[DRAFT] Academy Sub-DAO

[wolovim]

First, thanks for reviewing.

@rubinovitz

I do however wonder if there should be some explicit fees that need to come out of each season to avoid the problem @kempsterrrr mentioned: “if we’re doing this on profit (net proceeds), what is to stop the team from raising their costs and never returning anything to do the DAO? Is the DAO just supposed to trust you? How do we pay for the increased operational costs/overhead as the project grows if a Sub-DAO is not making a profit?”

Academy’s request is purely CODE governance tokens. Outside of a baseline CODE reward for project stewards, any further reward flows to D_D after expenses, but before contributors. I don’t think there are any perverse incentives to inflate costs; contributors would be hurting themselves at least as much as the DAO. By keeping costs down, contributors earn more. Additionally, if there have been any costs so far, they’ve been footed by contributors and I haven’t heard any voiced expectations of reimbursements.

@rubinovitz

I do wonder if we should allow sub-DAOs to fail and declare a sort of sub-DAO bankruptcy after the first season to let people experiment. E.g. the worst case happens: this subDAO pays contributors but can’t generate any other revenue. In this case I don’t think we should ask for the contributors to pay DD back, but DD should probably let another group try to create the official sustainable educational sub-DAO of DD.

Generally agree with the premise that D_D needs to get comfortable letting sub-DAOs experiment in low-risk ways. I’m obviously biased, but given that Academy is not requesting any stablecoins, is requesting a relatively modest amount of CODE tokens, has a well-known team, financial upside, and an MVP… I’d suggest this proposal is pretty comfortably on the low-risk end of the spectrum.

@rubinovitz

It seems like the value exchange is that The Academy produces educational content (therefore furthering DD’s mission) and then DD gives distribution for that content across the DD network and lends its brand.

Extending the timeline out further, an Academy platform done right has much more to offer D_D. It could incorporate DAO-specific onboarding content or create pipelines that plug into D_D Jobs, D_D Agency, Mentorship, or any other initiative in the DAO. Example of using Academy as a vetting service: If a hackathon support team is considering applicants to sponsor and send to a hackathon, an Academy profile could verify they’ve completed some amount of a particular curriculum. That roadmap isn’t yet set, because the focus on is still on doing the fundamentals right, but that is a welcome discussion.

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A final thought: with Season 2 a few weeks from close, instead of creating a whole new proposal, I’d prefer to tweak this proposal to include a straightforward Season 2 retroactive reward + an updated outlook for Season 3 / Q3 / whatever we decide to call it.