BanklessDAO Multisig: Funding Pause and BDAO Reorganization

Governance
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Title: BanklessDAO Multisig: Funding Pause and BDAO Reorganization
Authors: Icedcool
Squad: [BanklessDAO Multi-sig: Icedcool, Links, AAJ, Senad, 0xLucas, Rowan, jengajojo], Hiro Kennelly, 0xZFi, BPetes, tomahawk, trewkat, OrnellaWeb3, NF Thinker
Date Created: 1/22/24
Date Posted: 2/14/24

TL;DR

  • BanklessDAO’s current structure and funding processes have become a burden to the organization and are not sustainable long term.
    • This structure was developed during a bull-market phase that had an abundance of resources.
    • These resources are no longer available which necessitates reconsideration of how the DAO funds its organizational units.
  • For the above reasons, BanklessDAO multisig signers will pause funding from the DAO Vault, enabling the DAO community to reflect on its mission, and to redesign the DAO’s organizational structure.
    • This will:
      • Require reexamination of all the organizational units at the DAO and a revision of the funding models and methods accordingly.
      • Facilitate the design of processes for brand allocation and usage, in light of recent cases of conflation with HQ and inappropriate brand affiliation.
      • Energize the DAO community to reorganize around a shared focus for the DAO, and decide where to direct efforts and funding which best support the mission.

Summary

Pause BANK Funding

Our Constitution mandates that BanklessDAO multisig wallet signers “[m]ust work to ensure the perpetuity of the DAO’s existence in alignment with the DAO’s mission, vision, and values.” This mandate is submitted by the multisig signers and others who believe the perpetuity of the DAO is now at risk, and immediate action must be taken to ensure its long-term sustainability.

BanklessDAO developed its organizational and funding structures during a bull market with a surplus of talented contributors, capital, and attention.This led to organizational models that were successful in helping grow the DAO, but have become burdensome and unsustainable with reduced resources (time, people, etc.). With the finite supply of BANK remaining it is essential that the DAO manages its distribution effectively.

Restructure the DAO

Additionally, this pause would enable the DAO to reorganize with lessons learned about BanklessDAO organization and resources, including defining a more intentional approach to brand usage and distribution with the intent to avoid future instances of inappropriate or illegitimate brand use, and brand conflation.

Working groups will be organized and after a period of reflection and evaluation will generate separate proposals with specific recommendations for restructuring the DAO around a new shared purpose with the appropriate organization and funding models.

More details are specified below.

SPECIFICATION

The Vault Multisig signers are asserting that a pause on funding is necessary in order to enable the DAO to focus on the work of clarifying and defining a clear mission, and then identifying the subsequent structures necessary for the DAO to sustainably pursue its mission.

This pause includes all funding EXCEPT for necessary fiat costs, like hosting, or DAO-critical applications.

  • From both the DAO Vault and Grants Committee, pause BANK distribution for all organizational units for the foreseeable future.
    • Any groups that need funding for fiat, critical costs should submit a request via the Forum. Examples include:
      • Hosting
      • Security bots
      • Other critical infrastructure
  • In the Governance Department, kick off meetings for:
    • Retrospective on BanklessDAO
    • Brainstorming into proposal for the mission/purpose of the DAO
    • Draft new organizational models for
      • Overall DAO structure
      • Funding
      • Brand usage and external collaborations / partnerships
      • Any additional models identified post evaluation
  • At Community Calls, generate discussion around all of this to organize people.
  • The Grants committee will fund groups on a case by case basis, for work done up to 2/14/24, in the Grants committee Discord Forum
    • Deadline: 2/21/24

SUCCESS METRICS

  • Funding Pause
  • DAO discussion on organization about going forward
  • Working groups brought together to initiate the reorg

NEXT STEPS

Immediate implementation:

  1. Submit to the Forum for discussion and sentiment collection
  2. Pause funding
  3. Form working groups to reorganize the DAO within the Government Department

Poll

The Multisig is mandated by the Constitution to ensure the DAO’s perpetuity.

This poll is included to understand DAO sentiment. The Multisig will use it as guidance on how to proceed.

Sentiment Check
  • Agree
  • Abstain
  • Disagree
0 voters
12 Likes
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Because of the significance of this post, I wanted to write a personal response to it.

The DAO has been operating for 2.5 years, with structures that were developed at the height of the market. These structures enabled a viral growth of the DAO, enabling permissionless involvement and other DAO ethos values that are very important.

Through this we grew far and fast, although we find ourselves now in a place where the overhead is burdening the DAO.

There are a number of examples, although one I’m very cognizant of is that we didn’t build in review or cutting processes.

Org units have been working with designs that were decided on at the outset of the DAO, patching and trying to keep them running, when they have long outlived their importance and a refresh is needed.

BanklessDAO pioneered many different models in the DAO space, and I hope through this pause and subsequent retrospective we can incorporate the MANY lessons we learned through the past 2.5 years, re-energize and focus on the new phase of the DAO.

This can and should include questions like:

  • What is important for us and what do we want to do?
  • Should we even have guilds, departments, the Grants Committee, etc?
  • Should we have seasons?
  • How should funding be done for work?
  • How should we grant access to the brand?
  • And more.

Some things are clearly working, like our organization in notion!

Some things need review, and should be let go of.

I believe our community and people are what make us strong, bound through web3 coordination technology.

Looking forward to the coming conversations and discussions.

Through our people BanklessDAO is strong :muscle:.
Appreciate you all.

20 Likes
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This is really well said and I fully agree with the proposal and your thoughtful personal response :pray:t3:

For the last 2.5 years, there’s been very little that I’ve loved more than BanklessDAO and its contributors. I have felt for 18 months that a reset is in order, and I’m very pleased with how this proposal turned out.

Without question, we are long overdue in considering a proposal such as this. The GSE began a task that I hope this process finishes - how best to build a sustainable organizational model that brings mission-aligned contributors together to seek novelty, joy, adventure, and fun on the edge of a world we are still building.

We have learned so much these last three years - it’s time to put that learning to work. I look forward to working with you all to build what’s next.

11 Likes
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What are the intended working groups that would be formed?

What aspects would they be around?

Who would be in the working groups?

Who would lead the working groups?

What are the KPIs, and the missions of those groups?

I assume the discussion was in the gov chat (I have been spending my time outside of bdao, so I am unaware).

The reason why I am abstaining is that I agree with the general ethos behind the change, but I have a lot of questions as to what the end would be.

(Does not mean I am negative towards of course, it definitely makes sense to do so, but if the conversations get stuck in the endless ideation phase, I am going to be more curious as to how this is going to be a benefit).

Big props tho. I appreciate it.

5 Likes
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All important questions!
Organizing will begin in the Gov department, and anyone can get involved.

The groups are starting with the above list, but certainly not limited to that.

An important aspect of this is, I don’t think any one person knows all the answers to this, but working together we can identify lessons learned, incorporate them and build stronger.

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I saw the list, and I am appreciative, but how does that break down in to actions if that makes sense?

So this is a big undertaking right, I’m just intrigued on the exact way that this will all go down.

As usual, Im just curious. Because it seems like there’s been iterations of this need happening for some months now. Which means, what’s this going to be, that’s different.

I’m pretty optimistic. So it should be quite intriguing.

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There’s no predefined plan that can answer what you’re asking. This is actually the fun part. Figuring it out as we go, together, as a DAO.

Love it that you’re optimistic homie, that’s all that’s needed to start!

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Hi @Icedcool - Great proposal. Short and focused. I fully agree with the collective observation and need for a re-org of bDAO. We have become bloated and inefficient in many aspects. There is a clear need to define and align on a vision and mission first, and then start the re-org process based on that. No one should be immune and protected from this and every Department, Guild and Project should be reassessed. By Projects I mean the ones still operating within bDAO and not yet acquired the independence to operate on their own (which many have).

Can we please put a timeline to this? How many days for the sentiment check, and the key steps after that?

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Yes. That’s the crux of what I am saying. It’s a tall order. But as @sandeepdas9179 suggest. Clear defined timeline, clear defined goals. @Icedcool gives a great opening salvo.

I presume my abstain should only really count towards quorum. No harm to either side.

Even the most creative venture can be achieved with a clear ground floor infra.

Let’s see what happens.

1 Like
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So, consider some thoughts even inside this conversation.

Would this be completely starting from scratch?

Would you be starting from a complete change of name?

@sandeepdas9179 mentioned this in a previous discussion.

Again. The opening charge is good. I look forward to see what’s next.

I’m continuing on a journey of deciding where I belong these days. Have faith that something will come through that will be beneficial to you all.

4 Likes
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The DAO is adrift with a realignment in the direction of a common North Star required to establish a common cause towards which we can all pull together.

We have great things to do, both individually and collectively, and the onus is on us to take actions to bring about this bright future.

As a social club or a global org, we can make our mark with everything that we do. The future can be ours, if we build it together, rather than letting it be built for us.

1 Like
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I think this is a great idea, this is a great opportunity to restructure and relaunch stronger than ever.

However, pausing the funding completely and just leave it open for tools and alike could harm the DAO. There are still active contributors who are producing work, ie. newsletters and other stuff. Is it expected they continue working without any funding, or are we okay they completely stop the work?

Furthermore, we are aware of the legal needs - legal needs money. Ie. we will need to pay an external contributor for IP and branding (I am talking to some lawyers, and they do want to help, but expect to get reimbursed (which is normal, it’s A LOT OF work), we will need to fund the incorporation (assuming we move forward with that), there are contributors investing significant time to support the DAO on this matter, are they expected to work for free? I would add that this is not the question of $$, rather of the fact that $BANK is the voting power.

Looking forward to hearing on this. Thanks.

4 Likes
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Was waiting for something like this for quite a while.

I strong agree, feel this is well thought out in terms of the ‘why/what’
I also greatly appreciate that it isn’t trying to be the ‘how’ inside this simple and to the point proposal. The ‘how’ is not multiSig mandate, it’s governance, workingGroups, and the DAO at large :muscle:

This is the proposal that provokes proposal that solve it. I’m behind the signers in generating the forcing function that hopefully will generate some quick to follow proposals the get us unstuck. My sense is that we’ve been in slow moving quicksand for quite sometime and this is the first proposal I’ve seen that says (hey we’re stuck, only thing worth doing/talking-about is how we get out of this as well as mission critical things like eating/breathing/hydrating)

bDAO strong – excited to see us move beyond this chapter soon

Correction: This proposal also has similar vibes and energy which I applaud too [PROPOSAL] Rescind the Snapshot Vote for the S10 GC

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Appreciate that you feel there may be some operations underway that feel “DAO-critical” and based on your comment @DAOlexa it seems you have specific context that may help identify some areas where this may be true.

I sense a lot of latitude in this quote from the proposal (copied below) and would love to see some of the groups you’ve got context of start testing its boundaries to define through action/outcome what “DAO-critical” really means instead of us trying to working too hard to define it hypothetically here in the proposal and comments.

“The purpose of a system is what it does, not what it claims to do” – let’s find out what we are

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Great work, @Icedcool on this proposal. Just one question for clarity: what do we define as DAO-critical? Is that something we would make clear going forward? From what @DAOlexa echoed, there are certain things that are necessary, but we need a clear definition of what those critical things should be or would be.

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@Paulito @DAOlexa

The way I look at it, the only things we should be funding during the pause are hard fixed costs for things we require to keep Discord secure (bots etc) and our information accessible (Notion).

Work that’s happening w/ legal and every other org unit of the DAO is not strictly necessary to keep the DAO alive; it’s just stuff we want to do or have been doing, but not activities absolutely necessary for the DAO to continue as an organization while keeping its member safe and informed.

I agree with @Bpetes that we should see what we need. I can ofc imagine a world where we look at some type of Coordinape-style RPGF to comp contributors who continue working during the pause, but that’s a different proposal for a different time.

4 Likes
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I think completely stopping funding anything (excluding tools and alike) is an additional step to kill the DAO and make contributors leave.

Considering legal as something unnecessary is exactly what brought us to our knees and this ridicoulous situation. Seems like we dont learn from our mistakes.

The branding issue that we have now and is easily taken away from the DAO is precisely for the reason we dont have any vehicle to protect the what the DAO did. The terms and conditions of the brand usage could have been solved long time back if we had proper tools in place. Now, we call these tools “unnecessary”.

While I understand and salute the radical approach, thinking long term it will do us harm.

Comments such as “well if people are here for the money, they can just leave” just shows that we dont really understand the mission and why we are here. The point of DAOs is to be good enough so people can work, contribute and live off of it, without having to submit themselves to the traditional world setting. The problem is that our governance is broken and dysfunctional, not the contributors and their work.

Are we planning to stop everything the DAO is doing? Do we have a timeline on when everything will be “back to normal”? What is considered “critical”?

Seems like some VERY Important information is missing from this proposal to really enable members to make an informed decision on voting.

Also it would be better if we had people who weren’t involved in drafting this proposal to comment and share their opinions, because so far: Iced, Ornella, BPetes, and Hiro are listed as authors and are the main commenters and supporters of the proposals. And it’s only Homie, Paulito, Tom and myself who aren’t - and we have questions that are not really well answered.

It’s perfectly understandable that you agree with the proposal you wrote, but would be great to leave space for people who had no involvement in it to discuss it.

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I think it’s def ok for proposal authors to comment, in fact necessary. and feedback like you’re providing is the point of this post. I disagree with your take, but not your right to participate and make your opinion heard.

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I know what we can’t do, and that is keep doing what we are doing. This proposal enables us to stop and reflect, which needs to happen, to find next steps.

The proposal is intentional in not being prescriptive and not having a timeline, because what we SHOULD do is unclear. (I would love to have and set those things… but those would only be my thoughts)

We have to go through a rediscovery process and period, to find what we WANT to do and build at the DAO.

Which is why this proposal outlines people coming together, in a DAO way, to find a path forward.

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I didnt say the authors shouldnt be commenting and responding to the proposal they wrote, what I am saying is that other opinons should be heard as well and prior to yours. Because yours has weight and influences people how they vote and perceive it.

Well, we can agree that we disagree on the effects of this proposal. Everyone has an opinion, and this forum is a place to share it. :woman_shrugging:

2 Likes