SEED Latam | Regarding the selection of the new badgeholders for our members.
This week is an important one for the Optimism Collective, as Friday (tomorrow) is the last day for badge holders to turn in their voting badges to new members to expand the Citizen House and launch retroPGF3.
Although it was not a requirement, as a community that honors the values of decentralization and transparency, we asked our members @Joxes and @CryptoChica, holders of the current badges, to post who they decided to give their new voting badge to, and they readily agreed:
However, we believe that we have failed in our communication, since some people made public their disagreement about the election of our members. We believe it is important to demand this type of communication and transparency (we have demanded it) as long as it is a framework of respect and well-intentioned, informed questions. For this reason, in this post, our members will expand on their communication about their selection.
We would also like to clarify some points that have been mentioned:
As is our spirit we make everything public and in community. The Joxes delegation, besides voting in community makes all its decisions public, this can be found in the Delegates Communication Thread. Even the retroPGF2 voting was also public and @Carlosjmelgar also attended and presented his web3beach project to the community.
We leave the links of the votes, justifications of the votes and how was our voting process:
This will continue, I encourage you to follow our posts in this forum or you can attend our governance calls.
This is a malicious and baseless message. We suggest the reading of the logic behind a sibyl attack and also read the retroFPG rules.
SEED Latam is a big ecosystem, we have been working since Abril 2020. We interact with a large number of communities and builders in Latam and other regions, our members also participate in other initiatives. We make this clear from day 0, in SEED Latam - General Communication Thread. This is common in crypto we are few people doing many things.
ETHKipu is a much bigger ecosystem than ours, surely many of its contributors are part of other initiatives.
ForkDAO is one of the many communities that relate to SEED Latam, as well as others such as Solow, Mujeres en Crypto, Kairos research, EthLima, Desci Latam and dozens of other communities. How we relate to other communities is described in Section 7 of our bylaws, you can read it here.
If you have proof of such strong accusations as the ones you mention we recommend you to post them in the discord channel destined to this kind of accusations you make, here is the link: Optimism and you can also ask for help to @lavande.
Final Words and Reflection
We acknowledge the dissatisfaction voiced by some regarding the selection of badgeholders. This sentiment underscores that there’s still considerable room for refining the process. Additionally, we believe it’s crucial to review and enhance the badgeholders’ selection system, introducing modifications that allow nominators to provide a rationale and make their choices transparent to the community.
Our communication channels remain open for discussing these matters. Together, we can build a more robust and effective governance for Optimism.
I joined DeFi Latam on May 11, 2021, as a Community Manager but eventually took on a much broader role and ended up becoming something of a Community Builder.
From January to August 2022, I got involved in the organization of ETH Latam Buenos Aires as one of the 5 people in the general coordination. It was an unpaid role, and over 20 members of SEED Latam took on operational tasks because we understood that the event was a benefit to the entire community.
From July to October 2022, I volunteered in the organization of ETH Latam Bogotá.
In March 2023, I started working in the emerging structure of ETH Kipu.
I left my leadership role at SEED Latam (formerly DeFi Latam) on June 5, 2023 I transitioned to coordinating the emerging Governance area of SEED Latam on the same day.
I am currently continuing to work in both organizations.
Only two people are involved in both organizations. One of those people is me. The other person is @0xLocoPacha, who is the designer for both organizations. I will not make a generalization or value judgment about my colleagues’ social circle. I will only say that in SEED Latam, there are 18 people in the Governance area alone. And in ETH Kipu, including members, collaborators, volunteers, and teachers, the number is around 50 people. And if we consider students, the number goes up to +400.
Both positions were communicated on July 19, 2023, in this forum:
For more details about the structure of SEED Latam, please check this post. You can review the updated organization chart here.
Rules and Criteria for Choosing Badgeholders
Now I would like to focus on the rules and criteria because these are what we must adhere to. As a badgeholder, I was instructed to nominate a new person to receive the badge. In this regard, I have two types of criteria to follow:
Rules and Code of Conduct: In this case, subjectivity is minimal because the text does not require much interpretation as its meaning is clear:
JoĂŁo did not work with me, nor does he work with me now. The rule is satisfied.
JoĂŁo does not represent any project or company. He acts on his own.
JoĂŁo can help with the process. His fresh perspective and common sense will help provide the necessary insights.
JoĂŁo is a lawyer. He follows multiple Web3 governance structures. I trust his input will be crucial when evaluating initiatives in the Collective Governance category.
JoĂŁo will definitely expand the diversity of perspectives, for the reasons I mentioned here:
My own personal assessment: having experienced being a badgeholder in RPGF2, I understand the responsibilities we are subject to. When I thought of JoĂŁo, I considered the following aspects:
Time availability
Proactivity
Critical judgment
Objectivity
Dissemination and impact
My Relationship with My Nominee, JoĂŁo Kury
Under no circumstances do I believe that members of any DAO should disclose personal details or aspects of the relationships they form both within and outside the Web3 ecosystem. However, given the relevance of the relationship between JoĂŁo and myself to his nomination, I am sharing some paragraphs summarizing our interaction.
TL;DR: JoĂŁo is not my friend. We do not have a pre-existing relationship. He is just another builder I had the opportunity to meet at a crypto event.
Brazil: ETH Samba
I met JoĂŁo on March 31, 2023, in Rio de Janeiro, at the ETH Samba event organized by Solange Gueiros and other builders from Brazil. It was my first time in Brazil, and I was invited as a speaker.
I use this paragraph to digress briefly: I had the honor of being the first speaker at the event (you can verify this by clicking on “Program” on the event’s website), opening with a talk about Public Goods where I discussed RPGF2 and the importance of the experience (you can access the presentation here).
I remember it was my first experience in a country where neither English nor Spanish was the norm. Despite the excellent atmosphere and everyone’s willingness to communicate using a mix of languages and gestures, I naturally ended up having more extensive conversations with those who spoke Spanish or English. João was one of the people who surprised me because his Spanish was quite good, and we began discussing various topics. I was impressed by his understanding of DAOs and governance, as well as his particular interest in privacy issues for governance participants. We greeted each other and shook hands with the promise that we would collaborate on governance in the future. However, we did not communicate again until months later.
Argentina: Governance Day, “La CaSEEDta,” and ETH Argentina
In anticipation of the ETH Argentina conference, we at SEED Latam worked diligently to organize an exclusive side event on Governance (we believe it was the first of its kind in the region). Upon learning of João’s possible trip, we invited him to give a lecture at the #GovernanceDay, which you can find here (in English).
João was in contact with different members of our team at the house rented by SEED Latam to host people from different countries (nicknamed “La CaSEEDta,” a play on words for “little house”). João did not stay there, but he visited us on some days along with many other guests. He conducted interviews since several people from both Optimism Español and SEED Latam had traveled from different countries. I must admit that I was not aware of these interviews until I saw them published. You can watch the videos on his YouTube channel.
As a member of @ETHKipu, I was also in close contact not only with JoĂŁo but also with different members of the Brazilian community. We do not have an English version, but I wrote this article myself. I was in touch with multiple members from different countries. This means that my contact with JoĂŁo during those days was within the normal range of interaction as with other people.
Post-Argentina
JoĂŁo inspired confidence in me to nominate him for the role. In fact, while these questions were being raised on the forum, I saw this message in the SEED Latam Telegram community.
The impact of nominating a badgeholder in advance is being questioned, and I believe we can already see results https://www.optimismpt.com/
This is definitely the result of dozens of conversations that took place during those days when people from 7 different countries came together. Meeting @Pumbi and other members of Optimism Español was crucial for this initiative to emerge. In fact, we had suggested it, but we didn’t know they were going to launch a website. It was a pleasant surprise today, but I experienced it with a bittersweet feeling due to the accusations in the forum.
Communication
We have been involved in the governance of Optimism from day 1 at SEED Latam. All communication is concentrated in the communication thread of the SEED Latam delegate Joxes, active since July 16, 2022, and earlier this year, we created an institutional communication thread for SEED Latam, where we take special care in ensuring clarity and detail in our actions both politically and organizationally.
In light of this, such allegations are unacceptable and even immature. Badgeholders are also subject to a conflict of interest declaration. Voting for organizations in which they are involved is prohibited.
Both Joxes and I decided to take a proactive role and communicate our nominations on the forum. While this is not mandatory, we believe it is positive to do so. Most nominations have not been reported.
Last year, it was also not mandatory to report the rationale behind votes. However, Joxes did it here, and I did it here.
Therefore, this statement is malicious, incorrect, and attacks our culture and work ethic:
We have instructed our nominees on this point from the very beginning, emphasizing the need to make a final post informing about the decision-making process, the review of all proposals (even if they are more than 200, last year there were 195), and the communication of all of this on the forum, Discord, and personal networks.
I understand that this was a personal initiative and was not mandatory. In any case, Gonna can clarify. In my case, I prioritized a face-to-face interaction where I sat down with JoĂŁo to calmly discuss the importance of the responsibility in this role and asked him targeted questions to understand if he was genuinely interested.
Final Personal Conclusions
Apathy and Concentration.
In the last Citizens’ House meeting held 2 days ago (September 12), it caught my attention that three days before the deadline, 82 badges had not yet been distributed. This is at least concerning because the failure to distribute and accept the badge ultimately leads to the centralization of decision-making. Why do we not have at least 100 badgeholders at this point? Are we fully comprehending the importance of distributing 30M OP?
The role of the Badgeholder is not paid. There are no financial incentives to get involved. This narrows down the options when thinking about valid candidates. It is common for people in Web3 to be involved in two or more projects.
Proposal for New Badge Distribution Methods
I believe we can work during the reflection period to suggest new distribution methods. Unfortunately, right now, I can only think of bureaucratic layers for the process. While I have tried to strictly follow the criteria set by the forum, some sectors are not satisfied with it. This is an excellent opportunity to revisit parts of the process that are constantly evolving and make quality suggestions to improve the badgeholder selection mechanisms.
But it is the task of all members of the Optimistic collective.
How is this immature ?
This is a very serious question. I am a concerned member of the community. The post is from @Carlosjmelgar that brought attention to this matter.
Please provide transparency of onchain transactions between you and the other members mentioned in this thread in the form of a dune analytics dashboard or bubble maps tacking method.
I took the time to read the criticisms about the distribution of my voting badger; there has been a particularly hostile atmosphere in the thread since I made my nomination public (I opted, yes), I’m going to start with some important considerations.
Criteria and choosing
With this new round, rules and criteria were established, and new restrictions were made clear while the spirit remained intact. This is my interpretation and base approach:
The Optimism Foundation encourages following four criteria, and they invoke the inclusive spirit perfectly! I considered much more than just focusing on checkable contributions on Twitter. For example, related to my decision, each round of public goods financing in the Ethereum ecosystem gives us essential experience and information, and it’s good that retroPGF soaks up all the points of view from my perspective.
There is an implicit perception of a community member stuck into some measurables, which is unhealthy. It is not only about the time spent or activity of your forum account and some deliverables; Optimism has been characterized by having an inclusive and extensive ethos as the Ethereum community does.
Something interesting as an exercise: according to the Optimism discord, Ethereum co-founder vbuterin is now a badgeholder. What do I think of this? I believe it’s fantastic!; yes, he doesn’t spend much time publicly in official discussion instances, but we all know that he has a lot to contribute (and already did in so many fields on scaling, public goods funding, and a lot more). Nobody has any doubt about it, it would also be unfair to judge him using metrics or search examples.
Distributing my voting badge to Lucy
I know Lucy from her experience planning and executing the two rounds of Quadratic Funding for Ethereum Honduras. My appreciation and after talking with her on previous occasions and at the time of contacting her to find out her interest in nominating her, is that she will contribute value and experience to the round, with Public Goods and Education being her domain. Surely, @Lucya_eth can provide some details in this regard if anyone is interested in what they’re doing.
As you can see, there are things that, although they are not included in the metrics in the forum, do not mean that a nominee does not have context, or does not make contributions; When I spoke with Lucy to corroborate this, I was able to realize that she has experience gained within the retroPGF process, and I consider it a good differential as the objective of retroPGF as a system matures due to the time dedicated by its members throughout its rounds.
So:
Can this person help advance the process and structure of RetroPGF as a funding mechanism?
I believe yes, as explained, their involvement in previous funding rounds will provide a particular and useful perspective. The scale, successes, and failures, exist everywhere, every experience is valuable.
Is this person a domain expert in any categories up for funding in RetroPGF?
Education and Public Goods in general. Good fit.
Has this person shown strong alignment with the long-term growth of the Optimism ecosystem and the mission of the Collective?
I also believe yes, + Ethereum values and public goods.
Can this person expand the diversity of viewpoints and insights from which evaluations are made?
Yes, and I hope we can all organize the retroPGF3 so that this process of expressing our different points of view can happen successfully throughout the entire round.
Others thoughts
On the other hand, I have read harmful comments, such as the mention of sybil attacks, this is not good and even disrespectful to the nominees, I suggest taking time to get to know them if you wish and not overlooking that they are individuals who come from the ecosystem like each one of us and deserve the same level of consideration.
Lastly, I am an Ethereum community member, and Optimism builds for Ethereum. Therefore, rather than evaluating contributions made to the Optimism ecosystem, anyone who contributes to the Ethereum ecosystem is also part of Optimism, as we share the same values and goals. If we can understand everything this implies, the collective will proliferate in the direction we want to go: scaling Ethereum.
Hello, Optimism community! Lucy over here, thanks for the opportunity to share and collaborate with this ecosystem I have so much admiration for! A Little background about me and what I can contribute as a Badge holder for this RetroPGF round.
I’ve been active in the Ethereum ecosystem for a little over three years. As a community leader in my city of Tegucigalpa, I have contributed to the growth of the local and national community, organizing educational meetups, designing grant and scholarship programs for Hondurans to attend events abroad, and strengthening the local ecosystem. Directly in public goods, I have been part of the launch of 2 rounds of QF with CLR.fund, provided support to the Devcon Bogota CLR Round, and was part of the commission of Kipu Impact that provided support to Cryptochica on the past RetroPGF2 where we analyzed the 195 projects. I have contributed to educational spaces to promote Public Goods as a growth opportunity for the web3 ecosystem.
More related to the Optimism Ecosystem, we partnered with a local University and Zapper in Español team (To onboard students), a museum and Moonbirds (to onboard artists and collectors), and the Optimism in Español team (to onboard the local community):
I want to thank Joxes for also considering my “traditional” background where before joining the ecosystem my work was focused on social projects such as fighting against gender and social violence through international cooperation, promoting advocacy, and political participation. This provides me with a set of skills and knowledge that I can offer to the Optimism ecosystem in things like really defining project results, identifying best community growth practices, and legitimizing the value of our input as individuals and also from the projects that are put forth in this RetroPGF round. I must emphasize that I had a series of talks with Joxes and many discussions about being a Badgeholder and the ethos of Optimism before being accepted.
Feel free to reach out if you want to learn more about the activities we organize in Ethereum Honduras, unfortunately, Carlos is not a good source, for many months his job has been to defame what we do, but we don’t want to bring this kind of situations to the governance of Optimism. I think the important thing is what lies ahead, which is RetroPGF3. Any doubts or questions, or if you want to collaborate with the Honduran community feel free to contact me on Twitter @lucya_eth.
João here. I want to express my deep appreciation for the valuable work that Optimism is doing. I’m thrilled to be a badgeholder in this Round and contribute to the community, especially by raising awareness within the Brazilian crypto community.
Before diving into my contributions, let’s clarify a few facts about me, as there has been some confusion and misinformation circulating without proper research.
I initially graduated from Law School, but my true passion lies in crypto. Being a part of this ecosystem, characterized by mutual support and shared benefits, is truly remarkable. My journey began by creating video content in Portuguese covering topics related to crypto, DeFi, DAOs, and web3, with the aim of spreading knowledge among Portuguese speakers (you can find my work here).
Furthermore, I spent nearly two years as a member of the Core Team at Bankless BR DAO, the first Brazilian DAO. During my time there, I wore many hats, from marketing and community management to governance, podcasting, and even coordinating the writing guild. This diverse experience was especially valuable because we were pioneering the establishment of a DAO in Brazil, without any local precedents to guide us.
In line with my mission to educate Portuguese speakers about Ethereum, I co-founded EtherCast Brasil, the first Brazilian source of information dedicated to the Ethereum ecosystem.
Earlier this year, I was one of the creators of Modular Crypto, a media organization committed to providing the most reliable source of information about crypto in Brazil. Our educational efforts cater not only to newcomers but also to experienced participants seeking to deepen their knowledge of crypto. We produce content nearly every day, covering crypto news, weekly Ethereum rollups, articles, research, and more.
After ETH Argentina I also decided to help create Optimism PortuguĂŞs to bring more awareness about Optimism to Portuguese speakers. We are far from where we want, but we are taking the first steps, organizing ourselves and starting to create and publish content about Optimism.
To keep this message concise, I’ve compiled a list of my contributions and mentions related to Optimism over the past few years, which you can find below:
To give even more context about my nomination, several months after meeting CryptoChica in Brazil, we met again in Argentina, where she talked to me about all the work she is doing with governance and also invited me to be a badgeholder, making it clear, since the beginning, that this is something of extreme importance and responsibility.
Given how busy web3 events are, we talked about the subject again when I had already returned to Brazil, where we held meetings so she could explain more about how the work of a badgeolder works.
Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to continuing to contribute to the Optimism community.
And thanks again to Cryptochica for trusting me and, from the day we met, making me even more excited to study governance on web3.
Feel free to reach out if you have any doubts and/or questions.
Thanks for chiming in. I’m very interested in learning more about your previous work relating to Optimism. In your own words - Do you feel like you have shown strong alignment with the long-term growth of the Optimism ecosystem and the mission collective?
Can you share more about the QF rounds you organized? Specifically your reasoning for choosing to deploy them on their respective chains and the impact created by the projects that were funded.
How has your “traditional” background helped promote relevant advocacy in Honduras?
Can you show examples of defining project results from the previous CLR rounds your organized? What impact have they created for the Ethereum ecosystem and/ or Honduras?
The concerns are strictly related to the criteria, not how much time she has spent in the forum.
Your choice seems based on the personal relationship between @CryptoChica and @Lucya_eth + Lucy’s involvement in EthKipu. It seems as if you’re grooming badgeholders to push your project’s agenda instead of nominating people based on the criteria outlined above.
Can you point to us where you see these alignments? We’re getting to a point where we’re “Public Goods Washing” when unable to show any real results. Really interested in where you are seeing this Optimism specific connection. This this part of the criteria in mind - how is she a better fit than many other people showing up in the Optimism ecosystem every day?
[quote=“Joxes, post:6, topic:6814”]
Is this person a domain expert in any categories up for funding in RetroPGF?
Have you taken the time to familiarize yourself with the Ethereum Honduras ecosystem? Specifically the projects that participated in the recent QF round? Really interested in learning how you feel about that after so many years of work done by this team and that’s all they could scrape up to show for a “thriving Ethereum ecosystem” they like to boast about.
answer all
Can this person help advance the process and structure of RetroPGF as a funding mechanism?
Is this person a domain expert in any of the categories up for funding in RetroPGF?
Has this person shown strong alignment with the long term growth of the Optimism ecosystem and the mission of the Collective?
Can this person expand the diversity of viewpoints and insights from which evaluations are made?
JoĂŁo did not work with me, nor does he work with me now. The rule is satisfied.