Ed Mazurek - Developer Advisory Board Operating Budget

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Developer Advisory Board Operating Budget

Proposed Board Lead: Ed Mazurek (wildmolasses)

Proposed Board Operating Budget: 122,000 OP (+52,000 OP from last Season)

Contact Info: changes@gmail.com

Goals of this proposal:

The goal of this proposal is not to compete directly with Zach Obrontā€™s proposal, which is fantastic. (Zach was on the S5 board and is otherwise very qualified. Furthermore, Zach was kindly helpful to my proposal, sharing his thoughts on the DAB on a call. Due to his kindness and qualification I happily support his proposal, and am keen to hear whether any of these ideas could fit within his Board.) Rather, it seeks to achieve 2 things:

  • to consider the role of transparency in the DAB
    • In season 6, Optimism as a whole is moving to provide more transparency into shifting governance to the community. The DAB could also increase transparency to serve the community as well as future iterations of the DAB. Consistent with Season 6ā€™s Intent #1, this proposal seeks to move the needle on governance decentralization by making it clearer what the DAB is doing when. Letā€™s borrow the spirit of the iterative approach suggested in the path to open metagovernance:
      • Hypothesis: Despite increased transparency and expanded responsibilities, the DAB can be more effective in S6 than in S5.
  • to foster a healthy dialogue around the DAB
    • I was encouraged to submit a proposal because having only 1 leads to a vote-in by default, without any dialogue. By suggesting some ideas here, I have the potential to influence the DAB that emerges regardless of voting outcome. I apologize for any not-quite-mature ideas here that would be revised or improved via firsthand experience on the DAB. But, here are my thoughts given the information available!

Previous work or qualifications to be Board Lead:

Board Charter:

  • Season 5 responsibilities that will persist (from Developer Advisory Board)
    • Assess the completion of technical milestones that the Developer Advisory Board has advised the Council on. (In S5 this was mostly limited to Intent #1, but this will now relate to all 3 intents).
  • New responsibilities for Season 6 (predetermined from Season 6: Developer Advisory Board Renewal):
    • The DAB will be expected to provide plain english explanation of Protocol Upgrades within 72 hours of a proposal draft being posted
    • Approval by the DAB will be required as 1/4 delegate approvals required for a Protocol Upgrade to move to a vote
    • The DAB, alongside Core Developers, will be able to create ideas on the Ideas List
    • The DAB will advise the Grants Council on any technical grants and/or milestones, regardless of which Intent they fall under. Advisory should be provided to the Grants Council within 72 hours of a request.
    • If DAB reviewers (at least 3) unanimously vote ā€œnoā€ on an application or milestone, it will prevent approval by the Grants Council
    • It is recommended that the OP Labs representative vote on any application corresponding to the core protocol and/or associated roadmap
    • All members will be accountable to governance as they remain removable via the Representative Removal proposal type outlined in the Operating Manual
  • Additional responsibilities unique to this proposal:
    • Call for feedback from stakeholders: DAB should post a public thread on gov.optimism.io that will serve as a call for feedback from stakeholders. Stakeholders should be formally reminded once a month to provide ideas on whatā€™s working and what could be done 1% better. This will be useful for this seasonā€™s DAB as well as future iterations of the DAB.
    • DAB should maintain a doc (linked in above forum thread) that captures what its members are doing each month. This includes an index of the protocol upgrade summaries, links to DAB feedback in Charmverse, etc. ā€“ our activity public whenever possible!
    • DAB should be a key presence during Grants Council coordination, and should work with the Grants Council lead (and four review teams) to determine what meaningful presence looks like. This could mean, for example, at least one DAB member is expected to join for the first 15 minutes of every Council meeting, or that thereā€™s a special Council or review team meeting every other month where the whole DAB board should attend. Notes from Grants Council/DAB synergy must be public, posted in the doc mentioned above.
    • Grow the future DAB by inviting engineers in our network to join DAB coordination calls. These engineers can be either seasoned engineers who weā€™d invite for their unique knowledge related to some delegate request weā€™re considering, or junior engineers (perhaps DAB candidates in S7 or S8) who are present in order to learn firsthand what the DAB does. This will increase DAB transparency as well as grow the candidate pool for the DAB.
    • Board lead should maintain regular update blurbs / articles on the experiment that is this seasonā€™s DAB; should be posted to forum (see Lead responsibilities)
    • The DAB should move as much of their comms as possible to a public place (like the #developer-advisory-board discord channel, for example) and lean on a private channel only in the case where the sensitivity warrants it.

Breakdown of Board Operating Budget:

Total Budget: 122,000 OP (+52,000 OP from last Season)

  • Lead = 25,000 OP (+5,000 OP from last Season)
    • Responsibilities carried forward from last season
      • Publish internal operation procedures
      • Facilitate board member review
      • host board meetings that will occur every 2 weeks (last season specified at least once every 6 weeks, but with the increase in responsibilities, Iā€™d like to increase this)
      • Ensure milestones on technical missions have been met before dispersing funds
      • Final decision maker in the event of board disagreement
    • Responsibilities not carried forward:
      • The Lead will not be solely responsible for the DAB retrospective. Instead, each DAB member (including the lead) will be asked to contribute their own thoughts inside one S6 DAB retrospective thread.
    • New responsibilities from last season:
      • Maintain public updates on forum of the experiment that is this seasonā€™s DAB to remind the Grants Council weā€™re here, and assist with the ā€œlearnings and iterationā€ of future DAB seasons.
    • The lead shares in the responsibilities of ā€œBoard Memberā€ listed in the section below. Because of the increase in responsibilities, I seek to increase the leadā€™s budget by 5000 OP.
  • Ops Lead: = 25,000 OP x 1
    • New in S6, the ops lead is a board member with additional responsibilities:
      • Responsible for assigning an ā€œownerā€ to each incoming Grants Council request. This owner does not have to answer the request themselves, but is responsible for calling in any other DAB member / stakeholder so that it gets answered on time.
      • Interviews each DAB board member once a month, asking whatā€™s going well and what can go 1% better. Feedback gets collated and is published in Board Leadā€™s public updates.
      • Reminds Grants Council 1x a month that weā€™re looking for feedback in our feedback thread! (see Board Charter)
      • Should be present at specially scheduled Grants Council<>DAB meetings, notetake, and publish the notes.
      • Primary point of contact for Grants Council and review teams.
      • Actively pulls invite list of special guest engineers from other board members for DAB calls, and coordinates scheduling (see Board Charter)
    • The ops lead shares in the responsibilities of ā€œBoard Memberā€ listed in the section below.
  • Board Member (General): 18,000 OP x 3 = 54,000 OP (+5,500 OP from last season)
    • Update their activity on the ā€œWhat is the DAB doingā€ doc on a regular basis.
    • Each member expected to post their own post-mortem on the DAB during the reflection period. This increases the transparency of the DAB.
    • Due to the increase in responsibilities, and consistent with the reward suggested in the Season 6: Collective Reward Framework, Iā€™d like to increase each board memberā€™s budget by 5,500 OP this season.
  • Board Member (OP Labs): 0 OP x 1 = 0 OP
    • This OP Labs member will support both general board members and OP focused board members. Consistent with last season, it seems the payout here is 0. :frowning:
  • Board Member (OP focused): 18,000 OP x 1 = 18,000 OP
    • This board member will share the responsibilities of the general board members. Additionally, similar to Zach Obrontā€™s proposal, this member will be responsible for doing most of the lifting on OP protocol upgrades, taking the time to understand and then explain internally to the DAB. Then, this member will drive the plain English upgrade summaries forward. Beyond that, this member will be responsible for attending token house calls to explain the upgrade when appropriate. To compensate for this additional lift, this member will share less of the grants council advising load, but is still expected to contribute.
    • Due to the increase in responsibilities, and consistent with the reward suggested in the Season 6: Collective Reward Framework, Iā€™d like to increase each board memberā€™s budget by 5,500 OP this season.

How should governance participants measure the Boardā€™s impact, and ensure its executing on its Charter?

User Experience KPI:

Foundation suggested measures:

  • NPS of Grants Council Reviewers (as the Grants Council is the primary user of the DABā€™s advisory)
  • Response time to Grants Council inquiries (as the Grants Council is the primary user of the DABā€™s advisory)
  • 90% provision rate of plain english summaries of all protocol upgrades within 72 hours of proposal being posted

Additional measures unique to this proposal:

  • Community awareness of DAB activity as measured by likes/engagement in the forum

Performance KPIs:

Foundation suggested measures:

  • Public feedback from OP Labs engineering team on the grants made by Grants Council (is it positive or negative?)
  • Number of technical milestones not met
  • Voting participation on protocol upgrades, considering the # of abstain votes of protocol upgrades
  • Number of questions about protocol upgrades from Citizens

Additional measures unique to this proposal:

  • Number of DAB candidate applications into S7 (expecting an increase)
  • Number of DAB Lead proposals in S7 (expecting an increase)
  • I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.
  • I do not believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.
0 voters
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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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As an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power, I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote!

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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and believe this proposal is ready to move towards a vote

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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

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Slightly late but signaling my thoughts:

I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and believe this proposal is ready to move towards a vote.

Also good to see a competitor to the standard renewal budget.

3 Likes
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The following reflects the views of L2BEATā€™s governance team, composed of @kaereste and @Sinkas, and itā€™s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.

After reviewing both proposals for the Developer Advisory Board renewal, we have decided to vote in favor of the one by @zachobront. It was a hard decision as Zach and Ed both have a strong background and are a great fit to lead the DAB.

Zach was a member of the DAB in Season 5, as appointed by the Foundation, and therefore, we feel he has more relevant experience when it comes to the operational side of the board. Moreover, we feel that his proposed board charter is more suited for the Season 6 scope.

Having said that, we highly appreciate the fact that Ed came with a competing proposal, having different visions for the board definitely enriches the discussion around it. Weā€™d love to see Ed active in the collective as we appreciate his skills and experience and believe heā€™s a valuable member of the Collective.

4 Likes