Season 7: Collective Reward Framework

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Special thanks to @alisha.eth, @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

    • Ad hoc: These contributions are open to anyone!

    • Contribution Paths: These contributions are open to anyone who has completed all steps in the pre-defined path (not elected)

      • All the NERD programs and the Ambassadors are contribution paths

      • Contribution paths are led by “Maintainers,” which are similar to “Leads” on Councils, and may be supported initially by Foundation Missions.

    • Representatives: Elected contributors that act as representatives. Please note that most contributors should not be elected, (see DAO Design Principles.)

      • 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.

      • Elected representatives currently receive stipends from the Governance Fund. Stipends should correspond to Impact Ratings.

    • Governance participants Highly engaged governance participants receive retroactive participation rewards.

      • Rewards should correspond to Impact Ratings.

      • This comes out of the Unallocated portion of the token supply right now, but will need to be supported by the Governance Fund eventually.

    • Service Providers

      • The Collective intentionally does not support persistent working groups staffed with full time DAO contributors, instead supporting autonomous Service Providers via Missions.

      • OP Labs and other Core Devs (Sunnyside Labs, Agora, etc.) can be thought of as Service Providers, as can other Mission Applicants.

      • Service Providers may be supported by Foundation, Governance Fund, or Retro Funding Missions.

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.

  • Impact 1 = Contributes to the accessibility of the Collective; no specialized skills or context needed

    • 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

  • Impact 2 = Contributes to the accessibility of the Collective; some specialized skills and context needed

    • 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

  • Impact 3 = Contributes to development of the Collective; low level of specialized skills and moderate context needed

    • Participation in a significant governance experiment

      • Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 750 OP per Season

  • Impact 4 = Contributes to development of the Collective; moderately specialized skill, high context needed

    • Providing valuable feedback implemented by the Foundation

    • Publishing reports or analysis on governance process, programs, and/or policies

      • Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 1,200 OP per Season

  • Impact 5 = Contributes to development of the Collective, moderately specialized skills, high context needed

    • 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

  • Impact 6 = Contributes to the operations of the Collective; moderately specialized skills, high context needed

    • Anticapture Commission

      • Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 2,500 OP per Season

  • Impact 7 = Manages operations of the Collective; moderately specialized skills, high context needed

    • govNERDs

      • Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 8,000 OP per Season

  • Impact 8 = Drives strategic outcomes for the Collective; highly specialized skills and context

    • Grants Council, Developer Advisory Board, Milestones and Metrics Council

      • Suggested Season 6 Rewards: 20,000 OP per Season

  • Impact 9 = Drives critical outcomes of the Collective; highly specialized skills and context needed

    • Security Council, Core Development

      • Suggested Season 6 Rewards: > 20,000 OP per Season

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.

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As part of the Path to Open Metagovernance, we’ll be experimenting with polls this Reflection Period.

Are there any aspects of the Collective Rewards Framework that you do NOT understand?

Please provide additional feedback in the comments if you select any answers below

  • What this framework is meant to be used for
  • How different contributions are rewarded
  • How impact ratings work
  • How this framework is “enforced”
0 voters
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It seems like the DAO Design Principles link is broken.

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Should be fixed now!

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I’m sorry, my criticism may not be objective, but it’s certainly candid. How can we avoid the impact mentioned here affecting the Optimism Collective, rather than just the badge holders? I see that govNERDs seems to have a significant impact, while community management doesn’t appear to have much influence.
When discussing Contribution Paths, you can’t simply talk about the impact determining everything. Consider influence from another angle: can you do without it?
Yes, I firmly believe that basing Contribution Paths on workload is more aligned with the real world.

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This framework has been updated for Season 7. Below is a summary of changes made:

  • Updated expectation that Governance Fund budgets should not be set with the expectation of receiving Retro Funding as we refine the retroactive reward mechanism.

  • Based on learnings and shifting responsibilities and time commitments over the course of Season 6:

    • Rewards for Impact Rating 4 were reduced from 1,000 OP to 750 OP
    • Rewards for Impact Rating 4 were reduced from 1,500 OP to 1,200 OP
    • Rewards for Citizen governance participation were changed from 2,000 OP per Round to 2,000 OP per Season as the time requirements for participating in a metrics-based Retro Funding Mission are greatly reduced, balanced by a growing set of other governance responsibilities in the Citizens’ House
    • Rewards from Impact Rating 6 were reduced to 3,000 OP from 4,000 OP based on a survey of ACC members at the end of Season 6
    • A suggested reward amount has been added for Impact Rating 9
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Impact 2

I feel like contributors are slowly disappearing,

I know their/our/my work as volunteers, but to value their impact, we need to appreciate how they spend their time in the Optimism space acting as a “killing machine” against scams targeting users. Indirectly, their efforts contribute to ecosystem growth, even if the results account for less than half of the overall impact

And what about the tech nerds, translators, and numbanerds? Why aren’t they included in the contribution path? Even though they receive funding through retro funding (except for translators), I think they deserve recognition for their impact, especially since their skills are technical unless OP intends to eliminate these roles entirely

Just giving my opinion

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Hi @fujiar

The SupNERD work removing and reporting scammers is super important, which is why they had a dedicated Foundation Mission Proposal for S6. The TechNERDs also had a dedicated mission, along with the GovNERDs. So while they may not have been explicitly mentioned in this Collective Reward Framework they are all still active Contribution Paths.

We have lots of initiatives across the Collective, so we could not include all examples in this framework or it would be too long and difficult to follow. Just because it was removed as an example does not mean the Contribution Path is gone.

If you have more questions you can always join the next Office Hours in Discord and I’d be happy to go into more detail.

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