DAO Ops proposal

[wolovim]

@Erik_Knobl

generating a sense of ownership on their domain.

Just saying it doesn’t make it true. It’s not about the language you’ve chosen, I think its just one of the trade-offs of such a system - at least as I currently understand it. Another way to highlight the idea is that, on their own, groups build budgets as a team (e.g., the Partnerships or DevRel Team) and you lose that here.

[Erik_Knobl]

No problem adjusting to that, assigning each working group a share of the total budget, and let them use it as they need. I’m not interested in anyone having full control over each expense. However, I do care about not spending more than what we have.

Again, the core of the proposal is:
1-Revenue-Generating contributors should get their rewards based on the income they bring to the DAO. Initial percent is 10% but fully open to discuss more options/different numbers.
2-There is a spending threshold of XX% of the current treasury to fund Community tasks. Initial percent is 50% but fully open to discuss more options/different numbers.
3-All important tasks done should be considered by this budget.

[Piablo]

I totally agree with you @ntindle that this proposal is not the place for this discussion. But I am saying that this and any other proposal still doesn’t have any guard rails regarding ethics and that we should start getting that into place. We had a conversation about it a long time ago. It was brought to nothing as I see it, despite a massive amount of engagement. @Erik_Knobl, otherwise these small groups of people, stewards, executives, etc have nothing to fall back on. And in their election process, has/does this question of ethics in the context I’m talking about come up? It results in them having to make executive decisions based on their own interpretation of what ethical for the DAO and that’s not fair on them or for the rest of the DAO.

We already have a mission and vision statement, which I believe serves the DAO quite well as a community, but its ethics are only inward facing to serve our community. They don’t anticipate bringing outside influence into the community and that’s where we need guardrails - and anyway, we simply need to define that for ourselves, and the question will also be asked from external folks that want to engage with us. Just because at this stage in the game, it doesn’t seem like a priority for us, doesn’t mean that others haven’t thought about. Believe me, they have. The whole world of business and education is alive with the conversation around ethics, and has been for a long time. I’d like to see us future proof ourselves.

But yeah, let’s open the conversation on a clean page specifically to address this crucial topic.
cc @luan

[wolovim]

@Piablo

But yeah, let’s open the conversation on a clean page specifically to address this crucial topic.

Appreciate this line of thinking. Look forward to hearing possible implementation ideas if you’ve gotten that far.

[kayprasla]

Re: Kemp’s comment in the DAO Ops Tasks S2 doc on non-sponsored content.

I think I’m with Kemp on not assigning a USD value to non-sponsored content. We can always have (and will) some bounties in $CODE budgeted for that activity.

Writing Value over Editing

I see blog editor and blog writer getting the same amount. In cases, editor getting more. I have closely worked with both the personas and think we can reassign some USD value from editor to the writer (given $100 per blog is not justifiable at all, should be at least $250 - $300).

DevRel Fulfillment Coordinator’s Role
Missing from the doc.

Not sure if it’s considered under Partnership Fulfillment Coordinators, but needs to be described explicitly.

[isiah]

I like that idea, that and specifying which season and the role in the metadata. Becomes an online history of positions holders in DD

[kempsterrrr]

Great efforts moving forward with another proposal @Erik_Knobl - lots of interesting concepts and ideas.

@Erik_Knobl

1.1 DAO Ops

DAO Ops main goal is to coordinate revenue-generating activities operating under the Developer DAO Foundation legal setting, and use the income to support the Community activities of Developer DAO.

This will be done by creating the framework for members willing to perform activities with the capability of generating revenue (Executives), be able to receive a share of that income, and send the rest to the DAO’s Treasury. This income will be used to reward contributors willing to perform activities that will benefit and grow the community (Operators).

A large part of the DAO Governance Structure Upgrade was to simplify and clarify structures and roles.

Have you thought about the complexity this new terminology is adding back into the DAO? If so, what are your reasonings for adding more role terminology back into the mix vs not?

How are these Operator roles selected?

@Erik_Knobl

USD based payments
The DAO won’t spend more than half of what it currently has, therefore, total funding for Community tasks can’t be more than 50% of the total existing USD in the DAO Treasury on the first day of each new season. The DAO won’t risk spending more than what’s already in its pockets.

• Total current existing USD in the Treasury: 133,949
• Total budget requested (50% of the total): 66,974

Is the intention here to be cash in the treasury on a given day or leftover cash from the previous season?

The figures you’re quoting here include income/expenses from Season 2.

Below is the balance sheet today, not including S2 income/expenses or job board revenue. The critical number is Equity (Cash + what we’re owed - what we owe) = $88,454.41

This will have a very meaningful impact on the proposed budgets, they would be $44,227.205 rather than the $66,974 currently being used.

In general, very supportive of having mechanisms for ensuring the treasury is protected and it’s growing over time. I wonder if the above info would impact your thoughts about budgeting for S2.

@Erik_Knobl

General amendment: Other sub-DAOs can request in their budgets up to 5% of the total funding of the total existing USD in the DAO Treasury on the first day of each new season, and it will be up to the Stewards to approve or negate that expense based on the importance of the tasks performed by the sub-DAO. Initial suggestion would be to limit the number of approvals of this type of funding to 2 or less for season 2.

Love the idea of setting the threshold and putting that decision to the Stewards. Is this on top of the 5% for non-revenue generating roles, and is that per Sub-DAO?

@Erik_Knobl

$CODE Rewards
The total request for $CODE will be a pool of 100,000. The rewards allocated to each contributor will be 1 $CODE for each USD paid. $CODE not used in this way will be returned to the DAO in the first 5 days of the end of the season.

Thoughts behind this $1 rate for $CODE? Do you see it being expanded across the DAO for other activities?

@Erik_Knobl

[DRAFT] DAO Ops Tasks S2

These numbers aspirationally are interesting but depending on your thoughts on the above might need to changed and that will have knock on affects.

A few questions/thougnts:

1. Why are most roles documented with what seems like hours and the coordinator’s roles on %? If we update the revised figures I’ve shared above, that will leave the ops work at $2,200, which is not sustainable for the level of work. This means ops would coordinating AR/AP/Contracts/Payments etc. for less money than the folks they are coordinating doing work that takes less time
2. I don’t think paying folks for unsponsored content is a good idea. We can use $CODE for that.
3. I’m not sure your numbers make sense vs the number of partners we do/don’t have. Could be interpreting the doc though !! I believe using smaller amounts to retain folks for roles, and then multipliers based on deliverables makes more sense ala the original labs proposal, specifically for editing and writing sponsored content. This achieves balance between retention and drive to increase revenue.

[Erik_Knobl]

@kempsterrrr

A large part of the DAO Governance Structure Upgrade was to simplify and clarify structures and roles.

This is an attempt to elaborate in that effort.

@kempsterrrr

Have you thought about the complexity this new terminology is adding back into the DAO? If so, what are your reasonings for adding more role terminology back into the mix vs not?

We can use “revenue-generating contributors” and “non-revenue-generating contributors”. I just think it’s shorter.

@kempsterrrr

How are these Operator roles selected?

That task has been delegated to coordinators of each area.

@kempsterrrr

Is the intention here to be cash in the treasury on a given day or leftover cash from the previous season?

Leftover from the previous season.

@kempsterrrr

The figures you’re quoting here include income/expenses from Season 2.

Below is the balance sheet today, not including S2 income/expenses or job board revenue. The critical number is Equity (Cash + what we’re owed - what we owe) = $88,454.41

This will have a very meaningful impact on the proposed budgets, they would be $44,227.205 rather than the $66,974 currently being used.

Thank you, this is good feedback. The system will adapt to any adjustment in the available budget, affecting all rewards.

@kempsterrrr

Love the idea of setting the threshold and putting that decision to the Stewards. Is this on top of the 5% for non-revenue generating roles, and is that per Sub-DAO?

Yes, on top of that. And for each sub-DAO. Right now there is no clarity if other sub-DAOs can request USD, why, and how much. We need that.

@kempsterrrr

Thoughts behind this $1 rate for $CODE? Do you see it being expanded across the DAO for other activities?

I just think it’s simpler because the real reward is USD. If required, I can add the hourly calculations.

@kempsterrrr

Why are most roles documented with what seems like hours and the coordinator’s roles on %? If we update the revised figures I’ve shared above, that will leave the ops work at $2,200, which is not sustainable for the level of work. This means ops would coordinating AR/AP/Contracts/Payments etc. for less money than the folks they are coordinating doing work that takes less time

There are two steps in this process. First we have to know which roles we are rewarding, and how much each area needs. These initial numbers are an effort to have consensus, and learn how much Community, Operations, and Partnerships need?
Then, we balance and negotiate those numbers. If we start saying currently a role will be paid with $100 monthly from a 50,000 seasonal budget, we know it’s 0.2 of the total budget. If the available budget is reduced, we adapt that reward to that percent, just like coordinators.
If we have more money, all payments remain the same. If we have less money available, all payments will be reduced.

Open to discuss ways to improve the payment/percent, in a way that creates a system for all. It’s still a work in progress. Currently, Operations is ranked in the same level as other coordinations (community and devrel), and compensated as such. My initial suggestion for you would be to have a basic role, and also take on other (defined) tasks, which all together will be a sustainable payment. But if you feel we should create a unique role, with a single payment superior than the rest of the roles, we can discuss it too.

@kempsterrrr

I don’t think paying folks for unsponsored content is a good idea. We can use $CODE for that.

$CODE is no meaningful reward for any task. But if enough people feel the same, totally open to change that.

@kempsterrrr

I’m not sure your numbers make sense vs the number of partners we do/don’t have. Could be interpreting the doc though !! I believe using smaller amounts to retain folks for roles, and then multipliers based on deliverables makes more sense ala the original labs proposal, specifically for editing and writing sponsored content. This achieves balance between retention and drive to increase revenue.

I no longer believe in retaining a handful of persons to save the DAO. It’s not working. I believe in rewarding as many people as we can to have a vibrant community and increase the possibilities to everyone. All business opportunities will depend on us having a community, therefore, let’s invest in it.

[kempsterrrr]

@Erik_Knobl

@kempsterrrr

A large part of the DAO Governance Structure Upgrade was to simplify and clarify structures and roles.

This is an effort to elaborate in that effort.

@kempsterrrr

Have you thought about the complexity this new terminology is adding back into the DAO? If so, what are your reasonings for adding more role terminology back into the mix vs not?

We can use “revenue-generating contributors” and “non-revenue-generating contributors”. I just think it’s shorter.

OK. This feels like it adds complexity that we’ve just removed from our processes and makes Governance bigger again which feels like a mistake.

@Erik_Knobl

@kempsterrrr

How are these Operator roles selected?

That task has been delegated to coordinators of each area.

Who chooses the Coordinators?

@Erik_Knobl

@kempsterrrr

Love the idea of setting the threshold and putting that decision to the Stewards. Is this on top of the 5% for non-revenue generating roles, and is that per Sub-DAO?

Yes, on top of that. And for each sub-DAO. Right now there is no clarity if other sub-DAOs can request USD, why, and how much. We need that.

Totally. That power was given to Stewards in DAO Governance Structure Upgrade, see below. Does this replace that or just doing that work for now?

@kempsterrrr

Define DAO-level Treasury Strategy (any DAO Operational / Foundation costs, Treasury assets available for budget requests).

@Erik_Knobl

@kempsterrrr

Thoughts behind this $1 rate for $CODE? Do you see it being expanded across the DAO for other activities?

I just think it’s simpler because the real reward is USD. If required, I can add the hourly calculations.

tbh I like it as an experiment. Quick and easy.

I wonder if there is a reduce scale for paid roles though i.e. if you’re paid by the DAO your $CODE rewards are 50% of what they otherwise would be based on OKRs?

@Erik_Knobl

@kempsterrrr

Why are most roles documented with what seems like hours and the coordinator’s roles on %? If we update the revised figures I’ve shared above, that will leave the ops work at $2,200, which is not sustainable for the level of work. This means ops would coordinating AR/AP/Contracts/Payments etc. for less money than the folks they are coordinating doing work that takes less time

There are two steps in this process. First we have to know which roles we are rewarding, and how much each area needs. These initial numbers are an effort to have consensus, and learn how much Community, Operations, and Partnerships need?
Then, we balance and negotiate those numbers. If we start saying currently a role will be paid with $100 monthly from a 50,000 seasonal budget, we know it’s 0.2 of the total budget. If the available budget is reduced, we adapt that reward to that percent, just like coordinators.
If we have more money, all payments remain the same. If we have less money available, all payments will be reduced.

Open to discuss ways to improve the payment/percent, in a way that creates a system for all. It’s still a work in progress. Currently, Operations is ranked in the same level as other coordinations (community and devrel), and compensated as such. My initial suggestion for you would be to have a basic role, and also take on other (defined) tasks, which all together will be a sustainable payment. But if you feel we should create a unique role, with a single payment superior than the rest of the roles, we can discuss it too.

I think the way this is defined is the problem, it is creating far more work for Ops, not less. Handling payments/contracts etc., across all of these different people isn’t a small task. It’s far bigger than Season 1. With current definition, Ops needs to handle contracts and payments for 65 Contirbutors a Season. To put that into perspective that’s:

• Up to 65 Contributor agreements (probably not all at the same time as its fluid); info gathered, questions answered, contracts sent, chased, signed etc.
• Up to 65 invoices per month; chasing people, checking everything carefully etc.
• Making sure we make up to 65 on-chain payments correctly every month

That is ~ > 10x last season and doesn’t include Accounts receivable invoices, contracts for partners etc.

I’m not sure what the right solution would be under this potential model, I will have to think about a suggestion (any advice on what might be useful info), but that is not sustainable.

[kempsterrrr]

There was a lot of discussion on the @stewards call today regarding the need for a framework for calculating rewards.

Copying from Labs proposal channel in discord

Typically, companies do this in the following ways:

• pick a location that is their base line
• get salaries for roles in that area
• target a percentile (i.e. 90th, 80th, 70th) etc.
• pay that globally, or, use a cost of living multiplier based on location (i.e. more in more expensive places, less in less expensive places)

Please see this spreadsheet for some data-backed suggestions, copied in below.

Role	Base Salary (Year)	Bonus (yearly)	Base Salary (month)	Bonus (Monthly)	As %	Source
Community Manager	$ 66,356.00	$ 2,258.00	$ 5,529.67	$ 188.17	3.40%	https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-community-manager
Partnershis Lead	$ 69,915.00	$ 39,419.00	$ 5,826.25	$ 3,284.92	56.38%	https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-sales-rep
Operations Lead	$ 84,409.00	$ 8,133.00	$ 7,034.08	$ 677.75	9.64%	https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-operations-manager
Recruiter	$ 84,409.00	$ 8,812.00	$ 7,034.08	$ 734.33	10.44%	https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-recruiter
Fundraising	$ 68,761.00	$ -	$ 5,730.08	$ -	0.00%	https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-fundraising-coordinator
	$ 373,850.00	$ 58,622.00	$ 31,154.17	$ 4,885.17

This falls apart a bit if we’re seeking to bounty many things out, as the data for this doesn’t exist. If we’re doing that, it seems sensible to decide on a flat hourly rate for those tasks. I don’t think we should be doing this for operational (so community, ops etc.) work, though, as these things need accountability and don’t have a variable to motivate that accountability. Bounties IMHO should be reserved for things with limited accountability/impact on the community/cost of goods sold.

We’re working in current structures from Season 1 for roles, whereas we’ve evolved most of the other structures and I wonder if maybe we should consider doing the same for roles. Just and example of here of the Job Description for a Community Manager @ ENS.

[ntindle]

This makes a lot more sense to me but this money has to come from somewhere.

[kempsterrrr]

Indeed. However the monthly total here is roughly aligned with what is being suggested in in-flight proposals. Be very easy to reduce these rates by a % of available funds/revenue generated each month (this would incentivise everyone involved to drive value)

The other major problem I see is how tasks are being allocated as things fall through the cracks (i.e. DAO Marketing/social etc.) without defined roles. See ENS community role JD that looks after their socials.

[ntindle]

Fair. The ability to hold people accountable for things as well as having them dedicated to these roles is really desirable. How long could we sustain funding at this level right now?

[kempsterrrr]

If we ignore everything else and just look at revenue from partnership this season that is currently at $20,000/month (and we’re expecting another cc @Colin4ward ) bringing it to $30,000 - so we’re basically break even (assuming we make no more money from josb/events) AND have ~ 80k left over from last season

Caveat I’m remembering these numbers on the file and will need to check. Very late here

Ignore this, we’re missing some figures. See message below

[kempsterrrr]

WOAH… sorry, we’re missing a delivering/devrel/newsletter work here. Got ahead of myself and tired, I’ll add these in tomorrow. Although again, if you look at the ENS community JD, some of this comes from that role and imagine some might come from Partnership here (given how the roles are defined)

Regardless, I think the approach has a lot of merits and will explore more tomorrow.

[kempsterrrr]

Dropping one more piece of food for thought on this model before bed. FWB offers a sliding scale of USD rewards or tokens. Not sure exactly how this works there but I wonder if (assuming legally fine) we can explore something similar (at least for Labs/Ops)

It would work something like this:

For every $1 USD a Contributor reduces their pay, they are paid 10 $CODE.

So for a worked example, let’s say someone is paid $10,000/month and 0 $CODE. That person decides to actually take only $8,000 in USD and then 20,000 $CODE (2k * 10 CODE).

This further rewards folks in elevated Governance for believing in the community by being happy to take less USD in return for $CODE.

[ntindle]

I agree with this in general and should absolutely be explored.

[allWiseee]

This may have already been touched on, but I don’t think a dao wide bounty is great due to lack of accountability on ops and community side.

I think back to when I started actualizing onboarding 1st quarter of last year, I spearhead the initiative, and galvanized others to help me. That happened naturally. Someone with full accountability (me), and a team that wanted to add value but not be accountable for the entire project.

Maybe those project leads can create bounties for their specific needs instead of the stewards, which I’m sure you’re not opposed to.

[kempsterrrr]

Given the situation, this is hard to say, but if the calculations in this proposal remain the same, I cannot perform my role in S2. The time required to perform these tasks (far more than S1) is not equivalent to the return or the risk associated with ensuring we remain compliant, particularly when my name is on the Foundation.

This doesn’t come close to covering living costs, and I won’t have enough time to generate significant funds from elsewhere at this rate. The minimum for me to be able to perform these roles is $5,000.

I appreciate this may not go down well and seem unfair, but it is what it is, and I can’t put myself at risk like this. I’m happy to work on reducing this bus factor in S2 and diversify my income, but I’m not prepared to perform this role at that rate.

[Erik_Knobl]

Based on the feedback collected, I have decided to withdraw this proposal from contention. The process has been a learning experience, and really hope to be able to improve some of the ideas in this initiative.