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

📜 Proposals
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… 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.

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

I was initially trying to be as deferential to the stewards as possible. But it seems from the comments above that a few of them are asking what Gitcoin Holdings recommendation is. If I am reading that correctly, then I can bring this up in our next Leadership meeting + come back w. a recommendation from that group.

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22

Very interesting discussion, I was trying to follow all the points and seems all very valid.
I want to bring some points as a core developer for like 3 years in Gitcoin, because not sure how that will affect or not in the calcs or if even I would be benefit by the proposal.

I started first as a user on Gitcoin, then moved as a contractor (I was the front end dev on Kudos v1 the other one was Jason) and after some time got hired, first as contractor then as core dev. In the next 3 years worked with every product on gitcoin (very proud of it :smile: )

Today Im not longer a Gitcoin core dev I vested part of my vesting tokens but I wasn’t part of the airdrop either because I was a core dev at token launch time. By contract my tokens will be locked for one year more so I don’t own any :confused:

Of course I was paid for all the work I done here and very glad and grateful to be worked on Gitcoin, but at the same time looking on what is fair or not I understand @captnseagraves feelings, I started when the team was really small, the product was only bounties so I feel I could add more value to the community, of course “adding value” not necessary is attached to the amount of tokens, but I do feel makes part of the feeling of “belong”.

About the formula, I feel is very relative when talking about contractors or employee and not sure if should be based on the amount received as I feel is not a good validator of value added. I feel time based is strong way to measure dedication to a project.

Again, my intention here is bringing “the feelings from the other side” I will be happy on any decision.

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23

Just read all the comments here, thanks for bringing all this detail here kevin.
I agree with comments made by lefteris, linda, griff & trent.

Ideally check with the holdings team first what they think would be appropriate as a possible extra compensation plus who else is in your position and can receive this compensation as well, and then I’d definitely would support this.

I think after a while your post is locked for further editing, I think you can just write the final proposal in a comment, create a new proposal and link to this one for more details.

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I think that this will end up being the most reasonable conclusion given the relatively small scope.

And I’d say you succeed in being deferential to stewards – if the stewards feel the scope is too small for a wider judgement (2 potential claimants), then it really is the best decision to then defer back to you/gitcoin holdings internal team. There isnt really any conflict of interest or centralizing risk given steward request and limited scope.

My more general thoughts:
Its clear there appears there is a consensus that there should be some reward. It seems the issue that @lefteris /folks have is largely with the size of the claim rather than a claim itself.

That said, internal context within gitcoin is probably necessary to judge where kevins work sits on the spectrum / how much compensation is reasonable. + I think context regarding any potential implication of future equity whenever Kevin’s employment began is probably necessary as well (even if just implied in the company’s ethos).

Other context is of course the other people that were rewarded. I feel I received an absurd amount of GTC, what equates to a bit over $120,000 though it was largely because I hit many qualifiers (Kernel Participant & Mentor, large donator, large grant recipient).

Have my contributions been more than Kevin? Honestly, who knows, but probably not. I have contributed quite a lot in small ways over time, and I do not personally know the details of his contribution + can personally speak to how horrible LOC is for a metric (my first project was, a disgusting 20,000 line rebalancing tool/python GUI), so its hard to say. All this said I personally err on over-rewarding past/potential contributors, rather than potentially undercompensating them.

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25

Thanks everyone for the comments above :pray: Much Appreciated.

Just wanted to give an update to the community. I have communicated with @owocki offline. He is planning to talk with Gitcoin Holdings Senior Leadership and respond with feedback in the new year. Thought It would be good to share here.

Happy Holidays!

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Hey guys – author of Gitcoin Kudos V1 here. @captnseagraves please include me on your final proposal, I can provide any information required. I also did not receive GTC allocation for my work performed as a contractor from 2017 - 2018. Thank you for your effort on the proposal.

And similarly, thank you @owocki for bringing this up to the Gitcoin Holdings Senior Leadership. Hope everyone has a nice holiday break ahead of them, and I look forward to hearing more!

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27

Happy 2022 everyone! Wanted to give an update to the community. I received this email from @owocki this morning.

Hey Kevin,

Thanks for your patience as we worked through this discussion over the holidays.

We (Gitcoin Holdings Leadership) decided that we’re not in support of this proposal (or a variant that rewards past contractors) at this time. I understand this is not the outcome you wanted to hear. I’ll do my best to capture the discussion below.

The primary reasons we decided not to support:

  1. You and I didn’t meet on the platform or do any of the engagement on the platform, and so it’s not appropriate to treat our engagement like it should be retro distribution for platform usage.
  2. You didn’t stay at gitcoin for the cliff time (6 months), so it’s not appropriate to treat it like you’re a full time employee or long term contractor allocation.
  3. The proposal is not in the best interest of the community, it’s only in the best interest of a small handful of people.
  4. Supporting the proposal would set a precedent for people to come out of the woodwork and ask for distributions, and that’s not in the best interest of the community.

The message went on to include a personal note as Kevin and I have been friends since 2017 and still see each other regularly in the Boulder, CO community.

While the Gitcoin Holding recommendation is unfortunate for myself and other early contractors, and I disagree with the outcome, I will accept it moving forward.

I will respond to the points above and then I will consider this matter resolved:

I seem to fall in an edge case that is just not worth it to have included in the community/GitcoinDAO governance.

  1. Yes, this is the exception I was proposing for early contractors.

  2. My records indicate that the first day I submitted an invoice for work was 7/20/18 and my last day submitted for work was 2/22/19. 8 months in total. If 6 months was the cliff, then it appears that I do qualify for a long-term contractor allocation. Regardless, crypto-winter hit and I left because it was unclear whether there would be funding for me in the next month, let alone whether ConsenSys would consider hiring me full time.

3 & 4. What I hear in these statements is, this edge case of early contractors wasn’t included in the original token drop and is now too politically costly to address.

There is no comment on the quality or value of the work contributed, which seemed to be a significant point of conversation in the thread above. Perhaps it wasn’t valuable work to lead the effort on Gitcoin Grants v1.

This outcome seems misaligned with Gitcoin’s core mission and how it has rewarded contributors on its platform in the past.

However, the community asked for Gitcoin Holdings’ recommendation and this is the result. I am happy to live with that.

Thank you everyone for the time, effort, and thought you put into this proposal. It really does show the willingness to govern and work together on issues. I am truly grateful to be a part of this community.

I wish Kevin, the Gitcoin Holdings team, the GitcoinDAO and platform, and all those working to provide public goods the best of luck and the highest success. I will always support you. I will always be your friend and advocate.

Best,
Kevin

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Hi @captnseagraves!

Happy 2022 and I hope you are enjoying a great time with your family and frens.

Moving forward, we are building dGrants, dCompass, and many other things see who’s hiring
I strongly encourage you to apply to any position because you are an amazing contributor. There is many dRewards available for you if you are up to the challenge!
Feel free to reach out on discord!

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29

Very mature response, thank you for sharing

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@captnseagraves Thank you for posting this and sharing your thoughts. I have not heard anything from Kevin other than on this forum. I personally don’t consider it case closed.

I’m in a similar boat here, except that I did engage with the gitcoin.co bounties before I met Kevin personally. I contributed to bounties as early as November and December of 2017. Once I started to get more involved with Gitcoin, I wanted to play a bigger role. At that point I was put under contract with Gitcoin rather than going through the bounty system.

As a contractor, I worked for Gitcoin for longer than 6 months - my records indicate I was involved with Gitcoin for about a full year. I contributed to the gitcoin/web codebase and launched Kudos V1 - which involved leading the project, writing the backend code, and writing and deploying the solidity contract.

I share the sentiment of @captnseagraves and feel that the allocation of GTC does not truly represent the contributions of the community members, and contractors are being left out in the cold.

So to address the 4 items:

1 and 2 don’t apply to me. 3 and 4 seem like easy outs to not address the issue at hand. How many people are going to come out of the woodwork? It seems like some of the biggest contributors were these contractors, and in those days there were only a handful working on the project.

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IMO, “woodworks” include people that have come to the numerous weekly meetings that are also coders and contributed not only to one repository related to Gitcoin.

Your best bet is to create a grant, its a bit intuitive at the moment. But You could always set up structurally similar grant to Rotki by @lefterisjp buidlbox

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