I agree with @erik.near on the conceptual split of organizations that provide services and communities that are designed to activate and engage people.
I would vote to have different names to distinguish between these two types.
Given we are going to have more companies and partners contributing to building ecosystem - it make sense to call this kind “Partners”. Even if they are using DAO tooling for their business - they are not operating as a group of professionals or people with common goal (which is definition of a guilds).
Then the sub-communities of NEAR should keep the “Guild” naming.
If we all agree on this nomenclature, next step would be to classify the current Guilds into these two types.
For “Partners” it would mean clearly define their mode of operation and switch to contract based payment - where project would pay them for specific delivery.
For “Guilds” I see it more as defining what are major sections of NEAR community: languages and regions, themes (DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, etc), professions (devs, designers, product managers, etc). These sub-communities are evaluated by engagement of members and also how these people get activated by contributing to other projects and partners.
There will be Partners that provide services to NEAR Foundation directly (as a proxy to NEAR Ecosystem).
For example:
- “NEAR Week”, which is an information and a marketing agency. In turn NF will be paying the marketing contract. Over time this contract would transition to Treasury DAO and it’s sub-DAOs that are responsible for that vertical in the ecosystem support.
- A current guild that suppose to be providing services to projects, but actually not delivering due to lack of personnel or time - re-qualifying as partner would mean they need to deliver on the contracts they make with projects. E.g. they would need to either commit to working with projects or dissolve it.
- For “DeFi Guild”, I would expect us to have Telegram or Discord channel where people are routed. Have an active discussions on the latest of DeFi both for users and developers. Learning and job opportunities, brainstorms and Twitter Space sessions. Community organizers and managers of such guild would then be the on the DAO council, managing the budget they have to facilitate engagement in their community, rewarding retroactively members who engage and bring value as well as receiving some compensation for their time.
PS. https://roke.to should be used a funding tool, to allow for streaming payments from one DAO to another. This would enable a control over the budget that Guild can spend, while not needing a constant confirmation and oversight.
Process of monthly reviews will be providing the visibility in the funds spent as well as understanding if this Guild is alive or should be cut from funding. Community members like @Dacha who are constantly on the watch may provide inter-monthly information if there is something weird happening in the guild’s community.