I want to share my opinion on this topic. I am new to the community and have only really been focused on contributing to V1, so this is what I will talk about.
I really believe in this project and can see @Olshanksy has an excellent mind for not only the work that he does but also in how he can see what needs to be done. For this reason, I think the bounties are an amazing way to get people (like myself) working on building this protocol into what it is meant to be. The tasks are very well outlined, and this makes working on them easy to get into. Their evaluations are fair. I believe @Olshansky and @jdaugherty assign them values after discussing the task. I think it is unrealistic to think about hourly wages when it comes to the bounty system and instead, it should be focused on the impact of the task at hand. There should be no penalties for work done efficiently and fast.
The actual payments for the bounties, I believe are going to be sorted out soon with the new changes to the DAO meaning they can actually be paid out
Regarding grants and payments to people contributing to the protocol. I think that this is a tricky topic and should really be thought over very carefully. People have already mentioned about the overlap of many of the gigabrains in the community working for “Pocket” companies. This may be controversial but I think grant payments to these individuals should not be allowed. This is purely based on the idea that if they are working for a company already, then the company should be paying them. If their contributions are to benefit the entire community then these should be put forward in a DAO proposal asking for payment after the fact (as I am assuming these individuals are being paid whilst working on these projects). If however the individual is not working for a company in the ecosystem and doing these contributions out of their own free will, a grant would be an ideal olive branch to extend to them. I will sound biased here but those are simply my thoughts.
Overall I am very much in favour of the bounties system - and I hope the payments become more frictionless as time goes on. I think the idea of low friction grants from PNF are also a good idea - however the individuals that receive these grants should be focused on the community as a whole and not have any vested interests in private companies.
It’s great to see this discussion and the sharing of different perspectives - having these discussions around pain points and root causes in the open makes for better solutions. I think for now this thread should not be too opinionated on solutions and should try to welcome as many different viewpoints around key issues regarding people’s ability to contribute and get paid.
One other point before responding directly to some comments is that resource allocation for Pocket should flow to our shared goals and priorities. This is why PNF wanted to deliver Project DNA as our first priority - so it can create alignment around what those priorities are. Then teams/individuals can make their own decisions around whether they mobilise towards those priorities - in the knowledge that resources will be available and frictions will be reduced - or whether they prefer to work on other things, which is of course their right and should be welcomed, but in the knowledge that availability of funds and the outcome of proposals might be less certain.
Ok, responding to some specific points raised:
At PNF we have identified this as a pain point. There is no ROI for someone investing a full month navigating the proposal process for small payments. This is an unnecessary burden. We plan to address this through the creation of “Sockets” - low-friction seed grants for working towards the goals and priorities of Pocket. By providing seed grants optimistically we can avoid needless debate and make continued funding contingent on evidence (of impact and results) rather than “ideas”. This broader compensation discussion might be best to focus on bounties and these smaller “seed” grants first. PNF will soon share more on the Sockets program and anyone wanting to provide input to make the program better will have plenty of opportunity to do so.
This is another pain point we identified at PNF and have on our roadmap as a priority - we are working on design of an RFP process because we recognise that larger pieces of work need to make their way to highly capable builder teams and PNF will work to facilitate that. We are meeting as many teams as possible in the next weeks so we can understand their needs and capabilities more and hopefully finalise a design for this soon.
I also empathise with the perspective that bounties maybe don’t fully recognise the importance of certain contributions. I want to say clearly that PNF thinks anyone delivering a bounty is a critical part of Pocket, these people are a reason for our success that we should recognise and celebrate more, and also there is no task important to our success that is beneath any of us - no matter whether it’s called a bounty or something else.
I think Shane summarises it nicely - To do what? Energy and funds will flow more effectively when we have clear and focused priorities as an organisation, because then it’s easier to allocate more/larger work and funding to different teams and businesses.
However, asking what the DAO needs done doesn’t mean we should craft this need into a job description. I strongly believe we should be allocating work to different projects/teams rather than ossifying into a set of full-time “roles”. The power of Pocket grows from the success of the teams in our ecosystem to pursue creative solutions and their ability to work together, not from building new teams in “the DAO”.
This is why PNF has kicked things off with Project DNA and will next be launching new grant mechanisms. We must first answer the question of what the DAO wants to prioritise, then direct resources to any builders wanting to pursue those priorities. Depending on the nature of the priority, this may take the form of a bounty, or a “Socket”, or an RFP. But the point is that we will not be building out a large and ossified team of full-time roles, which would defeat the purpose of a DAO, we will be maintaining a pipeline of opportunities for DAO contributors to tap into.
One other point on this: We are a technical, engineering-led project and this will (rightly) always be our top priority. But without product, marketing, BD and design focusing on the customer, and economics, governance and operations people in the background optimising our systems, we will never be a success. We should not create two classes of citizens - engineers & “the rest” - because we are completely reliant on each other. We don’t want to lose builders - or any talent - that we have across the community. It’s on us all to make sure that happens by working together.
Harry’s perspective is not inherently more “right” than anyone else’s, but I’d just say that he and @Olshansky have a unique experience of using the current system successfully for v1. We also have @deblasis who joined PNI after working on bounties and @PoktNews who is on a rolling bounty each month - let’s hear from them, and equally we should listen to and hear from anyone who feels like our current systems don’t adequately meet their needs, whether that’s @dire , @donvincenzo , @poktblade , @addison , @pierre , @msa6867 or anyone else. Being open and user centred in our approach to solving the daily challenges will help us optimise what we already have, and I think the biggest reason to be optimistic is the crazy amount of talent in this community still to unlock. Let’s hear more of their voices before we jump into solution mode - either here in this thread or within the DNA survey**
This is a great point and I had thought of including something similar in the DNA form.
Pocket should always be “engineer/engineering first” ; also want to humbly remind the “buildooooors” out here-
Without y’all this space wouldn’t have taken birth but without the enabling functions listed above (and more), this space will die a martyr or at best stay at fringes.
Let us please respect the value of diverse competencies.
I cannot believe I reached the botom of this thread!
There were a lot of topics addressed up there, so I will try to be succinct… (yet I failed…)
First, as @Cryptocorn said, we should not use geography to modulate rewards. If POKTscan would follow this path I would not be here (as many of the other great people there), talent should be rewarded as talent, independently of where it resides. Also there is the problem of anons, how are you going to weight their geolocation?
Please be very careful with this.
Second, DAO hiring and committees was once debated, I still think that hiring is not the way. Bounties and reimbursements should be enough if the conditions are clear.
I think that requesting payment for work already done is not that bad, the only problem is to know how much are you going to be able to claim for it beforehand.
Something related to the last point.
I kinda agree with @h5law when he says that contributors that already work for companies in the Pocket ecosystem should not be awarded grants, sometimes being part of the community is part of their job. We should measure this carefully, I can only speak for myself, but I suspect that other members of Pocket companies function the same way.
Much of my work is behind the scenes in POKTscan, however some other part of my job is to lurk around this forum, telegram and discord and stay up-to-date with the latest rant. This should not be regarded as a contribution, as being an active in a debate or arguing in some proposal is difficult to separate from the “duty” to you company. What I see is that there are three kinds of jobs for someone in my position:
Keep track of socials and comment on things that affect your interests.
Use your paid time to contribute to the ecosystem.
Contribute to other stuff in the ecosystem / help people.
The first one should not be paid for, you are doing it for your own interest.
The second one should be paid to the company, since it has already paid you to do it, then discuss with the company your rewards.
The last one is a side effect of the others and could be rewarded. I find myself sometimes talking to random people asking for advise on random subject and random times. Nobody pays me for that, but I have the knowledge and I can help them. I would be in all my right to just ignore these people. If the DAO thinks that this kind of interaction is worth of being rewarded, then they should be included as candidates for rewards.
allocating more/larger work than that for which the bounty program is geared makes sense. There is not much in the bounty area that is a meaningful fit for what I contribute. I look forward to seeing more of the “socket” concept.
Despite living in one of those expensive markets year round (Los Angeles) I tend to agree with both @Cryptocorn and @RawthiL points about the global new economy not being tethered to a location and the value added not being location specific. I am fine in general with not having a COLA
I tend to agree with @h5law sentiment and @RawthiL followon statements regarding staying away from making grants to those already fully employed or otherwise compensated within the ecosystem and rather utilizing task-specific reimbursements for defined contributions that are clearly outside the scope of such a person’s “day job”. But for contributors such as myself with no attachments or compensation within the POKT ecosystem outside of DAO reimbursements or funding, a grant process would go a long way to stabilize involvement and keeping effort focused within the ecosystem instead of elsewhere. Constant wondering if the DAO will come through with reimbursive funding at the end of months of putting in time and effort does not make for the most optimal flow of creative and technical energies. I believe a grant model for such cases would greatly increase efficiency and productivity .
Where there are such grants, making it a “seed” grant with met milestones etc in order to qualify for renewal or continued funding is fine, so long as the process is streamlined and not as onerous as the DAO PEP model often is.
Re @shane 's model, it is a good starting point though I agree with what someone else mentioned about needing a much larger range than the narrow 120-150 currently used for other types of activity. That being said, I’m not sure how practical it is at the end of the day. I incorporated it into my PEP-44 reimbursement request, though somewhat artificially. Meaning that I capped my hours for which I requested reimbursement to 160 hours whereas I probably actually put in 3x the hours over that period. So actual hourly compensation was much less than what shane’s model would suggest, which is fine, because asking 3x would have been a nonstarter. Several already thought the capped ask was too high. Bottom line. Hours put in and skill and expertise represented by those hours are only two pieces of the puzzle . Other pieces of the puzzle are impact of the contribution - as several have mentioned - as well as the uniqueness of the contribution/likelihood that the contribution would have been made by others had the contributor not stepped up. I am sure there are several other such intangibles.
Last, in an ideal world, there is no politics, no personality-driven decision making. Rather, funding - whether reimbursive, imbursive, one-time or recurring - would be based solely on the merits of the contribution (in the case of backward-looking funding requests) and merits of the proposal + past performance in the case of forward-looking funding requests). We as a DAO are not completely there yet. Therefore I welcome process improvements such as “socket” etc that help streamline and remove friction that can and does currently arise within the Pocket DAO.
Maybe not a hiring committee as such, but a ‘soft guidance’ committee (potentially part of GRIP’s remit?) to give a suggestion when there are cases of ambiguity on asking for compensation.
Proposers wouldn’t have to ask for the recommended number, they could still ask for more/less, but it would give some gravitas: ‘GRIP Funding Committee recommended I receive 200k POKT and that is the amount I’m asking for’ as an example.
I’ve suggested oversight committee type structure in the past, and the challenges of evaluating engineering contributions are a driving reason for that. I don’t think that’s GRIP necessarily, but perhaps a similar structure.
Let me rephrase: non-binding committee suggesting an evaluated amount. People can value themselves more or less, but a neutral, repeatable formula or set of standards that can be applied by a third party to offer a ballpark figure.
Although I appreciate we may get into new issues of who’s on the committee and potential for politics etc there.
Tempted to share more, will double down on a few raised by the community-
Excited to get a glimpse of socket and the RFP process. If bounty is working, why break something that is working!
COLA will be tough to implement for individuals. Should be explored for domiciled companies in the RFP process.
Feel appointed individual (from the PNF) or a committee is the way to go, similar to a “representative democracy” instead of “direct democracy” for each and every decision. The latter may not be scalable.
Budgeting the DAO treasury could be explored; budget allocated to compensation broken down into subcategories such as R&D, RFPs, bounties, abstract projects/innovations, etc. Helps build structure and do better treasury management.
Didn’t see it in the PNF Roadmap. Maybe @Dermot can guide.
Hiring full time employees for the DAO appears debatable but what about proactive annual/quarterly planning of where DAO needs to spend, budget and then seek out resources (from the community or outside). Take a proactive approach instead of reactive and passive.
#4 and #5 are related.
POKT Samaritans can be rewarded quarterly for great community service- chosen by the “representative individual or body”.
As a newcomer/quasi outsider, I see subjectivity, non-standardisation, emotions, politics (possibly) in the funding related posts (not all). While those may not be totally avoidable, how can we move the needle towards structure, standardisation and objectivity.
They key word is “meritocracy;” I suggest it be embraced as one of the core values.
Wondering what the next steps are @Jinx (since you created this post) & @b3n . Or maybe @shane.
Wait for socket, RFP process, DNA results to unfold?
I think there is soft consensus around changes (wherever needed) and putting harder structures in place.
A committee or a body sounds fine as long as its representative and upholds meritocracy by adhering to the rulebook that gets created prior.
However, I would be cautious centralising decision-making in one body just because it exists. There can be multiple bodies empowered by the community for different tasks/agendas. That also gives opportunities to new community members with diverse backgrounds to participate in such committees.
Maybe a member of GRIP, a member of PNF and a member of PNI (or DAO appointed representative?) Funding + stewardship could come under GRIP. A 3 person team re-elected each year?
These would be non-binding recommendations for compensation.
