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  • ATX DAO V2 - pt. 1: Guilds & Giving Circle

Working doc

Restructure ATX DAO as follows:

1. Replace the existing 11 committees with 3 guilds, aligned to the three areas of ATX DAO’s mission:

Onboarding Guild, with the goal of “Enabling local artists and businesses to participate in the crypto ecosystem”.
Community Guild, with the goal of “Uniting Austin's crypto communities”.
Policy Guild, with the goal of “Advising the government on better crypto policy”.

2. Each guild will not have elected leads. Community members will organically choose the direction, fluidly contribute to tasks, and get compensated accordingly.

3. Operational tasks listed below will not fall under any guild. These will be remunerated part-time positions.

General Operations, Treasury, and Accounting
Assignee: @MeganKay
Compensation: $40 per hour
Marketing and Events
Assignee: @512mace
Compensation: $1500 per month

3.1 More operational roles can be added as they become needed, upon the approval of a proposal as outlined in 7.

3.2 The people assigned to the tasks above are not eligible to receive compensation via the giving circle for tasks associated with their roles. Nonetheless, other non-assigned members who sporadically help with operational tasks can submit their contributions for recognition in the giving circle.

4. Establish an operational epoch of one month. This epoch will serve to mark the cadence of compensation, monetization strategies, contribution submissions, and strategic decisions.

4.1 Each epoch will begin on the first day of the month and end on the last day of the month.

4.2 The giving circle ceremony will take place during the in-person member’s meeting of the following month.

4.3 At the end of each epoch, member contributions will be financially compensated according to a social giving circle.

4.4 The giving circle and compensation will be structured as follows:

4.4.1. Amount: At the start of each epoch, 1,000 USDC will be reserved to compensate member contributions across the three guilds.
4.4.2. Eligibility: Eligibility for compensation in the following giving circle is based on DAO membership and self-appointed contributions. Meaning that if you are a DAO member and claim to have made a contribution via the contribution form, you are eligible for compensation in the next giving circle.

  • Form: The form will allow you to either add a contribution to a standalone project, or a contribution to an existing project. You should only add contributions that have been completed during that epoch.
  • Definition of contribution: Contributions are anything that helps advance the DAO in any of its three guilds (policy, industry, or community). These do not include operational tasks such as answering emails, updating the website, managing social media, etc. Operational tasks do not fall under any guild and have appointed people on flat monthly rates to fulfill them.

4.4.5. Participation: To participate in the circle (that is, to award giving points to each other), one must be present in our monthly in-person meeting and be a DAO member. Every member present will receive 10 giving points. Members can choose to recognize each other’s contributions with however many points they wish. They don’t need to allocate all their points in a given epoch, can allocate more than one point per contribution if desired, and can also allocate some or all their giving points to their own contributions if they believe it to be fair.
4.4.6. Recognition: During the giving circle, each member will allocate giving points to contributions, not to individuals. This incentivizes people to recognize impactful work while minimizing the impact of personal relationships and charisma in the recognition process.
4.4.7. Compensation: At the end of the giving circle, members will receive a percentage of the epoch’s total compensation pool in $USDC, corresponding to the percentage of the giving points received across all their contributions over the total giving points allocated for that epoch
4.4.8. Funds Rollover and Cap: If not all the distributed giving points are allocated at the end of an epoch, the percentage of unallocated funds will roll over to the next epoch to a cap of 3,000 USDC. After this cap, all unallocated funds will return to the DAO treasury.

5. This proposal overwrites the following organizational proposals:

ATX DAO Blueprint

Subcommittee Head Assignments

Education Committee

Committee Reorganization

Committee Chair Elections

Committee Budgets

Establish Political Thank Tank

Reputation and Bounty System

Core Team Structure: Spring Term 2022

DAO Compensation and Revenue Sharing Models

  • With the exception of the already approved $30,000 events budget and compensation for marketing and events.

Rationale:

Mission Statement and Organizational Alignment

ATX DAO’s mission has organically evolved from what was first passed by the genesis team in our blueprint (November 19th, 2021) to what we see in practice in the organization today. Particularly, since the establishment of the public policy think tank, ATX DAO has progressively become a more relevant crypto policy advisor for the city of Austin and the state of Texas.

Our mission has grown to encompass three key areas of operation: Community, Onboarding, and Policy. We “unite Austin's crypto communities, enable local artists and businesses to participate in the crypto ecosystem, and educate the government about the benefits of Web3”.

Nonetheless, our current organizational structure establishes 11 committees, and our main communication system - discord - has 11 member-only channels and several community channels. This has led to significant operational cacophony and made it virtually impossible for less active members to keep up with the DAO and, consequently, made it hard for new members to engage in the DAO.

Reorganizing the DAO into three guilds that directly align with the areas of impact of the DAO will help reduce the operational overhead of multiple committees while giving members a more digestible way to stay updated on everything that is happening in the DAO.

Decentralization and Fluid Contributions

The current committee head format has led to centralizing decision-making committee heads. Members wanting to engage and propose ideas in certain areas need to go through these people for context, social “permission”, and official sponsoring of any proposal they want to submit. This, added to the communication cacophony of our discord has led to myriad backchannel discussions where only a few members are actively influencing the future of the DAO.

Due to this decision-making centralization, the structure has also created operational single points of failure. If for whatever reason, a committee head is not engaged at a given point in time, the DAO becomes stagnant in that area. This means committee heads can’t take a break or lose engagement in the DAO, for the organization stops without them. Lastly, the tenure of these positions makes us slow to react to less engaged or poorly behaved committee heads. Removing the committee model and elected positions will contribute to a more decentralized organization. Communications will become more transparent and decision-making and strategy will be distributed across the community.

Another benefit of the guild system is that it brings fluidity to the operations of the DAO. Members are free to take a break, to absent themselves from daily DAO operations, or lose interest in the organization altogether, while the DAO will organically absorb their contributions and readjust. New members who want to contribute to the organization simply need to pick an area that fits them well (onboarding, policy, or community) and start an initiative or contribute to any of the ongoing projects.

Focus on IRL connections and community building.

The new organizational structure places a lot of power on the members who attend the monthly in-person meetings. These members will have the effective giving power of choosing who gets compensated for a given epoch and vote on the continuation of any ongoing revenue projects.

This emphasis on in-person meetings is deliberate, and it stems from the belief that, as a city DAO, the ability to get most of our members in the same room is our superpower. This IRL component and the trust that emerges from IRL connections is what sets us apart from other DAOs. This organizational structure puts that competitive advantage at the forefront of our operations.

It is understandable that there will be times when even highly engaged members simply won’t be able to attend in-person meetings. It is worth highlighting that members can still be recognized and compensated for their contributions even if they are not present. Being absent from any monthly member meeting will not hinder members’ future engagement or opportunities in the DAO in any way.

Most of us joined ATX DAO because it is fun. Hanging out with our crypto friends is fun; drinking beers and grilling out with the crypto community is fun; showing off our gains during the bull market is fun, and suffering together during the bear market is fun. The incentives to show up to the in-person member meetings are, ultimately, an incentive to build those IRL connections, leverage the efficiency and trust they bring, and put the fun back into our vibrant community.

Focus on sustainability, prevention of contributors’ burnout, and recognition of work

The central objective of this proposal is to build a sustainable City DAO: A truly decentralized autonomous organization that can stand on its own, that can outlive any member’s burnout, that is owned and spearheaded by its community, all while doing good for the city we love.

To achieve our goal, we need to do two things. First, we must recognize and start compensating our members who have been tirelessly working for this organization. Show them, with monetary and social recognition, that their work is seen, that it matters, and that it is all for a greater cause.

Second, we need to decentralize the operations of the organization. Only this way will we be able to create ownership across the DAO and build an organization that is bigger than any of its members. Every single holder of an ATX DAO NFT is the owner of this organization and should feel empowered to act that way. This is our thing. This proposal addresses those two elements in an attempt to take ATX DAO to the next level. It is important to highlight, nonetheless, that this proposal will start bleeding out ATX DAO’s treasury in recognition for work and as a way to incentivize sustainable revenue streams for the organization. This proposal was written with full awareness of its impact on our financial models. At the proposed burn rate - including operational positions, monthly compensation pools, and monetization idea incentives - our runway is approximately 12 months.

It may well be the case that we reach the end of that runway and we have not been able to find a way to sustain the organization in the long term. By voting to pass this proposal, we must all be aware that this is a real possibility, and we must be fine with that outcome. Although, personally, I would rather have us die a glorious death in an attempt to do something big than be too conservative and face a slow death by lack of engagement.

It is time to go big or go home.

    Now that we have more members I think we are finally at a size where we can begin to decentralized, so I appreciate the spirit of this proposal.

    A couple questions and comments on first read through.

    Guilds

    • What is the purpose of the Guilds given that the giving circle compensation amount is across all three guilds?
    • Will each member fall under one specific guild?
    • Will there be regular meetings held for each guild? If so, who will be responsible for organizing and running these meetings?
    • How will the guilds operate differently or similarly to committees?

    Epochs / Giving Circle (may want to change the title of this section to reflect that it is mainly about the giving circle)

    • Who is responsible for organizing, running, and recording the giving circle ceremony?
    • Is there a way we automate distribution of these funds to reduce the operational burden?
    • Is funds rollover necessary, or can we simply divide percentage based on the number of allocated points? (i.e. ignoring points that individuals choose not to allocate)

    I do want to note that this will break the REP system. Is there a way that we can build an on ramp for contribution based membership under this new model?

      realitycrafter

      Addressing you comments Jesse:

      Guilds

      • Purpose: We spoke about this in more detail during the last member meeting on Monday, but it is merely a way to organize communications within the discord and funnel/quantify contributions in all the areas of operation of the DAO.
      • Members belonging to a specific guild: Members should be able to contribute to whatever guild(s) they want, without the necessity of any formal affiliation.
      • Meetings and leadership: A big bet of this proposal is that social leaders will emerge for each guild (as they have done so already). It should be up to the people who are doing the work in these areas to decide whether they need to meet regularly or how to better manage their workloads.

      Epochs/Giving Circle

      • Leading Giving Circles: As per your request, will add an operational role of Giving Circle mediator in the proposal.
      • Automating Distributions: There is nothing saying there can't be a way to automate this, but as of now, there are no tools that support this automation. Coordinape is working on this automation.
      • Fund rollover: The rationale for the rollover of funds was to incentivize a more fair rewarding for bigger, longer term projects that span across multiple epochs.

      For instance, say during an epoch there were only 3 "small" contributions - say hosting a meetup, updating the website, and promoting a learning session with artists. Since these contributions were small, let's say not all the giving points (and funds) were allocated during this epoch.

      Now say in the next epoch a "bigger" project that took 3 months to complete is done - say we pass DAO legislation, or somebody successfully builds token-gated pages into our website. The rationale here is to make it possible for these longer-term projects to be rewarded in higher amounts (if the funds rollover previously) without having the giving circles turn into a "jackpot" kind of scenario (hence the $3k cap).

      On-ramp

      I absolutely agree that we should build an on-ramp for non-members to become DAO members via the giving circle. This is something I believe we should work towards, but I would like to see this model tested before we introduce that on-ramp.

          SamPadilla

          PROPOSED EDITs:

          1. As proposed by @realitycrafter, adding a new role for giving circle MC that @brennanmulligan and I will hold. Also introducing a method for new members to become giving circle MCs, and assigning the tasks of running weekly meetings to @MeganKay and/or @512mace
          2. Added information regarding the first epoch of the DAO.

          3. Operational tasks listed below will not fall under any guild. These will be remunerated part-time positions.

          General Operations, Treasury, and Accounting:

          • Assignee: @MeganKay
          • Compensation: $40 per hour

          Marketing and Events:

          • Assignee: @512mace
          • Compensation: $1500 per month
          (NEW)

          Giving Circle MC

          • Assignees: @brennanmulligan and @SamPadilla
          • Compensation: $75 per giving circle
            .
            .
            .
            (NEW)
            3.3 Any DAO member can become MC of the giving circle upon unanimous approval of all other current MCs.
            3.4 Running the weekly member calls on Mondays is a responsibility that will be shared by @MeganKay and @512mace as part of their operational tasks.

          4. Establish an operational epoch of one month. This epoch will serve to mark the cadence of compensation, monetization strategies, contribution submissions, and strategic decisions.

          .
          .
          .

          (NEW)

          4.5 The first epoch (Epoch 0) of ATX DAO V2 start as soon as this proposal is approved and lasts until the end of the month when the proposal was approved.

            SamPadilla Automating Distributions: There is nothing saying there can't be a way to automate this, but as of now, there are no tools that support this automation. Coordinape is working on this automation.

            This is incorrect, based on my demo, this is currently supported in Coordinape.

                SamPadilla Now say in the next epoch a "bigger" project that took 3 months to complete is done - say we pass DAO legislation, or somebody successfully builds token-gated pages into our website. The rationale here is to make it possible for these longer-term projects to be rewarded in higher amounts (if the funds rollover previously) without having the giving circles turn into a "jackpot" kind of scenario (hence the $3k cap).

                I think that contributions need to rewardable in an outcome agnostic way.

                For example, we should be compensated each month for our contributions to policy whether or not the bill passes.

                    SamPadilla The form will allow you to either add a contribution to a standalone project, or a contribution to an existing project. You should only add contributions that have been completed during that epoch.

                    I think more attention is needed here.

                    What if my contribution is not a part of a "project" (however that is being defined here)?
                    What do we mean by contributions that were completed?

                    IMO project based contributions are not necessarily what the giving circle is for.

                    Is providing thoughtful feedback on a governance discussion part of a project? Do we want to have to define a project for every little thing we might want to incentivize participation in? Probably not, because now we have administrative overhead similar to DeWork.

                    Whether or not thoughtful discussion of governance proposals is "project-based" or not it is definitely something that I think we should be incentivizing.

                    I think we are putting up too much structure around this. I see the giving circle as monetized appreciation. If you appreciate what someone has done, reward them. The whole point is that its subjective, or rather, inter-subjective, because we are cross-referencing all the opinions of the participants as to who should be compensated. This keeps overhead low, vibes high, and relationships at the center - by design.

                        SamPadilla 4.4.6. Recognition: During the giving circle, each member will allocate giving points to contributions, not to individuals. This incentivizes people to recognize impactful work while minimizing the impact of personal relationships and charisma in the recognition process.

                        Does this mean contributions will be anonymized? Can each person have multiple contributions? This feels like it could add complication.

                        One of the key purposes behind the giving circle is to person-alize the way we value eachother's labor - it works precisely because it is context rich. Our relationships carry an incredible amount of information. To remove the opportunity for relationship to shape decision making is to take away the nuance which is fundamental to our social cohesion. If we strip away to much of that context, we're just giving money to lifeless jira tickets, not to the people that we know, trust, and can have discussions with (individually or as a larger group) if we feel conflict or misunderstanding needs to be resolved.

                        This is an excellent interview with the founder of coordinape which does a good job of illustrating that: https://youtu.be/L54lcwjUYzM

                            @SamPadilla @brennanmulligan We need to include this MAJOR REMINDER from the previous compensation proposal:

                            Additional Notes
                            Any compensation will be considered reported income. Any individual receiving income in excess of $600 (whether as salary, commission, or bonus) can expect to receive a 1099 tax form reflecting their compensation received for the calendar year. ATX DAO will not be withholding taxes and individuals will be expected to ensure their own tax liabilities are met.

                            To expand on this note - this means that ATX DAO will need to collect your social security number. It would be awesome if there were payroll systems where members could enroll themselves, input their SSN, and at end of year the tax forms would be generated. I don't even mind if I have to go in once a year and update what was paid out to everyone. I do not know if this is possible but surely there is a solution in the market already. We aren't the only ones in this boat.

                            Personally, I do not want any administrator of the DAO having access to SSNs as it creates too much liability for the DAO and the individual who has access to that information. We want everyone's personal identifiable information to be as secure as possible. I do not mind tracking member names and amounts paid - but I absolutely do not want anyone's SSN at risk or exposed.

                              brennanmulligan

                              So a contribution for a given month could be "I am working on xyz with end goal of A"?

                              Sounds fair to me. That was the main rationale behind rollover. If that is the case then the need to roll over funds in my eyes is not really there.

                              Curious to hear @512mace thoughts on this since he first brought this up.

                                brennanmulligan

                                Contributions would not be anonymized. Contributions would be attached to whoever did them, but instead of assigning giving points to the people, you'd be valuing the contributions they had during a given epoch.

                                  MeganKay Hmmm good point.

                                  Do you think this still applies when compensation contributions are short of $600?
                                  I def think we need to handle this and due to my ignorance in the space I kinda defer to other on this front.

                                  Happy to add this to the final proposal

                                      SamPadilla Technically, anyone receiving small amounts of supplementary income has the responsibility to report it to the IRS (cash tips, etc.). The reality is a lot of people don't. That's not our concern though. We only have an obligation to generate a 1099 for anyone that we pay more than $600 in a calendar year. I'm looking at payroll providers that can handle this now, unfortunately they are expensive ($50/contributor/month). I will keep looking at what we can do administratively. The backup plan would be to have an accountant prepare the 1099s, in which case we would need to provide amounts, legal names, and SSNs. We would need a secure way to store SSN info to protect our members as well as ATX DAO

                                      This is currently an administrative gap and should not deter or the outcome of the proposal. It is important though and people need to know the information we need.

                                      I am not an accountant so if anyone else has insight on this, I would love to discuss.

                                        I've always been a fan of the Coordinape type of compensation model feel as if people need to be recognized for the work they have contributed.

                                        I think the proposal makes the assumption that inactive members will become active due to the compensation aspect. I'm not sure if this will be the case. I think these circles tend to work the best when there is already an active group of people.

                                        Some questions/comments:

                                        1. Which month do you want to start this? As soon as it passes in Nov? There will need to be extensive communication with the community.

                                        2. I'm confused by the in-person giving circle.

                                        4.4.5. - "To participate in the circle (that is, to award giving points to each other), one must be present in our monthly in-person meeting and be a DAO member"

                                        and

                                        "It is understandable that there will be times when even highly engaged members simply won’t be able to attend in-person meetings. It is worth highlighting that members can still be recognized and compensated for their contributions even if they are not present."

                                        So if people contribute during that month but are unable to make the monthly meeting would they be able to participate in the circle?

                                        While I think in-person events and interactions are very important I don't think missing one meeting should disqualify someone from earning through the circle. A lot of our work is done asynchronously and I don't see why this should be any different. In fact, during the member interviews, some people said they wouldn't be able to be as active off-line as they could be online. While ATX DAO is meant to facilitate local connections those connections and contributions could still happen online. Coordinape is also built to work with remote teams.

                                        1. The proposal calls for 3 guilds. We initially had 5 committees and expanded to 11. What will be the procedure to add guilds? A simple proposal vote?

                                        Amount: At the start of each epoch, 1,000 USDC will be reserved to compensate member contributions across the three guilds.

                                        I feel that this amount should be percentage based so as to coincide with the dao's bank growing (or shrinking)?

                                        I did some research and this may be a good answer for our tax reporting and 1099 generation! If I'm reading correctly, Stripe can file the 1099 forms for only $3 per form. That's much better than others I've seen! I reached out to their team to see if there's anything special for crypto since I think thats a specific form (1099B or K but I'm not sure) https://stripe.com/connect/1099

                                          MeganKay Nevermind about this, Stripe Connect says they will not work with crypto. I'm going to look into Quickbooks as an option. Looks like they have a payroll add on for contractors, $2/contractor/month which isn't terrible.

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