Purpose: S2/S3 Financial Proposal
Status: Proposal Discussion v1.0-1.1
Authors: @brent @alibama @SpectraCryptoVerse @Carla78 @barukimang
Reviewers: @lee0007 @ramon @Shawncubbedge @Anthony.Leuts @Ricktik6 @fartunov @AClay
Final Version: Financial Proposal: Aragon dTech Season 2
Proposal Summary:
A proposal to secure $363,000 funding for the Aragon dTech team for the next 8 months of operation for Technical Support of all Aragon products via Discord, technical forum, and help tickets, creation and maintenance of documentation including video documentation, management of a Bug Bounty program, quality assurance testing, maintenance of existing Aragon codeset, and outreach for 3rd party integration with Aragon products.
Proposal description:
The Aragon dTech team will focus on the following initiatives:
- Continue technical support services via Hub Spot, Discord, and forum.
- Technical forum management, moderation and response to community questions.
- The creation of MAS (Maintenance as a service) within dTech which will pilot an initiative to support Aragon product software, assist with bug resolution, keep code libraries up to date, and monitor industry changes that effect current products. This pilot will meet regularly with the product team and share the same source of information (Jira) for transparency.
- Collaborate with the development community to become involved in the technical aspects of Aragon products/add-ons and provide feedback to the product team who can weigh risks and viability of partnerships. This includes collaborating with 3rd party organizations such as Dework, Otoco, WallId, Raincards, and Blossom labs.
- Enable Spanish support and assist community and growth teams on Latin American focuses when those needs arise. This process will serve as a template for additional languages assuming additional languages are deemed viable to Aragon. Currently, three members of dTech speak fluent Spanish.
- Continue management of the current Aragon user documentation and continue working with the development team for the expansion of documentation in Stoplight for new products. In addition dTech, will continue with Miragon 3S (the DAO education series).
- Liaising with other guilds within Aragon to execute technical aspects for Web3 tool research, decentralized experiments, process research and testing. This includes helping with products such as Dework, gnosis safe, and other 3rd party tools which the team has knowledge of or the ability to research.
- Product testing and quality assurance of new products prior to release. Test user stories set forth by product team, ensure UI/UX usability, find and report possible risks back to product and development teams.
- Continue bug documentation and management of a bug bounty program if such program is approved by the DAO. A proposal is currently being developed by dTech for this initiative.
- Creating and reporting over technical bounties assessing appropriate compensation and timelines while ensuring bounties are within the scope of dTech. Bounties help grow the community and give the guild resiliency.
- Bounties may be given to contributing members for the following focuses
- Assist with English support questions to further reduce response time.
- Testing and research of current and future versions of Aragon’s products and integrations.
- Multilingual support in discord and Hub Spot.
- Assistance with MAS with help from the community if needed.
- Bounties may be given to contributing members for the following focuses
- Set a standard template and protocol, using automation where possible, for monthly reporting on dTech proposals.
Proposal Rationale (How this initiative is adding value to the Aragon Network):
Technical engagement with the community, technical support, and product integration enables organizations to use Aragon products which they otherwise would struggle to comprehend and deploy. A core team dedicated to the support and expansion of existing and future products ensures Aragon’s footprint in the decentralized governance space. Without these technical support services, users will have a high barrier to entry setting up a DAO with Aragon’s products.
Furthermore, dTech will ensure that viable web3 products consider possible integration with Aragon and that the current Aragon codeset stays up to date.
Limitations and risks:
- Team members leave who are focusing on an important dTech initiative.
- Other team members who shadow can fill in those responsibilities until a replacement is found.
- We start Spanish support and no Spanish comes in being a waste of recourses.
- Any Spanish support role will be required to also provide English support removing the need for adding additional resources.
- Senior level tasks are presented to MAS (Maintenance as a service).
- The team will collaborate with the development team for a resolution passing the task to them if requested, use bounty money and network with the community to help find a resolution.
- A bug bounty program does not get approved by the AN DAO in the future
- dTech will work with other guilds to define how to proceed with bug discovery beyond reporting via help tickets and discord.
Duration and Deliverables:
- Project duration is 8 months however, if delegate voting is in place by the 4th month, an additional 4 months will be contingent on delegate votes.
- Each month the guild will publish a report detailing the achievements accomplished over that month in the forum which identifies the status of each deliverable.
- Success will be defined by the minimum criteria:
- Average support tickets replied to within 16 hours and resolved within 24 hours. Additional metrics of support will be included in the monthly report.
- Support setup for Spanish (Discord and Help tickets) and results communicated to community and growth teams. Results shall be used to consider French language support.
- Will report status of third party integration initiatives by adding engaged organizations to the CRM, report the number of engaged third parties in monthly reports and their status and collaborate with product team on possible projects as a result of these 3rd Party initiatives.
- MAS, Maintenance as a Service, will use Jira for all issues and collaborate with the development team with status calls every two weeks. Monthly reports will contain a status report of issues that have been resolved and which are currently in progress.
- Open dTech strategy calls will continue to be available twice a week for anyone to join and participate in the evolution of dTech’s activities.
- Miragon 3s will complete a minimum of 1-2 videos per month with a total of a minimum of 10 over the proposal timeframe. dTech will report total number of views for each of these videos monthly.
- Complete full product testing of new Aragon products delivered to dTech within a minimum of 45 days.
- Contributor bounties will be reported monthly including the time and cost involved. Additionally all bounties will be listed in Dework.
- Maintain engagement with current long term contributors and aim to Increase contributor engagement with a focus on contributors with programming and additional language skills.
- Propose a Bug Bounty program to the AN DAO.
Team Information
The dTech team is fluid as additional contributing members may join from the community and others will leave. Some will be moved into a core contributor role as the need arises and dedication is demonstrated. All members shadow each other to ensure deliverables are met however, each initiative has a lead.
Current dTech team:
- anson parker#4296 Core Member 3rd Party Integration lead
- barukimang#3560 Core Member, MaS & Miragon lead
- Carla78#9313 Core Member, Documentation lead
- Spectra CV#6148 Core Member, Budget-Bounty-Admin lead
- Brent Russell, Brént#008 - Core Member, Customer Support lead
- Camel Pavel#1004 Contributor - Spanish Support lead
- aakansha#9163 Contributor
- tony.stark#5145 Contributor
The current 5 core contributors have been a part of dTech since its inception in November 2021 and have completed 2 seasons via proposals with the ESD. Additionally, 3 long term contributors have joined over the course of the previous two seasons. dTech has met all deliverables under budget in its previous two seasons and has also provided more value beyond the deliverables listed in previous proposals.
dTech Season 0 End of Season Report
dTech Season 1 End of Season Report
Strategic Alignment
The Aragon dTech Guild will lead with user feedback and data for the product team but will follow supporting all products and services developed. Additionally, dTech will yield to processes and structures put in place by other guilds which have received funding from the AN DAO such as operations and financing.
- Aragon dTech frees up engineers’ time which in the past was consumed on supporting users instead of developing.
- Aragon supports business development initiatives prescribed by the DAO Experts program serving as technical engineers and advocates of its growth
- Supporting technical operations of all teams that is not otherwise covered by an Aragon devops team.
- Providing user feedback and possible industry tools to the product team for a better product fit.
- Providing technical documentation and communication from our unique perspective as leaders in community engagement in Discord and support tickets.
Funding Information
This proposal aims to secure funding for operations totaling $363,000 in USDC and ANT token.
Approximate allocation of funds and recourses over the 8 months per initiative (Includes compensation):
Technical Support _________ $140,000 ___ 38.57%
Spanish Support__________ $6,000 ______ 1.65%
3rd Party Integrations______$17,000 _____ 4.68%
Miragon 3S ______________$27,000 _____ 7.44%
MAS ____________________$90,000 ___ 24.79%
Technical Documentation ___$50,000 ____ 13.77%
Administration ____________$8,000 _____ 2.20%
Quality Assurance _________$15,000 ____ 4.13%
Bug Bounty Program _______ $3,000 _____ 0.83%
Education _______________ $6,000 _____ 1.65%
Misc ___________________ $1,000 _____ 0.28%
Compensation
- Total core Aragon dTech member compensation of $37500/month. Broken down to a yearly salary per dTech member is $90,000/yr. The math for this is ($37500 monthly compensation / 5 Core Contributors) * 12 Months = $90k
- $7,000 monthly for bounties to be delivered to non-core members (Contributors and other community members)
For comparison, I am including Glassdoor salary estimates based on Charlotte, NC which has a cost of living below the US national average. These estimates include the value of employee benefits which a guild contributor will have to provide for themselves out of their compensation as they are essentially contractors.
- Technical Writer $98,917
- Technical Researcher $112,313
- Technical Support Specialist $75,164
- Technical support Engineer $108,242
- Software Engineer $116,258
- Videographer $90,726
- Solidity Developer $90,408
- QA Analyst $100,406
A note on education: The allotted $6000 is be used over the length of the proposal for advanced technical training and education for dTech members surrounding governance tools and or Ethereum and L2 ecosystems. At the time of writing we have discussed with Blossom labs (creators of EVMCrispr, @sembrestels) possible technical training on creating Aragon add-ons and other advances technical training aimed at the Aragon platform. Educational spend will be approved by either @AClay or @Ricktik6 beforehand and not be the sole decision of dTech.
Fund disbursements for this proposal will be made by the finance guild and dTech will follow DAO finance procedures set forth by the finance guild. All unused funds will be rolled over into future approved dTech proposals or returned to the DAO at the end of the proposal time period.
In the event the finance guild is unable to provide compensation services (Currently there is no approved ongoing proposal by the finance guild) dTech will store the funds in a gnosis safe with 7 signers, 2 of them being @AClay and @Ricktik6.