Labs Budget - 2023-Q3

[kempsterrrr]

@rubinovitz

paying someone to attend a call != them contributing positively to the DAO.

I proposed this as I felt incentivising community participation does == participating in the DAO and thus should be rewarded a small amount for doing so. The idea is getting folks together to build community and create opportunities for value to be created, vs. trying to be super granular on what is or is not value.

@luan

then I’m a little skeptical at this juncture, that Agency will see much success within those formats.

The intention is to take advantage of as many opportunities as possible to shine a light on what the agency is doing. I agree, this is unlikely to cause a significant immediate impact (particularly on inbound leads for work) but I’d hope such efforts would compound over time.

If Agency is not part of those spaces we lose that opportunity. We are noticing more and more (particularly after the success of hackathons and the fellowship) more investors, protocol reps etc. attending the Town Halls.

@luan

I think the Open Space that @Gordo set up, serves as a more suitable primary recruitment pathway;

Agreed - I’d love to see us promoting this space in the Town Halls we can funnel folks towards the opportunity. As for Organic deal flow, awareness is the start of achieving that IMO and hopefully, the town-halls as well as more prominence in the newsletter and some dedicated marketing support from Labs could help here.

@mannyornothing is also keen to push to bring work into the agency - Maybe a call is best to figure this out?

A lead for some paid work was already shared in the chat - @Gordo didn’t feel it was work agency would want to do but would be interested to get your/others perspectives as well.

@luan

I’m presuming that in the early stages, ‘utility’ will look like distributing the token more through hackathons, competitions, giveaways, rewards for some work in the DAO etc (as has been shared above). If a token is only held by a subset of people, then it limits its circulation and thus utility.

Totally agree. The 1st stage we’re seeing is a socially based experiment to figure out the right incentives and rewards in the DAO. Once we’ve got a good enough sense of the rewards and incentivises the intention would be to then introduce utility based on token holdings.

For example , in the future this could look like the following:

• x number of CODE tokens need to participate in a hackathon
• y number of tokens needed to apply for a Fellowship Program
• z number of projects needed to spin up a team to work in agency

Can also see a world where we introduce staking to further the utility. For example, you stake the token requirement to participate in a Hackathon/Fellowship/Agency, and then if you submit/complete the fellowship or Agency project, you earn a yield. If you drop out maybe you are slashed.

We believe though it’s better (and tbh necessary) to keep things open whilst we’re testing and figuring out what works and what doesn’t, before putting things on-chain.

Regarding rewarding folks outside the DAO - been riffing on this also so glad you brought it up.

The goal with these CODE allocations is to a) attract and recruit builders, b) rewards and incentivise them to create more value - I agree that doesn’t need to be limited to DAO Members and could see a world for example where we issue CODE to everyone who submits to ETH Global hacks (we can get their wallet addresses from the ETH GLobal website)

this would allow us to welcome in certified builders in the same way the CODE rewards for all verified D_D hackathon submission are now. What do you think?

@luan

There’s no women listed. I have no context for why that’s the case; but it’s my view that efforts should always be made to attract more women into web3 (and the DAO as a byproduct). And those who express an interest in (or show they have the capability to step into) some of the aforementioned roles, should be empowered and supported in meaningful ways. A meaningfully diverse operational team is a net positive for any DAO.

Discussed with the DDW women’s team about their intentions next season and they’d decided not to submit a proposal. Instead, we have now brought Sam into labs to work with Billy on community, initially taking over the Scholarship& Travel work handled last season/quarter by Scarlet.

She was not mentioned in the proposal as she was away, and we hadn’t had a chance to speak directly with Sam at that point. We’re just ironing out here role and will update the JD when completed.

@luan

Is Developer DAO is returning to the format that I argued for, back in February (i.e. prior to the start of Season 2)? Will there no longer be 2-3 Community Managers within DD Labs?

Experience last quarter was clear, underpaying multiple people to collectively do 1 role was much less effective than more reasonable paying one person to do that role. @Billyjitsu went over and beyond his $1k last quarter so we’ve reallocated the funds to him to lead community and the intention is to grow a team around him as funds allows. This is starting with bounties payable to a few members for hosting dedicated spaces as well as Sam leading the scholarship work (we hope her roles evolves into CM).

@luan

I’m not sure if I’ve misread, but can you elaborate on this? I’m aligned with the premise in theory, but I’m keen to get some clarity around some of the approaches that will be taken, to achieve this. Is it the Town Halls, Twitter Spaces, Hackathons etc? Or do you have something else in mind, in service of this?

Good q - exactly as you’ve suggested this will be achieved via the CODE Rewards: Hackathon subs/winners, workshop attendees, giveaways etc.

Our aim is to welcome in > 500 folks this season via these paths.

EDIT - @luan opened up the discussion for reducing the CODE requirement to join discord here.