, 11:48am

Hey Louis,

That the CoopDAO would be 1st port of call for any CFDAO application, and would be the initial hurdle any submission would negotiate. We’d have CFDAO Working Group overseeing process, and would hope to draw expertise from our members to asses the appropriateness of any proposal. This would not necessarily be a value-judgement, more that it seems ‘legit’ and has followed and subscribes to whatever the agreed due process is for applying to CFDAO. Our CoopDAO Working Group curation process could perhaps follow something similar to the AA’s curation of AGP’s, with the final decision making then happening externally.

This is potentially quite loaded we’d have to think and discuss in more detail too. But yes, absolutely appreciate that if ANT holders show little interest in the process we should definitively reassess. Thanks for bringing this up.

The ‘5%’ fee was proposed in the previous thread (not by me:), though having given this much thought I have proposed both the flat fee %, as well as 5% per application - I think that would be reasonable for the work involved but is of course up for discussion.

[quote=“LouisGrx, post:2, topic:934”]

though this would require final membership ratification on our side

What are you referring to here?

That the Coop should have a vote to ratify our involvement once agreed cross-network - I think many members will be keeping an eye on this anyway, and we’ll be discussing it on keybase too.

Sure. I was hoping to highlight that this is an opportunity for much cross-pollination across not only various Coop Working Groups but also the wider community as a whole (which you highlight nicely).

Couldn’t agree more.

Gus and I are working flat-out on this (I’ve been pretty much full-time, including weekends since last week (though will always only claim my agreed 2 days per week remuneration). There’s a huge amount of discussion and considerations of best possible practice for the CoopDAO ongoing atm - as someone else mentioned on another thread: building from the ground-up “is hard!”. But, you know, we didn’t sign up for this expecting it to be easy.
It’s because of the incredible potential value that there is to be had from this, once all the processes begin to fall into place and can become clearer (for all of us) – that is what’s currently driving us forward – but yes, decentralised consensus is tough .
We’re doing everything we can, over the short amount of time we’ve had, to make this the best it can possibly be (defining new processes and exploring fresh tools to make it all happen as we go). We’re also fortunate to have several brilliant people around us to draw upon and learn from, adding to the work that’s already been put into the Coop org as a whole.

I’ve been a part of some great things, but this project has easily the potential to be something significantly greater than anything I’ve had the pleasure to be involved within before - it really matters to us you know, I’m actually all-in on this.

But yes, totally agree re the above ‘must have’s’, and we are going as fast as we can (we are two people technically working two days p.w. since last week:). All this should have settled down and will be much clearer by the end of the month, when we are then hoping to have our first set of voting regarding the progress that will have evidently been made by then. Finance issues should be defined and agreed upon before that point though (this aspect is actually super-stressful for me currently if I’m honest, this is heavy real-life stuff with serious implications for my family).

Anyhow (cough cough:) – Very happy to discuss any of this, with anyone, though perhaps better in a separate thread from now on.

Hope these responses have covered some of your questions and look forward to discussing some more (including the wider community too).

Cheers Louis and all the best

burrrata · May 11, 2019, 3:18am

What if instead of the Aragon Cooperative controlling CFDAO funds, the Aragon Cooperative curated a list of CFDAO proposals for ANT holders to vote on on a regular basis?

this would provide the service of screening spam so that the ANT holders are not overwhelmed
it would also encouraging those who create funding proposals to get feedback/support from the Aragon Cooperative, but would also encourage engagement with the broader Aragon community to get feedback and support on proposals
it would cap the influence/bias that a small group could have on the community while simultaneously providing a valuable signal to guide ANT holder decisions

To make this a win/win for the Aragon Cooperative a system could be created that rewards the Cooperative proportional to the amount of curated proposals that ANT holders approve.

A naive method would payout a percentage of a base reward based on the amount of curated proposals that ANT holders agreed with. This could be calculated directly or quadratically.
A more interesting method might be a split between an accumulating base payout per approved proposal multiplied by the % alignment with ANT holders (these could also be direct or quadratic). This would incentivize the Cooperative to curate only proposals that ANT holders will deem valuable, while also encouraging the Cooperative to actively engage with and support the communities ideas to make sure that the maximum number of viable proposals are created.

Overall, the goal is to create a mechanism that incentivizes the Cooperative to engage with the Aragon community to support the creation of proposals that ANT holders agree with. If ANT holders agree with the curation/suggestions of the Cooperative, then there will be a large payout. If ANT holders disagree with the curation/suggestions of the Cooperative, then there will be a small payout. A mechanism like this would align incentives in a positive-sum game between funding proposal creators, the Aragon Cooperative, and all ANT holders.

To make this more concrete, let’s look at some examples:

Basic model: a fixed total reward paid out as a % of the alignment between the Cooperative’s curation and ANT holder votes.

ANT holders vote to fund 5 of 10 potential proposals, which includes the 4 supported by the Cooperative. This means that the Cooperative was 4/5 in alignment with ANT holders. The Cooperative would receive 4/5 of any potential reward.
ANT holders vote to fund 2 of the 10 proposals, which includes 2 that the Cooperative supported. The Cooperative is 2/4 in alignment with ANT holders. The Cooperative would receive 2/4 of any potential reward.

To incentivize community engagement and active participation you can make the payout be an accumulation of all aligned payouts multiplied by the % of alignment. In the above examples this would look like:

ANT holders vote to fund 5 of the 10 proposals, which includes the 4 supported by the Cooperative. This means that the Cooperative was 4/5 in alignment with ANT holders. The Cooperative would receive rewards for curating 4 proposals (simple addition or quadratic curve) multiplied by 4/5 (the alignment % with ANT holders).
ANT holders vote to fund 2 of the 10 proposals, which includes 2 that the Cooperative supported. The Cooperative is 2/4 in alignment with ANT holders. The Cooperative would receive rewards for curating 2 proposals (simple addition or quadratic curve) multiplied by 2/4 (the alignment % with ANT holders).

I hope this makes sense, but if not please let me know and I’ll do my best to explain! Also, if you find errors with this model or have suggestions for improvement I’d love to know

Aaron · May 11, 2019, 5:38pm

Hey guys,
Still catching up on all the discussions and initiatives. It’s really amazing to see how big the Aragon community has grown and the number of teams working on the project

This makes a lot of sense to me. Keeping the CFDAO and the coop more loosely coupled seems more prudent especially at the early stages. The main value add I see the coop bringing are

A. Working with applicants to submit higher quality applications,

B. Reducing the bandwidth demand on ANT holders.

Maybe over time increasing the discretionary power of the coop to directly approve applications as it proves its value

For this to work effectively, the coop done need to be incentivised, however, I also agree with @LouisGrx about being mindful of increasing friction.

How about the CFDAO issuing a fixed fee which would be multiplied by the alignment. So instead of charging applicants, the CFDAO is paying the coop for services rendered which removes the friction for applicants?

burrrata · May 11, 2019, 6:04pm

Yes. That is what I intended here. The budget to reward the Cooperative for curation and community support would come from the CFDAO budget, not from community members who create and submit proposals. This reduces any potential friction for community members to encourage maximum participation. It also rewards the Cooperative for curating and supporting the best proposals.
In the accumulation option, there is a base payout per proposal that accumulates for every proposal that the Cooperative supports that ANT holders also support. The total payout would then be multiplied by the % of alignment (proposals the Cooperative curated divided by what ANT holders actually voted on).

originally I added a note suggesting that the accumulating payout could be quadratic rather than linear, however this could incentivize lots of very small proposals, leading to a very large reward with very little impact. I think initially a simple linear model with X payout per approved proposal multiplied by the % of alignment makes the most sense.

To write this out concretely: C = (P*R) * A

R is the reward for the Cooperative per proposal approved by ANT holders
P is the number of proposals that the Cooperative curated that ANT holders also approved
T is the total number of proposals that ANT holders approved
A is the alignment of the Cooperative’s curation divided by the total proposals that ANT holders supported (P / T)
C is the Cooperative’s total payout per term in this game

LouisGrx · May 13, 2019, 9:12am

Cool mechanism proposal @burrrata! In the short run I’m not very confident that implementing such a logic would have a significant impact on the growth in proposal count. Feels like this kind of mechanism really makes sense once we have a substantial flow of proposals (and therefore value) going through it.

On the other hand I think below is a fair assessment of what is needed from Coop to face the bootsrapping situation we’re facing:

A. I see this very simply as Coop members acting as coordinators to bridge offer (proposals/bounties) and demand (workers).

Receiving proposals for bounties from Aragon teams and also from the outside. Help proposers fill content and format it.
Help proposers find qualified people to undertake the job.

B. ANT holders already approve the CFDAO budget quarterly. Given the stakes of CFDAO proposals (most often pretty low) I’m not sure it makes sense to involve them into these granular decisions. We may be able to reduce the bandwidth demand on ANT holders to 0. I will keep thinking about a system where decisions over CFDAO allocations are made by a group of Coop members.

Overall this hands a lot of decision power to the Coop, but ANT holders still have quarterly control on budget, and internal Coop permissions can be arranged in a way that ensures things are not too centralized. Ex: a group of coop members is designated to execute tasks in A., another larger group of coop members approve the proposals. This relies a lot on the fact that coop members are considered trustworthy.

Julian · May 13, 2019, 4:30pm

Many thanks to everyone who’s weighed in on this so far, really good responses.

I could do with thinking this through some more, will respond properly tomorrow.

I would though like to make something clear, that perhaps I hadn’t made clear enough before (& apologize if the wrong impression had been given…)

As per @light’s original proposal, the initial fee for Coop’s Curation (& assistance in whatever form) will be written into the proposals themselves, so that e.g., if you’d require 1500DAI, we’d then add n(i) DAI onto that initial amount (could also be option of paying costs only ‘if successful’). The applicant is not covering the curation costs out of ‘their own pocket’ as such.

Cheers, and more tomorrow…

light · May 14, 2019, 2:03am

I think the sustainable way to do this would be to charge up front and then have the proposal build in the cost of the fee if otherwise approved. This way “spammers” will be charged the fee even if their proposal fails. And because even if a proposal fails, curation work was still completed and should thus be compensated.

We could use standard language like:

Proposal initial amount is XXXX DAI, and if the Aragon Coop approves this proposal then the final amount will add YYY DAI to reimburse the Aragon Coop curation fee, for a final total of ZZZZ DAI.

Julian · May 15, 2019, 3:45pm

Thanks for the above @light.

I do now wonder whether we’ve ‘fixed’ the spammer issue, as I can’t see any blatantly dodgy proposal getting through with Coop involvement - though of course no system is 100% accurate.

The questions now seem to range over the preferred levels of coop involvement, and these are on a quite substantial scale. I’m actually wary of proposing too much here – we (the Coop’s CFDAO 5-member Working Group), are in place and ready to carry out whatever the wishes of the wider community are for our involvement.

If you don’t mind I’d like to share a couple of interesting comments from the WG (there’s quite a few more too - some top-class discussion has taken place over the last couple of weeks):

That the Coop could provide (paid) mentors for feedback on projects once complete, with the funding rolled into initial proposals (& that such feedback had been incredibly valuable for previous Nestees, for example)
That if the Coop also managed voting on proposals, the WG would curate, and then the wider Coop membership would vote on proposals (+ we need to ensure against conflicts of interest/ as well as general gameability - w. some serious implications for the current pseudo-anonymity of Coop membership [which I like & am loath to have to change too much])
Is there potential for the CFDAO Process to assist with management of possible Bounty’able tasks for Nest/Flock Groups - interfacing with the wider community (which then connects into us having a list of potential people for assisting with things like Hackathon type events, sending people to run workshops, presentations etc.

(amongst many other things - like “when agent app?” ).

So yeah, really happy to let the discussion keep moving on, and we’ll be there to do whatever’s deemed best practice and most agreeable for all…

For full disclosure, the CFDAO Working Group is:
@danielconstantin
@DanielS
@gabi
@Julian
@LouisGrx

DanielS · May 15, 2019, 3:45pm

We could totally use this model and it makes sense from a design and technical perspective.

My only fear is anytime you take people’s money away by slamming a mandatory service fee at the end of the curation resentment quickly builds up at the middle person…

Adding it lump with the Coop budget with approval from AGP holders gives more legitimacy to the Coop as appointed curator but does not solve the spamming issue…

Perhaps a good compromise is a lump sum in the ANV vote and/or a general proposal submission fee that goes to fund the coop, but not an extra success fee deducted from funding.

light · May 16, 2019, 1:31am

These are interesting ideas that could have merit, but for the purposes of my proposal I want to keep the focus on the issue “we have a vulnerability in the DAO that needs patched if we want it to continue operating productively”. So while these discussions are worth having, and maybe even here on this thread, I personally will stay focused on solving this problem and answering any questions Coop members may have about how I am suggesting they can help solve it.

I’m not seeing how this is better than what my proposal suggests, which is a proposal submission fee that proposal authors can optionally add into their final proposal to get it reimbursed if ultimately approved by ANT holders. (Also not sure what this “extra success fee deducted from funding” is a reference to.)

I think adding the proposal fee up front like this best aligns interests all around: spammers get hit with a penalty that disincentivizes further spamming, the Coop gets paid for their review time, and legit proposal authors are more likely to put in the work required to get their proposals approved which could make deciding easier for voters.

DanielS · May 16, 2019, 11:41am

My bad, didn’t get it was opt-in. Will upvote proposal!

Julian · May 16, 2019, 11:55am

Well, maybe hold on a moment here.

@light - If the aim of the updated proposal is solely to deter spamming, no spammer is going to tick the option of paying a % of the proposal to us if they have a choice.

For me, optionality isn’t an option.
(and how’s that for a badly parsed sentence:)
This seemed reasonably sorted, ie

We seem to be going somewhat backwards …

lkngtn · May 16, 2019, 4:21pm

To be honest, I feel like there may be volunteers willing to “curate” proposals especially if the role is pretty much just preventing spam. I think the expectation is that the role would be a bit like forum/subreddit moderation.

It makes sense to me the the Coop would fill that role as it creates a point of contact between the coop organization and the community, but I’m not sure it makes sense to formalize a curation fee into the the CFDAO and we haven’t even had a real issue with spam.

There are additional services which are mentioned in the OP which are not currently a part of the CFDAO scope which could be valuable ti the community and represent more significant effort than could be reasonably expected without some sort of compensation…

Specifically:

and

These promotional and accountability measures feel like something that should be formalized and proposed with an associated budget for the scope of work. I don’t think trying to fund this by taking a cut of proposal fees makes much sense, Aragon/ANT holders are footing the bill one way or the other and adding proposal fees seems to create unnecessary mental and logistical overhead… It seems more reasonable to clearly defined the role/responsibilities/tasks and then come up with a reasonable budget for performing that work.

It also makes me wonder if we should consider this as a separate initiative from the CFDAO. We could decide to no longer fund the CFDAO (via an AGP) and instead fund a Coop Community Fund proposal with a different set of proposal requirements/expectations. Before the next AGP round the coop could decide to submit a CFDAO proposal for some of the current funding and test drive the new Coop Community Fund process. (this would be a good way to show how it works ahead of formalizing it in the next AGP process).

Additionally by the next AGP vote there may be alternative spam filtering solutions available. Specifically 1hive has been brainstorming what we might want to build after we finish our redemptions app, and the idea of a forwarder that requires a user to either burn, deposit, or lock tokens for some time period before being able to perform an action like “create a vote” is a likely candidate. So it may make sense to use that for proposal curation for the CFDAO and have the Coop simply coordinate promotion/engagement/follow-up accountability, without having to take on a privileged role in the proposal process.

burrrata · May 16, 2019, 6:02pm

Oh! I didn’t get that either. Also my bad lol. If it’s an optional fee then that greatly enhances the attractiveness of the proposal

It makes a lot of sense for the Cooperative (or any other organization) to use the current CFDAO process to request funds for any services they propose providing to the CFDAO. This seems simple and logical. If this included curating CFDAO proposals for ANT holders to vote on I would support that. This seems like it would help out greatly until something more automatic and long term could be implemented.

Having humans manually review CFDAO proposals will not solve the potential spam loophole at scale, but I think that loophole will soon be closed as the Aragon app ecosystem evolves. Once there’s an application that solves this problem, I think it makes sense to add it into the CFDAO.

light · May 16, 2019, 6:39pm

To be clear: under my proposal, it’s mandatory for the proposal author to pay the fee, it’s optional for them to request a “refund” by building in the cost of the fee to their proposal.

Example:

Proposal to create an Aragon GIF
Cost: 500 DAI
Coop fee: 25 DAI
Total proposal cost, if approved by the Coop: 525 DAI

This is a perfectly fine counter-proposal, provided we have volunteers lined up to help. It’s kind of like forum moderation, just with a bit higher stakes, hence my willingness to attach a monetary component to it.