PEP-42: Reward and Decentralise (RAD)

Edited 09/20 to change BAG Holders to Foundation.

Attributes

Summary

TLDR: PEP-42 secures a budget for one-off contributor activities via a Pocket DAO bounty program through the end of 2022 with the initial goals of supporting contributions to the V0/V1 protocols and some small collaboration experiments between external contributors and core team functions (i.e., potential Reddit moderation, Event Ambassadorships or others TBC). Pending the success of this program, the authors intend to work with the community to seek an annual budget to fund contributor bounties through 2023.

Motivation/Rationale

  • Provide more paid opportunities for DAO participants and community members – Ecosystems are emergent and must pursue opportunities for value creation flexibly and rapidly to help Pocket capture this value. Packaging discrete and emergent work into bounties and incentivising contributions can create more momentum in having the community contribute to Pocket in new and meaningful ways.
  • Further progressively decentralise Pocket Network’s workforce – By creating a wider range of available tasks for participation, we can establish relationships with new builders and participants that can build long-term value for the network. We see bounties as a way for people to start entering and contributing to the Pocket Network via the DAO and beginning a pathway to building more complex contributions or associated businesses.
  • More closely fuse Pocket Network, Inc. team activities with the DAO – Decentralising more work will further enmesh the community and core teams in the most important thing - working together. These types of work experiences not only can generate value in task completion but more empathy and trust and greater visibility to both the community and core teams.
  • Learn through small-scale experiments how to optimise contributor experiences and work collaborations, including onboarding, payments, etc. – We are at the start of decentralising work at Pocket. The whole ecosystem of web3 is grappling with challenges around onboarding, payments, accountability, growth, and many other things that web2 or traditional companies take for granted. By creating more of these discrete experiments, we can benefit from more learning opportunities and start to build playbooks that can optimise our ability to work in this way.

Operational Considerations & How it works

We will identify a (hopefully) increasing number of contribution opportunities for external collaboration with Pocket Network, Inc (PNI). We will also, where possible, use this bounty program to help action community suggestions that are provided by the IDEAS mechanism outlined in PEP41.

The DAO will make these opportunities for community and external contributions visible to all via Dework. Dework acts as a middle layer for community contributions and integrates with existing tools like Discord and GitHub, limiting friction with existing workflows as we scale. It is also a Web3 native product that can accept token payments, NFT gating, and other functionality that will allow us to scale over time.

We aim to create pathways for both permissioned and permissionless contributions. That is:

  • Permissioned: People apply to take up contribution bounties to the Pocket DAO via Dework
  • Permissionless: Trusted contributors who have achieved certain trust/role thresholds can self-assign work bounties without the need to apply or seek approval

These contributions will be completed for the Pocket DAO and will be supported by the following accountability mechanism:

  • CREWmates: All bounty contributors will have CREWmate. CREW stands for Contributor Rewards and Effective Work. The CREWmate is the main point of contact for support of the bounty contributor and is the person who will review and sign off on the successful completion of work. The CREWmate will be assigned and communicated to the contributor at the commencement of their work by the Head of DAO Talent.

The Bounty Contributor’s CREWmate is their main connection point should support be needed when completing their work. The CREWmate has discretion to approve that work has been completed to a satisfactory standard for payment and the Head of DAO Talent will work with contributors and their CREWmate to help ensure the most effective outcomes. Work can be paid for completion, pre-agreed value, or milestone payments, but not solely for the effort expended - we reward results.

Note: Over time, we will further define the nature of contributor relationships, systems access, and other needs as relevant to completing the work and provide guides and playbooks that should facilitate the improved and rapid integration of community contributors.

We will document as much as possible, work in the open by default and provide monthly updates to the community via the Foundation through this forum to update the community on work assigned, results achieved, and funds disbursed.

Budget

We are proposing 600,000 $POKT from the DAO treasury be allocated to the above described bounty program with the goal of funding 50 tasks across 10+ contributors.

How did we arrive at this figure?

Estimating the speed of operation, aliasing this can be difficult, particularly as we incentivise new types of contributions. Because of the broad range of possible types of contributors (highly technical to non-technical) our logic is based on task hours. We have priced this budget on expectation of:

  • Months of funding required: 4
  • Contributor goal: 10+
  • Task Completion Goal: 50
  • Average task size: XtraSmall (XS) to Medium (M); Some Large (L)
    • XS = 1-2 hours (10%) - $50-100 = $500
    • S = 3-6 hours (30%) - $150-300 = $4500
    • M = 1-3 days (50%) - $400-1200 = $30,000
    • L = 4-8 days (10%) - $1200-3200 = $16,000
  • Estimated Contributor breakdown:
    • 5 V1 developer contributors (40% of tasks) - 20 tasks
    • 2-5 V0 developer contributors (10% of tasks) - 5 tasks
    • 5 community contributors (20% of tasks) - 10 tasks
    • 5 Marketing contributors (20% of tasks) - 10 tasks
    • 5 Experimental contributors (10% of tasks) - 5 tasks
  • Average Contributor Rate: $50/hr

Note that these are approximations to help us calibrate the budget requested. The actual distribution of task type/value may differ.

Total for 50 tasks: $62,600 = ~600,000 POKT

Payment currency & mechanics

Payment will be a 50% Split $POKT/$USDC . 50% of the total budget will be converted to $USDC at initial funding to act as a hedge against price movements during this period.

We want to incentivise owning and holding POKT, but we need to hedge against possible price movements during this period and be pragmatic that many web3 contributors today have expectations to be paid in ERC20 tokens due to their convenience for living and operating expenses.

The Foundation will be responsible for maintaining the budgeted funds. They will make monthly payments after a reconciliation of bounties approved in Dework by relevant CREWmate.

Deliverables

The main deliverables of this proposal will be:

  • Systematised bounty contribution mechanism via Dework
  • Increased number of rewarded community contributions (Goal: 50 tasks / 10+ Contributors)
  • Status reporting on WIP activity and results (both contributions and value generated/saved for the Pocket Network)
  • Documented learnings from contribution experiences to underpin a set of guides and playbooks for community contributions

Dissenting Opinions

  • The requested budget is too high
    • The anticipated work will need to be completed by someone. This request is lower than the cost of hiring Full Time employees in terms of salary costs, attraction costs (hiring, recruiting), and time costs (time to hire, interview process etc.)
  • There aren’t enough checks and balances
    • We have defined the role of CREWmate who will be the person responsible for accepting that work has reached the standard required for payment for the work. In addition, the Foundation will need to complete their own check and acceptance of the work provided prior to making payments and reporting to the DAO
    • Hiring full-time employees means fewer checks and balances within the community because it is by its nature more opaque. We want transparency to act as a driver of accountability.
  • We don’t need to focus on this now
    • Accelerating our ability to deliver the v1 protocols development, and supporting other types of contributions is a high priority. We are an ecosystem for builders and we want to ensure that building with Pocket is a primary focus for the DAO

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.

4 Likes

I support this proposal 100%. This is a great move to further community / core team collaboration while clarifying priorities. Exactly what we need in my opinion.

2 Likes

I also support this proposal. I do have a question and a couple suggestions.

Question: Will CREWmates and BAG holders be entirely composed of PNI employees or will there by non-PNI DAO representation?

Suggestion 1: For both this and for PEP-41 , I would like to see monthly AMA / status calls to let the community know what is working well, what isn’t working as intended, what pivots are needed, share success cases, report what percentage of the budget has been spent etc…rather than wait for the 4 months to pass before issuing a final report. Such call could be joint PEP-41,42; no need for separate calls. I would like to see the inclusion of something like this added to the scope of each proposal

Suggestion 2: I would like to see a portion of the budget (say 10-20%) of each of PEP-41 and this proposal be available to fund worthy suggestions and contributions, respectively, outside of adherence to the DeWork workflow but rather via more informal mechanisms such as completely at the discretion of the BAG holders. Part of the prototype is to evaluate the utility of DeWork for this kind of effort, and I do not see how that aspect can be evaluated without a non-dework baseline to compare it to (quality and quantity of suggestions and contributions, how much red-tape the dework flow adds, etc, how problematic is the scalability of an informal system, etc)

1 Like

Good questions/suggestions.

CREWmates and BAG Holders will be composed of the authors of the proposal (who are all members of PNI) for now. It is my strong desire to use this experience to systematise such work that we can extend these responsibilities beyond PNI (particularly the role of BAG Holders).

Monthly AMA and status calls are great and already within our plans. For a budgeted proportion to be outside of Dework, I do think it’s a good idea to have some discretion (I already know of some work that might be bountied “retroactively”) but generally think we should report transparently on where those needs arise rather than proactively plan for them

I support this proposal but will add a little bit in general how I feel about this

Personally, I think $50/hr (varies on location, and whatnot…) is on the lower end given that most of the tasks for bounties are for building out the early stages of our next gen protocol. This will pretty much require some specialized expertise/knowledge down the road. To be clear, I highly spite paying devs per hour, especially in the early stages.

$50/hr down the road whenever V1 is established and a large foundation is already there? Hell yeah, I’d gladly take down some bounties for the lols, spend a couple hours coding to pay for my coffee, dinner, etc. Why not? But right now, V1 is still in the early stages of the foundation, and everyone knows that the early ones tend to be compensated on the higher end (if everything plays out the way it should, doesn’t have to be immediate)

Overall though, it’s a step forward to using the DAO funds to help us accelerate our goal to V1 and decentralized RPC access in general. But in my opinion, the satisfaction to take on these bounties aren’t that attractive, unless you have significant bags already in POKT (or in vesting). And I presume that’s half of the reason why the Core devs are in it to win it :slight_smile:

4 Likes

I support this proposal without reservation.

2 Likes

This is pretty cool. Will the bountie amount be shown on each task?

2 Likes

Yes. As much as possible bounties will show a price, or alternatively there is an option for contributors to suggest /offer a price

2 Likes

This is an interesting approach to accelerate the community contribution, I support this proposal.

1 Like

Hey @poktblade! Thanks for your great contributions to the discussion, as always :pray:

I tend to agree with you re: V1 contributions, and developer contributions in general. I was trying to find a normalization for an average since we plan on experimenting with other bounty types with this budget (marketing, community management, etc.) so I based it on a $100k/year USD average, which is commiserate with high CoL cities like NYC, although perhaps slightly below the average for other US metros like LA.

We tried to cover the variance with this disclaimer:

Note that these are approximations to help us calibrate the budget requested. The actual distribution of task type/value may differ.

Even with the $50/hr average to calculate and justify the funding amount requested, it will not be a flat distribution by task type or contributor type but fairly subjective (and ideally an open dialogue between the CREWmates and bounty hunters as part of assigning tasks).

Our current goal with the V1 bounties is to focus on valuable starter tasks to make sure efforts are commiserate with rewards as another means of balancing the distribution of this initial program funding.

As tasks grow in complexity and commitment, we prove results and get more funding, and work on monetizing core contributions in a more fluid way, I think that those operating in a more consultative fashion have grounds to make a case for a higher bounty rewards and even propose tasks via this mechanism and name their price. And I welcome and encourage dialogues like these starting with these initial bounties as we learn.

I personally am always happy to pay top $ (and POKT!) for developer contributions and look forward to negotiating these specifics with you and other contributors as we start mapping tasks to rewards (wen DAO vote?? :slightly_smiling_face:) and expanding the bounty program together.

Thank you again for your support and feedback!

4 Likes

This proposal is now up for voting Snapshot

2 Likes

A few questions as voting winds down. Who is - or who appoints - the “Head of DAO Talent”? And what’s a “BAG” holder?

1 Like

Thanks for these questions. My role is as “Head of DAO Talent” so it refers to me :slight_smile:

Edit: Bag Holders were proposed as a mechanism for administering payments. The proposal was edited prior to voting so that the Foundation will administer payments (in place of the Bag Holders).
Further details will be provided on the operations of this and apologies for the confusion (which can be attributed partly to covid brain and mostly to my inattention to detail :smiling_face_with_tear:)

With the voting now closed and approved I want to say thankyou for your confidence in us to further activate the community through this proposal.

This proposal was approved with 18 approvals and 0 rejections. Snapshot

3 Likes

RAD Update - Program Month 1 (October 2022)

October was our first month of the RAD program (Pocket bounties). Details of the program are above and current bounties available can be access here:

https://app.dework.xyz/pokt-network

Results:

In the month of October, 3 key bounties were delivered:

  • @deblasis completed Part 1/3 of outlining a baseline for the V1 Protocol CLI. In addition, he provided valuable feedback on how to independently onboard as an external contributor.
  • @profish delivered a first phase of the GitHub wiki which is now in further iteration to leverage with a proper review / PR process and keeping docs next to the code
  • @ PoktNews took over the PoktDAO twitter account and has provided regular updates on DAO proposal, Bounties, Community Suggestions and other relevant DAO news

These have been high-quality and impact contributions to Pocket.

Other bounties have been allocated but remain incomplete:

  • Improvements related to Protobuffs to ensure good code hygiene. This is a great starter task for someone to complete!
  • Lisbon Ambassadors who attended various Lisbon Blockchain week events, including a Pokt meetup

Applications received for bounties but not allocated include:

  • Metis marketing
  • DFK marketing

Retrospective:

The program has been positioned as an experiment, and while still in its early stages we are already accumulating valuable learnings. Some of these include:

  • Dework is a simple tool but still requires some offline coordination. We can close some observed gaps through better documentation and communication. We will endeavour to share more with the community on this soon.
  • High-skill and high-context contributors make the RAD bounties system fairly effortless. Like most systems, good participants can bridge gaps (It should be noted that the 3 contributors reward this month are now contributing on a more permanent basis).
  • But, the system has been somewhat more difficult to operate with lower context or newer potential contributors. We will keep iterating on this.
  • For Developer Bounties, having more focus on the type of contributions we want to permission via Dework will help us increase efficiency and impact. We are currently in discussions with @jalde and @Olshansky on this and will share more soon
  • From Ecosystem Bounties, we need to increase the volume of potential contribution opportunities and this will be a major focus in November. We have a smart, active community that needs more opportunities to participate this way.

Rewards:

Rewards for the RAD program will be disbursed by the Pocket Network Foundation (PNF). Operations of this will be communicated shortly as part of a broader range of updates. Contributors owed rewards for bounties have been communicated with regarding any potential delay.

Program funds:

Reminder that the RAD proposal secured 600,000 POKT, anticipated to be used as:

Average task size: XtraSmall (XS) to Medium (M); Some Large (L)

  • XS = 1-2 hours (10%) - $50-100 = $500
  • S = 3-6 hours (30%) - $150-300 = $4500
  • M = 1-3 days (50%) - $400-1200 = $30,000
  • L = 4-8 days (10%) - $1200-3200 = $16,000

Actual funds to be Disbused in Month 1:
Bounty - Contributor - Size - Rewards

  • Developer Bounties - Deblasis - S - $250 USD = 3487 POKT
  • GitHub Wiki - Profishional - S - $200 USD = 2790 POKT
  • PoktDAO Twitter - PoktNews - L - $1750 USD pm = 24408 POKT

Note: These rewards use the 30 day (Oct) average price from CoinMarket cap of POKT. This price is 0.0717

Program Funds: **

600,000 POKT

Rewards - October

30,685 POKT

Balance

569,315 POKT

Burn rate

30,685 POKT pm. Runway of 18.55 months

4 Likes

RAD Update - Program Month 2 (November 2022)

November was the second month of the RAD program (Pocket bounties). Details of the program are above and current bounties available can be access here:

https://app.dework.xyz/pokt-network

Results:

In the month of October, 3 bounties were allocated and delivered:

  • Germany and team worked on the V1 visualisations. This is an important activity as part of V1 and is hopefully the beginning of a continuing relationship through the life of V1
  • For Lisbon Blockchain week, 3 members of the Pocket community took up a bounty to be “Pokt Ambassadors” by undertaking activities and attending events
  • PoktDAO Twitter continues to be run by PoktNews

Other bounties allocated but incomplete:

  • There are no other bounties in progress

Applications received for bounties but not allocated include:

  • There were no other applications for bounties that remain unallocated

Retrospective:

As we entered our second month there were some additional learnings:

  • It is important that our bounties find the right balance between tasks that achieve the right priority and a valuable level of impact to various teams. Starting the month of November we may not have had that right, as tasks were more likely to indicates tasks that someone “could do” as a starter task. We have no increased the focus of developer bounties which we think will provide better balance between these needs and a higher level of impact
  • Attracting talent to these bounties is something that we have allowed to happen organically. Now that we have more confidence in the types of bounties offered, and the way we can support delivery, we plan to more actively try to attract people to these bounties. One way we plan to explore is by creating incentivization bounties for talent referrals. More to follow on the board soon
  • We still have significant scope to increase the number of Ecosystem Bounties offered. We want to note that we stand ready to help any team - be it PNI or other teams in the ecosystem - to make use of the RAD mechanisms and budgets to help advance the goals of the Pocket Network. If you need support or would like to use RAD in your team please reach out to me.

Rewards:

Rewards for the RAD program will be disbursed during December for the months of October and November. We are in the process of capturing final wallet details from relevant bounty hunters.

Program funds:

Reminder that RAD proposal secured 600,000 POKT, anticipated to be used as:

Average task size: XtraSmall (XS) to Medium (M); Some Large (L)

  • XS = 1-2 hours (10%) - $50-100 = $500
  • S = 3-6 hours (30%) - $150-300 = $4500
  • M = 1-3 days (50%) - $400-1200 = $30,000
  • L = 4-8 days (10%) - $1200-3200 = $16,000

Funds to be disbursed (Month 2):

Bounty - Contributor - Size - Rewards

V1 Visualizations - Germany - L - Excluded**

Lisbon Ambassador - Annie Snow - S - 1000 POKT

Lisbon Ambassador - Ashley - S - 1000 POKT

Lisbon Ambassador - Tom W - S - 1000 POKT

PoktDAO Twitter - PoktNews - L - $1750USD | 27,733 POKT

Note: These rewards use the 30 day (Nov) average price from CoinMarket cap of POKT. This price is 0.0631

** The Visualizations bounty is quite complex and requires further alignment. It is excluded to allow this report to be shared without delay.

Program Funds: **

600,000 POKT

Balance - Start of November

569,315 POKT

Rewards - November

30,733* POKT

Balance - End November

538,582 POKT

Burn rate

30,709 POKT pm. Runway of 17.54 Months @ current rate

3 Likes

RAD Update - Program Month 3 (December 2022)

December was the third month of the RAD program (Pocket bounties). Details of the program are above and current bounties available can be access here:

https://app.dework.xyz/pokt-network

Results:

In the month of December, 8 bounties were allocated and delivered. This is again an increase on the previous month:

  • We implemented a “developer referral bounty” which was claimed by @PoktNews for introducing us to @h5law
  • @h5law completed PreCommit hook bounty. The rockstar just did the work and submitted the PR which the dev team loved :fire:
  • @Jinx and team started scaling our community content and marketing efforts, with 5 bounties being awarded from 7 submissions. As encouragement to the team and to better align work with the current POKT price we have provided a 2X multiple for these early adopters. Thanks to @jdaugherty and @ethen (and others) for advocating for fairer rewards
  • PoktDAO Twitter continues to be run by @PoktNews

Other bounties have been allocated but remain incomplete:

  • The bounty to review our Trophy system was claimed by @OmnistratMatt and aims to be completed within January

Applications received for bounties but not allocated include:

  • There were 2 submissions for community content that were declined

Retrospective:

Our third month allowed us to further refine our approach and included learnings:

  • Referrals really do uncover the best people. Referrals have already introduced us to devs who joined the protocol team and now great new talent has been referred for bounties. We should continue to leverage this mechanism and I’d encourage anyone who knows people that might want to work with Pocket to claim the referral bounty
  • Having a “campaign” for community involvement yields good results. The work of Jinx and the Poktopus army generated a number of submissions and opportunities for further engagement. We will see how this might be replicable in other functions

Rewards:

December rewards for the RAD program will be disbursed during January. Funds to be disbursed can be seen below:

Program funds:

Funds to be disbursed (Month 3):

Bounty - Contributor - Rewards

Precommit Hooks - @h5law - $1200 | 16,830 POKT

Referral bounty - @PoktNews - $1200 | 16,830 POKT

Community Content Small - @0x_Boo - 1000 POKT

Community Content Small - @Cryptocorn - 1000 POKT

Community Content Large - @0x_Boo - 3000 POKT

Community Content Large - @Japandy - 3000 POKT

Community Content YouTube - @Japandy - 5000 POKT

PoktDAO Twitter - @PoktNews - $1750USD | 24,544 POKT

Note: These rewards use the 30 day (Dec) average price from CoinMarket cap of POKT. This price is 0.0713

Program Funds: **

600,000 POKT

Balance - Start of December

538,582 POKT

Rewards - December

71,204 POKT

Balance - End December

467,378 POKT

Burn rate

44207 POKT pm. Runway of 10.57 Months @ current rate

9 Likes

nice! 71k in december!

2 Likes

RAD Update - Program Month 4 (January 2023)

January was the fourth month of the RAD program (Pocket bounties) and was our largest yet. Details of the program are above and current bounties available can be accessed here:

https://app.dework.xyz/pokt-network

Results:

In the month of January, 6 large bounties were allocated and delivered which create our largest month ever:

  • @h5law has architected a strong pipeline as a trusted agent with the Protocol team. It’s great to see this mechanism work and is something we hope we can scale further for protocol dev :fire:
  • @OmnistratMatt completed a deeper analysis of Pocket’s trophy system and results will be published shortly by Matt and Jack
  • PoktDAO Twitter continues to be run by @PoktNews , including a small back payment for additional work completed towards this task

A number of developer bounties are in progress but remain incomplete.

Applications were received for 2 bounties but were not allocated.

Retrospective:

Our fourth month has led to some additional improvements and requests:

  • Bounties are not being priced in “Task Points”. Point values will relate to the number of $USD or $POKT to be rewarded. This creates greater visibility for contributors and will allow payment tracking to be simpler than the previous system
  • We want more talent/developer referrals - if you have any ideas for improving this system please let us know
  • More will be announced soon of the intersection of bounty and grants programs. Please keep an eye out for further updates from PNF

Rewards:

January rewards for the RAD program will be disbursed before February 15th. Funds to be disbursed can be seen below:

Program funds:

Reminder that RAD proposal secured 600,000 POKT, anticipated to be used as:

Average task size: XtraSmall (XS) to Medium (M); Some Large (L)

  • XS = 1-2 hours (10%) - $50-100 = $500
  • S = 3-6 hours (30%) - $150-300 = $4500
  • M = 1-3 days (50%) - $400-1200 = $30,000
  • L = 4-8 days (10%) - $1200-3200 = $16,000

Funds to be disbursed (Month 4):

Bounty - Contributor - Size - Rewards

@h5law - Developer Bounties (x4) - $14,400USD | 244,897 POKT

@OmnistratMatt - Trophy Review - $3000USD | 51,020 POKT

PoktDAO Twitter - @PoktNews - $1750USD |

PoktDAO Backpayment - PoktNews - 24,764 POKT

Note: These rewards use the 30 day (Jan) average price from CoinMarket cap of POKT. This price is 0.0588

Program Funds: **

600,000 POKT

Balance - Start of January

442,703 POKT (Restated)

Rewards - December

325,769 POKT

Balance - End December

116,934 POKT

Burn rate

120,766 POKT pm. Runway of 0.96 Months @ current rate

As we have advanced rapidly toward the end of our runway you should expect another update on this very soon.

7 Likes

Love to see it! New PEP incoming :cowboy_hat_face:

4 Likes