Grape Overhaul: Thoughts & Suggestions

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While not a fully fledged plan (obviously) this is an effort to not only view things as holistically as possible but hopefully get the conversation going.

I will try to convey my thoughts for both the structure of the DAO, Board, SubDAOs, but also chime in to the emissions discussion.

DAO Core / DAO Board Restructuring

As proposed by Dim Selk here I would also like to support the idea of pushing an alternative option when we push the Election Vote On-chain as described here:

In the Realms vote pushed to confirm the results from the elections I would also like to add the option of a dissolution of the board (as it is now) and the immediate formation of the DAO Operational Team (DAO Core).

If this option is accepted by the voters, I would propose that the newly elected DAO Board serves as the first rotation that will have the added responsibility of forming the DAO Core and transitioning to this new governance structure.

DAO Board should comprise of up to 5 individuals. (IF things go very well and workload is not manageable, then we could consider 7 members).

They are the voice of the DAO, both in terms of expressing the community’s voice but also forging the path forward with their strategy

The DAO Board should set tangible & defined goals with clear timelines, both for the DAO but also toward the SubDAOs.

Make a habit of continuously assessing progress towards these goals on a weekly basis (minimum).

There needs to be better and more timely communication between the DAO board and each SubDAO, in terms of goals, tasks assigned and progress made.

Within the DAO Board, there needs to be clear and defined responsibility for each member, so that a SubDAO knows who to address to get the message across and/or the job done. The buck needs to stop at someone in every front.

Defined delegation of responsibility for each member. Said members will each be accountable for the tasks they have undertaken and they should report directly to the DAO & DAO Board in a weekly meeting on what they are working on, progress and next week/immediate goals.

Up to a certain extent, we should think of the DAO Talks/Calls as an All Hands Meeting for the whole Skill force.

The DAO Core that is currently being proposed by Dim Selk must essentially be a group of individuals with that role, practically being the workforce of the DAO Board.

I tend more and more to think that a part of the DAO Core can consist of the leaders of each SubDAO. This would definitely allow the facilitation of a better synergy between the Board and subDAOs, something that has proven to be a difficult task in the past.

These are the people that are more knowledgeable & in the know in order to facilitate requests coming from above than the SubDAO leaders.

The idea of a DAO Core where each member has specific responsibilities (i.e. emissions, DAO Additions Removals, and other operations) will allow better efficiency and organization for our governance structure.

Content SubDAO

In my humble opinion the Creative part of this SubDAO needs to scale down in order to be more nimble and, most importantly, sustainable.

There is really no point in having such a large number of designers and the majority of work (more than 80% of the work actually used) to be coming from the same people over and over again.

There is a common occurrence, apparent all across the workforce with members putting in the absolute minimum work in order to get the emission at the end of the month.

This only puts us down and does not help to move forward and evolve as a workplace.

I totally respect & understand the need for compensation for services rendered, but the way for this to be achieved in a sustainable way is by all of us working towards the goal that the value of $GRAPE emitted to a workforce member is more than enough to be able to both sell some but also hold for voting power.

This will never happen if everyone keeps selling their emissions the moment their stream ends (or sooner).

Recommended action (for now; similar approach might need to expand to all other Tiers):

All Tier 1 Designer & Tier 1 Videographer receives 0.2X in emissions (instead of current 1X). Similar, but proportionally smaller reduction should be applied to higher Tiers.

I tend to think that emissions should be at least tied to a % of revenue brought in per epoch. This sounds really harsh and radical but it is a sustainable direction. Which brings me to my next point.

Re: THOUGHTS on Metrics discussion that could apply to Content Creators: (please feel free to shut them down by recommending something better, sustainable and actionable)

-Revenue brought in: Weighs 40% in member emissions calculation

-Grape Members acquisition: monthly % of growth through content followers, subscribers, audience in AMAs will reflect on the emission. Invite tracker will possibly be large in play here. Weighs 40% in member emissions calculation

-Member retention: Hard to track?

-Ratio of resources used (designers, videographers etc) VS content produced.

Weighs 20% in member emissions calculation

Community Management SubDAO

Moderators

Moderators are in the first line of the Grape Workforce. They are among our most active members helping out daily 24/7 users from all over Solana coming in to seek guidance.

It is also very difficult to place metrics to their work.

This is currently been discussed with Tariq here: Emissions based on market demand for grape - #10 by Takisoul

Some thoughts on what we should seek to measure in our metrics:

-Responsiveness to a member seeking assistance.

-Assist provided in Setups (this is the easiest to measure and a very helpful service by our mods) Note that currently, not all moderators assist in setups.

-Knowledge: How proficient a moderator is demonstrably when dealing with out of the ordinary questions and issues.

-Activity/Engagement: This is hard to track for every moderator individually.

-Going above and beyond: Bringing perks to the Grape community. For example, many of our mods reach out to other communities, often resulting in bringing WL spots for the Grape community. This should be considered towards evaluation in my opinion.

A recent alternate version of tiering moderators is that all moderators get assigned a flat Tier (tier 2) and gain upper Tiers by participating in Setups and assisting in special events (example Jogging with Barndog live events).

This discussion is to be continued since the participation in the calls (mostly by moderators) has been almost nonexistent. Whenever there is interest in this discussion by the stakeholders within the SubDAO, we will happily participate. Until then, no need for further discussion (or emissions).

Organizers

Gaming Events is one of the pillars of Grape. Back when we started, we wanted Grape events to be one of the main reasons casual normies join the community. Offering top notch gaming events, plus truly great prizes.

Unfortunately, in time we realize that these events are only used by existing members, in order to accumulate more $GRAPE to sell. Which is fine. What is not fine is that events have not been bringing new users and have been giving out way too much $GRAPE, which in its vast majority is dumped on the market.

We were recently asked why Events/Contests are offered 500k $GRAPE per epoch for prizes (which by the way is almost never utilized fully). This too will change drastically.

My proposal on this is for a 50k $GRAPE monthly allocation for Events/Contests.

Legend proposes instead that we allocate a fixed USDC value to events. Events will be categorized to big, medium, small caliber (based on participation).

These two proposals will go into an internal vote by the Community Management SubDAO.

This will not affect cross community /Solan wide tournaments, for which this SubDAO will be seeking approval via vote on Realms.

Gaming events will continue to be one of the pillars of the Grape experience, but we need to take a different approach.

Moving forward, events of medium to small magnitude/participation will not be held anymore and the primary focus will be on blockchain games.

2022 is the year when we are seeing more and more playable and enjoyable games on Solana. Heck, we even have some (if not the) top content creators for Solana Gaming in our family.

This should be the main focus for Grape Events moving forward.

Research SubDAO

Our team of researchers consists of some of the smartest people on Solana. The (back then Solana alpha) Curated Alpha channel used to be one of our flagship channels, has amassed 96 readers in the past 28 days (29 posts).

For reference, the Solana chat (researchers are not responsible for posting content there) has 130 readers, the same amount as the Grape Calendar & Announcements channels.

Of course is expected to have less viewers, being a gated channel, viewable for Great Apes & Gorillas only) but, admittedly, the content there has been subpar of expectations.

What is astounding is the level of criticism (borderline or straight up fud by certain members of this SubDAO) vs the almost complete lack of counter proposals on actionable steps, besides some recent feedback (which I was really happy to receive) re: how Grape defines itself.

One could argue that researchers provide the raw content for our content creators, but is this really a fact and to which, measurable extent? If so, who keeps track of this?

Do the researchers communicate their content to content creators or is it simply that some content creators are researchers and get the content anyway?

Has there been any discussion about metrics in the Researcher SubDAO?

Have the researchers weighed in the SubDAO tokens discussion with something more than a non response or “I am not fond of this” type of response?

Developers SubDAO

Admittedly I am not that well versed as to how the Developers SubDAO operates. Mostly due to its size and the fact that moving forward we are focusing on pursuing development goals via grants, I lack the proper insight to further comment.

I would expect from this SubDAO as well to provide some information & insight on the criteria, metrics they keep to track their progress and performance.

Grape International Communities

The Grape community takes pride in its international reach. With two fully formed SubDAOs (Pandas & Garudas) and a total of almost 700 members, they are mostly independent in their strategy, as long as they support, promote & work towards the wellbeing and evolution of the Grape community in total.

Here there is a need for a better understanding of what these subDAOs do and what value is being generated. There is a need for a point of contact to provide reports on progress.

Another question revolves around their metrics and what are they (if any)?

Panda Crew (Chinese Community)

Currently the Chinese community (Pandas) have a total of 302 members. To my knowledge, their activity has been minimal in the Grape discord and I would really like to know what are their plans, goals & actions for the foreseeable future. Here too we need to hear some proposed metrics for performance towards goals met, plus how their budget has been utilized towards growth.

Garuda (Indonesian Community)

The Indonesian community has a total of 359 members. Lately they have been active, organizing gaming events, which up until now were also open to Grape members. Budget for the prizepools of these events has been going out from the general Events/Contests budget but moving forward, they will be utilizing their own Garuda budget, which initially was reserved for -among other things- growth.

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I’m delighted to see so many things put together in a coherent fashion! And right in time, since I was in the process of writing up a possible way forward regarding Dim’s posed question in today’s DAO Call on how to continue with his idea of introducing the ‘DAO Core’. I changed my mind and will instead write up an answer to this awesome post as it’s also better to first have a quick chat with you again, Dim :slight_smile:

#1 - DAO Baord confirmation vote

I’d like to reiterate the reason why I think we shouldn’t change a process we committed on (as in no change to the on-chain vote) and keep it as a simple confirmation vote for the chosen DAO Board selection.
In my view, we should never change things mid-execution. If we set out to do something and we start the process, we should always finish it (as best as possible). Even if it’s a somewhat ‘flawed’ process unless it seriously hurts Grape and everyone is aware of that and aware of the consequences. If we have the urge to change things, we can start the process of doing that. And if the majority agrees with it, it shows us that we either didn’t take enough time to talk things through before starting the first process, or that we haven’t had enough foresight to anticipate something that came up.

Changing anything mid-execution that we agreed upon and also communicated in a transparent way is potentially a dangerous thing to do, as it totally undermines transparency, reliability, and consistency.

That’s also something we talked about in the DAO Call today and hopefully, as I understand, agreed upon.
So basically: The current on-chain vote for DAO Board confirmation has nothing to do with anything we maybe want to change afterward and it shouldn’t be changed. It’s totally irrelevant whether it succeeds or not, at least in terms of any proposal that could be voted upon after that, even it’s a drastic change on the same thing we previously voted on.

#2 - DAO Core

The reason why I’m not a fan of how I initially understood the idea of ‘DAO Core’ is that I don’t think that introducing an additional layer or ring serves our idea of a truly meritocratic community. I worry that it creates an additional barrier for people to participate if they are not part of this ‘DAO Core’ group.
Here is why I think that: In the past few months, we had a lot of situations where people voiced their opinion and had ideas regarding changes and things that didn’t directly fit into any subDAO. They naturally turned to the DAO Board since they saw 5 people who agreed to help in advancing the DAO, especially in terms of organizational aspects and the facilitation of communication.
This led to a perceived assumption that the DAO Board or someone therein would ‘manage’ that stuff.
Introducing a pre-defined ‘Core Team’ would even further move us in this direction. At least that’s what I fear. Voting on the group would make it even worse because then you’d have created an additional artificial barrier for people.

What I think we need is a way for members to participate in core DAO tasks and get rewarded for it. This for me, as mentioned before, calls for the introduction of Skill Roles for the DAO. For the same reason we use them in the subDAOs. Members who want to help get a role, and are rewarded based on their Tier which in turn is based on their contribution and not on a vote to ‘get in’.

I totally support the idea of assigning tasks to people, or rather people to tasks in order to achieve results. For me, creating a barrier isn’t the way though.
It could be that I’m still not getting it. So if you all mean by introducing something like the ‘DAO Core’ that we should introduce Skill Roles to the main DAO and only call all those members part of DAO Core, then, fine. It’s basically the same thing and I’d only argue that this could have a slightly negative effect since it also creates a perceived division between DAO Members and ‘Core DAO Members’. If you intend to vote on this group though, then it’s essentially creating an artificial barrier and I’m against it and I also think that it’s against the meritocratic approach.

#3 - Working in subDAOs

For the same reason, I think we shouldn’t make it harder for people to participate in the DAO (e.g. by voting on whether they can become a part of the DAO Core team), I think we shouldn’t make it harder for members of any subDAO. If they don’t do any work, sure, then it’s obvious. But when I joined Grape, I was under the impression that every contribution counts and is welcome, and I still am. If we think that people do the bare minimum or game the system to get rewarded, then we should either raise the bar of the Tiers or create more Tiers so that people get less on the lowest one (which you already proposed); this is in every subDAOs purview though.

A simple solution for acknowledging the fact that some members do more work in a subDAO and others less is adjusting the Tier-structure accordingly. We always should try to value every contributing member and as long as it is done in a fair manner, we shouldn’t restrict participation in any subDAO or the DAO.

For me, it doesn’t matter if most of the time it’s the same members doing the work. What is important though is that they then in turn also get the most rewards. If people try to exploit our structure, there is always the option to set them as Tier 0 or to introduce what Arximedis proposed, the use of a percentage-based system. If we do it properly, the discussion regarding sustainability shouldn’t arise, a percentage-based system would see to that.

#4 - Revenue-based metrics

Incorporating revenue metrics in our considerations is a good thing I think. At the same time, it creates potential division. What I mean by that is the answer to the simple question of origin. Where did the revenue originate and who made it possible? Was it the one who conceptualized a project? The developer who programmed it or the one from the sales department who sold it to customers? In some areas it is easier to break it down, granted, but you get my idea.
The commission-based system could work very well but with everything we do in regards to a re-distribution, we should make a dry run first and evaluate the outcome. A low percentage could also work so that there is an incentive right from the start but 40% might be a bit high.

#5 - $USDC vs $Grape rewards

Regarding what is better, for us and/or e.g. community engagement, I’m not sure. On the one hand, I feel that it would be way easier for us to communicate a fixed amount of $USDC as ‘prize money’ or other incentives. On the other, it goes against what we want to achieve, doesn’t it? We want people to perceive $Grape as a community project with community rewards, right? Handing out Dollars could incentivize people to participate in activities, ok, but wouldn’t it make it even harder to convey the purpose of our community? As I said, I am unsure and I’d love to hear other thoughts on this.
What I could see though is, ‘paying’ people outside of the community in Dollars for specific tasks that we deem valuable, like the grants. We don’t necessarily need them to join the community, we primarily want to get things done.

#6 - International subDAOs

I’d also love to see some more discussion (on Discourse) regarding the goals and ideas of our international subDAOs. I know that this isn’t so easy since there always is the language barrier and also a limited amount of people who are available to translate. Maybe it is also on the rest of the DAO to come forth with questions to start the conversation. I’d be willing to take some time out of my day and relay anything that will help in the discussion and in finding a way of better understanding our common goals @natome @Ridho.alifutama @Libra.

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Closing I’d like to thank you again @Takisoul since it’s always harder to kick off a conversation and give people talking points to either agree or disagree. Either way, what it does is promotes a critical discourse and I love it :two_hearts:

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The concept of emission being tied to % of revenue brought in per epoch really makes sense. It incentivizes more input as it’s directly correlated to output.

Great ideas discussed by you two CryptoPawz and Takisoul. This broadens my scope on how these things work and open my mind to different points of view.

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[quote="CryptoPawz

I agree with this :100:

Merely being a member of the DAO doesn’t mean I should get compensation/emission. Emission should reflect amount of work put during an epoch.

I’ve always been troubled thinking why removal from DAO is made. It’s understandable if DAO members vote for the removal of an individual due to unhealthy and negative contributions.

For some (including myself), wanting to be part of the DAO is a matter of inclusion (feeling of being among). And when they finally join the DAO they spend hours of their day following through conversations, learning how to contribute, and staying quiet on conversations where they have no opinion or expertise.
But with the way the DAO was structured, one is almost compelled to contribute to every discussion because they fear being booted. You can see this more apparent in the earlier days of the DAO (people making meaningless proposals and comments).

Before joining the DAO I followed alot of conversations, but didn’t keep up with alot. One of the reason for not keeping up was because there were conversations where I had opinion but couldn’t reply, hence I started to pay less attention to the conversations. So joining the DAO now, my attention span to DAO conversations has increased, I spend hours of my day reading through proposals and discussions. Me not replying to every conversation just means I don’t have foresight on the topic and the opinions I might have were gathered from what others already contributed.

I don’t know how inactivity is measured but I think it’s only natural for one to lose interest in the DAO conversations almost completely when they are removed purely based on not making contributions in a while. And this I believe limits potential valuable contributions to be made by those individuals.

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what if we introduce NFT for top positions in contests? say 1st position in major contests like poker. We then somehow embed some utility into the NFT (access to grape.art premium features). We might also decide to organize grand tournament at the end of every month or quarterly with significant SOL or USDC prize (This might be Solana-wide or only for those NFT holders). If it’s Solana-wide, holding one of those NFTs from weekly contests grants you automatic whitelist for participation. If it’s within grape only, then it’s more like tournament of champions (ToC).

#Note: This is an idea I’m drawing from how Rox conducts their phantasia contests. Winners of daily contests get a trophy, and 0.5 SOL is raffled among ten random participants (0.05 each).
At the end of each month trophy holders compete in ToC for spicy prizes. Since I was never lucky to win a trophy I bought the only one listed on secondary for 1 SOL to be able to participate in Tournament of Champions.

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You raise some great points in your post @Takisoul , I just wanted to weigh in on the Research SubDAO

I’d note that while Researchers certainly are reponsible for the conent in Curated Alpha and that more could be done with the content that gets pushed. I’d also note that active engagement in all the access channels is viewed as part in parcel of being a holder of the Researcher role, and that a great many of the most active community members in these channels are Researchers and that it would be a diservice to not to say that many of the SubDAO members are seen as Subject Matter Experts and Thought Leaders on many Solana DeFi topics and NFT projects.

I’d also recognise what was said in the DAO call today in that as many active Research members there are in these channels there certainly are many others community memebers who don’t have a Researcher role who nonetheless are providing great insight and alpha that should also receive recognition, while some of these are covered in other roles such as NFT Council or Gaming Council and the lines perhaps get a bit blurred between remits and crossovers, the are others further still who hold no skill roles/titles that would deserve to be acknoledge and I hope to propose a way to recognise input in these channels in a more inclusive manner.

Metrics have certinaly been on the Researchers agenda and formed part of the weekly calls discussions over the last while, and a preliminary list of metrics have been sent across and briefly discussed on the DAO call, these are in need of more work and formal weighting to fit in the current model if not superseeded by other Research propsals that are being formed.

SubDAO tokens have been discussed at length both on calls and in chat, there have been very mixed views on how the Alpha token sould be utilised. Its base case of being used in the SubDAO’s governance is seems sensible and fair. There have been suggests of it being used to gate more exclusive alpha channels, for it being used as a reward for skill based Research events and other uses. Atm we’re in an uncertain spot if it should be a prerquistit for the Researchers role or not and have actually refrained from inviting other community members to become Researchers until it is decided.

In general I think its fair to say researchers have been making slow progress on enacting meaningful change off the back of signicant adjustment in the groups status quo and effectively starting from scratch in defining/ redefining responsibilities.

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