Greetings. Name’s Dickson (aka Dixon), currently the product manager of Aragon App, with background in stablecoin, digital insurance, growth hacking, and consultancy (linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dicksonwong/).
Writing is never my strongest skills so let me get straight to the point: DAO contributors’ life is hard. With proposal approved on a seasonal basis, the uncertainty on having the funding delayed or unapproved post a significant threats to the finance of each individual. Such problem is further surfaced with the recent DAO transformation in Aragon with most of the fulltime team members now force to be eating-what-they-kill. While one might argue that “This is the DAO life”, yet i believe it’s in fact an overlooked issue in the entire DAO space - “employment”, often as on-demand task, has never been treated seriously.
The DAO landscape might be young and I don’t think we can move the mountain in a day, still, we shouldn’t do nothing about it - that’s certainly not something that Aragon, as a DAO pioneer, dare not to face. Aragon should continue being the role model in the space.
TLDR; With the help from some of you guys, here is the proposal of a Pod that ran by Guilds Members, aiming to provide a safety net for AN DAO primary contributors, operated and governed in a decentralized manner. This document is incomplete, as you can see some sections would have remarks on numbers or stuff. This is also intentional, because this should be a proposal that we, as the major contributors of AN DAO, to gather, discuss and align, as a DAO.
That’s all I have prepared in the past month, i shall now leave this to the good hands of yours. Cheers.
Special thanks to @ramon , @AlexM , @b3n , @mheuer , @Lion917 , and @Shawncubbedge on reviewing and providing their valuable time and best commentary to help this document in evolving into its first presentation version.
1. Background
With the DAO-ify movement, AA & AL are now moving towards to guild-based structure in which guild will maintain its own profits and losses. Such design, while being Web3.0 native, provides only a bare-minimal security to guild members to work for AN DAO vision in a recurring & sustainable basis, as proposals approval will be a haunting uncertainty that each workgroup will face constantly, which can be unhealthy to any member.
Envisioning with the next generation of DAO, AN DAO will likely be having two types of contributors guilds - project-based ones that emphasize on revenue of short term endeavours, and long-term ones that cares most about how to realize the Aragon vision. The former one will likely have multiple projects running in parallel with different funding streams (most likely including other DAOs), the latter one instead devotes themselves for a single mission to make Aragon successful yet much likely prone to sustainability risk.
To achieve this, we suggest introducing a Guild Members Pod (GMP) with its own treasury for wellness of Aragon guild members, with pod-controlled assets that fill the gap to provide grants as insurance for AN DAO long term operations.
2. Solution Overview
- Setup a Guild Member Pod treasury on Aragon App, operated under Ops, People, or Finance guild, governed by a Pod. with seasonable participants selected from related guilds.
- Enforce taxation on guild proposal from long term / core guilds to AN DAO
- Enable grants as insurances & other welfare for guild members.
Focusing on the long term dedication of contributors to AN DAO, it is key that we can provide some sort of security, both financial as well as psychological, if we want to create a positive and healthy work environment. For this we propose that whenever a proposal for funding is created to the AN DAO, for those long term guilds, they must allocate 5% of the funds risen to the AN DAO Wellness Treasury.
The treasury could be operated under a selected existing guild/squad (e.g. People guild) or could have a dedicated squad for it. The accumulated assets will be used for the welfare & insurance of participating guild members.
1. Insurance for People
- Should a guild failed to get a proposal approve, provide up to 3 month of salary as fund to the guild members such that they have sufficient time to either iterate for a new proposal for new funding, or decide to be off-board.
- Sustaining fund should be paid and reviewed on a monthly basis until the guild gets its operational funding (from AN DAO) or otherwise, dissolved.
2. Welfares
- Medical, and other welfare support. (To be discussed. not in Day 1 scope)
2.1 Eligible Guilds
GMP aims to serve Aragon contributors that has been devoting themselves to bring out the best of Aragon. Given the infancy of this initiative, we accept the following applicants:
- Guilds that formed from Aragon Core Team and Aragon Lab
- list to be provided
- Guilds that has been established under AN DAO, that includes
- dGov
- dTech
- dOps
- … etc.
That being said, in its initial scope the GMP will not accept any other applicants.
These guilds, if decided to participate in GMP, must also submit a fee, that is proportional to their proposal that submitted to AN DAO for funding, as a form of contribution to GMP treasury. For details, please read Treasury and Financial Terms section.
2.2 Grant Application
2.1.2 The Process
- Eligible guild submit requests to GMP, with evidence that a recent proposal is rejected by AN DAO and proof that operation of the guild is at risk without fund by certain timeline.
- GMP review the request as a Pod team, and use Aragon App to create proposal for voting among guilds representatives. For details of the governance process please refer to Governance section below.
- Once approved, the requested fund (up to 3 month of the team run rate) will be paid by phases according to the next Funding & Payment sections.
2.1.3 Applicants’ Commitment
- Applying guilds must only spend the new funding for paying their Primary Contributors (defined with at least 50% of their time committed to the guild). i.e. the grant cannot be used for, but not limited to, marketing, bounties, researches, etc.
- The applying guild will require to attend regular meeting (to be defined) with GMP, named as Proposal Refinement Process, such that
- the guild is showing progress on refining their proposal for next funding
- GMP can provide necessary assistance on helping the guild to make a better proposal
- Should the revised proposal passed and funding is granted before GMP grant is paid, no GMP grant will be paid.
2.2 Funding & Payment
2.2.1 How much can each Guild ask?
For the moment, up to 3 months. Additional criteria to be discussed in later version.
2.2.2 Paying guilds
This is assumed that the grant request has been approved by the GBP.
- Payment will be paid in monthly basis, subject to decision of GMP upon the Proposal Refinement Process. (see Applicants’ Commitment)
- The payment, once approved, will be paid by the end of the month.
- GMP will rely on Aragon Association existing payment and legal framework to provide compensation. i.e. if AA has been paying salary to an individual in a guild through direct bank transfer, it will be done the same.
3. Governance
This section specifies the governance mechanics from Pod setup, member selection to voting.
3.1 On-chain Setup of GMP
- GMP will be initially setup using Aragon App as a Wallet-based DAO.
- Governance configuration as follow:
- Minimal Participation : 60%
- Approval Threshold : 60%
- Should the proposal failed to pass, the guild can apply for one appeal and the process will start again in one week.
- The first cohort (i.e. Oct - Dec) -
3.2 Pod Selection - Seasonal Guild Representatives
- Each Season last 3 months.
- In the last month of each Season, each eligible guild will submit a list of their members that wants to be one of GMP in next Season.
- Existing GMP will collect the name lists from all guilds, and randomly to choose one member from each list.
- The existing GMP will then execute the following in sequent
- Adding the new group of members’ wallet onto GMP - will require one proposal and vote
- Removing the existing group of members’ wallet from GMP - will require one proposal and vote
- Add and remove the new GMP members on
3.3 Pod Voting - Voting for Grant Request
- Each guild application will be published as one of the proposal and voted among GMP within a week.
- Should appeal is needed, the proposal will be re-run and research in a week.
4. Treasury and Financial Terms
4.1 Financial Objective
The financial goal of GMP is to establish a cross guild treasury that enable grants as insurance scheme for guilds, such that guilds in AN DAO can operate up to at least 6 months run rate without any further funding requirement.
Once such financial goal is achieved, the surplus (that collected through taxation) will be refunded to AN DAO treasury.
We are currently estimating $X,XXX,XXX (TBD) as treasury goal. Calculated by,
- Monthly budget from all the proposals that have been funded in past year.
- Monthly budget from guilds formed by Aragon Core Team and Aragon Lab (which is working in progress)
- Multiples the total of these two by 6.
4.2 Sustainability - Proposal Taxation
Eligible guilds, as long as their participate in GMP, they are committed to contribute 5% of the fund risen from their AN DAO related proposal. In other words, the guilds are advised to ask for additional 5% funding within their budgeting when submitting proposal for AN DAO approval in order to meet this requirement.
4.3 Startup - Initial Funding Request
TBD
4.4 GMP Compensation
Since this Pod existence is purely for the sustainability of AN DAO guilds and workforce, the compensation is considered to be tokens of gratitude rather than a financial aid. Given that, each member in the Pod is suggested to have XXXX ANT per month (or XXXXX ANT per Season). Subject for further discussion.
5. Timeline
Jul - Sep
- Open discussion on forums
- Proposal refinement
Sep
- AN DAO proposal and voting
- Forming its initial cohort.
Oct
- Implement on Aragon App
- Oct - Dec as first pilot Season
Dec
- Take learning and refine the Pod operations guidelines
- GMP help setting up the first official season : Jan - Mar