[Proposal] Retroactive GTC Allocation to Lead Engineer of Gitcoin Grants V1

đź“ś Proposals
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** This proposal has been edited to reflect the conversation in the comments section ** - 1:23pm MT 12/6/21

  1. Summary

This proposal is to retroactively allocate an appropriate number of GTC tokens to Kevin Seagraves, the lead engineer and product manager for Gitcoin Grants V1. Gitcoin Grants has become core to the Gitcoin platform and a staple in the Ethereum ecosystem having distributed ~$16M to open source projects at the time of GTC creation. I was allocated and claimed ~327.778 GTC for the bounties I paid out while building out Gitcoin Grants, but I did not receive a stakeholder allocation for core contributors as mentioned in the article announcing the creation of GTC or a GMV allocation in the community airdrop for the work of actually building Gitcoin Grants.

  1. Abstract

I am the 7th leading contributor to Gitcoin by lines of code, contributing 47,747 lines for Gitcoin Grants V1. Gitcoin Grants has emerged as one of the leading products in the Gitcoin portfolio and has distrubted $22.76m in funding to open source projects at the time of writing. Gitcoin’s mission is to “Grow Open Source” and I believe my work has contributed significantly to executing on that mission.

  1. Motivation

I LOVE Gitcoin. I was one of the first contributors to Gitcoin having co-authored the original Bounties smart contracts with Kevin Owocki, reviewing Kevin’s never-released whitepaper, and reviewing the logo design and color palette back in 2017. I came back to Gitcoin and built an industry-leading product with Gitcoin Grants. I wrote the requirement for the beloved Bot Learning To Love meme. I would LOVE to have a stake and continue to contribute to the Gitcoin Community and DAO.

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Heart Bot

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The Gitcoin team at DevCon 4 in Prague. I’m in the Gitcoin Tree shirt, bottom left.

  1. Specification

This proposal can be fulfilled via a transaction from the GitcoinDAO treasury or other appropriate store of funds to captnseagraves.eth based on the calculation below.

GMV Allocation - Calculate a GMV allocation based on the funds I was paid to build Gitcoin Grants. The project was originally a bounty, but was so large in scope I was paid as a contract and not on the platform. Thus it was not calculated as part of the airdrop and I did not recieve tokens for this work done. Based on my tax returns, which I am happy to provide to select individuals if needed, I was paid a total of $29430 for my work on Gitcoin Grants. Based on the following equation and math:

Formula: GMV per user / GMV Total * GMV Allocation Percent

29430 / 22,000,000 * 10,800,000 = 14447.4545455

I feel retroactive allocation of 14447.4545455 GTC would be appropriate.

  1. Benefits

The Gitcoin ecosystem can uphold and ensure the integrity of its mission to “Grow Open Source” and appropriately reward one of its oldest and most prolific contributors. It can set a positive precedent to reward individuals who have added significant value to the ecosystem in the past and who were passed by earlier this year in the GTC creation event.

The ecosystem will empower one of its biggest supporters to continue contributing in meaningful ways.

  1. Drawbacks

These funds may come from the DAO Treasury rather than from the original token airdrop allocation.

  1. Vote

This proposal consists of two votes (I would provide snapshot votes, but do not currently have enough GTC to submit a snapshot proposal):

  • The first is to approve the retroactive allocation of GTC to Kevin Seagraves the lead engineer of Gitcon Grants V1:
Approve retroactive allocation of 14447.4545455 GTC to Kevin Seagraves
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

Appreciation

Beyond all this token business, I am so grateful to the Gitcoin team for their friendship and everything they have enabled me to do in my career. Thanks @owocki @vivekmsignh @ceresstation @Pixelant @octavioamu @thelostone-mc @frankchen07 @austingriffith, and everyone else in the gitcoin fam, for everything. Much Love :robot: :heart:

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Do we have any idea how you were missed in the token allocation and if there are other core contributors in a similar circumstance?

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@seanmac

  • Stakeholder allocation
    I dont know how stakeholder allocations were assigned; if it was only individuals and entities on the cap table or if there were more slots available. I was not granted a position on the cap table in my time as a contributor.

  • GMV allocation
    The GMV allocation was calculated by participation in and value transferred on the platform. I built the Gitcoin Grants V1 but didn’t receive compensation on the Gitcoin platform and wasn’t a hyper-user afterward so only received a small GMV allocation.

  • Other Contributors
    I’m not aware of the status of other core contributors and their allocations. But it might be worth looking at the Gitcoin Web repo contributors page to find other significant contributors and check in on their allocation status.

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Hi everyone,
Hi Kevin,

I dont feel like it’s my place to comment on this proposal (thats the stewards job) other than to provide context + answer questions.

Three pieces of context I feel that it’d be appropriate to share.

  1. Kevin Seagraves did contribute as a contractor to Gitcoin Grants in late 2018/early 2019. In mid 2017

  2. In the initial design, we did consider doing a retroactive distribution to all of the Github contributors to gitcoinco/web to https://github.com/gitcoinco/web/ but eventually that got cut. If memory serves me

a. this was because we didnt have the product/engineering capacity to do it.
b. I remember that instead of rewarding contributors 1 by 1 we did want to come up with a generalized & neutral distribution approach to reward them all in 1 fell swoop.

Do we have any idea how you were missed in the token allocation and if there are other core contributors in a similar circumstance?

The token allocation for the stakeholders did not include contractors who did not stay long enough to be on a 1 year cliff/4year vesting schedule. All contributors in this stakeholder allocation were on a 1 year cliff/4 year vest.

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@owocki Thanks for sharing that context. It is very helpful.

  1. Confirming this is true.

  2. This is helpful to hear how the GMV allocation method was arrived at as the core method for token distribution. Of course, no model was going to be perfect but does seem to be a flaw that a significant contributor to the code base was passed over. My argument to the community is that my contractor payments could have been processed on the Gitcoin platform, as the project was originally a bounty, and I would have received a GMV allocation more in line with the value I helped to create for the Gitcoin ecosystem. The scope of the project was so large I was brought on as a contractor, so was not paid via a bounty and thus not allocated tokens.

  3. This is helpful context around stakeholder allocations as well. It sounds like I would not qualify for that allocation. I will revise the proposal to remove that option.

@owocki Follow-up question, can you confirm if this is the formula that was used to calculate GMV allocations?

GMV per user / GMV Total * GMV Allocation Percent

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yea thats right. note that the GMV was priced in dollars, with the conversion happening at the time of the transaction.

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@owocki In a different proposal, it was shared that $22,000,000 was the GMV number at the time of GTC creation and the appropriate value to use for the GMV allocation calculation. So, is this equation correct?

GMV per user / 22,000,000 * 10,800,000 = Users GMV allocation

or when you say

do you mean real-time when tokens were claimed? So, 22,000,000 would be outdated.

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An update on this. I received feedback from a few stewards via direct messages that this proposal makes initial sense and is worth putting to a community vote. It identifies a hole in GTC token allocations for contractors who performed work for Gitcoin Core that did not stay long enough for a 1-year cliff (stakeholder allocations) and were not paid out on the Gitcoin platform (GMV allocations). However, if a proposal like this were to go through it should make sure to cover all individuals in this situation.

Proposal update: This proposal is to retroactively allocate GTC to contractors who performed work for Gitcoin Core that did not stay long enough for a 1-year cliff and were not paid out on the Gitcoin platform. It will calculate a token allocation based on the compensation previously paid out as if those funds were distributed via a Bounty or a Grant on the Gitcoin platform. This will provide the contractors with the same opportunity for involvement in GitcoinDAO goverance that the many other devs who performed work-for-hire jobs on the Gitcoin platform, and who received a GTC allocation, enjoy.

@owocki Were there other contractors that contributed to Gitcoin that did not stay long enough for a 1-year cliff and were not paid out via the Gitcoin platform? If so, can you share their names and contact info here or in a private message so that I can reach out and coordinate around this proposal?

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hey all, im busy working on fighting another fire right now so please excuse my somewhat flippant response.

kevin - can you please ask the stewards who felt this was worth being put up to a vote comment here? it is not appropriate for you as the proposal submitter to make that assertation on their behalf.

i can’t publicly disclose who worked for gitcoin/consensys during its early days publicly for privacy reasons. i could check with legal about starting a process that discloses it, but that will take time and resources from the holdings company - please email me kevin@gitcoin.co to kickstart that process if its something you want to pursue… meantime, if you want to see who contributed to the codebase through the years, i recommend looking at the commit graph at Commits · gitcoinco/web · GitHub - it contains information about who built the product through the years, regardless of how the engagement was structured (full time, contractors, platform users, all treated equally).

IMHO per the governance process you will want to update the body of the proposal with the final list of names, addresses, + allocation amounts before this can go to vote

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@owocki My apologies for making an assertion on behalf of others. I have asked those that I spoke with to post here.

I will wait to initiate any process with Gitcoin holding until we see support from stewards.

I seem to have lost the ability to update the body of the proposal. Is there a way for me to regain that ability?

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Hi @captnseagraves, I hope you are doing well!

I think Gitcoin Grants are one of the “Core Function” of Gitcoin and many of us has had benefits from close or far either while having a Grant and receiving funding or in my case I was able to get some dRewards from the “Grants Reviewing” Squad with GitcoinDAO because I was working on the grants approval.

I would like to personally say thank you because the grant system had a huge impact over the community and around Gitcoin ecosystems :slight_smile:

I would like to see more comments from each Stewards in this post so we can debate around this request.

My suggestion at this point would be to have an overlook at other participants or “Core contributors” from Commits · gitcoinco/web · GitHub + Contributors to gitcoinco/web (github.com) and from what I see there is a few that deserve some rewards or that have similar contributions.

This post is similar to the artist behind moonshot bots.
There is another option instead of digging into the treasury, we could either:

  • Chip-in 250$-500$ each, let’s say you have 100 contributors this is 25-50K$ Witch is a nice bonus I think.
  • You open a grant, and we contribute to your grant… Unknown amount of funding but it might be interesting

On the other side, it could be also interesting to know if you were a paid contractor at that moment, or simply contributing to open-source projects/software

  • If you did agree on a certain amount to build the grants system, then I think it’s not appropriate to ask for more funding or rewards afterward.

If not, we might want to consider a retro-active airdrop for you or debate in the option mentioned above.

This is only my own opinion and I would like to see more comments from other Stewards.

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Would be curious what other contributors were missed, I am in support of this.

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I have supported a few airdrops at this point and know it’s impossible to get it right… If we can get a list of contractors and its greater than 10, then i would support a proposal to reward them.

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Hmm few things from me.

I don’t think it’s fair for stewards to have to be called to make a decision here, especially if it involves business of Gitcoin Holdings back in 2018.

I think this should be discussed (1) in private with Gitcoin holdings and then if something is agreed (2) a proposal to the DAO that has the support of and a lot more details from Gitcoin holdings.

Followup questions:

  1. This could be considered an “unpaid debt” of Gitcoin holdings. Not the DAO. Why does Gitcoin DAO have to take it over? Are there any more such debts? As an active DAO participant and someone who wants to put the DAO’s interests first I would really like to know the answer to the question.
  2. @captnseagraves you appear to be #13 contributor to the gitcoin web repo with work carried out over 1 month. January to February 2019: Commits · gitcoinco/web · GitHub

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From what I understand this was paid work. Why do you feel you should receive 14447.4545455 GTC ($152131.69 by time of writing) for this one month of work on top of what you were paid to deliver?

Have all of the people above you, people who seem to have contributed a lot more work ,and some still are, been also compensated in this manner? I mean even @androolloyd has more commits in the repo and over a longer period of time than you.

Again here I feel it unfair on the stewards and the DAO to have to deal with “dirty laundry” of Gitcoin holdings.

If anything, anythign at all is decided here it should be for every single missed contributor. And then the tricky part (and what would be unfair to some) would be to figure out the actual value submitted.

Lines of code, commits or anything like that is a silly and extremely easily gameable metric. The only person who would actually know the true value of each contributor would be the CTO.

And again … this is why this should be solved between Gitcoin holdings and its former employees / contractors.

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@lefterisjp Thank you for this thorough reply :pray: It is very healthy and helpful for the conversation.

I am not exactly sure how the token was architected so I may be wrong here, but my understanding is that the DAO ultimately allocated and issued GTC. In any case, the DAO now has full control over allocating GTC, so my request is to the DAO. Gitcoin Holdings did pay me out as a contractor, so there isn’t an unpaid debt. I was a contractor paid to build Gitcoin Grants just like the thousands of other work-for-hire jobs found and paid out via Bounties and Grants, but unlike those other thousands of jobs done I was not allocated GTC in the airdrop because the value I was paid did not transact on Gitcoin. I built the platform that was used to allocate tokens but was not allocated tokens myself.

I am the #7 contributor to Gitcoin by lines of code added at 44,747. You are looking at commits, which in my opinion is not as good of a measure of value-added. Commits can also be squashed and the number displayed can be lowered. That is in fact what happened a number of times with Gitcoin Grants to my recollection. Mark Beacom squashed commits to keep the record smaller. I can also change one character, create a commit, and push it to Github, manipulating this number. With lines of code, if there is a linter enforced, this cannot happen in a non-standardized way across all contributors.

Screen Shot 2021-12-12 at 11.11.01 PM

This work was carried out over 6 months, from August 2018 to January 2019. Github only displays contributions to a repositories default branch. My changes, adding Gitcoin Grants directory to the Gitcoin Web repo, were not added to the master branch, the repo’s default branch until January 2019.

Screen Shot 2021-12-12 at 11.17.40 PM

It was paid work, just like all of the other thousands of developers who were found and paid out for work via Gitcoin Bounties and Grants. All of those developers were allocated tokens in addition to the money they earned on Gitcoin. Surely, building Gitcoin Grants, the platform many of those individuals used and were allocated tokens for using, merits at least the same class of token allocation. As I shared above, it was 6 months of work.

Every person who has committed more lines of code than me (Owocki, thelostone-mc, mbeacom, octavioamu, danlipert, & gdixon) is or was a Gitcoin Core team member. If they had an agreement for equity and stayed for longer than a 1 year cliff, they would have a stakeholder allocation, and would (I hope) have a much larger allocation than I am requesting.

In response to your point about @androolloyd. And this is in no way intended as a slight to Andrew, he has written 23,029 lines of code for Gitcoin. Around half of the 44,747 lines I have contributed.

Screen Shot 2021-12-12 at 11.24.32 PM

If the DAO has the power to allocate GTC and Gitcoin Holdings does not, I believe this is the appropriate forum to make this request. Perhaps Gitcoin Holdings architected the token issuance and made an oversight regarding early contributors and contractors, but they have since handed control over to the DAO.

Agreed. That is why I propose only considering contractors who performed significant work for Gitcoin Holdings early on, were not provided a stakeholder allocation, and were not paid out on Gitcoin and so did not receive a GMV allocation in the airdrop. To my knowledge, there is only one other candidate, the author of Gitcoin Kudos V1. Perhaps there are 1 or 2 others. I propose these contractors are allocated tokens as if the funds they were paid were transacted on the Gitcoin platform as a Bounty or a Grant, like the thousands of other developers who worked and earned on Gitcoin.

I plan on reaching out to the other top contributors to Gitcoin in the next few days to see if any of them were contractors in the past and fit the above description. If they self-identify Gitcoin Holdings should be able to confirm their contractor status or not without any privacy issues.

This sets a very high bar for the retroactive allocation, with a small number of significant early contributors, using the same allocation mechanism that the airdrop employed.

In sum, my request is to be included in the governance of the platform I helped build. I believe my work has contributed greatly to the mission of “Growing Open Source” and has helped facilitate funding for thousands of developers. It is unfortunate that a small few’s early work, that every holder of GTC has benefited from, was not allocated tokens. This is an opportunity to rectify that. I am asking that my work be recognized by the community and to be granted the same opportunity to participate like everyone else.

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I am the #7 contributor to Gitcoin by lines of code added at 44,747

Lines of code is no way to measure contributions to a software project. An automatic linter or a package update can add thousand of line of code and get committed by a developer. No serious developer or organization I know has ever used this as a metric or a KPI anywhere.

Again that is exactly why this is not something the DAO should have to decide. It’s not equipped to. It’s between you and the CTO of the project at the time. Only that person can measure the value of your contribution and make a recommendation to the DAO.

This feels wrong and from the conversation between you and Kevin here it seems to me you have not talked to him about this.

Please figure it out with him first and then come together here to make a recommendation. One that would preferably cover everyone.

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@lefterisjp Sure. Any derived metric (Commits, Additions, Deletions) is an imperfect measure. So perhaps we do not use any derived metric.

One benefit from my above-proposed allocation method, looking at value paid out to contractors as if it were a bounty, is that it is a true/false outcome. Was the bounty accepted and was value paid out to the person delivering the Bounty? This was the metric for all other GMV Allocations.

In the case of Gitcoin Grants, it clearly was.

@owocki What do you think of this proposal? And if it is a reasonable proposal, can you confirm that my work on Gitcoin Grants was accepted by Gitcoin Holdings? I will also reach out offline to discuss.

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This is tough to judge as a steward given we do not have the entire context from that time. echoing Lefteris’ comments as well.

The one year stakeholder guideline makes sense as long as it was applied equally, which it seems like it was. The rule was by time spent contributing, not rank of contributions, or lines of code. I worry that by breaking that established rule, there are many others which will come out of the woodwork asking for their allocation of GTC, and many grey areas which lead to a drain on the governance process.

For that reason, I am leaning towards not supporting this proposal.

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Thank you @trent for your comments. They are really helpful for the discussion.

The one year stakeholder guideline is not being broken in this proposal request. In my understanding contractors never qualified for a stakeholder allocation. Also, the proposal has moved away from rank of contributions or lines of code as a measure of value-added based on the discussion with @lefterisjp above.

The current proposal is:

This keeps a very narrow scope and maintains the established rule of the GMV allocation which allocated tokens based on a bounty being accepted and funds being paid.

The only exception in this proposal is to consider the work contractors submitted to Gitcoin Holdings as a bounty completed on the Gitcoin platform. This treats them the same as the thousands of other developers who worked and earned on Gitcoin and who were allocated tokens in the GMV airdop. I believe those that built core products like Gitcoin Grants v1 and Gitcoin Kudos v1, should be afforded the same opportunity to participate in GitcoinDAO governance.

I am currently in discussion with @owocki offline to see if other former contractors elect to opt-in to this proposal as well.

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I also have a similar sentiment as Lefteris and Trent. I don’t feel I have the full context for this as a steward and it feels more of a Gitcoin holdings company matter that should be discussed privately and then proposed to the DAO rather than the stewards deciding.

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