[Proposal] - DAO Infra Workstream

šŸ§™ šŸ§™ā€ā™€ļø Ideas and Open Discussion
1

Workstream Name: DAO Infra

DAO Infra Purpose:

  • Maintain key infrastructural mechanisms for Gitcoin (that either donā€™t easily fall within the current workstream structure or can be done more effectively/efficiently within a single, focused workstream)

Responsibilities

  • Governance (in coordination with the CoS at the Foundation)
    • Executing the S19/S20 Governance Roadmap and Timeline
    • Supporting Passport and Allo in governance-related activities (if/as needed)
    • Overseeing general governance functions including
      • Snapshot and Tally management
      • Discourse management and enforcement of code of conduct
      • Acting as an ambassador for Gitcoin on the forums
  • GCP management, including:
    • Tracking of projects
    • Creating accountability measures
    • Working with WSs to create guidelines around which projects get approved
    • Working with WSs to create objective decision-making criteria
  • Stakeholder comms, including:
    • Steward engagement
    • Steward Council engagement
    • Internal comms (DAO Digest, Gitcoin Pulse, and other context-building initiatives excluding the Community Calls that are being run by PGF)
    • Ecosystem (aka Citizen) comms (mostly through Gitcoin Citizen Twitter)
    • Will closely align with the Stakeholder Comms strategy doc

Optional initiatives (now or in the future)

  • Policy drafting (recommending DAO-wide and team-based policies)
    • Ex: Travel policies, parental leave, etc.
  • Community management, including:
    • Directing newcomersā€“particularly in Discordā€“to the appropriate place within the Gitcoin ecosystem to get involved
    • Keeping the community.gitcoin.co portal updated and relevant
  • Facilitation of CSDO and team-based peer reviews
  • Supporting onboarding/offboarding process, including:
    • Managing job posting/monitoring
    • Conducting preliminary interviews
    • DAO onboarding (tooling, meeting familiarization, culturalization, etc.)
    • Offboarding (exit interviews, managing severance issues, etc.)
  • Conflict management, including mediation
  • Discord management
  • Coordinating security initiatives (already started by Umar, Mathilda, Ben)
  • Multisig and financial management support, including:
    • Acting as a signer on WS multisigs as needed
    • Overseeing payments for WS contributors
    • Bookkeeping for the DAO
  • Project Management support, including:
    • CSDO-level PMā€™ing
    • Deeper integration within WSs

How this workstream differs from DAO Ops (spun down in early 2023):

  • Support function will not exist within this workstream
  • Will not drive anything related to CSDO other than stewarding proposals first put forward by CSDO members & participating as a workstream
    • Driving of CSDO will live with the Foundation and CoS role
  • The primary intention of this workstream is to remain thin, with 1 PT Workstream Lead and a few part-time contributors to assist in executing tasks
  • Scope of the WS will only increase based on performance of existing tasks and the identified needs of the DAO
  • Litmus test for taking on tasks is:
    • a) Is someone doing this and, if not, is this something that the entire DAO benefits from?
    • b) Can this service be more efficiently/effectively performed as a centralized function for the DAO as a whole vs. within an individual Workstream?

Why not have this be a GCP?

  • To be successful in this role, it is important that contributors of this workstream maintain a certain level of context at the DAO to properly execute on stakeholder comms
    • Being a workstream allows for the Workstream Lead to be invited to key meetings & participate in key decisions
    • There is also a matter of optics - GCP tend to be more external, workstreams more internal
  • This is an ongoing initiative vs. one-off with the intention of having a clear end point

The Team & Qualifications

  • Workstream Lead: @CoachJonathan @ 20hrs/wk
    • Almost 2 years at Gitcoin, +1 years as a Workstream Lead
    • 5+ years of project management experience
    • Proven track record of operationalizing MMM as one of the most cost-effective workstreams at the DAO
    • Additional specific role: Governance coordinator
  • Additional Contributors:
    • TBD Contributor @ 20hrs/wk (General execution)
      • Help with stakeholder comms engagement
      • Consult on governance roadmapping (TBC)
    • @gaoa97 @ 10hrs/bi-weekly (DAO Digest)
      • Current DAO Digest writer
      • Strong track record of delivering quality work, on time

Budget

For this workstream, I am requesting a 3-month budget of $42,000 + 33% reserves @ $13,860 = $55,860 starting Nov 1 (S20). These funds will pay for:

  • Wages for WS Lead + 2 contributors
  • Additional (small bucket) of funds (less than $2k) for potential unforeseen expenses such as:
    • Tooling (Governance, project management tracking, etc.)
    • Subscriptions (Discord bots, etc.)
  • Reserves will only be used in the case of GTC price slippage
    • In the case DAO Infra is spun down after its first season, all the reserve funds will be returned to the DAO treasury and will not be used to maintain further work at the workstream

Optional:

  • Increase budget by $X to hire a CISO consultant to deliver an information security plan for the DAO Infra WS to execute on (with support from others at the DAO)

Multisig signers will be @CoachJonathan (WS Lead) and @deltajuliet (Chief of Staff). Open to suggestions for additional signer(s).

Timelines

  • Work on governance has already begun
    • Governance post outlining details to be posted to the forum ASAP
  • S19 (current season) - Basic setup (already underway)
  • S20 - Full governance and stakeholder comms implementation
  • S21 - Testing, evaluating, pivoting, new bolder experiments

Measuring Success

Note: These metrics are currently being sourced and can be added to the proposal as soon as benchmarks are established.

Key metrics to be tracked:

  • Overall Steward engagement
    • Engagement rates on forum
    • Steward scores on delegate.gitcoin.co
    • Number and amount of tokens delegated
    • Number of new Stewards onboarded
  • Number of DAO2DAO governance initiatives initiated (likely only in S21)
4 Likes
2

What is the skill set needed for this role?

3

This role is not currently scoped, so it is hard to say. This is simply a request for extra budget, anticipating that there will be quite a bit of work to get our governance roadmap in place.

4

I do see some potential in this workstream, and I do think the work is important, it also makes me wonder.

Some of the responsibilities could be incorporated into existing roles within the DAO. Not a big fan of the layer of padding it adds between workstreams and the DAO itself.
We are all accountable to the DAO, as stewards and contributors.

I donā€™t think we need complex strategies to attract stewards to Gitcoin. Have we asked anyone?
GCP management - I do think stewards (voters) should vet the projects and be accountable.

The CSDO multisig: Link
Who owns the funds and what are they for? Maybe CSDO can choose to fund this initiative if they see fit. As I see most these responsibilities are at CSDO level.

3 Likes
5

Just to create some clarity around these:

These are initiatives/functions that the DAO could consider amalgamating within 1 workstream (DAO Infra) instead of having each workstream manage it independently. Given the proposed budget, these are far out of scope for this upcoming season and are for consideration in future seasons (if at all).

Hopefully this helps clarify things @jonas .

3 Likes
6

Thanks for outlining this proposal @CoachJonathan While I generally agree that execution on the operational responsibilities is necessary, there are two parts to Governance: Operations and Strategy

Operations
Except the roadmap execution, all other responsibilities highlighted here are Governance operations and they are best run by an ops in my experience.

Strategy
The roadmap and timeline is where the DAO should have ownership distributed between the stewards as opposed to a top-down implementation. While the top-down implementation may seem efficient in the short term, it does not help the agenda of decentralisation nor does it incentivize stewards to actively contribute towards building the DAO. This results ultimately in the foundation having to employ people in order to drive strategies as opposed to an empowered community which constantly drives value back to the DAO.

While 80% of the responsibilities outlined are about governance operations, almost all of the success metrics measure engagement on the governance strategy. Past teams in gitcoinDAO and other DAOs have unsuccessfully tried to engage delegates by posting proposals but failing to recognise that governance is work which requires the person to understand context and sense make based on ongoing conversation flow. In order to engage delegates the best strategy as shown by Optimism, MakerDAO, AAVE etc is compensating delegates for their work.

7 Likes
7

Thanks for your feedback! I support this initiative, in alignment with the sensemaking proposal outlined in my Citizens Round application.

8

Hey Coach J, Iā€™m supportive. It sounds like a beefed up version of the ā€˜thin governanceā€™ that Shawn was running earlier in the year by adding GCP management, stakeholder comms, and increasing the scope of governance.

I wonder if @owocki could be helpful in thinking through Gov strategy given his history?

1 Like
9

I appreciate everyoneā€™s comments on this!

I wanted to close the loop here - after speaking to (many) contributors at Gitcoin, I want to withdraw this proposal. It looks like some of these functions will be propped up by the Gitcoin Foundation.

In terms of some of the comments that @jengajojo made - I think these are amazing points! I know Gitcoin is committed to progressive decentralization so many of these ideas are in line with plans that will be taking place over the next several quarters.

7 Likes