Mad Hatter MGMT Season 5 Proposal

Mad Hatter MGMT Season 5 Proposal
Title: Mad Hatter MGMT Season 5 Budget Proposal
Author: nonsensetwice#3475
Date Created: July 15, 2022

  1. Summary

  2. Mad Hatter Features and Services

  3. Season 5 Plans and Goals

    1. Proposed Feature Development
    2. Support and Education Through wenHELP
  4. Financial Implications

    1. Project Manager Responsibilities
    2. Core Developer Responsibilities
    3. Compensation Breakdown
  5. Success Metrics or KPIs

    1. Feature Utilization
    2. Feature Development
    3. Developer Onboarding

SUMMARY

Multisig Wallet Address:
TBD

Note: This proposal includes remuneration for the final weeks of Season 4, replacing the Season 4 budget proposal.

Once upon a time, the original intent of the DEGEN Workgroup was to develop “one bot to rule them all” to assist in all matters pertaining to the administration of the BanklessDAO (hereafter, bDAO) Discord Server. However, upon development of the POAP distribution feature, DEGEN became specifically about POAP, and the bDAO server-specific features were split off into the Mad Hatter Discord bot, with development waning. Due to recent organizational changes, the DEGEN Workgroup has since disbanded, relinquishing custody of Mad Hatter. As such, Mad Hatter now requires a team to assist in its maintenance, feature support and education, and continued development.

MAD HATTER FEATURES AND SERVICES

Mad Hatter serves specifically to be a public good for bDAO. The features that exist in Mad Hatter have been designed and developed out of either a need for administrative automation, or requests from the community to improve operations. The existence of the bot itself provides a number of opportunities to help onboard new members for various groups in the DAO, while continued development allows for incoming developers to showcase their talent. This bot is not currently, nor will it ever be, designed for the purpose of generating revenue.

In an effort to best support bDAO, a number of features were developed and built, including, but not limited to:

  • /squad up for quickly bootstrapping projects with the right roles and personnel
  • /notion homepage for Notion Guild Pages delivery
  • /notion meeting-notes for quickly bootstrapping an agenda in Notion for Guild meetings
  • /afk or “Away from Keyboard,” to capture user notifications and inform the notifier when someone is away
  • /coordinape for Coordinape participation form delivery
  • /guest pass for Guest Pass assignment and automated removal upon expiration
  • /timecard for time keeping, to manage time coverage and review
  • Username Spam Filter to prevent spoofing of high-level contributor accounts and minimize social engineering attempts
  • Various features and updates to support Ops in administering the Discord server

SEASON 5 PLANS AND GOALS

PROPOSED FEATURE DEVELOPMENT

Prior to releasing custody of Mad Hatter, the DEGEN Workgroup had a roadmap of features to build out for the bot, none of which came to fruition, yet remain anticipated. In bringing a team together to support the continued development of Mad Hatter, many of these features will become production priorities. These features include, but are not limited to:

  • Augmenting Mad Hatter with a front end for ease of configuration
  • Opening up Squad Up to allow Level 1 members to quickly bootstrap projects
  • Enabling tipping with BANK on Polygon
  • Adapting Coordinape automation via the upcoming Coordinape bot for bDAO-specific functionality
  • And many more!

While it is unlikely that every single one of these features will be completed during Season 5, these features can begin development, the delivery of which will allow bDAO to become better organized and more efficient. Furthermore, Mad Hatter will provide ample opportunity for devs new to bDAO to pick up bounty work and quickly integrate into the DAO’s work-intensive ecosystem. Currently, the Developers Guild provides its own form of First Quest, providing incoming developers with quick and easy bounties to produce features across a number of projects, allowing said developers a fast path to onboarding. Mad Hatter will provide more of these opportunies, with the team vetting incoming feature requests and making bounties available to developers for those features that are most likely to succeed.

SUPPORT AND EDUCATION THROUGH wenHELP

In addition to the above, there are matters of education and support to consider. With the success of DEGEN largely due, at least initially, to the work provided by the Product Support Center—now rebranded as wenHELP, and will be referred to as such for the remainder of this document— Mad Hatter MGMT will outsource education and support there. Despite Mad Hatter being the de facto bDAO bot, few are aware of all of its capabilities, and fewer still are competent in all of its use cases. Α partnership with wenHELP will not only provide the necessary support for issues and inquiries, but also provide opportunities for general education of Mad Hatter features across the DAO by way of content generation and presentation.

wenHELP’s responsibilities will include:

  • Content generation, including, but not limited to:
    • feature documentation
    • tutorial videos
    • Scheduling Knowledge Sessions
  • Troubleshooting and issues resolution, including:
    • logs review
    • troubleshooting ticket management
    • communicating technical issues to the core dev team for bug fixes and patches
    • answering support-related questions from bDAO members
  • Running polls and surveys to understand use cases for Mad Hatter in bDAO and how it can be improved season over season

Mad Hatter MGMT will work closely with wenHELP to provide the assistance they require to generate all necessary materials and properly support bDAO members coming to wenHELP for assistance with Mad Hatter.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

This proposal seeks to remunerate work managed at the end of Season 4, as well as to fund the project through Season 5. To accomplish all the terms of this proposal, Mad Hatter MGMT will consist of four salaried positions:

ONE PROJECT MANAGER
The Project Manager works to maintain the operations of Mad Hatter MGMT, which includes managing team meetings and POAP distribution; proper execution of the team’s governance framework; instantiating multisig transactions and following up with approvals and/or rejections; resolving conflicts within the team; preparing proposals and other such operational documentation; and reviewing Pull Requests to the codebase maintained by the team.

THREE CORE DEVELOPERS
The Core Developers are primarily responsible for the overall structure and maintenance of the codebase, which includes writing tests and refactoring code; reviewing Pull Requests; designing data models and guiding the development of requisite APIs; guiding the development of and maintaining the front end/bot configuration site; onboarding new developers; working closely with other developers from other projects in collaboration, as either consultants or contractors; and assisting in the management of the bot’s deployment.

In addition to these positions, a bounty pool will be necessary to incentivize contributing developers to build new features. A funds disbursement to wenHELP for the creation of documentation and educational materials and presentations, in order to provide hands on support for bDAO members. Furthermore, the deployment costs, currently covered under a private debit card, will need to be reimbursed.

COMPENSATION BREAKDOWN

As the current workload is unknown, the following figures are being presented as an estimate of the time commitment of the core team, with regard to a small stipend for each position. Considering that the Core Team’s focus will be on maintaining and planning, approximately six hours of work per week is estimated for each position at a rate of 1000 BANK/hr.

An amount of 24,000 BANK is requested for the maintenance of Mad Hatter through the final weeks of Season 4. This breaks down to roughly six hours a week for four weeks for one person.

An amount of 312,000 BANK is requested for Season 5. This breaks down to six hours a week for 13 weeks for four roles, as listed above.

A bounty pool of 100,000 BANK is being requested for Season 5. This will potentially cover the development of up to two major features—estimated at 35,000 BANK each—and a handful of smaller features and feature augmentations.

An amount of 190,000 BANK is being requested for wenHELP to generate educational content around all of Mad Hatter’s current features, and provide support for bDAO members seeking to make the most use of these features. This amount also includes basic app monitoring to assist in the troubleshooting process when bDAO members run into issues using Mad Hatter’s features, and includes support through Season 5. The breakdown of this amount can be found in the Mad Hatter MGMT x wenHELP Partnership Proposal.

Finally, deployment costs are currently covered via the personal debit card of nonsensetwice#3475 and runs at a monthly cost of 10.00 USD + applicable taxes and fees. This includes:

  • Mad Hatter’s deployment through Heroku: 7.00 USD/mo
  • LogDNA/Mezmo account for log collection and 7-day retention: 3.00 USD/mo

A reimbursement of 12.00 USD for the month of July is requested in the form of USDC/DAI or its equivalent in BANK to cover these costs, as well as the relevant transaction fees to offramp to fiat, as well as 36.00 USD in the form of USDC/DAI for Season 5, which will cover deployment costs for August, September, and October 2022.

Role Position Rate Time Total per Line
Season 4 MH Maintenance 1000 BANK/hr x 6 hr/wk 4 weeks 24,000 BANK
S5 Project Manager nonsensetwice#3475 1000 BANK/hr x 6 hr/wk 13 weeks 78,000 BANK
S5 CORE Dev 1 Tiki#0503 1000 BANK/hr x 6 hr/wk 13 weeks 78,000 BANK
S5 CORE Dev 2 1000 BANK/hr x 6 hr/wk 13 weeks 78,000 BANK
S5 CORE Dev 3 1000 BANK/hr x 6 hr/wk 13 weeks 78,000 BANK
Bounty Pool 100,000 BANK
Education & Support wenHELP 190,000 BANK
Deployment Reimbursement 12 USD/Mo 4 months 48 USDC/DAI
Total Overall 626,000 BANK + 48 USDC/DAI

This brings the total amount being requested for the remainder of Season 4 and all of Season 5 to 626,000 BANK + 24 USDC or DAI. Any unused funds will roll over to the following Season and offset the seasonal budget request.

SUCCESS METRICS OR KPIS

Mad Hatter success metrics will revolve around three main points:

  • Feature utilization
  • Feature development
  • Developer onboarding

FEATURE UTILIZATION

Mad Hatter MGMT will measure the success of Mad Hatter by way of feature utilization and new feature development. We will work closely with wenHELP to monitor logs and measure the use of each command, taking a record of utilization prior to education of the available features, and then again after educational materials have been published and knowledge sessions have been introduced. The primary goal during this stage will be to establish a workflow that will allow Mad Hatter MGMT to quickly recognize and understand what features are underutilized and why, and poll the DAO on how these features can be improved, or if they should be removed. Season 5 will be used to establish this workflow, minimizing the fiscal impact of Mad Hatter in future seasons.

FEATURE DEVELOPMENT

Mad Hatter provides a unique value proposition to the DAO in that features can be developed specifically to meet the DAO’s needs internally, by way of improving operations and efficiency. For the remainder of Season 4 and the beginning of Season 5, the list of proposed features will be reviewed and bounties will be established for developers to begin work on those that take priority. It is unlikely that all of these features will be completed by the end of the season; however, progress can be made toward their completion, with expected delivery of two major features and a handful of smaller features and feature augmentations in Season 5.

DEVELOPER ONBOARDING

As all new feature development will be executed via bounties, Mad Hatter MGMT will work closely with the Developers Guild to provide opportunities for developers new to bDAO to become quickly acclimated to the DAO’s work culture. Smaller bounties for feature augmentations will be recommended to new developers, while larger bounties for new features will be recommended to more consistent contributors, though any developer can take on any bounty they feel confident in completing. In terms of metrics, success in this area will be determined by how many bounties are picked up and completed. Ultimately, Mad Hatter MGMT will provide a welcoming atmosphere of work for new developers coming to bDAO through the Developers Guild.

  • Yes, absolutely
  • No, absolutely not (please leave a comment)

0 voters

6 Likes

i just think it’s an extraneous project

3 Likes

It should be obvious that MadHatter is a necessary infrastructure in bDAO. We can take a case study of guest pass management, and imagine having to manually keep track and maintain the guest pass cycle every time. This will quickly proof inefficient and cause chaos and miss management . That can also be said for every other automation this bot does, and it can be easier overlooked now because it has made life easy for everyone to the point that we don’t have to think about it.

Also, the devs that are working on this take a lot of time and skillet in building and maintaining this project, it is only fair the DAO set aside some funds to address key infrastructures like this.

I will go as far as to state that they don’t even need to apply for funds, there should be a set amount of BANK set aside for infrastructure maintenance and I believe Mad Hatter falls across as a necessary infrastructure.

14 Likes

Hence, this Bot handled all the features listed above for S4… its encouraging to see most of this works brought to a possible easy way of operation. Am a big fan of learning, and this here, deserves an accolade.

6 Likes

Agree, this is a necessary infrastructure in bDAO with tons of benefits.

4 Likes

This is one of the project I appreciate it existence in the Dao, this should be kept running at full scope and given necessary support, it can even be bigger and stronger, adding more features and the possibility is unlimited. Kudos to the Mad Hatter team.

2 Likes

I’ll absolutely love to see the progress of MadHatter, the bot is a crucial part of the DAO.

3 Likes

Spot on! The bot has always been useful, so this is welcome.

6 Likes

Excellent point. Thank you for bringing up Guest Passes. The Guest Pass system was originally handled manually. And to your point, it was inefficient and required a lot of overhead to maintain. Once we built out the automation, it’s been a simple matter of using a command to update guest passes. Such a huge difference.

Thank you for your support! It’s much appreciated :pray:

3 Likes

Thank you, @_iamthompson. Lots of existing features to assist in bDAO administration and growth, and if this project is funded, we’ll see more of them. I appreciate your support!

4 Likes

Many thank, @183Aaros :pray:

2 Likes

Thank you, @LordRanchoatos1813. I agree, there is so much potential here. I’m looking forward to seeing how Mad Hatter may further support the DAO, should this proposal be funded. I appreciate your support! :pray:

2 Likes

Thank you for your support, @Mofiyin :pray:

2 Likes

Thank you for your support, @McEal :pray:

2 Likes

Thank you very much, @Crown :pray:

2 Likes

How so, @ernest_of_gaia? I suggest that the guest pass automation, username spam filter automation, and coordinape sign up delivery features alone are worth pursuing continued development. Could this just be a matter of lack of awareness of what Mad Hatter is capable of that leads you to believe this project shouldn’t be funded? If this is the case, then I argue that the educational concerns addressed in the proposal will help you and others become knowledgeable on it’s many use cases.

Or, in your estimation, should the bot be shut down? And if so, why? This bot is arguably not extraneous to bDAO operations. And without funding, there is no bot. Deployment costs money, and maintenance takes time and effort.

3 Likes

This is one crucial automation system within the DAO and has helped a lot, lets keep this up.

7 Likes

Awesome! Thank you for your support, @israelrex :pray:

3 Likes

And here i was thinking MadHatter never really served a meaningful purpose other than send random replies to messages and make random jokes. To think it does this much, i can rightly connect the dots now and see how beneficial and important its presence is in bDAO.

I will totally agree with Tony on having an amount set aside for managing the bot, rather than having to apply for funds.

This project, I’m in support of.

8 Likes

Thank you, @Leahpar! I’m happy to read that this has changed your perception of Mad Hatter! Much of what the bot does runs behind the scenes, so aside from the snarky asides the bot occasionally drops, there is quite a bit it manages regarding our Discord server. I appreciate you taking the time to understand Mad Hatter better, and appreciate your support of this project :pray:

5 Likes