Summary
The following proposal will be explaining in depth the motivation and distribution of a set of requested tokens from the Stakeborg DAO Financial Committee (SFC), spread over an extended period of time, in order to retroactively reward the community’s contributors. This proposal is for everyone, it has been aligned with the community’s contributors and curated by all of the project managers currently handling a specific portfolio in our DAO. It is brought forward with the simple intention of creating a one-time occurrence for transforming the measurable effort from the first months of our DAO in capital for our members.
Motivation
Before delving into the motivation and execution of this proposal, it comes with great importance for the reader to treat the following structure as a one-time occurrence of granting funds. Rather than using this as a whitepaper, we are fully aware that SFC at its core is based on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) when granting funds to a project, and it will continue to be treated as such for any future proposals. In the following pages, we describe a particular mechanism that can retrospectively reward our members, while ensuring the natural growth and expansion of contributions in our DAO.
This proposal is based on the values that we as contributors pledge for today:
Contributors are the heart of our community, and their work is its engine.
Throughout the last months we have seen how small groups of individuals can put their minds together and create ripple effects over thousands, alongside products that are built with purpose, and can be scaled. Tackling different responsibilities, in everyone’s quest of creating their individual profile within Stakeborg DAO, contributors have delivered on multiple areas, and reached audiences from various backgrounds and fields of interest. In numbers and facts, our involvement translated to:
Ambassadors: the eight selected ambassadors that took on the challenge of publicly representing StakeborgDAO brought great value to the DAO through points that are highlighted below:
- organized over 30 IRLMs and this can be seen as the biggest achievement during the preliminary mandate. The IRLMs served as the perfect environment for community members to meet and get to know each other, eventually bonding and strengthening their relations, translating all into better collaborations and involvement;
- these strong connections transcended online interaction into IRL partnerships, e.g. Capital - via Robert, Zoomserie - via Alex, Monteoru - via Jenny, ZaZa Restro Pub ™ - via 1Johnny;
- they were among the most active contributors on both Discord and Twitter, always there to engage and initiate meaningful conversations regarding StakeborgDAO and the DAO space in general;
- had representatives at local and international events, highlighting StakeborgDAO with every occasion (e.g. Brand Minds, TST, ETH Barcelona);
- have also been active on Twitter, expanding the reach of StakeborgDAOs articles and posts, but also by creating original web3/ crypto related threads;
- another great achievement was @1johnny’s and Pavel Andrei’s "Blockchain, NFTs & DAOs” presentation delivered to over 40 students of Faculty of Electronics Telecommunications and Information Technology, part of University of Politehnica Timisoara;
- also took StakeborgDAO at VeeCon 2022 and got to meet GaryVee on multiple occasions. Pretty sure Gary heard about StakeborgDAo on a couple of occasions;
- were involved in many community initiated projects and were among the most active contributors.
Moderators:
- ensured the rules and values of our community are being followed and our community safe.
- moderated thousands of discussions between community members on Discord;
- responded to commonly asked questions with answers that adhere to community’s standards;
- coordinated programs that incented community participation (e.g. rewards and recognition);
- managed and merged threads to ensure that the community is easy to navigate;
- managed contributors’ roles;
- identified and reported on community sentiment;
- jumped on 1:1 calls with members to get to know them and help them get to know our DAO;
- got to know a high number of community members, their interests and skills, which is valuable in identifying skill-sets for projects;
- actively promoted and participated in community’s projects and initiatives;
- created and rolled out internal campaigns, e.g. Road to Level 7;
- created and rolled out external campaigns on Twitter, e.g. #BTCPizzaDay, #WhereMyDAOgoes;
- cross-referenced and promoted community’s content on other platforms than Discord (Stakeborg and Stakeborg DAO Twitter, YouTube, Instagram content);
- used bots to facilitate different activities;
- gave proper feedback and maintained a healthy growth oriented environment;
- attempted to keep the community entertained using relatively (un)funny dad jokes.
BringWeb3:
- multiple development tools released to improve one’s interaction with our space, such as:
- explorer.stakeborgdao.xyz - a tool intensely used to estimate transaction fees;
- coingecko price feed discord bot - hosted by andreiv.eth;
- roles bot - used to identify the members of our DAO that are holders, stakers, diamond hands. This option opened up new opportunities for dedicated channels and communications for a relevant group of members that are involved in governance. It’s hosted by andreiv.eth at a personal cost of 7$ a month;
- Discord Stage POAP bot - keeps track of the participants and the time they spent at a certain event;
- stakeborgdao.xyz website improvements and management
- graphic designs and building a visual identity for Stakeborg DAO
- our own community’s NFT collection;
The DAO Insider (TDI) is an entry point into the world of contributors for anyone interested to participate, with no particular skills necessary. It is a long-term project that aims to build a sustainable and effective media product.
- created a StakeborgDAO history book;
- 180+ daily, weekly and monthly reviews on https://stakeborgdao.xyz/ , where anyone can follow the entire DAO activity in a short format with a twist of familiarity;
- created the foundation for future projects, which are currently in the works (Newsletter team, more to come);
- built a team of editors, who handle articles, roles on the community platform, and ensure that everyone is properly guided to post their article as efficiently as possible;
- Twitter gang makes sure the TDI Twitter runs the team’s products.
- Quiz Masters take care of engaging the community, twice a week, in a relaxing manner with fun and educational questions created by the team (25+ quizzes so far);
- implemented weekly calls to organize the projects and build various structures;
- many hours were further spent in calls about DAOs, vision, blockchain, thus creating a nurturing space for curiosity and learning. These interactions are best reflected in TDI’s strong products, but, most importantly, in the close bond and the high level of trust between project members.
Community Talks: started as an idea to build a virtual safe space where community members can interact, discuss current issues, share and generate new ideas, as well as meet each other beyond the Discord avatars.
At the end of the season, six months after it launched, here are some of the highlights:
- First episode on 16th of january;
- 43 unique guests (some of them attended more than once);
- 21 editions of community talks;
- ATH of participants: 118;
- More than 1000 attendees in 21 editions;
- introduced POAPs for the first time in our community;
- a total of 175 POAPs were minted;
- 2 youtube channels with a total of: 190 followers and 1700 views;
- started CT Twitter account and gained 45 followers in one month of activity;
- moved the activity from Discord to Twitter Spaces;
- created a safe environment for contributors to interact, aggregate around ideas, and start working together. Onboarding is one such projects that was born from the CT vibe and is still ongoing;
- managed to shine a spotlight and bring awareness towards all community initiatives.
Onboarding is a community project, which aims to create processes, tools and structures that provide a lean path for members on their journey to becoming contributors.
- first project to create a structured proposal and go through the feedback process on Agora;
- guided and initiated the community in an important pillar of DAO governance, thus paving the way for other project proposals that followed;
- passed two proposals with community’s feedback and support;
- identified, fine-tuned and formulated our community’s mission and values, now emulated through the onboarding process;
- created and implemented a friendlier onboarding mechanism for new members, based on a re-designed Discord channel structure;
- implemented weekly sync meetings for the team to brainstorm, share ideas and organize on tasks;
- 1:1 onboarding calls with new joiners.
DAOthon: started off from a community initiative that organized the first Daothon in Cluj (RO) in March 2022 and continued building on the success and feedback received from the first participants.
- developed a new team that, for 8 weeks, focused on turning what happened in Cluj into one of the potentially scalable products of the Stakeborg DAO community;
- brainstormed and defined the next iterations of the DAOthon - from the event structure, visual identity, and marketing strategy to the business model and how to fund the individual events;
- worked in multiple teams, completed more than 50 specific tasks, and had more than 20 meetings tallying up to over 250 hours of continuous involvement for it.
On top of the brief summary made above, contributors have dedicated an immense amount of time in establishing the world of Stakeborg DAO to what it is today. Thousands of hours of calls, discussions on all our platforms, proposals, and feedback have been put into ensuring we build a home for everyone’s values and skills, and where everyone will eventually aid the products delivered as a DAO.
Work is appreciated, measured in complexity, and rewarded accordingly.
Every task, be it big or small, is adding to the total of the results achieved by our DAO. This is and will not go unnoticed. Beyond appreciating the contributor’s commitment, we understand that not every piece of work is the same, and every request comes with its complexity that needs to be estimated. Finally, the complexity should then be translated into rewards, supporting our members for being part of our space.
Our members are here to build and bring value long term.
If we were to create a parallel between the timeframe in which we have delivered all of the above with the current status of web3, one could identify that even in our DAO, we are still early. Seeing our DAO in its initial days enhances the perspective of what we can all do as a group, and what long term commitments from our members can bring in products and results. The impact of everyone’s dedication to our space will continue to scale, which requires us to establish a mechanism of ensuring that we fairly value every task completed towards an initiative’s goal.
Execution
Separating the timeframe of involvement
Within the last weeks, there have been multiple announcements in our community in regards to rewarding the contributors that have participated in projects of the DAO since its establishment. The last months have been separated into two sections, before 1st of April, and between 1st of April and 1st of July.
Collating the contributors from each period of time.
The number of contributors in each of the projects has been transparently collated by the project managers of each team. The members from each project have been contacted to provide feedback / confirm whether they should be considered for the two timeframes, and respective alterations have been made to our initial lists before putting this proposal forward. While this document is written by a compact group of individuals, it has been thoroughly based on the cohort of individuals it’s affecting and their input. We strongly believe in providing transparency, and we were pleasantly impressed by the level of maturity, vision for the greater good, and corresponding transparency back that we have received as a response.
As such, the following distribution of participants per project has been established:
The numbers above represent positions that one could have in each project. A percentage of the contributors have had multiple positions in different teams, however the rewarding mechanism we propose is based on the cumulated roles of each individual, rather than considering one’s efforts in multiple projects as a single reward.
Rewarding mechanism
To ensure a fair distribution of rewards across contributors and projects, we propose that 50% of the requested funds be allocated directly from SFC season 0, via Coordinape, and the other 50% through vesting over four SFC seasons.
By considering the contribution of 50 members over a timeframe of nine months, and through understanding the impact of rewarding individuals that have delivered projects with the appropriate incentives, our team proposes the sum of 100.000 STANDARD from SFC to be allocated to all members that have had a position per the aforementioned table, as follows:
- 50.000 STANDARD allocated to contributors with a longer vesting period of four SFC seasons (SFC season 1 - 4; 12,500 STANDARD tokens per season, i.e. 14% impact on SFC’s quarterly budget);
- 50.000 STANDARD from SFC season 0, allocated to contributors based on four Coordinape rounds.
The distribution of the funds translates to the below structure:
- 50.000 STANDARD allocated to contributors with a longer vesting period of four SFC seasons (SFC season 1 - 4; 12,500 STANDARD tokens per season, i.e. 14% impact on SFC’s quarterly budget).
Due to the different sizes of each project’s team, we strived to find a formula that rewards effort rather than disadvantages smaller teams (e.g. Community Talks). We calculated the average no. of members per project for each of the two time frames, which resulted in an average of 9,6 members/ project until April 1, and 9,4 for April 1 - July 1. We then applied a +/- 5% coefficient for each person below or, respectively, above the average in each project. This resulted in a different reward / position for each project, i.e. each project rewards their members with a different number of tokens. The total reward for a contributor is determined by the number of positions and the projects that they were part of.
See below and the table for more details.
- 50.000 STANDARD from SFC season 0, allocated, without vesting, to contributors based on four Coordinape rounds;
In the spirit of web3 and our DAO, we wanted the rewards to be allocated as meritocratic as possible, through Coordinape, according to each contributor’s effort, participation and added value. After many discussions and feedback rounds, we propose the following distribution:
Round 1: distribution of 25.000 STANDARD among all DOERS, in two Coordinape stages based on the two time frames.
- Stage 1.1. before April 1 (12.500 STANDARD among 31 DOERS) and
-
Stage 1.2. April 1 - July 1 (12.500 STANDARD among 45 DOERS).
Round 2: distribution of 25.000 STANDARD among all projects, in two Coordinape stages, based on the two time frames.
- Stage 2.1. before April 1 (12.500 STANDARD among 5 projects) and
- Stage 2.2. April 1 - July 1 (12.500 STANDARD among 7 projects).
The distributions of tokens to contributors will happen within each project, between the respective members. The amount that a project receives is a result of the number of members multiplied by the reward / position in each of the two time frames.
The total amount of tokens for each contributor, that resulted after these four Coordinape rounds, will be consolidated in a table (together with each contributor’s wallet address) that will be shared with the SFC. The distribution should happen, as mentioned, from SFC season 0, without vesting, directly to each contributor’s wallet.
Unlocking of the funds:
The complexity of deciding on a final strategy to bring forward has been debated in numerous meetings, looking at multiple methods of unlocking the funds, over different periods of time, and with various algorithms behind them. Feedback has been also requested from our contributors outside of this proposal’s team background, specifically from each team included, which has surfaced a new series of possible allocation and unlocking systems. After careful consideration, we are confident the above system is the most robust and meritocratic, as it has a low impact on SFC’s quarterly budget, i.e 14%, while at the same time allows us to evaluate and reward work more accurately, as well as conclude rewarding about nine months of work within one year.
The majority of the funds are unlocked from SFC-0. This decision is centred around the current state of the projects that are ongoing, and their necessity for funding in the following months. Furthermore, the granting of funds from SFC for any future initiatives is performed only after meeting a set of KPIs that have been previously agreed. Taking the above into account, for a mechanism such as the one described here, while keeping the bigger picture in mind, season 0 is the most optimal for requesting a larger sum from SFC retrospectively, conscious that it comes with minimal risk over any other project currently ongoing.
We have considered that the sum proposed is over the maximum request of funds a project can make in a quarter from SFC. Moreover, we aim for this rewarding mechanism to not block any current or future initiatives from receiving the necessary funds to continue their work.
As such, we propose that the rewards for each individual to be vested over a longer period of time, namely the first five SFC quarters, through the following structure:
The funds will be rewarded to each individual, for their involvement in the timeframe given. Whether the funds will then be transferred into a project’s multisig, locked, staked, or have any action performed over them stays at the latitude of the contributor. The sole goal of this proposal is to reward contributors retroactively, rather than focus on their future involvements and strategies.
We seek community’s feedback on Agora for the next 72h, after which we’ll move the proposal to Snapshot for the final vote.
In case of a positive vote, this team will gather and compile further details, such as wallet addresses, and set up the Coordinape rounds. In the occurrence that a contributor does not respond and provide the necessary details in the set time window, their tokens will be redistributed equally to the rest of the contributors, thus continuing to reward active involvement.
Resources:
We require the sum of 100.000 STANDARD from SFC, unlocked and allocated following the execution plan presented.
Team background:
Erwin
RaluW.eth
RazvanLaca
Flepsman
Gsping.eth
jenny
MAC
Mtk
ostanescu.eth
vru
This proposal has been shared, discussed with and is supported by our community’s contributors.
