[S17 Proposal] INTEGRATED FDD Budget Request

[tigress]

TL;DR

FDD as a workstream is dissolving after Season 17, but the need for fraud detection and prevention services is far from done.

• S17 Budget is almost $10k lower than Season 16
• FDD is not requesting any reserves as this is the last season for us as a workstream
• The Contributor Transition process has already started partially with an intention for clear transfer roles after EthDenver
• Embedding fraud & data analyst/science knowledge and expertise across the workstreams will help the DAO realize the value of trust & risk management as well as increase awareness for fast-paced, data-driven “build-measure-learn” culture
• Open Data Community continues data infrastructure innovation with hackathons and provides data transparency, provenance, and reproducibility for algorithmic policy decisions

3 key themes this season:

• Continued Trust in Gitcoin’s Ability to Prevent Fraud
• Empowering the DAO with Open Data Infrastructure & Processes
• FDD Workstream Dissolution Success

Amount

FDD is requesting $123,694 from the treasury to complete a budget of $340,314 for S17. A breakdown of the budget can be found at the end of this document.

Gitcoin Season	Season 15	Season 16	Season 17
Season Budget	$349,500	$349,500	$340,314
Season Reserves	$233,000	$172,615	$216,620 1*
Unspent Reserves %	100%	100%	100%
Treasury Request USD	$362,500	$409,885	$123,694 2**

1*) FDD received $233,000 in reserves which were requested at a GTC price of $1.65 in S15. These were received in January at a GTC price of $1.37 making the received total of $193,461. 60% was converted to stables ($116,077) leaving a 40% exposure of GTC to upward price movement from $1.37 to $1.78 ($77,384 to $100,543) leaving a total of $216,620 in unspent reserves

2**) Since FDD intends to dissolve as a workstream, we will request the full season budget less 100% rolled over reserves from S16. The amount of GTC requested and the value of the reserves will be adjusted based on the current market value at the time this proposal is moved to Tally using the lower of the current price or the 20 day moving average, whichever is lower.

Milestone Report S16

Season 16 has been a very dynamic and the most unusual season for us. We set out with likely projects (S16 budget request) and needed to respond to the changing circumstances of the DAO during the season. The changes include the decision not to host GR16 in December, to deprecate the cGrants product, the decision by GPC/PGF that sybil defense services wouldn’t be needed during UNICEF/Fantom/Alpha rounds, and subsequent findings that these did indeed need services.

Our assessment on what we completed and why can be found here: Miro | Online Whiteboard for Visual Collaboration

Objectives Past Season	Initiative / Outcome	Key Result
Continuous analysis & validation of passport scores made available for round owners & technical users in partnership with the Passport team.	Everything the Passport team asked for was delivered on time and extra work was done	* Created 4 scores including the one in use for Alpha rounds and Passport Scoring as a Service * Built a passport scoring application mvp * Delivered stamp topology research and stamp prioritization requests
Build reliable composable, open source software tools for round owners to prevent fraud.	Documentation and understanding were massively improved, but actual building was slower than expected. Results of hackathon could make this green.	* Designed a user interface for legos to be used by an fdd fraud consultant & eventually a round owner * 5 Packages wallet legos in FDD github * Created documentation for the person of a fraud consultant or round operator * Created & updated readme files for all legos and applications and general getting started * Created FAQ for Open Data Community to build and interact with legos * Posted 3 articles discussing Sybil Scoring Legos * Building custom aura implementation for gitcoin grants and an gitcoin/fdd team to participate
To empower a regen data community with infrastructure, tools, and shared learnings which provides 50% of impactful insights into optimal capital allocation using Gitcoin grants.	Community growth and participation were a huge success with non-gitcoin community members driving many efforts.	* Enabled the community led curation of data sources for quality and usefulness. * Collaboratively authored the landscape of useful tools and guides for Open Data Community. * Catalyzed & lead creation of a platform to host the open data community including collaboration about tools, data sources and methodologies especially non-gitcoin participation documentation & bounties to create new analysis and turn validated analysis into legos * Over 100 in Discord with 6 active (non-fdd) contributors on Github * Built a public facing data & research hub with all past grant round datasets with FDD
Find a sustainable strategy to engage ODC members and contributors to service decentralized grants rounds & maintain quality processes.	While we lowered the % of ODC costs which Gitcoin pays, we did not establish governance to run a grants round yet. This is partly because the protocol wasn’t ready this season.	* Doubled prize total from $19k to $40k while Gitcoin/FDD is only paying 39% of it! (paid 100% last round) * Added 6 sponsor orgs * Contests hosted for unicef, fantom, and gitcoin alpha * One previous hackathon participant was funded and returned as a Sponsor to the 2nd hackathon - They also provided services to the Fantom round outside of the hackathon.
Continuously iterate, test & innovate on algorithmic solution quality and availability.	We deprioritized much of the grant eligibility work due to the decision to have closed alpha rounds, but had multiple useful outputs from FDD research.	* Bankless & Snapshot Analysis leading to 6 new legos * Created a topology of stamps with recommendations * Designed Cost of Forgery stamp weighting model * Trial use of rhaphorty open source graphdb for graph analysis * Building custom aura implementation for gitcoin grants and an gitcoin/fdd team to participate * cadCAD round simulator - can be used to find optimality gap analysis and optimal red team strategies * Design workflow pipelines for legos from ideation or behavioral observation through building
The right work gets done and the tools and access needed to do it is in order. We build plans for the future	The lego process was more difficult to scope and start but now since it is going it is moving well, we worked through many models for the future, but ended up needing the last week of the season to realize dissolution was the best answer.	* Created a custom moloch DAO (on testnet) for a multisig allowing for true decentralization and potential spin out capability while separating Gitcoin funds to NOT be accessible by a ragequit * Analyzed at all past FDD contributors pay, membership status, and contribution weeks to design a share splitting model * Received a grant for sybil study of Aave onchain activity which overlaps with needs for Gitcoin * Posted 5 FDD review articles * Taught and/or transferred responsibility to Tigress treasury management and how to pay contributors

Legend
Success
Incomplete, will hit goal or priority change
Incomplete, will not hit goal
Canceled - out of workstream’s control

Moving to a Protocol Future

The launch of the Allo Protocol will shift the needs of the Gitcoin community away from the historic goals of the Fraud Detection and Defense workstream.

In pivoting into a new structure, FDD is preparing to support the break out into smaller and more end-to-end accountable workstreams, without sacrificing the unified intention of the FDD: fraud defense, risk mitigation, and trust building.

These smaller functional units eliminate any “I have 2 bosses” conflicts of interest. Individuals safe-guarding risk and trust priorities are embedded in end-to-end accountable working groups.

The core promise of the Fraud Detection & Defense workstream has been providing legitimacy & trust to the outcomes of Gitcoin’s quadratic funding rounds. This has been done by keeping quadratic funding rounds free from stolen and misallocated funds caused by sybil attacks and illegitimate grants. The continued improvement of our ability for clients using Passport & Allo protocols the ability to access and share this trust with their communities belongs as a function that is accountable with the program, product or engineering teams providing the trust.

These functions of the current “centralized” organizational FDD structure will have moved over to other end-to-end accountable workstreams by the course of Season 17 to better reflect the future structure desired by stewards & Gitcoin leadership. We anticipate beginning to make these operational changes gradually with clear accountability shifts only happening after EthDenver, concurrently with the GPC workstream splitting into Passport & Allo streams. These changes are being made with the prior consent and partnership of the other workstreams involved.

This last season FDD has 3 key themes:

Continued Trust in Gitcoin’s Ability to Prevent Fraud: Data informed recommendations to mitigate fraud are made continuously available.

• Fantom & Gitcoin Alpha Round Recommendations
• A Scalable Mitigation Sybil Solution Exists
• Sybil Defense Innovation & Insights Continue after FDD
• Passport has Analysis & Data Science Support
• Recommendations to Correct Web2 Vulnerabilities are Followed Through

Empowering the DAO with Open Data, Infrastructure, & Processes: Data processes & pipelines are reliably available & maintained.

• An On-chain Data Extraction Solutions that Meets the Needs of Real-Time Anomaly Detection
• Open and Decentralized Data Repository for the Community
• Gitcoin Analytic DB & Query Interface

FDD Workstream Dissolution Success: FDD contributors and work is smoothly transitioned and/or shut down.

• Successful Transition of Contributors
• Clearly Documented Closing of Accounts & Obligations
• A Proposal for a Ratified Process to Spin-Out “Investible Workstreams”

List of S17 Outcomes

Continued Trust in Gitcoin’s Ability to Prevent Fraud

Outcome Description	Essential Intent Connection	Likely Projects/Tasks
“What outcome or impact will we see?”	“How does this align with our most important work?”	“What will the work likely look like?”
Final recommendations are provided to the Fantom & Gitcoin Alpha rounds	Programs Growth	Data extraction & cleaning Computation of all sybil scoring legos available Analysis of potential fraudulent behavior is drafted Final recommendations for retroactive Sybil discounting
The tools & processes for a scalable sybil mitigation solution is available for program managers during the beta rounds.	Programs Growth	Conduct historical analysis Design dashboard essentials & highest impact visualizations Finish building a round dashboard MVP Earn consensus on policy shifts as needed Collect user feedback on round dashboards “Trusted Vendor” process solidified Monitor April rounds and define opportunities for improvement
A flywheel of insight and innovation in sybil defense brings continued innovation & insights from the Open Data Community which reduces sybil behavior and improves Program Manager feedback.	Financial Sustainability	Insights are documented and included in fraud runbooks Analyze ODC 2nd Hackathon submissions (e.g. www.grantlooker.xyz) and use potentially good submissions as inspiration for the further development Builds are documented in Github for future use Lowercost of iterative innovation for data infrastructure & innovation from the FDD workstream budget to bounties & membership costs. ODC synthesizes learnings from the first three hackathons and provides documentation towards data standards and good practices in ongoing resource updates, useful to Gitcoin and the entire web3 community. Freshly built legos get tested and applied to beta rounds Testing reports including metrics on fraud tax are written in co-creation (ODC, Gitcoin Fraud Analyst) and shared with Gitcoin’s product & engineering teams.
Passport is supported with analysis & data science needs as they work to hire a new data analyst/scientist.	Protocols Passport	Assistance in hiring and training of a data scientist to join the GPC workstream in S18 Updated score is provided Retraining schedule is created for PSaaS Update & adjust weighting before next season Testing reports including metrics on fraud tax are written in co-creation (ODC, Gitcoin Fraud Analyst) and shared with Gitcoin’s product & engineering teams. In case of success, stakeholders discuss how and when to implement legos.
Recommendations to correct web 2 vulnerabilities are made to respective product units.	Protocols	Define Opportunities & additional data pull needs Monitor Google Analytics events during alpha round & analysis Get feedback on recommendations Correct web 2 vulnerabilities Monitor core metrics for change with implementation

Empowering the DAO with Open Fraud Data, Infrastructure & Processes

Outcome Description	Essential Intent Connection	Likely Projects/Tasks
“What outcome or impact will we see?”	“How does this align with our most important work?”	“What will the work likely look like?”
An on-chain data extraction solution is developed providing speed, transparency, reliability, cost efficiency, and auditability gains.	Programs	Settle on tech stack Erigon archival node for ethereum chain data Trueblocks node with custom Chifra Server Define core heuristics Share with partners for testing Define contract/protocol anomalies Set up a Service Leasing Agreement (SLA) with Open Data Community to run the Gitcoin Open Data Stack Begin serving up chain data via Rounds Dashboard & GitcoinDB
An open & decentralized data repository with all round data is consistently updated for the entire Gitcoin community.	Programs Growth	Discovering scope of repository project in co-creation with Gitcoin Builds an MVP similar to the fddhub.io but hosted by the open data community and updated with new round data To ensure continued support and availability a service agreement for continued data infrastructure support is defined and agreed upon between Open Data Community and Gitcoin.
A Gitcoin Analytic DB & query environment empowers analysts across all of GitcoinDAO to become more data driven		DB design discovery - Tech stack / tooling research Continue build in progress Metric discovery in partnership with all workstreams Financial Dashboards w/ DAOops Partnership health w/ PGF Partnerships Product Goals w/ Allo & Passport DevRel Goals w/ DevRel User Activity w/ MMM Modeling for GTC utility to design a more costly to attack than defend system Solve hosting questions - gain home for SaaS charges Begin surfacing key on-chain signals in query environment

FDD Workstream Dissolution Success

Outcome Description	Essential Intent Connection	Likely Projects/Tasks
“What outcome or impact will we see?”	“How does this align with our most important work?”	“What will the work likely look like?”
Successful transition of contributors with offered and accepted roles to other workstreams allows the completion of FDD work and the smooth assimilation to new roles.	DAO Organization	Transfers are communicated with other workstream leads, introductions are made, and formal transition dates & compensation agreements are set. Data Analyst > Allo Fraud Analyst > Program Readiness (PGF) Data Analyst hiring support > Passport Other TBD = Data Engineering, Technical Writer, Financial Analyst Successful handover: FDD work is either completed or transitioned to new workstreams
Clearly documented accounting winddown of all FDD wallets and financial obligations.	DAO Organization	All FDD multisig wallets are closed Severance is paid where necessary Exit interviews are conducted in partnership with DAOops Transparent budget is available for review w/ audit
Proposal to create a CSDO-ratified process for spinning out “investable workstreams” exists to help Gitcoin avoid the “services trap”.	Financial Sustainability	In cooperation with DAOops create a positive sum model / process for de-risked, legally viable, and minimally disruptive investible spinout of workstreams. Discovery around unanswered or uncertain aspects of workstream dissolution is conducted leading to ratified solutions which are safe to try. Recommend a “spinout architecture” including literature research on legal wrappers and tech solutions Craft a “spinout process” to transfer ownership and funds

Budget Breakdown

The FDD Season 17 budget is almost $10k lower than Season 16. Additionally we will not be requesting reserves for S17.

Budget Category	Description	Amount USD
7 Core Contributors	WS Leads Product / Strategy (Joe) Operations (Tigress) Full Time Contributors Data Scientist (Omni) Sr. Fraud Detection Analyst (Alex) Data/DevOps Engineer (Zen) Data Analyst (Bella) OpenData Community Project Lead (EPowell)	$241,639
3 Trusted Contributors	FDD Review & Science SME (J-Cook) Data Analyst (Adebola) Analyst (Sorana)	$27,300
2 Regular Contributors	Software Engineers (Eric & Yogeesh)	$24,375
Open Data Hackathon	Bounties / Prizes	$30,000
SaaS, Fees, etc.		$3,000
Travel & other expenses*)		$14,000
Other Bounties		$0
Total		$340,314

*) Includes Gitcoin Retreat, EthDenver or similar events & travel reimbursements.

Footnotes in Conclusion and Looking Forward

With the DAO Data-related outcomes described above, we intend to provide data insights for protocol-based and transparent DAO operations. We have the skills and the opportunity to codify certain best practices. We also believe past learnings from best-in-class sybil defense have led to several key opportunities for automation, tooling, and experimentation.

As we prepare to better utilize data for FDD aims, we see a necessity of building out the data capacities of the whole DAO alongside us, and it no longer seems efficient for FDD’s data resources to operate in silo.

Can Gitcoin be the new, more secure, and more trusted GoFundMe? Can we correct the issues inherent in early web2 projects like Kickstarter & co? We believe so. But to be ready for the new challenges which come from a wider audience, we have to invest in tooling and the necessary infrastructure now in order to carry out the promise inherent in an on-chain, trustless grants system.

It is, of course, the case that Gitcoin is not alone in these essential needs to secure our protocol and protect our governance practices. We have heard repeatedly from our partners – new and long-standing – that it is necessary for other DAOs in the ecosystem to have the tools and the knowledge available to protect their own environments. Because of the growing demand for such services, it is thought to be well-validated that the DAOs Growth unit can spinout and begin seeking payment for more generalized “trust-as-a-service” as an a la carte consulting product, as well as providing this service which can be added to the most vulnerable grants rounds ad hoc.

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Authors of this Document

Section	Author(s)
Milestone Report	Joe
TL;DR	Joe
FDD Outcomes	Joe in collaboration with Stewards and FDD contributors
Amount, Budget Breakdown	Tigress with support from Joe
Footnotes in Conclusion and Looking Forward	Alex

[shawn16400]

Thanks @tigress for posting this - your reviewers to this proposal are @kevin.olsen @drnicka @eugyal @farque65 @llllvvuu @ccerv1 @lthrift

[ccerv1]

First off, let me say that I deeply admire this team’s intention to work itself out of a job this season and to distribute itself across the DAO and the broader ecosystem. This is admirable and a clear sign of true mission-alignment.

Second, given the intention to dissolve, I am highly supportive of a transition season that not only enables the services provided by FDD to be refactored / relocated but also gives the people reasonable time to find their footing elsewhere in the DAO or the broader ecosystem.

For these reasons, I am supportive at a high level of both the proposed outcomes and the amount of budget requested by FDD for S17.

That said, I have some more specific feedback that I would like to see incorporated in the final request, which I will share below.

1. The three themes read as goals for FDD contributors, not the DAO.

The current themes are:

1. Contributor Transition Success
2. Dissolution Governance Success
3. ODC Project Value to Gitcoin

I would prefer to see a clear statement of where the DAO should head and how this team will contribute to getting it there.

For instance, this is a great first theme to anchor on:

@tigress

building out the data capacities of the whole DAO

Another theme, not explicitly mentioned, might be: “ensure Sybil attacks do not detract from the QF experience for round managers and grants”

A third theme could be “bootstrap a community outside Gitcoin to contribute to Sybil defense on the protocol”.

2. The outcomes feel arbitrary and inward-looking

This may sound overly harsh, so let me provide some examples:

5 or more legos discovered or built during the 2nd ODC hackathon are used during the beta round fraud analysis

If I’m a round manager, I don’t care how many legos it takes or where they came from. I care about Sybil attacks manipulating my matching pool. I care about projects feeling unhappy about the allocation. I care about honest users complaining on Twitter that they couldn’t donate or their votes were squelched.

(aside: I believe there is a HUGE role for data analysis and new legos / algorithms to play in improving the round manager experience, but those are the means to an end, not the ends.)

Similarly, all of the Contribution Transition Success outcomes in the form “transitioning […] from FDD to […] team” do not feel demand-driven. Again, I strongly believe there are highly valuable skills among FDD members that should be absorbed elsewhere in the DAO! But a successful outcome should be framed from the perspective of the DAO and its partners accomplishing something, not a contributor finding a new home.

3. ODC activities / outcomes don’t make sense here

As per my earlier point, I am very supportive of a theme along the lines of “bootstrap a community outside Gitcoin to contribute to Sybil defense on the protocol”. I am also supportive of budget going to outsource or bounty work through ODC.

But it feels disorienting to have a DAO goal be, in effect, to prove that another DAO is valuable to Gitcoin.

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tl;dr

I am supportive of the overall budget. I share the goal of ending this season with every current member of FDD finding a new home within a Gitcoin workstream, in ODC, or in some other entity that is highly complimentary to Gitcoin. But I would like to see some crisp, more measurable outcomes to this transition season that are framed from the DAO’s perspective.

[griff]

Wow, a graceful exit. Thank you for recognizing the market conditions and the fact that this is not the right timing to invest in the epic research that the FDD is known for.

Thank you for your work in the previous seasons, i don’t think Grants would have the legitimacy it has without your work.

I’m in general supportive of this proposal, but I want to ask every work stream… what would happen if this proposal didn’t pass?

Not fear mongering, just a practical reality. What would “No” look like?

[lefterisjp]

To everybody else I would vote abstain or No. But for this since it’s an exit of FDD as a workstream with a nicely laid out plan I am inclined to vote FOR.

[kevin.olsen]

The response from Carl regarding framing was spot on, and in particular, I resonated very strongly with:

@ccerv1

Again, I strongly believe there are highly valuable skills among FDD members that should be absorbed elsewhere in the DAO! But a successful outcome should be framed from the perspective of the DAO and its partners accomplishing something, not a contributor finding a new home.

It would be very helpful to know what a successful transition looks like, what the timeline for transition looks like, and what would a successful end state look like.

Regarding the proposal for a data workstream:

@tigress

A proposal for a “thin” project based DAO data workstream is ready for Season 18 budget reviews.

I’m not supportive of this line item and feel it’s heading in the wrong direction. This is a purely functional workstream vs. an end-to-end accountable workstream. I would prefer to see budgeted work embedded in the workstreams, but encourage non-budgeted organizational structures that span workstreams (i.e. guilds, or communities of practice).

Given our budgets don’t come with a BATNA, I would want to quickly explore that here:

Given the FDD has reserves for 2/3 of the next season, this budget is really just a request for the final 1/3 of the season.

If this budget wasn’t passed, what would happen?

For Contributor Transition, given the current needs in the DAO for the analysis work to happen across Growth/Allo/Passport I think any workstream that is planning to absorb FDD’ers could support the contributors joining in S18 out of reserves. I see little impact if 2 mo or 3 mo of budget is available to support this transition.

For ODC I’m unclear what 2 mo vs 3 mo of further incubation in the DAO would yield.

For the Dissolution Governance requests I’m unclear what would not be delivered in 2 mo vs 3 mo.

To help Stewards make this choice. I think it would be helpful to clarify what the choice is between (2 mo vs 3 mo) and what would change in the S17 FDD output given either of those outcomes.

[ale.k]

@kevin.olsen

It would be very helpful to know what a successful transition looks like, what the timeline for transition looks like, and what would a successful end state look like.

This is helpful! And thanks, as always @ccerv1 for high level direction -

@disruptionjoe @tigress I think it sounds like we can definitely incorporate better the key deliverables (with clear value props) for the DAO will be in place; 30-60-90 - to help parse this decision.

Top of mind for the longer term projects in flight:

1. Best in class on-chain analysis tools so that Gitcoin can not only provide elegant protections against sybils, but also serve our greater needs of grantee transparency and reputation-assessment long-term.
2. Dashboards, core metric design + results of user research from our alpha partners: How do they want to do sybil defense? What are they willing (and unwilling) to do internally- and where does sybil defense rank in their priorities?

Both of these are currently underway - and can be accelerated if we accept certain trade-offs - but given that there are lead-time contingencies which are outside of FDD control (e.g. the time to sync an archival node is ~3 weeks) - let’s be really clear about the time commitments we need to do an excellent job - and also honest about when analyst + data eng attention can fully be focused on the new initiatives of the workstreams they’re absorbed into. I think we should articulate where we are now and what key milestones will have been achieved throughout the season.

(renewing my lucidchart trial now )

[DisruptionJoe]

Update

We will be updating to a revised version incorporating feedback on Friday, 2/10.

[kyle]

I just want to chime in that I really appreciate the consideration and direction FDD is proposing. I am supportive of the general path and look forward to revised budget version coming out soon

[ccerv1]

I’m in support of the updated budget and proposal that @tigress and @DisruptionJoe have posted at the top of this page. Thank you for incorporating feedback from me and other stewards.

(For readers, ICYMI, the original budget post has now been updated to a new one … so note that all the comments above this comment were in reference to the original budget, not the updated one.)

And … I do think @kevin.olsen raised a good point that’s worth addressing in the comments about the incremental value of a 2 vs 3 mo transition. It’s not a sticking point for me, but may be helpful for other stewards to consider.

[DisruptionJoe]

On one hand, it seems at first like we are talking about 2 months vs 3 months of funding. In reality, we are talking about a much bigger difference. I will try to break it down here.

Fund the budget

• Finish ongoing work which is needed to successfully set the infrastructure which will support the analysts that move into the other workstreams.
• The people in FDD have the time to transition whether they are continuing in another workstream or moving on.
• We collectively celebrate a governance success as FDD completes work and smoothly transitions.
• Will cost the DAO $125k

Don’t fund the budget

• Confused contributors unsure about their transition will make finishing work unlikely or difficult to predict.
• Some would likely qualify for a severence and would need to end their work immediately for us to fund it.
• Loss of trust of contributors in other workstreams to see that Gitcoin has their best interest in mind.
• Unknown losses in knowledge transfer to newer FDD members.
• Will save the DAO $125k

Going into the Unicef, Fantom, and Alpha rounds we were told they would not need fraud analysis for these rounds. We were prepared anyway and have been working directly with Fantom to make sure they have all the knowledge to make choices that build trust with their community.

This work required FDD contributor experience and skills to gather the data. This data gathering process even helped us to troubleshoot protocol issues with GPC as we learned how the protocol was setup. We found issues such as the need for timestamps with contributions. These weren’t originally on the subgraph, but they are necessary for fraud analysis. We had the ability to scrape the ceramic nodes when product was way to busy fixing issues. We did this to better understand Passport effectiveness. We are currently doing data operations work for the Alpha round and the analysis will follow. This data operations/engineering example is only one that illustrates this issue.

At this time, FDD works as a team with specialist strengths boosting the abilities of the others. To successfully transition, we need to move from this working culture to one where more generalist capable analysts are embedded in the workstreams. We are lucky that much of FDD’s past work is at a point where we can finish building systems that will 10x the output & accuracy of the analysts who continue the fraud detection & defense work for Gitcoin.

Without clear transitions for the contributors, it is unclear which necessary skills we might lose.

A look at context and dependencies

We have some work that is ongoing which has context and dependencies which I don’t think would be easy to manage through an abrupt transfer.

This 30-60-90 milestone diagram shows a few of the deliverables listed above which have high context & dependencies. This work is the most likely work to be disrupted. It is also the work that will best set up the DAO for a data informed future with the analysts in each workstream empowered by having the right tools and processes.

My personal opinion & bias

As an FDD workstream lead, you can see there is obvious bias likely to be present in my opinion. However, if you consider that I am the one putting forth the idea to dissolve FDD for the better of the DAO, then perhaps my motivation is pure. Especially when you consider that I am one of the FDD contributors without a clear transition. There are currently 3/9 who have fairly certain transition plans, and 5/9 who I believe have clear and obvious paths forward.

I personally want to see Gitcoin succeed. I am a stakeholder not only as a contributor, steward, and user, but also with substantial personal “skin in the game”. My honest advice to the stewards would be to approve this budget.

FDD has protected the community from $3 million in fraudulent allocation of funds over the last year and a half. This move to dissolve FDD is not because fraud detection & defense is no longer needed. It’s exactly the opposite. We have the opportunity to setup the infrastructure, processes, and tools needed to empower the analysts working with the end to end accountable workstreams. This effort might not happen if this transition is not managed well.

To me this is not a question of 2 or 3 months of work. It is 3 months of work with smooth transitions for both those staying with Gitcoin and those moving on OR confusion and difficulty rallying the team to do their best and complete the work that sets up future protocol and program success. The work we do this season IS part of Gitcoin’s most important work. I encourage stewards to provide us the opportunity to show the entire web 3 ecosystem that

• Gitcoin governance is working
• The next 100 grants program managers can be absolutely sure that using Gitcoin gives them trust, legitimacy, and credible neutrality in funding what matters.

[ccerv1]

Agree. From my perspective, three months is a reasonable transition period. Mitigating the downside in terms of morale / unintended skills loss is more important than a once-off cost savings. Furthermore, I respect that FDD went straight to proposing a transition season (as opposed to, say, proposing a normal S17 and pushing the dissolution question further on down the road).

I’ll state it again: this budget proposal has my support.

[JR-OKX]

I really like the two longer term projects you mentioned, and we are already in conversation on how we can help re: the on-chain data analytics project. Three quick questions on this initiative with consideration to the dissolution context of FDD, which might be in many people’s heads as well

1. How would on-chain analytics help other work streams? Any potential synergy between this part of FDD and Gitcoin passport (has web2 credentials)?
2. Once certain on-chain analytics tool is employed (assuming quite some work and follow-ups and maintenance are needed), who/which party would be held responsible to generate insights and crystallize into action items if FDD members are spread out across work streams?
3. A follow up question would be are there going to be occasionally check-ins as a team to align on the shared topic? How would this look different to the working style prior to dissolution?

On high level, this proposal has my support. Thank you for all your hard work in previous seasons and working on legitimacy of Grants. 3 months of work also seem justified to me considering the work and commitments leading up to Eth Denver in about a month.

[kyle]

Thanks for the updates.

I am still likely to support this budget, but I am slightly confused at the continued build out and support with 7 FT contributors. I don’t know what actually lives on for those analysts that are embedding in the teams.

Regardless, I do trust the team to suss out what they need, and hopefully @ale.k and others are pushing for things they can leverage and maintain on-going.

[DisruptionJoe]

We have strategically setup an FDD edition of the community call this Wednesday at 12pm EST / 5pm UTC. This call is open to all DAO Citizens in the Discord. Here we will be showing the Open Data Community’s 2nd hackathon results and discussing the future of protocol based fraud defense.

Here are some of the topics we will likely cover:

• Growth of the Open Data Community (ODC)
• How Ongoing Goals of the ODC Will Help Gitcoin
• Showing Off the Best Submissions
• Discussing Open Data Infrastructure
• How the New Data Infrastructure Benefits All Workstreams
• Q&A

I’ll let @ale.k chime in as to how the work of Season 17 will live on an benefit the analysts which transition.

[tigress]

Proposal updated to INTEGRATED status.

Thank you!

[ale.k]

Hey @JR-OKX - thanks for the thoughtful follow-up! We really foresee enterprise-level data abilities to be a huge need for multiple initiatives around the DAO - certainly going well outside of fraud-fighting and systems design for risk mitigation, as you call-out.

1. How would on-chain analytics help other work streams? Any potential synergy between this part of FDD and Gitcoin passport (has web2 credentials)?

Yes to synergy, to be sure! Passport use and roll-out by our partners definitely presents a rich opportunity to see the success (and the failure) of various stamps in safeguarding many communities with diverse needs. We have already been asked for recommendations from early partners in this capacity, and we see the work FDD has done in creating scores and training models to be something where there will be an ongoing need. An example of this is the good initial results in predictive nature of a model that maps stamp-attainment to average donor spend.

Outside of the Passport product team, we also see several mission-critical initiatives to be reliant on on-chain data and a final-state permissionless postgres solution. Examples of this include one of the top things we heard from donors during alpha rounds: They want to see their own donation history. Another example where data infra is pivotal to our success would be in providing indicators of Grantee reputation and tracing grant-awarded funds over time. We are building in a way which will make this kind of data not only available internally, but available for public audit at any time.

2. Once certain on-chain analytics tool is employed (assuming quite some work and follow-ups and maintenance are needed), who/which party would be held responsible to generate insights and crystallize into action items if FDD members are spread out across work streams?

I think I addressed this a bit above in terms of ownership of future insights, and how these initiatives may live within product teams as needed.

As far as the ongoing maintenance need - on-chain data will actually be by far our lowest-lift on an ongoing basis, and node maintenance the smallest fee (less than 20 USD/monthly currently scoped). Through the peer-to-peer sharing method pioneered by the OpenSource indexing project TrueBlocks, our on-chain data will only improve with more users.

More generally, we do see the full-time Data Engineer (@zengatsu) serving a role which will be billed similarly to how DevOps has been billed of throughout the DAO: each workstream who depends on such services absorbs part of the salary and SAAS costs.

3. A follow up question would be are there going to be occasionally check-ins as a team to align on the shared topic? How would this look different to the working style prior to dissolution?

Excellent question and I think we’re all curious how this is going to shape up in practice We welcome any ideas or best practices in terms of “guilds” and similar formations where we might have formal specialties imbedded in product teams…

[shawn16400]

In case you missed it - this proposal is now posted on Snapshot for vote. The vote closes on Tuesday Feb 21 so be sure you vote before then.

https://snapshot.org/#/gitcoindao.eth/proposal/0xf185198f0b0b7dacfcfd0e25d6129ed2b8a2fa40e5f527c38e966ebad0417284

if you have any issues voting, please ping shawn16400#5507 in discord for assistance.

[linda]

I voted yes on this proposal given the assigned steward reviews and that it’s reasonable to have a transition period/budget.

[lefterisjp]

I also voted yes as per my previous comment. I like the way you guys are handling this and the transitional budget is reasonable.