About that discord ownership

[Takisoul]

Regarding the proposal for the Grape server discord ownership, I would like to officially volunteer as the new owner, by submitting this proposal.

If our community decides that I am the new discord server owner, it will be an honor for me and a responsibility that can not be overstated.

Along with that new ownership, I want to propose an entirely new(?) approach for our community.

In the heart of that proposal is the Grape Vision, which we have discussed many times.
Part of being a community’s discord owner is being bestowed upon the responsibility & power to voice and act towards the vision of the Grape DAO.

My vision for Grape calls back to one of our founding principles and part of our core mission statement: To decentralize communities.

To do this, I want us to use all the expertise we have accumulated throughout the whole time Grape has been around: Knowledge & tools, along with utilizing the skills of our core contributors in the most efficient (and incentivised) way.

I also wish to expand on this and propose that Grape eventually becomes the staple for anyone that wants to participate or create their own decentralized community.

A greater service DAO that will be using our knowledge base & tools (Solana DAO tooling, Grape Access, Grape.art, Grape backed tokens, marketing etc) to kickstart other DAOs.

Among other things, whatever vision we have for our DAO, the need to begin compensating our contributors in a more generous and giving way is paramount to me.

It is the only way for us to thrive and expect better performance from our devoted contributors who (most of them) have been with us for so long, having received disproportionate rewards for the effort they have put in.

In order to even be able to pursue achieving the above, we should first start delegating roles, tasks & responsibilities to our core contributors, then reward them generously for this.
The goal is to incentivize these people to keep doing what they love & what brought & kept them in this community in the first place.

Part of the reason for this generous approach in rewards is the whopping 60% of $GRAPE supply is to be distributed to the community as per our tokenomics. For a variety of reasons, this has mostly been left unutilized. (Not to mention the Team allocation which too will be going to the Grape Treasury after all).

It is time to change that and distribute that $GRAPE and subsequent voting power to the contributors that deserve it the most, so they in turn can have a stronger voice (and hopefully show initiative) on shaping our beloved DAO. I am also hopeful that this reward distribution will go towards people who have the best possible understanding of what we are trying to achieve within our community & DAO.

(Even though I have been working on this proposal for the past couple of weeks) I really hope that the recent moderators saga showed the importance of governance power and that DAO members should be exercising it every chance they get (also kind of surprised this was not already clear to a sizeable portion of our community).

Grape DAO is not simply a discord server and we should start focusing more on our onchain aspects of our community, rather than its web2 shell which is our discord. This is the only way we ensure Grape lives on if for example discord was to disappear tomorrow.

At this point I should note that I drew inspiration for the delegation of the tasks you will read further below from several sources, including my own viewpoint of where I see Grape headed more fittingly, along with the Grape Stories Miro by @CryptoPawz.

My proposal and terms under which I will accept the responsibility to be the discord owner is that:

1. This will be a quarterly (3 months) duration, to be reviewed for renewal from both sides after said timeframe ends.

2. The amount I request to undertake this complex & ambitious endeavor to accompany me taking over the Grape discord ownership is a total of 6500000 $GRAPE & 17500 $USDC for the whole three month duration. A more detailed breakdown of this budget can be found here.

3. This proposal & instructions in it will go onchain EOD Tuesday, 27 Dec 2022.

4. Should the onchain vote for this proposal be successful, the above funds are to be transferred to a Squads which will be controlled by myself, @legend & @Jahris.
   We will then distribute them as we see fit per monthly basis, also following the distribution & task delegation below.

Note: For the vast majority of the tasks & groups I mention in this proposal, I will be providing assistance & support in whatever capacity I can. I will also be responsible for cross DAO communication, i.e. make sure SubDAOs/ groups communicate effectively among each other and with the greater DAO.

Tasks:

DAO agenda, DAO Call Moderation & Vision pursuit
Assigned to Takisoul.

The agenda of our DAO calls is of paramount importance, since it basically illustrates the topics & matters at hand that the DAO spends its time discussing (hence giving importance), attention and resources on.

I will be handling the drafting of the Agenda for the DAO calls, carefully considering the Vision pursuit & the community feedback.

---

Community Management /Moderation
Assigned to: @legend , Takisoul, and @DyNite.

CM/Moderation will include the moderation of the Grape server only. It will not include any moderation/cm for any Grape SubDAO; SubDAOs should seek their own arrangements with their contributors.

Also including community management tasks such as:
-Server Events: Taki, Legend
-DAO Call recordings: Legend
-Grape Newsletter: Taki, legend, Jahris
-Events/contests: Legend
-Assistance in calls, roles
-DAO additions removals

---

Gaming council

I have been meaning to get more involved with the Grape Gaming Council for a while now. I believe there is great potential for Grape being (sic) the go-to place for anyone who wishes to get involved with Solana Gaming.

For example: buy, rent assets to play current/upcoming games. Play them, have live shows w teams and so on.
Potential revenue: Specifically target out rentable assets on Cardinal, then acquire a couple and start renting them out. Grape members get priority. I will also explore BD possibilities w Cardinal to see whether we can get specific games assets included there.

This of course is just a basic idea but I trust the person responsible to be managing this Grape group in the best possible way.
The people I would love to see handle things in the Gaming Council are the following:
Management: @TheRipTyde
AMAs, Spaces: @Barndog

As the manager, Riptyde can use his reward to whatever capacity he chooses, i.e. keep it all and/or collaborate with other Grape contributors and give out a portion of his reward to them.
I am pretty aware that @Barndog does not want to be bothered w time consuming DAO shenanigans and this is not the ask here. I do feel he will forever be part of the OG Grape family and now that his Stepn days are over, I want us to empower him more than ever to focus on the one thing he loves the most “Be here for the games”.

---

Grape NFT Council

Manager: @_Alexperts.sol

Proposed Goals/requirements: Provide a regular (ie weekly, monthly) report on Grape NFT portfolio & strategy

The Grape NFT Council also has a great potential in both attracting new members interested in venturing in NFT debauchery as well as learning a thing or two.
AlexPerts is an ideal candidate to champion any NFT related activity (as he has recently demonstrated with his personal initiatives with the Pertsverse Solana NFT channels).
I would also like to add @nanko.sol to be involved with the NFT Council. (less gifs, more NFT degeneracy please)

---

Documentation, Metrics

Our documentation is in dire need of an update & a certain degree of upkeep. Moreover, should this proposal pass, there will need to be a lot of changes in the documentation, to properly convey information to all readers, regardless of their level of involvement in Grape.

I believe @CryptoPawz is ideal for this update (content), with @legend providing the stylistic/layout finishing touches.

For metrics, there are no better people than @Arximedis & @CryptoPawz to handle them.

The goal here is to start looking at meaningful metrics on a regular & more comprehensible basis, more particularly in identifying quantifiable metrics regarding energy/funds spent by the DAO in correlation to revenue (actual or potential) that we can generate in any way, big or small.

---

Reputation System & UX

Even though reputation is something the whole DAO should be thinking of, I believe we should assign this to @potrok to spearhead/coordinate.

Moreover, Potrok should be working in tandem with documentation & metrics and lead community UX oriented initiatives such as Workshops and work on User analytics to better understand (how to grow/strengthen) our community.

---

Marketing & Media

In the effort to become the DAO to kickstart other DAOs, we need a proper marketing strategy to promote our tools, activities and overall status as the above.

I chose @Jahris & @Whale_s_Friend for this.

Their goal will mainly revolve in implementing strategies to promote everything that’s great about Grape (DAO expertise, Grape Access, Grape.art) (Jahris).

Whales Friend will be responsible for doing live events, such as Spaces, streams w updates on Grape etc. These are just suggestions; I entrust the two contributors I assigned to perform in the best interest of Grape.

---

Bounties

Through this proposal, I aimed to strip down tasks & responsibilities from being a potential bounty and the reason for this is for bounties to become more developer/ technical oriented.

We have a very devoted bounty program, which I believe moving forward should be focusing more on technical bounties.

In a sense, no major changes here, but bounties become dev focused, so they can allow our developers to be distraction free, in order to compose their way (and get rewarded for) into building the tools for our great community.

For the Bounties management @riderinred has been doing exceptional work and that should not change.

I expect to see @riderinred 's Bounty Master more involved in the decision making process, rather than being a Bounty moderator of sorts, coordinating the signers.
I also believe that the Bounty Master should also become a signer in the relevant Squads.

In collaboration with metrics, the DAO needs a more detailed breakdown of rewards going out & revenue coming in. An example of a successful quarter for Bounties will be one where the amount of approved bounties goes up within the quarter.

As a closing comment, ANY GRAPE MEMBER can volunteer to assist, participate in any initiative and I will be happy to consider their recommendations.

[nanko.sol]

i had said this before on our last weeks call and still think Takisoul 's ownership of the discord is a good step given his involvement and the vision he shares with GRAPEDAO.

i think his overall proposal does strip down the basic activity regarding the discord but I would also like to point out that already mentioning and delegating tasks to different people can be an issue as a barrier to entry for newer members and/or existing members who would like to volunteer.

I don’t know how this issue will be taken care of if a member who hasn’t been assigned a specific task wants to hop on to a task in between. how the emissions will be handled for that? etc.

thirdly why no usdc for nanko?

given the above concerns, Its a yes from my side considering that the overall proposal is actually progressive and would at the very least specify a lot of activities which are currently being done on an ad-hoc basis.

till i write again. bye.

[its.kirk]

Some observations:

• The initiatives and proposal are a for a grant assuming everyone involved continues contributing and recognizing existing contributions
• The squad should involve more people, the wording “as we see fit” means this is a grant to Taki, Jahris and Legend and might or might not reward other members as described. This ambiguity / uncertainty, is not needed. In a trust-less environment I would like all the contributors mentioned in the proposal are included in the squads and a 60% quorum is set
• Discord Ownership is completely separate from Vision/Roadmap and next steps, these should be two proposals and not one
• Given the discord owner can be someone else, it might not be fair to assume grant rewards prior to discussion from contributors

[DeanMachine]

Lots of stuff here.…however my main focus is the discord ownership

To be clear, it’s my understanding now that you will only take the Discord ownership if this budget gets approved?

Otherwise, I’ll be giving the ownership to @Tariqstp1 @Tariqstp ? (Assuming no other volunteers by the end of the month)

[Takisoul]

Thanks for the observations!

“as we see fit” is there not for uncertainty, but for the contrary, ie referring to:
-the event of any of the contributors wish to step down prior to the proposed quarter’s end.
-the way, timely manner in which rewards will be distributed (current thinking is upfront at the beginning of each of the three months). We need to trust our contributors more and my goal is to convey this through every action & aspect of this proposal.
and so on.

Duly noted for the other observations, but for this proposal, I consider the vision part of (accepting) the server ownership & I wish to adhere to the particular (number of) signers I mentioned.

[Takisoul]

That is correct. I will only accept server ownership if this proposal/budget gets approved.

[_Alexperts.sol]

Lets do this!

I cannot think of ANY other person in grape that is able to DELIVER on such position.

The 3 month review is also great.

[riderinred]

In general, I do not understand why the discord ownership is suddenly linked to the overall direction of the DAO. I am confused by this and think the proposal should be split up or it should be clearly articulated that “discord owner” is now some special role that will have leadership authority in the DAO.

Specifically, I think a flat payment for a position without any exact trackable responsibilities will result in a poor outcome for all involved.
Also now that we want to explicitly differentiate between Grape DAO and GAN subDAO for the mods payments, you are proposing the Grape DAO pays for the Gaming Council subDAO and the NFT Council subDAO? That is the opposite of what we did with the mods payments for the GAN subDAO.

[Takisoul]

It’s not about leadership authority but more of an effort & responsibilities I am willing to take in order for us to be able coordinate better and increase our performance & focus as a community & DAO.
It is my opinion that we need this kind of coordination.
Re: the SubDAOs /groups you mention, the distinct difference is they do not have their own treasury , token. If and when they do (bullish on having one each with the right conditions) then yes, they should subsequently become financially independent.

[riderinred]

Reason 1 why I will vote against it

Paying people without clear responsibilities will lead to a poor outcome for everyone involved.
It is utterly irresponsible to pay people without an exact definition of duties and what will happen if duties are not fulfilled. You are lacking both in your proposal.

Reason 2 why I will vote against it

Furthermore, you are proposing additional expenses of ca. 6k USDC per month without providing any calculations on how these expenses might be recouped long term. This would even be possible with a very simple back-of-a-napkin kind of overview.
E.g. one in-depth Gaming Council AMA session and testing of web3 game will cost X $. So if the Gaming Council holds at least Y such sessions a month, we are in the green. Same with DAO startups, one startup of a DAO will cost X and if we sell this Y times a month we will be in the green overall even if no other services get sold.

[Takisoul]

Reason 1 why I don’t agree w what you are saying and I am totally fine with you not supporting it

The whole DAO has been looking for a clear vision/direction for months now with no success.
I am proposing a more specific vision, that encompasses everything that we are currently doing.
Taking steps towards this vision will lead to more and more refined & clear responsibilities.
It is utterly irresponsible to expect progress & quality work without rewarding/incentivising people who are contributing.
You can not expect any kind of decent performance by volunteerism alone, nor can you have much of expectations for people doing something for you for free.

Moreover I am sure that my path & actions so far as a core contributor since day 1 of Grape ( and an ex core team member) justify an extension of trust by the DAO that I have a good judgement & the best interest of the community in mind when it comes to managing these funds.

Reason 2 why I don’t agree w what you are saying and I am totally fine with you not supporting it

I am proposing expenses which will go towards rewarding contributors, among them yourself and no, I do not expect any significant recuperation from these expenses immediately, simply because we are currently not ready to pursue income (with the best possible chances of success) in the ways I describe (or any ways that anyone has successfully proposed & championed too).

To put this into perspective, you are clamoring for a budget expense that if it were to continue in a long term fashion (which I do NOT suggest or hint at) would define our “runway” to roughly 20-26 months. For context, most startups have a runway of 8-12 months…
Unless your position & argument is for the DAO to hoard the treasury and only produce value with whatever contributions we can get for free from people.

There is no shortage of ideas in Grape, but we lack action.
Great (Ideas &) action are a product of productive work and that requires time & dedication.
Not only I am proposing we act towards making people more happy and motivated to deliver a better performance forward but what I am suggesting is in line with $GRAPE tokenomics too.
What I propose is to incentivise existing contributors to give a better level/quality of contribution of their skills & time, in a more coordinated fashion.

I am sure you do you expect contributors to provide this for free. Either that or you are simply ok with half assing things. I am clearly not in that school of thought.

The way I see it, we can either continue doing what we have been doing with results that are known and very adjacent to inaction
OR
we can try a new, more coordinated pooling of our collective efforts and see where it takes us.
The success or failure of this endeavor will be evident at the end of this 3 month period and I am confident Grape will be in better shape than it is now.

Oh and one more thing.
If this proposal passes, will you be taking part in the initiative or you perform your best when you are working for free and I should remove you from the projected rewards?

[TheRipTyde]

I do agree this does seem to be sandwiching discord ownerhip with a plan of action for Grape.

I like the intent, and am not against it, there are a lot of ideas here which may be difficult to realise which doesn’t make them not worth pursueing by anymeans.

On the Gaming Council management front, I’d certainly be happy to represent and report on the Gaming Council , but rather than presonally receiving a direct payement from the DAO, I’d rather such a payement went towards the GC Squads to purchase gaming related NFT’s and compensation be based on a revenue/profit share basis should any such purchases prove successful.

I’ll reachout to @Barndog on the AMA spaces front, I know he’s looking at different opportunities atm and he may want to simply do things for himself, but will see what he thinks.

[riderinred]

You are right about many things and we actually agree mostly about what we want to achieve. How we get there is where we differ.
Maybe my comments came off as rather stand-offish, that was not my intention. I only want to offer my honest criticism of your proposal and point out in what ways it could be improved.

What we agree about

@Takisoul

The whole DAO has been looking for a clear vision/direction for months now with no success.

Yes. We had many talks about this but nobody ever stepped forward and took upon the responsibility of committing to a course of action. We are in dire need of people who are able and willing to bear responsibility.
I am glad that you are coming forward and are willing to take this up.

@Takisoul

It is utterly irresponsible to expect progress & quality work without rewarding/incentivising people who are contributing.
You can not expect any kind of decent performance by volunteerism alone, nor can you have much of expectations for people doing something for you for free.

Agreed completely. Also, I have been one of the loudest voices in Grape calling for payment of core members. Dating back to my proposal to pay the DAO Board.

Where we differ

@Takisoul

Not only I am proposing we act towards making people more happy and motivated to deliver a better performance forward but what I am suggesting is in line with $GRAPE tokenomics too.
What I propose is to incentivise existing contributors to give a better level/quality of contribution of their skills & time, in a more coordinated fashion.

I am very much for compensating and incentivizing contributors.

What I am against is a flat payment for a role. There should be very simple metrics for each role that can be tracked, e.g. attendance.

@Takisoul

we can try a new, more coordinated pooling of our collective efforts and see where it takes us.

I would love to see more coordination happening in our DAO. But I didn’t find that in the proposal.
What I see is people should be paid for holding roles and the responsibilities of those roles are not clearly defined. My perspective is that we need some very basic agreement of what measurable actions a “good” role owner accomplishes.

For e.g.
A “good” Gaming council (member?) does 1 AMA a month.
A “good” Bounty Master holds 1 bounty call a week.

Because without this agreement even a willing and motivated member does not really know what should be done.

Example: A role holder is inactive for a whole month.

With a flat payment for a role, the role holder will get paid the full amount. And everything goes on as before.

Now if we have defined measurable actions a “good” role owner should accomplish, we can see that these actions weren’t done. This allows us to adjust our system and make it better.

[Takisoul]

Thank you for your response and I am very relieved we are in the same direction.

As far as the points we differ:
the notion here is to extend the trust to these longstanding contributors that they know what to do and I will of course be here (along w the whole DAO I presume) to nudge towards the best possible direction.

Examples:
A good NFT council would be one that has taken some coordinated actions and has managed to increase the value of the Grape portfolio.
A good Gaming council would be the one doing some events, activities and present us w a plan of action for this quarter, ie plan to borrow x,y asset from NFT council in order to play this game/mission etc harvest the rewards and level up the game; do x contests borrowing assets to members within the month.
A good cm would be to organize a couple of events (poker) for the community, maybe even explore rev generating poker tourneys (small revenues here and there that do nonetheless point to a better direction).
A good bounty master keeps doing what they think is best but we look at the ratio of resources spent/value received.
A good DAO call , moderation would an x increase in onchain proposals for the quarter.
As to the event of the member going inactive for a month, they will not get paid the next one. It’s better to "pay’ one month’s lost salary and learn that that person is not reliable / should not be rewarded again or tip toeing and waiting for their free contribution.

I have faith that together we can all raise the bar on performance, without getting too stuck in the mud of over indexing processes. Once we such flow in place and we find our footings, we will organically grow into discovering & understanding metrics that matter as kpis. (it’s not always about income brought in for example).

[Takisoul]

Update re: this proposal.
For starters, I am very thankful for the DAO’s vote of confidence on me becoming the new server owner, based on the results of the poll that @BillysDisc_rd put up on discourse.
Secondly, today is the deadline for my proposal to go on-chain.
I understand that this is a pretty radical approach and what I am proposing is a big change in how we have been approaching things.
Given all the above and the fact this has all coincided with the holiday season and all, I have decided to reduce the scope of the proposal from three to two months.
Therefore, I will be moving forward with the on-chain vote given a revised rewards distribution & the result of the poll.
The revised/adjusted numbers for this new proposed duration can be found here.
I am very excited about this and really looking forward to the improvements our DAO will be able to accomplish in the following months!

[Takisoul]

Both proposals are on-chain!
Here is the $GRAPE vote for the 2-month discord ownership & Grape Vision pursuit by Takisoul.
and
Here is the $USDC vote for the 2-month discord ownership & Grape Vision pursuit by Takisoul.

If the vote passes, funds will be moved to the Squads controlled by Takisoul, @legend , @Jahris . (they have already been added as owners w threshold 2/3)