This document is only relevant to members of the Grants Council and the Collective Feedback Commission.
Season 6: Mission Request Creation Guide
What’s a Mission?
To understand Missions, you first need to understand Intents. Intents are directional goals that allow the Collective to align on near term targets.
Missions are specific initiatives aimed at achieving one of the Intents. They are tightly scoped and can be accomplished start-to-finish in less than 12 months.
Mission Requests outline specific initiatives delegates want to see built for the Collective. Teams can then apply for a Mission grant to fulfill a Request. The Grants Council selects applicants.
Mission Requests are pre-specified requests for grants that work towards the Collective Intents. A Mission Request outlines an initiative to be executed but does not assign a team to execute it.
Example Mission Requests:
Intent 1: Progress Towards Decentralization (Governance)
Mission Request #1: Create Governance v3 contract for the Collective
Mission Request #2: Onboard 100 new delegates
You can see the list of Mission Requests the Foundation suggests for Season 6 here.
Who Can Create a Mission Request?
In Season 6, Mission Requests will be created by the following parties
- Intent #1: Feedback Commission
- Intent #2: Not supported by the Governance Fund
- Intent #3A: Grants Council
- Intent #3B: Foundation Growth Team
Members of the Feedback Commission and or Grants Council may chose to sponsor ideas from any other community member. It is up to these members to decide how they want to facilitate the sponsorship process, but the Foundation will create a thread where community members can propose ideas for sponsorship.
When are Mission Requests Created?
Mission Requests will only be proposed and approved at the beginning of each Season. You can think of this as the Collective’s bi-annual budgeting process; it only happens at the start of each Season. While this creates some limitations, this process is designed to prioritize work and incentivize execution, which are common challenges in many DAOs. This process is not intended occur again until Season 7.
The above is subject to evaluation based on learnings throughout the Season. A mid-point re-assessment may be considered if deemed necessary based on demand and the need to be adaptive throughout Season 6.
How Do I Create a Mission Request?
For Feedback Commission and Grants Council Members Reference Only
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Please note that Mission Requests can only be supported under one Intent and must fall within scope for that Intent
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Mission Requests are meant to support specific initiatives that can be completed start to finish (marked
done) and are not meant to contract ongoing services and/or working groups -
Mission Requests should specify the work to be done but not the specific team to complete it
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Mission Requests should not rely on Foundation action or support
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Mission Requests that are similar should be combined to prevent redundancy
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Mission Requests may not propose metagovernance changes and/or structures (such as the creation of committees and/or Councils). Please see the Path to Open Metagovernance to understand how and when those proposal rights will come online.
Specification
It is recommended that Mission Requests outline a high level goal to be achieved but refrain from over-specifying the specific tactics to achieve that goal.
For example:
Increase the number of active developers, globally
Not
Host hackathon in Europe
Best Practices for Measuring the Success of a Mission Request
The Collective as a whole is driving towards making better data-driven decisions. A key of this is measuring impact upon completion of this Mission!
Milestones:
These measures should measure progress towards completion, including expected completion dates for each is recommended
Good milestones…
- Should be easily verifiable and ideally verifiable on chain
- Should be objectionable in its completion-ability. The outcome shouldn’t be a subjective metric.
- Source of Truth which is the proof for completion should be laid out in a clear and cohesive manner.
- Should correspond with logical checkpoints in a grants completion stages.
Metrics:
In order to standardize evaluation, it is recommended that metrics for success and milestones tie back to the target metrics listed under the relevant Intent.
- It’s important to understand these mission grants will be measured on their ability to drive the high-level metric from the specific intent
- To make the measurement of performance more actionable, it’s recommended that the high-level metric from the intent be broken down into more detailed metrics
- Using concrete performance metrics should remove subjectivity from the evaluation process and provide insights about the effectiveness of Mission Requests
Impact:
These measures should be focused on performance and may be used to assess your Misson’s impact in the next round of Retro Funding
- You can think of impact as how much the Mission Request contributes to the high-level metric, whereas the metrics make that impact measurable
- Over time, it’s important to understand how different growth levers contribute to our Intents and shed some light on which mechanisms best support which types of contributions
Mission Request Template
Please note Missions must be completed within 12 months (i.e. marked as done).
Delegate Mission Request Summary: Mission Requests should be tightly scoped and well-specified. You can see examples here. You should describe your Mission Request in 1-2 sentences here.
S6 Intent: Please list the Intent your Request aligns with here
Proposing Delegate/Citizen: Delegate name/pseudonym, linked to delegate profile
Total grant amount: This amount should reflect the total amount required to execute the Mission. If a Request specifies multiple applicants, the grant amount should reflect the total OP required to support all qualified applicants. (e.g., if the Request is to make 50k OP grants to 4 applicants, you could specify the total grant amount as 200k OP.)
We have suggested applicants request 80% of the amount of impact they believe they will generate, incentivizing the rest to be rewarded retroactively based on quality of execution in future Retro Funding Rounds.
For clarity, additional Retro Funding is never guaranteed and applicants should not submit applications on the assumption that they will receive more than the upfront grant.
Should this Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants: Select from: “One,” “Up to X” or “Multiple”
How will this Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?
- Please explain alignment with the relevant Intent
What is required to execute this Mission Request?
- Please list responsibilities and/or expected deliverables
How should governance participants measure impact upon completion of this Mission?
- Milestones: These measures should measure progress towards completion, including expected completion dates for each is recommended
- Metrics: In order to standardize evaluation, it is recommended that metrics for success and milestones tie back to the target metrics listed under each Intent as much as possible.
- Impact: These measures should be focused on performance and may be used to assess your Misson’s impact in the next round of Retro Funding
Has anyone other than the proposer contributed to this Mission Request? If so, who, and what parts of this application did they contribute to? If you sponsored another community members idea, please credit them here.
How Are Delegate Mission Requests Approved?
- Once you create a Mission Request, the proposing group of which you are a member, will rank order Mission Requests to determine the suggested order.
- The Token House will approval rank the Requests until the budget under each Intent is fully allocated.
- The Grants Council will then process grant applications under each Request for the remainder of the Season.
- Mission Requests must be completed and posted to the forum by July 8th at 19:00 GMT. However, it is encourage to post drafts to the forum as early as possible to incorporate any delegate feedback before the deadline.
