Labs Budget - 2023-Q3

[kempsterrrr]

Thanks, @Piablo I’m equally grateful for our on-going conversations regarding the mentorship program and academy. This is a big team effort

@Piablo

I know the question is hypothetical, but what might that 10% be used for in the future? What sort of real-world value can it provide?

This is ultimately up to token holders submitting proposals to allocate funds. That said, imho we should introduce some guidance here to ensure the treasury grows over time (i.e. we don’t just spend it all) and we always have the funds to pay the Foundation’s yearly costs (currently ~$35k).

I suggested in here one thing I’d to see happen with funds is buying back the CODE token from the open market. I also suggested in a few places that, once the treasury grows sufficiently to fund it, we run regular decentralised grant programs like ENS Small Grants where an amount of USDC is distributed to projects in a decentralised way where members submit ideas and other members vote on them.

These are just my ideas, though. I would love to see a discussion opened on this in another forum post.

@Piablo

Why 10% and not 20% for example if we’re talking about sustainability?

Very valid question. We tried to balance the sustainability of the new model with the sustainability of the DAO and based on the calculations in the spreadsheet, tbh 10% just felt like the right number to strike that balance.

@Piablo

I would love to hear the thoughts of the ‘contributors’ on the payroll as to how ‘their’ reward fits into the model of the DAO as a whole regarding these percentages. And what sort of compromises they feel they face accepting these percentages

Which percentages are you referring to: DAO share, sharing with other Sub-DAOs, or both?

Personally, they don’t feel like compromises to me, felt like to me the right balance to ensure the sustainability of the DAO and the ability to support other Sub-DAOs.

@imnote.eth

This looks solid.

Thanks

@imnote.eth

I’m interested in Scholarship Lead position.

Thanks for putting yourself forward - I should have been clearer about the status of this position. After speaking with the DDW team who ran this program last quarter. As they’re not applying for a budget moving forward, we agreed to bring that work into labs to be run by one of their team. This is TBD because conversation to confirm they’re happy with the role hasn’t happened yet, as they’ve been away. Should they not be happy with that the role (either description or practicalities - i.e. contract), then we’d open this up.

We have a lot of work to do to introduce a more structured and fairways of choosing contributors. Right now, it’s very much been a social method between existing contributors, but as the teams grow, I would love to see an application and interview process established for each role. Sadly, we’re not there yet, and I apologise if that feels frustrating or unfair.

Assuming this model is successful I hope over time it will significantly increase the opportunities for Members to become contributors with meaningful and well-rewarded roles either in Labs, Academy, Agency, Mentorship or anything else created in the future.

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@imnote.eth - thanks a bunch for your perspective on mentorship.

@imnote.eth

is there some mechanism for well-connected dao members to vouch for or recommend high-quality developers (or committed learners) to join the dao?

Not currently. Be interested to know more about how you’d see something like this working, maybe a post on another thread to open a discussion around the possibility.

@imnote.eth

is there some sort of proof of project that people who participate in the hackathons get? So that can build reputation for shipping it?

We’ll be issuing NFTs to everyone who submits to the hackathon using https://mintkudos.xyz/

@imnote.eth

I’d like to lead more Teach Anything on a monthly basis. I hosted one for the first official Community Workshop, but would prefer to have these be size-capped and recorded, then uploaded to Youtube. They thrive on direct connection between attendees and teachers, which doesn’t work when streaming to Youtube.

@Billyjitsu is stewarding a budget for holding dedicated time in the calendar to support members on whatever they’re struggling with. the intention is 1 hour, twice a week, where someone will be there to help folks out. I believe he has someone in mind for this already, but worth reaching out to him directly.

Over time as the model grows we’re expecting to grow the team to offer many more of these kinds of valuable opportunities for Members to get more value from their membership and become paid contributors to deliver such ideas.

@imnote.eth

• I love the idea of having a revenue model around reliable solution providers, such as Thirdweb, and featuring them in the content of Academy and the hackathons. It gives us as a DAO alignment on a tech-stack and expertise that can later be valuable.

Totally agree regarding need for a sustainable revenue model around every thing we do. Many DAOs have struggled to figure this out and it would be a huge achievement for everyone if we can do that here.

We’re working with the academy team atm to line up some “paid partners” to host course content on V2 of the platform - either written by them and maintain by us , or they fund someone in the DAO to create the course - the latter if it happens might be another amazing way for Members to become contributors and really create value for the DAO and be paid well for it. Very much TBD.

One thing we’re trying to avoid though is locking the DAO down to a specific tech stack which is why we’re not pursuing a preferred L2 for example, or only being an Ethereum DAO as we feel that is limiting what builders can create. However seeing a protocol on academy would be a-ma-zing - and still leaves members with the choice of how to build.

With the preferred providers, we’ve tried to identify things that are necessary to build in the space: (wallet, exchange, RPC, Storage etc) but agnostic to the underlying L1/L2/whatever.

@imnote.eth

I’d like to see more cross-pollination of initiatives, such as progress in Academy (or lack of it) triggering a call to action to join the mentorship program (as a mentee). Or presenting a workshop getting an automatic invitation to mentor in the mentorship program. Or for me to have an overview of all the topics and solutions in the academy program in the back of my mind, so I can recommend it to my mentees. As it is, I do my best to forward links to my mentees and friends about upcoming workshops etc.

This is one of the core goals of the new model - coordinating the different sub-daos/teams to create a more streamlined and connected member experience that funnels folks through each opportunity in the DAO. We have a standing Coordination call each Thursday at 3p m UTC and the intention of this space is to coordinate between groups so everyone is supporting each other - please come long.

Some opportunities for coordination I’d love to see are:

1. Mentors leading cohorts through academy tracks
2. Mentors leading a team of juniors through a hackathon
3. Regular twitter space highlight builders in the DAO, whether that’s a project in Agency, a hackathon team who submitted, or just a member doing cool stuff.

Think it’s worth sharing a slide from the updated (but still WIP) partner deck which feels like a nice visualisation of the Member journey in the DAO…

Really appreciate all the feedback

I’ll follow up with @drop_knowledge about the status of the CODE rewards you’re missing - sorry about that