An Alliance is a group of people (new or pre-existing) that will work together to complete a Mission. An Alliance can be a pre-established organization or a group of contributors that comes together specifically to complete a Mission.
What Does an Alliance Need?
There are a few key features that all Alliances need to have:
A leader. The Trust Tier of the leader is the Trust Tier of the whole Alliance. See more about Trust Tiers here. The leader will also be the main communication point for governance to ask questions and get updates, and should be available for such.
A Mission. The Mission can be a Foundation Mission (RFP) that the Alliance is applying for or a Mission the Alliance is proposing (Proposed Mission.)
Defensible value. A good Alliance has a clear reason why they are the best suited to execute its Mission. Is it your skill combination? Unique contextual understanding? Relevant experience?
If applying for a Foundation Mission (RFP), an Alliance should also be able to defend why their skillset/context/experience/positioning is the best suited to complete the Mission.
If proposing a Mission, an Alliance should also be able to defend its Proposed Mission’s potential impact on the Collective.
What Does a Good Alliance Have?
A good Alliance has the following:
Reward distribution plan: A clear idea or plan for distributing the Mission funding to the Alliance members.
Conflict resolution plan: An internal conflict resolution process. The DAO will not handle internal Alliance disputes unless they directly relate to defrauding the DAO.
Here are some helpful questions to have thought about:
What do we do if someone has worked significantly less than everyone else?
What if someone gets sick and cannot contribute at no fault of their own?
What do we do if someone wants to leave the Alliance?
Are you following the leader strictly (dictatorship) or allowing everyone to have an equal say? (democracy). Both are valid options!
Communication: Have a dedicated space for communication (like Discord, Slack, Telegram, etc.). If creating an Alliance from scratch, check for timezone compatibility or sufficient overlap.
I love the concept of Alliances and the idea of people coming together to tackle a specific mission that aligns with the season’s intents. On top of the aforementioned aspects that a good Alliance has, I’d add that they would need to have:
Defined roles for each member of the Alliance.
Clear distribution of responsibility for the different tasks required to complete the mission in accordance with the skillsets outlined in the defensible value.
That way, the Token House will have more information and context with which to rank the proposals.
Also, it’d be wise to have a place where contributors interested in participating could form Alliances. That could be a Discord channel specifically for discussion around Alliances, or a Discourse post under which people can signal their intention to contribute to a specific mission, and leaders who want to form Alliances can find suitable teammates by going through the responses.
fwiw I don’t think it’s necessary for all individuals in Alliances to participate in the fulfillment of the objectives. I think it’s equally valuable to have trusted people vouching for certain projects and essentially putting their reputation on the line (as a direct beneficiary or as simply a concerned citizen) without doing the actual building
but making clear who’s responsible for what is probably a good idea, yeah
Doesn’t it go against the broader ethos and culture of trustlessness tho? Should we judge a mission proposal on the merit of the vouch of a trusted individual as opposed to judging it based on the combination of the desired outcome and the skillset of the Alliance’s members?
What happens if someone’s more qualified than me to take on a mission, but I have a trusted individual that can vouch for me because they’re my friend? I realize we have lock-up period and clawback in place to prevent malicious intent, but I think laying a solid foundation is better than band-aid fixes.
But regardless of the thoughts above, even if an individual in an Alliance is there just to vouch, that’s still a role that should be described (e.g why their vouch means something) since not everyone will be familiar with the context.
Greetings,
Yes that is a good idea to have a place to discuss that, somewhere like discord. I am totally ready to be part of it. Can contribute in any intent/s.
We’re hosting an Alliance Forming and Mission Proposal workshop tomorrow (May 30th at 18:15 GMT) to facilitate some of the suggestions mentioned above. You can find details in Discord Events or on our Public Governance Calender. We’ll also create an Alliance channel in Discord following this workshop.
The intention is for all members of an Alliance to be active participants in the pursuit of the Mission. The intent is not to have someone associate themselves with a Mission in order to vouch for its credibility. Delegates can vouch for Mission proposals by providing 1 of the 4 delegate approvals required to move to a vote.