Dear Bankless Nation 🏴,

We are a few weeks away from the end of the season and the DAO is busy as always. Season 9 proposals are under review by the Grants Committee, org units are starting role-holder elections, and there will be an opportunity soon for interested Level 1 members to be elected for the Grants Committee. For this week’s editorial Boluwatife interviewed four of the current Committee members, which is great timing for potential candidates!

At the Community Call discussion this week, the Infosec team shared plans to audit and revamp bDAO’s Discord server roles and permissions, citing the need for security and role-appropriate technical knowledge as reasons for the review. This timing aligns with the transition to management of the Guest Pass role with Collab.land via the Discord Apps menu. The roundtable conversation progressed to some ideation about the intention of the L2 role, the importance of mutual respect when contributors step away, and the value of inclusive language when adjusting access levels or permissions.

Some further updates from the call are that the Governator project has regretfully paused development, there’s a second SAFE airdrop for eligible multisigs to claim, total time-locked BANK is at 9.28 million BANK across 127 holders, and — as always — there are cool podcasts and hot reads to check out.

Have a fun weekend!

Contributors: Boluwatife, WinVerse, Warrior, theconfusedcoin, Paulito, anointingthompson1.eth, Vi-Fi, d0wnlore, trewkat, HiroKennelly

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✅ Action Items

🖊 Subscribe to the Crypto Sapiens newsletter.

🎁 Claim: Eligible guilds, departments, projects can now claim the SAFE Airdrop #2.

👨‍🏫 Learn how to use Bounty Board and Dework on August 8 in the watercooler.

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

🏛 Governance

Snapshot Votes

👥 GC Funding — Accruing Value Via RPGF3

The Grants Committee has approved the proposal for Accruing Value Via RPGF3, initiated by members from IMN, Nación Bankless, and Bankless Africa. The GC agreed to funding based on additional KPIs. If this Snapshot vote passes, the funding will be distributed: half immediately and the other half upon verification of KPIs.

Head to Snapshot and cast your vote by August 11, 2023.

Proposals in Discussion

🔴 Optimism Liquidity Implementation

The DAO does not currently own liquidity on Optimism L2. This proposal aims to address this, with the intention of migrating 5 ETH and 2.2M BANK from Mainnet in order to implement a full-range position on Uniswap V3. This is due to rising L1 gas costs and growth in BanklessDAO subDAO activities on Optimism. This will produce an initial liquidity pool worth $20k. Visit the Forum to participate in the conversation.

🏴 DAOStewards as Official Meta-Governance Delegate

This proposal aims to formally designate the DAOStewards group as the official meta-governance delegate for BanklessDAO. The stated goal is to simplify the delegation procedure by removing the requirement for individual delegation proposals. Take a look at this suggestion and the concerns stated in the comments, and let us know what you think.

Grooving With the Grants Committee

Author: Boluwatife

Operating on principles of decentralization and transparency, BanklessDAO's Grants Committee (GC) plays a pivotal role in empowering creators and visionaries within the DAO. The GC facilitates the distribution of BANK to cutting-edge project teams, supporting initiatives that align with the DAO's mission. In this piece, we get to know some of the dynamic individuals who make up the GC and learn more about their work in propelling the BanklessDAO community towards a bankless future.

Four members of the bDAO Grants Committee — links, Baer.eth, Icedcool, and raybankless — graciously shared their perspectives, experiences, and visions for the future of BanklessDAO.

These individuals shoulder the responsibility and accountability for overseeing the grants system, evaluating incoming grant applications, and efficiently managing the grants treasury. Additionally, the GC collaborates with guilds and departments to review and provide guidance on seasonal funding requests. The GC is required to be transparent and communicative with the DAO, which entails providing access to GC meetings and offering opportunities for DAO members to express their opinions.

It is not always easy to find individuals who are experienced, willing, and available to be part of this intensive process. Having held multiple roles and contributed to many projects, GC members are trusted individuals who have demonstrated remarkable dedication to BanklessDAO's mission. Balancing several roles can be challenging, but each GC member emphasized the importance of open communication, collaboration, and setting clear priorities to optimize their time and maximize their impact.

How do you intend to make sure that funding goes to the projects that really need it?

links: Unfortunately, we don't have the capacity to deep-dive to find projects who really need funding. We have to rely on those projects coming to us looking for funding. I will spend most of my time trying to help projects who ask for funding set themselves up for success. In the future I'd like to get more depth on encouraging promising projects to request grants, but we have to work on our basic framework first.

Baer.eth: I have run projects through the Eisenhower Matrix for budgeting, but this will not work effectively in BanklessDAO.

Icedcool: This season, I'm taking a much sharper eye on funding and what should and shouldn't be funded.

raybankless: Funding is not a clear cut process, you can't. Sometimes you think it is not worth funding that project/guild, but other committee members think otherwise. Or maybe they don't think otherwise but want to give them a chance. So I don't think you can make sure of that.

All four emphasized the significance of transparency and community input, involving the wider DAO in the decision-making process to foster collective ownership. They also highlighted the iterative nature of the funding process, which involves learning from past experiences to optimize future funding decisions.

What do you plan on improving about GC processes?

links: There are lots of ways we could improve, but the top of the list is to create clarity and resiliency in our GC procedures.

The GC is an elected position which experiences new members every season. Each season, we also have new project champions and coordinators who may never have gone through a grant process. We need to ensure our procedures are easy to find, understand, and follow so that those seeking grants can get them, and those giving grants understand the expectations on them.

Of particular importance is to solidify the Grants Committee mandate. The existing Constitution has us only handling "mid-season funding requests", but we do much more than this now. I'd like to work with the DAO to solidify our mandate which will hopefully make clarifying our processes more effortless.

Baer.eth: I want to reduce the overhead of the DAO every season; projects, Guilds and Departments that got funding in previous seasons are getting a rubber stamp every season and are added to the Snapshot. There is little to no sanity check by the DAO due to the enormous amount of proposals coming in during season change! Unfortunately, the GC doesn't have any jurisdiction over seasonal proposals. So what I'm looking for is to plug the Bank leakage by reducing the seasonal funding to essential Departments and changing everything else to ad-hoc funding.”

raybankless is an advocate for better onboarding of members to the GC and better guidance for the projects applying for grants.

Icedcool: the Grants Committee has a number of focuses that revolve around GC definition, process clarification, documentation, and project/DAO alignment. A fuller overview can be found in this GC Brainstorm in Figma:

What are your thoughts about Quadratic Funding for DAO projects?

When asked what they thought about quadratic funding for projects in the BanklessDAO, GC members unanimously praised the quadratic funding mechanism for its potential to promote fairness and community-driven decision-making, however, had their personal reservations regarding the limitations of the framework.

While acknowledging the merits of the Gitcoin platform as a valuable infrastructure for funding and fostering a secondary marketplace for BANK funding, it's essential to recognize that relying solely on this platform might not be sufficient. The GC retains its vital role within the DAO, controlling BANK issuance and project and guild funding.

However, there are valid concerns about resource allocation and the potential for popular projects to dominate funding, leaving smaller yet equally valuable initiatives with limited support. Detailed budgets provide clarity for project needs, but Gitcoin's quadratic funding could eliminate this requirement, raising questions about accountability.

While quadratic funding efficiently channels resources to projects, its primary focus might not be creating accountability but rather ensuring funding distribution. It may work well for projects categorized as "public goods" but might not be as suitable for profit-seeking ventures, though uncertainties persist.

What is your long-term vision for the DAO?

links: I'd like BanklessDAO to be a gathering place for dream-seekers. Those who want to take control of their lives come to BanklessDAO to learn how. To do that, we need to create an environment that can actually help people get there … that's the hard part.

Baer.eth: BanklessDAO currently focuses on media to educate the world to go bankless, but we don't have any in-house products for those on this long journey. We should onboard people through media, give them the tools to advance further, and provide the necessary care once they have reached a milestone. In other words, we should be a one-stop solution for people to go bankless and be Bankless.

Icedcool’s long-term vision for BanklessDAO is strongly aligned to its mission of onboarding people into web3. He clarifies that we are currently doing the above well, although we need to get better at our sustainability, roles, and talent management. To that end, it is important that we stay at the head of new tooling, new coordination trends, and continue to experiment with ways of organizing and doing governance.

raybankless is of the opinion that BanklessDAO could be more successful in the long run if it focuses on public goods.

What does success look like five years from now?

Each GC contributor rounded out the interview by answering the question: what will a successful BanklessDAO look like in five years?

links: If we have built a successful onboarding tool that people use, and if the onboarded members return, and refer content to arm themselves, or even use the DAOs media as an authentic source for information in non-custodial web3, then we are successful.”

Baer.eth: In five years, I expect web3 to be much more developed and nuanced. A successful BanklessDAO will be a place where people can jump into and experience the best of web3 (tools and coordination), and start getting involved in ownership economies, where their decisions impact the projects, groups and organizations they are working with, and they share in the value accrual of that.

Icedcool: BanklessDAO will be a bustling place, with contributors who care about the Bankless mission and pitch in to help. We will have several "successful" projects who are able to support their own contributors and help hold up the Bankless brand. We are a landing spot for people new to blockchain, and a rite of passage for veterans in the industry.

raybankless: Within the next five years, numerous contributors from BanklessDAO will secure positions in other prominent DAOs and organizations. These opportunities will arise due to the invaluable skills and extensive networks they acquire and cultivate through their participation in bDAO.

How amazing it will be to revisit these responses in five years and see our growth as a community!  Cheers to our great members of the Grants Committee and to all our contributors and readers we say thank you!

👀 In Case You Missed It

🎟️ Change in Guest Pass Process

There are changes underway for the application of the Guest Pass Discord role. It will still provide the same access, and will still expire in 14 days. Instead of using the /slash command to add it for the person, we will use the Apps menu built into Discord. It is important that a Guest Pass is assigned through the Apps menu and not directly added to a user’s account or it will not expire.

🎙️ AMA With ATOR Protocol

In this AMA recording, we deep dive into OPSEC within web3 with ATOR Protocol. This project is dedicated to enhancing online anonymity by strengthening the Tor network. With surveillance increasing, this topic is becoming even more important.

🌐 WebX × Bankless Japan

Author: d0wnlore

The Bankless Japan team is still working hard after our attendance at WebX last week, a large 2-day conference in Tokyo that saw over 15,000 attendees and nearly 300 speakers. From various levels of the Japanese government, to tokenization of different industries and DeFi protocols you have likely used, it was great to see different industries attend and get excited about what can be accomplished with blockchains and web3 in the region.

The WebX event struck a balance between attracting established organizations, newbies to web3, and DAO or protocol builders. While some attendees were just getting their feet wet with web3, their conversations were usually within earshot of other developers talking shop. This would often lead to interesting conversations on how different worlds and industries can collaborate to accomplish similar goals.

At Bankless Japan we were in a great position to connect with future collaborators and promote the Bankless mission, as we had a booth near the exhibitor floor exit that was hard to miss. We also hosted small workshops at our booth about NFT-based loyalty programs and securing Twitter X accounts with 2FA. Kaz and d0wnlore helped run the booth and talked to attendees, while Yuki and jackalpha also moderated panels at the speaker stages.

Events like WebX show that there is both an eager industry and hungry audience in Japan that wants to see web3 technologies further disseminated for general use. Japan is well known for fusing technological innovations within their rich culture, if there is a good fit. Bankless Japan will continue helping explore web3 use cases with local projects and promoting successful use cases to a global audience.

🍔 Grab It While It’s Hot

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🗓 Set A Reminder

🛄 How To Bounty Board/Dework

Are you interested in learning how to create and claim bounties on the Bounty Board and Dework? Join the Education Department on Tuesday, August 8 at 14:00 UTC in the watercooler voice channel to learn more about these tools.

📝 How To Notion

Do you want to learn how to use Notion? Join the Education Department on Wednesday, August 9 at 14:00 UTC to get help with the Notion Ninja Learn to Earn courses. Understand how Notion permissions are managed and the skills you need to be an effective Notion user.

📖 How To BANK (Governance)

Join the Education Department on Thursday, August 10 at 14:00 UTC in the watercooler voice channel to learn about the BanklessDAO Constitution, and in particular, how the DAO is structured.

🤣 Meme of the Week

h/t 0xLawliette