DAO Genesis - Committee Formation

[BenAffleck]

The ssv.network DAO was established last year. Since its inception, the DAO has managed to self-organize and lead strategic projects on behalf of the community, such as the DAO partner program, contributor onboarding, and committees.

The next big challenge is to define a sustainable future mode of operation for the DAO.

For this, the DAO has assembled a ‘DAO Genesis Committee’ (dGC). The committee links the needs of the community, the protocol core team, and the DAOs token holders. Also, the dGC is in charge of organizing and overseeing the DAO.

dGC responsibilities

The committee will pursue the following goals for the DAO:

• Define a governance and operation framework
• Create a roadmap to decentralization and growth
• Execute on that roadmap

DAO Governance

The dGC will update the community regarding DAO’s decisions, the use of treasury, runway, protocol development, and other relevant concerns.

To do this efficiently, the dGC will structure and establish a governance and operation framework, along with good reporting mechanisms, to facilitate transparency between the DAO and its stakeholders.

Roadmap to decentralization and growth

The dGC works alongside the protocol core team to define the DAO’s vision, mission, and goals and develops a path to the DAO’s independence and long-term sustainability.

While working on a plan to get there, the dGC will identify areas of uncertainty and define the necessary measurements to investigate and gain the necessary insights to make informed decisions. To progress, the dGC might initiate appropriate working groups and assign expected outcomes and dedicated compensation models.

Execution

During the first month, the committee will focus on executing the Multisig Committee Formation proposal and ensure its effectiveness. Also, the committee will lead and oversee the already established Grants Committee (GC) and Operator Verification Committee (VOC) by making their work transparent to all stakeholders, formalizing the current goals, onboarding additional members, hardening and documenting existing processes, and identifying areas of future improvements and required resources.

In preparation for long-term sustainability, the dGC derives a minimum viable governance and operational framework for the DAO, its committees (long-lasting), and working groups (temporary), which includes:

• Why, How, and When to generate new committees and working groups
• Define the relationship between groups and the dGC
• The group leader’s responsibilities, reporting, and accountability
• Compensation model for leaders and members along with operational budget
• On- and off-boarding procedures and guidance for member diversity and qualification
• And more…

Genesis structure

dGC initial formation

The initial dGC consists of 6 members, of which 1 member is assigned as the program lead and one member of Blox represents the protocol core team’s point of view. The Committee’s initial mandate will last 6 months. A public vote is required to continue the existence of the dGC after that period ends. The committee lead is appointed every 6 months by the same public vote. dGC members are appointed by the dGC lead or by a community vote.

The initial formation includes the following members:

Member	Discord handles	Wallets
BenAffleck (Program Lead)	BenAffleck#9383	0x2de670a1d8c1de83d8727295284704bb196ba117
Fod	fod#8970	0x489a727c5722d0D0CF654d169F87De1Bb5743A87
Taiga	Taiga#9240	0x78D71193A507287365b968dBf7D3Bc6C49d7Eb0b
Sp00ky	Sp00kyG#6714	0x872Da650d6d727b87e56D8e46f62228a27f94B3d
Yorick	Yorick#0990	0xeCbb058Fc429941124a2b8d0984354c3132F536f
Blox representative (protocol core team)	TBA	N/A

dGC Lead

The dGC Lead is an organizational role that drives the initiative, and is accountable for executing the committee’s mandate:

• Manage and organize committee meetings
• Assist in scoping committee member’s roles
• Assist in scoping working group leader’s roles
• Publish a monthly ‘state of the DAO’ progress report on the forum
• Participate in community calls and represent the DAO
• Assists with setting up working group leaders’ targets, and reporting standards
• Cooperate with working group leaders to create goals and track progress
• Develop related governance and operation procedures
• Work with the protocol core team, the members and external agencies to define a roadmap to decentralization, vision, and mission for the DAO

The dGC lead will be accountable to deliver on the following execution plan:

Month 1
Coordinate and help define the DAO’s governance and operation framework. Improve transparency and reporting standards; provide state of the DAO updates, treasury use, and runway. Present grant issuance and progress.

Month 2
Ensure working group lead assignment, role definition, goals, and reporting.

Month 2-6
Oversee the ongoing operation of committees and working groups. Transitioning the DAO’s focus according to the “roadmap to decentralization”. Define roles and responsibilities moving forward, and present a long-term plan.

dGC Compensation

dGC lead

The Genesis Committee lead’s compensation will be 10K USD per month in SSV tokens.

The compensation covers all the work for the dGC and working on any number of existing or newly created committees or working groups without getting any extra compensation.

dGC member

The Genesis Committee members’ compensation will be 3K USD per month in SSV tokens.

The compensation covers all the work for the dGC as part of the dGC mandate. Above that, a member can participate in other committees or working groups and get compensated according to the group’s compensation model.

Backdated compensation

The dGC members assumed their role at the beginning of April 2022. They were not compensated for their work thus far. The committee compensation will backdate to start in April 2022. The first installment due to the Genesis group will include the months leading to this proposal’s execution. The backdated compensation will be calculated at 3K USD in SSV tokens per committee member, with no distinction between a member and a lead.

External services budget

The DAO treasury will allocate a 55K USD budget to the dGC. The dGC will use that budget to obtain external consulting services to help accomplish its mandate. In case a third-party agency is onboarded, the work scope, fees, and deliverables will be transparently shared with the community.

Total budget

Maximum budget for 6 months, assuming this proposal is effective December 2022, including backdated compensation and external agency budget.

Member	Monthly ($)	Total ($)	Unit
Lead	10,000	60,000	SSV
Member	3,000	18,000	SSV
Member	3,000	18,000	SSV
Member	3,000	18,000	SSV
Member	3,000	18,000	SSV
Blox	0	0	N/A
Backdated	3,000	105,000	SSV
External		55,000	SSV or USDC
Total		$292,000

The SSV token price will be calculated according to the DAO standard; 90-day closing price average in the previous months.

Compensation distribution

Every month, the ‘master of coin’ will post a payment request under this proposal. The request will include total allocations for all team members, including reference calculation and external consulting services if any. The Backdated compensation will be executed right after this proposal is passed.

On/off-boarding

Changes in the dCG structure can be achieved in one of the following ways:

• DAO vote
• Genesis Committee majority vote; 4 of 6 members at current state

Removing or adding a dCG member will require a public vote. The vote will be followed by an official announcement in Discord and the forum. The protocol core team can change its representative at any time with the support of a dGC majority vote. Any change must then be announced on the forum.

Heat check

How would you vote on this proposal?

If you’re against this proposal, please make sure to leave a comment

• Yes (in favor of this proposal)
• No (against this proposal)

After the proposal passes heat check, it will be formally voted on snapshot.org.

[1212]

Oppose these “committees” that do nothing, and oppose these meaningless expenditures. Please let the public see the return on these expenditures?

[alonmuroch]

The people in the proposal are in fact what drives the DAO, from working groups to everything else.
This proposal is here to officially define those roles.
The DAO needs to have people in it doing various jobs, and the DAO needs to compensate them for it. Otherwise you’d simply have … well nothing.

[1212]

In fact, what I expressed is that instead of engaging in these unwarranted formalism and not seeing the real meaning, we should work on market capitalization maintenance. For example RPL then maintain early investors. (As a DVT technology leader, for ETH 2.0 such a huge narrative. It’s hard to understand how to behave so badly.) It’s meaningless to not treat the community and investors as people and to engage in unhelpful formalism as a whole

[contextual]

I do see a very rational seed in what you say. I am closely monitoring some DAOs and yes i could say they actually do very little work (if any) because every proposal in 99 out of 100 cases just gets blindly signed and accepted without actually generating any value or the sense of centralization and control that it is expected.
Though formal things still have a room to exist, but the actual terms and conditions should be thoroughly assessed and refined. And more people should come by to actually cast a vote and form the DAO so that the DAO truly becomes one.

[alonmuroch]

In this case I think this group of people does a ton.
They lead and take part of in numerous working groups which are important, they are super active in the community, etc.
If you look at the hardest working people from the community, you’ll see that it’s them.

This proposal is more of formalizing what’s already exists than blindly creating a group.

[1212]

So please ask.
They lead and participate in many important efforts.
What are some of the important jobs? What form of answers have been given to the so-called important work? Has the community been made aware?

Are they very active in the community?
According to my daily DSI community observation. Often I don’t see any DAO/team/project side for 10 days and half a month, so where is the activity?

If you look at the people who work the hardest in the community, you will find that it is them.
What kind of results do you actually get from hard work? Sorry, I don’t see it (at least not in the SSV brand effect and market value at all)

[fod]

We have not been idle. We have had real, meaningful, quantifiable accomplishments that directly relate to the long-term growth of the protocol and the price of the token. For example, the Grants Committee has gotten many different top-tier teams to build valuable projects on SSV, like staking pools, staking services, and supporting infrastructure like explorers and operator monitoring. We have dispersed 19 grants so far for teams including Ankr, Stader, Consensys, and many more. These will all each bring huge amounts of TVL to SSV in the future, which is ultimately what will make the price go up. Another example is our outreach and business development, which has resulted in successes like Lido (~30% of all validators!) planning to run validators on SSV.

There is much more work to be done, which is why this proposal was made. For example, we have a major need to upgrade our tokenomics. This will help form a Tokenomics Working Group that will create and execute a tokenomics roadmap and that will help to bring more value to the token (make the price go up) and improve the qualities of the network (decentralization, stability, etc.).

Also right now, the project has been managed by Blox, which is a temporary arrangement that won’t work long-term. We need to have the DAO manage itself and be fully independent, which involves carefully designing a governance structure and hiring some employees directly. There is no alternative to this, unless we want to let the DAO fail in the future. We need committed, entrenched employees to manage the project and execute tasks. And we first need to create those necessary roles, fill them with people, and get them started. This all takes time and work, and it isn’t trivial.

The salaries are very fair given the high caliber of people being hired, the large amount of work they will be doing, and the large amount of work they have already completed without compensation. You can’t expect these people to work for free, and if you don’t pay them, they will leave, no one will do the work, and the DAO will simply fail to accomplish anything.

[contextual]

A little off-topic here because i got curious after reading this proposal.

Me myself together with @aaaaallll | ChainOps @kl0ndike @Paradigma represent the RU Ambassador team who got selected last June.

Since then, we performed a lot of internal work managing localization, translations, documentation, Medium, Notion and Gitbook together with the Discord.

Back in the day, we were told to expect to be tipped / rewarded for our contributions and hard work, and haven’t received anything so far.

So I am quite surprised that our case is left hanging without any further elaboration whilst such proposals to compensate other team members being made.

I do not insist on anything and i have enough patience, but some clarity and concrete upon this matter would be greatly appreciated, as very little things are being communicated!

Thank you.

[fod]

Allow me to apologize for this on behalf of everyone else. This is a problem that needs to be fixed as soon as possible, and this is part of the responsibility of this new Genesis Committee. The major contributors here should be compensated, and we are currently not. I say this as someone who has done hundreds of hours of unpaid work here. Please have confidence that we will address this, as it is one of our top priorities. And feel free to message me and the committee to discuss your case specifically.

[Taiga]

Disclaimer: I’m in the committee being proposed.

I find the feedback to be completely justified. I can see where it’s coming from.

Many meetings and technical discussions are held in private and never see the light of day. We don’t have processes that would enable a transparent communication channel where the people doing work can showcase their progress, which results in lack of clarity and transparency.

We need processes and frameworks that allow us to scale and increase velocity, both as a decentralized protocol and as a group of contributors. We need to figure out onboarding, offboarding, compensation structures, a legal entity to enable the aforementioned, line of reporting; the list is endless.

There’s a lot of work to do. If you get a free meal and it’s terrible, it’s a tricky situation to just complain. This proposal sets incentives for ownership and accountability by compensating folks for their time and expertise. It will even enable contributors to drop other compensated activities in favor of SSV work.

I hate to sound cliché but if anything, for me this has been reassuring: people’s concerns in this thread are exactly what this working group is trying to address.

[contextual]

Neither i want to bother anyone nor acting boldly. Rather, I have enough patience, and I am here to build!

But some precision and clarity on such a matter would be greatly appreciated! Since we’ve spent a lot of time grinding and working through a decent chunk of work!

Thank you.

[contextual]

I have no concerns with DAO being formed and made! It is the core principle of such an organization as ssv.network and an essential one!

My message is that if we really want to establish a proper DAO than we need to take many things into consideration. For example, the amount of people who make decisions and votes. Their expertise and knowledge together with transparency of work that has been done already and the work that is yet to come! And what value it generates for the organisation as a whole.

And to accomplish this, people must feel the connection within the organization together with transparency. Have the same field of everyday tasks and interests and act as one organism.

I am with SSV for a while and IMHO @fod is the best candidate since he generates a lot of thoughtful conversations rather it be forum or Discord and you can clearly see a man who very well understands what he is talking about!

This is what i actually mean by the people who constitute to DAO. There should be some level of authority and respect behind them because this is how level of trust is determined. And if we speak DAO to operate upon a set of incorruptible rules, then people who represent it should possess that trust.

Otherwise, such proposals appear to be no more than an attempt to draw yourself a nice salary out of thin air.

This is at least what comes to my mind after closely monitoring some top-tier DAOs for the last year.

[fod]

Thank you for your support and kind words. I try my best to help here however I can. I also want to call attention to the other members of the proposed committee, as I believe all of them are outstanding in their own way and are worth of your trust. We complement one another very well, and together, I think we have the combined skills necessary to advise the DAO and execute on its objectives. Specifically, the committee lead, @BenAffleck, is a great fit for the position and is well worth the proposed salary. Paying Ben will allow him to reduce his hours elsewhere and focus on SSV as his main job.

Regarding your (and the other ambassadors’) payment, I think one of the first priorities of this committee should be to set up structures to pay everyone for their hard work. There are several others in the community that are in the same situation, and this needs to be fixed as soon as possible. For your past work, we can arrange back pay (as we did for ourselves above). And then we can decide on how we would like to structure your future compensation together, whether we all feel that a fixed salary would be best, or some alternative compensation structure like a Coordinape pool. We can discuss all the options together to determine what’s best and most fair for you all. Unfortunately, we are moving at the speed of DAO consensus (and are all still unpaid and very limited with our time), so a few more weeks of your patience is required

But as always, feel free to reach out anytime if you’d like to discuss anything.

[contextual]

Sure! I want to stay here long-term and i have no problem waiting! It’s just me and the rest of RU segment that wanted some clarity upon this matter. No more, no less. Now since feedback received I feel better

With regard to DAO i just was expressing my thoughts that i believe to be reasonable. First and foremost duty of a DAO is to generate value for the hosting organization. And to do so, the ways that it’s members contribute and constitute to the DAO must be clear and transparent and agreed upon by the rest of the community. This is how a healthy DAO is formed.

I have no doubts in the competences of the people listed in the proposal, but unfortunately there is no way that a curious member like myself could refer to some source and see what has actually been done and the value generated.

So apparently we need to arrange some ways for the internal work to be traceable and reachable (until at least a certain extent), as this will allow for that degree of transparency. And in return, the transparency will allow for a healthier and subjective conversation and trust to build up.

I am not touching the fact that very few people actually come around to participate in such discussions. And it appears that only those with direct interest attend. That is not a sign of a healthy DAO. So in my opinion, it is worth spending a while to actually think on how to expand the reach and influence of ssv.network as a DAO and to attract competent individuals.

I am just speaking plain DAO principles that are important to build a healthy and long-term sustainable organization and i would appreciate any reasonable critics or arguments should you have any!

[Yorick]

Just checking in to say I agree with what’s been said. The work that the DAO has been doing needs to be more transparent, and creating that structure is exactly what this is about. I’ve been on the technical side, for example leading one of two NO groups that did the SSV test inside Lido. That is important for adoption, and a non-trivial amount of work.

[markoInEther]

Note: I am not a part of dGC committee. I also didn’t know any of the members from the Committee before starting contributing to the DAO and am not benefiting from this proposal in any way.

I am very much in favor of this proposal but I understand the criticism raised here, since most of the work the Grant Committee does is not visible from the outside at it may like not much like a frivolous expense by the dao, with no actual utility.

I have joined the DAO in Late September and frankly I was reallly surprised how much work has been and is beeing done at the DAO. Most of the work is not visible from outside looking in and this is something I think needs be much improved.

To illustrate this point there is currently more than 20 active grantees, working on their solutions. Work with grantees is not just about evaluating and approving grants. There are rounds of feedback before Grant application is submitteted, then the Dao supports grantees in the process and is helping to solve blockers they might have, then there is a process of checking milestones, evaluation etc. Not mentioning a similar number of ecosystem partners, who the DAO is partnering with to create necessary partnerships for the success of SSV such as Oracles, APIs, Notification services etc. Nowadays I spend most of my working time engaged with people here proposed for dGC, our grantees and partners helping them solve blockers, improve their proposals etc. and creating necessary resources for the community like documentation, articles and other.

What @BenAffleck is writing as goals is really something that is clearly needed by the DAO from my experience. General clear structure, framework, roadmap and transparency are currently lacking and it is not possible to have these without dedicated group working on it long term.

I also would want to note, I have been working with all of committee members who have been doing their work for the past months without any compensation, which is definitely a strong signal of their dedication to this project, at least for me.

[SpookyG]

Voting is open, go vote:

DAO Genesis Committee Formation

[kl0ndike]

hi guys!
voted for the proposal!

[satbalwyn]

@BenAffleck

Publish a monthly ‘state of the DAO’ progress report on the forum

do we have any report published yet?