Improving the Guest Pass System | BanklessDAO Weekly Rollup

Catch Up With What Happened This Week in BanklessDAO

Dec 3

Dear Bankless Nation 🏴,

What time is it? Well, that depends where you are situated on this wonderful planet of ours. Many of us have experienced some frustration around daylight saving periods when meeting times suddenly change here but not there, in this guild but not that project. Your Forum vote is needed on this latest bDIP, in which Ops Department Coordinator Rowan proposes that we add wording to the Constitution that states we will coordinate around UTC time in the future.

Speaking of the future, who might you like to hear from at an upcoming Community Call roundtable? During this week’s Community Call, Above Average Joe mixed it up a little by opening a Miro board to seek feedback on what the community would value in potential speakers from outside bDAO. It was cool to see contributor names flying all over the board adding post-it notes with their thoughts in real time!

Also during this week’s call, we congratulated theconfusedcoin on his Level 2 nomination, and heard from shepherd about the latest additions to ThriveCoin’s recognized contributions. Once again, BanklessDAO will be raffling off five exclusive NFTs among contributors who connect a wallet to ThriveCoin this season.

No doubt contributors at all levels will want to read today’s editorial, which covers some suggested changes to the guest pass system. The Forum post which inspired the editorial is still available, although the associated polls have closed.

Whether you have a great deal of time to give to the DAO, or a just a little, your contribution is appreciated. If you found some time to give in November, then make sure to sign up for the upcoming round of Coordinape, which is open now (no matter where you live!). Enjoy some downtime this weekend folks, and come back charged up for another week of making bDAO strong together.

Contributors: someduderando, Dippudo, theconfusedcoin, anointingthompson1.eth, AustinFoss, Paulito, WinVerse, Liquidiot, siddhearta, Trewkat, HiroKennelly

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Improving the Guest Pass System

Author: Someduderando

How best to manage guest passes has long been an important question for BanklessDAO. Recently, blockboy created a post in the Forum to discuss improvements for the guest pass system. This article will cover how guest passes work, what the flaws are, and how we can potentially improve the system, and is based on the Forum post.

To officially join BanklessDAO, members need to hold at least 35,000 BANK. While any person can join the Discord server, they won't have access to all the channels without verifying the BANK holding. Since our mission is to help people get started in web3 and DAOs, we have chosen not to force newcomers to invest upfront to join the DAO, permitting the use of guest passes for those who are interested in contributing. Guest passes enable access to nearly all the channels so contributors can potentially earn their way to the 35,000 BANK threshold and become an official member of the DAO.

Guest passes automatically expire after two weeks. If the holder is interested in continuing to contribute to the DAO, they'll need to ask a Level 2 contributor to renew their pass once it expires.

Drawbacks of the Current Process

While the current process has been in use for some time and is by no means a failure, there are some drawbacks that need to be considered.

Reduced Commitment Level for Newcomers

Most newcomers join bDAO because of their interest in learning about crypto and embarking on the Bankless journey. A guest pass helps these people get up to speed on how the DAO works and provides some time to find a place to contribute. However, guest passes sit outside the existing layered membership system. Since new members acquire access to nearly the entire Discord with relative ease, they may not recognize the additional value that membership provides. This issue is exacerbated by the unlimited renewals allowed under the current system. When members are able to renew their guest passes for an unlimited time frame, they are not necessarily incentivized to become an official member of the DAO. They may come and go without committing to the long term value and success of the DAO.

By limiting how many times guest passes can be renewed, the DAO can create a sense of value and privilege in being a member. Each member who isn't contributing in a meaningful way will be forced to leave the system and only those who are able to commit and contribute can earn the BANK needed to become an official member. Additionally, restricting the time frame newcomers have to earn membership will ensure they will become active contributors, since they need to contribute consistently to earn 35,000 BANK in a limited timeframe.

Incentives for Value-Extracting Members

Given that guest passes can be renewed for an unlimited time frame, this could encourage newcomers to contribute purely to earn BANK and immediately sell it. As discussed earlier, the lack of time restrictions on guest passes allows members to stay indefinitely in the DAO and effectively sidestep the member leveling system. This diminishes the utility of holding BANK, doing nothing to discourage members from selling. However, by putting a time restriction on the guest pass, newcomers who are only interested in the monetary benefits of the DAO, and not interested in the mission, will be limited. Ideally, all our contributors are committed to the mission of the DAO and are willing to help with tasks that might not necessarily directly translate to money in the bank.

Some Solutions To Improve Guest Passes

Introduce Renewal Restrictions

It is clear that unlimited renewals are bad for the system. With a limit on renewals, new contributors will see the benefit of holding BANK. Additionally, it ensures those who join guilds and projects do so because they believe in the BanklessDAO mission and aren’t primarily motivated by quick gains.

An important note here is that these restrictions should not be too harsh as they can lead to good contributors leaving the DAO or running out of time to earn enough for membership. A good balance would be to allow newcomers to contribute for one season. If they can't earn enough BANK within a season, it likely means they didn't contribute enough. They can either buy the remaining balance or move on. This ensures that those who earn their way in have truly done so and believe in the mission.

An important caveat to note here is that we could reduce the membership thresholds to ensure members who contribute enough within a season will earn enough for membership. For example, instead of 35,000 BANK for L1 membership, the threshold could be reduced to 15,000 BANK. Similarly, the timeframe could be for more than a season, but the goal is for the timeframe to be just long enough to demonstrate the benefit of holding BANK and becoming an official member.

Increase Membership Incentives

As an aside to the discussion about the mechanics of the guest pass, increasing membership incentives would be a great way to ensure most people hold BANK instead of selling it, thereby removing one potential abuse layer in the guest pass system.

Provide Other Methods for Newcomers To Join

Going beyond a free guest pass, we could introduce other means for members to join. For example, providing a season pass where newcomers buy a certain amount of BANK and lock it up for the duration of the season to have full access to Discord channels. The specifics here are yet to be debated at length, but the general idea is that introducing new ways for members to join can be beneficial for the whole DAO. It’s possible we could offer different opportunities depending on the target audience. For example, those who can actively contribute could earn enough in a season to become an official member, but those who just want to see how a DAO operates can be given a short pass.

Looking To the Future

The current guest pass system has a major flaw. By introducing carefully crafted time restrictions and other methods for newcomers to join, we can create a more vibrant and active community that believes in the mission of bDAO and is invested in seeing it realized.

🗓 Weekly Recap

Community Highlights

📺 Weekly Rollup Recap With Liquidiot

Join Liquidiot for some sexy vibes in this week’s Rollup Recap. Just kidding, it’s rated G for great! Catch up with what you missed, or watch it just for the entertainment value. You can find all the Rollup recaps on the BanklessDAO YouTube channel, thanks to Liquidiot and WinVerse.

What’s New

👕 AMA With MetaFactory

MetaFactory is a crowdfunding platform for the creation of community-owned brands with an initial focus on fashion/apparel. It curates and manages the brand ownership (IP) and product auction marketplace, as well as handling product production and fulfillment on behalf of its brand partners. Learn how MetaFactory became the go-to platform for manufacturing web3 merchandise in this information-packed AMA.

🎡 Writers Guild Playground

This week the Writers Guild got its silly on, with a friendly competition to see who could write the most popular incorrect sentence in the Writers Playground channel. Congratulations to KingIBK for collecting the most emoji reactions with this crazy sentence!

Fresh Content

🎙 BanklessDAO Podcasts

Get Involved

🦫 bDAO Otterspace Badge Program

The pilot version of the Otterspace badge program is aimed at improving the current system of guest passes for regular contributors. It gives us more token infrastructure to work with, improves L2 requirements, and allows us to start exploring seasonal participation.

Minting links are:

If you have any issues minting, please fill in this form.

📝 Sign Up Phase of Coordinape Is Open

The sign-up phase for the December Coordinape round is now open and will end on December 7, 16:00 UTC. If you've contributed to the DAO over the past month (November) and you'd like to participate in the Coordinape round:

Go to the 🤖bot-commands channel.
Type in /coordinape form-request.
Click the link to the Tally Form and fill it out.
Wait for the Allocation period to begin to give and receive GIVE.

Learning Opportunities

🤼‍♂️ DAOplomats: Using the System for Transparent Collaboration

A DAOplomat is an individual who enters BanklessDAO, representing the interests of another DAO. A DAOplomat is not to be confused with a standard guest of BanklessDAO who is granted a Guest Pass on the server. If you wish to learn, understand, and get involved with DAOlationships and the DAOplomat system, join anointingthompson1.eth on Tuesday, December 6 at 14:00 UTC in the DAOlationships voice channel. To set a reminder, RSVP to the event.

🧑‍🎓 BANK Utility: Uniswap and BANK

The Bank Utility series shows new members what they can do with their BANK tokens across different web3 protocols. This session will concentrate on BANK and Uniswap. If you would love to learn more on how to utilize your BANK tokens, Join Aloy on Wednesday, December 7 at 14:00 UTC in the watercooler voice channel. To set a reminder, RSVP to the event.

👁️‍🗨️ How To Etherscan Session

Etherscan is a block explorer and analytics platform that enables you to access details on any Ethereum blockchain transactions that are pending or confirmed. Do you want to know how to track the BANK and other tokens in your wallet? Join Ernest-of-Gaia on Thursday, December 8 at 14:00 UTC in the watercooler voice channel to learn about this powerful tool. To set a reminder, RSVP to the event.

🏛 Governance

Proposals in Discussion

🎁 cNPS Survey Results — Season 6 Month 1

One of our Operations Department analysts, Ella Dane, has authored a report on the surveys taken from the last Coordinape round that ended on November 16, with a sample size of 181 DAO members. She discusses bDAO’s trending Community Net Promoter Score (cNPS) over the last year. A cNPS is a rating given the following question, “On a scale of 1-10, how likely would you recommend X to a friend or colleague?” Our score for this month was 37, down nine points from October, and almost half of what it was a year ago at 68. In her report Ella provides a nuanced breakdown of how guest passers, L1s, and L2s differed in their respective responses, as well as top contributor praise and criticisms. While it may not be pleasant to read about such a sharp decline in contributor satisfaction, it is good to be aware of the reasons for it. So make sure to head over to the Forum for the full context and to share your thoughts.

⌚ bDIP-02: Coordinated Timing Across BanklessDAO

Here’s a small reminder of our latest bDAO Improvement Proposal in the Forum. In the hopes of standardizing our DAO-wide scheduling process, and avoiding the twice-a-year chaos around daylight savings time, it is proposed by Rowan that all bDAO time be given in the UTC format.

In order to meet quorum, the bDIP needs 51 votes. If passed, the following new section will be added to our Constitution:

DAO Coordination
BanklessDAO coordinates around Universal Coordinated Time (UTC). Wherever possible, meeting and event times are expressed in this timezone.

🛡️ Snapshot Voting — Implement Shielded Voting

To date, all bDAO votes have taken place on Snapshot. Votes are transparent; everyone can see who voted for, or against, each proposal in real time. Now Snapshot has partnered with Shutter Network to implement partial privacy. According to Snapshot Labs:

Shielded voting is a voting system in which the voters’ choices are private during the voting period and get revealed when the proposal closes. This prevents the voting process itself from influencing the vote results.

This proposal suggests that bDAO use shielded voting for the rest of Season 6 as a trial run to collect feedback and then later produce a bDIP for permanent implementation in our Constitution.

✅ Action Items

🐘 Sign up: The Coordinape sign up is now open and will close on December 7, 2022.

💡 Share: New proposals are up on the Forum; please share your ideas.

⛏ Mint your Season 6 Participant Badge and Level 2 Badge from the Otterspace badge program.

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

🤣 Meme of the Week

Thank you Godwithus

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