DAOing It Full Time | BanklessDAO Weekly Rollup
Catch Up With What Happened This Week in BanklessDAO
Dear Bankless Nation 🏴,
This week’s Community Call was run in a new, more conversational format. It may take some adjustment, but it’s already evident that this is a great improvement on the firehose-style updates of past Community Calls. We saw the value of this new format today during the round table discussion on what will no doubt be remembered as the Great Quorum Conundrum of ‘22. Everyone who listened is now well informed about the quorum difficulties we have, the options for resolving this, and the implications of each. Hearing the variety of opinions and viewpoints is very important as it allows us all to make an informed decision!
Many DAO members have worked for traditional companies, where the management makes all the decisions which cascade down the hierarchy. In BanklessDAO, we are very privileged to be part of an organization where each one of us has a say in the decision-making process. Governance is everyone’s responsibility, so read further below, get informed, and exercise your privilege!
Contributors: teeLEROO, Ssasho0, Samanthaj, Trewkat, tigress, borisSchickedanz.eth, BogDragonov, d0wnlore, siddhearta, hirokennelly.eth, Dippudo
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🗓 Weekly Recap
BanklessDAO Weekly NFT Showcase 🔥
🧑🎨 Artist: Blair Zaye
🏦 Auction Type: 1/1
💰 Price: 0.03 ETH
Blair Zaye is London artist with a taste for wicked smiles. Cryptogrillz is a limited collection of 1/1 PFPs with ETH and Bankless motifs. These are available from 2pm EST on Friday, February 4, 2022 via Rarible
Community Highlights
🚀 Community Call: New Format
Our Community Call has been revamped to be less firehose and more fireside. Apart from the announcements at the beginning, the rest of the agenda looks markedly different. Instead of including every guild and project update, “Hype News” will provide time for a few key highlights. Remaining guild and project updates will be published in a newsletter format every other Tuesday. The rest of the call is dedicated to a roundtable discussion and this is where the best part of the change comes. Every week the audience will be able to discuss and be informed about the most important topics in front of the community.
Community Call Agenda
1-10min: Governance and admin announcements
10-35 min: Hype News from project and guild representatives (4-7 updates)
35-55 min: Keynote speaker/roundtable facilitated by the moderator
55-60 min: Closing thoughts from the moderator
If you want your project or guild update to be featured in the Project Updates Newsletter, please complete this submission form.
🧑💻 Bankless Consulting Is on Fire!
The people at Bankless Consulting don’t sleep, they are on fire, besieged by a range of clients from different industries! Just this week they inked a new 30K USD client contract for website development.
They’ve received over 50 inbound client leads since the Season 3 launch on Twitter Spaces two weeks ago. One of these is the president of a major sports league who contacted Bankless Consulting via Twitter and asked if we could help with their Web3 strategy.
Bankless Consulting is a land of opportunities. Right now they need someone with experience building a community online for a cannabis play-to-earn NFT project. On top of that, there are opportunities for developers, and those with marketing, social media, and governance expertise. There are a plethora of jobs but you can also earn a finder’s fee for introducing new clients.
🔥 DAO Heat
What’s New
🧠 Crypto Sapiens Podcast
In this week’s episode Humpty talks with core team members from Yearn Finance. They discuss Yearn, onboarding from Web2 and more, via the lens of a journey from FANG companies to Web3.
✍️ BanklessDAO on Medium
🧢 BanklessDAO Beanie Merch Drop!
Keep your head straight in this bear market! Our frens over at MetaFactory have dropped a super premium beanie just in time for ETH Denver, and a long crypto winter. Whatever happens next, we know you’ll stay warm, look fresh, and weather the storm.
Rebate of 42% of purchase back in ROBOT
Designed by CryptoWifΞ
One Size Fits Most - Edition of 300
Wool acrylic blend + PVC patch
On-hand, shipments process in a few days
Will also be available for purchase/pick-up at ETHDenver
🌉 The humanDAO Makes Earning Rewards on HDAO Accessible to All Through Dual Chain Staking on Polygon
Our friends at humanDAO have a simple mission: help the underserved make a living in the Metaverse. To build on that mission, today they have released dual chain staking on both Ethereum Mainnet and Polygon. The Polygon proof-of-stake chain provides an affordable alternative to Ethereum. This aligns well with humanDAO’s mission to make Web3 earning opportunities widely accessible, especially for their large community from the developing countries. You can find instructions on how to stake, either on Mainnet or on Polygon, in this article.
Get Involved
💪 DAO Coordinape Round
Don’t miss the DAO’s latest round of Coordinape! The sign-up will be open from February 3-7, 2022. If you have contributed to the DAO, make sure to sign up, opt in, and remember to GIVE. GIVE runs from February 9-13, 2022.
Head over to the #bot-commands channel
Type in /coordinape form-request
Submit your information so you can be included in this round.
🧐 Upcoming Knowledge Session: Laika Blockchain Lab
Laika enables a no-code way of making requests to smart contracts. Join the project showcase and live Q&A session to be held next Wednesday, February 9, 2022 at 9:30pm EST in the Data Junkies voice channel. Note: You’ll need to grab the Analytics Guild role from the #role-select channel in order to RSVP and access the voice channel.
💪 Developers Guild Knowledge Session
The next Developers Guild Knowledge Session will be with Chris from humanDAO on Tuesday, February 8, 2022 at 8pm EST.
🏺 DAOlationships Guild
What’s cooking in DAOlationships Guild? An AMA with The Idols NFT project. Come and learn how The Idols are merging the power of DeFi with the strength of NFTs. We’ll be discussing The Virtuous Cycle, ETH staking, fair launch NFTs and much more.
Where: BanklessDAO Amphitheatre
When: Wednesday, February 9, 2022 at 8:00am PST / 16:00 UTC
Who: NFThinker, jarisjames, 0x_Neptune
🤝 KeeperDAO Referral Program
Get a job in crypto! Do you like solving hard problems, care about building more efficient markets for everybody, and want to work at the frontier of decentralized finance? KeeperDAO is looking for full time contributors, with salaries ranging from 169,000 USD -722,000 USD. There are positions ranging from engineering, recruiting, product marketing, copywriting, and design. Sound interesting? Sign up for our referral program and go full time DAO.
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DAOing It Full Time: Tips Gathered Around the Office
Author: Samanthaj
Thank you to my interviewees! | sovereignhealth.crypto#9040 | Above Average Joe#5427 | The Psych Guy (IST)#8880 | siddhearta#9802 | Jake and Stake#4439 | Liquidiot#5975 | Ornella 🏴 bDAO EN/ESP/IT#2775 | Icedcool🏴#4947 | hirokennelly.ethᵍᵐ🏴#0001 |
In 2021, a record number of U.S. workers quit their jobs. So many, that “The Great Resignation” got its own Wikipedia page.
Tired of forced virtual happy hours, crabby bosses, and office-politics-turned-Slack-politics, workers from every industry—Big Tech to tourism—have turned in their two-weeks en masse.
I think I know where some of those workers went.
As workers flock to crypto jobs, bDAO has been lucky to snap up some of that talent.
I recently gave up Slack and professional headshots for Discord and 1-of-1 pfps, and I became curious about who else was swiveling their chair and bouncing their yoga ball into the DAO office for good. So, I dipped into a couple cubicles to see what our full-time DAOers are up to and gather their sage advice.
Here are some tips that you won’t hear at the water cooler.
#1: Decrease Time Spent in Synchronous Calls to Increase Work/Life Balance
Many people agree that work/life balance is essential to keeping sane while working in crypto. But how do you achieve that? Making an effort to cut down on responsibilities is one way, but being more guarded with your time is another.
Sovereignhealth said that cutting down the time spent on calls to a maximum of four hours a day has been important for his productivity and for building equilibrium: “I don’t want to be buried in Discord, feeling obligated to keep up with every little detail,” he said. RedCrystalDragon holds a similar sentiment: “I'm far happier now, even with the stress of making sure I get paid, than I ever was working with a regularly paid job. I don't have to take a call if I don't want to,” she said. IcedCool said that being reasonable about how many meetings he can attend is an important new step for him: “If I'm in meetings I'm not necessarily getting work done, so I've been guarding my schedule strongly lately.”
Above Average Joe agreed that the flexibility of being full-time comes with greater responsibility, citing the balance between family and work as one of his biggest challenges. The DAO is “more flexible than corporate, but more responsibility,” he said.
I agree with these full-timers. Calls can be draining on energy and productivity. And the more calls you’re in, the more close to corporate life this DAO becomes. I try to look critically at the calls on my calendar and only attend the ones that I really want to be at. But, given that sync calls in the DAO are some of my favorite times of the day, saying no is pretty tough.
#2: Find Another Income Stream for Cushion and Safety
When a large piece (or, for many, the whole pie) of your earnings is provided in a low-market-cap, high-volatility coin, finding another income stream is essential for many full-time contributors. “Riding the BANK token is tough,” said IcedCool. “Personally, I am supplementing via yield farming and investing activity.”
Soverignhealth said that “unpredictable income” is a big challenge for taking on DAO work full-time. It’s not just that the token price swings up and down, it’s the varying flows of BANK coming in per month based on projects you’re involved in and tasks you take on. Even a different-than-normal Coordinape round can send things out of whack. Liquidiot expressed a similar sentiment: “My compensation varies wildly, in both the amount of tokens I receive and the volatility of the tokens themselves,” he said.
One potential solution to this would be for projects and guilds to set compensation based on USD value, then adjust the amount of BANK tokens contributors get based on the price of BANK on pay day. But that involves more overhead for coordinators and the potential of running multi-sigs dry.
A recent thread titled Full-time bDAO in the #dao-general channel lit up with people talking about how to find outside income. My tactic has been a freelance copywriting gig that pays just enough and doesn’t require me to be on too many calls. Others choose to contribute to other DAOs, have a savings and investment cushion to live off, get good at yield farming, or have family members with stable fiat jobs.
Unless, of course, you live in an area where BANK translates to more purchasing power. “I actually went full-time because this is my first proper job,” said The Psych Guy, who is based in India. “I have done internships, but they hardly paid the bills.”
#3: Starve Your Distractions, Feed Your Focus
Jake and Stake said that “shiny object syndrome,” where you find yourself getting pulled toward the newest, most exciting projects, has been a big challenge. “This eventually leads to accepting lots of different kinds of work and a loss of focus,” he said. This loss of focus isn’t good for deep-work activities such as writing. Learning to say no and keeping your focus on what’s in front of you is essential.
Siddhearta has taken on a unique approach to keeping his focus right where he wants it to be. “The last few months I’ve been experimenting with an at-rest, at-play model of living,” he said. “Play is DAO life, exercise, time with family. Rest is meditation, reading, naps. I play until I need to rest, and rest until I want to play.” But it can be hard to implement an at-rest/at-play model if you haven't set the boundaries that would allow you to do so. Hirokennelly said that once you build your social capital, you start getting pulled into projects left and right. “People are often wanting more of you, so learning how to set boundaries and saying no has been a challenge,” he said.
Overall, many full-time contributors said that setting boundaries and turning off the computer are essential to keeping sane. “Weekends are always off since connecting with Mamma Nature is veeeery much needed,” Ornella said. “It’s the only way I believe we can properly recharge for a new amazing week in DAO-life.”
#4: Lead With Your Heart When Things Get Tough
Almost all the full-time DAOers I interviewed said that their deep love for the work makes doing the work that much easier. No one mentioned BANK earnings as their internal driver (possibly on account of challenges noted in #2), noting instead the amazing bDAO community as their “raison d’être.“ I decided to take this path because it has purpose,” Ornella said. “It's a mission that will change the world.” Taking this mission and love for the community to heart can help motivate you when work gets busy. Liquidiot said that, “although many days have felt overwhelming (the burnout is real) I have yet to experience a day that lacked interesting problems to try and solve.” For internally-motivated workers, diving into interesting problems is a good way to rekindle that fire.
IcedCool said the people he works with “are some of the smartest, most interesting people that I've ever met. This additionally backs my thinking that it is 100% worth my time.” Above Average Joe said “the DAO is a natural place for me to call home,” and Hiro admitted that the work is “a lift, but I love it.” Siddhearta put it succinctly: “Sometimes the most joy comes from just hanging out with all the incredible people here in the DAO.” I couldn’t agree more.
Bonus Tip: Full-timers All Do One Thing Shortly After Waking Up…
The Psych Guy: “I wake up, check Discord a little bit…”
Above Average Joe: “Wake up, make coffee and shower, catch up on overnight DMs and @ tags…”
Liquidiot: “Most of my days involve rolling out of bed at 4 AM, grabbing a cup of coffee, and sitting down in front of a mic and Discord window. . .”
Hirokennelly: “I wake up early and start by dropping gms in the servers where I'm active. . .”
Ornella: “I wake up, have some breakfast, do some stretching and meditate a bit. . . I then get ready to DAO by checking on priorities and messages from the US-based DAOers.”
I, too, check Discord shortly after I wake up. But, honestly, would I want it any other way? The community excitement and love for the work motivates me to keep on keepin’ on. Ornella beautifully articulated what being full-time feels like: “The DAO gives and it gives A LOT. Energy from all over the world converges into one great force, a force so powerful that it not only changes the world around you, but it changes you inside out. Become the best version of yourself, receive that gift, and with it, the knowledge to help others achieve that as well.”
❤️ Contributor Care
Authors: tigress, borisSchickedanz.eth
Readiness: Culture Design and Operations
Readiness is the score you give yourself for being ready for the day and aware of your needs and wants! It’s a self-assessed measurement of your creative powers, physical wellbeing and mental as well as emotional debt.
It’s about you!
Your individual readiness enables a deeper human connection with the greater community.
Now it’s about us!
The readier and healthier we are, the better we can align to the mission, connect with others, and keep on building at a sustainable pace.
Headed west. Being on a journey. A wild and long one!
It’s vital to ask if there is something we can intentionally do to support ourselves in the long run:
What would it mean if we designed and developed our operations and culture in a more conscious way to make contributor readiness part of the conversation?
Here are three ideas and their progressions:
1️⃣ Project Retrospectives: Reflect and learn! Include some contributor love by creating a safe space for people to share how they feel right now. Scared of people not speaking up or big emotions coming out? Reframe your thinking: emotions carry a deep message. Anger does. And silence does as well. Whatever it is, something emerges. Deeply welcome it. There is wisdom in it ready to get unboxed.
2️⃣ Vibe Checks: Try to get everyone involved through interactive participation on digital whiteboards (e.g. Miro, Mural). You can come up with all sorts of cool photo collages that help to articulate and reflect the energy in the room - at scale!
3️⃣ gm three breaths meditation: Every morning when you type gm! make it a conscious act. Type gm. Pause for three deep breaths and connect with your guild and frens in space, hit enter! If you want to go deeper ask yourself: How am I arriving at my keyboard right now? Wired or tired? What is my intention of the day?
These are only three ideas. And there are more. A lot more!
If you would like to brainstorm and make readiness and (mental) health a part of your everyday DAOlife conversations please tag or DM us, or join us in the mental-health channel!
Hope you’re feeling wired, not tired, and ready for the day!
🌱🤍🧠
🎣 Phishing School
Authors: BogDragonov, d0wnlore
Demystifying Two Factor Authentication
What is Two Factor Authentication? It goes by a few names such as Multi-Factor Authentication, 2FA, MFA, and of course Two-Factor Authentication.
The Basics
Two-Factor Authentication or "2FA" is a security measure that requires a second "factor" to log in, but what does that mean? Traditional logins (Single-Factor Authentication) are a standard username and password combination. 2FA is an additional step which follows your successful password entry. Typically this is a rotating 6 digit code or a text message with a unique code.
Why 2FA?
2FA serves a very important purpose. If your password is guessed, stolen, or captured in some way, an attacker cannot log in to your account without also having control of your second factor. This helps you protect your accounts and gives you precious time to change that compromised password.
Different Types of 2FA
2FA comes in a few flavors. SMS, TOTP, and the chocolatey goodness that is U2F/WebAuthN. What does this all mean? We can break these down into a simple table:
To dive deeper into these let’s look at the detail of each.
No Second Factor
Obviously, no second factor is the easiest to use, but also offers no security above your username and password combo. A captured password is game over! If a service offers 2FA as an option, I highly recommend enabling it. The ease of use for single factor never outweighs the risk of a lost/stolen password unless you absolutely do not care about your account.
SMS/Text Messages
This is by far the easiest second factor. We all almost always have our phones with us, so receiving a text with a unique one-time use code is very simple. Almost every service that has 2FA offers this as a choice. SMS comes with some big risks though! First, protecting a high value account such as a bank account, Coinbase account or similarly valuable resource could make you a target. With only SMS protecting you, that means that a hacker might try to "SIM swap" your phone. This is where the attacker pretends to be you and gets your cell phone carrier to activate your phone number on a SIM card they control. Often times these attackers simply bribe cell carrier staff to do this, and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
TOTP (Google Authenticator)
TOTP is one of the most common non-SMS measures. It's a unique code you scan during setup, and then you have an app that generates rotating 6 digit codes. Google Authenticator is a very common application used to store these codes. This is still very easy to use, and moderately secure, however the theft of the unique setup code (don't save it or share it!) can still compromise your security. Additionally if your authenticator app is reset, or you lose your phone, you will lose access to those accounts if you log out of them, or are prompted for the code again. TOTP carries some risk this way, but ultimately it's one of the better methods for protecting accounts.
U2F/WebAuthN (AKA Security Keys)
This factor is the most secure as it requires connecting a physical security token to your device and tapping a metal contact on it to authenticate. The YubiKey is a popular example of these tokens and one I highly recommend. There are some big risks with this factor though. It's highly secure and decentralized so if you lose the token or it breaks, you will lose access to the accounts it protects. There are no ways to backup a proper security key either. If a service offers to let you setup multiple security keys, I recommend doing so. This is my favorite method of account protection.
Multiple Second Factors?
Absolutely! Do it! Many services allow you to setup multiple second factors, and then you can choose which one you want to use each time. Google accounts are a great example of this. You can use multiple YubiKeys, TOTP, and SMS if you want. You can then choose the factor most convenient in the moment. I highly recommend setting up multiple methods when available to mitigate the risk of locking yourself out. Be cautious though in your choices. Your account security is only as strong as the weakest factor you choose to enable. I typically use TOTP+2 YubiKeys when the service supports the combination.
Forced to Use SMS? What Can You Do to Make It Suck Less?
Is SMS-based 2FA your only choice? Lots of important accounts only offer this legacy option. Banks (lol) are a big example of this and while we can't wait to be fully bankless, we understand the need to have these accounts for interacting with the old money world. What can you do to avoid SIM swapping attacks? Unfortunately this advice is currently only for those of you based in the USA: get Google Fi service! It's a cheap second phone line (if you don't use data on it) that can receive text messages. Only give it out to the services that you enable SMS-based 2FA for. Unlike most cell carriers, Google Fi support staff do not have the technical ability to swap a SIM card unless the requestor has access to the Google account the service is opened with. So if you protect your Google account with YubiKeys or TOTP, then an attacker cannot SIM swap your Fi phone number. This is the measure I personally use where 2FS SMS is my only choice.
Note: There are other less common attacks on SMS 2FA that can get around this, but we'll save those for a deeper dive on this topic.
What About Hardware Wallets?
Unfortunately there is no 2FA for a crypto wallet, but we will discuss wallet security in a future Weekly Rollup!
🏛 Governance
Proposals in Discussion
📖 The “How to DAO” Book
The proposal is to publish the first definitive long-form “How to DAO” book in two volumes, the first focusing on the contributors’ side and the second on the creators’ side. With 2022 being the year of the DAO, the market timing is ideal. In addition to having projected sales of up to 500,000 USD, the book is a key tool in the bDAO goal of Web3 onboarding.
🔐 BanklessDAO Information Security Team
The Discord Nitro phishing campaign is a reminder that bDAO’s security must be a priority. The proposal is to fund an information security (InfoSec) team to secure bDAO’s IP resources and educate members about general security best practices. The bDAO InfoSec team will be situated under the Dev Guild, working in collaboration with DevOps, the Ops Guild, and DAO administration.
💸 Tokenomics - Moving to L2 Consensus Proposal
The Treasury Tokenomics group would like to open a discussion around migrating to an L2 or a sidechain because Ethereum L1 is no longer practical. Though the long-term plan is to be multichain, Polygon is the frontrunner. With voting approval to migrate to Polygon, a tokenomics committee will formulate a plan to present to bDAO.
👥 Amendment: KeeperDAO x BanklessDAO Talent Scouting Partnership
BanklessDAO (bDAO) and KeeperDAO (KD) have formed a talent scouting partnership to leverage the collective talent of bDAO to help recruit full-time contributors to KD. To incentivize this partnership, KD has created a referral program where they will pay bDAO a fee equal to 10% of the first-year salaries for any successful placements made by bDAO. We are now presented with an amendment to leverage the Newsletter Team for this program. Go check it out and vote!
🖥 Season 3 BanklessDAO Website Vision and Strategy
The website project created a “living” forum post, where they will post updates and provide transparency as to their goals and progress. The forum post allows us to read about the vision, objectives, strategic alignments, and measures of success. Their goals with this forum post are to:
provide transparency into what the bDAO project will be working on in the short term
align and promote collaboration with other guilds on various work items
generate conversations around the overall direction of the bDAO website.
💰 DAODenver Sponsorship
This proposal is asking BanklessDAO to support DAODenver with a grant of 50,000 BANK. In exchange for this financial support, BanklessDAO will receive undying love and devotion from the DAODenver community, and at least two electronic banners for display at DAODenver, a two-day conference focusing on the challenges and opportunities facing today’s DAOs (to be held February 15-16, 2022). The event is produced by DAOists.xyz in cooperation with ETHDenver. BanklessDAO strongly supported passage of a proposal to become a DAO Partner of DAODenver with 45 votes in favor and zero against.
👩⚖️ GSE and Quorum: The DAO’s Options to Repair Governance Processes
Quorum is a procedural requirement that sets the minimum number of people that must be present for a vote to become enacted. It exists so proposals can’t be shuttled through without a sufficient number of contributors casting votes. A quorum requirement can be thought of as a legitimacy requirement. It shows that a sufficient portion of the community have cast their vote.
A quorum of 36.8 M BANK was set in this post, which was voted in favor of. Unfortunately, this target is set too high and we can’t usually reach it. This puts some important questions in front of the DAO:
What should we do about the GSE Program, which was intended to provide solutions to medium and long-term issues facing the DAO?
What should we do about the quorum standard we set, knowing that it is unlikely that votes will reach this standard in the future, including any vote to revoke the quorum requirement?
In both cases, should we honor the 36.8M Bank quorum requirement or not? Should we stay true to what was already agreed? Or maybe we should acknowledge the mistake, take fast actions and show flexibility and adaptivity? What about the ethical point of view? As you can imagine the conversation during the Community Call was very lively with different viewpoints, concerns, and ideas. What are we going to do about it? Follow the link, read the information and be part of the decision making process!
✅ Action Items
🔐 Enable: 2FA on your important accounts.
🗳 Vote: Check out the forums to vote and comment on bDAO initiatives.
💰 Participate: Coordinape sign up February 3-7 2022 and GIVE February 9-14 2022.
🏃♀️ Catch up: Review this week's Community Call notes or listen to the recording.
🙏Thanks to our sponsor
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