šŸš© Missold BanklessDAO Advertising

General
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Hey bDAO frens,

My name is John Ellison. Iā€™m the co-host of ReFi Podcast and the Source steward at ReFiDAO. Iā€™m a long-time fan of the Bankless Podcast and weekly reader of the bDAO newsletter.

Iā€™m writing this post to try and resolve a $10k dispute between myself and one of the service providers under the ā€˜Banklessā€™ umbrella. Hereā€™s the story:

BACKGROUND
Iā€™ve had an unfortunate experience engaging with one of the service providers under the Bankless DAO umbrella. I donā€™t want to name the organization in this thread, but given the recent editorial in the newsletter, I thought it was important to raise the issue.

I reached out in 2021 asking if someone from BanklessDAO was interested in producing the first season of our podcast. I was connected with a service provider who sold us a package, and we submitted a partial payment for the engagement.

FAILED SOW
After almost four weeks of constant back and forth, it was clear the service provider could not deliver upon the scope of the agreement. I requested to terminate the agreement and they agreed to provide a refund in the form of advertising on BanklessDAO properties.

AGREEMENT TO REFUND IN KIND VIA BANKLESSDAO ADVERTISING PLACEMENTS
I accepted this as a repayment in-kind, as to their credit, had assembled a team which worked hard but simply failed to deliver at a professional standard.

We agreed to a refund-in-kind via an MOU signed by both parties including two key deliverables:

  1. A Twitter Space hosted by BanklessDAO
  2. Advertising on BanklessDAO newsletter

We proceeded to schedule a Twitter space to launch season two of our podcast and I sent the content for the newsletter. I sent the calendar invite to the service providers and a number of high-profile ReFi influencers titled ā€œBanklessDAO Season 2 Launchā€ (clearly indicating the BanklessDAO name).

This was over a month in advance of the Twitter space.

TWITTER SPACE RUG
Less than a week before the space was due to run (and after I had made a public commitment to host the space), the representative from said service provider informed me the space would be held on their service provider account with circa 2k followers (instead of BanklessDAOā€™s 35k+).

I confronted him on this and said it was not what we agreed, had significant detriment to our brand reputation, but in good faith to HIS brandā€™s reputation decided to proceed with the space (as they had publicly promoted it as well).

They delivered a mediocre Twitter Space and disengaged. No newsletter advertising. Nothing.

RADIO SILENCE
They ignored several Discord messages and emails and have stopped communicating entirely.

The sum of money they charged us was just less than $10kā€¦

RISK TO BANKLESS NAME
This is an active community member who is selling services under the ā€˜Banklessā€™ name and upon further investigation, has also failed to deliver their SOW for other members of the ReFi community.

I donā€™t want to defame this person or ruin their brand reputation, but I think itā€™s important this issue is resolved as bDAO navigates how to maintain a solid brand reputation and maintain trust within the community.

What are the conflict resolution procedures for this kind of issue within Bankless DAO?

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I DMed the author of this post and asked who the service provider and person in question were. They didnā€™t feel comfortable speaking with me about it. I directed them to ombuds with the warning that ombuds typically deals with internal matters.

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Hey @climateXcrypto,

In addition to @links response, I want to add Iā€™m sorry to hear you had a challenge with one of the projects(?) at BanklessDao, and I appreciate your desire to keep things upstanding.

A few acknowledgements:

BanklessDAO is a big place and has distributed and decentralized authority, with projects and subDAOs that have autonomy in terms of their leadership, operations and governance.

Ultimately any kind of enforcement is done at the sentiment of the DAO, AND projects and subDAOs have their own autonomy.

Looking forward to hearing about a positive resolution.

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Iā€™m sure we can find a positive solution to this issue and we nees both sides in order to mediate this. Thanks for bringing forward this issue.

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Thanks @links for reaching out and to @icedcool and LiviuC for your support.

Fortunately this forum post has prompted the service provider in question to get back into contact after months of ignoring my communication.

So weā€™re making a step in the right direction! I will look to resolve this with them privately one last time and if not will pursue other options including the ombuds which sounds like a formal structure to manage conflict such as this.

As bDAO is evaluating how itā€™s brand is used, I would highly recommend there be some clear guidelines about referring community members to service providers as this is effectively an endorsement. Almost all the people in bDAO are anon and this can create some difficult incentives when it comes to delivering quality work and doing what you say.

Iā€™m a big fan of the Bankless community and donā€™t want to tarnish the name in any way, thus me raising this without specifying specific actors. Thanks for your support and Iā€™ll keep you posted.

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we build in public, without having some idea of who we are talking about really canā€™t offer any help and canā€™t support any kind of resolution

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Yes I understand that, and I appreciate your offer of support. Before naming names I want to give the other party one last chance to make things right. Weā€™re meeting today thankfully so am optimistic.