Financial Proposal: ESD S1 Budget Request for Discretionary Strategic & Governance Funding

1. Summary: Strategic Governance Funding

The Executive Sub DAO (ESD) requests funding according to section 5 (5) (e) Aragon Network Charter of 7200 ANT / 60k USD equivalent for AN DAO discretionary, strategic governance development from April 1 2022 until 31 July 2022.

This proposal sets out fixed funding so that the ESD can more effectively execute the powers as granted by section 6 (2) (a) of the Aragon Network Charter:

  1. Pay members of other Sub-DAOs
  2. Make grants to other community members at their discretion, providing;
  • such transactions are disclosed transparently on the Aragon Forum website.
  • an Escrow is used to hold funds until the completion of the agreed-upon deliverable.
  • the deliverable has been fully assessed by the members of the ESD
  • the funds are used grow and maintain the Aragon Network
  1. Pay suppliers of the Aragon network, providing such transactions are disclosed transparently on the Aragon Forum.

This financial proposal is in addition to

These proposals should be read in conjunction with the ESD End of Season Report March 2022 which highlights that the ESD needs to increase transparency, ensure our own accountability and improve community engagement.

2. Situation/Rationale

Season 0
We faced a number of challenges to meet the Charter mandate, as highlighted in the End of Season Report. It is worth highlighting here again that the ESD was only able to meet the above mandate thanks to integral help from @AClay @mheuer. Many contributors have gone above and beyond their remit to help AN DAO deliver Season 0 and this request for fixed finding is to help compensate strategic contributions.

Season 1 (S1)

Charter Adaptation: with @AClay enabling support, we are looking to

  1. fund a step change process to the Aragon Network Charter, to better serve the needs of our growing community. We seek to expand the ESD membership from three to five members, as well as a number of other changes as advised by the Compliance Committee. All changes will be undertaken via community vote on Main DAO proposals.

  2. to supplement the Charter we need to build out operational standards and will look to fund the development of forum posts to provide clear and transparent guidance for DAO processes i.e multisig rules, Request for Proposal (RFP)

We request 10k for season 1 to reward 500 USDC to authors of supported Main DAO proposal with no $ value attached

Strategic Development: There is further work required next to the particularly defined SubDAO responsibilities which we propose to reward over and above the 200 ANT per month.

We request 30k for season 1 to fund this work based on quotes for service, coordinape, or fixed allocations.

Identifying New Initiatives: To encourage inbound requests for funding ESD will provide compensation to author/s of funded proposals as of 15 March 2022. To this purpose, we propose the Aragon Scout Program and request 20k for season 1 to fund this program which is proportionate to 5% of the total 360k discretionary funding plus other 40k strategic funding requested by the ESD season 1.

3. What impact will this project have?

We believe funding this proposal supports strategic and governance development needed for the ESD to function effectively, to allocate strategic and fixed, discretionary and continuous funding. This funding will enable us to better engage with the community, Aragon Association and Aragon Labs and provide clear information about the funding process. Approval of this funding enables our ability to uphold our Charter mandate and operate more effectively, which we believe will ultimately help to

  1. grow the number of active DAO on the Aragon network and
  2. support the overall purpose of the Aragon DAO defined in the Aragon Network Charter.

Strategic funding is allocated using the standards set out in the Aragon Network Charter, and supplemented by the following ESD statements

ESD Team Members(s) @lee0007 @fartunov @daniel-ospina
ESD Discord: tag @Executive Sub-DAO members or danielo#2815 | Ivan | AN#6678 | lee0007#8152

How will you interface with the community?

  • ESD Public Governance Discord for KPI reporting and responding to community inquiry
    ESD Notion ESD meeting agenda and minutes
  • End of season forum posts for transparency, visibility and reporting on Exec SubDAO activity and summary KPI’s
  • Funding request forum proposal requiring a minimum of 7 days
  • Monthly reporting for projects with discretionary funding tied to deliverables
  • Bi Weekly Community AMA to provide opportunities for contributors to seek advice on developing new funding proposals

4. Proposal Budget

The ESD has been given substantial power by the Charter which creates the need for strong alignment with and high transparency of spending. We want to balance the speed and impact of capital deployment being robust enough to minimize funding overlaps but nimble enough to scale funding.

In terms of spending, there are fundamentally four types of funding all shown in the budget below; continuous, discretionary, fixed and strategic. This proposal is a request for the fixed and strategic funding portions of the S1 Budget.

7200 ANT fixed payment owed to SubDAO members as per the charter.
60,000 USDC strategic governance funding season 1 for the following proposed mechanisms to support strategic governance

10k for Charter Adaptations
30k for Governance Development by SubDAO members
20k for Aragon Scout Program

4.1 Full S1 ESD Budget Request

Portion of strategic and fixed funds requested in this proposal shown in bold

APR MAY JUN JUL S1
Discretionary USDC Equivalent 40000 80000 120000 120000 360000
Continuous USDC Equivalent 110000 110000 110000 110000 440000
Strategic USDC 15000 15000 15000 15000 60000
Fixed ANT 1800 1800 1800 1800 7200
TOTAL USDC Equivalent 162500 202500 242500 242500 860000

Applied assumptions for strategic and fixed funding proposal

  • Rational: Streaming of 800k funds to the Main DAO is a primary determinant of the total ESD S1 funding requests.
  • Carry Over: Funding beyond 800k accounts for ~60k unallocated funds from Q1 2022 (USDC ANT ETH)
  • Strategic: 60k USDC does not include the standard 70:30 split based on current accounting proposal
  • Fixed: 7200 ANT @ 200 ANT per month, per member of each SubDAO

4.2 Payment of Funds

ESD Gnosis Safe: 3/4 0x394Feb37899BB9aF6963B823a2d84668929d59f7

Charter Aragon Governance proposal section 5 (f) 3 a By default, all Financial Proposals involving a deliverable should use an Escrow (see Additional Definitions). In cases where the use of an Escrow is omitted, a justification must be included in the Description. b. Greet.me shall be the default Escrow provider for Financial Proposals.

Justification for Use of Multisig: Our experience in season 0 has highlighted the need for a simplified payment process. There is a technical error that is blocking USDC payments from Govern and for this reason, two multi sigs were used for payments in the last month of season 0.

We herein formalise the use of a multisig in favour of default escrow. We believe this is necessary to effectively function and meet our commitments to contributors in a more timely manner. Once funding is approved by ESD the full funded amount is transferred in a single payment via Govern to the EDS multi-sig. This will significantly reduce the number of monthly transactions and minimise unforeseen issues that have delayed contributor reward payment.

The ESD are committed to upholding

The Aragon Network Agreement | The Aragon Manifesto | The Community Guidelines | Aragon Governance Proposal Process

Voting will be scheduled within 7-14 days of this proposal

ANT holders are asked to vote YES or NO

  • YES fund ESD request for 7200 ANT & 60k USDC discretionary strategic funding
  • NO do NOT fund ESD request for 7200 ANT & 60k USDC discretionary strategic funding
  • ABSTAIN
2 Likes

Where does the “Scout funding” fall within this table?

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As mentioned here (ESD Statement: Aragon Scout Program - #3 by joeycharlesworth), I’d prefer for this to be proportional the discretionary/strategic funds received by the ESD rather than capped.

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Can you please elaborate on this one?

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did you mean 50k USD? That’s what the vote has at the bottom.

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I’d suggest instead amending the Scout Program to include financial rewards for successful non-financial proposals too, such as Charter Changes.

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Can you please elaborate on this? And who exactly would the funds be going to?

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Scout funding is on the Strategic Funding line

I have updated the line to clarify “Governance Development by SubDAO Members” which encompasses ESD, Compliance & Tech committee to supplement the 200 ANT provided in the charter for time currently very under-resourced.

This funding has been delineated from the Scout program because SubDAO members are mandated by the charter to undertake strategic governance work. Under the proposed Scout Program the ESD members would be in the position of requesting funding for approval by ourselves, clearly a conflict of interest.

Instead, we seek approval for this funding from ANT holders and have prioritised working with the Finance team to ensure increased transparency and access to information about all funding allocated.

Voting Open Aragon Voice - the ultimate solution for creating and managing proposals and voting in a decentralized, cost-effective, and secure manner

I would like to nominate the following proposal authors for funding under the governance allocation

$500 each to the author &/or teams

@b3n Seasons at Aragon here
@AClay Standardising payments in AN DAO here
@voronchuk Security Audits here
@AClay ESD Compensation here requires updates as per discord to reflect funding is from the strategic development budget

$825 @mheuer for Umbrella here 5% of approved funding $16500

@fartunov @daniel-ospina would you second these nominations for payment in the May reward distribution cc @Ricktik6

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These nominations seem in line with what we previously discussed. However, not sure a member of the AA should receive an additional payment for something that falls directly within their job description (as I understand it). e.g. B3n for DAO work. In contrast to mheuer paid for conflict resolution when his job is more research oriented.

Thoughts?

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I am on board with the nominations. Feels like I am writing this again but overall I think until proposal submitters get used to applying for the mechanism it makes sense for the ESD to make some nominations. Ideally for the duration of this season - yes, we can make nominations.

I won’t discriminate between AA members and non-AA members. It’s an incentive for contributions if the individuals decide they are compensated sufficiently for their contribution through other means they can forgo it

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@fartunov @daniel-ospina in response to the ESD Compensation for March and April I would like to formally request the release of further funding to compensate to the same standard as all others have access to under this approved proposal

Charter: forum posts to provide clear and transparent guidance for DAO processes

$500 each for

  • Aragon Scout Program here
  • Strategic and Governance Funding here

The lesser of 5% or 3,OOO being 3k each for

  • 440k Continuous funding here
  • 360k New Initiatives here

For a total of 7k specifically to reward the development of S1 funding proposals and supporting documents. As the lead author of these proposals and documented processes, I wish to nominate the following contributors to this effort form a second coordinape circle to allocate these funds across the following @AClay @joeycharlesworth @b3n @ronald_k @fartunov @daniel-ospina @lee0007 I would further ask that all people in the circle be eligible to recieve GIVE rather than limiting the size and effectiveness of the circle

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ESD General Meeting 16 May: Renee recuse/abstain from voting. No Decision due to absence. Funding decision to be made async or decided at the next ESD Meeting 30 May cc @fartunov @daniel-ospina

I am on board with the proposal.

Also would like to nominate the EVM-crisper and the DAOstar.one authors for receiving compensation as per the scout program. I believe the proposals fit the criteria new (not repeat) funding requests/proposals that have passed and the authors have not been compensated.

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Happy to support all authors that are developing proposals to the benefit of other contributors. Can we confirm please that at the time of submitting their respective proposals

@thelastjosh was not planned to recieve compensation within the funding for DAOStarOne
@sembrestels was not planned to recieve compensation within the fuding for EVMCrispr

I ask because they are both listed as team members of the proposal which I understand typically meant eligible to receive compensation.

That said

So the limitations can be adapted, provided we apply the same provision to all proposal authors since 15 March. We need to draw a line somewhere otherwise all authors could become eligible for Scout Reward which was not the intended purpose of this program and was not accounted for in the 20k budget request @fartunov where would you propose we draw the line between contributor developed proposals and independent authors?

Due to the stated limitations, I have not claimed an additional 3k funding for authoring this proposal, because at the time of writing this was the proposal under which I would receive funding.

I reference the Scout Program as the current established method, to calculate and reward proposal authors. I did however expect the requested funds to be released from the strategic development budget, as per the first coordinape circle for

Yes, confusing and overly complex and as @daniel-ospina mentions above only intended as an S1 solution until we establish improved systems for fair compensation cc @AClay @Ricktik6 thoughts?

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Fair point, I had forgotten about the limitation. Let’s proceed as intended.
It makes more sense for dgov circle to rethink processes from first principles and start with something simple than for us to keep bandaiding things that were designed with an expiration date in mind

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I prefer to stay aligned with the limitation, lets not reward contributors within authored proposals and draw a fair line.

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Nominating @AClay for the Scout Program Funding for the Bounties for leads proposal here

  • Fee Request : people are encouraged to request a payment that they believe they have earned.
  • Fee Limits : In all cases the maximum fee request must be the lesser of either 5% of value funded or $3000 .The final allocation will be open to negotiation with the ESD. Funding will not be dispersed until ESD is formally notified as per the fee notification process.
    [/quote]

However, as I am unsure as to the extend of the crossover with roles including AA Head of Network Ops and Transparency, and AN DAO Finance Steward I will leave this to the author to self-nominate and advise here a requested amount as per the process

[quote]

Thank you @lee0007 feel this was under my role. Will forgo.

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