poktDAO and Pocket Network Protocol (opinions)

[ethen]

A few days ago I was added to chat with Michael and Arthur from PNI, PoktFund founders (PoktBlade, Daichi), PoktScan founder (Michael O’Rourke), and Thunderhead founders (Addison, Pierre, Sevi). Arthur wanted to get the ball rolling on LeanPOKT and Geo-Mesh payouts. With SendWallet being paid out already by the DAO, before exiting the room, I had what is written below to say.

*This is important, as what I was saying was a message to them and not to the community. I will be following the message with more of my opinions to the community.

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___ word for word ___

I’ve been pushing for LeanPOKT and Geo-Mesh to get paid for sometime now. Some argue that is irrelevant to PEP-49, I of course would argue the opposite. We can’t move on to a whole new year and start handing out pokt when our top contributors haven’t been paid out. Of course Geo-Mesh hadn’t submitted yet, but im of the opinion that PNF should have been helping push that forward sooner rather than later. Thank goodness we have moved forward on that end in the separation of PNI from PNF. Hopefully they are more supportive of community builders going forward.

Some points and numbers I’d like to throw out. These numbers are AFTER LeanPOKT and Geo-Mesh get paid out for last year.

I pretty much agree with all of Sevi’s points. I think you guys should follow through with most of them. But y’all is a private company and that’s your shit. Not trying to get involved with that, but with PNI being the biggest builder in the community, for the sake of my livelihood and my bags, I need to watch what happens there closely.

Now the numbers -

Ritesh and I will be submitting a DAO proposal for 2m pokt for 10 months of work Feb 15th - Dec 15th. We will do all the design for PNI as it relates to the protocol. This could be anything from the site, the portal, marketing materials, eth denver. Anything they need, we will take care of. Then we will move onto the site and whatever PNF needs. And from there to community design - poktdao twitter, poktnews, reddit, poktscan (if they want it), rpc meter, pokt.watch, pokt.info and whatever else the community needs us to design. As long as it’s not for a staking service and directly beneficial to the community, we will handle.

More on POKT allocation now

PNI - 40m pokt of which 20m should be paid back as Sevi said. Sevi said all should be paid back, not sure i agree. but that’s y’all proposal, these are just my opinions.

Paid out over 18 months
PoktFund - 10m pokt
PoktScan - 10m pokt
Thunderhead - 8m pokt
SendNodes - 8m pokt

To clarify on how this will be spent among SendNodes - 444k/month. 300k of it will go to our engineers. 100k/month for Don, Dire, BigBoss. The existing 144k/month will go to our treasury and this amount will apply existing company equity percentages. I would hope the other teams would do the same, but i can’t control that. We can’t make big moves forward if the best talent is not being compensated - the engineers.

So why the $Pokt to these teams. PNI needs to be more collaborative with v1 work. Theres no reason why your v1 product manager (jessica?) can’t get with Addison and Don and start working more amongst the 4 teams. Figure out what is missing and how PNI can start offloading some work to community builders.

Olshansky
PoktBlade
Dire
BigBoss
Pierre
Jorge
Ramiro

I’m sure there are a few others on those teams. Especially for PNI.

78m pokt in total (Ritesh+Ethen design, PNI, TH, PS, PF, SN).

This leaves the DAO with 47m pokt minus what is paid out for LeanPOKT and Geo-Mesh. Keep in mind the DAO still takes home 2m/month. So while still spending on community proposals, they would still be left with approximately close to 50m pokt if they spend about 1m pokt a month on various proposals.

end

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Now to the community:

I was hoping LeanPOKT and Geo-Mesh would be paid out before PEP-49 went to vote. I know its up to those respective teams to submit their proposals, but pretty disappointed in the PNI team for theirs to go out first. Oh well.

As I said, I agree with most of Sevi’s points and think PNI should have to pay back some of that 30m. At least half, if not, you guys really lucked out after an absolute disaster of a year.

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Ritesh and I will be submitting a proposal for any and all design work that anyone needs from the community. Whether it be a project, an individual, or a team. We will not be designing for staking services. We’ve already begun work on a rebrand for PNI and the protocol. We will focus on the main site and onboarding App Builders and Node Runners. We’ll do some graphics from time to time pertaining to v1 and the progress being made there. We’ve also finished a landing page for the DAO and PNF, that will be the beginning stages of a more thorough website containing: Members, Treasury, Voting, Proposals, and Becoming a Member. We expect to make lots of progress there in the next month with considerable input from the 5 members.

Designing as with anything is order of operations and we want to make sure we are going in the right order while not neglecting any community projects or individuals. We will have monthly progress reports and want to be held accountable. Expect this proposal next week. 2m $Pokt paid out over 10 months the 15th of every month. Ritesh and I split everything 50/50.

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Now let’s get into the community engineers.

As I’ve said, I think the 4 major teams need a payout similar to PNI. I’ve lowered the figures as they have lowered their ask.

Paid out over 18 months -
PoktFund - 7.5m
PoktScan - 7.5m
Thunderhead - 7.5m
SendNodes - 7.5m

I’ve also brought Thunderhead and SendNodes up to PoktFund and PoktScan levels. Our teams are just as good as theirs.

So the reason for me continuing to ask how PNI employees will be paid out, is because we have no problem doing that from SendNodes.

To break down the 7.5m if we were to get that:

416,667 $Pokt/month
Don - 95,000 $Pokt/month
BigBoss - 95,000 $Pokt/month
Dire - 95,000 $Pokt/month
SendNodes Treasury - 131,667 $Pokt/month
This puts us at 68.5% of funds going to our engineers.

I don’t know how the other teams would distribute funds. This is just an opinion of how I think things should be done. There are some really smart community developers that are not contributing enough and have had to look for employment elsewhere. Really good devs don’t get into crypto to wage slave, they’re here to collect tokens. And bounties are good but comparable to commissions. The point of building in crypto and web3 is to get the builders to replace the venture capitalists and angel investors. Instead of paying with money, they pay with their time.

Figures can go up or down depending on the time commitments for each of the teams. I think the 4 teams should get together and see if this is a viable plan. I’d also like to see the 4 teams submit a group proposal.

For those of you that think its too much - again, engineers don’t get into crypto to be paid out in USD. To continue down that path is rejecting this new world of incentivization. Also, if they were to be paid out in USD, and 6 months later the price was to double or triple, they are technically diluting their payout as the price pump has a direct correlation with the work they’re doing.

Considering the DAO prints about 2m tokens a month, this would leave them with more than enough as we’ve mostly had funds just sitting there accumulating for a time like this.

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[Olshansky (Daniel Olshansky)]

@ethen You covered a lot of different topics above. The only one I’d like to respond to is on the topic of V1 development.

I posted an update yesterday on the responsibilities & composition of the protocol team within PNI:

Protocol development at this stage is difficult to manage from both a product and a technical standpoint. I honestly believe we have a small but high-performing team, and having “too many cook’s in the kitchen” could slow us down.

Whenever there’s an opportunity to bounty something out, we’re doing our best to do so and the work @h5law has been doing is proof of that:

Our main goal is to deliver a foundation that’ll “outsource us out of a job”. This requires good documentation, good automation, high code quality and the bare necessities from a feature standpoint. Another piece of proof of that is this GitHub Wiki that automatically updates whenever new changes are merged to main which also came from an external contributor.

Defining requirements, deliverables, specs, etc with too many external teams is really hard at this early stage, but we are constantly ideating longer-term outsourceable features (e.g. IBC integration). We’re seeing improvement month over month, and IMHO, we just need to keep doing what we’re doing.

References:

• V1 Codebase
• V1 Specs
• V1 Roadmap
• Dework

P.S. One thing we could potentially do (for future proofness sake) is increase the DAO’s per-block allocation so we have the funding to incentivize and reimburse devs team more (internally and externally). Might follow up on this in a separate thread.

[ethen]

Thank you for responding Daniel. I trust that you have it all taken care of and are monitoring the development closely.

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Feeding off Daniels point though -

Just because PNI has it all taken care of on v1, doesn’t mean that payouts are not needed to the external teams for ecosystem development.

[ethen]

to make another point here.

This does not take anything away from Jessica or Daniel. I think they are bad ass and I absolutely love them.

But it’s important to understand who is contributing and put them in a position to succeed and get compensated.

[ethen]

Absolutely stacked! Made my day today. Truly

[zaatar]

@ethen

Ritesh and I will be submitting a DAO proposal for 2m pokt for 10 months of work Feb 15th - Dec 15th
… for any and all design work that anyone needs from the community.

Ethen, I do hope you’ll first post this proposal for feedback under Governance in the Pre-Proposal category where GRIP can do its magic.

[ethen]

Sure I can do that. Thank you for the guidance.

[ethen]

This is a good thread to follow:
https://twitter.com/0x_boo/status/1621806236478881792?s=20&t=Muuvn7PtJdLeLY-Rt1yUzg

[poktblade (Blade)]

Hey Ethen,

Just now seeing this. Appreciate the support and vocalness you’ve brought to this community as usual. I would be interested in autonomous grants to help grow the ecosystem if the organization has built up enough trust with the community. I’ve had the pleasure to speak to both BigBoss and Dire in the past and have full confidence in their technical abilities and understanding of POKT. Just my thoughts as of right now:

1. The ecosystem for DRPC is changing fast, with lots of competitors and other options that consumers are looking at. It’s something to note, but not to get distracted with. If organizations are on the fence about contributing to POKT, then I think this is a perfect opportunity to show how POKT differentiates. We have the most mature governance system out there for a DRPC chain, and [as a dao voter], I’d love to provide incentives for contributors to keep doing what they’re doing. It’s a perfect time to realize this opportunity to welcome contributors and not push them away, especially the ones that have already been here.

2. I’m also open up to a multi-group proposal (as you know, had an initial group proposal idea going on), but this might be hard to coordinate and get everyone aligned, and might not be best for an organization’s financial management. I think we’re early in the process of contributor grants in general. So far, all of them have been retroactively, but obviously, to grow - they need to be seed/grant based. Of course, that comes with a level of trust, reputation, and accountability. This is what PNF is trying to streamline moving forward. I believe PNF has already kicked off the initial convos with each organization - I say we keep working with them [but obviously this should not extend for months]. They could handle all coordination and help get the grant from the DAO instead which will likely result in far less friction. WDYT? Obviously with this system, said organizations can bypass PNF too - that’s the beauty of our governance system as is.

3. To be frank, the bear market is not looking good right now for tokens in general. To your point - builders are not here to build a bag in stables/USD, we’re looking to build a bag into POKT. But at the same time, for sustainability purposes, staffing does require a source of USD/stables whether it’s from another gig or here. Unfortunately, right now, PNF does not have many stables to give out - certainly not at the same level as PNI, so external contributors do not have that lucrativeness. You should consider this when being compensated in POKT.

[Olshansky (Daniel Olshansky)]

Appreciate it Ethen!

Worth calling out that the rest of PNI is just as vital to the growth of the ecosystem and the protocol as much as external contributors, and that the experience there is what we’re building into the protocol right now. For example, the Fisherman is an evolution of our learnings from the Cherry Picker. The Portal actor is an evolution of what we learned from managing a gateway. The entire ecosystem wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the efforts of the marketing team.

Could you give me your thoughts about this proposal I’ve been thinking about recently related to the point you made:

Do you think it’d be reasonable to increase the DAO’s allocation to 25% so we can continue building a treasury for all contributors? This could be proactive (for future work) or retroactive (for milestones met). For example, we could submit a proposal to the DAO to reward the marketing team for hitting their growth goals or the protocol team for hitting a milestone (e.g. TestNet) along with the infra team for making that possible?

[ethen]

@Olshansky

Worth calling out that the rest of PNI is just as vital to the growth of the ecosystem and the protocol as much as external contributors, and that the experience there is what we’re building into the protocol right now. For example, the Fisherman is an evolution of our learnings from the Cherry Picker. The Portal actor is an evolution of what we learned from managing a gateway. The entire ecosystem wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the efforts of the marketing team.

Absolutely brother. I have never ever doubted the technical capabilities of PNI. Except for things breaking here and there and slow to react/fix, but tech will always have issues and that is more on support and not protocol development.

@Olshansky

Do you think it’d be reasonable to increase the DAO’s allocation to 25% so we can continue building a treasury for all contributors?

Can you provide some context here as to where this came from? DAO’s allocation to 25%…

@Olshansky

For example, we could submit a proposal to the DAO to reward the marketing team for hitting their growth goals or the protocol team for hitting a milestone (e.g. TestNet) along with the infra team for making that possible?

And yes, additional $Pokt can and should be requested for hitting milestones or sales targets. This is why I was so adamant about knowing who gets what. PNI can spend whatever USD they have however they like, but the $Pokt being requested from the DAO should be distributed and explained in detail.

[ethen]

Steve Ballmer Developers, Developers, Developers

[shane]

Thank-you for being transparent and putting these thoughts out there. It’s good to hear your perspective. I like the idea of the DAO supporting contributors, which I would assume most folks can get behind.

How that structure will look should be a major focus of PNF and the DAO. PNF already seems to making stride in that area as @poktblade pointed out.

Ultimately I think there needs to be a process with deliverables and accountability to a neutral party, like PNF. You mentioned a few companies in this post, but there are many other folks involved in this ecosystem and folks that have had more involvement on v1. We need a system that scales beyond the focus of specific companies, which is why PNF will have an important role in establishing a fair system for all contributors.

Most importantly, all the companies you mentioned already have significant businesses in the POKT ecosystem, so there needs to be robust accountability. Without deliverables and uniformity across all contributors there is nothing keeping any of these companies from leveraging DAO funds for their own business growth. Sure, they may provide open-source resources, but there is a lot of other aspects to their business that only benefit them and have the catalyst to their success. There is a lot of competition within POKT and we have to be super sensitive of that. The DAO needs an entity like PNF to ensure that funds are not being given in ways that are funding growth for a companies revenue and expanding their market share.

IMO the way PNI asked for tokens for employee vesting is not sustainable, so we absolutely should not make it the standard for applying to other companies. The situation with PNI is unique as they are transitioning from an org that was focused only creating POKT value, to company that can stand on it’s own revenue, while still being a significant contributor to the POKT ecosystem. That transition only applies to PNI this one time, and as from here on out they are an equal company in the ecosystem. The DAO can support individual projects (like LeanPOKT and Geo-mesh), with specific utility and deliverables, but I don’t believe the DAO should be the source of extra salary/vesting options just because a company’s business is in the POKT ecosystem.

I totally agree with many of the ideas you present though. We want an ecosystem that allows contributors, especially developers, to thrive. I also look forward to seeing your design proposal. Your team does great work and that could be a awesome asset in the ecosystem. I also am excited about PNF take steps to organize contributor efforts in a neutral manner that can be applied to all in the ecosystem with reasonable accountability. As @Jinx referenced recently, I hope to see a structure like PEP-16 that focuses on structures for individuals and projects, and not general company funding.

Thanks for being open and sharing. I’m interested in hear if you have thoughts on mechanisms that differ from the structure of PEP-49, as I can’t see that formula scaling beyond PNI’s one time transition.

[ethen]

@shane

Ultimately I think there needs to be a process with deliverables and accountability to a neutral party, like PNF. You mentioned a few companies in this post, but there are many other folks involved in this ecosystem and folks that have had more involvement on v1. We need a system that scales beyond the focus of specific companies, which is why PNF will have an important role in establishing a fair system for all contributors.

@shane

Most importantly, all the companies you mentioned already have significant businesses in the POKT ecosystem, so there needs to be robust accountability. Without deliverables and uniformity across all contributors there is nothing keeping any of these companies from leveraging DAO funds for their own business growth. Sure, they may provide open-source resources, but there is a lot of other aspects to their business that only benefit them and have the catalyst to their success. There is a lot of competition within POKT and we have to be super sensitive of that. The DAO needs an entity like PNF to ensure that funds are not being given in ways that are funding growth for a companies revenue and expanding their market share.

I can understand where you are coming from when you see the companies, but specifically for SendNodes I highlighted 68.5% of the 7.5m going to dev talent. And for sure they should be accountable.

Progress reports should be due between the 1st and 3rd of everymonth. But I’ll leave that to PNF.

@shane

IMO the way PNI asked for tokens for employee vesting is not sustainable, so we absolutely should not make it the standard for applying to other companies.

Keep in mind the ask I laid out for the 4 teams cumulatively equals that of the PNI ask.

@shane

The DAO can support individual projects (like LeanPOKT and Geo-mesh), with specific utility and deliverables, but I don’t believe the DAO should be the source of extra salary/vesting options just because a company’s business is in the POKT ecosystem.

I’m ok with it not going to SendNodes. We could do 100k/month for all 3 of our devs specifically. 5.4m $Pokt to Don, BigBoss, and Dire. And we could see what other devs want to have free reign on building.

For what its worth, I also think you are deserving of a substantial monthly payout in $Pokt. I’m not sure about the team of NodePilot and how many devs there are, but I know you personally bring a lot to the table.

@shane

I totally agree with many of the ideas you present though. We want an ecosystem that allows contributors, especially developers, to thrive. I also look forward to seeing your design proposal. Your team does great work and that could be a awesome asset in the ecosystem.

@shane

As @Jinx referenced recently, I hope to see a structure like PEP-16 that focuses on structures for individuals and projects, and not general company funding.

I think we could use Jinxs’ post to start hashing out a new PEP-16. These posts are a lot of back and forth, but I’m hoping with some we can start adding bullet points and getting a list together in the posts instead of a google doc. Not sure if the forums are supposed to be utilized like that.

@shane

Thanks for being open and sharing. I’m interested in hear if you have thoughts on mechanisms that differ from the structure of PEP-49, as I can’t see that formula scaling beyond PNI’s one time transition.

I’ve given the basketball analogy in regards to the talent that we are bringing on to build in our ecosystem. When an NBA organization signs a top talent player, they don’t try and sign them and say “what do you bring to the table”. They already know they averaged 25 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assist for the past 5 years. This goes for any sports organization. I think most would agree that the talent in crypto is like no other industry in the world. Pocket Network is no different. Some smart mfkin people here. We need to figure out who are the key players for the DAO, pay them a monthly stipend and hold them accountable.

A thread on oversight I’d like to share.

[zaatar]

@ethen

These posts are a lot of back and forth, but I’m hoping with some we can start adding bullet points and getting a list together in the posts instead of a google doc. Not sure if the forums are supposed to be utilized like that.

You raise a great issue!

The forum is not suited to creating an evolving list precisely because there’s “a lot of back and forth.” For example, if you start with a list of 10 items in your initial post (in the Pre-Proposal category) and another 10 items are added in dribs and drabs by members who reply to your post, someone has to comb through these replies, locate and extract the relevant new list items (they might not be obvious), then go back and add them to the original post. Very cumbersome and inefficient. (BTW, in this scenario, it goes without saying that your initial post belongs in the Governance Pre-Proposal (PP) category because that’s what it’s for - development of proposals.)

Proposed Solution

Use the forum Pre-Proposal category in conjunction with a Google Doc. Post a link to the Google Doc in your forum post and invite readers to add to your list in the Google Doc via the suggestion feature. This will make compiling the list much easier as it’s all in one place. Once the list (in the Google Doc) is complete, go back to your forum Pre-Proposal post and update the list.

Proposal Revision

A similar procedure can be used to develop a proposal. Start by posting a rough draft In the Pre-Proposal category. Based on the comments that accumulate there, gradually develop your proposal in a Google Doc. Once you’ve revised your proposal to take account of all the feedback, share the Google Doc with GRIP for proofreading and a copy edit. Then, go ahead and post it as a formal proposal.

[ethen]

@zaatar

Proposed Solution

Use the forum Pre-Proposal category in conjunction with a Google Doc. Post a link to the Google Doc in your forum post and invite readers to add to your list in the Google Doc via the suggestion feature. This will make compiling the list much easier as it’s all in one place. Once the list (in the Google Doc) is complete, go back to your forum Pre-Proposal post and update the list.

Do you have an outline for Proposals? I would think that is needed for anyone thinking about submitting a proposal.

[ethen]

Attributes
•Author
•Recipients
•Category
•Asking Amount

Summary
Motivation / Background
etc…

Maybe you should get a list together and explain the items in detail and how one should go about addressing them to the community.

[ethen]

If you think a bunch of stuff is happening in Pocket Network and exciting stuff is going on, take a look at the discord.

[zaatar]

@ethen

Do you have an outline for Proposals? I would think that is needed for anyone thinking about submitting a proposal.

GRIP is producing an easy-to-follow guide on how to construct a proposal. The first draft is 99% done. Here’s the link:

Proposal Preparation Guide: First Draft

@ethen

Attributes/•Author / •Recipients / •Category / •Asking Amount

Summary
Motivation / Background
etc…

Maybe you should get a list together and explain the items in detail and how one should go about addressing them to the community.

The guide address this too. Note, however, that the template is being revised. The proposed (and likely) revisions are set out in the guide.

[RawthiL (Ramiro | POKTscan)]

Thanks @ethen for bringing up this topic. There are many interesting things in the previous points but I think that we all agree that is important to the Pocket ecosystem to retain top talent and attract new contributors.

I agree with @shane when he says that the PNI case is a one time thing, the DAO should not be used to fund private companies. However there is need to promote cooperation among companies. Cases like LeanPOKT and GeoMesh are rare (sadly), most of the development is kept closed among node-runners, we need to find a way to encourage companies to release their work and to sustain their participation. If it was not for the companies that @ethen mentions, V0 would be in real trouble, it is not bad to show them some appreciation.