CIP-137: Outward Facing Team

Proposals (CIPs)
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TLDR

This is a proposal to combine the former Community, Media and Education guilds to create a unified “outward facing team.” This reflects a concern that we may lose our community if we move entirely to a project-based structure, and that land without a community is not a city. The purpose of this proposal is to streamline, reduce costs and improve community engagement.

This proposal would begin on February 1, 2023 and run until the end of Q2 (June 30, 2023). There will be no monthly compensation. Instead, a Coordinape circle will be used to allocate retroactive funding to those who contribute value to the DAO. The circle is open, allowing new contributors to enter and those who do not contribute to be voted out. The circle would be funded with $7K per month for a total proposal request of $35K.

Goal One - Expand Community Engagement

CityDAO’s original mission was to build a city of the future by tokenizing land, property rights and governance. To achieve this mission, CityDAO must be able to speak to both potential and current citizens, to inform them of activities, discussions, events, votes and information. Citizens must be onboarded effectively and assistance provided to those who need help understanding the projects. The discord must be moderated, both in English and in the international channels. If we have no interactions, discussions or engagement, we lose the voices of the very citizens who funded CityDAO in the first place.

Goal Two - Use Coordinape for Retroactive Compensation

Previously, CityDAO paid money to facilitators and contributors prior to completing tasks. This lacks accountability. We believe that using Coordinape for retroactive funding based on value provided to the DAO could be a more effective new method. Therefore, we would like to implement this strategy to test its efficacy.

With Coordinape, a circle of people vote at the end of each epoch. One epoch will be two weeks. Value is determined by the members of the circle allocating GIVE tokens. Each member of the circle has 100 GIVE tokens per epoch to allocate. These tokens have no actual value, but represent votes. If someone does not contribute value to the DAO, they do not receive GIVE tokens. People cannot give to themselves. The amount of tokens received determines the amount of money received at the end of the epoch.

For example, if Memebrains contributed to the DAO, and members of the circle felt that his contributions were valuable, they could allocate some of their GIVE tokens to him. At the end of the epoch, if Memebrains had received 20% of the votes, he would then get 20% of the available funds (20% of $3500 = $500).

Project Team

The initial circle for voting on value and allocating compensation would be: David, ScottA, Missa, Memebrains, Lupei, Elmo and Simplepixellife.

This project team is not fixed. Coordinape allows for people to vouch for others to be added to the circle, or to remove people from the circle. It is important that these circles be fluid, allowing for new members who provide value to be added and removing members who do not provide value. Anyone who has provided no value to the DAO for two epochs (who has received no GIVE tokens) is to be removed from the circle.

Budget

The budget would be $7000 per month to the Coordinape treasury. There is no requirement that the full amount be spent each month. By default, Coordinape distributes the full amount in the treasury each epoch. However, anyone in the circle could vote to reduce the total amount spent per epoch. It would require more than 50% of all Coordinape circle members to approve a reduction.

Previous Budget
Community: $27K + 18 NFTs
Media: $17.5 + 16 NFTs
Education: $19K + 15 NFTs
Total: $63,500 + 49 NFTs per quarter
Previous Two Quarter Total Budget: $127K + 98 NFTs
Current Two Quarter Proposal Budget: $35K + 0 NFTs

Timeline and Deliverables

There is no specific timeline, as this is a structural proposal rather than a project. This is a five-month proposal (two quarters). There will be a formal check-in and vote at the end of Q1 2023 to determine whether there is a reason to terminate this structure early. This will require 2⁄3 of all Coordinape circle members to vote for early termination.

There are certain somewhat fixed deliverables that are important for maintaining CityDAO’s community. These may change over time. The initial deliverables are:

MEDIA
Running AMAs - Memebrains
Running Twitter Spaces - MemeBrains
Running Twitter posting - Missa
Running TikTok - Missa
Running YouTube - Missa

COMMUNITY
Moderating Discord - Elmo
Assisting Discord members - Elmo
Moderate Thai channel - Lupei
Write weekly newspaper - Lupei
Write bimonthly roundup article - Lupei
Moderate Turkish channel - Simplepixellife
Host Turkish Twitter Spaces - Simplepixellife
Manage community/marketing projects - Simplepixellife / Lupei

EDUCATION
Help create onboarding process - David
Create helpful content - ScottA
Provide assistance to members - ScottA

Risks

It is acknowledged that anytime a legal entity such as CityDAO interfaces with the public, including through social media, there is an inherent risk involved, such as claims of misrepresentation. Where there are questions, they will be flagged and reviewed either by David or by a legal consultant, if CityDAO has one.

The only other risk is that it may prove difficult to align communication across multiple teams. However, this seems like a worthwhile risk to take as it would remove the barriers between teams and lead to greater cohesiveness.

29 Likes
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Just a placeholder note that as of the post I am writing here, the only “likes” on this are from the people entitled to comp/authority under this CIP (in fact its the entire team except simplepixel)…Plus Melinda who I believe is a citizen, and “Freo” who probably is not a citizen and appears to have only joined Discourse a few hours ago - ostensibly to vote for this proposal. (i.e… likely a sybil or implant). It also feels “conflict-y” to have the team be all people with soft power as former guild leads and/or public facing figures (like its ed guild lead, community lead, or podcast host). This is not an attack at all on any of the team, all of whom I respect a great deal, just commentary in real time on what I am seeing from my seat.

Not to mention - We still don’t have citizen gating on the “likes” which is long overdue and currently being worked on by the dev team. I think we need to pause CIPs (arguably the proposers should voluntarily be on board with this in a good faith effort to fix citydao’s known governance issues), but at a minimum, should stop allowing people who may or may not even be citizens to affect the outcomes of governance (by liking this post for example). Its being worked on: Discord

None of this is to say that this proposal will not hit “20 likes” before the 21 day window ends, in fact I am confident this particular team can drum up its support - just that it already looks pretty problematic in terms of support, conviction and voting as of this moment and also given what we know about voting.

5 Likes
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Has my vote. I personally have found the education guild to be one of the best parts of the DAO, and while I also am supportive of the project only DAO approach, I was also worried about losing the conversations and work that comes of of the education guild.

I’m sure there are other ways to ensure its continuity, but this appears to be well structured, and is low risk at 7k a month. Coordinape will be a new thing, but again, lets test it out and see how it goes. If nothing else its a good experiment for the use of coordinape and how we might use it in the future of CityDAO.

One suggestion - can you add a few members of the circle that aren’t proposed to be beneficiaries of the payments? Something like 2 citizens chosen at random who have been active in the discord that epoch? If not ,its hard to imagine a case where the circle would decide to not spend the full amount.

I’d still vote for this even if that change wasn’t made, as I think 7k is a low enough amount for a 5 month trial. If that seems too much then we can adjust the next time.

6 Likes
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Well said Nick, I agree.

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Right and agree.

We dont want people use CityDAO in a bad way. Thats why i guess we’ll need another CIP for the idea “Gate Keepers” (Still DAO, the last decision will be made by citizens but centralization at decentralization, my next Twitter Space content). I dont want to change the subject here, let’s discuss at discord.

Here, what i want is to continue our journey without interuption. At CityDAO, we need 2 things (more than 2 but still) ;

1 - Focus at projects (current and new)
2 - Being active & more communication

All the details are above but we need to continue to send tweets, make videos, marketing, keep in touch with communities in & out, content…

Community, Media and Education are willing to do that and also experiment a new system.

“Experiment” is the key word.

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These are valuable points. It’s true that those who have liked this proposal so far are mostly those who are named in it. This could be seen as “those who stand to benefit monetarily.” It could also be seen as “those who are particularly concerned about keeping our community and marketing going”.

The idea was that, being coordinape based, anyone who provides value could benefit monetarily. But I agree that we want to have proposals that benefit the DAO, not the members who stand to personally profit. I think this is where the voting and quorum would be more important than the mere 20 likes.

I do like @Nick123’s suggestion to add active discord members to the voting circle. Maybe we could just ask who wants to be added? Theoretically, the circle is meant to be those who contribute value but there’s merit to having others for fairness and transparency.

I also agree that taking a pause until governance is improved is reasonable. But I share the concern that we might end up pausing until we have no more community. But if we stop moderating the discord to remove spam bots, what happens? How long do we pause for? Having a set timeline for the pause might help in considering a pause.

2 Likes
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Hey there :wave: No sybil, but not yet a citizen either.

I have been aware of CityDAO for a while, working on ancillary projects, and now am finding myself falling down this rabbit hole and trying to determine if there is a place for me here. Mostly still trying to wrap my head around what’s going on - I sifted through a bunch of google docs, notion, discord, etc and it seems that this is the place where things are actually happening. It also seems like there are some big “group identity” questions arising. That’s about as much as I feel confident saying at this stage. Lots to sift through.

I “liked” this post because:

  • The consolidation of Community, Media, and Education given current low activity and identity questions that I can see seems like a good move to A) delineate a shift/transformation/evolution in a section of core organizational processes and B) refocus attention, energy, and resources that may be too dispersed to be effective.

  • Coordinape is a method of income distribution I am familiar with that does a pretty good job counteracting bias/centralization/nepotism/etc. Coming from the outside that gives me more confidence that I will be fairly compensated for any effort.

5 Likes
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Media full web2 … Not your keys , not your profile. The web3 region remains empty. I am actively using that space. and I introduce ourselves directly to those who are completely devoted to the world of blockchain. The neglect of the web3 region is as appalling as nokia rejecting the touch phone. follow on lens , phaver , orb → daocity.lens :smiling_imp:

2 Likes
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Using coordinape for compensation, any activities that bring value to the DAO, such as introducing our marketing to web3, could be rewarded retroactively.

1 Like
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Hi Freo,

We appreciate your support, but can I please ask you to unlike this proposal? As @DAOvolution mentioned, we are trying to make sure that only citizens “like” proposals, since that is technically a part of governance, in that 20 “likes” allows a CIP to go to a vote. Only citizens are supposed to govern, especially in terms of spending money.

“Liking” a forum post isn’t the best way for us to do this on a technical level, but we’re still in the process of having the dev team adjust this issue so that only NFT Citizenship holders are able to give it a like.

Please, anyone who reads this, don’t like this proposal unless you are a citizen.

5 Likes
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Agree 100 %

Citizens should decide if we continue or not

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Sure, but it looks like I will need an admin to unlock the option. Seems there is a timer for undoing a reaction and we are outside that window.

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I fully support and would love to be part of this team! This is a robust proposal to me. I especially like that the price decrease from the current scheme was highlighted plus the willingness to experiment with Coordinape. Evidence that we are learning and moving in the right direction. Additionally, one common concern among CityDAO has been replenishing the treasury. Currently our only income stream comes from citizen NFTs - and it is this team that can really help attract a larger citizenry!

Just curious, why did you pick $7,000/month?

I also thought of that as an unlikely scenario but not problematic.

3 Likes
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I originally suggested $5K a month. However, some of the others in the group felt that was a little low, so we raised it to $7K. It was not based on any quantitative measurement of hours spent or of relative value to the DAO. I think almost anything would be good compared to waiting until after ETHDenver is done in March and letting community and media atrophy until then. It wouldn’t be the end of the world or the DAO, either way.

3 Likes
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https://opensea.io/collection/cdao :grinning:

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That doesn’t seem like an accurate statement when I look at the likes right now, maybe it’s changed with more people adding likes since after the date you posted so that makes sense

Agreed that needs to be fixed moving forward for sure, I noticed that as well. The said it’s easy to see which Discord user IDs did the liking, seems like mostly Citizens right now when I skim through

Either way, the liking/forum seems like a good topic for the upcoming governance discussions moving forward into 2023

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Krause House DAO seems to be using Coordinate successfully right now which is encouraging to me. I was a bit, well fine very lol, skeptical at first, but the more I think about it and see in action by others the more interesting it becomes

I’d really love to crack that nut of treasury replenishment, it’s such a huge and recurring topic, maybe an open channel voice discussion could help with some brainstorming, just a thought…hmm

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It’s my understanding that the circle is the only ones eligible for comp under this structure so you’ve created an infinite loop with no community input.
Why doesn’t the community get to vote for ‘early’ termination. It’s a closed loop with the circle.
Then they would need an extraordinary vote to STOP payments! ludicrous.

Above it says it’s indefinitely awarded. There’s a ‘check in’ after q1 (or 5 months? Not really clear) but the bottom line is that this flips authorization on it’s head. You’re authorized to draw from the treasury unless you decide you’re not. This is honestly kind of naked.

1 Like
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These above sentences conflict. And it also kind of negates the argument that this will be more efficient. It’s a circle jerk.

Woh! That’s bad math, and it’s not internally consistent with the ammount said you were spending.

I’m just going to be Frank here because I think y’all do some good work but I am nervous about doing this where we are paying people to pump but no legal or administrative. I think there’s a term for that…

1 Like
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These are fair critiques, like most things it will just have to have an element of trust in people doing the right thing. You could put a bunch of bureaucratic checks into this, but that will all cost money and slow it down.

In the end, if it is a circle jerk, well it will only last a few months. This all relies on trust, I mean the signers on the multi-sig at any moment could just drain the treasury. No real checks on that either.

The real check is people like you keeping watch, so really, this type of response is appreciated!

ps. one good thing about this is by definition all the things produced should be visible. It is outward facing. So, it will be easy for citizens to call foul if we don’t produce what we promised.