Rethinking FDD: defending against fraud --> optimizing capital allocation

[DisruptionJoe]

The point is not that FDD should be the one to handle defining or measuring this metric.

@j-cook

At the same time, one of the pertinent criticisms of FDD in the past has been that its objectives and processes have been somewhat opaque and difficult to appraise. A reconfiguration must therefore start with a clear and unambiguous definition of a specific remit, a clear set of performance indicators, and demonstrable alignment with the priorities of the wider community.

This post claims that there is not a metric by which an a/b test could be run to prove whether a given FDD expense is valuable to the community.

This is the conversation we needed to spark.

On a completely different note:

I find it difficult to respond to your criticism because it is citing reasons why FDD might not be the right group to solve the problem, while incorrectly identifying which problem the post aims to solve.

@owocki

specifically the leadership of the FDD lacking (1) data science skills (2) software engineering skills that can be hands on in the product.

I’m going to assume that you are referring to me and not the multiple Ph.D level data scientists who have built and iterated on the current system which is now fully run by GitcoinDAO. Maybe there is another DAO out there which has already solved sybil resistance at scale which you can point to as an example of what qualified looks like in this context?

Did I catch you on a bad day?

@owocki

(3) a perceived history of trying to do too many things + not nailing the core mission when it was small (having a wide focus on the legitimacy of the whole dao vs just nailing sybil/collusion defense), an expanded scope makes me nervous.

When we started the DAO, everyone had to figure out what was going to happen. Yes, we have gone wide at times, but I would also argue that we have been continually improving and executing on our primary objectives including sybil defense and grant eligibility.

We report on these improvements every round in the Governance Brief

@j-cook

FDD could have a more holistic approach to GR security if it reconfigures with “capital optimization” as its overarching goal rather than “Sybil defense”. This reconfiguration is an excellent opportunity to realign FDD with the DAO and the wider community, to set some new baselines building from empirical data and to enable closer tracking of FDDs progress against clearly defined KPIs.

The answers are not all presented in this post, it is intended to start a discussion around how FDD should configure itself going into the Grants 2.0 era. Some of the more nuanced questiions that could be pertinent to the discussion but have not been mentioned in the outline above are:

• What are the sensible KPIs FDD can define to track its own progress?
• Can an optimization framework eventually extend to allocate social, emotional, intellectual capital as well - do we get these things for free by optimally allocating monetary capital?
• How can the $GTC token fit be used to best effect in a new capital-optimization framework?
• How can we ensure FDDs capital optimization processes are transferable across rounds in Grants 2.0?

This highlights the primary intention of the post. It is not about reconsidering what work FDD is accountable for, but rather to re-evaluate how we frame our accountability in a holistic way.

What do you think about these outstanding questions?