@kempsterrrr I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this and have discussed it with members and potential members. I agree that we need to rethink how we fundamentally play the game.
The people I have talked to love the idea of earning your way in through the academy or someone else staking theirs on you to join.
Changing the game we all play to participation first makes excellent sense. Several engineers were interested in hanging out in the social aspect of the DAO. They said they’d potentially pick up a task now or then, but they are currently employed and happy with their jobs, but just unfilled socially from work.
Going into the unknowns:
What impact would such a redesign have on the current DAO structure (Guilds, Projects, Discord, etc.)?
One of the significant changes I would see would be combining many guilds into service-focused methods. Additionally, I would expect initiatives to share if they intend to make money for the DAO. If we change the game, that will enable paid positions from some of these things.
What kinds of participation make sense to reward vs. not, same with learning?
Lots of different delineations here. IMO should be decided on a case-by-case basis. Putting more rules around this at the beginning would make it more difficult. I’d put a few guidelines, though: if it’s external and reasonable, we should issue code to it. If it’s internal and laborious, we should pay people USDC (or whatever real money). We should issue $CODE for it if it’s internal and fun.
How do we limit how much rewarding folks in $CODE for participation and learning be exploited?? (e.g., Ask everyone to complete Gitcoin Passport when joining, maybe reward them for this or PoH, have a mechanism for reporting perceived bad actors, etc.)
I think this also needs to happen on a case-by-case basis. We could put significant effort into it or do it as required. I think the external facing issues are the most important to solve, and most of that could be handled with fancy captchas on things like the academy.
What impact would a new rewards model like this have on long-term governance and decentralization?
I have no idea, but I think it would get more $CODE to those who don’t run the DAO. It would also add more members with allocation and allow the DAO to grow into a proper professional organization. One of the natural impacts this would have is on the business model. I’ll go into the business model further below.
What impact would a new rewards model like this have on $CODE budgets?
IMO it would make them more valuable but likely wouldn’t change the allocations. If we decide that every hour of participation is worth 5 $CODE, then we could have 3x the number of participants for even the most active budgets. That aligned with the above decision to allocate real money for real work. That would free up the $CODE budget significantly. That, combined with @wolovim 's goals of simplifying governance with tools like governance multiplying NFTs for those contributing, will make this DAO run much more efficiently.
How do we fairly allocate $CODE rewards between Players and Builders?
We don’t attempt to is the simple answer. Builders and Players get rewarded the same for participation; builders get rewarded with a multiplier NFT (or something similar) that is considered in our voting model.
What would a correct relationship between a Sub-DAO and the DAO look like? (e.g., DAO owns part of it, all of it, revenue share commitment, profit share commitment, etc.) How do we ensure they support the DAOs mission?
This is one of the most complex questions to answer. I need a lawyer to answer this, but its model should be the sub-DAO allocated X $CODE to use as appropriate. Y% of profit should be assigned back to the DAO. X should vary based on the sub-DAO, and Y should be required in the charter of the sub-DAO.
Should Sub-DAOs be issued $CODE as part of their being established?
Yes. See above.
TL;DR Questions
Should we redesign our $CODE rewards model to also reward folks for participation and learning, not just contribution, to help foster the primarily social experience that made the DAO great in the first place, and help achieve our mission?
Yes absolutely. Doing it has a lot of benefits, and we should try to improve the DAO over time.
Can we increase the utility of the $CODE to provide more value to members, by introducing staking, using it to unlock opportunities in the DAO, and/or allocating treasury funds in a more decentralized (and fun!) way (i.e. like ENS small grants)?
I think this is a great idea. Getting discounts on merch is another place I would love to see this. Using ENS small grants as an example is a great start.
Should we make the DAO itself smaller, disconnecting $CODE governance so directly to commercial and operational considerations, and rather use Governance to empower members to create Sub-DAOs that can more easily create value for the DAO and its ecosystem overall?
I say yes. This is one of the essential things the DAO can do regarding the sustainability required to accomplish its mission. This is very important to the future of the DAO.