Thanks for sharing the budget and for always been open and transparent with community.
I have some questions and some comments.
Qs -
1. Is the budget paid out in NEAR or in USDC (or stable coin equivalent)?
Most people would agree the budget is chunky. If it were to be extrapolated to a yearly budget ($2m+ per year) that would be 25% more than the entire Grassroots DAO budgets combined ($1.5m) under v0.
My key concern is that the market is ROUGH. If paid out in NEAR, I worry the sell pressure would be immense - NEAR keeps dropping in CoinMarketCap rankings, OG holders and projects keep getting rekt and losing faith. I would support budget getting paid out in USDC only (interesting how changing the unit of account automatically changes the perception of just how much money we are talking about here…)
2. NDC is ‘Community Led’ - who is the decision maker on this budget?
As it is to be expected of a Chunky budget in the midst of a rough bear market, most community members I’ve had the opportunity to talk about are a mix of surprised, sceptical or against it. Which leads to the key question - who is the real decision maker here?
I am worried we are sleep walking into spending very large amounts of money with very:
a) little input from the community
b) feedback, questions and concerns being automatically dismissed because this ‘community led program’ doesn’t actually need the community to approve spending
As I’ve outlined on my Vision for Grassroots DAO post, the only I way I see governance being valuable long term is with things being Default Dead: nothing move forward unless there is sufficient buy-in from the community. If we were to apply this to GWG and this budget: is the budget simply being communicated to us or are we being asked whether we want to proceed?
3. How does NDC determine value creation?
I have a very simple principle - you should always create more value than you extract. While it may be true that NDC has the potential to create and unlock several orders of magnitude more than the requested budget, the key questions are:
- What is the simplest way we can achieve our goal?
- Can we achieve our objectives in a more cost-efficient manner?
- Do we have the best people for the job?
- Are we doing what matters the most right now? (Unlock maximum impact)
- Are there inefficiencies, redundancies that need to be eliminated?
There is always the risk of the NDC becoming too bloated which leads to polarisation: some people concentrate on the things that are adding value while some people concentrate on things that may not be needed or working as intended. The truth lies somewhere in the middle: can we cut the budget in half and achieve the same results?
The aim is not to hamper people doing greta work. But to acknowledge that we are closer to a Brussels level of bureaucracy than the vision of Decentralised Governance as an engine for growth of the ecosystem.
4. What are the current oversight mechanisms?
Expanding on the questions around value creation above, who determines and approve each item of this budget? I’ve seen a proliferation of working groups - some without clear leadership, reason for existing, or even much activity recently and they are more likely than not to be funded.
I want to be clear that I do not believe that anyone has bad intentions. But I am worried that realistically - there is no one keeping track of ‘part time hours’ worked, or asking tough questions prior to disbursing money.
5. What happens if the NDC fails?
The reason why most of us are in crypto is because of corrupt politicians and bloated bureaucracies that then significantly hurt the economy and our ability to work, progress and succeed. Perhaps the biggest lesson from recent financial crises is: ‘too big to fail’ is a recipe for disaster. Entitlement and immunity is what kills you.
I thin we should all be reminded daily that the NDC can fail.
Everything we do - and ask funding for - needs to be seen through a very clear North Star:
- Is this creating value for the NEAR ecosystem? (NEAR as a blockchain can also die)
- Is this more or less likely to lead to the long term success of NDC? (as measured by community approval, participation. Big assumption is that NEAR doesn’t die first as a blockchain because all the focus went into governance and not enough into fostering an environment welcoming and supportive of builders)
Overall, it’s a strange feeling to be considered an OG, to spent countless hours trying to catch up with all the discussions, countless more hours contributing what I hope would be valuable insights, and not see myself reflected in a huge budget (have never received $1 from NDC). I believe the sentiment is similar with many founders and builders operating on shoestring budgets, grinding just to keep their project alive on NEAR (many have to go to other blockchains out of necessity).