[Season 3] Reduce Membership Threshold

[0x_Lucas]

Title: [Season 3] Reduce Membership Threshold
Authors: 0xLucas
Date Created: 12/8/2021

Summary

Reduce the Season 3 membership threshold to 10,000 BANK for Level 1 and 100,000 BANK for Level 3.

BACKGROUND

We’re in the final stages of planning for Season 3. The Season 3 temp check allowed people to vote on the membership thresholds. Here are the results so far:

While the general sentiment is to keep the threshold unchanged, this post outlines the argument for why we should reduce the threshold and make Bankless DAO more accessible for individuals.

The 35,000 BANK threshold was initially set at Genesis as this was the nearest round number that users who held the 2021 Bankless Badge received in BANK. The intention was for the threshold to adjust on a seasonal basis to ensure the DAO remained accessible & all members were sufficiently aligned with the DAO (via skin in the game). However, we have never changed the threshold.

(It’s funny as this threshold reduction was proposed within the first week of Bankless DAO’s launch).

MISSION & VALUES ALIGNMENT

Bankless DAO is meant to act as a permissionless community that anyone can join and contribute to. We achieve this through BANK memberships and guest passes. However, the current threshold of 35,000 BANK is limiting a lot of individuals from becoming full members and causing an overreliance on guest passes.

PROBLEM

We’re at the point where there’s a good case to change it now given the high barriers to entry which has led to some issues around Talent Onboarding and Guest Passes.

High Barrier to Entry

The core problem is that the current threshold creates a high barrier to entry for new participants, limiting our ability to onboard new talent while relying heavily on guest passes as a workaround. We now have tons of contributors who are responsible for renewing and managing guest passes, which has led to a significant amount of overhead for those individuals.

We want to create a broad community for the DAO to build on; however, the current threshold is limiting this.

We can see this as membership growth has stagnated. This is seen in our member graphs where the amount full members has largely gone sideways while the 0-35K BANK range has experienced a majority of the growth in holders.

People who are interested in the DAO simply aren’t accumulating or earning the necessary amount of BANK to become full members & active contributors. This could be because they may not think it’s worth the price tag for full memberships or they’re perfectly comfortable leveraging the guest pass for access.

Number of Full Bankless DAO Members

Number of <35K BANK holders

Benefits

Here’s a good synthesis on some of the benefits from the OG Threshold Reduction proposal from @frogmonkee and @EliteViking.

A lot of these point still apply, and even more so given some of the issues we’ve seen as outlined above. Adding to this, there’s a ton of benefits right now for reducing the threshold to 10,000 BANK.

Increases Accessibility

Reducing the threshold would substantially lower the barriers to entry for joining Bankless DAO.

First, we’d immediately lock in ~500 new full members to DAO (per the stats above) while making the membership significantly more accessible for the 1700+ individuals in the 1-10K BANK range.

This would drive a lot more talent in the DAO while simultaneously reducing the amount of guest passes that we need to distribute on a daily basis. Given the growing issues surrounding guest pass management, I think this is worth noting as the threshold reduction would increase the conversion rate for active contributors who rely on these temp passes.

Increases BANK Velocity & Liquidity

The second aspect of the reduction is arguably pretty valuable. A lot of individuals are constricted with the Level 1 threshold and especially Level 3, limiting them to LP or tip their BANK given they’d lose access to the membership.

By reducing both thresholds, it would open up a substantial amount of BANK to be used for tipping, payments, liquidity provisioning, lending & borrowing (soon ), and other activities that benefit the DAO. As a result of the reduction, the amount of BANK flowing through the Bankless DAO economy would increase, allowing us the generate more value across the board.

NEXT STEPS

• Get consensus around threshold change
• Move to Snapshot in early January with budget requests

POLL

• Reduce Threshold to 10,000 BANK + 100,000 BANK
• Keep Threshold at 35,000 BANK + 150,000 BANK

[AyrtonB26]

I am in full support of reducing thresholds, the benefits outweigh the cons. I am very happy to see
a potential action plan for S3.

[JENetics]

$800 vs $2800 (at current $BANK price) is a much more feasible “membership privilege” fee to earn within the bDAO. It helps keep BanklessDAO more accessible for everyone working to make the Bankless mission possible.

[frogmonkee]

Personally I’m for this. We’ve seen a lot of discussion around Guest Pass exclusivity. This will help, though not completely alleviate the problem.

One big challenge we saw originally when this discussion came up was “Oh, but people will sell!” To that:

1. I think we’ve seen conclusively that people believe enough in BanklessDAO to hold their tokens. Most sell only to cover living expenses
2. We have LM programs that incentivize people to LP instead of dump tokens

[twilight_pirate]

Another option is to allow Bankless members who do not contribute regularly to “sponsor” or allocate their tokens for “sponsorships/scholarships.” This could be a solution to the guest pass scenario as mentioned above. Rather than guests we would have “sponsored members,” or “scholars.” I have no idea how difficult it would be to coordinate something like this. Nor do I know if there are a lot of inactive members within this DAO. It would be good to see others that are not active become slightly active by sponsoring someone who would like to contribute regularly.

[TheMarvel]

All good thoughts for the change and Jenetics’s price goes up argument almost swayed me but the hard work I put here to earn my membership was worth it to me and I hope worth it to the 1st 3 seasons and as RSA said on the podcast, “if Bill Ford can do it at 76, what is your excuse?” Enough changes are happening so very quickly and I am sure Season 4 will even bring more. Feeling too old to embrace this change. Other problems seem of greater importance to me. Maybe it is time to post the, “and stay off my lawn sign!” Grumpy today, sorry.

[Soundman]

I like the idea of lowering the threshold however the proposed solution would cut the cost of membership by just over 70% that seems drastic to me. If 10k bank is our goal for membership I would feel more comfortable if it was a gradual change something like a 25% drop each season until we get to 10k bank membership.

[freedomfighternum626]

I agree with this. What if we lowered it to 20,000 BANK?

[Soundman]

I am abstaining from voting in the poll because I would vote for lowering the threshold but not to 10K

[Nym]

As a new guy to this world as of ~3 weeks ago, the biggest hurdle to joining/contributing isn’t specifically the BANK threshold, but actually more so on the “how the hell do I actually start accumulating BANK to become a ‘real’ member here” side of things.

I know there’s an option to use tokens on a swap system to simply buy my way in, but contributing and “growing” into the DAO seems far more appropriate (and prudent, in several ways), so further clarification to the best ways to start earning BANK by being in the mix would be hugely hugely appreciated.

Short of providing a much clearer and coherent path to earn enough BANK to meet any membership threshold (e.g. a “14-day path to membership” guide in a FAQ), lowering the bar seems like a well-paired consideration to motivate effort we want to see more of for people to lean in and contribute.

[JENetics]

True! When I joined, Bank was $0.04 (or lower) so membership was still shitballs crazy expensive but half of what it is today. Even back then, during season 0, I argued for a lower entry cost, and the guest pass was created.

I’m glad we’re at least open to a discussion now tho!

[0x_Lucas]

Love this idea for a “How to earn a Bankless DAO membership” guide

[Grendel]

Despite the drastic reduction and the discrepancy in which the L1 and L3 thresholds are reduced, I tend to be in favor of this measure.

Given the greater ease of access to the DAO, I believe it is necessary that this reduction be accompanied by two measures at the same time:

1. set a maximum time limit on the guest passes (no more than one month), without the possibility of reissuing

2. increase the use cases of the BANK token to prevent a large flow of sales of the same

Otherwise, the simplification of access would not make any sense, because the guest passes would continue to have almost the same rights as the members without ever getting involved and without having skin in the game.

[frogmonkee]

For #1, I think there is a powerful combination in:

1. limiting guest passembership to a month (no renewals) with
2. a clear guide on contributing (maybe commission writers guild) and
3. Seasonal passes that members can buy L1 access for a period of time

[0xBrandon]

While I like the idea of increasing accessibility, I’m voting against this atm.

I get the sense that we have an issue with utilizing the current talent with have. Adding more people would only exacerbate this problem.

[DoubleB]

I don’t believe that we have too many fingers in the pot. We need new members who bring fresh eyes and new ideas. The diehards will stick around and evolve as the bDAO membership evolves.

The more I think about this, the more I think the L1 threshold should be reduced further.

[Homeless]

So thinking through this the thing that has remained constant regardless of token price is the hourly rate has remained at 1000 BANK per hour, so the hours of compensated work to reach Level 1 has remained 35 hours. This amounts to less than 1 week of classic employment. Out of fairness to those predecessors who earned 35k BANK via remuneration it would seem reasonable to reduce hourly remuneration to match the reduced Level 1 BANK qualification by a factor of 3.5 to 286 BANK per hour, so the sweat equity to reach level 1 remains constant. With this rebalancing future adjustments will essentially be automated and consistent. If the 286 BANK remuneration number seems low remember that for season 0 the price of BANK was 3.5 times less (4x less if you believe the average price this season is around $0.1) Maybe the pay rate seems low DAO wide, so maybe there is a different pay rate once Level 1 is achieved. With this adjustment we are back to Season 0 values with $800-1000 USD or 35 hours of remunerated time to reach Level 1.

[cywintam]

I support the proposal, but I’d also like to see priority given to migrating liquidity to L2. Bankless has been a key player in shifting the narrative towards Ethereum being Rollup centric, we should lead the way by having BANK tokens utilized there. Not to mention that would be a way to reduce cost of membership without reducing membership threshold, and would be pretty huge in increasing velocity.

[Grendel]

This is a very smart consideration and one to take note of

[RunTheJewelz]

As someone who earned into L1, I support the idea of creating a clear pathway to put in the sweat equity, and do not feel that 35 hours is too much to earn that distinction. Whether that is at 286 BANK/hr to reach 10K or 1000 BANK/hr to hit 35k, does not matter (great point @Homeless ).

However, I am wondering if talking about L1 and L3 requirements are missing the mark. What are we trying to achieve? In my mind, we are trying to figure out the best way optimize the following 5 items:

• More people coming into the DAO and contributing in a meaningful way
• More people involved in governance (Governance is everyone’s job)
• Create some threshold where membership perks apply
• Create gates for Coordinape Rounds
• Unlock potential and new ideation for people jumping in and working on projects in alignment with the DAO’s Mission, Vision, Values

Questions for discussion and alignment on what we are trying to achieve with regards to new membership:

• Do we want to have more people active in the DAO, or just more people holding BANK?
• Do we have the resources to pay full members fairly (currently 1000 BANK/hr) if we double the number of active contributors? What if we 10x?
• Will we be able to decentralize guild funding enough to compensate more new joiners and create the path to membership (Currently many guilds have 4-6 paid L2 Roles)
• Do projects have excess capacity and budget to reserve for new joiners to meet these thresholds?
• Can First Quests, or some other onboarding operation create a clear path to BANK earnings, or would it be wiser to have some other proof of involvement be used to gate new joiners (h/t @Nym )

Suggestion:

• The Level 2 tag is currently unrelated to the Level 1 and Level 3 tags. The level 2 tag is the only one we have that signifies contribution. I suggest we create a pathway for guest pass holders to earn Level 2 tags (which need a rebrand, btw) as a way to unlock membership perks, Coordinape rounds, recognition, salaried roles, guild/project responsibility, etc.
• Allow for voting for “full membership / (L2)” to guest pass holders which have shown significant contribution without holding enough BANK - with a financial reward of BANK (10K?) to hit the new L1 milestone. @ManuelMaccou @MC10 @Puncar @chuck25 @dside @ryananderson