[Temp Check] Season 2 Planning

[0x_Lucas]

Bankless DAO! We’re a little over one month away from the end of Season 1. As such, we need to start planning for Season 2 and the encompassing programs. This post serves as a general temp check featuring a range of polls across different aspects of Season 2.

The results of the poll will influence the proposed Season 2 spec & budget. However, none of the poll results are official and the actual spec will reflect the encompassing discussion in this thread (not just the poll results!).

This aims to be a relatively neutral temp check - I will weigh in my two-gwei in a reply to this post.

Let’s get into it!

Membership Threshold

The current membership threshold stands at 35,000 BANK to join the Discord. We have the option to increase, decrease, or keep the existing threshold.

• Pros of increasing: Requires people sitting at the threshold to opt-into the next Season
• Cons of increasing: Increases barriers to entry for new participants
• Pros of decreasing: Increases accessibility for joining the DAO
• Cons of decreasing: We’ll see a larger inflow of new members (this could be a pro or a con depending on perspective) and/or leave contributors with less skin in the game.

• Increase Threshold
• Decrease Threshold
• Keep Threshold Unchanged

Follow up poll for membership threshold:

• Raise to 40,000 BANK
• Raise to 50,000 BANK
• Decrease to 25,000 BANK
• Decrease to 10,000 BANK

Splash Zone / Level 3 Status
DAO members can earn whale status and a special channel by holding 150K BANK. We have the option to increase, decrease, or keep this unchanged.

• Increase threshold for Whale status
• Decrease threshold for Whale status
• Keep threshold unchanged for Whale status

Budget

Season 1 allocated 11M BANK for a range of initiatives, including funding the grants committee, allocating BANK to guilds, and an end-of-season Coordinape Round. For reference, we have about 151M BANK in the treasury as of now. Remember: Seasons aim to last ~3 months so there are diminishing returns on the amount of BANK we distribute!

• Increase Seasonal Spending
• Decrease Seasonal Spending
• Same Seasonal Spending

Follow up poll for Season 2 budget:

• 7M BANK
• 10M BANK
• 11M BANK
• 21M BANK

According to the Season 1 spec, the seasonal budget will largely be broken down into a handful of categories including Grants Committee, Guilds, Seasonal Projects, and Contributor Rewards. Season 1 allocated 5M to Grants, 5M to guilds, and 1M to a Coordinape Round for Contributor Rewards.

Grants Committee

The grants committee has distributed roughly 66% of its budget in Season 1.

• Increase Grants Committee Funding (>5M BANK)
• Decrease Grants Committee Funding (<5M BANK)
• Keep Grants Committee Funding Unchanged (5M BANK)

Guild Funding

This one is a bit tougher to gauge right now as we could use some data on how Guilds have spent their funding (cc @paulapivat !). Season 1 allocated evenly across guilds–obviously this isn’t most effective way to do it.

We should be allocating guild funding based on how each guild spent their previous seasons funding as well as the size of the guild & value it provides to the DAO.

• Increase Guild Funding (>5M BANK)
• Decrease Guild Funding (<5M BANK)
• Keep Guild Funding Unchanged (5M BANK)

Seasonal Projects

The goal here is to identify a handful of revenue-generating projects to fund in Season 2 to continue operations and growth. We currently have a handful of projects earning revenue for the DAO. This poll will be a multiple choice vote to identify the key projects that people believe should receive funding. Ideally we’re funding 3-5 projects directly within each Season.

• Merch Sales
• NFT Showcases
• BED Index
• Editor & Writing Services
• Liquity Frontend
• DAO Rollup Sponsorships

Contributor Rewards
Season 1 allocated 1M BANK to a one-time end-of-season Coordinape round. We have yet to launch this so results vary. However, our Season 0 round was a big success.

• Increase Contributor Rewards
• Decrease Contributor Rewards
• Keep Contributor Rewards Unchanged

Follow-up on the frequency of the Coordinape rounds for Season 2:

• Increase Frequency (Monthly)
• Keep Frequency Unchanged (End of Season)

Liquidity Mining

The final thing worth considering to implement in the Season 2 budget is liquidity mining programs. Right now, we have two potential opportunities for liquidity mining: BANK-ETH and BED-ETH.

To clarify, each liquidity mining program would only last the duration of the Season and would require a renewal on a season-by-season basis. These programs will also require further analysis to idenitify the optimal allocation (depending on liquidity target & respective APYs).

BED-ETH Uniswap V3 Liquidity Mining

• Launch BED-ETH Liquidity Mining
• Do not launch BED-ETH Liquidity Mining

BANK-ETH Liquidity Mining

There have also been discussions about launching a liquidity mining program for BANK-ETH.

• Launch BANK-ETH Liquidity Mining
• Do not launch BANK-ETH liquidity mining

In my mind, there are two avenues here to consider. One is the 80/20 BANK/ETH Balancer V2 Pool which has been discussed. The other is jumping on the Uniswap V3 train if there’s a BED-ETH liquidity mining program.

There are some pros & cons to each:

• Uniswap V3 50/50 BANK-ETH: We can just fork the BED-ETH liquidity contract if we pursue that route and implement it for BANK-ETH. People will be familiar and it creates solidarity across both programs. Importantly, the liquidity depth in v3 will be significantly higher than Balancer v2. The downside is we’re unsure if Collab Land can support V3 NFTs–however, our neighbors at Friends With Benefits are implementing a V3 liquidity mining program (who also use Collab Land). There’s also potential for us to implement this functionality into DEGEN.

• Balancer V2 80/20 BANK-ETH: The benefit is that there’s a lower impermanent loss risk for the 80/20 pool and we can easily support BPT tokens for Collab Land. The downside here is that this pool doesn’t really solve our liquidity issues, and is more of a token economic upgrade than liquidity upgrade.

• Launch Uniswap V3 LM Program
• Launch Balancer V2 LM Program

These polls should cover the majority of the spec for Season 2, however, we may be missing some stuff. Let me know! Some of the more nuanced discussions will likely need to be forked into separate threads over the next few weeks as we dig into these.

Again none of the polls will officially determine the Season 2 spec. This is used to gauge sentiment from the DAO on the direction for Season 2.

Happy voting!

[TheMarvel]

So very happy and thankful that the soft poll and proposal for season 2 is putting suggestions before the DAO. Very helpful. Thankful for the input opportunity and inclusion. Fantastic folks attempting fantastic things. Keep charging! Light the fire for Season 2, but finish strong Season 1. Great beginnings

[jameswmontgomery.eth]

Here are my thoughts on some of these polls.

1. Decrease the membership threshhold to 25k (or 30k) BANK

With the recent increase in BANK price and Guest passes in a weird state, 25k seems to be a respectable decrease to lower the barrier of entry while respecting those who previously bought in.

We thrive with new contribution and, in my opinion, a slightly wider net would do us good.

2. Increase the seasonal spending to 21M BANK (if not 33M).

Not only do we have 151M+ BANK in the vault, but our Seasonal income of BANK alone is 33M (given 3mo season). Distributing the full vest or most of it should be our duty to those contributors giving their time to the DAO (more below).

Putting more into savings without a plan is useless.

3. Increase funding across Guilds, Coordinape, and Projects.

With the compromise of 1k BANK/hr, our Guild and Project budgets are roughly holding for S1.

As Guilds begin to implement the role based framework, the current rates (let alone higher rates) will take up vast portion of Guild budgets - not leaving room for Guild expenses like SaaS subscriptions or Guild Coordinape rounds. Guilds mostly need more funding and some larger guilds (like Dev) may require larger budgets than others.

A 1M Coordinape round is not enough. As long as we adjust for high-touch contributors in some way to account for super-compensation, I would love to see a wider net of impactful compensation distributed in this way.

• For better accuracy, I vote for monthly coordinape rounds, but this may become overbearing in the long term. (perhaps some automated tech solution, hmm…)

Grants Committee 5M Project budget is probably okay, unless the fundamental of 1k BANK/hr is modified.

4. Seasonal Projects

I feel like we have more?

Consulting at large is probably a low hanging fruit if we want to get into that.

Degen and Bounty Board also have on-chain revenue monetization plans.

NFT Platform may get second life. (fair enough)

Membership Subscription… techically?

Anyway, I’m riding for Merch & NFTs - clear S1 winners that we need to double down on.

5. I don’t know shit about liquidity mining so I didn’t vote.

One more thing

The recommended wage needs to be addressed by a qualified working group. 1k BANK/hr is a nice compromise I think, but we need to commission a squad to work on this and possibly provide a continually updated recommendation (per season or even as a live equation).

Another one more thing

Thank you guys for putting this together, DAO strong

[Eagle]

Thank you very much for this very useful survey.

I would agree to slightly decrease the entry BANK amount.

BUT HERE I WANT TO POINT OUT TO AN ADDITIONAL ISSUE: In my opinion, we need to fix a bit our guest pass policy. Whoever can get one and we don’t have clear rules to assess who can continue to have access and who loses this right.

[tommyolofsson]

Great post!

I think maybe we should also include some kind of agreement between current and future revenue projects and their split with the DAO. This should of course be done for all new projects as early as first funding for the DAO to vote on full transparenct and benefit for the DAO. (We need to collect all current agreements as well)

For the projects, I’m not sure here so correct me if I’m wrong. But based on the sales of merch and NFT’s (if this is the same team) those projects should be able to fund themselves out of their cuts? If there are clear expansion plans which need more captial then fine we should include them and vote on the expected revenue benefit for the DAO. But to move further, it’s important for projects to at some point turn a profit for the DAO and to develop out of their own pocket. Otherwise the DAO funds everything and the profits go elsewhere also in the long term.

For Guild funding I really did like the way I think @frogmonkee was taking it, more of a talent pool for projects. In this case, funding for guilds could be kept at a similar level and their additional funding come from projects the DAO votes on. I think it would be a lot easier from a governance standpoint, we would also have to check each season what the cost of the DAO is in terms of back-end, systems etc and make sure we’re running as lean as we can.

To base future funding on prior spend is to incentivize spend. In theory all guilds could then spend their S1 allocation since that gives more runway for future plans. I think it would make more sense to use a framework of X roles or X compensation to manage talentpool and if guilds need more they have to request more funds and those funds are voted alongside projects.

I also agree with earlier posts that we need to set DAO compensation templates per season (or so), I do also think it could be included in each seasonal spec. We have a few DAO wide agreements to make among them compensation and DAO cut of revenues, this process feels like a logical step to codify those.

[ernest_of_gaia]

i am so flipping happy that my vote matters I love the bankless journey

[Icedcool]

@0x_Lucas

Seasonal Budget

I voted for increasing seasonal spending, and I want to advocate for this for 2 reasons:

1. Future AND current projects will need funding, and the Grants committee has almost distributed all funding based on current projects. When the current projects need more funding, and additional projects are created we could be put in the position where the Grants committee may need to say no to projects that could be very valuable.

2. Bank doesn’t do anything for us held in the treasury. From a startup, and economic perspective, distributing Bank generously supports project incentivization, allows for work compensation, and creates overall economic velocity for the DAO at large.

Based on this increase in season 1 funding, I think that the Grants Committee distribution budget should increase to further fund the number of projects that I’m hearing about.

Also depending on Guild needs, that distribution should go up as well.

Ultimately, we can work with a surplus but are limited by a deficit.

[paulapivat]

@0x_Lucas "we could use some data on how Guilds have spent their funding "

I’m on it!