[GCP-005] PASSED Gitcoin Supporting Zuzalu, a first of its kind pop-up city

[kyle]

I know Janine has been off of work last week, and I thought i might try to summarize where we are.

It sounds like there a couple of tactical requests open:
1 - Can she breakout the 80k funding request into a bit more detail and also add thoughts on what will actually be accomplished while supporting Zuzalu
2 - Can we split this into more options (fund $80k, fund the $100k round, fund both, etc.)

The next bit of feedback from folks is around “why this” or “why now.” Perhaps I can summarize what I am seeing here too and offer a light perspective as someone who has been plugged into some of the work underway.

1. "Why this" - There are questions around why “sponsor” this event, what makes it “most important things” aligned, and what precedent are we setting?

   1. [New Market] Zuzalu has a Public Goods week where lots of Public Goods focused participants will be hacking on new tech, and exploring new and novel ways to fund public goods. Prior to Janine getting involved, Gitcoin was not invited or introduced to the conversation. It was mostly going to be OP leading those convos (which is a great brand to have at the helm too!). Janine exposed Allo to the group and has encouraged they use Allo to fund what matter to the Zuzalu community. It will be the first time we run a QF round for a local pop up city/group (yes we have done QF rounds for the City of Oakland and others, but not one for “network states”, which is a killer long term use case to try out)
   2. [Supporting what matters to US] The round we would support and run is core to our ethos of wanting to support public goods. I mentioned this before, but I am certainly keen to support novel uses of the matching pool fund to ensure the soul of Gitcoin is thriving. While Vitalik has donated millions to our cause, I don’t see this about “repaying” him so much of us using those funds to showcase whats possible with Allo and an aligned community. This is the first we have explored doing this and I would love to see how it goes and if we should do more of this.
   3. [Sponsoring] We have historically said we wont sponsor events, which I have been a stickler of myself. But we have explored funding in the past that was for novel software development, moonshot ideas and things that were adjacent, but valuable to our cause. The $80k for 3 months of work for a handful of people with the outcome of seeding Gitcoin, encouraging Allo adoption and testing QF outcomes for local communities seems high upside.

2. “Why Now” - There are questions around this event being a distraction, not something timing wise we should focus on, etc.

   1. [Distraction] The public goods week, and the proposed round would run during the April rounds, if I am not mistaken, timing seems highly aligned as we would slot it in as a featured round.
   2. [Bear market] Given the bear market, the spend of the DAO, etc. should we fund this now or continue to have the hatches battened down? While we are reducing the number of workstreams, we are also trying to introduce funding for things that are more fun and bring good will to the communities and people who have supported us. I believe we should take on more adjacent, ahead of the protocol launch, to continue to showcase the interest Gitcoin has in being a dominant player in the space. Gitcoin had very little involvement in curating or participating in the core Eth Denver event (outside of our own great event). Had there had been a GCP to support people who wanted to grow Gitcoin’s presence at EthDenver, I would have (likely) supported that as well. Now is the time to get the marketing drum out and showcase who we are, and what we stand for, ahead of the protocol launch!

I look forward to Janine plugging back in and adding her comments on a couple of the open threads.

[bobjiang]

Thank @kyle for your summary!

I got the thoughts and causes behind this proposal, so I would vote “for” the proposal because:

1. this is public goods experiment
2. we could try Allo protocol in this experiment, maybe Passport protocol as well

anyway, we could adjust OKRs to align with the changes, and it is worth to have a try.

[Viriya]

Appreciate you giving us some more perspective here @kyle

I like the idea of splitting the vote into more options. I think that will give stewards some flexibility on choosing what to fund as this proposal is a biggie.

[J9leger]

Thanks all for the discussion, it’s been fun reading through and hearing everyone’s perspectives! I’ve both summarized my response, included the change I will make in what I post for everyone to vote on (I will put this and included details for each of your thoughtful answers below:

Summary:

• Clarifying the ~$80K budget:

  • $20K to Gitcoin and Supermodular for grants round and bounties
  • ~$60K for 4 people (1 FT (me) and 3 PT - not current Gitcoin contributors to avoid taking anyones attention beside my own away from running the round)
  • Listed areas of focus and outcomes at a high level

• The round: $100K from Gitcoin matching pool would go to Zuzalu Public Goods aka open source tools and projects that help push the idea of CoordiNations and “network states” forward and show cases our software. This does not include IRL events at Zuzalu. In addition, to the question of additional funds from different sources, we haven’t promoted funding this round as we don’t want to detract from partners funding other rounds but we could source the $100K funds from multiple sources if we as Gitcoin do not want to fund it all ourselves however I would like us to commit to a $100K round.

• Sponsorship: I’m not convinced the funds are necessarily comparable to sponsorship. I see this as a new market for Gitcoin that is aligned with our purpose. We’ve discussed at length the idea of Gitcoin supporting local communities and helping them fund their shared needs and this feels like an investment in creating a real use case for other communities to model.

• COI: I think the broader participants coming to Zuzalu from Gitcoin won’t necessarily gain anything by voting yes on this. I have always planned on abstaining from this vote.

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Changes to the options for vote:

1 - Vote yes to completing funding the initiative with the requested resources and matching pool funds:

• $100k in Matching Pool funds
• $82K in remuneration for the team working to deliver Zuzalu

2 - Vote yes to funding the initiative, but not offering the matching pool funds for the event.

• $82K in remuneration for the working team and events at Zuzalu

3 - Vote yes to funding the matching pool, but not offering remuneration for the team work:

• $100k in Matching Pool funds

4 - Vote yes on funding the Matching Pool and partially supporting team work ($50K)

• $100k in Matching Pool funds
• $50k in remuneration for the team working to deliver Zuzalu

5 - Vote No on financially supporting the event in any capacity.

6 - abstain

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Detailed responses:

@Yalor - a match from Metacartel is a generous offer! This could align well to some of the thinking I share in response to @krrisis questions.

Clarity on budget for $82K (in response to @jengajojo, @CoachJonathan, @kyle and @krrisis ):

• Expenses: $20K to Gitcoin and Super Modular for running the round and hackathon bounties
• Compensation: $62K for 4 people’s comp (1 FT (me), 3 PT). Zuzalu wants to be a community project and not an event that gets sponsored whereby there is a central org that has a P&L and receives sponsorship to cover expenses and sponsorship gets an org their logo added to all things PR related. Gitcoin will be one of few making this step to help compensate volunteers who are dedicated their time. Given Allo protocol could be the mode to collect and allocate funds to future Zuzalu villages, supporting this experiment feels aligned not only to supporting the broader Ethereum community in BEING in community and buidling in person together. All while also supporting a potential large user of Allo protocol in the future.

The three additional PT contributors are supporting with 3 months of time dedicated to:

• Operational support and SOPs that Gitcoin and Zuzalu can partner on around open sourcing all processes and tools used to easily build similar social infrastructure and use tools like Allo protocol to fund their shared needs
• Hackathon and Grants round support and understanding the Zuzalu community’s shared needs to help shape the requirements for the grants round and projects to support / encourage and identify people to build
• Grants round results to showcase to local communities how they can fund their shared needs and the value of using Allo protocol to do so
• Public Goods week support and write up of outcomes and results to share as content
• Involvement and facilitation during the final event around future activations of Zuzalu villages and how to use allo protocol to help allocate funds for future communities

With regards to compensation, I have added an option to vote on a lower compensation request of $50K - I’d likely forego my own compensation and still have funds for the Hackathon and to support other PT contributors.

Other Orgs/DAOs pledging financial support: the EF and 0xparc have given significant time from devs to build tech for the project thus far, VitaDAO has invested funds to cover longevity experiments and covered compensation for 3 of the Zuzalu Longevity team members. A number of orgs have given time and finances to support the weekly conferences.

@CoachJonathan responding to your questions and thoughts below:

• Other experiences refers events that will be related to the hackathon, the Zuzalu Public Goods QF round and to fund people helping run Zuzalu. This will not be funds that go to dinners or parties as that doesn’t make sense for Gitcoin to fund.
• Supporting 4 people’s comp vs less or more. We’re keeping the team extremely lean for Zuzalu and we’d be supporting some of the core team along with VitaDAO and two other independents. We’d be covering 1/4 of the core team with these funds, which feels both like an investment in the success of Zuzalu but also a recognition that this is a community based initiative with other orgs or people to support.

If we don’t take this opportunity, will someone else get it?

• I took this opportunity with a verbal commitment from Gitcoin to support my efforts at the very least (if the DAO votes no on supporting - I plan to continue supporting Zuzalu and would still extend my goodwill to Gitcoin and the amount I’ve worked to involve Gitcoin in this effort from including Gitcoin team members who wanted to join and in having a much broader Public Goods week, when it was going to be an Optimism only event). Initially we had a very small presence and just with my involvement alone, Gitcoin has become a core DAO participating.

conflict of interest

Interesting question, I hope the Gitcoin team benefits from Zuzalu as this should become a market for us in the future whereby communities that pop up, Zuzalu or others, should use Allo protocol both to fund the infrastructure and community shared needs. By running a grants round for Zuzalu and helping support with compensating some of the team, we’re creating a partnership that ideally should be mutually beneficial. To clarify we also only have 4 (maybe 5) full-time Gitcoin residents and the rest of the Gitcoin team are coming during the Public Goods week “conference” that we are co-hosting and was previously going to be an Optimism only event. The funds themselves shouldn’t necessarily benefit any Gitcoiners, unless they submit projects to the Zuzalu Public Goods round.

I personally see this as a sponsorship opportunity

This feels misaligned as I see this as a new market opportunity. In addition this feels misaligned with the idea of GCP’s unless we’re seeing GCPs as sponsorship opportunities. In the spirit of funding projects that have high potential long term value for Gitcoin, this falls squarely in that camp.

@Viriya response to your questions and thoughts below

Are we committed to deepening our engagement with the web3 community OVER finding new playing fields (I know both are important so I’m positioning this as an even-over question)

If the question is if we’re committed to deepening our engagement in Web3, the answer would be yes this is a priority and Zuzalu is a phenomenal opportunity to do this. Potentially one of the best. It’s also exploring new playing fields at the same time.

How much money is a reasonable amount for event spend this year?

I think we may be missing the mark if we see this as just a large event. Yes there are many sub-events and conferences as part of Zuzalu but the larger vision of Zuzalu is a new way of living and being in community surrounded by people with shared interests and pushing new ideas of what it means to build your own city and experience the value of proximity.

matching pool funds to be spent on meaningful projects vs. parties

I’m not sure where the ideas of parties came in to the QF round for Zuzalu. Maybe there are open source projects related to a community building idea but it would have to be open source. Ideally the round is focused on building tooling that makes living in an environment like Zuzalu feasible for many more people at a significantly lower cost and with less time investment upfront than this first experiment. As a start, the EF and 0xparc have volunteered their team’s time to build relevant applications and hopefully we can have more people build open source tools with the incentive of this round.

“Fancy” apps that make living in community and building new projects that push Ethereum and the broader ecosystem forward - yes. Fancy events - ideally no.

Zuzalu is not about building a large scale conference with fancy events. It’s about building a community that has a high concentration of people interested and with deep expertise in the same topics at its core.

I appreciate you asking for what you need and I also appreciate that this opportunity is HUGE for you (and am happy you seized it!). That said, I’m still torn if the DAO should pay for any team members to run this event.

Appreciate your perspective. See above around the reason I think there is value in us supporting the team’s time. This is one of the most values aligned opportunities for Gitcoin and building a partnership seems like a strategic initiative for long term value.

My DMs are constantly flooded with less costly opportunities that will expose us to new markets

Less costly doesn’t always = higher quality. I think for the quality of this opportunity it’s a reasonable cost.

@Kris response to your questions and thoughts below

I’ve answered more about funding above. I won’t go through disclosing all other contributions in public.

How many projects do you expect to run on this QF round? The reason I’m asking is because although we of course massively should encourage any community to decide if they want to run a full round, I think the story is slightly different if this is funded with Gitcoin’s own matching funds or treasury

I hear your point and I think this is a different situation to the Turkey Earthquake round. I agree with Kyle that this is a novel use case and I also think there is a side where we’re supporting a big next step for the Ethereum community (this is broader than Longevity). One that Vitalik happens to be playing a large part in and I think it important for Gitcoin to support if we say that OSS and Eth Infrastructure are two of our core causes. This is also one way for Gitcoin to support as a small gesture of appreciation ALL while showcasing our new protocol. This is not a core round and would be a featured round this April round so it doesn’t impact the vote for core rounds. We intentionally discussed not making a huge effort to fundraise from other projects for this round so as to not outsize or take away from other rounds this coming April round. However, if Gitcoin chooses not to support this round, we will look for support from others.

Would love to understand this better, is one of the outcomes that will be delivered an actual playbook?

Yes. It takes significant effort to build a community and maintain it over a longer period plus receive significant / impactful outcomes. We hope to capture learnings in a playbook. See above for additional initiatives.

If I understand it correctly it would be entirely on gitcoin to run this round and not the zuzalu team, correct? Or how would you see the work be divided?

No, the Zuzalu team (me included) will help run this round.

@griff responses to your thoughts below

I just went to ETHDenver and then ETHporto and can’t even think of doing any more conferences for the next few months… It’s time to buidl

I couldnt agree more with you and that’s a huge reason why Zuzalu is being created, to actually have people in one place for an extended period to buidl. Many universities run on quarter systems that are 10 weeks long, this 8 week long experiment is similar to that length of time and completely changes the quick 1 week long conference mentality.

taking team resources away is a bad opinion from what i can tell

I agree with you and that is why I am the only resource being “taken away” is me and it’s a core reason I’m asking for additional funding to support 3 more part-time contributors that are not already supported by Gitcoin.

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I wanted to be thorough in my responses given my time away, while also provide a summary of why I think this is a really valuable opportunity for Gitcoin to align with early.

This is a great opportunity for us to both partner to support those who are helping bring this new concept to life, showcase our technology for a new market opportunity, while having many participants in the round be our current market (given the core Ethereum community who will be in attendance and aware of Zuzalu).

[shawn16400]

Thanks to everyone for their input and for participating in the dialogue. This proposal has been moved to snapshot for vote!

Please help us by taking the next step and voting on this proposal here:
https://snapshot.org/#/gitcoindao.eth/proposal/0xe0f6373f6c95575ddf273fcf2fc194edf096ff2fc5e4e9f8ef8e1405b51a0653

The vote will close on April 10th.

[krrisis]

Thanks so much Janine for your thoughtful responses!

I’m inclined to vote yes on the funding of the team, and would consider this as a regular GCP that deserves our support.

For the matching pool I’m happy to hear the idea is that it is about more than just this event, but I’m not entirely sure I get what the elegibility criteria for the round are. I read:

@J9leger

Ideally the round is focused on building tooling that makes living in an environment like Zuzalu feasible for many more people at a significantly lower cost and with less time investment upfront than this first experiment. As a start, the EF and 0xparc have volunteered their team’s time to build relevant applications and hopefully we can have more people build open source tools with the incentive of this round.

So the round is not about the Zuzalu event specificallly, nor is it about longevity, but it is about tooling that makes community events more successful? Could you maybe give some examples of what some projects could be this round would fund?

@J9leger

Zuzalu is not about building a large scale conference with fancy events. It’s about building a community that has a high concentration of people interested and with deep expertise in the same topics at its core.

@J9leger

the larger vision of Zuzalu is a new way of living and being in community surrounded by people with shared interests and pushing new ideas of what it means to build your own city and experience the value of proximity.

@J9leger

I couldnt agree more with you and that’s a huge reason why Zuzalu is being created, to actually have people in one place for an extended period to buidl. Many universities run on quarter systems that are 10 weeks long, this 8 week long experiment is similar to that length of time and completely changes the quick 1 week long conference mentality.

@J9leger

I also think there is a side where we’re supporting a big next step for the Ethereum community (this is broader than Longevity)

@J9leger

matching pool would go to Zuzalu Public Goods aka open source tools and projects that help push the idea of CoordiNations and “network states” forward and show cases our software.

I’m personally a huge fan of having more in-person events and co-living, for a longer period of time, so a huge fan of the round in and by itself (if I’m reading this definition correctly). So for me the question remains here, could other initiatives also benefit from this round, I’m thinking of events like the Giveth House, Cabin DAO, DAO Camp, Regens Unite, Chinwags, Metafest, Crypto Commons Hub, … IF they also showcase our software? (would be good to know how you define this and how this will happen in Montenegro) … all these initiatives are struggling to find funding and I hope they could also apply for this round. Following the above definition I think they could, as they are in-person events that definitely create forms of ‘network states’. So I hope we can define/open this up a bit more.

So tl;dr for me it’s for now a yes on the 80K, as a GCP Gitcoin wants to support in resources to promote Allo and an exciting new use case, and it could be a yes on the round if it’s a wider community-on-the-ground initiatives round. If it’s only to support the Zuzalu event this makes less sense to me, as this is just one project, and in this case I would say this could be a project (or a few) in the web3 community & education round.

I will vote yes on the team funding for now but very happy to change my vote once I understand the elegibility criteria for the Zuzalu round a bit better and they are opened up to more initiatives.

Again, super appreciate you doing this, the detailed answers and even offering to do this without any compensation for you personally, it shows how passionate you are about this.

[connor]

I appreciate all the lively and detailed discussion happening in this thread. I am fully in support and voted yes on snapshot

[carlosjmelgar]

Is it possible to volunteer with Gitcoin at Zuzalu? Asking for a friend

[Viriya]

@J9leger appreciate your responses here. I have a MUCH MUCH clearer view of the ROI and the intent of this proposal, so thank you for taking the time to detail that out.

It was really difficult for me as an outsider to understand what Zuzalu entailed and how Gitcoin could benefit but after reading your responses and speaking to people currently at the event, I’m going to vote yes on this proposal.

[birdsoar]

Feeling bolstered by the support above!! As a Gitcoin resident at Zuzalu, I want to amplify some points of clarity Janine made above:

• For what it is (a beautiful co-living experiment), Zuzalu is fairly humble. Lavish dinners or parties are not really a thing.

• Public goods are good! Some of the people here are learning about regen economics & public goods for the first time through us, even just in the Discord. I’m excited for Gitcoin’s presence during the Public Goods week.

• Zuzalu is more than a crypto space. The community includes folks building network states like Prospera and AfroDAO, longevity folks like VitaDAO, and more people building in spaces that require not only support, but quadratic funding and voting mechanisms to make their plans work. This is a prime opportunity for Gitcoiners to connect outside of our usual bubble.

• There is a general feeling of goodwill toward Gitcoin here. Would be amazing us to reciprocate that energy by contributing to a community endeavor that helps us connect with our ecosystem and grow our partnerships in the space.

Additional +1 to many of Kyle’s comments, which you can read above.

[shawn16400]

This snapshot has closed and option 1 (YES fund initiative & matching p) vote has passed with ~49% approval rate.

Full text of the option:
1 - Vote yes to completing funding the initiative with the requested resources and matching pool funds: $100k in Matching Pool funds $82K in remuneration for the team working to deliver Zuzalu

Metrics:
1948 unique votes
~8.29M GTC tokens cast.

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How, you may be asking can a vote pass with only 49% of the votes? This kind of a “chose-one vote” is formally known as a single-member plurality voting (SMP), sometimes called a “first-past-the-post” system. It is an effective system when there are more than two possible options, but there can be only one winner. In cases where there are more than two popular options, it is very common that the winner will not receive more than half the votes, but nonetheless the outcome is still valid when one choice has a plurality of votes.

“But I heard first-past-the-post voting was bad”
SMP is easily manipulatable when there are multiple positions to be won (think a slate of candidates or winners) and if you want tips on how to game that scenario for your local school board or council, hmu, otherwise it works just fine for this kind of case.

[ZER8]

Wow, now this sounds like a proposal that pushes forward the future we should all strive to live in! Kudos for the proposal and for creating the opportunity. Looking back at prior expenses, the full funding asked doesn’t seem like a lot.

Congrats for this extreme coordination effort Happy to see it pass with full funding