Core DAO Operations - Funding proposal

Proposal Information

Proposal summary:

Request for funding to incentivise and reward new contributors towards DAO operations tasks, primarily through bounty mechanics

Proposal description:

The proposal outlines :

  • The desire to prepare the Aragon DAO operations to be self-managed by the community through a short term activity of stewardship
  • The need to fund a set of operational tasks via bounties that will allow the emergence of a truly self-managing structure that supports this ownership
  • An explanation of how these tasks will be iterated across 2 week blocks starting with a set of defined bounties, then emerging bounties, and then a move away from a reliance on bounties to mechanisms that support ongoing contributions
  • And finally a request for funding of ~ $64,000 USDC to reward community members for completion of these incentivised tasks

Proposal Rationale:

Currently, the DAO team representing Aragon is small and stretched. Within the Community, there is a sense that opportunities are limited and work is not rewarded. The asymmetry of these two positions and the paradox can be simply addressed by bringing the talents and gifts of our community to core operational tasks of the DAO. Aragon will prioritise, incentivise and reward contributions for the scaling of core operations within the AN DAO.

We have collected from core contributors, current DAO projects and from some guilds a set of operational bounties linked further in this document.

These bounties will help transition ambassadors toward becoming core contributors and partners in the progressive decentralisation of Aragon - creating a strong foundation in which operational contributions can prepare us to scale guilds and sub-DAOs at some future point.

We expect that as bounties are completed, new bounties and coordination needs will emerge. So our second request is for funding to steward and coordinate with these contributors to iterate on the next set of bounties as work is completed. Finally, we expect to start to coalesce around increased teaming and collaboration as a mechanism to deliver on the work outlined, and so will at this point explore how we will leverage Coordinape and/or other collaborative incentive mechanisms to further reinforce a collaborative, collective culture.

Currently, there are real and perceived roadblocks to this, of which one is the process of attaining funding for tasks within the AN DAO structure. This proposal seeks to remove this limitation by securing a budget that allows for more flexible contributions to the AN DAO and for us to build in an evolutionary capacity - starting small, learning and growing together, figuring things out as we go and setting a tone for how we want AN DAO to operate in future.

For the community, we wish to say that now is the opportunity to meaningfully contribute to the Aragon DAO as we steward the core operations of the DAO to the community. We look forward to the evolution of the Aragon DAO and working as a partner with you to create a strong, collaborative and empowering place for you to realise your potential and work with us to realise the ambitions of the Manifesto. Bringing your talents into the daily operations of the DAO will undoubtedly increase the number of active DAOs built on Aragon, and provide a more efficient system for utilising the DAOs capital to help any number of intermediate DAO builders to create the next 10,000 DAOs.

Limitations of any benefits mentioned above:

The limitation is simply that we do not know exactly what can and will be delivered within the timeframe, and how effective this approach will be. This is comforting to us, because we reject the premise of being able to have all the answers upfront in a complex and evolving system.

The financial proposal process observed so far has required a clear definition of what work will be undertaken and by who, which feels inflexible and unreasonable for a DAO at its genesis stage. Here, we want to take the first steps to create an evolutionary organisation: humbly starting small, prepared to iterate and learn, and adapting quickly and effectively to find the optimal path to achieving our goals together. We have scoped a financial proposal which we think uses simple logic, and would ask the exec sub-DAO to view this optimistically and then keep us accountable, so that together we can learn how to bring both freedom and accountability to future funding requests.

Expected duration or delivery date (if applicable):

This proposal is made for a duration of 6 weeks. Funding is to cover three 2 week blocks, with blocks 2 and 3 at this stage providing for continued operations of earlier work and or newly defined work that will enhance the operations of the AN DAO. We also expect that if successful, it is likely to be the first of many future proposals toward the ongoing operations of the AN DAO by its Community Contributors.

Team Information

****Ben Perez - Aragon DAO steward (Aragon Core Head of Talent) - responsible for stewarding these tasks to community ownership

Alex Clay - (Aragon Core Network Ops Lead) - responsible for operational execution within the DAO

Taylor Rawlings - (Aragon Core Community Manager) - representing the community

Lion - Aragon Ambassador and designer of the bounty board enabling this work

We plan to work as stewards of this proposal and faithfully submit it on behalf of the wider Aragon Community & Ambassadors.

Note: Members of Aragon core team listed above will not be compensated as this sits within the scope of their respective roles.

Skills and previous experience in related or similar work:

The team brings previous experience in DAOs, organisation design, legal, operations, VC and transparency. Please review their current and historical contributions via:

Ben:

Alex:

Tay:

Lion:

Funding Information

Amount of ANT requested: 14,254 ANT (equivalent 64,143 USDC at 24th Jan 2022)

Escrow where funds shall be transferred: Greet.me shall be the default Escrow provider.

To ensure bounties are available for timely payment to contributors upon completion of operational bounties we ask that total funds of $64,143 be provided to an operations multisig account. We propose the use of Gnosis Multisig with 3/4 signers, so that funds can be allocated to pay for tooling (as these are identified) including Coordinape and or tipping tools for use in distribution of funds to community

More detailed description of how funds will be handled and used (in USDC):

Budget breakdown:

  • Request 1: Weeks 1-2
  • Request 2: Weeks 3-4
    • Fund ongoing and anticipated new bounties at 1.25x Request 1: $20,375
    • Milestone will be scoped and communicated prior to specified weeks
  • Request 3: Weeks 5-6
    • Fund anticipated new bounties at 1.25x Request 2, and transition of some bounties to collaborative incentive mechanism (Coordinape): $25,468
    • Milestone will be scoped and communicated prior to specified weeks
  • Request 4:
    • Expected Adhoc funds for purchase of tool subscriptions (i.e. bots), DAO access, plus other TBC: $2000

Funding request total: $64,143

Risks to execution that we see are:

  • Contributor contributions are unpredictable: The Ambassador program has hundreds of individuals but we are unsure how many are lost to Aragon given recent dormancy and missteps
  • Contribution scopes are unpredictable: We have used best judgment but scoped bounties involve complexity and unknown-unknowns as we dive deep into these operational areas for the first time
  • Executional risk: We will endeavour to be a force for living values of decentralisation and not being a central point of failure or bottleneck. As such, the ability to meet deadlines and deliver is also somewhat unpredictable as we try to humbly learn as we go.

Ownership, licensing, and/or control of any outputs:

We expect most outputs to align closely with the AN DAO operations and as such ownership, licensing or IP questions to be limited. We will advise the ESD on progress bi-weekly and cover any such topics as they arise.

6 Likes

So stoked to see this proposal, love the direction this is moving for community contributors and I know it is as much a labour of love as it is part of your respective roles. Thanks @b3n @Tayy @AClay @lion917 for building these opportunities to the community.

Question, as I pushed back on this with the tech support proposal. It was decided, in conjunction with members of this team, when seeking funding for the Executive Sub Dao that we would request a budget based on making payment split 50:50 ANT:USDC.

This 50:50 split was intended, at least from my perspective as an author of that proposal, to empower the community by distributing governance tokens, while also providing a stable coin portion in recognition that people exchange tokens for fiat to pay IRL bills.

I am happy to fund this excellent proposal on the basis of a 50:50 ANT: USDC split of the requested $64,143 with ANT I believe priced at distribution based on the rolling 60-day average.

Idk how this will work with the bounty model but it is the funding we have access to. My suggestion is that small bounties be paid in ANT with some larger ones in USDC to balance the scale.

Agree, complex and evolving and would welcome your input for the next season of funding to improve the ESD request and better support interim funding for community initiatives and contributors.

2 Likes

Thanks for the conditional support. The request is reasonable and we will take guidance from the ESD on the appropriate split. We also want to get ANT in hands of contributors, but recognise the cost consequences of this split are essentially borne by the contributors which becomes increasingly hard to justify while ANT remains tied to Layer 1. We have allocated a bounty for analysis of how we might activate an alternative chain such as Polygon for payments, and hope this person can work closely with the ESD to find a solution

2 Likes

Regarding request 1 - Thoe funds are for creating the board, or already for some of its Bounties?

On top of that, would be good to have an idea of what are the CORE bounties that we expect this request to deliver. Meaning, if at least those are completed, we consider the overall initiative to have succeeded.

1 Like

Thanks Ramon!

On point one -

These are for the bounties included in the board at inception. There is one bounty within the board that has been assigned as bounty Board setup and maintenance of the bounty board.
On point two -

In my opinion if we manage to allocate xx% of the bounties within this would be a success. I don’t think we should not be chasing specific bounties as we also want the best individuals to take them on and provide there expertise which may take more time on certain bounties. Happy to hear thoughts from others on what success may look like.

1 Like

Thanks for the proposal team.
@AClay sorry I still don’t quite understand your response to Ramon. So the 16.3k are for the already assigned and unassigned bounties on the board, one of which is the creation of the board? It’s not adding up for me mathematically?

Furthermore I really agree with Ramon that it would be nice to have some scope to these bounties. We can easily still keep it flexible.

I think it’s REALLY important that data is gathered so the project/community can create some precedent to work off of as we move forward. Especially as members come and go who may be leading certain initiatives. Otherwise confusion will ensue as proposals are created, bounties created and completed, etc. i.e. cost, time, skill, requirements, output, success, etc.

1 Like

No problem, the majority of the bounties are per week and there are some that are multiple individuals eg two individuals being paid $100 per week to manage telegram. This should add up to 16.3k for phase one.

On data, we will have different metrics for each of the bounties, as each will be different and can report on them based on the work being completed eg using telegram as an example again the bounty states: Spend an hour a day in Telegram providing moderation and coordinating with other teams to get answers. Probably add a few (5-10) comments each day to drive the conversation. Run social media campaigns. This example will provide 3 measurable metrics of the bounty that can then be merged in to a full report on all bounties that have been paid out in say that month. I will let others comment on the metrics and tracking that can be included as well.

Hope this helps

2 Likes

Agree @Anthony.Leuts

I’m happy to help where I can in this first sprint for developing success and performance metrics around specific bounties. Given this is only six weeks I feel like measuring community involvement as a % of bounty uptake is a solid measure of success.

Guiding life quote

“…for the things we need to learn before we do them, we learn by doing…” Aristotle

And given this is a community project would be great for contributors taking up bounties to be involved in the metrics conversation. Provided this is a conversation at the outset of each bounty, by the end of six weeks the team should have the data requested.

I think there’s a pattern here in my responses to ESD funding requests - that contributors should be involved and rewarded for participating in the development of DAO process’ as that is how we get to agreed strategic alignment.

3 Likes

I am really happy to read this proposal which goes in the correct direction of onboarding new talent with precise tasks.

The content of the bounties can be easily find on the notion page (Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.). They all seem very useful for the AN DAO. And I am sure that new talent and new forms of committment will tremendously augment the output and the value of our community.

Thanks a lot to the proponents for the time spent in preparing the proposal. It seems particularly noteworthy to me that @b3n @AClay @Tayy and @lion917 have acted without setting an amount for the organizational aspects of the operations connected to the bounties. Even if the amount of work will be huge!

4 Likes

This is going to change a lot of things and get the ball rolling quickly in the right direction eliminating a lot of friction.

The only thing I did not take away from this is how/where can someone from the community follow up on its status, output, success.

4 Likes

We hope so. Re other metric related requests above, we have a bounty specific to metrics which we hope will advance our ability to provide evidence of progress and learning for others. For the duration of the 6 weeks under the funding request, we will provide a bi-weekly report on status/completion as part of approving payments

5 Likes

I love the proposal and will wholeheartedly support it if there is enough budget across Main DAO and ESD budget that is not already committed to approved proposals (@AClay can we get a confirmation on this)

3 Likes

@fartunov I can confirm there is budget available in the ESD for the full proposal.

Reference: Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

1 Like

Hey, I can see there is about $160k spear across Main DAO and ESD.
Is all of that going from the Main DAO into ESD and how much of that is not committed to proposals that are going to be completed (If I understand correctly the deployment of Court on Arbitrum was approved but will not be executed)?

1 Like

I am good with that answer, considering there are quite a few $100 bounties, and paying in ANT or a split for such amounts feels taxing on contributors. For larger amounts the split makes sense and I am happy with the proposal team to make the call on where it makes sense to split or not.

1 Like

Contingent on ESD having enough funds that are not committed to already approved proposals I am in support

@lee0007 what’s your final verdict?
@daniel-ospina your thoughts?

Strong support for this proposal.

3 Likes

Hi,

I am writing to check if the proposal is still open. We would love to offer a solution to this.

Regards

Just for future reference for the team here @Anthony.Leuts you might like this too KPI Sub-DAO Structure — pet3rpan

1 Like

Wonderful, thank you! @lee0007

1 Like