Summary: RAD Season 1
The PEP42 - RAD experiment is now complete. Below we will outline performance against the objectives of the program. As a reminder, the objectives of the original proposal were:
- Provide more paid opportunities for DAO participants and community members
- Further progressively decentralise Pocket Networkâs workforce
- More closely fuse Pocket Network, Inc. team activities with the DAO
- Learn through small-scale experiments how to optimise contributor experiences and work collaborations
We believe that the first iteration of the RAD program has achieved each of these objectives.
Provide more paid opportunities for DAO participants and community members
Prior to RAD, some contribution programs did exist at Pocket in the form of Triforce and the Scholarship Fund. The total number of external contributors funded by these programs was ~5, and only 1 or 2 were people that might be considered new to the community.
Through the RAD program we funded a total of 28 bounties to 13 individuals. Of these, 4 were new entrants to the community whose relationship with Pocket started through their RAD contributions. Two of these were even hired by PNI subsequent to completing bounties.
While the barriers to completing specialised developer bounties are quite high, even today any individual within the Pocket community can be rewarded for referring talent to Pocket or for generating relevant community content through the RAD program.
These small but encouraging results give us confidence in the longer term possibilities of the program. We would also just note that we may potentially have achieved even more for Pocket DAO if the POKT price had not declined 50% in the time since the proposal was passed, which has ultimately reduced the runway of this program.
Further progressively decentralise Pocket Networkâs workforce
One benefit of the program has been our ability to increase the decentralisation of the workforce of Pocket. We now have 2 contributors to the core protocol operating through the RAD program, as well as having had our external PoktDAO twitter account funded by RAD.
These bounties are not just vanity activities but core functions of how Pocket Network operates both internally and externally. RAD has often been the catalyst for new conversations about the nature of work at Pocket and the start of relationships that even though start quite discrete, tend to be leveraged into continuing and increasingly important roles as trust and accountability are established. This increases not only the value of the work but the value of the ecosystem as a whole.
More closely fuse Pocket Network, Inc. team activities with the DAO
RAD bounties enabled benefits for PNI that persist to this day, including âincreased overall project velocity, addressing techdebt that may have otherwise been kicked down the road⊠and found owners for un-owned parts of codebase including FT contributors.â
We currently have two external protocol contributors working with the V1 team via bounties. While we do anticipate the nature of these contributions may well evolve beyond bounties over time, PNI now has contingent, external contributors working with them on a recurring basis through the RAD program. We hope this gives them, and the broader community, further encouragement that our path to progressive decentralisation is sustainable and will be a success.
Learn through small-scale experiments how to optimise contributor experiences and work collaborations
Much has evolved since the RAD program was developed, which has provided us clarity around further experimentation with programs like GROW. That said, we have been able to run small scale experiments to further tune the RAD program. This includes:
- Through the program we have experimented and refined the systems for working with external contributors. This has included further defining how external contributors access core systems like Github and how we authorise activity for social media accounts
- Through the Poktopus Army we have experimented with an âexternallyâ run set of bounties being delivered within the program. While momentum has slowed on this it does give us confidence to further explore how RAD can be a program leveraged by others in the community, not just PNI
- Through the Referral bounty, we have been able to experiment with leveraging talent referrals; a key part of growing any community or DAO. This identified the high level of talent in our extended networks that Pocket can try to access in more effective ways, although perhaps RAD is not a compelling enough mechanism to really make this work
- Through the Pocket Trophies bounty, we used a completely external contributor to Pocket who was relatively low context on how Pocket works. The result of this work was actually really good, and gives us confidence that we can use external knowledge within Pocket in targeted ways and to onboard new people into our ecosystem.
The future of RAD
With the encouragement of these results we plan to put forward a proposal for a continuation of the RAD program, addressing some of the opportunities and weaknesses of the program outlined above. Expect to see a new post in the forum soon.
As we close out the program a thanks again to all who have participated and supported us. We welcome anyone involved to share their own reflections, colour and feedback about the journey of RAD below.
Many thanks,
Ben, Jess, Jack, Ming and Olshansky
of 
s that they are.
). And in my opinion, this can only be achieved by getting more people working on the bigger open issues. And I think RADv2 will continue towards this goal with