# Sustainability Proposal Jam Session (6/9/22)

## Higher-Level Goals and Timeframes

We have **higher-level goals** and **timeframes**. The timeframes are *near-term* and *long-term*, and we've identified goals for both. Generally, for this proposal we're looking to implementing near-term ideas but with an eye toward longer-term discussions and solutions. We decided to focus on near-term ideas that were more seamless to implement and attempt to find consensus around these starting points.

We've identified that for longer-term proposals we'll take an approach rooted in getting more information from Warcamp and taking time to refine and iterate on our near-term solutions.

## Near Term Approach

- **Low Tech**
- Emphasis on minimalist, low tech solutions
- **Consensus Driven (based off the data)**
- Look toward the data and decipher what folks have identified
- **Low Bureaucratic Overhead**
- **Eye Toward Longer Term (Cycle 6 and beyond)**
- Gather more information from the DAO, get feedback on any changes implemented in Cycle 5, and discuss approach to gathering consensus around larger, more deeply impactful ideas

### Guiding Question

We set out with a key guiding question informing our approach to this near-term proposal: *what do people want?*

Several trends seemed to emerge from the survey responses. Folks seem to agree on the following items:

- Generally, folks want our burn rate to go down
- Increased agency and control
- Standards and control
- Desire for some sort of process related to value and compensation (review, standards, etc)
- Fear of value not being seen/appreciated by the DAO -- Visibility problem
- Visibility and valuation: Visible work bias? (This could be a longer-term problem -- what can we do in the short term to get us on a path forward?)
- No clear-cut way to see what someone's value is

## Reviewing the Survey/High Consensus Items

### 1: Soft-Budget Cap

- **Longer-term** idea: Consider if a soft-budget cap is across the entire DAO or Circle by Circle
- There are some other items we'd need to solve first, but there was a relatively solid consensus that something needs to be done with budget/capping budgets. We'd need to determine if this would be across the entire DAO or handled on a Circle by Circle basis (with each Circle having its own budget/cap)
- What does the DAO think should be allocated toward certain initiatives
- How would this impact recruitment and core contributors increasing their value level and commitment percent?
- Look at this from the point of view of soft caps
- **Near-term** idea for addressing this:
- Create a soft cap based on current burn across the entire DAO
- Look at the current burn and make sure we're not spending more
- DAO wide, not circle by circle in the short-term
- Hard look at anything that increases our burn
- Special consideration for expenses related to increasing revenue

### 2: How is Retroactive comp handled?

- Note: This may also relate to conversations around bounties, workstream staking, etc. (there may be some bias here from folks being very consistent across responses)
- Larger conversation via a followup:
- Bounties
- We can look at a structured review system at parts of the DAO where Retro compensation makes sense, and look toward a bounty board where it would make sense
- Look to using this in Cycle 6
- We don't even need a crypto-related protocol such as Dework. We can start with a spreadsheet to start implementing these (such as for Rangers)
- Look toward industry standards
- Would then have a editor/content strategist
- This could be circle based:
- Each circle could create their own Dework boards
- Know when to use this and when not to
- When bounty boards don't work:
- How do we calculate value?
- Move toward explicitly defined rates for roles to help standardize the rates for Retroactive contributors
- "This is the value that I added"
- This is a strong way of billing but how do we keep some sort of consistency around rates
- **Leverage Circle review sessions and oversight** about if the pay is appropriate for the retro contributors
- Bounty boards could also work here to help limit overhead
- How would a Retroactive system work with a bounty system?
- Would require someone to wrangle bounties (review, disputes, actual pay, etc.)
- Would need some oversight into the bounties to make sure we're not spending too much here
- Can always turn off the bounty approach to lower burn if needed
- Magesmiths:
- Challenge of appraising a job paying too much/too little
- Map work completed to pay requested and then review
- Magesmiths current work is actually pretty close to this structure
- Rangers:
- Rangers have moved recently to using a Project Board, so could also specifically leverage bounties for work (such as paid per article)
- Paladins:
- Recurring monthly things that need to be done with a time estimate for each task
- Alchemists:
- Determine actionable and tangible **deliverables** from the current Alchemist output

### 3: Commitment track value levels

- This will be a longer term proposal due to the complexity and how varied the responses were
- Let's find out more information from the DAO based on the following:
- Scope, allocations of focus and budget
- Immediate proposal: Move to a 1-10 value level system in the near/middle term. Moving into folks taking more HAUS to limit burn
- General reassessment of commitment levels

### 4: Detecting and handling disparity between individual's value

- Near-term:
- Flag system per Circle
- Anonymous(?) -- would need to be sensitive to visibility and context of work
- If adjusting someone's level you need to provide feedback
- There is no good way to move someone down, so we need more feedback about changing value levels (way more critical justificaitons for moving up)
- Folks shouldn't *specifically move down* -- it's more about increasing feedback loops
- What would the balance be here? This works if there is weight to the value selected
- **Flag System**:
- Flag would need to come from someone within the same Circle
- Conflict resoultion has to be Circle specific (fellow Commitment track contributors)
- Circle can delegate to another group (for example in Magesmiths can delegate to Dragons)
- Delegation will be proposal based (submit a proposal in the Magesmiths Circle)
- If in Circles, it's more related to folks who know the context of the work
- Not moving folks down
- Flagged -> must give feedback to help folks improve/meet their value level
- Long-term:
- Circle group review
- More holistic system for evaluating each other's value levels / evaluating each other's value levels
- **Value added** is a good benchmark but it's hard to calculate the actual value
- Spectrum of inputs could potentially be used to determine an individual's value level (value added, experience, peer review, self-assessment, unique role, etc)
- Keep drilling into the DAO about what resonates (what do people actually want?)

### 5: Delegating responsibility to elected representatives

- Having a dispute resolution committee/group outside of the Circle isn't a bad idea -- we could do a signal proposal/some other way to gain a sense of sentiment around this
- Delegation is one of the hardest points and where our DAO is the most divided
- Folks are extremely opinionated on this one
- Can see how we feel about the delegation parts about proposal before we submit it
- Giving folks a role around delegation
- If there was a dispute resoultion process/committee they can make a recommendation based on feedback that has been gathered: "You should aim to increase your output"
- Would need protections around flagging abuse and speaking out
- Some way to cycle out delegates to avoid strange power relationships

### 6: Coordinape and compensation levels

- Near-term: Remove the governance shares aspect of this process
- Focus more on giving props and praise for folks, not attaching to governance
- Separate the governance shares from Coordinape
- Emphasize this becoming a *cultural boost*, not the sole decider on our governance/ownership in DAOhaus
- Questions:
- Does this give enough of a cultural praising mechanic to even keep using?
- Long-term:
- Move to a tweakable system that we can configure with more granularity
- Gets more stake in DAOhaus via HAUS (not shares)

### 7: HAUS Limit
- Largely positive response to this
- Folks can buy HAUS as they want as it is, so this is an initiative to reward folks who are taking lower pay (in xDAI) so this helps extend our runway -- investing in what we're doing
- We should have some sort of an explainer around our social expectations/customs as related to HAUS

## Near-Term Actionable Items for the Proposal

### 1) Coordinape Change: Governance Shares

- **Governance Shares**: Commitment percentage determines what you receive for shares rather than the Coordinape process
- Can also potentially include value and commitment percent in the future
- What are the ramifications of doing this?
- Possibility that folks increase their commitment percent to acquire more shares, but do folks really do a lot with their shares that would lead to this type of gaming
- How would we do this for Retroactive contributors?
- Commitment estimate for the month

### 2) Increase Value Level Range

- Move current range of 1-5 to 1-10
- Practical considerations with this:
- Would we expand the $ value to the highest end (10) and then add more granularity to the in-between levels?
- Allow more granularity and growth within the DAO and the system/process improvements we make for setting and reviewing values will then have more of a range to work with

### 3) Flag System

- Flag would need to come from someone within the same Circle
- Conflict resolution has to be Circle specific (fellow Commitment track contributors)
- Circle can delegate to another group (for example in Magesmiths can delegate to Dragons)
- Delegation will be proposal based (submit a proposal in the Magesmiths Circle)
- If in Circles, it's more related to folks who know the context of the work
- Not moving folks down
- Flagged -> must give feedback to help folks improve/meet their value level
- Much more critical process for moving up a level

## General Topics

**Focus:**
- Near-term: DAO-wide survey asking about our focus -- what do you see as our core focus?
- Longer-term: Consider options such as workstream staking

**Looking Forward:**

We have lots of ideas for Cycles 6 and 7, but we want to take time to gather more sentiment and ensure that there is dialogue and debates. We'll post our longer term ideas in order to enter into this feedback and discussion process before proposing.

**Thoughts on Value Level:**

- Value levels (1-5) is too connected to reputation than to actual money needed
- Can we find a way to separate these? For example, if not needing the money then why need a higher level (other than reputation/signalling)
- Can there be a social process around this, such as keeping value high but allocating more HAUS to someone in this scenario
- Ensure that work is being accounted for and allow folks to distribute funds back to the DAO/others

## Questions for General Consensus

- Bounties and Retroactive Revamps
- Workstream staking