When Too Much Is Not Enough | BanklessDAO Weekly Rollup

Catch Up With What Happened This Week in BanklessDAO

Aug 20

Dear Bankless Nation 🏴,

We had a shorter Community Call this week following last week’s Season 5 kick off on Twitter Spaces. This brevity could be a sign that everyone is head down, hard at work. Regardless of the relative quiet of this week, there are milestones getting ever closer and unique initiatives in the works.

First, let’s acknowledge and give congratulations to our newest L2s: salmanneedsajob, Whales.xyz, rascole, Jay_the_Legal_Wizard, WinVerse, and Ernest_Of_Gaia. We appreciate all the work you do — well earned!

BanklessDAO is continuing to make advances into the real world, and not just at conferences. One of the latest Forum proposals, GM Bus, plans to bring Web3 and crypto education face-to-face with non-crypto natives. GM Bus is also funded through MetaCartel and Gitcoin, among others.

Another proposal on the Forum relates to DomainDAO and its goal to issue a .dao top-level-domain for the Web3 space. ENS has done a lot for the community, but it is very important for the Web3 ecosystem to have control over our own domain namespace. Make sure to read up on the details of the project and add your thoughts to the mix.

Finally, check out oxdog.eth’s breakdown of the GSE’s recent Forum post on guild and project funding. While v2 of this post will be dropping soon, this week’s article will get you primed to provide feedback.

We’re in a good groove, let’s keep the momentum rollin’!

Contributors: theconfusedcoin, anointingthompson1, oxdog.eth, d0wnlore, AustinFoss, Trewkat, siddhearta, HiroKennelly, ab_colours

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🗓 Weekly Recap

Community Highlights

📈 cNPS Survey Results — Season 5 Month 1

This analysis pertains to the survey of BanklessDAO members taken during the Coordinape period ending August 3, sampling 102 Guest Pass holders, 58 L1 contributors, and 66 L2 contributors for a total sample size of 226 members. We measured the community’s satisfaction with BanklessDAO and achieved a Community Net Promoter Score (”cNPS”) of 49, a 9-point increase from the July score. While bDAO members have expressed concern about the slow pace of improvements, Coordinape, remuneration, and token interaction, members are enthusiastic about the community, educational content, and opportunities to contribute.

🎯 August Coordinape Results

We have the aggregated (and identity-protected) data sets from all three circles from our August Coordinape round. Please navigate to the correct page for your contributor level. Please let us know in the #contributor-remuneration channel if anything is off (e.g. your wallet shows a different amount of BANK received this round than is showing in the doc). Thank you all for another great Coordinape round!

📊 DAO Contributor Sentiment Tracker

Are you a DAO contributor? We want to know more about your experience! How is it to work for DAOs? How's the compensation? What could be better? Our “DAO Contributors Sentiment Tracker” explores these issues and more. Share your views by filling out this survey.

☀️ BanklessDAO at ETHBarcelona

bDAO has been active at ETHBarcelona and we managed to catch up with founders of two very interesting projects!

We spoke with OrestTa from Scroll_ZKP — a "native zK proof-based EVM" about to launch a testnet. Listen in to find out how they integrate a wider community towards building more feasible and practical zK rollups.

We also spoke with the energetic Alvaro Go from HappyDAO3 whose mission is to make a happier world by providing access to mental health care to everyone, anywhere, for free. Watch this discussion to find out how they’re making this possible!

🤝 BanklessDAO Partners With DomainDAO

Earlier this week our community passed a proposal to partner with DomainDAO to help them secure TLD issuer status with ICANN.

TLD, or Top Level Domain, is at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System after the root domain — think ‘.com’ or ‘.org’. It’s the Web2 zip code for your internet address.

ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and they grant issuing rights for each TLD to a single organization. The issuer becomes the arbiter. If you’ve ever purchased a domain name you know how expensive that can be, so you can imagine how valuable it is to become an issuer! It also grants them the power to reassign rights or even block internet traffic to those domains. Up to now, issuers like Verisign have monopolized this realm.

This is the epitome of centralized internet control, and DomainDAO wants to change that. If granted issuing rights, DomainDAO will act in the best interest of the community, because it will be owned and operated by DAOs and individuals, not the corporate elite.

BanklessDAO is all about Web3, so why is this important to us? The answer is simply that the vast majority of the internet still operates on Web2, and our presence there is still important for visibility and onboarding new users. If we upset the wrong people in our mission to onboard new users to decentralized financial systems, we may be silenced or censored.

With this partnership, BanklessDAO has agreed to donate 0.1 ETH to the cause, and will have three years’ of exclusive rights to ‘bankless.dao’ if DomainDAO is successful in its bid. We’ll be exploring this further in a Twitter Spaces AMA next week — a conversation between Meaningless from DomainDAO and NF Thinker from BanklessDAO. The time and date are yet to be announced, so keep an eye on the BanklessDAO Twitter!

What’s New

🎙 BanklessDAO Podcasts

BanklessDAO 🏴 @banklessDAO

When is a decentralized ledger a blockchain? How will they cannibalize traditional 3rd party payment systems? @VertuCrypto teaches distributed tech 101 via @BanklessPub https://t.co/gRbcvrcxn6

🌏 Bankless Africa Newsletter

Bankless Africa @Bankless_Africa

🚨Newsletter out! Regenerative Art #NFT @abena_eth 🎨 🇳🇬#Nigeria - the most crypto observed nation Send #BTC via SMS @Machankura8333 P2P #Crypto in Africa Up by 75%, 🇰🇪Kenya leads spike @CeloOrg #Web3 Fund APR vs APY @BanklessWriters @bcethhunter banklessafrica.substack.com/p/what-is-gene…

What is Generative Art and Why Does It Matter?| Bankless Africa NewsletterThis is Bankless Africa Newsletter, a newsletter that helps you stay up to date with well-curated news about crypto and Web3 around Africa.banklessafrica.substack.com

Get Involved

📚 LEVEL UP Session With TohlHouseCookie

Do you want to learn more about some of the tools used in the Web2 and Web3 space? If so, join TohlHouseCookie as he helps you LEVEL UP your video-editing game with Premiere Pro. Head over to the #calendar channel to RSVP.

🌱 New Joiners Session S5x01

Do you want to spend time with experienced DAO contributors to talk more about your challenges as a new member and get some friendly advice?

Well, that's what the New Joiners Session is for. A human-friendly, no-bot-allowed chat session. Join us on August 22, 2022 to learn more about bDAO and how to get involved. Meet mentors who could guide you on your journey into DAO life and other new joiners who’ll become your fellow travelers.

To get plugged in and feel the BanklessDAO vibes, RSVP in the #calendar channel.

🥊 Fight Club

Bankless subDAO Fight Club is closing the Red Glove mint soon. These NFTs are available to all bDAO members until August 28, 2022! Head to the FC Discord and open a ticket in #minting-support. The price of the Red Glove is 200 MATIC, while the Black Glove — available to the public soon — is priced at the equivalent of $600 in MATIC.

The next series of Venture DAO Education will be starting the second week of September. Applications are open to all bDAO members, but analyst apprenticeship is only available to FC members.

#️⃣ WeAreDAO

Bankless IMN 🦇🔊🏴 @IMNbankless

#WeAreDAO presents a contributor whose integrity, hard work and passion simply cannot go unnoticed. A crypto-enthusiast since 2017, he is a veteran of the space and a member of bDAO since day 1! Meet Guild Coordinator, Grants Committee Co-chair and Language Champion @paul_1559🪁

🙏 Sponsor: humanDAO — improving lives through crypto.

When Too Much Is Not Enough: Making Better Seasonal Funding Decisions

Author: oxdog.eth

“We are overfunding”.

Governance Solutions Engineer (GSE) Manuel Maccou’s recent Forum post has been viewed over 300 times, but has only generated six replies. Granted, financial analysis to track spending is not the most thrilling topic in the world, but for the future of our DAO, it’s critical we all engage with this discussion.

Following several months of community concern expressed in weekly Community Calls and various Forum posts, the GSE requested that the Analytics Guild source data to enable analysis on the financials of projects and guilds in Seasons 1-4. The resulting dataset provides some interesting insights into BANK distribution and flow once it’s released following the Snapshot vote each season, and according to Manuel, gives us pause to reflect on ways we can use this information to “make smarter funding decisions and stronger proposals”.

The data supports the assertion that there are extensive amounts of funding left in guilds and projects at the completion of each season. Prior to receiving any requested Season 3 funding, guilds and projects were already holding a surplus which totaled just shy of 8.5 Million BANK. Using the average BANK price during Season 3 as a basis for the value of this surplus, we arrive at the significant amount of 370,000 USD.

It’s worth taking the time to analyze how this could happen, why this might be a problem, and what might be a possible solution. The GSE team is expected to release v2 of this report soon, so keep your eyes on the Forum. Thank you, Manuel, for your hard work in this area. 🙏

Pinning Down the Problem

The Forum post makes a brief reference to alternative uses for those remaining funds, asserting that had the inflated allocation not gone to guilds and projects, more BANK could have been directed towards “in-person events to boost exposure and impact, tackle compensation problems, and attract strong talent”.

However, when we examine the data, it is evident that the Grants Committee always had plenty of BANK available to fund mid-season projects. Had those types of projects been formed (and in fact, the GSE was formed in Season 3 to address contributor alignment and strategic prioritization), the funding was there to apply for.

For Manuel and the community members who have subsequently commented on the post, the data points to the conclusion that projects and guilds could work towards better budget planning and forecasting, with the twin goals of accuracy and accountability. It is also important to note that initial feedback on the data indicates that some guilds and projects did spend the seasonal allocation in their multisig, but this occurred outside the date ranges used by Analytics Guild and therefore resembled more of a surplus than was actually the case.

The ultimate conclusion, then, is not that we are overfunding. It is that the DAO must get serious about data-driven decision making. To enable continuity between seasons and seasonal role holders, we must collect and analyze the available data so that our planning reflects what we know to be true.

Treasury Truth

One thing we know to be true is that there is a finite amount of BANK in the DAO treasury. According to the Genesis proposal implemented via the DAO’s first Snapshot vote:

“[...] the community treasury [was] left with 5% of the total supply plus the first month’s vesting distribution in liquid BANK. This fund should act as an initial bootstrapping mechanism for the DAO while the remaining 40% allocation unlocks over the next 3 years.”

While the treasury will increase through the vesting schedule over the next two years or so (at the rate of ~11M BANK per month), the supply of BANK is fixed. This is usually referred to as the DAO’s ‘runway’ — the amount of time we have remaining before the vested supply of ‘new’ BANK runs out. By the time that happens, in May 2024, the DAO will need to have put in place the ongoing revenue streams and robust utility for BANK in order to ensure contributor incentives can continue to exist.

While one could argue that the ‘unspent’ BANK might serve to extend DAO’s runway, the plan has always been to reach a point where the DAO has a suite of revenue-generating projects and products. A key part of that is having a firm grip on the funding provided, and a reporting framework which allows us to see where there are opportunities to improve.

Where to From Here?

In response to the data Manuel has drawn attention to the following questions:

Did projects and guilds incorrectly estimate the amount needed?
Did members drop out of their roles mid-way through a season?
Were there not enough people to execute the plan?
Did proposal voters have the proper context when making their decision?
How do we ensure this data is kept current for ongoing analysis?

It’s unlikely there is a single factor causing the residual amounts across all guilds and projects. To uncover how we might tackle excess funding with better future judgment, let’s look at our governance process to see where the data might fit.

Informed Governance

As Manuel has pointed out, a fantastic attribute of DAOs is that those who build the ship steer it. But with this power also comes significant responsibility. If we maneuver through deep waters unlocking new lands, we can pat ourselves on the back. But if we sink the ship, we have no one to blame but ourselves. Governance is the responsibility of everyone, but taking part can be challenging at times. To apply well-informed judgment for a new proposal, you need to be constantly involved, but staying on top of things is time-consuming and challenging with so much going on.

A good guidebook for our travels is our Constitution and Community Handbook, which, while still in draft form, summarizes our structure, processes, mission, vision, and values. But to reach distant harbors, we need consistent data to steer in the right direction. The map we draw is the data we collect, and the compass that leads us is the analysis we draw from it. Making decisions based on instinct is as unreliable as being in the open sea and spinning a bottle to decide in which direction to sail next. If we don’t steer with intention, we might find ourselves in unsafe waters and run into issues like overfunding. Let’s look at how we can use our map and compass to maintain smooth sailing.

Data Tells Stories

Collecting and sorting the treasury data enabled us to understand that guilds and projects have at times been sitting on unused BANK. But to avoid the streetlight effect, i.e. the tendency to search for meaning where it is easiest to look, we must be deliberate in our use of metrics. Simply tracking leftovers and tagging them as bad is not a suitable measurement.

Any metric used in isolation is bound to paint a distorted picture. Raw data can tell stories but it is not useful unless the contextual information is available with it. We also need to consider outputs like revenue, influence on our brand name, growth in our community spirit, and other factors specific to each project or guild. But what should we do with this insight once we have it?

Data to Ideation

For data to be helpful in our decision making, it needs to be transparent, current, and relevant. Members may not have the time nor the expertise to sort through heaps of data and make sense of it. It is the proposal makers’ and the leadership’s responsibility to help members understand the significance of the data.

To determine how to use the data in the process correctly, let’s look at how a new proposal receives funding. When someone has an idea for a new project (or guild), they submit a proposal to the Forum. Depending on the requested budget, the proposal needs a specific minimum amount of voter support. If this is achieved, it reaches the Grants Committee.

Every week, the Grants Committee has a public meeting where new proposals are introduced, and the proposal squad has the opportunity to present their proposal and answer questions. In general, when four of the seven Grants Committee members support the project, it receives funding.

Where does historical data fit into this process? Just as you want to make sure you have a map and compass on board before setting sail, you want to make sure that good data underpins your proposal. Before submitting a funding request, the guild or project team writing the proposal should identify relevant data, for example, previous spending on similar projects, to predict accurately how much BANK the new proposal demands. If more information is needed, they should make an effort to gather it.

Once enough data is assembled, it needs to be presented understandably. This could be included in the form of key metrics, diagrams, or plain explanations. This ultimately leads to a more robust proposal that is more likely to be funded and will help DAO members and the Grants Committee to make a well-informed decision.

In Season 4, the Grants Committee instituted a new funding policy. Projects only receive half of their approved funding at the beginning of the season. They are required to list Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that are agreed on beforehand between the Grants Committee and project team. Halfway through the season, the Grants Committee checks in with representatives of the projects to review KPIs. If everything looks good, the second portion of funds is unlocked. This helps to identify areas where a project needs support. Ultimately, these metrics should help the projects reach greater self-sovereignty and help them decide on how best to allocate the DAO’s BANK.

A Better Way Forward

We already know from the corporate world that data is crucial to making good decisions, but it is even more critical in a DAO. With such a broad range of contributor experience, it is essential to bring everyone on the same page when it is time to vote again. As stated earlier, when a new proposal or idea is shared, the proposer should make best efforts to gather the needed information and present it simply, to help everyone make an informed decision. But to find and make sense of the data might be difficult, so we could build mandatory analytics into our funding requests, paid for by the Grants Committee.

We will see the impact of a focus on data-driven funding in the coming seasons, maybe in the form of beautiful data graphics included in new proposals or just by feeling less overwhelmed trying to make sense of a new Forum post. But getting there will be an iterative process. After all, DAOs are experiments in organic growth and development, and it is impossible to get everything right the first time. It is still early, we have just over a year's experience, and our community is dedicated to figuring out how things are done and striving for constant improvement. BanklessDAO Strong!

🎣 Phishing School

Authors: d0wnlore and the InfoSec Team

What I Learned From DEF CON 30

Last week the popular hacking convention, DEF CON, splayed across the Las Vegas strip for its 30th year. Eager to jump into the fray after the remote-only and hybrid versions that took place during the pandemic, I went and came out of my first DEF CON event with a renewed enthusiasm for the security space and picked up some cool, maybe nefarious, things to share with others. It was also great to touch ~~grass~~ sand and meet people from BanklessDAO and other parts of my life where our only contact was through chat rooms and social media.

Here I will go through some takeaways applicable for anyone looking to take their operational security seriously or are looking to attend a similar tech conference.

It Doesn’t Take Much to Be Good at Social Engineering

One of my favorite villages was the Social Engineering village, predominantly for its vishing Capture the Flag. Here contestants call unsuspecting victims and try to pry sensitive information out of them in a gamified social engineering campaign.

One thing that stood out in this year's social engineering village was the introduction of “Cold Calls”, where anyone could fill out a sheet and attempt a vishing call in front of the audience with a 5-minute time limit. While I did not get to see all Cold Calls that occurred during the conference, almost everyone I saw was freakishly effective at capturing flags — getting key pieces of information out of the victim — as soon as they got into the flow.

Past one’s ability to smooth talk, the things I saw that resulted in the most successful calls were calling the right target and having the right pretext. Meaning that you’ve researched enough targets and picked ones that are most likely to give you what you want, such as new employees and contractors. Having the right pretext is also key; what is your persona and are you behaving in a way that the target would expect that type of person to behave?

Talks Are Great, Talking Is Better

One thing I tried to keep in mind from my great time at Permissionless was to spend more time vibing with people instead of passively listening to talks (the LineCon phenomenon was definitely real this year). While talks at DEF CON are certainly interesting, especially for those where recording was not allowed and thus can offer more intimate information and stories, you’re still going to have more fun just talking to people. This could be while waiting in the massive lines, nerding out at the vendor booths, or hanging with others at suite parties.

If you’re going to a conference and don’t know anyone else attending ahead of time, try to connect with people through chat rooms or social media. DEF CON in particular has a Discord server and so do most of its villages, as well as a large presence on Twitter. Just ask around and start collecting names, as any conference experience will be much better knowing you have a squad of people to hit up if you need stuff to do.

We’re Still in a Nascent Space

Although the public perception and awareness of hacking has grown exceptionally well during the last decade, it’s still a niche space. Within that niche space are relatively niche topics like blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and Web3. To those of us who live and breathe this stuff everyday it would be surprising that a conference that very much talks about cryptography and has a liberal slant to it wouldn’t have more representation of our space there. But the idea of having “crypto” become a more significant part of hacking conferences like this is still a winding road for reasons we’re all likely aware of.

Other than Charles Hoskinson and others in the space making an appearance, plus a few talks on smart contract auditing and blockchain analysis, there was not much public representation of our industry here. Certainly not enough to create a village (a mini-conference with DEF CON that's large enough to house its own booths, talks and events). For security in particular we need to keep building out our own community to make sure that we draw, and keep, enough security experts to keep the space safe and give developers the room to experiment.

🏛 Governance

Proposals in Discussion

🪙 Tokenomics — L2 Liquidity Deepening

BanklessDAO has the Balancer pool on Polygon which has a volume (usage) of around 1,000 USD daily. Currently we have BANK liquidity depth equivalent to 46K USD on this L2, which is resulting in high slippage for people using and trading on Polygon. BanklessDAO needs to support the liquidity depth for operational usage, and so plans to migrate 24K USD of liquidity from SushiSwap and 26K USD from the Balancer L1 pool to provide depth to the Balancer L2 pool. This proposal is to gain approval from the DAO to migrate this liquidity to support operations on Polygon.

🚍 GM Bus Campaign

In a previous proposal, GM Bus requested funds from bDAO to become an official partner and help fund the project. Here is the proposal for reference: GM Bus and Green Pill Trailer - Season 1.

This current proposal is requesting additional funds to manage the execution of the proposed partnership agreement, and other activities that will assist BanklessDAO in supporting the GM Bus’s education initiative.

Web3 is hard for newbies to understand. Scams are everywhere. Anons talk about the mystical metaverse on Twitter, but it’s hard to grasp these things IRL. So the folks at GM Bus have decided to travel the road, meet people in different cities, and raise awareness of crypto with ordinary people. Let’s support them!!

✅ Action Items

📖 Action: Check out the Forum and post your first comment to a proposal!

🏃‍♀️ Catch up: Review this week's Community Call notes or listen to the recording.

🙏 Thanks to Our Sponsor

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