P19: S1 Specification & Budget

Authors: @Erik_Knobl @kempsterrrr @luan @vorcigernix
Previous conversations on this topic:

Summary

This is the Developer DAO Season 1 specification. If this proposal passes, the following will apply:

  • Season 1 will start on the 22nd of August 2022.
  • CODE token will be launched and the Developer DAO Foundation and its bylaws will be adopted on the same day. (see the associated proposal for Foundation)
  • Season 1 will end on the 22nd of December starting an intentional break that ends on the 31st of December.
  • The Season 1 OKRs will apply, focusing most of the DAO’s efforts on Education, long-term sustainability and improving diverse representation in leadership.
  • Season 1 Budget Applications will be allocated to Guilds, Projects and Operators on a monthly basis.

What are Seasons?

As defined in our Season 0 Proposal, Seasons are;

“A discrete period of time for DAO members to come together to align on projects and initiatives that help us deliver on our mission, values, and goals.”

DAO-level Objectives for each future Season must be defined upfront by the Stewards, and, prior to starting the next Season, retrospectives must be carried out by all teams to ensure we can learn and improve. These should be reported on the forum.

Cycle of Seasons

Season 1 will be 4 months long followed by a 1-month long Off-Season.

Season length and cycle will be evaluated during the Season 1 Off-Season retrospectives to determine the next timeframe.

Off-Seasons

Off-seasons are designated times for reflection, retrospectives, and if needed, elections of any type. Guilds, Projects, committees or roles that require extra funding for the Off-Season can apply for an extension to the Stewards. A specific budget for incentivising participation in Off-Season activities will be created by the Coordination Operator and Stewards.

Off-Seasons must include:

  • Retrospectives: performed on the level of the DAO, each Guild, and/or individual projects
  • Elections: may include positions within the Guilds, Operations Team, multi-sig signers
  • Leadership transitions: ensure smooth ownership transition of tooling, procedures, etc.
  • Prep for next season: e.g. voting on or preparing for the next season’s theme or priorities.
  • Reevaluate reward systems: gauge sentiment on whether rewards were appropriate for the effort last season and make tweaks if necessary
  • Rest: deliberately accomplish nothing, e.g. for a week

Giving these types of organizational health items a separate, dedicated time permits full attention to continue on season objectives while in that season, but also crucially builds healthy habits into the DAO, e.g., giving members a regular break from Discord, properly engaging in the process for regularly rotating leadership.

Scope of work

Season 1

Season 1 will start the day the following conditions are met:

  • $CODE token is deployed
  • Foundation Bylaws are adopted by the DAO

The season will last 4 months from 22nd August to 22nd of December followed by a short break and a 1-month Off-Season between the 1st and 31 of January.

During Season 0, our focus was on laying the foundations for the DAO to function. These objectives were defined in our Season 0 proposal as:

  • Ratify our mission, values, and goals
  • Implement and refine the DAO Structure and improve external and internal onboarding processes for joining the DAO and contributing
  • Implement and refine the Governance process and guidelines for community decision making
  • Research and propose options for DBUCKS (now $CODE) token issue & DAO legal structure (if required)
  • Create space for bigger picture conversations about the DAO and identify Core Projects we want to back as a community through into Season 1
  • Plan Season 1 launch event with partners

Whilst it has taken longer than expected, every member should be proud of us collectively delivering on these goals and laying the foundations for great future impact. It is now time to re-focus on our stated mission: “to accelerate the Education and Impact of a new wave of web3 builders.”

During Season 1, our primary focus will be on the first element of that mission: Education. Our secondary focus will be on long-term sustainability so it can have the biggest impact over time.

OKRs (Obective > Key Results [Owner(s)])

  1. Attract a more diverse active membership

    • Increase the representation of women, non-binary and other underrepresented groups in leadership positions (Stewards, Guild Leads/Operators, Champions)
    • Engage 100 more members in South America, Africa, and across the APAC regions.
    • Create and foster an environment that makes it easier for women, non-binary people, and people from underrepresented groups to participate in the DAO
  2. Position the DAO Structurally and Financially for long-term success

    • Form Stewards team with diverse representation and empower them with DAO-level leadership responsibilities. [@Erik_Knobl @kempsterrrr ]
    • Secure at least 1 paid project via D_D Agency
    • Agree on at least 8 revenue generating partnerships
    • 10 ecosystem grants received by projects across the DAO
  3. Provide members with high-quality learning opportunities

    • Launch School of Code with 1 Project Track and 1 Fundamentals Track [ @ropats16 ]
    • At least 500 200 people have completed lessons on School of Code [@ ropats16 ]
    • Add at least 15 5 more lessons to the School of Code [ @ropats16 ]
    • Run at least 16 Educational Workshops [ @ropats16 @kempsterrrr ]
    • Post at least 16 original educational articles/tutorials to the Developer DAO Blog
  4. Provide meaningful value for Members

    • 100 50 people find a job through the DAO
    • At least 50 people have received financial returns for contributions to the DAO [ @kempsterrrr]
    • At least 20 DAO members benefit from a space created for peer-to-peer reviews of rĂ©sumĂ©s/CVs [ @luan ]

The Stewards may refine or introduce further Key Result trackers during the Season as initiatives evolve quickly and become better understood.

Season 1 Funding Allocations

The DAO funds Guilds and Projects that members have collectively decided to support via our Budget Application Process (to be reviewed during Season 1 given low participation in voting).

The final Season 1 Budget Calculations can be found here.

CODE Budgeted = 442,680.00

USD Budgeted = $112,000.00 (see adjustments below)

The following adjustments have been made to the requested Budgets:

  • Community Guild Operator - paused
  • Design Guild Operator - paused
  • Soil CODE allocation increased due to miss-calculation

For the paused Operator Roles the current plan is for these to accrue to be paid out at a later date when the Stewards deem the treasury able to afford these rates.

To receive funding, Guilds and Projects must have completed the Budget Application Process and submit this form once this proposal has passed.

Throughout the Season, Champions and Guild Core Contributors must provide at least a bi-weekly update on the weekly Coordination Call (currently Initiative Leads call) covering:

  • Progress against defined Success Metrics & KPIs
  • Any blockers restricting progress
  • CTAs

They must also provide a monthly update to the forum to support better asynchronous context sharing for folks unable to attend Coordination Calls.

As defined in the Stewards draft proposal, Stewards reserve the right to hold back Guild, Project and Operator funding if the above conditions are not met, ultimately deciding via a majority vote of the Stewards.

Stewards

The role of the Stewards was initially defined here and is being revised here.

This new proposal will delegate power to the Stewards to make certain decisions regarding the treasury and mid-season funding on behalf of members and define mid-term objectives.

Given these implications, members are urged to take the opportunity to help define these roles.

Stewards will be elected members of the DAO.

Mid-Season Funding

It is important Guilds and Projects that require funding do not have to wait for the next Season to apply for it.

To improve the efficiency of the mid-season application process, the Budget Stewards will be delegated the authority to allocate an amount of CODE and USD expenses to be determined in the Stewards proposal to Projects, Guilds and Operators that request funding.

The Stewards and Coordination Operator will define the process for mid-season budget and expenses applications.

Treasury/Finance Infrastructure

As defined in this proposal, each Guild and Project must have a gnosis multi-sig with at least a â…” signer threshold, plus the treasury as a backup signer.

For Guilds and internal projects, the Treasury will be granted the power to withdraw funds from the treasuries in which it is a signer. For external projects, this will only apply to the $CODE in the treasury. The intention here is a fail-safe to protect against compromised treasuries and bad actors meaning lost $CODE or DAO Funds. See Stewards Vote in discord poll here.

Finance Stack and Tracking

As mentioned above, all multi-sigs must be Gnosis safes.

For Season 1, the Coordination Operator in partnership with Anubhav and our friends at Parcel will deploy safes on behalf of Guilds and projects across Ethereum Mainnet, Polygon, Optimisims and Aribitrum, with the correct configuration.

The Parcel team has been helping us set up the infrastructure required to make the challenge of managing treasuries at the individual at DAO level far easier and will be the tool we use for this for Season 1. Guides on how to use them will be ready for the start of the Season.

Using Parcel provides us multiple benefits:

  • Automated transparent tracking of finances across the DAO including categorisation of transactions for better transparency, auditing and compliance.
  • Built-in Budget and Expense request flow, including milestones. This Functionality can be delegated to non-signers (i.e. Stewards)
  • Gas-free transactions are sponsored by our Friends at Parcel

Drawbacks

  • CODE leaving the treasury
  • USD affecting the sustainability of the treasury

NEXT STEPS & TIMELINE

Once accepted, the Core Team will take the following steps to execute this proposal.

  1. Prosal will remain in DRAFT until the 13th, there is a synchronous discussion today (Friday 12th) @ 4 pm UTC on discord. :white_check_mark:
  2. The form vote starts on the 14th of August, running for 72 hours
  3. The snapshot vote starts on the 16th, running for five days.
  4. $CODE is deployed on the 22nd, Governance switches from the NFT to this ERC20 token, Budgets are issued to Guilds and Projects, and Season 1 officially starts.

Vote

  • Approve S1 Specification &. Budget
  • Deny S1 Specification & Budget
0 voters
2 Likes

Seeking some input here from folks who the OKRs directly impact:

@pbillingsby.eth @brianfive @ropats16 @meowy - School of CODE

  • At least 500 people have completed lessons on School of Code
  • Add at least 15 more lessons to the School of Code

Believe this conversation in the server highlight that currently there is no way to track competition of lessons/tracks in “School of code”. Does that mean the first Key Result here is not achievable?

How do you feel about the second Key Result? Too ambitious? Not Ambitious enough? Doesn’t make sense given the structure of the project?

@ropats16 - how do you and Mikleens feel about this target?

As the host, I’m OK with doing one of these every week and it seems like we’ve got a good pipeline. 16 basically means 1 every week for S1

@Kay @kayprasla @wolovim @BrianHHough

How do we feel about this target for original education articles for S1… do we think they’re possible or overly ambitious, or not ambitious enough? I’d see any content from partners or internally from members counting to this target

@kempsterrrr @Colin4ward @Bobbay @vorcigernix

How do we feel about this target? @vorcigernix I’ve copied you in as we were speaking about this yesterday, @Colin4ward and @Bobbay added you as partners and will be adding jobs to the job board which is one-way folks can get a job via the DAO.

@Colin4ward @Bobbay - this aligns with what was set out in [FINAL] MBD S1 Budget Application - are you happy with this?

–

I will be reaching out to folks directly on the server to engage on these questions as well but if we could all try to reply here that would be great for transparency and an opportunity for others to catch up async.

Believe it is also mportant we identify who is happy to own each of these OKRs, especially the Key Results under each objective. Will add names as well go to the original post.

The DevRel team has a dedicated budget for 1 article per week, so I think this should be possible.

2 Likes

IDK how realistic it is. To track this, we can make posts in the job channel mandatory with a shortener (eg bit.ly) and delete all that disrespect that. I think that some shorteners do have some information collecting and there we can use it to collect discord name + ask later if the application was successful.

1 Like

from speaking with the team in discord here, the revised KPIs are as follows:

  • Launch School of code with 1 Project track and 1 Fundamentals track
  • Add 5 more Projects lessons post MVP
  • 200 people completed a lesson

The proposal will be update accordingly.

missed this sorry. I’ll amend this to 50 people so it is more achievable. The plan I currently have for tracking this is regular check-ins with our partners who are posting jobs on our job board in Season 1 but that will need support from Partnerships Leads.

I wonder if there is a conversation to be had with @Colin4ward @Bobbay and co about success metrics tracking with partners? Unsure if they have this on their mind already…

Each partner can have its metric sheet for every fulfillment. It could be something like the one below.

  • How many have found a job through the pallet board
  • How many views on each blog post
  • Newsletter views (already happening)
  • Newsletter on-clicks to the sponsor’s graphic/links
  • Attendees for twitter spaces

We should definitely track it, especially as future sponsors will ask about this information. We can add this to the airtable probably

While I support this proposal, it is important to note that the budgeted $CODE outflow from the treasury is ~2x the first estimated amount and ~8.8% of total treasury $CODE.

This also sees the DAO accrue obligations towards the Community & Design guild leaders which is undesirable.

Ideally in Season 1, we can improve the budgeting process to get more context around total outflows.

1 Like

I also am not sure we are going to get the necessary feedback around ownership of Key Results. It may make sense to remove the measurable key results, leaving the objectives, for further development with responsible parties as the season begins.

Have updated the Key Results with ones I know we have defined responsibility for. Believe @luan put his name against others, would you mind confirming which @luan?

I’d like OKRs to be meaningful as well. Rather than remove it, I’d prefer we lean into assigning that responsibility or refining the ones we have in place.

@chuck25 and @Wikist how do you feel about this? Given you updated description that focuses on putting in place infra to support folks to apply for grants, I understand if you don’t want to be responsible for this and I would be happy to take it on as part of Coordination work.

1 Like

Completely agree. Where do we think is the best place to record this? Airtable? Somewhere else?

Also, are you and @Colin4ward happy to be assigned ownership of this Key Result:

Thanks for the tag @kempsterrrr. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense for anyone to be responsible for these fundraising outcomes in S1. For a few reasons:

  1. We don’t yet know what it will take to make D_D into a well-oiled machine for receiving ecosystem grants. @Wikist and my job will begin with Discovery and Problem Identification before we start building the solutions (infrastructure) which will lead to successful grants.
  2. Having a quantitative target could also be a perverse incentive for the DAO, whereby projects are applying for grants before they are ready or D_D projects are competing with each other for grants. In both of these instances, the long-term fundraising potential of D_D and its projects could be hurt.
  3. My hypothesis is that D_D grantseeking will be decentralized. So there will be an office that supports projects to find their own grants but that office isn’t responsible for getting the grants. Like how a university’s career services office functions; they provide you resources for jobseeking and they can help organize both sides of the employment marketplace (recruiters and jobseekers) but they are not actually responsible for whether you get a job or not. I am certainly open to your and others’ ideas about this hypothesis, and expect my assumptions to be tested during the first few weeks of S1.
2 Likes

Airtable since everything else is there.

I appreciate the objectives, but with the current market conditions, I’m not sure this is viable. It is also a commission role, so I don’t want to give off the wrong image that we prioritize any partnership to reach a goal.

When we say revenue-generating partnerships, they don’t have to be S1 partnerships.

1 Like

8 partnerships is reasonable. Not sure about 100 jobs.

1 Like

A format error, this bullet point should be in the same level of the below

1 Like

does our budget cover this unsure allocation?

It does not out of a desire to move forward with S1 one. The intention is for the [DRAFT] Stewards proposal to define these levels.

We have already 18 mentors putting in their time for 23 mentees at the time of writing. It would be nice to see them get some recognition. I’m sure all innocently overlooked. :wink:

Cheers.

1 Like

AND

in addition to the one you already have me marked down beside, I also put my name against both of these in the Airtable