PRO-G community proposal

Community
#1

Proposed New Role: Pro-G

Summary

We are proposing a new community role called Pro-G. The primary purpose of this role is to ensure that the high standard of community support that the Gro community has enjoyed so far is maintained 24/7 and as Gro scales. Pro-Gs would essentially be employed by the DAO, providing community support, moderating social media chats, removing spam and helping to develop and publish educational content about Gro and DeFi in general.

Aims of the program

  1. Community support (24/7)
  2. Community & TVL growth as a result of having a strong community
  3. Improved PWRD and Vault product awareness

Full details

Over the last few weeks, our community has seen significant growth. The team is very grateful to all Gromies for keeping the community active and friendly with positive vibes only. It has become impossible for the core team to be addressing every question we get on an individual basis and we think this is a great opportunity to move towards a more decentralised set up for Gro DAO. We are therefore considering different ways to decentralise our community support while maintaining the high standards that the community has enjoyed so far.

One of the options we are considering is to create a Pro-G role to recognise outstanding engagement with the Gro community and to provide the community with sufficient support 24/7. Pro-G would have admin rights to certain social media channels and be part of the team. It goes without saying that Pro-G would need to know the product like the back of their hand and consistency in responses would need to be ensured.

This proposal is to collect feedback from the community to make sure there is a consistent and scalable framework in place from the beginning. The Pro-G program is expected to deliver these benefits:

  1. Higher community engagement (spam or bots will be removed more promptly, faster responses to user questions)
  2. TVL growth as a result of higher community engagement which builds confidence to our project
  3. Greatly improved community support
  4. Increased community satisfaction levels due to better understanding of the product
  5. Maintaining positive and lively atmosphere within the community 24/7

Proposed list of Pro-G Requirements:

  1. De-Fi native (Degen)
  2. Member of the OG group
  3. Good writing skills
  4. Comfortable with using Discord, Telegram and/or Twitter
  5. Very friendly and empathetic
  6. Positive attitude
  7. Proactive participation in Gro community
  8. Understanding the core elements of Gro protocol and being able to educate other community members about them

Proposed Pro-G role

Below is a proposal for the GRO payment that the DAO would cover.

  • Payment: 100 GRO per month
  • Duration: Refreshed each two months (two-monthly vote)
  • Qualification: Voted by OGs
  • Number of roles available: Up to 5 initially

Please give feedback in comments about this!

Possible concerns and questions

  1. Will a paid role disincentivise others (OG or in the broader community) from contributing for free?

a. Consideration: do not overly incentivise Pro-G vs others.

  1. Is there a risk of malicious attacks by or through Pro-G if they have social media admin rights?

a. Consideration: by going via OG process (which is hard to game) the Pro-Gs have shown commitment to the project.

b. Consideration: well-intentioned Pro-Gs could still be targeted for phishing attempts; opsec training may help reduce the risk.

  1. Should rewards be paid directly or via the vesting mechanic?

a. Consideration: may be able to offer higher value with a vesting mechanic.

b. Consideration: vesting mechanic would allow OGs to increase their vesting stack faster but may also extend vesting calendar.

  1. Consideration: as Pro-Gs are effectively working they should be able to receive GRO without any lock.

  2. What do Pro-Gs need to do to remain Pro-Gs?

a. Consideration: Is there an automatic rollover every two months or does there have to be a vote to extend? If someone’s role is to be suspended/stopped, who votes on it/raises the proposal to stop?

  1. How do we make sure we have consistency of responses across OGs / Pro-Gs / team members?

a. Consideration: weekly calls and private Pro-G channel to align on information.

Last but not least

What should the name be?!

I like Pro-G, other options include:

  • Prodi-G
  • G-force
  • GROwn ups
  • GROmo Sapiens
11 Likes
#2

Hi Alona,

Generally, I think this is a great proposal - incentivising your best community members to stay on and be active is a good thing. Taking a book from the e-commerce space, these guys/and gals will be your biggest champions.

A few thoughts from me:

  1. On time commitments, is there any indication of how many hours a week the team is expecting from the Pro-G members?
  2. You mentioned that community support 24/7 is one of the aims, and that you are looking for 5 Pro-Gs to start, how do you see this 5 distributed geographically?
  3. I think that a paid role is great - I see it as people who don’t start as it going like “oh shit if I contribute good stuff, I ain’t wasting my time, I actually get to have something come out of this”
  4. I would say they get 75% without vesting, and the remaining 25% will vest or something like that.
  5. 2 months is short in my opinion, training, onboarding and retention is expensive, I’d look to retain these people for as long as possible.

Just my 2 cents,

Matt

1 Like
#3

Hey Matt,

Thank you so much for your feedback!

  1. I imagine it being a full-time role but would also want to recognise the flexible nature of DeFi so intentionally left out this part to see how the community imagines this role in terms of time input.
  2. I think where we need support the most is US West Coast or Asia time zones since they’d cover midnight till 8am UKT.
  3. Agree!
  4. Awesome idea! Let’s see what others think of it, but I think it would work great.
  5. All Pro-Gs will come from existing OGs so I can imagine very minimal time will actually be spent on onboarding/training - Pro-Gs will already know the product and the community very well which I think is a huge benefit. We are open to change the 2 months duration to anything else though:)
#4

I think this is a great offer! Such people will be very necessary for the community and help develop in the right direction by collecting the right people and filtering out bots and spam. Yes, there are many issues that still need to be discussed and agreed upon, but the proposal is really cool! It is imperative that you cover all time zones so that you can get round-the-clock support.
P.S. Pro-G sounds good and I like it too)

1 Like
#5

Hey great idea team!

  1. I don’t think rewarding a pro-g more would cause any discontent as we all see the importance of having round the clock admin support, and understand that it’s a fair bit of extra responsibility.
  2. I think the risk of malicious attack through the pro-g is unlikely but probably still worth running through additional security measures with them.
  3. Not sure about whether to vest rewards or not, but if you guys did decide for them to be vested then the reward could be a little better. ideally though, I guess people would like receive them without needing to pay a gas fee each time, like a normal pay check.
    4+5. I think the most important feature here is consistency, you need people that can be present most of the time so they can spot incidents as soon as they occur. They also need to have great judgement in dealing with tricky situations, and knowing when it’s appropriate to ban someone. I definitely think there should be a democratic element in how this position is chosen and maintained; however ultimately this person is gaining security access and needs to be implicitly trusted by the team, so team should have the final say about who gets picked imo.
1 Like
#6

G-force sounds cool, especially if consider last night’s spam attack which G-force could easily parry.

And what about rewards, I think they shouldn’t be vested. It already is more like a salary than airdrop, so these $GRO should be freely tradable, I think.

What about all other details, I’m more agree than disagree.

#7

1.a. it is normal for G pro to receive stimulation
2.If you assign G pro from OG, then there will be no attacks
3.as Pro-Gs are effectively working they should be able to receive GRO without any lock (24/7 Community support, they will need to procrastinate in order to do this )
4. The GRO team votes on the result of the month
5. Posting the results and that’s it (no proofs needed)
name SG (Senior OG) :smiley:

#8

Hey Alona, thanks for this!

Overall I think it’s a great way to get the community even more involved and reward them at the same time.

Specific responses to your points are below.

1. Will a paid role disincentivise others (OG or in the broader community) from contributing for free?

  • To be honest, I think it could, but it depends… If you’ve got a good level of engagement already from OGs or broader community, then placing a Pro-G there (that most may know is paid), might affect negatively the involvement of those actively involved; or, the more likely outcome (I hope) is that OGs will vote in the most active/helpful/effective OGs as Pro-Gs, in which case the ones that are already helping will be rewarded further – awesome!

  • But for example if you need someone to run your twitter (and no one else can do that, obviously), then there is no one to disincentivise by paying a Pro-G. So no issue there.

  • The paid role should encourage existing OGs to get more involved where they can, and might further encourage non-OGs to get more involved (on top of the OG airdrop!).

  • It should be made clear in comms that election to Pro-G will be based on all factors as you mentioned in your post, not just speed/amount of replies, as this could lead to low quality “spam”.

2. Is there a risk of malicious attacks by or through Pro-G if they have social media admin rights?

  • Definitely – but I think the risk should be negated by the points you’ve put in your post. Goes without saying that the team should keep an eye on all activity; it only takes one mishap to damage the reputation of the project. Maybe consider limited access/controls.

3. Should rewards be paid directly or via the vesting mechanic?

  • I would suggest a split between direct and via vesting; maybe 75/25 or 70/30 as suggested elsewhere. Part paid directly because it is payment for their efforts and so not fair to lock up the majority, but part vesting because this will benefit the protocol and looks better from an outside perspective, (no one could say Pro-Gs are dumping all their Gro payments!).

4. What do Pro-Gs need to do to remain Pro-Gs?

  • Would suggest that there is no auto-rollover, Pro-Gs must be voted in again to stay on. This acts as an event to engage OGs via the voting process, but also ensures Pro-Gs are kept on their toes :wink:

  • The team should however have the power to roll-over a Pro-G without needing voting, if for example they have a critical skill / are embedded well enough that the team needs to retain them for longer than the 2 months.

  • Any OG / Pro-G / core team should be able to propose to remove a Pro-G. Maybe not the wider community, as OGs are already selected from the wider community, but also we may get unnecessary / troll proposals.

5. How do we make sure we have consistency of responses across OGs / Pro-Gs / team members?

  • Template responses created by either OGs/ Pro-Gs / team should be shared across the piece.

  • We could build a question bank of all common questions and their template responses (in the usual fun and friendly Gro manner); could be a google drive doc for all to suggest changes. Pro-Gs should be trusted enough to use their own bespoke response if they wish, as long as the core info is in line with the template.

  • Weekly calls may be too much if there is nothing to be briefed on. Maybe as and when needed?

  • Would suggest only one OG & Pro-G channel so knowledge/idea can be shared across the piece, especially at the start since there are proposed to only be 5 Pro-Gs (might feel a bit lonely in their own channel!)

Questions/other comments

  • You mentioned “employed by the DAO” in the summary paragraph, but I assume you don’t mean literally? I’d be a bit apprehensive about formalising this into an employee / employer relationship (i.e. HR, legal, contractual matters to consider). Any payment should be non-contractual and a “contribution” to efforts on part of the Pro-G. I think it’d get messy otherwise.

  • What’s the motivation for the 2 month rotation period? Is it so that all OGs get a chance (if they want)? I guess it’s better to start off with a short rotation than a too-long one!

  • Where you mention full time – is that intended to mean that 8 hours a day that Pro-G would be “on duty”? Will there be any performance management / time trackers? I think we should be flexible where possible as some may have full-time jobs, + the remuneration of 100 Gro is not (if I’m being honest) attractive enough for a dedicated full time role (depends what we’ll be doing though, if it’s just 8 hours on duty, but you’ve only done 1 hour of responding to people / doing posts on twitter, then it’s actually well worth it - maybe we just need more detail on the expectation here).

  • One thought - if we put Pro-Gs into shifts, we should be careful not to disincentivise them from contributing off-shift…

  • Although OGs will vote on Pro-Gs, the ultimate selection should rest with the team. You guys will know where exactly you need help, for example if you need a twitter / IG / Discord helper, and some OGs may not have expertise in all areas. E.g. if the OGs selected 5 Pro-Gs that are all Discord-only users, but you needed 3 people on TG and 2 on IG, then the OG vote isn’t very helpful. To make sure the protocol gets what it needs, I would imagine a process like:

    • Team outlines, for that 2 month period, what the essential criteria are (your criteria might change from time to time)
    • OGs opt-in for the vote (I’d hope only if they fit the criteria!)
    • If opted-in, OGs create a short summary of what they can bring to the table as a Pro-G (maybe we can make a template for them to complete?)
    • OGs then vote (via snapshot / otherwise) a max of 120% (or something like that) of the requirement; e.g. if the requirement is for 5 Pro-Gs in that 2 month period, then OGs vote for up to 6 people that the team can choose from
    • Team has ultimate say; this is to ensure the Pro-Gs fit the requirement and also prevents any foul play by OGs (not that that would ever happen!)

Again, I love the proposal. If I think of anything else, will add it on. Pro-G sounds good :slight_smile:

1 Like
#9

Hi Alona,

Great!

Quick thoughts:

  1. Anyone who loves and supports Gro can be OG or ProG. Core team, OGs, even with community output, can agree and decide on that. Suggest we could open up wider and we do typeform application? So we may not be limiting from within. Unless we think, I think we do already have proven ProG-calibre OGs with us to seek internally. This is like L2 onramp at disposal. Lol.

  2. ProG role it’s akin to devoted community manager or assistant the community respects. For rewards I would tilt towards vesting. This mechanic i believe is positive. Both to community to witness and to ProG, a vested interest at play for him or her.

  3. Role rotation period, depends on number of ProGs we could invite. Also I don’t see it as short term gig. It’s going to be mid to long term. One thing, if we have super dedicated ProG, I’m sure nobody would mind him or her staying long. Everybody going to love him or her. Full of support and appreciation. Internally core team and OGs could agree and decide e.g. retention or reshuffling.

  4. Access control. For start I would prefer core team to still manage crucial links e.g. twitter account. As any untoward breach or hack, man that’s going to be real damaging to the brand, our community altogether. Until ProG has done due orientations and internally we are supportive. This we could further discuss I feel.

Names. ProG is good. We can remove the hyphen? Rather than Pro-G. Takes seconds to type tho haha.

Others: PG as shorthand would save more seconds typing.

Thank you.

#10

Awesome to see so many structured and thoughtful responses here :purple_heart:

A couple of people (@mattematty and @chocoblocko ) mentioned that 2 months seems a bit short so maybe the proposal isn’t quite clear here

It’s suggested that we would have a 2 month rolling term: i.e. a Pro-G could be renewed multiple times. So it’s more like a minimum term / how much overhead should there be about voting people in and out.

1 Like
#11

Hello，I think Pro-G is not only professional-G，and also Protect-G。

I was figo who contacted you yesterday, and I am trying to become an excellent community member. For this proposal, I would like to say that pro-G is similar to the core members employed by the team, so they should have different skills. And the salary of pro-G should be encouraging rather than fixed, so as to increase Pro-G‘s enthusiasm. The last point I want to say can it be more friendly to the new members? Because I think the enthusiasm of those who join early is not as high as those who join later. Just like a company, new employees are always full of vitality.