[Draft3] Rewarding Season 0 Active Community Members

Archive
1

Title: Rewarding Season 0 Active Community Members
Original Conversation: Recorded Discord Discussion
Authors: @frogmonkee
Date: 6/2/21
Supporters: @0xLucas

SNAPSHOT IS LIVE

First forum post:

SUMMARY

In order to retain talent and say thank you to everyone that has worked these past four weeks, this proposal will retroactively distribute :rotating_light::rotating_light: 1 million $BANK :rotating_light::rotating_light:based on a fair voting method available to any DAO member. This is significantly less than the originally discussed 11.1M

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 DAO’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 don’t spend money they don’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.

That’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, isn’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 1,000,000 $BANK will be allocated. This is a severe reduction from 11.1M $BANK. My mind changed when @0x_Lucas shared his modeling:

Screenshot 2021-06-02 174008
Screenshot 2021-06-02 174008802Ă—487 16.3 KB

This is roughly what using coordinape will look like. The actual distributed would be much more nuanced and smoother, but in essence, a few members will receive the lions share with a long tail of smaller payouts. (See more here)

At 1 million $BANK, that top few will receive 500,000 $BANK and be catapulted into the Whale category. The low end of this would still be in the thousands of $BANK. Given today’s airdrops to 2020/21 badge holders, this range seems more appropriate.

Adding another 10.1M on top of that number is irresponsible. I also think that 1M is more palatable to DAO members that will not benefit from this remuneration.

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 with 1M $BANK, after which the funds will be proportionately distributed across participating DAO members.

What is Coordinape?

Coordinape is central to this proposal. Coordinape was a project spun out from Yearn Finance. (For reference, Yearn’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. It’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 1000 GIVE tokens. Each token represents a proportional share of the salary pool (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 they’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?

Let’s tie all these topics back together. We’re proposing that:

  • Using Coordinape, we will let DAO members vote on how 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 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 1M $BANK will be distributed proportionally to the number of tokens they’ve received.
  • Participants will fill out a survey evaluating their satisfaction with their payout.

Success is defined as a >80% satisfaction rate.

Next Steps

  • Approve the proposal on Snapshot budget (1M)
  • Onboard to Coordinape
  • Begin a one week voting period
  • Distribute funds
  • Take a survey

FAQ:

How do we know if this model will work?

  • We don’t. That’s part of the great blockchain experiment. We’re inventing new ways to distribute money in a fairer manner. But both Sushiswap and Gitcoin use Coordinape, so there is some social proof. Internally, we will define success as a >80% satisfaction rate amongst participants.

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 “regift” feature where members that were overcompensated can redistribute. This is not a great solution, but Coordinape is working on this problem.
  • Move to snapshot
  • Minor changes
  • Major changes
0 voters
3 Likes
2

@Eagle @Oktal @Silver4k @BANKLESS_DUDE

Updated version. Thanks for commenting previously.

2 Likes
3

I am happy with this revision, and the modeling as well. I am voting to move this to Snapshot, and I hope it passes.

For the sake of clarity though, this model only accounts for 35 contributors, and I don’t think we actually know how many people are going to be recipients of GIVE. If this goes to Snapshot it will raise awareness to every $BANK holder, and so I think we can expect there to be more than 35 contributors receiving GIVE in Coordinape, since every member of the DAO can receive GIVE.

We have no way of knowing exactly how many people will end up receiving GIVE, or how many people will choose to “re-gift” their tokens. I still think the model gives us a good example of what to expect, even if the final $BANK amount may be a little bit more spread out.

I really hope that this will help reward those who have been contributing so far. This is a much better strategy than the previous drafts, and I am sure the results of this will help us learn where to go next.

Thank you everyone who has helped put it together!

6 Likes
4

I’ll just repost this since the other thread is now locked, could seem a bit out of context without it :

"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 don’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 didn’t follow everything lately but I’ve seen some talks about 4k$/month … That’s crazy and unsustainable. That’s higher than 99% of the salaries in most countries.

I’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.

What’s the aim of the DAO ? Having people making more money or helping people go bankless ?

I honestly absolutely don’t care about what $BANK is worth, outside of the fact a bigger price would mean more power to make people go bankless. I don’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 it’s sound harsh).

Maybe if people feel they don’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."

Just my thought, I try to read most of what’s happening and I feel like I read more about rewarding members with money than people trying to make other people go Bankless.

Edit : And I didn’t even talk about the sell pressure, if people are trying to get rewarded because they really need it, that will directly impact the price and the treasury as well

2 Likes
5

Hey Elkmar, thanks for commenting.
This conversation has been heavily discussed. This may not satisfy your concerns, but these are the answers I have:

I didn’t follow everything lately but I’ve seen some talks about 4k$/month … That’s crazy and unsustainable. That’s higher than 99% of the salaries in most countries.

The 4K was a delberate firebomb that @AboveAverageJoe set off to encourage discussion. This number is no longer relevant to the discussion.

I’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.

This was not a light decision. You can check the archive for the various drafts we went through.

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 it’s sound harsh).

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."

This is an interesting opinion and I encourage you to participate in further conversations. Especially in the discord if you’re around.

but what I read lately was not reassuring

I get this man. DAOs always look messy at the beginning. Culturally, I don’t think this concern is valid, but from the outside it can look that way. Hopefully future decisions will restore faith.

2 Likes
6

No real knowledge to share but the proposal appears a well thought out start and major steps in building the kind of structure I want to support. Great talent here and rewarding it and valuing it at the beginning is the correct step and priority. Long term strength of the brand. Adjust if needed as we move forward. Great honest discussion and inclusiveness. Press on to snapshot!

4 Likes
7

I agree with this cautious approach. Starting with a smaller amount of tokens means to test whether Coordinape may be a good remuneration system. Although, I think that on the long run some of our full time contributors may get a kind of fixed salary, as it happens in Yearn.

I also agree with the careful approach, because I think that the second airdrop has not been performed in a proper manner. It created an unjustified disproportion between 2020 and 2021 badge-holder in contrast with the exposed aim of the airdrop. Therefore, I fully support a proposal, which will turn out in an interesting social experiment and – in any case – will not have the effect of throwing away our BANKS. First important thing to do is learning HOW to allocate tokens!

I would suggest getting in contact with Yearn members to let them follow a bit our distribution (perhaps on social media). This could bring more attention to our DAO.

4 Likes
8

1 Million Bank across 30 people is $90 each.

I think you have swung from one extreme to another.

9

If the million was distributed evenly to 30 people that would be ~$1000 in value each.

1BANK is around $0.03

2 Likes
10

My bad. I think 3-4M would be more appropriate

11

I want to make a slight modification here that eligibility should be on an opt in basis instead of by tag.

It’s much less work and incorporates some degree of self selection.

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

12

Guild Tags will create more issues than it solves. No to guild tags.

Time to put this on snapshot

13

I’m afraid there won’t be enough BANK distributed, as the proposal is moving away from its original goal of recalibrating “equity” moving forward. I guess using Coordinape for the first time (and not knowing for sure it’s really adapted) it makes sense to be careful but it might be a ticking bomb.

On a personal level, as a member who does not have a guild tag yet but spends a good amount of time bringing ideas and giving feedback on many subjects, I wouldn’t understand if I didn’t get to establish an allocation of GIVE tokens to the contributors. I believe I have enough perspective for that.

3 Likes