Thanks! Loved our conversations last week 
Any thoughts on 
Projects that are expected to drive revenue will suggest a % split of revenue between contributors and the DAO Treasury to be included in their Budget Application and therefore discussed/voted on by DAO Members.
Is this to say that projects which are expected to bring in revenue require contributors to go at-risk until after the project? Or is it that the profit share is a bonus incentive?
Very good question @Colin4ward
The proposal suggests that moving forward the budget application process is proactive, whereby groups of members who come together to put forward an idea with the above criteria met can apply for $CODE which is allocated to them ahead of time to create the project.
Unanswered question here on exactly how that works but iād suggest itās transferred monthly/seasonly to a pre-defined multi-sig for the project/guild to ensure weāre not just allocating out LOADS of $CODE without any idea if there is follow through
This then proactively incentivises contribution by rewarding members with elevated Governance rights via our non-financial Governance token $CODE. So in the context of being rewarded in elevated Governance rights via $CODE, no members will not be going āat-riskā until after the project like they have been up until now.
That said, given $CODE is a non-financial Governance token and we will not be assigning it any value this does not help members pay any meatspace bills such as their rent.
The proposed solution to this is two fold:
- Supporting teams to apply for grant funding which is then split between contributors and the DAO with the suggested & included in the budget application. This should be the focus of most of the projects we support given out goal is to create public goods and I do not see us having trouble securing grant funding with some energy put into activating the many opportunities available, @drop_knowledge has some passion about helping drive a grants team to help achieve this/support projects and myself and @RyanCoordinator are passionate about helping make this happen ASAP
- Any projects that do generate revenue and apply for funding (i.e. job board, future conferences/events etc.) should include in their proposal how they indented to split any revenue generated with the DAO, this gives members the chance to discuss/debate and decide if they agree/not, or alternatively we set a standard rate. very interested to hear debate on this.
Hope that helps clear up the thinking and gives some answer to the question?
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Would this apply for people on the Biz/dev guild? They can be seen as active contributors but splitting sponsorships between contributors and the DAO in this particular case seems weird.
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This is a brilliant question. It had been on my mind that for āDAO Levelā projects and initiatives such as Seasonal Sponsorship or the Job Board that are likely to generate significant recurring revenue from the actions of a few, itās not totally clear to me how the split would work and so debate on this topic important.
These things need to happen and we need to be ensure people are incentivised to do them but be careful about those incentive structures so the focus doesnāt become maximising ROI - I know @wolovim has some interest thoughts here.
As the proposal currently stands it kicks this questions to the Budget Application Process but and I am unsure if we need to/should account for specific use cases like this here, or, if we should maybe just provide some guidelines and refine during the budget process.
Maybe it would be interesting to get thoughts on people who have been playing these roles thus far so in the Seasonal Sponsorship space thatās @nas @tonyolendo @Colin4ward @daeshawn.eth @Orlundo (please any one Iāve missed) and on the job board thatās me, @drop_knowledge @pbillingsby.eth @jazza.eth aykay.eth @carlomigueldy.eth @angel
My personal thoughts (acknowledging that I come from a place whereby iāll likely be rewarded for FT work at the DAO soon), that these recurring revenue generating initiatives should probably primarily (or maybe entirely) going to the DAO Treasury given they are at the āDAO Levelā and be spread across the DAO to support other initiatives as much as possible.
This feels a bit unfair though writing it so I think it would be really valuable to get others input here as too wether or not we set a standard or kick this debate to the budget application process where we could look at the specifics of each case.
Kicking the debate to the budget application process is where my thoughts are currently
ADDED
To clarifyā¦ on a project level (for example with the conf) if there is someone involved in the project from MBD/BizDev that is securing partnerships at the project level imho they should definitely be rewarded for that as other projects would be. Itās the DAO Level recurring piece Iām struggling with in my mind.
The amount of CODE distribution may be wrong, or the length of one season should be 3 months. 312,500 CODE is for seasonal length of 3 months
sorry for my weired focus 
Well Iāll be darned! The number of times I looked at those numbers and didnāt realise that is incredible. Thanks so much for pointing this out 
Iāll update the numbers in the proposal above. This is actually a good thing as we now have a larger pool of $CODE per Season to allocate to contributors which means more reward and quicker decentralisation via $CODE holdings.
With the total new monthly $CODE budget of 416,666.67 we can have an hourly rate (following the same assumptions) of 40 and still have 128,666.67 $CODE left after rewarding contributors for other initiatives. Or, 200,666.67 if we have an hourly rate of $30.
This is much much better! Might be a good idea for another check on the numbers if you donāt mind 
Iām struggling to stay on top of all this DAO structure and contributor reward stuff.
From the mbd side I think what we need most is the ability to agree weekly/monthly time commitments and a rate that this will be compensated for contributors that are taking on different roles in the guild.
I donāt think we can generalise how the guild may get a share of initiatives/projects it works on. Think we could negotiate that on a project basis, but think for now the guild should just focus on having some core ongoing contributors that are compensated for their time commitment.
Perhaps this can be budgeted on a seasonal basis with a way to propose new contributors with their time commitment and rate.
We already have a list of contributors in our notion with time commitment. That can be used as an initial guide for people, roles, commitments and then we just add a rate in CODE or DAI to thatā¦?
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so in the pursuit of simplicity for S1 this proposal suggests a flat hourly rate in $CODE that is rewarded for contributions made. guilds/projects would estimate the amount of time theyāre committing and then extrapolate this using the hourly rate figure to come to a budget.
Generally the idea is Guilds would have a few budgeted operational roles to make the guild function and then all outcome driven initiatives will be scoped and budgeted for independently as Projects to allow for flexibility and make it easier for budget proposals to pass through Governance.
That said, given $CODE is a non-financial Governance token and we will not be assigning it any value this does not help members pay any meatspace bills such as their rent.
The proposed solution to this is two fold:
- Supporting teams to apply for grant funding which is then split between contributors and the DAO with the suggested & included in the budget application. This should be the focus of most of the projects we support given out goal is to create public goods and I do not see us having trouble securing grant funding with some energy put into activating the many opportunities available, @drop_knowledge has some passion about helping drive a grants team to help achieve this/support projects and myself and @RyanCoordinator are passionate about helping make this happen ASAP
- Any projects that do generate revenue and apply for funding (i.e. job board, future conferences/events etc.) should include in their proposal how they indented to split any revenue generated with the DAO, this gives members the chance to discuss/debate and decide if they agree/not, or alternatively we set a standard rate. very interested to hear debate on this.
One oversight for this proposal is how we ensure the $CODE being allocated is not being wasted i.e. the Guilds and Projects who are being allocated code for their contributions are contributing and creating value. In itās current form the proposal suggests an entirely trust based model once budget applications have been accepted by the DAO.
This came up in the Gov call yesterday with @willblackburn @doswell.eth @RyanCoordinator @manny and others
A proposed solution for this is only Sending $CODE to Guilds and Projects on a monthly basis rather than the entire Seasonal amount up front and then putting in a monthly check to get an update on progress to make sure progress has been made.
Two options currently top of mind (these are not fully scoped):
- Each month, guilds and projects must provide an update to this forum on their progress
- A vote is added to the bottom of this to confirm if the next months budget should/shouldnāt be allocated
OR
- Each month, guilds and projects must provide an update to this forum on their progress
-A team (Ops, Gov, new team/committee) review this post and decide via vote whether or not the next months budget should be allocated
Would love to hear some thoughts on these suggested approaches
Hopefully we can discuss this on Fridayās call about open proposals.
I think recurrent activities with opportunities to collect funds for the DAO should be done by the DAO itself, through a Teams structure like Ops is doing, and get people paid for doing them. That would include Grants, Sponsorships, Token Swaps, etc. We need full-time people working on those, and bringing value to the D_D.
Ideas that can generate profit should be 50/50 split between the team and the DAO.
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Yeah. I think mbd may be better served by having budgets for contributor roles independent from the outcome specific initiatives. I donāt see these as āoperational rolesā, but just contributors as we have them now. Based on the current setup I would like to just have partnership champions and initiative champions just state their weekly/monthly time commitment and be compensated based on that.
Would only want to scope an initiative and request budget for it when it gets to a place of formality and scale. Is this possible?
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Iām glad to help on it, kemp.
Btw, I am alex, haha. Sorry for my name confusing you.
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The amount of Average Hours worked Per Season is not correct, it should be 80 hours per season. and the remaing calculations should be changed accordinglg.
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Glad to see this as one of the main topics of debate in the thread. Incentives make the world go round and I think we should be careful about which we establish. Iām pro-sharing the fruits of labor, but one thing I do not want the DAO to turn into is a PFP NFT factory because its most profitable.
If we establish a revenue-sharing model, I think that also needs to be paired with a nontrivial project formation/application process that screens projects for being well-aligned with our mission, values, and goals.
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Agreed. Even with a strict proposal process, I think that profit sharing would warp reality as anyone contributing would be better compensated for contributing to revenue driving projects over public goods (assuming a public good has no revenue).
Maybe (again, with a strict selection criteria) put all project revenues into a single pot and use that as a means to share revenue out to contributors. Here I see a risk of apathy (lack of direct compensation for effort) in exchange for not punishing people that want to work on non-revenue tasks.
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cc @gjsyme
i hear these concerns and have tried to factor them into the proposal. my general thoughts are all budget applications need to follow our DDIP process where by members will need to vote on budgets before they are accepted. It would be hear that the community can choose to support projects or not, and also feedback on the suggested % split in any grant or revenue funding.
whoās responsibility is it too ensure we stick to focusing on public goods ? is it not the community via Governance whereby theyāll vote on what they do or donāt support?..
regarding incentives not skewing the output of the DAO towards revenue generating projects, i personally feel our focus should be on creating a team/process that is focussed on supporting teams to secure grant funding for building public goods. I know @drop_knowledge has some ideas here. rather than trying to restrict the scope or project budget applications the community can make.
lastly i think itās important we update our Governance Proposal templates to have an explicit section on āMission & Values alignmentā or similar to force budget applications to explicitly state how their project supports our mission, values and goals. cc @willblackburn
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completely agree this could be the ideal situation but we do not have the treasury funds to make this a reality at the moment. i hope that after S1 or maybe S2 we are in a position where we have the funds to support people to work on these FT but i donāt think that is possible now.
think 50/50 might be a good starting point for the split but donāt think we should enforce this it should be guideline and what projects decide needs to be justified in their budget application process which the community can then weigh in on during the process.
I also share in the intuition that these āDAO-levelā projectsā revenue should primarily go towards the treasury. In the case of the pallet (jobs board), the contributors (we) were just unlocking latent value in the community so feels like that is where that value should go.
Though, given the service to the DAO that a āDAO-levelā contributor has provided, perhaps (in jobs board case at least) they should be rewarded via a one-time (retroactive) $CODE bonus thatās voted on by the community? However, this assumes that the contribution has not been priced in via early contributor rewards, which is questionable!
ty update figures to reflect this
suggested $CODE hourly rate is now $20 and increased the default % added to guild and projects budgets for adhoc contributions to 50% as per conversations in Governance call last week. this leaves 176.666.67 $CODE available for other initiatives.