[DRAFT] Agency Sub-DAO

This proposal sounds great! It is mentioned that the agency group currently is made up of 8 people. What kind of projects have they worked on in the past? Is the expectation that all 20 members would commit to the agency full time or part time as a side gig?

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What happens if it is less than $25,000 by the end of a season?

This is vague. And considering how nothing has been done by Developer DAO leaders to tangibly address this over the past 12 months (outside of myself) - I don’t think it makes sense to include this unless there’s a plan of action in place.

In the many times that I’ve raised this diversity issue to DAO leadership like Kemp, all I’ve gotten in response, are derivative comments that agree with me. But no actual plan or intention - just words that repeat the critiques I’ve already made.

The reality is that Developer DAO is even less diverse than it was 8 months ago. I was calling attention to the lack of diversity back then, and even as far back as November 2021. Diversity was a DAO-level OKR for Season 1, and nothing was done outside of my own efforts within the DevDao Women initiative and (the now shuttered) AxisOne Program. So unless there’s a definitive plan of action in place regarding increasing diversity in Developer DAO (or the Agency team), then I think that this should be removed from the proposal. It’s starting to become an empty set of words.

Lastly, I will say that this cannot happen in isolation. There’s multiple considerations at play; and crosses with SubDAO’s such as DD Women, but also community initiatives, onboarding etc. Perhaps more importantly, it’s also reliant on leaders who are actively working towards increasing diversity. Aside from myself, members like @Stefanie (and a small few), and then the DD Women core team; I can’t point to other leaders in Developer DAO between 2021 and today, who have taken active steps towards addressing this.

People are intelligent, and so I’d caution against the use of empty platitudes in the proposal.

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First of all, thank you Erik for taking the time to put this into a document.

Net treasury = treasury at the end of the season after expenses + taxes and distribution to the contributors, like a profit after taxes.

We need as well to understand what “donation” means legally.
I continue to advocate for the Foundation as a shareholder is the easiest and safest model in order to distribute earnings.

An agreement/vesting model with the Foundation based on those numbers or other milestones/kpis may work the best.

| Net treasury | Equity      |
| -----------  | ----------- |
| +$250k       | 2%          |
| +$750k       | 4%          |
| +$1M         | 8%          |
| +$5M         | 10%         |
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We still need a lot of details on both of these projects in order to finalize a contract, as talks are still ongoing.


How does it finally come to this?
@kempsterrrr @isiah @joshtsch.eth

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Is there anyone with GAAP experience to help review the calculation method?

What do you mean by that?

What do you mean by that?

What is the KPIs metric?

You mean there is no noone administrating the scholarships? Your understandable departure made wholes in D_D. I am still unsure of how many.

Overall I will support the proposal if the community agrees on it. I feel there are a lot of things that require much deeper research to be sure if everything here will stand a test of time, but I also don’t believe that we have time for that and I would be up for the experimentation with the Agency in this way.

Regarding the finances it’s the same. I know that they are needed to develop the Agency. But also know that DAO lacks money. I will be in support with others. If others decide to support this proposal I will too.

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Both questions are related to us having a defined structure and process. We currently are working on it, therefore, teams lack clarity on wether they are official teams, if they lack members, or where do they stand in the big order of things. We intend to give them clarity, and also implement a transparent reward system.

“75% of different roles in operating teams are covered.”
Not just devs, but designers, PMs, marketing guys, social media roles, etc.

Then this would mean we are building structure, and we need any amount of money. Open to discuss if we should still give a share to the DAO.

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Big thanks for putting this together @Erik_Knobl

Opened a doc here to migrate the proposal to the updated format for budget requests as per P-22: DAO Governance Structure Upgrade - [DRAFT[] - Agency Sub-DAO - Google Docs

Happy to jump on and riff on this to turn it around quickly if helpful just lmk. :slight_smile:

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I agree with Gordo here. Assuming Agency is eventually spun out as a profit-making entity, I believe it makes sense for the Foundation to own a portion of this. What this would mean in real terms regarding the impact on value return is:

  1. DAO is invested in the long-term success of the project
  2. DAO only benefits financially in two circumstances: if the Owners of the Agency entity take profit in dividends (Foundation would get equivalent cash against their % ownership), if there is a financing/liquidity event (DAO could sell its shares to investors)

In the meantime, whilst the Agency lives within the Foundation, it would be good to get clarity on the legal status of the projects in the Agency, as you understand it. Taking woop pay for example, is there an entity created around this or are we assuming it is running through the Foundation?

If it’s through the foundation we need to update the T&Cs and Privacy Policies to reflect this.

If they are running through the Foundation, where is the grant funding secured by projects currently being sent? Direct to contributors, somewhere else?

There are probably some knock questions here depending on your answer. As defined in P-22: DAO Governance Structure Upgrade according to the rules any Sub-DAO without it’s own entity needs to adhere to the Foundations processes

Were these calculated using the original 15 CODE per hour rate?

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Edited it to match the template. Thanks.

All current projects are assumed to operate under Foundation. If this would change, we will notify Stewards and take measures.
I must stress that there are no clear guidelines for projects working under Foundation, and as such, and I doubt any sub-DAO has clarity on this.

Let us know what do we need to do.

We are working on some applications, but lack clarity on what the process should be. Can we access a guide on what we should do?

That’s the plan currently.

Yes.

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Existing finances processes are documented here - I will be having another look at these this week. I’ll also check in with the Foundation supervisor about this question:

  1. If a project is part of the Foundation’s legal structure, should any grant funds secured for that project be run through the Foundation?

The answer to this question will come down to AML laws. We already know grants secured in the foundation’s name that hit the treasury require a simple regulatory filling to be submitted by the foundation director supervisor.

I am very happy for you and any stewards to join me on these calls.

Can you ask Alessandro where how he sorted out the existing T&Cs/privacy policy?

Another thing for us to bring up with the Foundation Supervisor.

No guide yet. For grants, I’d just made @chuck25 & @Wikist aware last season that any grants hitting the foundation require the filing mentioned above.

Come to think of it, given the Foundation is absorbing the legal risk of the work contributors are doing when projects are working in this way, they’re going to need to sign a contributor agreement. This is mutually beneficial as it clarifies someone’s liability and their legal working relationships with the Foundation as an independent contractor vs employee (important for tax reasons in many countries). Based on my understanding of these rules, grant funds should go via the treasury (where someone signs an agreement with the Foundation as a Contributor), but the reality is I’m not sure. we should organise that call with the Foundation supervisor and Stewards asap.

Regarding the Contributor agreement, some questions were rightly raised on the IP clause in this, which I imagine will be similar for any agency projects and have a note to revisit this week also.

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@mannyornothing @rubinovitz @Colin4ward @drop_knowledge @meowy
This proposal needs your comments and feedback as Stewards. Can you take the time to do that, please?

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Love the fact that more members will have access to paid opportunities.

I want to know more about this bounty program/onboarding process.

Overall it looks good to me, I hope we cab create more paid opportunities for members and bring more money stream into the DAO.

Bump on this ask. Generally accepted accounting principles should be followed here not some fun calculations of profit, loss, and friends

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Any suggestions? The proposal is ready to be elevated to snapshot.

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The main and most important value Agency will return to D_D is “High Quality”

What does that mean overall?

I get that the products you deliver to the best it can be delivered but does that also mean you will turn down possible work based off it is not “high quality” enough?

For people looking to contribute and do the bounties, is there a threshold being displayed? (Could it just be completing Academy and then being able to contribute?)

From contributors delivering bad work? certainly. From clients? It would have to be on a case by case basis.
Bounties allow us to have a testing layer of work delivered, where we can see how each individual contributor delivers before granting that member more responsibility. And there will be plenty of tasks, not just tech. We currently need social media help, for example.

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sorry, reading my post again it may be a little confusing. I mean if the inquiry for Agency to build the product wasn’t of high quality would it be denied?

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You mean if the client asks for a quick, bad quality project? Yes, I think we would reject it.
One of the main goals we have is to build a good reputation. Avoiding bad projects would be part of that.

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apologies i didnt get around to reviewing this properly before snapshot. couple quick questions to understand longer term expectations - apologies if i missed related responses in comments.

re:

  1. obviously(?) an agency can’t be expected to be a cost center for long, but i can understand needing bootstrap support. re: “structure for the future”, do you expect to request fiat funding in future seasons/quarters?
  2. re: requests/teams/overall strategy: are there any distinctions made between internal products (e.g., WoopPay) vs. external contracts? those are very different business models. you could also easily end up burning any contracting profit on bootstrapping an internal product. occasionally that could be a worthy endeavor, but seems likely the dao could get peanuts back on a regular basis. maybe future iterations of the budget should include at least a small percentage back to the dao per engagement, instead of waiting per quarter/season. not too fussed given there’s only 2-3 months left this season.
  3. are these four projects known already?
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No, I wouldn’t expect to request general funding in the future, but I would expect the funding to specific projects to continue, as we are doing currently with the website. There are specific needs of the DAO that members can build with enough direction and incentive.

Yes. Teams with external contracts are not eligible for this type of funding.

Yes. Open to discuss this down the line.

One is the website, and the other possible candidate is Woop Pay. Open to discuss specific needs the DAO may want to build for the rest of the projects.

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