I agree, @adrianseneca, that we should have a way to build legal status, website, and more things, if that is really required from us (and it seems it is not, given the Creatives does only a curatorship role and the resources are given by NF). I dont know for sure which things we really want and need. But let me ask you: why cant we build all these things using the Creatives DAO? People (including the moderators) could submit projects to the Creatives, and the moderators could review the individual proposals (for building things for the Creatives) and propose a funding proposal for NEAR. Is that a possible way?
(Or maybe 1 moderator could be in the Creatives DAO as a person in a group with proposal power but without voting power, in order to make it easier the process of having an individual associated to a dao in a no-voting power group, only to make the things that need individuals to exist to do. – only, of course, if this is a real need)
To make the individuals to have the power to vote and to demand a 50% approval to approve something could make many things not being approved. If you lower the quote, many things could be approved. It is difficult to have people voting. We have the Community experiment that does not work pretty good. Things are voting in a messy way. If Community DAO did not work the way it is, I dont know why Creatives should follow the same steps.
I really dont understand well why we need something splitted from the Creatives DAO.
Yes, my main fear is that moderators are gaining too much power and deciding things even without the Creatives DAO being consulted formally. I dont know if I understood it right what happened yesterday, but it seems that a decision was made on telegram, on a poll, and some actions are being made based on a telegram poll, without astrodao voting (a brand new Creatives DAO was created without any consent of the Council from the Creatives DAO: https://app.astrodao.com/dao/creatives-dao.sputnik-dao.near). If this happened and if I understood it properly, it seems that there is some abuse of power being made, and the Moderators DAO could be another expression of this abuse, as far as I fear. So this is my main concern: that we are building a structure of power that allows for abuse of power and of too much power for a few people over many people.
But answering your questions:
- I think we can active maintain community conversations in the forum, but with some more time for people to answer. DAOs’ members are full of work, making projects, proposals, reports, executing the projects, and voting for daos and analysing their projects… So we need more time to talk, to debate, to change our minds (or not), we need less topics (more concentration of discussion) and more active voting on rule proposals on astrodao after all debate is done and everyone expressed themselves. We also need more organization in the submission process from funding proposals and reports and in the time to organize the project. This could give us more time to think about the path of Creatives DAO, to analyse properly the proposals etc. I would suggest for that the following:
- from 1 to 5: submission of proposals
- from 5 to 10: community conversation in a monthly meeting with every dao leader + technical evaluation of proposals + DAOs content evaluation of proposals + no projects being executed
- 11 to 25: to execute the projects
- 25 to 30: submitting reports + building the general report.
I think if we are organized to do these things, we can be organized in community conversations too.
- We can obtaining approving and rejections if all DAOs had to to submit a Vote Approve and a Vote Reject proposals to all DAOs in which they submit a request to vote. This could also be different if we could use some Astro feature to voting by just accepting or rejecting instead of building a cfc that is specifically just to approve.
I think that maybe you want people to vote directly instead of DAOs because of this problem. It seems we would get more rejections, if DAOs could just downvote the proposal directly instead of making a CFC to reject. I saw Astro made a feature to vote in other DAOs, but I didnt use it yet, so I dont know if it already solves this problem. But maybe it does. And just an Astro change in its feature could solve our problem here, without a change in the structure. However, I like the idea of having a group for all the people of the community beyond DAOs, as I said before. If we have both, we dont need any other group to be the individuals that would be accountable for the creatives dao, although we could choose an individual, that could be a moderator or not, to receive the grant resources and send it to the DAO, as it is made nowadays with other daos. But I remember here that as soon as the Creatives DAO has a legal wrapper, we dont need individuals anymore to receive grants, because it could be in the name of the Creatives or its legal institute.
Other things may be important for approval or rejection, i.e., for the community to see the value of the proposal of a DAO. Maybe to be a rule that the DAOs should talk about their proposals and reports in a monthly call could be a good idea. What each DAO is achieving? What each one is doing? Maybe the call could be a zoom meeting, for people to be able to show things if they want. This would be a loooong call, but maybe we can commit to that, in order to evaluate together everything that is happening. This would be according to the values of transparency and decentralization.
- It is hard to get to that point yet, because I dont see these projects as a project from a Moderators DAO, but from the Creatives DAO.
But if a Moderators DAO is going to be created and funded, I think first it should ask for 2,000 usd when we return to approve funding for daos, because it is the fairest thing, without abuse of power. Then we should evaluate if the moderators are really able to do what they must do for the community (technical evaluations of proposals and reports, community call etc) and the projects they are willing to do on their DAO. If they are, then we proceed to 3,000, and then to 5,000, exactly like any other dao. And we should never let moderators DAO to enter the Creatives Council, in order to not have duplicity of votes in the ecosystem. The duplicity of votes should be avoided, as I see: no one should be part of more than 1 dao inside the Creatives Council. But a general way, I dont think moderators should be building projects as a DAO. They should focused their work in moderate, help the community to vote and to understand NEAR community, and not drive the future all the DAOs from the Creatives. The own DAOs should do this.
About the content of this proposal, upgrade legal status is cool, but are we talking about Moderators DAO legal status, or the Creatives DAO legal status? If it is the Creatives DAO, it is ok, but I would like to know why it is needed. If it is the Moderators DAO, I dont see any reason to upgrade legal status from an organization that just started. About the price, is it the price of what? Is it the cost from Otoco? They charge a 1000 usd? Is this resource to be used on-chain?
Nice too to have a domain for the Creatives DAO. The price seems appropriate, but does it contain the price for the site development, back and front end?
About NEAR Certified Creative course, 800 usd is for what? I could not understand. And who is going to receive this resource? I saw in your link that Near Certified Creative is already requesting resources for onboarding dao:
So it seems this 800 usd is only to make a playbook, to organize the content, is that right? I just want to understand if I got it right.
And about a marketplace, I talked about this in another place, but I could not see a reason yet to have our own marketplace or paying 3,000 usd for project presentation with a timeline, ux and a source code, without knowing the project. I think we need to know how much money are we going to spend in this marketplace in total? In how much time this marketplace will give us profit (given the value sustaining this project is the Creatives self-sustainability). Is it going to stay in the wallet of the Creatives DAO or Moderators DAO, the shares of the marketplace and the creativerse? Would we have any maintenance cost? How much? How much bug removal, marketing, publicizing, ux fix we would have to spend to maintain and make the marketplace to grow? As other people already said, you could ask mintbase how much time and money it costs to maintain a marketplace. I know, for example, how much it costs to maintain a good metaverse with source of income to pay the team and to have profit. It is not cheap. If we do not have to maintain, in how much time are we starting to make profit from the shares we will have? And will this money already allow us to pay what the DAOs need to exist? I do not see a link for the marketplace project, so I dont know if 3,000 is cool for what we are going to receive. I think we need to know more about who is going to deliver it, what market place is that, does it already have a nice number of people there, artists and collectors? Or is it going to be built from the scratch, even without people already on it? Could you send me to the link on the forum where the project of the marketplace is being debated?
Concerning guidelines not to be rules, said by @FritzWorm and @palomak, this is cool, but you applied them as rules in the entire Creatives ecosystem. You must do the same with yourselves, and apply them as rules, in order to be the examples of the community. You know I have @tabear, @frnvpr, @chloe and @JulianaM, previews moderators, in super high regards, because they never disrespected a rule they made and even though they never applied them as rules, but much more as suggestions. I really prefer a centralization on them again then the process you are trying to develop in this manner you are doing, without real consent of the community, and in your own vision, not ours.
Now, sorry for the digression, but now answering your 4th question:
- First, I agree that self-sustainability is interesting and should be a path of all DAOs, but not in the way that you are trying to drive the communities. Many members are worried about the way things are being made and the roles the moderators are attributing to themselves. The role of the moderators is pretty clear for all these months, since the council role was given to the DAOs: moderators make technical evaluation of proposals and reports, and community calls. Who decide substantial things is the community.
So, concerning self-sustainability, is there an official request from NEAR Foundation about this? If there is not, so it is a long path for us to debate, that need no rush to get to a decision. An informed and debated decision is the best treasure we can let for future generations.
And about the Moderators DAO as a whole, it is not clear yet the mission, the relevance, the distinction from the Creatives DAO, and the future projects. As I see the things that you are trying to make could be build by Creatives, I see no need for a Moderators DAO to exist and make the role that is supposed to be from the Creatives or one of its DAOs. As the main important projects from your DAO are: NEAR Certified Creatives and the marketplace, they both could be projects submitted to already existing DAOs. In fact, you already did that by requesting funds to Onboarding DAO to produce the course. So I see no reason for open another DAO and request resources for the same project by them. Concerning site and these things, as Fritz proposed himself, these are things that the salary of 250 NEAR from the moderators (more than 2 times my payment as council of Metaverse DAO) could cover them to do. Concerning hosting the site, the own onboarding dao could give funds for that, given that the site is going to be used to onboard people on the creatives. And concerning the marketplace, this could be requested maybe to Mintbase, in order to build a marketplace with their code, without the need of a new DAO for these projects.
If we are going to move for a self-sustainable model, we have to ask ourselves some questions:
Can the Creatives be self-sustainable? By marketplace and metaverse? Already established metaverses are here since 2018 or longer. Near Hub and Mintbase are here for some time, but they do not depend only of the revenues, but also from grants. The resources spent on maintaining a world and a marketplace with lots of traffic, enough to give value to the lands and NFTs, and make it profitable for us is hard. But, Philosopher, again, can the creatives be self-sustainable? I think that it cannot right now, but it can in the future (in a proper way that we should discuss as DAOs). We are in a side blockchain, trying to develop it, to grow it, to make people to onboard it, to build on it. If we allow only self-sustainable daos, we will make the daos to disappear from near, because at the moment most of DAOs are not self sustainable. All artists were complaining of not selling their art on Mintbase, one of the largest marketplaces on NEAR, and you think that open a brand new marketplace will give profit? It could, but I am really not sure that it will. Most of DAOs will not give profit, but it is not profit that NEAR Foundation is looking for now, but growing the number of users, growing the visibility, make NEAR to achieve new places, new communities, and not less.
So, to answer you, while Near does not officially requires us to be self-sustainable, I do not see any reason to rush it (although to build guidelines as suggestions for DAOs to try to follow in their path to growth and sustainability, it can be good: for example, suggestions of how to produce a pfp project with staking possibilities, like @Samtoshi_F_Baby had taught me, suggestions on paths to onboard collectors, as I tried to develop with @marianeu, etc). Self-sustainability step is a second one that we are not ready to give, given the size of our Creatives community. I know Fritz thinks 250 people is a large community, but in terms of an international blockchain, it is not. So, first we need to grow community, then self-sustainability. That is my opinion concerning these matters.
I would like to suggest to all people reading this post to read the comment from @frnvpr, which I think it is pretty pertinent and adequate to this discussions, and with which I agree:
I like always to ask for apologize by the way I talk, that could be harsh sometimes, but it is not my intention. I am writing this text for more than 6 hours, and I tried a lot to be the most respectful I could in my disagreement and I also tried to point some paths I believe we could follow in our way to growth with transparency and decentralization.
Thank you all for reading and thinking about the things I said here.