How to input on Foundations of Genesis 1.0

Kate · November 16, 2019, 12:11pm

Greeting esteemed collaborators,

The core Ecosystem team (Kate, Livia, Eric) at DAOstack have been tasked with being the bridge between DAOstack and the Genesis community - ensuring DAOstack are represented in the DAO as major stewards of the project, platform and tech and funders of Genesis. Genesis is the first DAO of DAOstack and will someday be responsible for the GEN treasury so it is important to design it well to ensure skin in the game is represented and it has the ability to grow and flourish.

As part of this role, and to help us migrate to the next evolution of Genesis (1.0), we have built some foundations that need input and feedback from the community in order to get them to the point where they represent us all well, these are:

Reputation distribution
Mission and Principles [DAOtalk Discussion]
Objectives (initial thoughts here - more detail to follow) This piece of work acutally originated in a proposal passed by Eric A before he joined the DS Ecosystem Team
Budgeting areas (Budgeting areas is a piece of work from Lior who has an idea for how we can direct our proposals and spending efforts to better use the funds to achieve our goals).

It is super important to get the input from the community now that we have some proposed foundations for the Genesis DAO going forward. And of course, these proposed foundations will only be established if they are passed by vote in Alchemy.

How you can input

First: make comments on the 4 DAOtalk threads (if possible propose adjustments to the text or additions)
Second: we’ll have a 2 (or more if needed) input sessions to discuss these foundational texts, to propose changes or suggestions that people may have and figure out how we can integrate them. This may be challenging, but with consructive attitudes I’m sure it can be done.

The Weekly Call this Tuesday 19/26/2019 will be used to discussed the Mission and Principles and Objectives. We can have another session for those who cannot make the weekly call and we will continously collect feedback via ongoing DAOtalk’s.

The following weekly call 26/11/2019will be used to discuss Budgeting Areas. Again if people can’t make the call and want to input we’ll figure out a solution.

Two More Foundational Pieces
There are two more aspects of the Genesis 1.0 design that we’d like to cocreate with the community by catalysing small and invited task forces - these two areas are:

Genesis Alliance
Funding Module

The Alliance will be a group of Genesis members and teams who are highly staked into the project (either by locked GEN or work). Many open networks create different levels of engagement to enable strategy and stewardship to take place while the network grows and new people join.

The objective of the Alliance is to allow some coordination - the details of how this will occur and how it will best serve Genesis need to be worked out by the Task Force responsible for designing solution. They will need to get input from the community and DAOstack before submitting a proposal. I will invite a small group to help me design the Genesis Alliance (I don’t exactly know how this invitation will work yet) but this group should represent some of our different interests in the community (DAOstack, DAO founders, builder teams, GEN holders).

A Funding Module could enable Genesis to directly raise funds itself, using the GEN it will govern. This is a very difficult task that needs careful consideration of many factors including the price of GEN on the market, crypto-economics and of course our principles and objectives as a community. We think we can delay the formation of this Task Force till Genesis 1.0 is up and running and the Alliance has formed.

Utilising significant expertise of some members of the DAOstack team we worked on an attempt to attract funding to Genesis but through some fast testing realised it wasn’t going to fly and that this could potentially be done by the community itself. We will realise details on this so the Task Force can learn and improve.

Note: it is my opinion that members of these critical task forces should propose to be paid for their time, if they wish.

Thanks a lot if you made it to the End here and looking forward to moving forward together . Please leave comments or feedback on the process I have set out above.

Tagging various people who have expressed interest in this process @Luuk @Grace @Jantine @orishim @exponent @AdrienDLT @perlmutterlabs @ElaKagel @Gil_B

Grace · November 15, 2019, 1:25pm

IMNVHO, when we talk about funding (self-funding) for Genesis, that should be in line with the mission of Genesis DAO. If the mission of Genesis DAO is to promote DAOstack and GEN, then the question would be “Who wants to contribute funds to DAOstack?” I’m not sure we have a good answer to who would want to do that, and why they would do that. DAOstack ran an ICO and received funds, so this might be a kind of “IEO” if the contributors were getting GEN in return for other currency contributions. Given that none of our projects seem to have much of an ROI, what would we offer to an investor/contributor? As a kind of not-for-profit DAO, it’s very hard for me to come up with a reason for anyone outside of DAOstack to align enough with the mission to give a donation. Maybe I am missing something here, but that’s my assessment of the funding issue.

Kate · November 15, 2019, 2:49pm

This is the task of the Funding Modul. One outcome of their work could be to advise that no funding module is likely to raise funds for Genesis. Additionally there more thinking and data than the few lines mentioned in this post as the point of this post is to signal the process rather than to dig into the task itself. Are you saying though that we shouldn’t try?

Grace · November 15, 2019, 3:02pm

I don’t know what you should or shouldn’t try. But with any marketing or fundraising campaign, there has to be a compelling WIIFM. I guess what I’m saying is that the first step is to develop a value proposition for a specific audience. Saying “let’s raise funds” isn’t the correct first step. The correct first step is say “What problem are we solving, and who are we solving it for?” If we can’t answer that question, then fundraising is more about asking friends to give us money because they like us, which does work, but only for a limited time/amount.

patdaostack · November 15, 2019, 3:42pm

Admin note: Added budgeting URL

IvanThinking · November 15, 2019, 8:09pm

@Kate Could you please make the Mission and Principles part a DAOtalk thread rather than a link to a Medium article?

Also - I don’t exactly understand the LGN part of the GEN lock. Can you point me to an explanation? I lock GEN for (say) 12 months and this allows the DAO to make a derivative LGN coin that they spend/use somehow? And LGN has value because…? I’m missing something basic here…

patdaostack · November 16, 2019, 12:14pm

Admin note: added to original post.

exponent · November 17, 2019, 5:13pm

Thanks @Kate and team for this body of work you put for GenDAO,

Would love to share some input and hope the points we bring up can support and contribute what we’re co-creating

As the mission and vision reads and as a GenDAOists, Genesis is the DAO that tasks itself with exploring new frontiers on the path to decentralization of power, it does so using Alchemy and more generally speaking DAOstack technologies with the greater mission of DAO-fying the world.

It is therefore critical that as a community we foster both:

Growth of DAOstack tech adoption
Growth of the GEN economy

In our exploratory pursuits as a community we have funded and conducted some fantastic experiments that contributed to Genesis mission in varying degrees, some indeed more than others. We have also learned that at times even the most elegantly engineered feature developed by a genius is not sufficient in isolation. Growing the GEN economy need focused dedicated efforts of a diverse community of technologist and entrepreneurs.

In achieving the objectives we set for ourselves as a collective, we’re bound to face challenges, we must strike the balance our drive towards productive outcomes and determination and the level diversity and of openness to paths we haven’t thought of or are coming from members of the community who may often not be heard.

The proposed objectives @eric.arsenault worked on should serve us as lenses through which we prioritize funding allocation for proposals. We should also establish sooner rather than later 3rd party funding in the form of periodical subscription for coordinated work or sponsorship plans.

We often forget as a community the differences between DAO types in Alchemy and in DAO space in general:

Type 1 - Open Society style DAOs Inclusive and diverse in their membership. Ambitious and often idealistic. these hard to coordinate, yet interesting as a socially transformative force that can empower the voices that are often not heard. Also very suited for the use of the Holographic Consensus.

Type 2 - Private membership DAOs similar to dOrg, these are built for efficiency as the on chain social consensus component in these DAO can be thinner and require less use of the Holographic Consensus. These orgs use of Alchemy is DAO is fantastic for convenience in transactions and transparency, but maybe less emphasized on collective attention prioritization with the holographic consensus.

These classifications are naturally coarse and don’t encompass the full spectrum.

Since Genesis isn’t a intending to become a private membership DAO, I will focus on the Open Society type DAO features.

Reputation, sustainability and revenue**

DAO-fying the world aligns well with growing and empowering as many people as possible. Establishment of onboarding and peer support mechanism are crucial here and reputation should be fairly easy to retain even if over time it is decreased due to member inactivity. However, given how hard it is to onboard members, we must allow inactive members to chose to become active with the leas difficulty possible.

While being open and inclusive, we must develop mechanisms for revenue generation to be sustainable. Not all stakeholders have equal skin in the game or similar characteristics, thus reputation capping should be defined for different stakeholder types depending on how much influence the DAO wants to allocate to each specific type of stakeholder. Notably, fluidity must be allowed participants to move between roles or perform more than one role simultaneously.

With that a few distinct stakeholder types should be discussed:

Worker - produces work in the forms of: code / event / signal proposal / a body of research / etc.

Pollinator/Catalyst - connects the DAO with external parties, potential stakeholders or teams, take notes, writes important content and guides. This role is important and too often goes without getting rewarded. We should enforce at least social mechanism for allocation of Rep and ETH to those members. Most naturally Kate’s DAOstack Ecosystem team can appoint or coordinate pollination and catalyzing activities and resource allocation for rewarding the important work they do.

Funders - to promote economic sustainability, 3rd party organizations can be attracted to engage Genesis community members in coordinated projects that serve those 3rd party funders.These funders in return should be contributing capital to Genesis by means of a periodic subscription and purchase of lockable GEN so that they can gain REP and actively cast their votes.

Entrepreneurs and downstream DAOs - Genesis is the mother of all DAOs. Entrepreneurial teams with lots of skin in the game currently engage in and support Genesis and the broader DAOstack ecosystem’s needs. They are building their own ventures on Alchemy. These stakeholders are highly invested in Genesis as their entrepreneurial activity is built on Alchemy’s foundation and these groups in my opinion warrant having lockable GEN vested in them to ensure their reputation is befitting their risks and input.

Example:
dOrg actively develop software
dHack: promotes the adoption of Alchemy through hackathons
bitfwd: Coordinating entrepreneurial market growth for DAOstack in APAC.

Predictors - have financial stake and interest in the activity that runs on the DAO.

This list is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather to draw attention to the existence of stakeholder variety and the need to recognize and support stakeholders in a manner that aligns with risks and contributions characteristic of each group. Taking in mind of course that no one stakeholder should be able to dominate, but, the potential and skin in the game should be reflected in the REP capping.

Thanks @SofiaD for reviewing and discussing.

Kate · November 19, 2019, 2:04pm

The objective of Today’s Weekly Call (5pm CET in https://zoom.us/j/7976264664) is to discuss 3 foundational texts for Genesis. You DO NOT have to join the weekly call to feedback. Just send your answers to the questions below in bold by replying to this thread

Proposed mission

‘The proposed mission is to expand the DAO ecosystem through DAOstack adoption and the increasing utility of the GEN token.’

It’s important that we solidify this and pass it by proposal. It needs to reflect the purpose of DAOstack while being able to inspire and attract members of the community

What changes would you suggest so that you feel inspired to achieve this mission, in your work/proposals and in your voting?

7 proposed principles Proposed Mission and Principles of Genesis 1.0 - Let's discuss here

First, note any principle that is not in the list that you think should be there, and why.

Second, identify any of the principles that you really don’t agree with, and why.

Objectives Genesis Objectives & sub-Objectives

We have some thought that has been done on objectives, this is still early work:

What in your opinion is the number one key objective that Genesis should focus on?

Remember - we want to make a proposal to have these foundational texts so that we can align going forward. Please submit constructive feedback to ensure we build stronger foundations

Kate · November 22, 2019, 9:29am

PROGRESS UPDATE

A small agile task force to work on the Mission, Principles and Objectives has formed with myself @Luuk and @exponent and we’re advancing the work with the great feedback from the Weekly Call. If you want to give feedback please feel free to add it here in this feedback board or even PM me on telegram.

Right now our plan is to develop a Purpose, with a mission as the way we will achieve that, and see if we can go from 7 Principles to 5 and try to have a balance between reality and aspiration. We’ve already got a very draft purpose - which has been floating around for a while but now comes to the fore:

'The purpose of the Genesis DAO is to build the infrastructure for a world where people own, govern and organize via decentralized collaborative networks (DAOs).

We pursue this purpose by expanding the DAO ecosystem through DAOstack adoption.’

We’ll be workshopping this even more, and advancing on the Principles. The task force will present something back end of next week.

We want more feedback on the proposed Objectives so either comment here, PM me, join the weekly call or feed-back in any constructive/creative way you so please

Happy Friday