Framework for Guild Coordination

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Summary

With the launch of Season 1 last month, the DAO has run into a few operational roadblocks that are consistent throughout guilds. These roadblocks largely include coordination between different guilds and codifying existing responsibilities within guilds.

This forum post outlines a potential framework for guild organization that accounts for intra-guild coordination and cross-guild coordination. This framework includes six roles that can and should be present in each guild as well as scenarios for how these roles may interact with other DAO members:

  • Guild Organizer
  • Governance Coordinator
  • Talent Coordinator
  • Secretary
  • Internal Project Coordinator
  • External Project Coordinator

Roles

Before continuing, I want to clarify a few things about roles:

  • Roles are grouping of responsibilities that members commit to. They do not grant formal powers over others.
  • A single person can occupy multiple roles – In the beginning, I suspect people will have multiple roles (eg. guild organizer and internal project coordinator may be the same person)
  • A role can have multiple people.
  • Members with and without roles must all follow the same governance processes.

That being said, I have identified six roles that each guild could/should fill:

Guild Organizer

  • Update Notion and Discord channels with new information
  • Organize and facilitate weekly meetings
  • Act as a reliable point of contact for general guild matters
  • Provide DAO community call and newsletter updates
  • Assumes project coordinator responsibilities for all intra-guild projects
  • Generally responsible for being aware of all guild-related activities and moving them forward, both internal and external

Governance Coordinator

  • Aware of DAO and guild governance procedures
  • Help others navigate governance processes
  • Represent the guild in any governance related activities
  • Assist in writing proposals, both from inside and outside the guild
  • Solicit feedback and participation on polls, discourse, and voting
  • Raising awareness for changes in governance

Talent Coordinator

  • Welcome new members to guild
  • Scout new members as needed (#intros and volunteer signup)
  • Directed new and existing members to tasks
  • Assist project coordinators in finding talent to fit positions
  • Maintain contact with members to see if they require support
  • Maintain Notion table of active contributors

Secretary

  • Taking notes for weekly guild meetings
  • Maintaining/organizing Notion and Discord channels for easy consumption
  • Track incoming and outgoing multi-sig transactions
  • Track reimbursements
  • Report to Treasury Guild

External Project Coordinator

  • Assist in cross-guild coordination
  • Understand and scoping requirements for cross-guild tasks
  • Working with talent coordinator in finding labor resources for cross-guild tasks
  • Responsible for making sure obligations are met
  • Maintain Notion page for ongoing projects

Internal Project Coordinator

  • Assist in intra-guild coordination
  • Understand and scoping requirements for intra-guild tasks
  • Working with talent coordinator in finding labor resources for intra-guild tasks
  • Responsible for making sure obligations are met
  • Maintain Notion page for ongoing projects

Sample Scenarios

To better understand what these roles are and how they may operate, I’ve laid a possible scenario for cross-guild collaboration.

In this scenario, during their weekly sync, the Marketing Guild has decided to run a brief campaign to promote the $BED Index. Part of their campaign involves two written pieces from the Writers Guild: (1) Why to Buy $BED and (2) How to Swap $BED.

As a multi-guild project, @Devin_S#7402 and @0xLucas#3124 have taken on the role of Project Champions and are responsible for seeing this project to execution. To get started, they reach out to @siddhearta#9802, the Writers Guild external project coordinator.

Siddhearta, Devin, and Lucas all sit down to scope the expected work. Together, they affirm criteria relevant to the Writers Guild, like expected time commitment, due date, compensation, article length, etc. Taking this information, Siddhearta passes it on to @FrankAmerica#0610, the Writer’s Guild talent coordinator to recruit.

Having understood the scope of work, Frank decides it would be good to have an experienced writer for the first article and puts a call out during the weekly guild meeting, to which @RichardPatey#8350 responds. The second article on how to trade is a good beginner article for new guild members to get their feet wet, and asks a new face, @Torgmeister11#1140, to write the post. @nonsensetwice#3475 agrees to edit.

Having found the appropriate resources, Siddhearta connects Patey, Torgmeister, and Nonsense with Devin and Lucas, updates Notion to reflect the commitment, and lets the guild organizer know about progress made.

A week into the project, Siddhearta checks in with the writers/editors to make sure all is smooth. After the project is delivered, Siddhearta, who is also the Writer’s Guild secretary, logs the successful project and books 5,000 BANK to pay out Patey, Torgmeister, and Nonsense during the next distribution.

Other possible scenarios include:

  • @humpty#6939 looking for support from the AV Guild to produce the CryptoSapiens podcast
  • Onboard looking for Web3 developers to help with the Aave course
  • Assistance in spinning up a proposal for funding a premium 1Password subscription

Next Steps

Before implementing these roles, there are a few steps we must first take:

Compensation – Given this is a new experiment, I believe we can operate in good faith. I propose that each elected person logs their weekly activity in hours and gets compensated accordingly. In future seasons, we can set hard caps on compensation based on the expected number of hours worked. Recently, numbers like 250-350 BANK have been proposed with some consistency.

Scoping Responsibilities – The responsibilities mentioned are generic. Guilds should scope their own roles and attribute responsibilities specific to their guild.

Elections – Each guild should hold elections for each role. Recall that multiple people can occupy the same role and the same person can occupy multiple roles. This does not need to be done on chain.

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Excellent post, I overall agree to what you are proposing and we are seeing this framework starting to emerge as the DAO is establishing a more formal structure.

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Awesome, good food for thought for the Analytics Guild. Sharing!

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Roles are probably the next step for our DAO to get more organized!
On compensation maybe the UMA approach can be pursued that I saw popping up from time to time.
I don’t think that the bank amount proposed is able to keep our DAO alive, DM me to chat in depth in a voice channel maybe!
Awesome to have you back and it already brings Banklessdao forward, what a comeback! :smiley: awesome

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Thank Frogmonkee, I agree with your proposal.
As for compensation, I believe that in several cases it is already possible to outline the number of hours per week that a role provides. This would avoid the need to keep an attendance register.
To underline the good faith in which everyone works, the number of hours indicated by those who are performing those roles is often less than the number of hours actually worked.

I also agree on the hourly valuation of 250-350 BANK, valid for all roles held.
This hourly valuation should in no way be seen as a depreciation of the effort of those who work and commit themselves. Since we are all shareholders, the goal of each member is the strengthening and growth of the DAO. The compensation in shares, even if today it may not seem particularly substantial, in the future it could correspond to very high values. It is all in our hands, our efforts and our work.

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good proposal @frogmonkee I see one of the biggest issues is cross-guild collaboration and facilitating work between guilds, and hopefully a definition of the required roles is very helpful and a way to address these important issues

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great proposal @frogmonkee love it, especially the IRL example. One side note, I have zero experience in streamlining a couple of 1000 contributors. The only IRL experience I have is managing the effort of 100+ people and with our current DAO having only 10+ super active contributors in each guild, maybe creating 6 new roles feels a bit too corporate to me. On the other hand, splitting up the to-do list into micro roles and micro-tasks might make it easier for more people to contribute and be ultra focussed on a very specific task/responsibility. In my experience I don’t even have 6 people working on the website, or the liquity or the nft platform project so I would not know how to assign 6 new roles to the current contributors, it’s just a handful of people who do a weekly voice call to ship a product and I want everyone to have the feeling they matter and don’t manage them with 6 “executives”. To ship the website I need a handful of people to ship and get all the guilds involved to iterate, give feedback on the MVP. Above all, I’m stoked you’re back, this is a good structure that makes sense to manage a couple 1000 people but to ship a product I feel we need only 10+ people working when they can, do what they love most, and a champion to make sure everyone is happy and gets enough compensation

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This is a great in-depth breakdown and description of roles. I like that one person could fill more than one role, or equally each role could have more than one person assigned to it. Having a DAO wide table of existing roles and their appointees will streamline the communication process, especially with inter-guild requirements. The real world example you use is a perfect case in point.

As mentioned by @livethelifetv, we really don’t want to make this a top-down style existence, but at the same time some accountability and guidance can be useful in propelling projects forward. To avoid conflict, having a seasonal election may raise more awareness among new members of the possibility of landing a paid role while also incentivising performance by incumbents if they wish to be re-elected.

Here is a proposal I put together with @Reinis for the Talent Coordinator role. It seems we’ve blurred the lines with Talent Coordinator and Project Coordinator. Would be good to hear your thoughts, or feel free to take any ideas we’ve included.

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Thanks to everyone that took the time to read and reply :pray:

@fin4thepeople @Grendel
I put together a quick spreadsheet for potential costs. I think the numbers are an overestimate. @fin4thepeople I’m not familiar with the UMA model? Do you mean paying salary on KPIs?

@livethelifetv and @NFThinker I’m so happy you brought up these points. I was hoping someone would so I would have the chance to explain.
Yes, the appearance of 6 roles does seem overwhelming, but only if you view them as individual positions. With the scale of the DAO as it is, I suspect roles within guilds will be occupied by the same people. Writers and Developers may have more diversity, but something like A/V or Design may only have 2 or 3 people occupy all 6 roles. The point is merely to segment responsibilities into discrete components that signal to other DAO members who can best help them. The framing of “executives” is not entirely accurate. Each role occupies a supporting position, not a position of leadership or power.
Also – I have a separate forum post for project coordination. I’m working on setting up meetings with project coordinators this week to better understand pain points and will work on possible solutions then. Please put in your availability, both for the Website and Liquity: Calendly - frog monkee

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I am also aligned with this direction, as we are seeing this natural evolution happening across guilds. I propose that if we evolve this, guilds should templatize their work as best as possible, so we know what deliverables we have to be accountable for to who, such as Marketing should write a brief for a campaign before engaging writers, design or others.

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@frogmonkee Based on the spreadsheet and considering $ 300 BANK as an hourly rate, the numbers suggest that the solution is sustainable from the point of view of balancing the accounts of most of the Guilds, covering just over 33% of the seasonal budget.

Perhaps we should indicate the maximum % impact of seasonal compensation on guilds’ budgets, so as to be sure that there is always a certain willingness to invest in projects and pay tips and bounties

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a very large work done. thanks

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This is great dude.
The only caveot from #dev-guild is that we don’t differentiate between external and internal coordinators.

Dev project coordination challenges require somewhat involved tracking of different aspects of the project, but the work doesn’t change whether it is between or internal to our guild.

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Great proposal @frogmonkee and good to see you back in action! :muscle:

Some thoughts about compensation, not necessarily $ price, but just price strategy:

cc @Grendel @fin4thepeople

I find it weird to expect that the price of BANK would go up when the strategy is to use a low hourly valuation.

Usually best companies (especially in crypto) tend to overpay because they want to attract the best talent so they can be successful.
So for me, the logic would be:

  • “underpaying contributors” → not attracting the best talent & low motivation → projects don’t deliver good products → price of BANK goes down
  • “overpaying contributors” → attracting the best talent & high motivation → projects deliver great products → price of BANK goes up!

So, of course if we don’t have a big enough budget for higher hourly compensation, we shouldn’t do it.
But if the budget is available, I think we should always try to pay contributors as much as possible to incentivize them.
Frog’s spreadsheet is going to be super helpful to be able to anticipate the impact :+1:.
Great idea Grendel with the “maximum % impact of seasonal compensation on guilds’ budgets” :+1:

Even more important than focusing about $ price / hours, I think we should always make sure that hours compensate are bringing value to the DAO.

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I agree with all the points you have said. My concerns, which obviously represent only my opinion, are the following:

  • distribute tokens unequally between projects and members
  • distribute too many tokens at a time of low liquidity
  • focus only on the present and not on the future value of the token as well as future members of the DAO

As I previously had the opportunity to indicate, I believe that if the budget dedicated to the projects will still have tokens at the end of the Season, these tokens should be divided among the projects already financed as a form of production bonus.

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@Grendel @didierkrux

I agree with you two. I’m not a huge fan of the hourly model, but it is a good way to estimate work. Because these are guild related positions, payment would come from guild treasuries, and should therefore be left to the guild to decide how compensation works instead of a single model across the board.

Alternate models could be:

  • Flat salary, to be reevaluated each season
  • Special coordinape round with guild members and allocate GIVE, but only elected positions can receive

@Icedcool I’m fine with that too. This isn’t mean to be prescriptive. Guilds should modify as need be.

If we go through with this, once members are elected, we would have a cross-guild meeting with all talent coordinators, governance coordinators, etc. to better scope out responsibilities and processes that apply to all guilds.

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Excellent and necessary work. Agree there needs to be some role definition & the flexibility to move among and have overlapping (or split) roles.

For me, even one of these roles is still a lot and I feel like I’m doing 3 at the moment, and not very well. :sweat_smile: :grimacing:

Another role I feel is important, and has been discussed, is that of the Product and/or Program Manager outside of a guild structure. The guilds and their roles plug into this, but that role drives a priority product or project that must ship. (Maybe Frog’s guild framework is not the right place for it, so my apologies - but I think it’s important enough to bring up)

Regarding compensation, I think current incentives coupled with vesting and successful launches will drive crazy good outcomes. Similar to a stock option model, but more egalitarian and open. I’m not a tokenomics expert, but the UMA kpi & success token concepts have me intrigued. Also wondering what BANK will ultimately be - governance, utility, equity, or some combination?

Excellent work, clear af, and such a joy to have you back, Frog.

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Personally I agree with the role of Product / Program Manager and I am pushing it on the proposals I write. Not all products and programs would need a manager, but most of them will.

I also agree on a compensation model that partially relies on vesting dynamics.

Compensation is the hottest topic of the moment, I myself have had many talks about it. The positive thing is that we all agree on some fundamental points, such as finding the best ways to give satisfaction to those who work and push the DAO more and more. Surely there will be a way to find a meeting point between all the instances, building bridges is in the nature of BanklessDAO.

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@Droste
I completely agree. I have a separate forum post in the works on project management that incorporates some of the roles in this guild post that I will publish later this week.

Also, you’re doing a fantastic job. There’s always more to be done and gaps in what we could be doing, but I know for a fact that you’re killing it.

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Welcome back!

  1. I :heart: the way you’re signaling a role-based paradigm and making it clear that it isn’t about adding bureaucracy/executive leadership; it’s more about ‘jobs to be done’ and people taking a ‘tour of duty’ in a role and that the roles are service oriented not about delegated decision making rights (decisions happen in the governance mechanics of the guilds and these roles are subject to executing the ‘will of that’ governance not the other way around)
  2. I’m torn between standardization and guidance e.g. If we standardize on roles and hopefully soon their proposed salaries then it will reduce guild to guild variation in compensation for these roles which is probably not a bad thing over the long-term to help keep things relatively fair…but in this nascent phase, dictating that these roles ‘must exist’ in each guild (even if same person wears them) could perhaps prematurely inhibit experimentation and discovery of the ideal pattern(s) for roles across the DAO. – Not sure I have specific advice here (yet), just noticing a tension I felt
  3. I really like the guidance on an hourly rate DAO-wide…but agree with sentiment of others that we should try to quickly move away from this so that the sometimes silly games and overhead cost of submitting and reviewing hours subsides quickly. Reflecting on this reaction, my proposal would be that DAO-wide we audit how these roles are emerging, being filled, and time spent in them for ~1mon and then finalize this proposal w/ the ‘mandatory roles per guild’ (i.e. minimum viable guild roles DAO-wide) and their salary guidance. Each Guild may augment the role description and even locally adjust the salary, but would do so with solid argument and through their local guild governance mechanism. End result is loose-standardization for fairness and efficiency, but autonomy preserved at guild governance layer.

Sorry, I wrote this somewhat stream of consciousness, hope it’s useful.

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