Storming Into Season 6 | BanklessDAO Weekly Rollup

Catch Up With What Happened This Week in BanklessDAO

Oct 29, 2022

Dear Bankless Nation 🏴,

As Season 5 officially winds down, there’s a lot be hyped for, not least of which is the opportunity Season 6 affords the DAO to put deep work into longstanding issues around our governance processes and procedures. Governance is the foundation of all we do, and the opportunity to keep working to get it right is one of the privileges of being in a space that optimizes for self-sovereignty.

Apart from governance, there’s a lot to consider next season, whether it’s hosting AMAs with big names like Lido and Brave, or committing to upping your writing game by joining the third BanklessDAO Writers Cohort that will be starting on November 18. Previous cohorts were a huge success, having shipped well over 100 articles, and it pushed folks to become more consistent writers and promoted new connections amongst DAO members. As we know, it’s not really about Layer 1 or Layer 2, but Layer 0, the people who make the cryptoverse the place we want to spend our time.

Crypto Sapiens will soon be available in video on YouTube, and stay tuned for upcoming recordings with DeWork, Disco.xyz, and Forcaster. Speaking of newness, the first version of the Bankless Advisors website is nearly complete and the onboarding process will begin soon. Bankless Advisors are further proof that we keep on building the bear.

As for building the bear, this week’s editorial focuses on the Season 6 preview. We’re storming into Season 6 together, continuing to build the future of social relations, like our support for the DAO’s latest L2 nominees: AhinoK, Sandeepdas, sketchbreezy, Shaun/dancingpenguin, Warrior, and Ella.Dane!

Please take this gap week to rest — to put great work into Season 6 you must put in the patient work of recharging too. Thank you for an inspiring season, and see you in November.

Contributors: Deewon, ijeblowrider|Ambra, Orlando107 DAOist, ximpli_ana, WinVerse, olokoji, Feems, ETrinity007, anointingthompson1.eth, Liquidiot, HAshBrown27, Trewkat, siddhearta, HiroKennelly

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Storming Into Season 6

Author: Orlando107 DAOist

As Season 5 draws to a close this week, it’s time for us to think about recharging as we prepare to steer the DAO into next season. Season 5 saw many major developments, including a revamped Coordinape, the conclusion of the first GSE cohort, and a new method for funding guilds. But there’s no resting on our laurels, as Season 6 will require renewed focus on governance, revenue, and onboarding.

If you’ve ever had to go to a corporate team-building exercise, you’re probably aware of the team development stages described by the psychologist Bruce Tuckman. Tuckman said there were four key stages in the pathway to a team’s success: “forming, storming, norming, and performing”. Without describing all four stages, it seems evident that BanklessDAO is somewhere between the ‘storming’ and ‘norming’ stages; there is still some friction over the best way to produce results, and even what those results should be, but there is a definite cohesion and appreciation of one another's strengths. We have a shared a vision, and that’s kept us going through some tough times.

After the wake-up call of the bear market, many of us wondered what was next with crypto. Some even bought into the ‘crypto-is-totally-dead’ narrative. Those of us in BanklessDAO know this is not true, that there is real value in what we are building, but we’ve still had to shake off general market anxiety and there is no doubt the bear is still hanging around in the form of depressed asset prices and inflation. And even though crypto has not bounced back yet, we can still do something — show that crypto cares and wants to look after its citizens. Caring for each other while we build for the future has been our focus from day one, and it has been informing our decisions ever since. Moooving into Season 6, let’s work on aligning the DAO’s collective energy towards those key objectives around governance, revenue, and onboarding.

Governance

It may seem like we beat the governance drum a little too loudly in BanklessDAO, but learning how to work together and govern in a distributed and decentralized way is one of the greatest challenges and opportunities in web3. There are major governance moves on the horizon for BanklessDAO, so let’s set the table and see how the governance feast looks for Season 6.

GSE Cohort 1

It’s been more than two seasons since the first Governance Solution Engineers were selected to address persistent governance issues in the DAO, including aligning contributors and strategic priorities. Their initial tenure concluded during Season 5. While it’s fair to say the GSE has had mixed results, in a Forum post dated September 15, 2022, the GSEs recommended a number of improvements to the operations of BanklessDAO, including revamping the Guest Pass system, having a BANK-buyback program, and moving projects towards a variable compensation model. As the first GSE cohort has concluded, it’s going to be up to the community in Season 6 to pick up the GSE’s baton and either run with it or elect a new class of GSEs to continue the work.

In the documents that kicked off the GSE program, it was decided that a base salary would be guaranteed and bonuses would be paid out retroactively. According to the update provided on the Forum by the GSE team, no payment has been provided to date and final compensation will be decided through a vote. As we wrote last week, it’s up to all DAO members to review what has been accomplished and vote according to their own assessment. Part of the hard work of Season 6 will be to take an objective look at the GSE program and determine both the amount of compensation for past GSE members and whether a future GSE makes sense.

Constitution

The main work product produced by the GSE is the Constitution and BanklessDAO Improvement Process, which passed a Snapshot vote in late September; both documents were officially adopted and are available via the bDAO GitHub repository. The Constitution attempted to capture the current state of the DAO’s organizational structure and governance processes, but as planning for Season 6 got underway, it became clear that the Constitution did not capture the community’s procedures around funding, and plans are underway to submit bDIPs in Season 6 to amend the Constitution to clarify funding procedures for projects and guilds. There is talk in the channels of holding regular meetings and / or AMAs to both educate DAO members on governance procedures and processes in the DAO, and to collectively work towards clarifying and amending the Constitution to better reflect operational realities and to provide a more flexible and responsive framework for future needs.

bDIP

If the Constitution is the code or rulebook that the DAO agrees to use as a basis for governance procedures, then the BanklessDAO Improvement Process (bDIP) is the way that we update and change that code. Modeled after the Ethereum Improvement Process (EIP), bDIP proposals provide a structured way to improve the processes and procedures that we use to govern ourselves and guide decision making.

Even before the close of Season 5, we have our first proposal — bDIP00: Seasonal Funding Process Clarification. This proposal clarifies the seasonal funding process used by the Grants Committee to reflect they actually assess previously funded guilds and projects. This bDIP proposal is still active on the Forum and needs to receive 51 votes in order to pass the quorum threshold established in the Constitution for minor changes. If you have yet to vote on this bDIP, please do so now.

We can expect many more bDIP proposals in the coming seasons as we continue to refine and clarify our governance.

Community Vote

Schedule and Funding

Season 6 will kick off on November 7, 2022 and run through February 5, 2023, with a gap week scheduled for February 6-13. As with the last two seasons, the Community Vote confirmed that a majority of voting members prefer that funding remain steady at 19.5 million BANK. For reference, the Treasury currently holds 170 million BANK, 27 ETH, 48,000 USDC, and not insubstantial amounts of governance tokens, including those from VitaDAO and Rocket Pool.

In Season 4, the Grants Committee instituted a new method to disburse funds to projects, namely in two parts, with funding contingent, in part, upon KPI reporting. Interestingly, the Community Vote revealed that nearly half of all voters feel that this level of accountability is insufficient to mitigate the risks associated with decentralized project management. Stay tuned during Season 6 to see what bDIPs or additional actions the community may take to increase the financial oversight in our projects.

In Season 5, the idea of Member-Based Guild Funding — where guilds are given baseline funding that is augmented by the number of active members — gained traction and was implemented, but the Constitution did not reflect this community desire, so stay tuned during Season 6 for a bDIP to specifically address this issue.

Finally, as implied by the funding totals mentioned above, guild, project, and contributor remuneration via Coordinape will remain unchanged for Season 6.

Still Storming

In Season 6, guilds and projects will continue to more tightly integrate. A series of bDIPs will clarify the Constitution, particularly the uncertainty around funding, but maybe also the Guest Pass system. When this cohesive effect is finally realized, a powerful storm of productive, creative power will be unleashed, propelling the DAO into its next iteration: an organization that helps to lead web3 forward while widening and strengthening the onramps that will help lead to mainstream adoption.

But first we need to clarify our governance. Each new season uncovers weak spots in our processes, and the bDIP process will enable us a way to, over time, strengthen our governance practices and create an enduring Constitution that serves the needs of the DAO and its contributors.

We’ll also need to continue to focus around revenue-generating activities, and seek and elevate those who can help us to better engage and grow our audience. While content teams seek sponsors and other traditional forms of revenue, let’s be sure to look to the tech behind the web3 revolution when developing long-term approaches to self-sovereignty. We can weather the storm, but let’s make sure we’re bringing our toolkit with us when we lead the way ahead.

🗓 Weekly Recap

Community Highlights

📺 Weekly Rollup Recap with Liquidiot

Do yourself a favor and join Liquidiot (Allyn Bryce) for some word salad and a recap of last week’s Rollup! It’s worth watching even though you’ve already read the newsletter, just for the sheer fun of watching Allyn make comedy magic on screen. You can catch up on previous recap videos, produced by Liquidiot and Winverse, on the BanklessDAO YouTube channel.

🌐 Cryptopians in Bogota

Author: Feems

Image credit: Trewkat (from supplied images)

In the second week of October, the city of Bogota, Columbia, saw thousands of builders, DAOers, and web3 professionals arrive for a week of conferences (ETHLATAM, Shilling Point, Devcon) and late-night fun at the endless side events and parties.

The preconceived rumblings about safety in Bogota and other concerns disappeared as I encountered walkable neighbourhoods, high-quality experiences, and friendly people. Bogota is, in fact, a prosperous cosmopolitan city where art, culture, and gastronomy coexist in every corner and neighbourhood, similar to New York and London, with its Michelin-starred restaurants and top-quality arts and culture scene.

My week in Bogota quickly put to bed the social media concerns and fears about its safety; like most cities, one must apply common sense and street smarts, but there was so much to enjoy.

The main event was Devcon, a conference initially for technical builders that has expanded to include various players: designers, researchers, infrastructure operators, community organizers, and artists from different nationalities. Although it’s also worth noting that the agility of movement in the digital world has yet to transcend to the real world, as many from other countries could not come due to visa issues. The programming varied from technical to social impact; there was something for everyone. The main ones I attended were governance-related — I enjoyed Isaac Patka’s Exploiting Inattention & Optimism in DAOs.

BanklessDAO was also represented in the speaking program; I spoke on a panel on Web3 Adoption in Africa, highlighting the opportunity for web3 companies to tap into highly educated and digital-native populations. Also, a big shout-out was made to Bankless Africa for all their excellent work. Tessa spoke at the NEAR space on a panel on building in the bear market.

It also happening that week was Schelling Point, a one-day celebration, thrown by Gitcoin, focusing on coordination, public goods, and regenerative finance. Last, but not least, there was ETH LATAM Bogota: a one-day event with talks and workshops in Spanish for people who want to learn about Ethereum. Our bDAO members Diego and Arilus did a presentation on the final form of Ethereum.

The week's highlight was connecting with all my internet friends and DAO colleagues and being inspired by all the great projects that will develop tangible change. It was so wonderful to see so many bDAO members from all over the world doing great things.

#️⃣ WeAreDAO

Bankless IMN 🦇🔊🏴 @IMNbankless

In our final post #WeAreDAO presents another core contributor who has changed bDAO through her creative energy and drive. She inspires the entire community with her art and her interview is the best way possible to end the campaign. Thank you @RedCrstlDragon ❤️‍🔥

Dippudo joins the Roll Call this week, having been a long-time contributor to the Rollup with some of his wonderful editorial graphics. Thank you Dippudo, and we hope you get to Japan one day. If recent Roll Calls are anything to go by, you’ll see many bDAO friends there!