[Draft1] Rewarding Season 0 Active Community Members

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1

Title: Rewarding Season 0 Active Community Members
Original Conversation: Recorded Discord Discussion
Authors: @frogmonkee
Date: 6/1/21
Supporters: Yves, Above Average Joe,Tgriffith3433

SUMMARY

In order to retain talent and say thank you to everyone that has worked these past four weeks, this proposal will retroactively distribute 11.1 million $BANK based on a fair voting method available to any DAO member.

BACKGROUND

On Sunday, Joe made this post on forums yesterday, proposing a method to back pay all the valued community members and their contributions to the DAO. Shortly afterwards, people started filing into voice channels to discuss, and the conversation went on for hours.

This conversation was fated to happen as soon as the DAO was created. For four weeks, community members have lifted the DAO and carried it step by step. As time went on, this enthusiasm turned into concern about sustainability. The market had taken a dump and the hours everyone was putting in netted zero income.

From quiet whispers, Joe brought this topic in the limelight. We had a healthy discussion that reinforced the DAOā€™s ability to ideate and work through difficult problems as a collective.

MOTIVATION

The motivation of this specific proposal is to retroactively gift $BANK to valuable community members from Season 0. Typically, companies donā€™t spend money they donā€™t have, and we fall squarely into that category. But, we need to give some reward, or we will inevitably lose talent that feels unappreciated.

Thatā€™s why, for this season alone, we propose treating $BANK as equity and not a wage. Something like this will most likely never happen again,

SPECIFICATION

To distribute $BANK, four questions came up as the most important:

  1. Who will receive $BANK?
  2. How much $BANK will they receive?
  3. How will they receive $BANK?
  4. When will they receive $BANK?

Who will receive $BANK?

This is the trickiest question, isnā€™t it? Ideally, we want to be as inclusive as possible, but also support informed decision making and not a popularity contest.

The solution here is anyone with a Level 1 tag and Guild tag in Discord. Meaning, and DAO member that is part of at least one guild. With enough lead time and proper communication, members that want to participate can join a Guild if they have not already.

How much $BANK will they receive?

Collectively, a pool of 11,111,111 $BANK will be allocated. This number accounts to the monthly drip of $BANK we get from the BanklessDAO Treasury. 400M $BANK / 36 months = 11.1M $BANK per month.

At the time of this proposal, 4 weeks have passed since BanklessDAO has started. This is the only non-arbitrary that makes sense to everyone.

How will they receive $BANK?

Using Coordinape. Coordinape is a P2P budget management tool that grew out of Yearn Finance. This is explained further below.

When will they receive $BANK?

Once Coordinape is implemented, we will start a one week vote period, after which funds will be distributed.

What is Coordinape?

Coordinape is central to this proposal. Coordinape was a project spun out from Yearn Finance. (For reference, Yearnā€™s governing DAO is a few steps ahead of BanklessDAO, but there are many parallels.) You can think of Coordinape as a peer to peer payroll management system. Itā€™s broader than that, but for our purposes, it works.

The essence of Coordinape is allowing your peers to determine your salary. The process works as such:

  • Each member is given 100 GIVE tokens. Each token represents a proportional share of the salary pool (11.1M $BANK)
  • Members can gift (or not) GIVE tokens to people they think deserve some share of the pool.
  • After a voting period, all the unallocated GIVE tokens are burned. The remaining number of tokens represents a proportional piece of the salary pool, and members are programmatically paid their share based on the number of tokens theyā€™ve received.

The simple premise is that if you ask everyone in the community who is doing good work, their collective answers will give a good sense of where the value is and who should be most rewarded. Over time, this also provides valuable insights for the DAO about what kinds of work is prioritized, what the community finds most valuable, and who are the key contributors in different areas.

You can learn more about Coordinape by reading their Medium announcement post, Docs, and Youtube demo.

How would this work?

Letā€™s tie all these topics back together. Weā€™re proposing that:

  • Using Coordinape, we will let DAO members vote on how 11.1M $BANK will be allocated to their peers.
  • Any DAO member that has at least 35K $BANK and a Guild tag is eligible to claim 100 GIVE tokens.
  • Over a one week period, we will all be able to claim their tokens and allocate them to any other DAO member
  • After the voting period, the 11.1M $BANK will be distributed proportionally to the number of tokens theyā€™ve received.

Next Steps

  • Approve the proposal on Snapshot budget (11.1M)
  • Onboard to Coordinape
  • Begin a one week voting period
  • Distribute funds
  • Take a survey

FAQ:

Wait! This isnā€™t sustainable!

  • Indeed. That is why this proposal is a one-off. If we find ourselves in this position a month from now, we will have failed.

How do we know if this model will work?

  • We donā€™t. Thatā€™s part of the great blockchain experiment. Weā€™re inventing new ways to distribute money in a fairer manner. But both Sushiswap and Gitcoin use Coordinape, so there is some social proof.

What about members that like to work solo?

  • These people will slip through the cracks. Right now, the community is small enough that we can recognize and vouch for these members. Also, Coordinape has a ā€œregiftā€ feature where members that were overcompensated can redistribute. This is not a great solution, but Coordinape is working on this problem.

If we give away 11.1M $BANK, wonā€™t we have 0 BANK for next month?

  • The community treasury starts with 50M BANK. Weā€™ll have plenty.
  • Move to snapshot
  • Make minor changes
  • Make major changes

0 voters

2 Likes
2

I approve the proposal in its entirety

1 Like
3

The only minor change that I suggest is the level 1 gets 100 gift tokens and level 2 500 gift tokens.
Apart from that all good and that you for writing it!

2 Likes
4

I dislike this because there are a number of Level 1s that deserve to be at Level 2, but have slipped through the cracks. Rather than magnify that gap, I think equal 100 tokens is better.

Happy to hear other thoughts.

2 Likes
5

I agree with this proposal, its not perfect and it does require us to trust members to do the right thing which can be difficult to do when individually we donā€™t know everyone and donā€™t have sight on every contribution. As a collective though we do and I trust the bdao will do right by the bdao. I feel this way based on what I have experienced thus far and the progress that has been made. No matter what someone is going to be left out and someone else will find the results unfair in some way, but this method trusts the bdao collectively to make the right decision which ultimately we wouldnā€™t be here volunteering our time if we didnā€™t trust the bdao.

3 Likes
6

Iā€™m always in favor of starting small and simple for new experiments.

We should 100% reward contributors for Season 0 but I think it would be unwise of us to allocate nearly 20% of our liquid treasury towards a brand new initiative that weā€™ve yet to trial or use before.

Iā€™d propose we split the Season 0 Community member Rewards into 2 rounds:

Round 1: 1M BANK Coordinape Trial. This would be used as an initial trial for the community to test out Coordinape and analyze whether or not it was an effective distribution (as well as identify any vulnerabilities/issues with people gaming it). If the trial is successful, we can move onto Round 2.

Round 2: TBD BANK Allocation depending on trial results. I think anywhere between an additional 2.5M - 10M BANK as proposed could be appropriate depending on the distribution in trial 1 (and where people stand on how theyā€™ve been compensated).

Iā€™ll add that Round 2 could also just be bundled into a Season 1 distribution and likely feature a much more sizable allocation (i.e. the committee allocates X BANK to Coordinape for y months in season 1 for active contributors, distributed retroactively every month).

On a similar note, itā€™d also be important for us to do some high level modeling on the distribution amounts with the proposed 11.1M BANK. Iā€™ll try to take some time to build this out later today just so we have an idea of what we could expect and make sure everyone is comfortable with the numbers in there.

Again - I think the move is to start small and prove the model out first. I know people are eager to get rewarded for their work (rightfully so given a lot of people have spent a lot of time on the DAO this past month) but we need to be extremely thoughtful and pragmatic with how weā€™re allocating the treasury - 11.1M is a material amount of our liquid BANK for a brand new experiment.

11 Likes
7

I think the trial doesnā€™t serve its purpose well. People can behave in a way in the trial and in a different way in the real event.
I would just go with the full thing.
There is a lot of people voting I think the tokens will be well distributed.

8

I agree with 0xLucas, there is no reason we couldnā€™t split this same amount into two allocations which gives us the benefit of trialing it the first month to see how it works. I really like this proposal, but it could easily backfire and end up negatively impacting a lot of less visible contributors.

9

I have been torn about this, but I think I have figured it out.

Anytime you dive into the unknown, you take on risk. We have been diving into the unknown every day since this DAO started. While some of the risk has been visible, there has been personal risk accumulating from the time people are putting in.

We can clearly see the thorns that have been hiding in the darkness, and now we must face them head on. No matter what path we choose here, some people will be hurt. There is not a risk-free option to choose here.

I am open to risk mitigation strategies like @0x_Lucas is suggesting, but given the track record of navigating the unknown, we got this.

Hopefully we will emerge with only minor scars, and the unknown wonā€™t be so scary anymore.

1 Like
10

At this point I think itā€™s a step in the right direction, and itā€™s a bit more than an 80% good enough plan for now.

Iā€™m on board for it. All we need is something to test and work from.

1 Like
11

Iā€™m fine with @0x_Lucasā€™s suggestion. Since weā€™re treating BANK as equity, this simulates vesting.

We can split into a 1M trial. When we survey members afterwards, if we have a >80% satisfaction rate, we go through with the second round of 10.11111M. (I donā€™t want to change the number. It comes from a logical place and itā€™s an important support beam for keeping this proposal acceptable to all.)

Curious to see the models too. Thatā€™s not something I know too much about lol

5 Likes
12

As much as I would be happy to vote for this. This is 20% of the community treasury, I would like to see a smaller amount to start with, and to give more when actual work is being completed.

To reward real work that is done done and deployed.

13

Iā€™m in favor of this proposal.
0xLucas has a good take; we should test a smaller amount for the season 0 distribution, then send the rest halfway through, or at the end of, season 1.

14

I understand what youā€™re trying to say, but want to caution you against using terms like ā€œreal work.ā€ Everything that has been done is very much real. Saying this denies the value of that effort.

As for it being 20% that not exactly true. The community treasury will still have 50M vested. The 11.1M is from what will vest when the monthly deposit is made from the treasury.

15

When I subscribed to the substack, I didnā€™t do so with the expectation that I would receive BANK or that aDAO would be formed, let alone that the DAO would be an active business or pay for my volunteer contributions. TBH, the way the DAO was launched, with basically zero infrastructure or even a generally understood mission, meant that these past weeks have been an absolute scramble to find our collective asses with both hands.

Agreed that some of you guys have been troopers in spending precious hours trying to do that grappling. And my comments here are in no way a denial of that effort. But maybe letā€™s put this into a forward leaning hypothetical, rather than retroactive. How much of the work done over the past weeks would have been approved (and paid) as defined bounties? Unfortunately, in the scenario we were faced with with basically only a Discord backbone, there was no winnable way that [time contributed]=[direct 1:1 progress]. (and thereā€™s much discussion still to be had about what Bankless LLCā€™s 250M allotment will be providing the DAO, since structure was not one of those things handed off). So itā€™s arguable that maybe half the work done would have been actual bounties seen as progress towards a defined goal? Genesis Teamā€™s 250M is vested over 3 years? Thatā€™s 6.9M BANK per month. Are we saying that these past 4 weeks have resulted in 11.1M BANK of progress that is roughly a 2X return over what Ryan & David et al have earned?

Without going back and assessing actual accomplishments and roles played therein, which would probably be the ideal but an unreasonable amount of work, I agree with @0x_Lucas ā€˜s suggestion for a smaller initial trial allocation. Especially considering that Kevin Owockiā€™s comments today in the Legal Guild about Coordinape seemed to indicate that that system works best over a period of results, not perhaps on a one-time peer assessment.

2 Likes
17

Some of the work that people do for the DAO would not be suitable for a bounty kind of reward.

Also adding to your observation about the Genesis team. What they get is split between few people so they get by far a much larger amount than any of the other members of the DAO would just for contributing.

Coordinape probably works better over a period of time, but having a test an a full event will not get you the results you are looking for.
Anyway, letā€™s do the test first as it is what most people are inclination towards.

By all means the whole event will be a test. If it goes well why might keep it or even improve it. But if we donā€™t like the results weā€™ll just move on.

18

alright, sorry, iā€™m a little outcome driven.

Organising is absolutely a lot of work.

what i meant was ā€œdeliverablesā€

1 Like
19

I like the idea overall. I support @0x_Lucas 's idea of doing a trial run. I also think people sould be allocated more tokens (e.g., 1000) so they can express finer grained preferences on who to reward.

20

I understand that people want to get rewarded now, and that not doing it would make us lose some people.

And I recognise I speak as someone not as much involved as most of the other members (I just like to give ideas and opinion, but donā€™t have time to be involved more than few minutes a day).

0x_Lucas has a great idea there, I totally support it.

Thegoodnunes.eth has an excellent point too.

I didnā€™t follow everything lately but Iā€™ve seen some talks about 4k$/month ā€¦ Thatā€™s crazy and unsustainable. Thatā€™s higher than 99% of the salaries in most countries.

Iā€™m a member of multiple DAOs and sorry for this but I feel like there is too much focus on giving money to members in this DAO. The 2nd airdrop was too much, and the focus on giving even more to the 2020 badges holders felt contradictory to the initial intention.

Whatā€™s the aim of the DAO ? Having people making more money or helping people go bankless ?

I honestly absolutely donā€™t care about what $BANK is worth, outside of the fact a bigger price would mean more power to make people go bankless. I donā€™t plan on making money out of it, I just love the idea of promoting cryptocurrencies, but what I read lately was not reassuring. For me a DAO is an entity you offer time too, because you want too not because you hope making a living out of it (sorry if itā€™s sound harsh).

Maybe if people feel they donā€™t get the rewards they deserve, it would be better to just give less time to the DAO as myself.

When the DAO generates a constant stream of revenues, a solid reward system based off a percentage of the gains made by the DAO would be cool, but nothing more, no employees, no fixed salaries or earnings.

21

Hello! This is the current draft. I will lock this one: