Core Tech WG Rewards

Part 1 - Proposal Submission

Name of the Project:

Core Tech WG Rewards

Proposal in one sentence:

Coordinape circle & rewards for Core Tech Working Group (CTWG) members towards fulfilling its mission, especially towards getting teams to do high-priority tech projects.

Description of the proposal:

The CTWG was established in late 2021 with the mission to “steward community initiatives towards high-impact technical outcomes.” This includes identifying high-priority tech projects (earmarks), find teams to work on them, and help shepherd those projects to completion. It’s made progress: it’s identified high-impact earmarks, got them in grants rounds, and set a process to determine whether a project is eligible for an earmark. Details: https://github.com/oceanprotocol/oceandao/wiki/OceanDAO-Tech-Earmarks

Here’s the problem. Only a handful of teams have applied under the earmarks so far. No team has gone through an earmark to completion yet. The WG has discussed many possible tactics (referral incentives, blog posts, etc), some of which could be funded as OceanDAO grants. However, each specific tactic has overhead to agree upon, implement, and (in some cases) get funded. Thus evolved a more general and an adaptive approach to drive this forward.

Grant deliverables:

  • [ ] A Coordinape rewards circle for Core Tech Working Group (CTWG)
  • [ ] 3 GIVE epochs for CTWG over the next 3 months. Each epoch uses 1/3 of funds granted. The first epoch will be run shortly after R14 voting completes.
  • [ ] 6 grant proposals that fall under core-tech earmarks and that received a grant.
  • [ ] 3 core-tech earmarks have successfully been accomplished. This may have been over several grants by the same team. Some may have started before this grant was initiated.

Project category:

Improvements to the Ocean DAO

Applicable earmark:

General

What is the final product?

Summary: A Coordinape circle and the social process around it, to incentivize CTWG members to focus on high value add activities, yet allowing for creative approaches and minimizing overhead.

Details:

  • Retroactively reward WG members who contributed most towards the CTWG’s mission, especially around finding teams to work on earmarks and helping the teams complete.

  • WG members are rewarded after-the-fact based on effort and (especially) effectiveness, as subjectively judged by their WG member peers. Using “GIVE” voting in Coordinape. WG members can opt-in for rewards; WG members that are already on contract will not opt in, of course (e.g. Trent, Alex, Roberto).

Tactics are up to WG members. Given WG discussions, WG members will likely be rewarding efforts & effectiveness on:

  • early stage of funnel. Example: writing a blog posts that details a specific earmark

  • mid stage. Example: referring a team to apply under core-tech earmark

  • tail end. Example: helping ensure a team has successfully completed an earmark (while avoiding double-dipping reward from Project-Guiding WG funds)

In this setup, WG members can just “go and try stuff” with little overhead. What tactics work, work, what don’t, don’t. The WG member gets rewarded accordingly. Many ideas have been discussed in CTWG minutes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ouW4oxKEgyaBeiZew4bd9HFwbNUiwReK0A2Ww7jmAik/edit#

From R12, the Project-Guiding Working Group (PGWG) has implemented a similar Coordinape-based approach to help fulfill their mandate. ttps://port.oceanprotocol.com/t/project-guiding-work-group-rewards/1190

Note: This grant itself does not count as falling under one of the Core Tech earmarks.

Which one or more of the value-add criteria will your project focus on? Why do you believe your team will do well on those criteria?

The project will help on all criteria, but especially help on “Usage of Ocean”.

  • Usage of Ocean → helps to catalyze projects with high potential usage
  • Viability → easy to implement technically, and we have the WG in place
  • Community active-ness → each team member is a CTWG team member, implicitly highly active
  • Adding value to the overall community → helps to catalyze many other teams to build valuable Ocean-powered products

Funding Requested:

3000$

Proposal Wallet Address:

0x61Ec1216Afe91Be1a087f9e8C26F913091FA9934

(will belong to Core-Tech WG)

Have you previously received an OceanDAO Grant?

No

Team website:

CTWG mission and all minutes https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ouW4oxKEgyaBeiZew4bd9HFwbNUiwReK0A2Ww7jmAik/edit#

Team discord:

CTWG Discord channel https://discord.com/channels/612953348487905282/908016816029319178

Team socials and credentials:

  • Team Complete audit of all meetings; driven by stewards [ Core Tech WG ]
  • Discord channel of Core-tech WG

Project lead full name: Prakash Kamaraj

Project lead email: drprakash@ieee.org

Country of Residence: India


Part 2 - Team

Lead: Prakash Kamaraj drprakash@ieee.org

Other CTWG members include: Trent McConaghy, Alex Coseru, Roberto Alcantara, Akshay, Robin Lehmann, Trang Nguyen, Richard Blythman, Shady El Damaty, Amir Mabhout


Hi @drprk, I just wanted to let you know that this proposal has been registered for R14 and accepted.

All the best!

Hi @drprk,

Thank you for submitting your proposal for R-14!

I am a Project-Guiding Member and have assigned myself to help you.

I have reviewed your proposal and would like to thank you for your participation inside of the Ocean Ecosystem!

Your project looks promising and I believe it’s aligned with our evaluation criteria of generating positive value towards the Ocean Ecosystem and the W3SL.

The project criteria are:

  1. Usage of Ocean — how well might the project drive usage of Ocean? With good core tech initiatives we get more potential use cases for Ocean Protocol
  2. Viability — what is the chance of success of the project? Solid team
  3. Community active-ness — how active is the team in the community? Great to see improvements to the DAO - doesn’t get more community active than that!
  4. Adding value to the community — how well does the outcome of the project add value to the overall Ocean community / ecosystem? This would add immense value to the Ocean ecosystem as this is all about improving Ocean Protocol’s core tech!!

Based on the reasons above, I am in support of your project and proposal. I look forward to continuing providing support and feedback to your project.

All the best!

-Your PGWG Guide