Synclab People Pod Proposal

Decentralisation
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Summary

This proposal asks to establish the Synclab Pod as a part of Gro DAO. This proposal will be open for comments over the next 3 days. If no substantial changes are required, it will then be open for voting for another 5 days.
If a proposal will be rejected - we will collect feedback from the community and come back with an updated proposal.

Mandate

As a part of GRO DAO decentralization I propose to create Synclab Pod to:

  • Develop marketing strategy which will be aimed at growing numbers in Gro social networks like Discord, Twitter and Telegram. This will lead to that the project will become more recognizable among the crypto community and will involve new active users;

  • Create a brand-new Ambassador Program with point-based system that will be splitted in multiple seasons (2-4 months per season) and connect it with the current OGs program that was previously developed;

  • Build relationships with other projects through collaborations and integrations;

  • Create marketing materials for socials: 3D videos, promotional pictures, infographics and twitter/discord posts (announcements, threads, news and more);

  • Develop and setup discord and telegram bots;

  • Create growth dashboard with all metrics (social and on-chain);

  • Moderate all GRO socials in primetimes;

  • Create educational content, quizzes.

Our main goals are to create a huge ambassador program that can help us to get more attention to GRO products, increase the numbers in socials and user engagement.

Composition

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Following the framework suggested in this post, the Synclab People Pod will include individual contributors who will work with community management, marketing, design and some programming. It also will include full-time and part-time contributors.

7 contributors currently included in initial Synclab People Pod:

  • rskl - Team Lead, community manager, developer of ambassador program.

    • Employment: Full-time contributor. (40-50 hours per week)

  • mk - Lead developer, senior software engineer with expertise in blockchain/web3 & web2 tech. (Solidity, Rust, Typescript/Node)

    • Employment: Part-time contributor. (20 hours per week)

  • naive - Creator of 3D arts and explanatory videos in crypto space.

    • Employment: Part-time contributor. (20 hours per week)

  • katyadolphin - Lead Community moderator, Feedback Analyst.

    • Employment: Part-time contributor. (20 hours per week)

  • Mazumba - Education and social content creator.

    • Employment: Part-time contributor. (20 hours per week)

  • DenisKrivilev - Community moderator.

    • Employment: Part-time contributor. (20 hours per week)

  • Xandrell - Community moderator.

    • Employment: Part-time contributor. (20 hours per week)

All contributors are part of synclab.team with huge experience in the crypto sphere.

We are moderators, designers, community managers and ambassadors in about 50 projects like Tally Ho, Covalent, Pyth Network, Mina, Moonbeam, Manta Network, IronFish and more.

Also most of the team are community members more than one year and already OGs from first and second cohorts and still holding our gro tokens.

Previously we prepared a Community Engagement model for GRO and small GRO video event that never was in production:
Community Engagement model

Video Event

Budget

For the next 6 months, I propose a budget of 350,000 USDC + 220,000 GRO that will be transferred to the Synclab People Pod operational wallet if approved. The operational wallet will be a 3-of-5 multisig wallet with 2 Synclab People Pod, 3 People Pod contributors.

  • Full-time contributor (Lead of this program): 60.000 USDC + 50.000 GRO over 6 months.

  • Part-time contributors: 120.000 USDC + 100.000 GRO over 6 months.

  • Employee bonuses (full-time and part-time): 20.000 USDC.

  • Ambassador program (season 1): 100.000 USDC + 70.000 GRO.

  • Advertising: 50.000 USDC.

Funds for Advertising and Ambassador program may not be fully spent. All unspent funds will be returned.

Reporting

Synclab People Pod will update the DAO on its progress regularly through the community channels such as Community Forum, Discord, and Telegram.

In addition, there will be a quarterly report to summarize progress achieved and high-level plans for the next 3 months on the Community Forum. The second quarterly progress report will coincide with the 6-monthly budget report outlining actual spend and proposing budget for the next 6 months.

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Thanks for attention, we really want feedback from team and gro users.
If it is necessary for our team to be doxxed - it’s not a problem in the future.

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I see lots of clash with the people pod duties/ Responsibilities and things on this proposal are things that are already worked on, I’m worried it might cause future tasking clash and conflict.

Did this proposal go through Raambo as he’s the current people’s pod facilitator? So if there’s any extension or branching of the People Pod, he should be aware right?

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Hey, kndlexi!
Yes, we had a call and discussed it, also I sent him the final version and he said that he would check it and answer tomorrow.

Also, yes, I noticed that some responsibilities overlap, but we can discuss this, and for example, reduce the team or, on the contrary, take some tasks away from him.

Besides this, of course, we can discuss the budget and change something.
Our plans include attracting a large number of people (thousands), and not the conditional 10 ambassadors who are already involved in GRO as OGs.

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I see your proposal as an initiative that can go under the People Pod but not outside it, not as a pod… There should have been further discussions even before putting it on forum. There’s also plan to attract more large nurmber of people in the new restructured OG program.

Working together and not working outside, This proposal duplicates tasks unecessarily, Budgetting; why double invest on marketing…

“Yes, we had a call and discussed it, also I sent him the final version and he said that he would check it and answer tomorrow.” Could have waited in my opinion.

The People Pod is in charge of DAO coordination and contributors management, even partnership (not integrations but yh), (looks like a partnership with Sync Labs) … If there’s any need for making use of ambassadors or experts outside Gro DAO, creating an extra pod or adding contributors, there should be sufficient discussions with the facilitator backing the proposal up. He needs to give us reasons why we need experts outside of Gro DAO to do the work the People Pod should be handling.

For me, there’s not enough discussion and communication before this proposal was put up and I forsee so much conflict and unecessary task duplication and I’m really not in support of this proposal moving forward .

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In my previous post I said that just draft-proposal and we can discuss our next steps here, why do you need any other discussions? If we can make a decision here, either send it for revision, or send it to snapshot.

This topic was created for discussion, refinement and other.

Why double invest on marketing

I missed something or? I never saw any marketing budget in all proposal that I read. If you can send this info - it would be cool, and then we will remove this expense from the list of expense.

this proposal duplicates tasks

What specific tasks does it duplicate in addition to the main task of “community development and growing”. We can talk about any point of this proposal.

We can work under current people pod but we want to create big things that need a lot of full/part-time workers, we don’t want to do small bounty program for only people who already in GRO.

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This is why I said tthere should be clear discussions with the people’s pod facilitator, to avoid repitition
or task duplicate. A lot of work have taken place since the creation of pods, some that are yet to be released as there’s still many corrections and check in. The OG program was just restructured, marketing is a bullet point in it… It is halfway released…

" Develop marketing strategy which will be aimed at growing numbers in Gro social networks like Discord, Twitter and Telegram. This will lead to that the project will become more recognizable among the crypto community and will involve new active users;
Create a brand-new Ambassador Program with point-based system that will be splitted in multiple seasons (2-4 months per season) and connect it with the current OGs program that was previously developed;
Build relationships with other projects through collaborations and integrations;
Create marketing materials for socials: 3D videos, promotional pictures, infographics and twitter/discord posts (announcements, threads, news and more);
Develop and setup discord and telegram bots;
Create growth dashboard with all metrics (social and on-chain);
Moderate all GRO socials in primetimes;
Create educational content, quizzes."

All these are already contents are already a part of what the new restructuired program would give, which was why I said there’s going to be a lot of task duplicates here

That’s why I said clear communication is probably not present here…

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Stepping back for a moment: Since the Gro DAO will likely be seeing more proposals from a wide range of participants going forward, this is a reminder that the DAO may want to consider adding an extra step like a temperature check before proposals are sent on-chain for a vote. If it then turns out that there is enough organic interest from the community, great! We can proceed further.

Currently, the only requirements for creating a snapshot proposal as far as I’m aware are to write a draft proposal in this forum and then to have 1M GRO tokens to create a snapshot vote sometime later.

As Gro decentralizes, there will inevitably be more interest from various parties in shaping the direction of the DAO. This is mostly a good thing. However, we must also consider that financial incentives tend to attract certain types of behavior, and unnecessary spending should be avoided. It is clear that since Gro began its decentralization journey, many people have shown interest in negotiating to receive funds from the treasury.

We must ensure that the governance process is being implemented in the best interests of Gro, the DAO, and the community. A temperature check-type solution, while imperfect, aims to curate proposals to make sure that voting on them only happens when there is enough evidence of community engagement.

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Thank you for the post and I appreciate the initiative. It’s great to see that people are keen on contributing!

To follow up on the post and discussion above, here are my two cents:

As mentioned by @jaypow, we usually have an informal discussion/ temperature check on either the community forum or a community call to gather feedback on a proposed idea, before drafting a more formal proposal. For example, see this initial post discussing the scope of a potential Risk/ Strategy/ Finance pod and the following draft proposal for Snapshot.

So especially given the size of your team and the budget being requested, I would suggest that this proposal is kept open for longer than just 3 days so we can get a thorough temperature check on it.

To add to @kndlexi’s comments regarding overlap with the People Pod’s existing mandate, as shared in the OG channel on Discord this week and soon to be shared with the wider DAO (see link here), the People Pod are already looking to source efforts on marketing, ambassadorship, partnerships, social media, education, community engagement via existing OGs and using the existing People Pod budget that was approved by the DAO in Vote 21 on Snapshot.

It is great to see the thought that Synclab has put into the proposal, the experience that exists within the Synclab team, and that some of the Synclab team are already OGs or have been previously active in the Gro community. Accordingly, I would suggest that the Synclab team members express interest through the questionnaire shared on the OG channel on Discord, and we can then explore how best to work together. This would also better align with the People Pod’s intentions of crowdsourcing a wider community effort (in an organic and decentralised manner) rather than outsourcing the entire marketing/ ambassadorship/ partnerships/ social media/ education/ community engagement function to a semi-external organisation running its own pod.

Lastly, based on where Gro DAO are from a product development perspective at this point in time (launching G2 for the Gro Protocol and starting the development of other Web3/ DeFi products), the scale and budget of your proposal might be in excess of what the DAO can actually market in the next couple of months. You mention wanting to onboard ‘thousands of ambassadors’… At the moment, we are looking to re-engage and grow the existing community, rather than go all out on shilling Gro.

I look forward to hearing other people’s thoughts too!

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Very well put!

The People Pod are exploring ways to implement an optimised ‘extra step’ before something is officially taken to vote, that is in the best interests of Gro.

I would be interested to to hear your thoughts on how to do so

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Great team ! We are ready to work !

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As you say, a bit more rigour in the proposal process is probably advisable now that there’s an increased interest in becoming DAO contributors with grants.

There is already one type of filter, the proposer has to possess 1mn GRO, OR convince someone who does, to put it up for snapshot vote. We haven’t mentioned this explicitly before but that’s one “quick-fix” filter. Find a GRO sponsor or be/become a GRO whale. And there’s no automagic escalation to a snapshot vote just because it’s on the forum.

Is 1mn the right threshold? That’s ~$50k at current market prices.

Wdyt of this vs temp check?

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I concur with @kndlexi’s point that most of the objectives of this proposal are already covered by the People Pod, and that the newly announced OG Programme is well-equipped to assign a variety of marketing, growth, research, and education-related tasks to OGs within the DAO. While I appreciate the initiative of this proposal, I do not think it is necessary given the existing infrastructure within the DAO.

Additionally, proposals for pods should present each contributor’s background, capabilities, and portfolio in detail, similar to a job application, given the significant budget requested. I agree with @raambo’s growth strategy of slow and steady growth, focusing on re-engaging existing community members and building the DAO’s brand, values, and mission in a healthy way.

I believe that, from now on, caution is necessary when creating new pods within the DAO, as approving too many proposals may stretch the available resources too thin. To ensure the DAO’s sustainability, it may be prudent to step back, focus on what we already have on the table and evaluate the results and effectiveness of approved pods before moving forward with new proposals.

I appreciate the effort invested in the proposal, and I recognize the potential impact it could have had on the growth of the DAO with better timing. However, at present, I am not convinced enough to support the proposal.

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Responding to @raambo and @graadient’s comments with a few rough ideas. Not requests or commands, just ideas!

Option 1 - No changes to procedures: Forum post, wait for comments & feedback, 1M Gro tokens required to create snapshot proposal. This is the safest and simplest option, though it is highly centralized. Currently there is only one wallet address that holds more than 1M GRO.

Option 2 - For changes to risk parameters and meta-governance, maintain the original procedure. Minimum 3 days voting period. This allows for faster decision-making and safeguarding of the fundamental working parts of the protocol.

For changes involving requests for funding from the DAO and committee membership, lower the financial barrier to entry while adding a more structured temperature check step. Summary below:

  • Step 1 - User creates a “Request for Comment” governance forum post. The length of discussion time depends on the complexity of the proposal and should allow for meaningful feedback.
  • Step 2 - Temperature check. A user makes a new post in the forum with the tag ”Temperature Check” (or whatever term we prefer) incorporating feedback from the first post and creates a snapshot proposal with at least 5 days length. Minimum requirement for creating proposals is 1000 GRO, and quorum is set at 50K GRO. Votes must be weighted voting, a simple majority (50% + 1) is required to pass, and “Make no change” must be included as an option.
  • Step 3 - Formal proposal. If an option that isn’t “Make no change” wins a simple majority in the temp check snapshot vote, the user creates one more forum post tagged “Formal Proposal” that explains and incorporates any feedback from the temp check. Set a 2 day minimum waiting period between the creation of the forum post and the snapshot proposal. Minimum 7 days in length on snapshot, 10K GRO required to propose, 100K GRO quorum. Votes must be weighted voting, a simple majority (50% + 1) is required to pass, and “Make no change” must be included as an option.

Moderators should have the ability to close or remove posts that do not follow the rules, as well as admins to delete proposals on Gro’s Snapshot space that are against the rules.

Option 3 - Same as option 2, plus giving veto powers to the emergency multisig (yet to be created) to prevent decisions that unfairly benefit individuals, game the system, or break laws. Admittedly, this involves more centralization and may or may not be necessary. However, an argument in favor is that it could exist as a last-resort risk mitigation measure if the composition of the Gro DAO or GRO token holdings changes dramatically in the future.

Membership can be comprised of existing pod members or a mix of existing pod members and elected community members, but perhaps GRO holders could delegate veto responsibilities to external arbitrators someday in the future.

Analysis: The thought behind options 2 and 3 is to begin decentralizing a bit more decision-making power to the Gro DAO whilst establishing measures to prevent exploitation. There are tradeoffs, such as increasing complexity, lengthening time for decision-making, and introducing possible risks. The benefits are, in addition to giving the community more of an ability to initiate certain changes, it also allows for the community to provide definitive feedback results earlier in the decision-making process rather than having only one consequential vote for every proposal.

These are an amalgamation of ideas from Uniswap governance, Hop, Liquity, and Frax. They are not set in stone! Feel free to suggest changes or reject them entirely if you think they aren’t suitable at this time. Furthermore, there are plenty of DAO experts who would be willing to consult Gro in its decentralization journey (for a fee, of course) if the Gro DAO wishes to pursue that option down the road.

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