[Round 10 Proposal] Governauts Rewards Systems Research Initiative

akrtws_TE_Academy · October 5, 2021, 11:31am

[Round 10 Proposal] Governauts Rewards Systems Research Initiative

Fact Sheet

Website: https://tokenengineeringcommunity.github.io/website/docs/academy-welcome
Twitter: https://twitter.com/tokengineering
Address: 0x3b067Af83F540cB827825a6Ee5480441a4237E77
Email: angela@tokenengineering.net
Residence: Germany
Category: Improvements to OceanDAO
Funding requested: $20K
ROI Metric: Grant efficiency

Our Proposal in a Sentence

We develop and verify DAO improvements for Ocean DAO, as part of a community research initiative led by Token Engineering Academy.

The Problem We Solve

Rewards Systems are a key element for DAOs to grow the ecosystem value, reward contributors and grant decision making power (governance tokens) to those who provide value to a DAO.
OceanDAO recently published an ambitious OceanDAO roadmap 2021/2022 that includes several updates on reward systems.

We’d like to invite OceanDAO to be a case partner:

we’ll analyse your data
we’ll explore the expectations of your stakeholders
we’ll come up with metrics to measure your reward system healthiness

Additionally, the research group will contribute to your ecosystem

grow confidence in your reward system
provide insights on sensitivities, benefits and value flow
make recommendations on how to improve your reward system
you support crypto public goods, gain reputation and get access to token engineering teams

This is a Community Research Initiative

a core token engineering research team will work on the pre-defined research question
additionally, TE Academy will facilitate a community research program to onboard co-researchers to learn Token Engineering methods and apply it to a self-defined research goal in the scope of the Rewards System Research Group
this contributes to our long-term objective to establish a new branch of Token Engineers focusing on governance and decentralization called the Governauts

Track Record

TE Academy has led similar research groups with partners like Balancer, Gitcoin Grants, and Ocean Protocol.
Learn more about TE Academy Research Groups here:

Gitcoin Grants Quadratic Funding
Balancer Simulations
HydraDX (here, here and here)
and watch a talk at EthCC 4 about TE Academy Research Groups

About the Governauts
Incubating Governauts is an initiative to establish a dedicated branch in Token Engineering focused on decentralization and governance.
We organize workshops and discussions, provide a platform for collaboration and bring research programs to life with TE Academy.
Meet the Governauts at Twitter, Telegram and at our events!

ROI

Note: Our total funds required are $60K. We’ll acquire $40K from additional partners to run this research program.

Generally, a great reward system is optimizing for sustainability. In order to attract successful proposals, it must be

motivating = motivates contributors to continue to build, and make follow-up proposals (they come back)
sufficient = helps contributors to have sufficient funds to focus on their proposal, push to deliver and make proposals round by round (they come back round after round, don’t loose momentum)
clear = provides clear requirements and makes the reward process easy (rewards system itself not a blocker)

For our ROI, we measure Grant efficiency in
% of proposals who are successful at least 2 times across 3 rounds.
Grant efficiency OceanDAO (round 7): 51.04%
This results in $108,350.00 that are potentially lost in a single round.

There won’t be any reward system with 100% efficiency, However, we expect that based on our proposal outcome, OceanDAO will increase Grant efficiency by 10% and as a result can save $22,132 that would be otherwise potentially lost.
Bang = $221,132 (across 1 year)
Buck: $20K (our proposal ask)
Likeliness of success: 90%
ROI = (bang/buck)*likeliness of success = 11.95128

Disclaimer: for our calculation we had access to data from Round 7-9

Deliverables/Milestones

Category: Improvements to OceanDAO
The educational program and research results will be publicly available. Work is close collaboration with OceanDAO core team and OceanPearl.io

Milestone 1 / End of October 2021
Core research team confirmed
Milestone 2 / End of October 2021
1-3 co-funding partners confirmed
Milestone 3 / End of November 2021
min. 20 TE Community Researchers onboarded
Milestone 4 / End of December 2021
Educational program delivered, mind. 8 public lectures provided on topics like computer-aided governance, game design, behavioral economics, currency design, monetary theory, and token engineering
Milestone 5 / Mid January 2022
Check-in with TE Community Researchers, review research plans (OceanDAO/OceanPearl.io and research group)
Milestone 6 / End of February 2022
Presentation of research results
Milestone 7 / Mid March 2022
Workshop with Ocean DAO team/OceanPearl for follow-up proposals, implementation etc.

Update: Preparing the program

Before we kick-off the program in Mid November, we

design the educational lectures
confirm mentors for the program
scout for and select the community researchers (in total 20, best fit to cases!), and make sure they are available and committed
confirm facilitators (we’ll need to cover 3 months in total, with 1-2 sessions per week!)
further specify the scope with Ocean DAO/OceanPearl.io

Team

Along with our core team, we’ll have mentors and governance researchers on board from DAOs like Gitcoin, CommonsStack,
BlockScience, TE Commons, and more.

Angela Kreitenweis
Role: Host, organizer
Twitter: https://twitter.com/akrtws
Discord: akrtws (TE Academy) #4246
Background:
Angela has worked in early stage startups since 2008. Between 2016 and 2018 she established venture development at innogy Innovation Hub Berlin, and in 2018 she co-founded the Token Engineering Community, which has quickly grown into a global network (https://twitter.com/tokengineering). The aim of the Token Engineering Community is to establish a new engineering discipline for successful and sustainable cryptoeconomic systems. In 2020 she founded TE Academy, the first educational institution for token engineering. Since its inception, more than 700 students across 21 time zones have participated in TE Academy courses. TE Academy is part of the TE Commons ecosystem (https://tecommons.org/) to fund and grow Token Engineering public goods.

Livia
Role: Research Lead
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_liviade
Discord: liviade #1387
Background:

member of the Commons Stack team
leading the Cultural Build of the Token Engineering Commons where
she stewards the Soft Governance and Culture working group
guided by the concept of self sovereignty to nurture environments that
can promote individual agency in collaborative settings.
having a theater and performance background, Livia believes in the
development of everyone’s subjective expression and embodiment of intrinsic motivations as a key element for participatory decision making

Shawn Anderson
Role: Research Lead, Data Scientist
Twitter: https://twitter.com/@ygg_anderson
Github: https://github.com/LinuxIsCool
Background:

MSc.
founder of Longtail Financial
steward of the labs at the Token Engineering Commons, and teaching
assistant at the Token Engineering Academy,
passionate crypto-economic entrepreneur that is applying rigorous
data science techniques to token engineering and actively participating in the scaling of decentralized institutions for incentive alignment around sum positive economies

Peter Hacker
Role: Educational Programming, Facilitation
Twitter: https://twitter.com/phacker_3
Discord: heater #9765
Background:

Bachelor degree in Economics and Mathematics
four years in eCommerce data analytics and
business strategy
active TE community member (TEC, cadCAD,
BlockScience, Commons Stack)

Jessica Zartler
Role: Educational Programming, Lectures
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jessicazartler
Discord: JessicaZartler #2263
Medium: https://medium.com/block-science/gitcoin-grants-round-11-anti-fraud-evaluation-results-50f4b0f15125
Background:

Governance Researcher (BlockScience, CommonsStack, TE Commons)
Governauts Ground Control team member

trentmc0 · October 5, 2021, 5:58pm

I’ve collaborated with Angela and her team in many TE related projects and I am constantly impressed. I think the proposal here makes sense for value-add to Ocean. I heartily support this proposal:+1:.

akrtws_TE_Academy · October 5, 2021, 8:52pm

Thanks Trent for your comment!

We are in conversations with 5 case partners at the moment, and can take max 2 - Ocean can be one of them. When I read OceanDAOs Roadmap, I knew this is a perfect match - timewise, and because of your ambitions to further develop the DAO. I hope you’ll all support this research program.
For OceanDAO and for progress in crypto decentralization!

idiom-bytes · October 6, 2021, 12:14am

Extremely excited to see TE and Governauts coming forward with this proposal, and focusing on this area of DAO research & engineering. I’ve been following TE for a while, read a bunch of the publications, lurk in the background of Discord, and am on the Governauts TG. Really looking forward to this.

realdatawhale · October 6, 2021, 3:44am

We are looking forward to making the OceanDAO more effective with your support. You’ve got our vote!

davidecrapis.eth · October 7, 2021, 2:14am

Hi Angela, love the work you are doing around TE and I’m eager to follow this project and learn more.

Just one question about how you calculate success of a project, do you account for partial success if it was partially completed? I’m curious if you have any insight on what a very good grant efficiency level looks like, from your experience in other projects.

akrtws_TE_Academy · October 7, 2021, 7:29am

Hi davidecrapis,
Great question!
We measure grant efficiency as % of proposals that are successful at least 2 times across 3 rounds.
So we actually don’t measure completion directly.
Instead, for grant efficiency, we take into account two aspects:
a) Is a proposal successful in the voting? Voters decide if a proposal is worth funding. The DAO’s policies define if a partially completed project can propose again - and it’s on voters to signal if funding should continue in this case.
b) Does a team come back and propose again successfully? There can be many reasons for a team to be not successful with a follow-up proposal. In any event, the funds aren’t spent most efficiently.
A because follow-up proposal doesn’t pass = not efficient
B because they give up and don’t submit a follow-up proposal = not efficient
C because still funds left, no need to propose again = not efficient, grants should incentivize spending the funds for maximal output
C because mission completed = that’s great. However, continuing to add value to OCEAN would be even better! Not max efficient.
Final remark: It might be worth reviewing the timespan. Due to data availability, we only analyzed 3 rounds. A longer timespan could make sense, worth exploring in the research initiative!

Robin · October 7, 2021, 7:40am

I have participated in several TE projects in the past and have gained valuable insights as well as great connections in the process. Thank you so much for your hard work!

due · October 7, 2021, 7:50am

Hello,

I think this proposal is missing a bunch of qualities that regular proposals have and so I’d like to encourage you the author to adjust your proposal:

It’s unclear what is actually done with the money requested in the proposal. Specifically; What is TE going to work on with this money? “Core research team confirmed” isn’t a really deliverable; the research team completing some work would be. I understand that TE can aid OceanDAO in governance design: But if it wants money in this process here; I’d advise to stick to actual and specific deliverables as e.g. “We analyze all votes in the oceanDAO rounds and see how whales influenced the votes”.
“Grant efficiency” isn’t really an existing metric to my knowledge so I’d suggest to use a metric listed in the oceanDAO wiki

akrtws_TE_Academy · October 7, 2021, 9:28am

Hi due,
thanks for your question!

There are differences between research projects and building tech, and that’s why I’m grateful for the chance to clarify.

“‘Core research team confirmed’ isn’t really a deliverable”
We put the step research team confirmed in our roadmap, because we’ll review the research scope next week with members of Ocean DAO and Ocean Pearl. Depending on that, we’ll see if we focus on analyzing the existing grants process or on parameter setting and simulations for new components like Conviction Voting. This will have an impact on what expertise we’ll need in the core research team.
“stick to actual and specific deliverables”
Defining the actual questions is part of the research process. We could certainly take the OCEAN DAO roadmap, pick one element, work on it as pre-defined in our proposal and come back in 3 months. We think it’s better to dig deeper before we define our actual deliverable.
Here’s an example: What is the actual motivation behind aiming for "more stable funding available to support larger teams "? (see OceanDAO roadmap). Ask OceanDAO teams, ask the stakeholders! This gives us insights on the best mechanism to choose (conviction voting? combination with grant process?) and how to configure the mechanisms we choose. And only then we choose the method like we a) run simulations or b) set up an experiment with stakeholders, resulting in the actual deliverable.
On our metric Grant efficiency.
We are 100% pro ROI calculation.
Metrics suggested are Datatoken Consuming Volume or TVL, however we can come up with new metrics, in case we think it’s more appropriate. https://github.com/oceanprotocol/oceandao/wiki/On-Roi
In our case, our aim is to take a metric that a) Rewards Systems can most directly drive, and b) we can measure the outcome in USD.
Grant Efficiency checks both boxes.
Actually we’ve started with ‘TVL in the voting process’, driving OCEAN demand. But it’s hard to draw the direct line between reward system improvements and TVL due to network growth. We’ve discussed this on Discord, here’s the full conversation: https://discord.com/channels/612953348487905282/776848812534398986/894591592273416223

Hope this helps, happy to answer on any further questions!

due · October 7, 2021, 12:05pm

That’s exactly my criticism. You should have come up with a set of specific deliverables before you make a proposal to the OceanDAO. Not after. I think you’d expect that from others too.

I think it’s vital to understand the functioning of the oceanDAO due diligence process, as this way is how the “project standing” of the OceanDAO works. With your current set of deliverables for example there’s basically no work that you’re committing to doing until the next round in November. So why should anyone vote for you?

What are the actual steps towards “Core research team confirmed”? And why is it the only deliverable until November? Also you say that in total you need 60k USD. So the deliverables you’ve mentioned; will you fulfill them all with the 20k USD of this vote until March 2022? Or will you raise more money in the OceanDAO until then?

I’d heavily favor a set of deliverables for the much shorter term (e.g. October) and then reapply. I know that there’s a potential conflict of interest here as you’re arguably getting special treatment from OPF members but being total real: This is how things work for most projects in the community. And they should work this way for you too.

I think its irrelevant to discuss your preferred mode of working and if research has a different process than other knowledge work. The OceanDAO is flexible enough to encompass all work; it’s a matter of framing in the proposal. The reality is that the OceanDAO has a set of rules that apply to all its participants; so also to you.

The only person that continues to talk about Conviction Voting is Trent. Actual Ocean stake holders are asking for improvement to problems; they’re not asking for specific solutions. Already there you can evaluate buy-in towards what should be a favorable outcome of the oceanDAO research.

I think one problem with assuming that all burned Ocean tokens are bad Ocean tokens is that a model-building approach is skewing reality. I’ve been active in votes that ended up burning tokens and in each it was better burning tokens than investing them into projects. A few things should be considered in general:

Not all Ocean holders have a homogenious opinion about the future of the Ocean project
It’s very good that there’s a wide range of diversity of opinions as this will strengthen the OCEAN token over time.

So as a counter balance to the popular OPF employee view that all Ocean tokens should always be invested; I’m happy to be the one providing arguments in the other direction.

IMO, the outcomes of R6-R8 - also the tokens that were burned - were in the interest of all Ocean token holders. The OCEAN token market confirms this.

All this to say that you should frame yourself as any other OceanDAO member and use the metrics available to everyone. Thanks.

akrtws_TE_Academy · October 7, 2021, 5:53pm

Hey due, thanks for your comments!

First: this is Community Research Initiative
Before we kick-off the program in Mid November, we

design the educational lectures
confirm mentors for the program
scout for and select the community researchers (in total 20, best fit to cases!), and make sure they are available and committed
confirm facilitators (we’ll need to cover 3 months in total, with 1-2 sessions per week!)
further specify the scope (as outlined in my message earlier)

This is why we apply for a grant now. I’ve added this to the milestones on top.

Second: We are acquiring additional funds from other partners to cover the total funds needed. So no follow-up proposal at OceanDAO for Rewards Systems.
However - in the spirit of Grants Efficiency - I’d be glad to continue collaboration with OceanDAO for token engineering education & research

For the rest of your comments, I see that you have something to say about developing DAO rewards systems. Welcome to the research group!
Please register here: https://forms.gle/zNNLdi8aUKystz3QA

realdatawhale · October 8, 2021, 4:32am

Hey TE-Team,

We just submitted our vote for this proposal and good luck. It was nice to e-meet you in the townhall too !!

If you have time, go ahead and review our Proposal on the Port. Let us know whether you have any comments.

Cheers,
Data Whale

amirmabhout · October 8, 2021, 12:38pm

Glad to see academic efforts, cultivating new concepts like Governance and Decentralisation into a new educational branch. Especially at a field like crypto where the pace, sometimes doesn’t give enough time to do some research beforehand, this effort long term can make this environment into a healthier and more transparent ecosystem.

I saw that you wish to analyse the data from the OceanDAO and wondered what data that would exactly be?

Also another branch to consider in the study of the voting process is perhaps ethical issues on transparency and privacy. Votes are anonymous, but the process which enables the votes leverage the publicly accessed ledger. For someone who has the knowledge how to query it, one can see wallets who voted on each project and see which projects were voted before in previous rounds and with time, it might reveal some patterns or hints into the identity of the wallet owner. It makes sense for each project participant to when holding tokens, to vote on their own project as well, which makes wallets easier identifiable. Is it ethical to make it transparent and have votes with identity where technology behind it, enables it in an indirect way? Or is it better to change how the voting is done to make wallets completely anonymous? And how it affect the health of the voting process as well as the dynamics in the DAO, can be sth to debate.

Thanks for TE efforts, enabling a progressive Ocean DAO!

akrtws_TE_Academy · October 8, 2021, 2:06pm

Thanks for your support @realdatawhale!

akrtws_TE_Academy · October 8, 2021, 2:25pm

Thanks for your support @amirmabhout!

You’re raising relevant questions! You might be interested in the work of Trueblocks and this TE Academy session recording:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TL1MTGM3uMf87YIbYpS5Wmh2eQlqizrp (start at minute 00:35:00)

For OceanDAO we will certainly aim for the full picture with all off-chain & on-chain data collected, plus qualitative data to understand the context. And, as mentioned earlier: define research scope first.

idiom-bytes · October 8, 2021, 5:48pm

Thank you for the engagement with OceanDAO, and core DAO design/engineering initiatives.

I’m extremely excited about the engagement from TEC, and see a lot of impact from the contributions and community.

I have voted to support this project.
All the best in R10!

akrtws_TE_Academy · October 9, 2021, 4:48pm

Thanks for your support @idiom-bytes!

akrtws_TE_Academy · October 12, 2021, 9:43am

Many thanks to everyone who supported our proposal, thanks for voting YES for Token Engineering research.

And thank you to those who asked critical questions!
We’ll work hard to prove that funds have been spent efficiently - can’t wait to kick-off the program!

akrtws_TE_Academy · October 12, 2021, 3:11pm

MEET THE TOKENENGINEERING COMMUNITY:

We’ll host an on-site/online event on
Wednesday, Oct 13 at 7pm CEST
at FullNode Berlin.

Join us to learn more about the Reward Systems Research Initiative
and other news from the Token Engineering global community!

Sign-up here to receive the calendar invite with all details: