Thanks all for the discussion, itâs been fun reading through and hearing everyoneâs perspectives! Iâve 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:
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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
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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 ânetwork statesâ 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 havenât promoted funding this round as we donât 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.
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Sponsorship: Iâm not convinced the funds are necessarily comparable to sponsorship. I see this as a new market for Gitcoin that is aligned with our purpose. Weâve 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.
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COI: I think the broader participants coming to Zuzalu from Gitcoin wonât necessarily gain anything by voting yes on this. I have always planned on abstaining from this vote.
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
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 peopleâs 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 communityâs 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 - Iâd 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 doesnât make sense for Gitcoin to fund.
- Supporting 4 peopleâs comp vs less or more. Weâre keeping the team extremely lean for Zuzalu and weâd be supporting some of the core team along with VitaDAO and two other independents. Weâd 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 donât 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 Iâve 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, weâre 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 âconferenceâ that we are co-hosting and was previously going to be an Optimism only event. The funds themselves shouldnât 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 GCPâs unless weâre 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 Iâm positioning this as an even-over question)
If the question is if weâre 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. Itâs 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
Iâm 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 teamâs time to build relevant applications and hopefully we can have more people build open source tools with the incentive of this round.
âFancyâ 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. Itâs 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, Iâm 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 teamâs 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 doesnât always = higher quality. I think for the quality of this opportunity itâs a reasonable cost.
@Kris response to your questions and thoughts below
Iâve answered more about funding above. I wonât go through disclosing all other contributions in public.
How many projects do you expect to run on this QF round? The reason Iâm 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 Gitcoinâs 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 weâre 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 doesnât 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 canât even think of doing any more conferences for the next few months⌠Itâs time to buidl
I couldnt agree more with you and thatâs 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 âtaken awayâ is me and itâs a core reason Iâm asking for additional funding to support 3 more part-time contributors that are not already supported by Gitcoin.
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).