Governance Solution Engineer Program - Completion of Cohort 1

Governance
1

Title: Governance Solution Engineer Program - Completion of Cohort 1
Author(s): Icedcool🏴#4947
Date Created: December 8th, 2022
Date Posted: January 10th, 2023

Reference documents:
GSE Re-Implementation: Link

GSE Notion Page: Link

GSE Members

  • 0xJustice
  • ManuelMaccou🏴
  • Rotorless
  • Saulthorin
  • Above Average Joe

GSE Completed works:

A Financial Analysis of Guilds and Projects

BanklessDAO Constitution and bDIP Standard Version 2

Compensation System Bankless DAO

Recommendations for:

  1. Membership
  2. Leveling system
  3. Org Units
  4. Guild Focus
  5. Seasonal BANK Buyback program
  6. Project Funding Roadmap
  7. DAO Legal Service
  8. GSE
  9. DAO Reporting
  10. Ombuds review/Judicial Offboarding

TLDR

Summary

This proposal is meant to complete the first cohort of GSE’s, collect DAO sentiment in terms of the deliverables, and to support discussion about continuing governance through creating a governing body that incentivizes and supports governance.

BACKGROUND

The GSE was proposed to organize a group of people at the DAO to address two important challenges for the DAO:

  • Contributor Alignment - How do we properly reward active DAO contributors, accounting for the varying skill sets and time commitment people are making?
  • Strategic Prioritization - What should we say no to? How do we, as a DAO, learn how to say no? How do we do this in a way that empowers the community to make decisions while also letting high-context individuals influence outcomes?

The GSEs were elected and were tasked with creating deliverables that had the requirements of:

  • Detailed specification to implement.
  • Community consent and feedback must already be included.

Through Seasons 4 and 5 they completed the above deliverables, and we are wrapping up in Season 6.

FINANCIAL SPECIFICATION

Base GSE Pay:

  • Each Gov SE is guaranteed a 75,000 BANK salary.

  • At the end of the Season, the DAO will vote on two deliverables produced by the GSEs via forum vote. One for strategic prioritization and one for contributor Alignment. Each deliverable will be rated on a scale of 1 to 5, which will unlock additional compensation.

    • Each deliverable will unlock up to 375K BANK
      • Each rating will unlock 75K in funding. 1 = 75K, 2 = 150K, 3 = 225K, 4 = 300K, 5 = 375K
    • We recommend that they distribute this unlocked funding amongst each other through coordinape, to reflect individual contribution as measured by each other.

  • Funds will be held in a multi-sig held by the 5 GSEs

    • Once all compensation has been distributed, GSEs must produce a financial report outlining how funds were distributed.
    • Any funds not distributed will be returned to the treasury.

Further Details:

The two workstreams(contributor alignment and strategic prioritization), had 500k BANK each to allocate to work being done. The GSEs would like to compensate the following contributors for their work:

Ispeaknerd 70k - Compensation plan
Senad 70k - Compensation plan
Icedcool 25k - Administration, and completion of GSE
Aloy 3k - Coordinator Roles

Summary

The GSE was an experiment that had high aims, a lot of goals and due to the breadth of focus a number of difficult challenges. Amidst that, the GSE cohort 1 created deliverables and suggestions that have helped move the DAO forward in terms of governance discussion and focus. Overall, I view this as a good learning opportunity, that has further pointed the DAO toward developing and refining our governance.

Next Steps

Upon the completion of this vote, the GSE will be free to kick off a coordinape to distribute funding amongst each other, compensate contributors, and return any funds not used back to the DAO.

A future proposal is in the works to create a governance department for the DAO to further incentivize and support governance.

Join the conversation in #governance and #BDAO Governance Workstream

POLLS

GSE VOTE

How to vote:

Based on your review of the above deliverables, vote 1-5 (1 being lowest, 5 highest) on how the deliverables have addressed the two prioritizations defined above.

Strategic Prioritization Deliverables:

  • bDIP candidates
Strategic Prioritization Vote
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

0 voters

Contributor Alignment Deliverables:

  • Constitution and bDIP Process
Contributor Alignment Vote
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

0 voters

Based on these polls payment will be released according to the financial specifications above.

2

It’s not clear to me how the polls relate to each deliverable. Both polls appear to refer to work around the bDIP & Constitution efforts.

Do the Completed Works fall under the two Deliverable categories, and if so, how?

Thanks for helping me understand! :pray:

2 Likes
3

I’d need the GSE to clarify the alignment of the deliverables.

In terms of the vote, it is meant to be an aggregate measurement of the two deliverables as defined by this section, and distributed according to this rubric.

That help?
I tried to keep it as clear as possible :sweat_smile:.

4

Thanks @Icedcool - the definitions and rubric were clear to me but I’m still unclear how each body of work corresponds to each of the two deliverables. Maybe each body of work doesn’t fall exclusively under one deliverable or the other, but it would still help to know how each work was intended to contribute to each deliverable.

I feel like I’m missing something and I apologize. As you say, maybe one of the GSE could help clarify. I’ll drop them a note on Discord.

1 Like
5

The proposed compensation system is very complex, and appears to be compromised now due to the likely cessation of DAO-level Coordinape.

6

Where is the option to reduce their salary because they did not accomplish their mandate?

The GSE did not accomplish these goals, even though they had an additional 2 seasons and 2M BANK to do so.

  • The financial analysis is rife with errors and unusable.
  • The compensation system is extremely complicated and has not gained consensus, and any consensus that has been gained has been done so by @senad.eth , not the GSE.
  • as far as I can tell, the recommendations are based upon GSE personal opinions, not research or consensus
  • there is VERY little documentation on the GSE process…very few kanban tasks, no project accounting, and only 8 meeting notes (many of those lacking information). The GSE were supposed to spend 30h/wk on this project AFAIK, and I don’t see evidence that they did this.

The sole exception to this is the constitution, which @0xJustice put through multiple rounds of consensus and implemented (thanks for this justice!)

I ask that this GSE cohort pay the contributors who helped them, reduce their salaries, and return the rest of the BANK to the DAO.

3 Likes
7

TBH this also feels high. Did you all spend 140 hours on the compensation plan? Did administration and writing this forum post take 70 hours?

8

Its a good check.

For me, probably not.
Maybe around 20-30?

Happy to accept a lower payment, this was suggested by the GSEs.

9

I am struggling a bit with the overall compensation sums here - I am not talking about whether they are to high or not, just the amounts overall. So 75k BANK/head (5 members)=375k (fixed salary) and then a success component one per deliverable of which there are two, up to 375k each. So a maximum possible compensation overall of 3x375k= 1.125.000 BANK +213.000 for the other contributors. Is that correct? These are maximum figures, I realise that.

10

That is correct!

Not simple :expressionless: .

11

Bumping this for awareness!
Going to close this vote on March 1st, and the GSE will act on the results, and return any funds not used.

As a component accepting a reduction in payment for myself from the 70k BANK to 25k.

2 Likes
12

@Icedcool You are showing great leadership and transparency, something bDAO needs much more of.

Thank you

2 Likes
13

I have been going back and forth with this for a bit - also not wanting to ask these questions and keeping in mind that the GSEs had a lot on their plate.
But I am not able to see that the GSE’s met any of their deliverables. Additionally, operationally, what was produced was produced in the exact the opposite manner that the specification set out. the GSE’s deliver on any of the deliverables that were outlined in the specification

I will post below, as click through fatigue is a real thing.

"Deliverables
Deliverables would include a detailed specification that we can begin to implement in Season 4. The closest comparable is the original Season Specification that still serves as an important guiding document for the DAO to this day.

This deliverable would have to be in its final form, if not extremely close. The idea is to have something we can implement by the end of Season 3 going into Season 4. As such, community feedback must already be included. I want to acknowledge that this community feedback can take time but if Draft 1is done properly, much of the community consensus will already be aligned.

Contributor Alignment

  • Refining the Guest Pass, L1, and L2 system to be more inclusive
    • Includes ways to offboard contributors that no longer meet the activity/recognition threshold
  • Create a compensation framework that can be updated and:
  • Envisions a new incentive model that rewards long-term contributors that stick with the DAO for longer periods of time.
  • :warning: Work with guilds to standardize guild roles and Coordinape rounds
  • :warning: Work with guild Talent Scouts and First Quest to identify challenges and better retain talent entering DAO

Strategic Prioritization

  • :warning: Model and present various strategic directions the DAO can take (present to DAO for feedback)
  • :warning: Outline a business plan based on an identified strategic model
  • Create an evaluation framework based on the identified strategy to help the DAO make strategic decisions with treasury and grant funding
  • Create a new evaluation process that optimizes for both community consensus and responsible decision making (will likely deprecate the Grants Committee as it stands)
  • :warning: Design a system that actually measures the output of funded projects and incorporates those findings into the evaluation process
  • :warning: Balancing funding cost centers with things that generate revenue or token appreciation

Gov SEs and Working Groups

Earlier, I said about Gov SEs:

These members are not to operate in silos and make decisions on behalf of the DAO. They are to work with the DAO to find the optimal solution by progressively designing solutions, presenting them to the DAO, capturing feedback, and iterating.

One method of working with the DAO is to create a working group around these two problem spaces. As such, Gov SEs will have to work publicly in these working group. Part of their responsibility will be coordinating these working groups, somewhere between a Guild Coordinator and Project Manager."

14

I am wondering @Icedcool, why there would need to be any sort of vote on this. What was delivered did not meet the deliverable criteria? Although I do believe that @senad.eth and @iSpeakNerd did deliver.

On a side note, I have been trying to wrap my head around this for quite some time. It seems like implementing what the GSE did deliver has set the DAO back Governance wise and the past year was not focused on what the GSE initiative should have been focused on.

Incoming wrap up of this incoming via a temp check.

1 Like
15

These terms were agreed upon, a LONG time go.

The GSE multisig has the funds, and needs to distribute then return the funds to the DAO.
So, IMO, gotta wrap this thing up and close it out.

The challenge you are highlighting is an artifact of the challenges this group had.
We should have had more nuance in terms of design, work and deliverables.

16

In service of wrapping this up, have advised the closure of this initiative with:

Compensation to GSEs:
Each Gov SE is guaranteed a 75,000 BANK salary.
Strategic Prioritization - Additional 75K
Contributor alignment - (split between 1 and 3, so 2) - Additional 150k

Total of 225k to be additionally distributed amongst each other.

Compensation to others:
Ispeaknerd 70k - Compensation plan
Senad 70k - Compensation plan
Icedcool 25k - Administration, and completion of GSE
Aloy 3k - Coordinator Roles 3

1 Like
17

thanks for closing this @Icedcool, very much needed to move forward.

@links, in response to your question

TBH this also feels high. Did you all spend 140 hours on the compensation plan? Did administration and writing this forum post take 70 hours?

I spent ~20 hours working with @senad.eth and @AboveAverageJoe to map out Joe’s proposed compensation plan. I was not involved in the initial design but we did adjust a few things as it developed. Mostly putting thoughts into written format that could be transmitted to others for understanding better than a long dense dry, half-finished essay. Links back to the original documents were shared in the forum posts if you refer back to those posted by @senad.eth

1 Like