Special thanks to @Alisha, @brichis, @ceresstation, @GFXlabs, @Gonna.eth, and @teresacd for feedback and suggestions on the Season 6 version of the framework as part of the Feedback Commission
Season 7: Collective Rewards Framework
What is this Framework For?
As governance contributions across the Token House and Citizens’ House are rewarded, it’s important to have a framework to set rewards consistently across the Collective. To this end, the below non-binding, guidelines provide a suggested framework to think about Collective rewards, and are not meant to serve as a rigid or binding policy encapsulating all possible scenarios.
The primary use case will be in the Token House’s evaluation of prospective Governance Fund budgets and to ensure more consistency and predictability for voter rewards (delivered retroactively at the end of each Season, based on governance participation.)
How will this Framework Evolve?
This suggested framework is a step towards transitioning more allocation decision making to the community. In the future, we may introduce a Budget Board to make recommendations to the Collective about allocation parameters. The Budget Board may use these guidelines as a starting point from which they propose a rewards framework or policy to be ratified by governance. Our recommendation is that any future policy be kept as streamlined as possible. The more complexity and/ or the more variables involved, the more difficult forecasting and budgeting will be for the Collective in the future.
General Guidelines
- Distributing rewards retroactively solves many of the compensation and budgeting problems prevalent in other DAOs. However, until the Retro Funding mechanism is reliable enough to support more contributions, we recommend setting Governance Fund budgets without the expectation of receiving Retro Funding.
- All rewards are entirely in OP.
- Foundation and Governance Fund Mission grants are locked for one year, unless supporting user incentives (full details here.)
- Stipends for elected representatives are distributed periodically throughout the Season and are unlocked.
- All retroactive governance participation rewards are unlocked.
Guidelines by Contribution Type
- There are several different types of contributions to the Collective
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Ad hoc: These contributions are open to anyone!
- These contributions may include research and analysis, hosting community calls, and/or Builder Ideas
- These contributions are best suited to be rewarded via retroactive governance participation rewards.
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Contribution Paths: These contributions are open to anyone who has completed all steps in the pre-defined path (not elected)
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All the NERD programs and the Ambassadors are contribution paths
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Contribution paths are led by “Maintainers,” which are similar to “Leads” on Councils, and may be supported initially by Foundation Missions.
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Representatives: Elected contributors that act as representatives. Please note that most contributors should not be elected, (see DAO Design Principles.)
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Representatives currently serve on Council or Boards that are established via the Collective Representative Framework as part of higher level system design that suggests the Collective can only support 4-5 of these bodies and ~50 representatives.
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Elected representatives currently receive stipends from the Governance Fund. Stipends should correspond to Impact Ratings.
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Governance participants Highly engaged governance participants receive retroactive participation rewards.
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Rewards should correspond to Impact Ratings.
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This comes out of the Unallocated portion of the token supply right now, but will need to be supported by the Governance Fund eventually.
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Service Providers
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The Collective intentionally does not support persistent working groups staffed with full time DAO contributors, instead supporting autonomous Service Providers via Missions.
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OP Labs and other Core Devs (Sunnyside Labs, Agora, etc.) can be thought of as Service Providers, as can other Mission Applicants.
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Service Providers may be supported by Foundation, Governance Fund, or Retro Funding Missions.
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Impact Rating Framework
This rewards framework is based on the concept of Impact Ratings. Impact Ratings are conceptual, to be used as a non-binding guide in determining budgets or rewards for various contributions.
This framework does not imply rewards will or should be made for all contributions that fall under an Impact Rating. Conversely, contributions that fall outside these examples may still be rewarded. Governance participants should use this framework to reason about which rating a given contribution would fall under and/or whether a given contributor should receive above/below the amount suggested by the corresponding Impact Rating (ie. leadership positions on a Council.) Impact Ratings will not be officially assigned or tracked as they are merely a decision making tool for the community to better assess budget requests and understand voter rewards.
Why Impact Ratings?
It is a design principle of the Collective to focus on outputs (impact) rather than inputs (amount of work) and we believe this approach should be reflected in a Collective Reward Framework. This framework also allows for the flexibility required to be adaptive over time while preserving the integrity of OP as a governance token (1 OP = 1 OP.) Given the need to be adaptive and the Collective’s approach to iteration and learning, each Season, the amount of OP suggested for each Impact Rating will be adjusted, and ratified, as appropriate.
Below are the suggested Impact Ratings for Season 6. Suggested rewards are on a per contributor basis.
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Impact 1 = Contributes to the accessibility of the Collective; no specialized skills or context needed
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Engaging in behaviors that promote Collective Values, such as disclosing conflicts of interest, promoting long term decision making, or empowering community members to make better decisions.
- Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 250 OP per Season
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Impact 2 = Contributes to the accessibility of the Collective; some specialized skills and context needed
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Completing actions or tasks that require some understanding and or specialised skill. I.e: Contribution paths (Ambassadors, supNERDs).
- Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 500 OP per Season
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Impact 3 = Contributes to development of the Collective; low level of specialized skills and moderate context needed
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Participation in a significant governance experiment
- Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 750 OP per Season
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Impact 4 = Contributes to development of the Collective; moderately specialized skill, high context needed
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Providing valuable feedback implemented by the Foundation
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Publishing reports or analysis on governance process, programs, and/or policies
- Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 1,200 OP per Season
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Impact 5 = Contributes to development of the Collective, moderately specialized skills, high context needed
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Active voting participation in governance, by top delegates and/or Citizens
- Suggested Season 6 Rewards:
- 2,000 OP per Reflection Period
- Delegates: 4,000 OP per Season
- Citizens: 2,000 OP per Season
- Suggested Season 6 Rewards:
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Impact 6 = Contributes to the operations of the Collective; moderately specialized skills, high context needed
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Anticapture Commission
- Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 2,500 OP per Season
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Impact 7 = Manages operations of the Collective; moderately specialized skills, high context needed
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govNERDs
- Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 8,000 OP per Season
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Impact 8 = Drives strategic outcomes for the Collective; highly specialized skills and context
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Grants Council, Developer Advisory Board, Milestones and Metrics Council
- Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 20,000 OP per Season
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Impact 9 = Drives critical outcomes of the Collective; highly specialized skills and context needed
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Security Council, Core Development
- Suggested Season 6 Rewards: > 20,000 OP per Season
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All of the contributor roles and associated rewards described here are intended for independent and engaged community members who volunteer to provide their knowledge and expertise to the Collective and receive an honorarium in the form of OP. These volunteers are not employees of the Collective, the Foundation, or any of its affiliates for any purposes.