As highlighted in the DAO decentralisation community post a few days ago, Gro DAO is continuing on its decentralisation journey in both governance and operations space.
DAO setup often poses a tricky balance between decentralisation and speed to execute. Vitalik recently shared his views on how to strike such balance in this post, where he highlighted how convex decisions could make use of broad-based governance while concave decisions––often seen in the execution layer––would be better suited for a more centralised pod structure with a high level of autonomy.
With that in mind, this post shares a strawman on how Gro DAO could develop its own decentralised organisational structure with suggestions on resourcing process and new roles.
Organisation strawman
This strawman follows the framework that combines DAO governance with more autonomous pods that are empowered to make decisions within the mandate approved by tokenholders. It outlines how the DAO governs the establishment and ongoing mandate renewal of the pods and committees, while delegating the day-to-day management within each unit to its own contributors (including the facilitator if there is one).
The strawman suggests 2 types of sub-DAO structure.
Facilitator-led pods (Products, Risk, People)
This structure fits teams that need to execute and build on a daily basis. There will be numerous decisions that cannot be exhaustively outlined upfront. Having a facilitator that can make executive decisions would ensure a high speed to execute.
As it is facilitator-led, DAO governance would be involved in regular but infrequent decisions. For example, DAO governance is required to establish the pod and its facilitator as well as to renew the budget every 6 months. Governance does not determine the contributors within each facilitator-led pod – it is up to the facilitator to determine how best to hire and retain contributors. Note that these governance rules could be changed under DAO governance.
The facilitator’s roles can be summarised as:
Interface with governance for establishing the pod (as needed) and proposing any changes to its mandate, goals, and renew budget every 6 months
Make day-to-day decisions to help the pod meet performance goals
Deploy the DAO-approved budget in ways they see fit – including hiring new contributors, changing incentive structure, or exploring new opportunities e.g., developing a new product
Provide regular status updates to the DAO every 3 months, but the exact level of details would be left for individual facilitator to propose to the DAO based on what makes sense to the pod
Facilitators should receive regular compensation. As this is a demanding role that requires continuous time dedication, facilitators should receive regular compensation under the budget to ensure continuity. This does not preclude bonus incentives based on the performance of the pod or individuals.
There is no one-size-fits-all facilitator compensation level. Each facilitator’s compensation varies based on their skills and time dedication. Some pods would require a full-time facilitator, while others may have lower time commitment. The facilitator should work with the People pod on benchmarking and adjust based on skill levels and industry benchmarks. While those numbers will not be published on the forum, they will remain discoverable as all payment will be on-chain. DAO members have the right to challenge those numbers together with other items in the budget.
Benchmark for facilitator base compensation is highly welcome. Some examples on DAO community forum discussion suggest a range of $5-15k per month but further work would be required from the People pod to establish an updated benchmark.
Committees (Emergency multi-sig, Treasury)
This structure fits teams where all contributors perform similar roles that are primarily around decision-making rather than execution. It alleviates the need to have a facilitator to make executive calls on a daily basis, but puts more onus on individuals’ abilities to make good decisions for Gro DAO.
DAO governance determines the committee membership. This is more akin to representative democracy where the committee members are voted in to make decisions for the best of its constituents (DAO members). Unlike a facilitator-led pod, any addition or substitution of membership should be approved at the governance level. Compensation budget should also be reviewed and renewed every 6 months.
People facilitator assists these committees to interface with DAO governance. This means the six-monthly budget renewal process of these committees would be owned by the People facilitator, including suggestions on compensation levels for the next 6 months. Ad-hoc governance decisions will be driven by the People facilitator as well.
Committee members own the reporting of their contribution. As the contribution made e.g., treasury allocation or emergency multi-sig action can be viewed on-chain, the DAO is kept informed in real time. But it would still be best practice for committee members to share their contribution with the DAO on their own accord since not all contributions would result in an on-chain action. For example, the Treasury Committee could end up not pursuing an opportunity after extensive discussion.
Benchmark for committee compensation is highly welcome. Some examples on DAO community forum discussion suggest a range of $2-3k per month but further work would be required from the People pod to establish an updated benchmark.
Prioritised open roles
Given the strawman above, there are some prioritised open roles below for anyone to signal your interest. See anything you’d like to give it a go? Reply here to introduce yourself and share more about your skills, interest, and experience for these roles!
People pod - facilitator: All the good stuff above requires governance and contributor facilitation to make things work. Look no further if you’ve been seeking a chance to help coordinate a DAO – signal your interest here so that we can reach out and discuss in greater detail! Edit: please refer to this post for more information including application process
Risk pod - facilitator: Keen to help Gro better manage its risks? Propose how you can help by replying here and introducing yourself in the Risk channel on Gro’s discord to get started. This scoping document is a great place to get a sense of the status quo!
Treasury - committee member: Want to help Gro DAO manage its $12mn treasury to support its mission? Throw your hat in to join the Treasury Committee for the next 6 months! Share more about your experience by replying to this post for your fellow DAO members to get to know you. You can reference this post here for more information on this role, but don’t let it confine your imagination – feel free to suggest improvement and updates as well!
Emergency multi-sig member: Are you a trusted Gro community member that wants to join Gro DAO’s emergency multi-sig and ensure proper actions are taken when the situation demands it? Signal your interest by replying to this post!
Edits:
Oct 26 - Check out the Groda Product Pod Creation Proposal here! It’s open for comments for 3 days till Friday Oct 28 and will then go into a 5-day vote if there’re only minor edits/suggestions.
Oct 28 - Check out the Risk Pod Creation Proposal here! It’s open for comments for 3 days till Sunday Oct 30 and will then go into a 5-day vote if there’re only minor edits/suggestions.
Oct 28 - Check out the People Pod Facilitator role & application here. Make sure to reply there by Sunday 6th November 2022 if you’re interested!
People pod - facilitator: All the good stuff above requires governance and contributor facilitation to make things work. Look no further if you’ve been seeking a chance to help coordinate a DAO – signal your interest here so that we can reach out and discuss in greater detail!
Hello would like to show interest in this role
Why I am a good fit for this role
I have experience with people’s operation side of community management in DAOs
Experience with Contributor offboarding and Onboarding
I can also manage contributors task on platforms like Dework, wonderverse, notion (documentation), Discord and currently exploring more tools.
I have experience with DAO governance (Discord poll voting - Forum chatter - Snapshot voting)
I can help with lots of brainstorm sessions for DAO voting improvement, Community engagement and moderation.
Team work is a value i cherish the most in DAO building as I am able to work with other pod members to acheive their goals (community wise)
I have organization skill and can help with co-ordination while DAO building (on the peoples end)
Want to ask if there are more criterias need to be met, inorder to be a part of this committee as I am very much interested in this role and know I can perform effectively to a standard pleasing to the DAO. If there are more questions, would be happy to answer.
If I understood correctly, there will be only one single facilitator per People/Risk pod, while there can be many committee members(s) in Treasury pod?
May one join the Risk team as a pod member but not as a facilitator?
lastly, is it possible to apply for role(s) as a team or project?
@exa256.eth Pods can have members in addition to the facilitators. Some roles may not be full time occupations. To the degree that their bandwidth allows, I think a person should be able to do multiple roles.
I personally don’t know if the Risk pod needs more than a facilitator to begin with, but that’s ultimately for the facilitator to propose to the DAO and why it’s needed
I think there are several options for you to contribute in this setup:
as a new project/pod with a team directly reporting to the DAO
an existing pod as the facilitator
an existing pod as a (non-facilitator) member. It’s up to the facilitator to staff their pod within the budget that the DAO has granted them
Hello Joyce and GR
I was an early participant, OG and G-force, I liked what we did with the team. Now I mainly work with different communities and manage them, I also want to develop more in this direction, I think this is the most important thing for the protocol. I would be happy to join and try myself in “Treasury - committee member” & “Emergency multi-sig member” because it’s all responsible for where the protocol will move with their community
People pod - facilitator it seems to me that I have not yet achieved this role, but I would be happy to help the “facilitator” and learn new things, especially since I am learning new things quickly
Hello all, I’m Beckley. First found out about Gro a year and two months ago while surfing through the Variant fund website. What caught my attention was the wicked simplicity of the protocol. The DApp was smooth and easy to navigate. My reaction: “Ah ah… finally found something in DeFi my pops can understand.” Made my first deposit into vault and the rest is history.
A year and two months later, still here. An Investor, active protocol user, DAO participant, G-force MVP, Gro OG, Risk member and most importantly, a Gromie
Skills
Ability to produce creative and informative writing.
ability to conduct quantitative and qualitative market research
Time management with attention to detail
Data visualisation & pattern finding through critical thinking
Represention of ideas through videographical means
Project / Campaign management
Experience
Brainstorm, research and analyze topics for business and brand development while expanding international reach through online newsletters to over 40 countries at Alpha sharks
Recorded and analysed trading data for tracking profitability and strategic adaptation for Dextools ( DeFi tool for monitoring market movement)
Collaborated with different departments to create social media copy and imagery while responding to serious inquiries and comments within 12 hours for Bgogo exchange platform
Worked closely with the Reserve rights team to represent the voice of the community to generate and amplify new blog post ideas.
Interests
Football
Video games
DeFi
Music and Dancing
Flaneuring
If you require any further information, please get in touch. In any event, I look forward to hearing from you as this process progresses.
Joined Gro community in July 2021 and was nominated as an OG in the second wave of intakes in Sept. 2021.
Am a crypto native who has worked as a bounty management assistance performing fraud detection and community outreach, and am a community moderator for another DeFi project.
I have a high participation rate in Gro governance votes that I felt informed enough to participate in. If I didn’t feel informed enough, I did not. In this emergency multisig role, I would of course plan to have a 100% participation rate.
Have onboarded users from other communities into Gro and have helped connect multiple outside participants with the Gro research chats.
I live in the GMT+9 time zone and due to the nature of my day job, have a relatively wide window of time in which I can make myself available for emergencies.
Though my day job is in a field unrelated to crypto (higher education), my work is student-facing and involves following strict procedures, navigating uncertainty, thinking on the spot, managing fraud, as well as cooperating with international students and colleagues of a wide variety of language levels. Communicating clearly across cultural divides is second nature to me.
My pledges if selected:
This account is pseudonymous, but I am willing to doxx myself to team members and other multisig members if they pledge to do the same in return. Accountability is paramount in this role.
I stay up-to-date with crypto security news and will use the best OpSec practices I can (on a related note, this is a great resource: OfficerCIA - start.me)
If I will be on holiday or busy with other work that would affect my responsibilities, I will notify the relevant team members in advance. In the latter case, I will relinquish my position and assist in the handover to another member.
I am willing to be considered for other roles if the team believes I would be a fit. And regardless of the outcome, no hard feelings - I will be sticking around! Thanks for your time.
(Unrelated, but fun)
I have a portfolio of memes I created for Gro over the months leading up to and since launch.
data chops: we have a team of data engineer and data analyst to help the DAO make more data informed decisions
Skills and Contributions:
Below is what myself and the Exponent team can contribute as a member of Gro DAO
active assets and smart contract monitoring, including Treasury Multisig activities
ability to cross-check Safe transactions by validating byte codes prior to execution
portfolio management: Exponent is a team of ex-hedge fund and can provide input on portfolio construction.
facilitate and contribute to community discussions around DeFi risks assessment
facilitate capital deployment: Exponent has already deployed its own capital for yield generating savings account and assets diversification
Note on Risk pod contribution: my understanding is that the Risk pod is currently missing a facilitator, and further decisions around membership are blocked. That said, we still want to express interests in the role and happy to co-facilitate/ work closely with a facilitator candidate, especially given our previous proposal that has high value alignment with this org structure
For any further queries about myself or Exponent, please get in touch on Discord. Looking forward to see a successful deployment of Gro DAO
I would ask to be considered for the Risk Facilitator role. I have extensive risk based experience, both from 2 years of DeFiSafety and more from my time in aerospace. While not an auditor I have very good contacts within the space and a wealth of experience in preparation and interpreting the results. I am new to GRO but will learn quickly. I commit to make all decision impartially from DeFiSafety with Gro DAO’s best interests front and center.
Experience
Started DeFiSafety in 2020. Full time in DeFi risk analysis for 2 years
instead of keeping a budget for a treasury committee, I would suggest keeping a small yield-research task forces (3-4 person, on part-time basis); that produce weekly stablecoin report; plus a quarter treasury allocation proposal (with some risk-tier choices); that the DAO can vote upon.
The reasoning is because a committee is a pure decision making body and have little measurable work to track performance. It’s better to link the functions of treasury committee to a working group; and leverage the output of this yield reserch working group for the DAO to make decision on the use of treasury.
Use of treasury is also a highly sensitive job that has risk of corruption if held in the hands of 2-3 persons.
As a stablecoin yield farming protocol, having the budget to promote active member into a paying role is also helpful in community building and knowledge sharing on latest defi yield landscape.
@Organized_Chaos@exa256.eth@karcharodon - what do you guys think re: @chriswong’s suggestion to convert the treasury committee to a yield research taskforce that also make suggestions for treasury allocation (among other things)? Tagging you as you’ve expressed interest for the treasury committee above
Thank you and @beckley for signalling your interest as People Pod Facilitator! As there are multiple interested candidates I’ll write up a separate post with a more detailed role description asking for more information from each of you. Stay tuned for more news this week!
Thank you and @jaypow showing interest for emergency multi-sig! Still waiting for a few more people raising their hands – hoping to have a few more people for say 3-out-of-5 multi-sig. Will get a vote underway once we get there!
I completely agree, so I left an application for several positions, if we manage to combine it into one role, it will be cool.
The use of the treasury needs more people to reduce the risks
I like the idea @chriswong, especially with the scope overlap. Note that treasury would bring in additional scope- particularly financial planning and reporting such as cashflow forecast, budgeting etc.
I think this will end up being a Finance and Markets team which would include: DeFi strategy research, assets and risks allocation, financial planning and reporting to the DAO. When you think about the working group- do you think it will still follow a committee structure? or more of a facilitator-led pod
thank you so much