Labs Budget - 2023-Q3
Authors: @kempsterrrr , @mannyornothing , @Billyjitsu , @PSkinnerTech , @allWiseee , @kayprasla @jamiebones @drop_knowledge (everyone who has attended VIBES calls)
Supporting Steward(s): @Erik_Knobl
Support conversations: Agency, DDW, Academy, Mentorship
Summary
Labs budget for Q3 2023. Introduces a new partnerships model, including preferred revenue share with Sub-DAOs and updated roles and responsibilities in Labs.
Motivation
This proposal seeks to learn from last quarter and improve what weāre doing in the following ways:
- Bring the focus squarely back on the community > and partners and provide a consistent experience for Members.
- Establish a stable and scalable revenue model.
- Directly support the operations and growth of all Sub-DAOs by sharing partnerships revenue and ensuring all Sub-DAOs have the support of Labs in marketing, community engagement & partnerships.
- More clearly define roles in Labs, increasing responsibility, accountability, and rewards with a flat rate across roles, with room for more flexible working via bounties.
Last quarter Labs covered Community, Partnerships, Jobs and Operations and proposed some support for website development with Agency.
This structure has worked OK. It allowed the team to focus and work better together but did not serve or support the other Sub-DAOs. We propose positioning Labs as the ācore teamā for the team that helps the entire DAO/Sub-DAOs, not just itself, succeed and grow together.
Scope of Work
Updated Partnerships Model & Community-Focused Experience
The Labs team has been working hard to figure out a new model that funds the DAO, allowing us to shift back to a more community-focused > partner-focused experience.
Preferred Partners
The foundation for this new model is āPreferred Partnersā.
The goal is to form longer-term partnerships (min 3 months) with trusted providers in the space for tooling/products/services our community needs: RPC, Wallet, Exchange, Infrastructure & Storage.
Rather than needing to host one of the events for individual partners, this approach allows us to host community events that elevate the education and impact of our Members whilst recommending preferred partners via CTAs to their services: YouTube/Luma descriptions, Emails, Community Documentation etc.
For this model to have maximum impact, weāre hoping to extend these partnerships across our Sub-DAOs - i.e. Academy uses the āPreferred RPCā in their course, and Agency uses the āPreferred RPCā in their projects (where possible). We all share in the revenue generated from the partnerships to fund operations and growth.
Weāve opened conversations with Academy and Agency on these points and aim to find a solution that works well for everyone.
Hackathons, vibesIRL, Merch, Jobs and Fellowships
On top of this ongoing revenue from preferred partners, Labs will drive more revenue from these areas to further grow the DAO treasury and be able to pay more Contributors to help improve the Community experience and grow the DAO Treasury.
Merch, Fellowship and vibesIRL, were each previously delegated to other teams. Our experience in the last quarter showed us that this separation only made coordination harder for domains that are so core to the Member experience. Weāve agreed with each team to bring this work back into the Labs team whilst we establish and scale this model.
Supporting the wider DAO / Other Sub-DAOs
A vital benefit of this updated model is more explicitly supporting other Sub-DAOs. We aim to do this in the following ways.
Revenue share from preferred partners
Where Sub-DAOs are happy to support the preferred partner model, weāll share 10% of the revenue from each preferred partner. If we hit current targets, this would amount to $2,500/month to both Academy and Agency.
Marketing, Partnerships & Community Engagement
The Labs team would like to work with Academy and Agency to support the work theyāre doing directly. At the moment, we hope to see this playing out in the following ways, however, details pending conversations with the team and may evolve:
- Sub-DAOs have dedicated time/space within existing marketing/community events to promote what theyāre doing, seek/funnel contributors etc. (i.e. area on Town Hall, in the newsletter, Twitter Spaces etc.)
- The Labs partnership team will promote the services theyāre offering to the partners weāre already speaking with (Already discussing lining up paid partners for Academy and can do the same to create more inbound deal flow for Agency)
Sub-DAO Coordinator role
Weāve also budgeted to fund a Sub-DAO Coordinator role for each Sub-DAO, which allocates $1,000 USDC per month to fund someone to handle essential functions of the Sub-DAO: meeting cadence, rewards allocation, and documentation.
Community-Driven Experience
The north star for this new model is an updated experience anchored in providing value for all Members, helping to increase their education and impact in the space.
We aim to achieve this in the following ways:
Regular Cadence of Community Events:
Weāre curating a regular cadence of community events we repeat each month anchored in providing value for Members. Some of the more solid ideas are:
- Builder sessions: regular slots each week where 1/2 Contributors will be paid to be available to provide help/support to any Member that brings along a technical/product/whatever problem.
- Regular, Community-driven Twitter Space Panels: Spaces around topics (for example, zk) where we invite experts in the space to discuss topics the community has signalled an interest in).
- VIBES: Contributors paid specifically to host VIBES each week as part of the community team
Weāre also considering a few other things, such as continuing the Wellness sessions with Emm and MVP/Feature demo sessions for Members to get feedback on what theyāre building from other members. Weād LOVE to hear some ideas here for regular activities the community would like to see happen.
At the end of each month, we have a Hackathon, and at the end of the quarter, we run a fellowship program with partners like Press Start Cap x Developer DAO Fellowship.
Here is an image of what the average month might look like under this model:
NB - Weāre actively seeking feedback from the community on this experience. Please share any thoughts, feedback, wishes, and critiques.
CODE Rewards for every activity
CODE has been underutilised in the last quarter. We propose allocating CODE rewards, or rewards pools, to the most community activities that help us achieve our mission.
The goal here is to āspendā CODE to incentivise and reward the things that make the community grow and more valuable for everyone, similar to how a DeFi protocol might issue yields to attract liquidity and make their protocol more useful for users.
Significantly, this will also help us recruit more members and further decentralise voting power in the DAO into the hands of Members.
More specific detail in the budget section below.
Domain of Operations & Team
This proposal delegates much of the DAOās core experience to Labs, establishing them as the core team responsible for: Community Management, Partnerships, Marketing and DAO Growth Operations.
Our experience last quarter has further strengthened the view, at least in our eyes, that we need to increase accountability and responsibility for such fundamental functions and, in turn, reward those performing these roles more reasonably whilst still ensuring we provide flexibility to support a wider pool of contributors and an ability to experiment with the experience being created.
Team
Role | Contributor | Role Description |
---|---|---|
Community Lead | BillyJitsu | Link |
Scholarship Lead | iamsamcodes | Link |
Partnerships Lead | mannyornothing | Link |
Content Lead | Patrick Skinner | Link |
Growth Lead | kempsterrrrr | Link |
The folks performing the roles above will be signers on the to-be set-up Labs treasury.
OKRs
VIBE | ||
---|---|---|
O1 | Foster a fun and safe Member experience | Owner |
KR | Consistent cadence of community events | BillyJitsu |
KR | Solicit feedback from Members to improve their experience | BillyJitsu |
KR | Organise vibesIRL event for Instanbul | kempsterrrr |
KR | Release DAO merch store | kempsterrrr |
LEARN | ||
---|---|---|
O2 | Provide DAO members with high-quality learning opportunities | Owner |
KR | Weekly learning workshops with Members | BillyJitsu |
KR | Monthly Twitter panels with industry experts | Kempsterrrr |
KR | 2 Builder office hours a week to provide technical support to Member | BillyJitsu |
BUILD | ||
---|---|---|
O3 | Support DAO members to elevate their impact on the world | Owner |
KR | 1 mini hackathon per month | Manny |
KR | 1 Fellowship program per quarter | Dropknowledge |
KR | Jobs made available for members from 2 Venture Frens portfolios | Dropknowledge |
GOVERN | ||
---|---|---|
O4 | Position the DAO structurally and financially for long-term success | Owner |
KR | 5,000 USDC added to the treasury each month | Manny |
KR | 2,500 USDC shared with both Agency and Academy each month | Manny |
KR | 500 new members with sufficient CODE tokens to acces the server | kempsterrrr |
KR | Distribute at least 75% of request Member rewards budget | kempsterrrr |
Budget Request (Including value returned to the DAO)
The full breakdown of the labās budget can be found here - in CODE and USDC.
USDC
This budget makes Labs sustainable whilst returning 10% of revenue to the DAO and 10% of preferred partner revenue to both the Agency and Academy to help fund their operations.
While this model is being established and we transition back to Sub-DAOs having their SAFE independent of the DAO treasury, we request that funds in the DAO treasury provide the difference to cover contributor and infrastructure/tooling expenses for Labs, Agency and Academy.
The maximum potential cost assets to the DAO Treasury in USDC is $ 28,399.65/month - for all expenses listed in the budget breakdown here.
This cost assumes no revenue generated by Labs.
We aim to reach breakeven in the first month based on ongoing preferred partner conversations and a potential mini-hackathon for July. However, we may not reach breakeven until August.
If we donāt reach breakeven in July, the request from the treasury would be to cover the difference between revenue - expenses.
CODE
Our request for the $CODE budget has two parts.
Contributor rewards
Monthly contributor rewards are calculated using the following formula:
(Monthly reward in USDC / Flat hourly rate in USDC) * 15 CODE/hour
The baseline request for $CODE Contributor Rewards in Labs and for Agenyc, and Academyās Sub-DAO Coordinators is therefore:
(Monthly Contributor Rewards in CODE / 50) * 15
($ 25,000.00 / 50) * 15 = 7,500 $CODE
Given there are two roles with a commissions structure - Partnership Lead and Venture Lead - we further request the CODE to cover the CODE rewards should both of these roles hit their full targets.
On target Partnership Lead commission - $1,500/month
Equivalent CODE reward - (1,500 / 50) * 15 = 450 CODE
On Target Venture Lead commission - $2,000
Equivalent CODE reward - (2,000 / 50) * 15 = 600 CODE
Total CODE request per month = 7,500 + 450 + 600 = 8,550 CODE
Total CODE Request for Q3 Contributors is = 25,650 CODE
Member Rewards
In the same way a DeFi Protocol uses yield to attract liquidity and encourage trading, weād like to use code to incentivise and reward the activity that creates value for themselves, the DAO and the ecosystem (i.e. attending vibes, workshops, submitting to hackathons etc.).
Important second-order impacts of this are:
- Decentralise the DAO faster by allocating more $CODE to Members
- Grow DAO membership
Below is a breakdown of the CODE request to reward Members:
Activity | CODE Rewards Model | Month CODE Budget | Season CODE Budget (Max) |
---|---|---|---|
VIBES | 15 CODE per NFT Claim (max 50 per NFT) | 3,000 | 12,000 |
Workshop Attendees | 45 CODE per NFT Claim (max 50 per NFT) | 4,500 | 18,000 |
Hackathon Project Submission | 360 per verified submission (3 -hacks, avg 20 subs) | 5,400 | 21,600 |
Discord Praise System | 5000 Bounty Pool Per Month | 375 | 1,500 |
Twitter Space Giveaway | 5 Memberships (400 * 5 * 3) | 6,000 | 24000 |
DevNTell attendee | 15 CODE per attendee Kudos NFT Claim (max 50 per NFT) | 3,000 | 12,000 |
DevNTell Speaker | 400 CODE per speaker Kudos Claim | 1,600 | 6,400 |
95,500 |
Weād welcome other ideas for activities that should be incentivised and rewarded.
Important note - The calculations for Twitter space giveaways are based on the current requirement of 400 CODE to enter the server. Once this proposal is passed, the labsā team would like to open a discussion with the DAO to significantly reduce this threshold and economic barrier for entry into the community.
Any change to this threshold would be reflected in the funds allocated for these giveaways. Assuming the DAO supports reducing down from 400 CODE, the labs team request permission to re-allocate that CODE to test other ways to reward Members.
Total CODE
The total CODE request, therefore, for Q3 is:
25,650 (Contributors) + 95,500 (Members) = 121,150 CODE
Drawbacks
- There is a reasonable chance there will be a currently unknown USDC cost to the DAO Treasury depending on how quickly Labs can breakeven. That said, it should be low and once breakeven is reached this budget will directly grow the treasury and open up opportunities for the DAO to allocate those funds.
- This proposal formally establishes Labs as the DAOās core team with responsibility and accountability for community, marketing, partnerships, content and operations - a high level of trust is requested.
- This budget does not currently account for Mentorship efforts. However, conversations with Piablo and co are ongoing to define a path where their work can be directly supported and better integrated into the wider Member experience.
- Some of the roles defined still require further, and likely ongoing, definition, which leaves some uncertainty in the exact value they will create.
- The CODE request is equivalent to 1% of our treasury.
- Some conversations regarding how best to coordinate this new model between Sub-DAOs are ongoing which means some details are yet to be defined. Unknowns always present some risk but we know what they are and are actively collaborating with Agency an Academy to define them.
- Our mechanisms for distributing the $CODE Member rewards are not fully defined after this news from Mintkudos.