Finance Squad Proposal

I will start by saying that I have not followed the discussion too deeply. I only want to note that some of the guilds are suffocating without funding.

dTech has never received payment on time for one reason or another. Mainly due to govern issues or waiting on a signature. This finance guild will create a role that can focus on solving these issues.

Currently it is the 20th of April and dTech has not been compensated for March, nor has any of the bounty contributors. This is the same with onboarding and ops. Some of this compensation is from the beginning of March. This has led to disappearing contributors and lack of interest in taking up new bounties. If compensation is not executed properly progress stops, interest and participation goes dormant and Aragon stagnantes.

I strongly urge to get this proposal resolved so guilds can focus on executing tasks and not worrying about compensation.

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Do I understand correctly those issues will be resolved?
These sound a lot like process and operational issues rather than financial. As the proposal is almost double recommended length, I sincerely apologize for not going over all the details. However, for us to decide, we would ideally want to see the impact of the guild over the season.

We identified a major pain point for the ESD at the beginning of Season 0: the lack of transparency around current financial standing, which is still unresolved. Yet we are committing on other things.

Ideally, the outcome of this season should be a streamlined set-up that does not require someone working full time on preparing reports…it’s mostly on-chain data so a script should resolve this (maybe there is an existing tool to resolve some of this.

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100% agree on the issue. I am not seing how the proposal is adressing the pain point. It’s a combination of tasks and symptom treatments, but doesn’t seem to be a solution to the underlying problems

Please adhere to the 750 word limit on funding requests

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These are all issues that are being resolved in the proposal. Rick has pulled together the prioritisation on bounties/tasks for the season to try and make it clearer what is being achieved. Solving the pain points and creating a robust process is a priority 1 for the season. Automating the reporting has been set as a priority 2.

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These issues will be resolved as we re-organize the payment process (which I am currently working on this week to outline on Notion)

As you stated it is indeed more a process and operation issue than a financial one.
In order to be transparent on the reward payments it is necessary to have a process where every stakeholder (Guilds, ESD, and Finance Guild) is aware of their role (respectively: report to ESD & Finance in time, Assess the reports in time, prepare the payments in time).

It is also not our goal to work full time on reports, but focus right now on getting these reports properly (and therefore provide transparency). If the new reporting processes are working then we will look into automating that process, as indeed that is the ideal situation.

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Hey, do you need any help on the accounting side of the finance guild proposal? I may be able to help with some of the work. I’m a Ph.D. In accounting and statistics with 7 years of experience in Big 4 and 3 more years of experience in public companies reporting to SEC. I worked with both US GAAP and IFRS standards, SOX compliance, etc. if this is helpful here in any way. Please let me know if I can get involved:)

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Hey!
Thanks for reaching out!
Lets have a chat, could you contact me via Discord: ricktik6#0196

Hey @Ricktik6 after reviewing the proposal again the value adds are starting to pop up. While the proposal is overly wordy and makes our job as ESD substantially more difficult than it should be I hope you would be able to submit a better one next time. That being said, let’s try to boil down the main deliverables into bullets that can help me @lee0007 and @daniel-ospina more accurately understand what will be achieved during the season:

  • Design and “enforce” a consistent reporting/approval/payment cadence across guilds through a well-organized process (well-organized means someone can quickly orient themselves on what’s going on and follow/execute the process, not lengthy wordy explanations - it should be clear who can schedule payments from which wallet, on what basis, etc.)
  • Have functional contributor payments for USDC denominated payments on Polygon

Are the two bullets above an accurate representation of the scope because if it is, it’s something I can get on board with?

NB: @AClay we have the umbrella proposal and the EVM crisper proposals approved. How/when are we initiating payments?

Comment below on the other discrete deliverables

  • 1st of May, deliver visualisation of token flow to aid transparency into the grants funding rated 8/10 or higher by community polling - not sure what this one is. If it’s about the pictogram PDFs, they were more confusing than helpful.
  • Prepare an overview of all contributors per guild (and their addresses) within a week after the guild is approved for funding by ESD (to get contributors paid in time) - sounds reasonable
  • 1st June, Deliver the Finance notion page, that will be rated by the community on: transparency, easy to understand, helpful (aim for 8/10 at community polling) - So far it is looking really good but just want to clarify something. The payment process should be in the main wiki somewhere - consult with @lion917 but the “how do I get paid” bit should be relatively easy to find, not somewhere deep in the finance guild space. Finance guild space can link in there as “one of our outputs”
  • 1 July, Initiate the necessary change in the Charter, to increase efficiency in the payment process - this basically means remove the payment process from the charter, or am I missing something?
  • 15th of August (after last payment cycle), deliver an overarching AN DAO S1 Finacne Report, which provides an overview of the financial status of AN DAO, a look back on S1 and an outlook to S2 (will be rated by the community and aim for 8/10)
  • The really basic transparency request by the ESD is still pending as per my last message - would be great to get a commitment on that being completed in the beginning of May

Looking forward to getting this out of the gate ASAP and apologies for the late response.

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Hi Ivan,

First of all, thank you for your feedback.

The two bullets that you mentioned are indeed the main scope for S1.

Great to hear that the ESD has approved already 2 initiatives!
I will also discuss the new payment & reporting process with the guilds.
If they have worked on / finished deliverables (in April) that are approved by the ESD, they should receive payments for that.

In terms of the basic transparency request by ESD, I already made a first draft on the ESD & Main DAO financial position which you can find here: Financial Position - Google Sheets

Lets align on this as well later today during the ESD office hours

In addition, I will also align with Lion regarding the Notion board.

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Can maybe take this to discord as to not distract.

EVM - Once per month based on deliverables so I would imagine first in April/Mays payment run
Umbrella - First payment of $3000 was paid in the last payment.

Thanks,

Alex

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1/3 ESD Approved: Based on the updates to the proposal and conversation to date here in the forum and elsewhere @Ricktik6 thank you for your proactive efforts to address our many questions. I am stoked that @AClay will have your talent and support moving forward to develop financial transparency. I look forward to working alongside this team following majority/unanimous support by the ESD cc @fartunov @daniel-ospina

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@Ricktik6 the proposal has my approval

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I have requested on several occasions for transparency that finance 1) post to the forum a summary of the contributor rewards payments by the 16th each month so that contributors can cross-check payment amounts and 2) provide a formal dispute process should they have any concerns. I’ve seen these issues raised in Discord and we need a standard operating procedure to track these errors (problem and solution) in order to continuously improve @Ricktik6 Can you please include this as a Priority 1 deliverable for 15 May.

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Done!

Simmilar comemnt that I made to the Growth Team proposal. This seems like a solid direction but the ideal would be for the funding to come from the Main DAO as the ESD was not setup to handle large scale recurring funding for teams.
The ESD was intended for quick grants to seed fund initatives or exceptional grants that might be needed.

As such, I’d invite you to submit this proposal to the Main DAO and I’m happy to provide guidance on the process if needed.

The proposal already has 2/3 approval in the ESD so it will move ahead (the above is to clarify my position).

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Season 1 Report

@daniel-ospina @lee0007 @fartunov

Deliverables

  • Prepared a format for the income and expense report that will be posted on the 16th of each month (In Progress, monthly recurring)
  • Maintain and coordinate reworked processes (In Progress, monthly recurring)
  • Prepared a format for the contributor rewards that will be posted on the 16th of each month (In progress, monthly recurring)
  • Prepared steps for monthly payment rewards (Aragon govern, Writing a new Multisig process, helping guilds with reporting, and raising awareness)
  • Restructuring and implementing the new payment process (In progress, will fulfill after a successful first pay cycle)
  • Prepared a payment dispute resolution form (Complete, see: Dispute resolution )

Funding Request

  • Amount Contributor rewards ($3.000)
    • Monthly contributor reward payments bounty ($1.500)
    • Payment reconciliation form ($500)
    • Preparing format Monthly income and expense report ($1.000)
    • (Worked most of the time on the payment process, that bounty will be paid out after the first successful payment cycle)
  • USDC 70% Total
  • ANT 30% Total

End of the month report (for Guilds)

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ESD General Meeting 2 May 2022 UTC 1900: Confirming majority support for ESD S1 funding.

Current Statement on the limitations of ESD funding

This proposal falls within the current limitations and we look forward to supporting Main DAO proposals in the future.

cc @fartunov @daniel-ospina

As all ESD team members have not yet had the chance to review April Reporting (seven days’ notice) a commitment was made by members in attendance to progress this asynch and will seek clarification if required to finalise the decision within 7 days.

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1/3 Approved: April funding release based on the above reported deliverables.

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2/3 approved

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