[New Process] Community Payouts

[mecsbecs]

[EDITED 2022-04-05T04:00:00Z]

Hello NEAR Community,

We are delighted to let the Community know that we have our new confirmed payout process.

Some elements will be familiar if you had the opportunity to read the earlier post indicating these changes to come but if not, here it is again with links so you can dig into the necessary identity checks and verification that are now key to this new process.

As of January 21, 2022, no payouts can be issued without an identity verification having been completed as outlined below.

Please follow closely and be sure to bookmark this post for future reference, as certain steps will need to be repeated each time you are looking to request funds:

1. Continue to post your [Proposal] in the appropriate category on the Governance Forum based on the content of the proposal.

2. After the proposal has received sufficient offline discussion on the Forum i.e. there are no more comments on the post to be addressed and the community has had time to respond to the contents of the proposal and receive clarification, the proposal receives implicit community approval.

   • Please refer to the Marketing DAO and Creatives DAO funding guides for more information on their approval processes as their approval needs to be explicitly granted by the respective DAO Council on the Forum before a poll is posted on Astro DAO to have the proposal move to a full council vote.
   • This discussion and engagement on the Forum is key to this entire process, so please share your thoughts positively and respectfully.

3. UPDATED PROCESS: To get the payout process started, the Guild Leader, DAO, or Community representative (‘representative’) must complete this form requesting your personal information, and your acknowledgment and agreement to the new Guilds Terms & Conditions and NEAR’s Privacy Policy. This step is required every time you are posting a payout request.

ONLY COMPLETE THE FORM ONCE YOUR ASTRO DAO POLL HAS BEEN APPROVED

4. Following this, you will be emailed with a prompt to complete a ‘Know Your Customer’ (KYC) identity verification. KYCs are common in the traditional banking sector and with cryptocurrency platforms and exchanges such as Crypto[dot]com and Binance for AML compliance. Our service provider for the KYC - until the decentralized solution SYNAPS or something like it is available - is Onfido and a piece of formal ID and photo will be required. Check which kind of documents are supported by region here.
   [ ONE-TIME STEP ]

5. Denomination of the Proposal’s payout amount if the individual wishes to be paid in $NEAR continues to be in (USD), and the payout amount in USD and target wallet should be clarified on the Astro DAO poll either in the description or in the new comments feature. The representative will then receive an email to a ‘Reward Agreement’ [template here] confirming the token amount and requesting the representative’s signature.

   • EDIT: there is no longer any need to show the $NEAR token conversion from USD on the poll and DAO councils are not required to update the payout value as the token price dips or rises.
   • EDIT: the option now exists for payouts in equivalent USD $5K or less to be made in stable coin! The following coins can be accepted as of 2022-04-05T04:00:00Z: nDAI, nUSDC, nUSDO, and nUSDT.
   • therefore individuals can now either request their payout in stable coin OR USD, which will be converted to $NEAR when NEAR Finance is executing on payment.
   • Any proposals requesting USD $20K or higher will be encouraged to apply to the NF Funding for a grant.

6. After the above paperwork has been completed, the KYC verification has been passed, and the outcome of the Astro DAO poll is favourable, you’ll be invited to send the NEAR Foundation an invoice:

[INSTRUCTION] Create An Invoice After Signing Community-Rewards Agreement

Dear community, With the new updates in community payout process, I realized that DAOs/representatives of DAOs need to create an invoice to complete the Community-Rewards Agreement to receive your fund. After finishing the process and receiving payout, I noticed there’s some slight difference between the instructions sent by NF and the actual UX on the website. So this is to help the community finish the process easier, step-by-step. After signing the Community - Reward Agreement, you’ll then…

After this, NEAR Foundation Finance will execute on the approved payment. EDIT: The NEAR Finance team will convert the USD payout amount to the equivalent amount in $NEAR when the payout is being issued.
* The funds will be sent to the personal NEAR wallet address provided in the Google Form and it is up to the Guild or project representative to ensure these funds are transferred to the appropriate DAO.

Please give a MAXIMUM of 2 weeks for your payout to be processed

[vandal]

Thanks @mecsbecs for putting this together and for clarification on the new processes! As payouts will be done in Near for now, how would a recipient of funds be able to claim a loss, as it’s understood now if the price of NEAR drops below 10% of what it was when a project was funded a request could be made to compensate so all project funding under that request is paid in full without a loss. Curious to see how that would look and if there’s any advice you could offer (for example the inclusion of a 10% buffer to the funding request maybe?)

Cheers!

[duOCELOT]

Awesome. Thank you. This helps a lot, and keep it organized.

Thank you for the work.

Councils, please check this out ot understand how the new system works.
@whoiscavenaghi @brunoqual @tesfon @frado

[Dabbie3229]

It’s a good step towards actualisation of clarity and transparency. I applaud your efforts

[mrufawaki]

Thank you this will help In a positive way and looking forward to see how to get familiar with new payment system

[Dacha]

@mecsbecs

After the proposal has received sufficient offline discussion on the Forum i.e. there are no more comments on the post to be addressed and the community has had time to respond to the contents of the proposal and receive clarification, the proposal receives implicit community approval.

Great news. Glad to see how the forum becomes a pivotal platform for open transparent discussions and approvals instead of the obsolete system of closed calls.

Thank You very much @mecsbecs . It’s what community members expected from NF

[Vladislav_vl25]

Last time we sent proposals there was a delay of 24 days.

Now because of the changes, are you suggesting we wait any longer?
Can you somehow resolve these issues more quickly?

Some events and agreements need a certain amount of financial flow.

Onfido is a bad service, as IDO showed on Aurora.

Why can’t funds be transferred immediately to the DAO?

I’m not against KYC and the rest, but I am against unnecessary bureaucracy.

We can debate and send letters all we want, but we need a better process than the one described here.

How will working the process of tying the amount to USD on NEAR.
Consuls take a very long time to vote and you can get an amount much less than you need, how will this issue be handled?

[mecsbecs]

If there’s a loss in value in $NEAR between the time when the proposal is initially made on the Forum and the Google Form and KYC have been completed, there is an opportunity for reassessment of the payout value on the Astro DAO poll being voted upon by the relevant DAO Council [while this side paperwork is being completed].

In step 5 as outlined here:

@mecsbecs

Denomination of the Proposal’s payout amount continues to be in (USD), however for the approved payment it will show denomination in ($NEAR) and the amount will be doubly confirmed in the new comments feature for polls on Astro by the DAO Council. The representative will then receive an email to a ‘Reward Agreement’ [template here ] confirming the token amount and requesting the representative’s signature.

When the payout amount is being “doubly confirmed” in the comments now possible on Astro DAO polls, the proposer/payee can request a re-evaluated amount if there has been a drop in value of 10% or more. The Council members themselves may even draw attention to a reassessment but it is up to the proposer to flag if the need arises.

Adjusting payout values when there has been more than a 10% drop in $NEAR value has been something we haven’t previously codified [although the general idea has been discussed here] but has been ongoing practice on a case-by-case basis. Within this new process there is now, hopefully, a clearer opportunity for a final value check-in to happen before the Reward Agreement is signed and the payout sent to wallet.

Proactive anticipation of potential fluctuation in price by including minor buffers within the initial payout proposal is something that has been done within the Community without complaint (to my knowledge) from the Council members in question, but this should be up to the respective DAO Council reviewing the proposal to weigh in on.

Thanks for raising this @vandal!

[mecsbecs]

Hello @Vladislav_vl25 - thank you for your questions and I understand your frustrations with delays and blockers within our payout processes. Your continued patience as we work toward a smoother process across all of the NEAR Foundation payout channels is greatly appreciated.

Changes in process - especially when approached strategically and in a coordinated effort across multiple NF teams and the Community, as we’ve been trying to do - unfortunately do take time. Our legal counsel has advised that this is the best flow for now without incurring additional legal complications by transferring funds directly to DAOs (at this time). As we’ve been required to act without further delay, this process is the compromise we’ve reached until we can publish a smoother, more stream-lined payout process, which has dependencies on the development of better, consolidated tooling for our use.

Regarding the item about tying funding amounts to USD, please see my response above.

The estimated duration of this new process as described above is 2 weeks and we hope to, once we all get the hang of things, exceed expectations by making it even briefer with practice and everyone’s cooperation.

[Vladislav_vl25]

What you think about Onfido?

This service is flawed, it was on IDO Aurora.

Do you know what it problem is? I’ll explain.
You can’t pass KYC to countries like Russia or Ukraine and still some countries.
You can only pass KYC if will you use a VPN.

Using such a service can put participants in different categories (not all people use VPNs, not all VPNs are safe).
I would say that the service would add some variant of discrimination and I think it’s important to state that.

[Vladislav_vl25]

Also, I can’t understand how this will work with the Guilds’ Tiering System.
If the Guild tier 1 needs $20k, and you specify that the maximum is $15k.
And then how will the quarterly payments look like, will I have to confirm each transaction for 10k of these payments?

We need clear deadlines for consuls and voting.
If the consuls are inactive, as they were in the end of last year and early this year, can you replace them?

I just want to explain that we don’t need more consultants or advisors to work, we have to give those who work well - work quietly.
We need a clear and elaborated strategy with specific timelines.

[mecsbecs]

HI @Vladislav_vl25 - I personally was unaware Onfido presented difficulties for unsanctioned nations (so not sanctioned nations such as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or the Islamic Republic of Iran) and so we are now discussing this internally with our FLO colleagues who have helped to set this up.
Thank you for flagging this and I’ll hope to have an answer for you soon.

With regards to how this process jives with the Guilds Tiering system, you will note
Tier 1 Guilds are eligible for maximum USD $15K for their main payout, while the payout ceiling listed here is USD $20K is to account for all payouts done through official Community funding channels, which does include the Guilds Tiering and other potential programs or projects. It’s always good to have some buffers just in case so there is space for new initiatives to develop, and so the USD $5K difference in these figures is intentional.

@Vladislav_vl25

And then how will the quarterly payments look like, will I have to confirm each transaction for 10k of these payments?

Yes, for every USD $10K given, a new Reward Agreement will need to be signed as part of the final step in the payout process. We are starting off fresh with everyone for the first payout under this process - so the Reward Agreement signature is needed from everyone in this first instance - but then another agreement won’t need to be signed until following transactions equal USD $10K cumulatively or there is one USD$10K+ transaction.

@Vladislav_vl25

We need clear deadlines for consuls and voting.
If the consuls are inactive, as they were in the end of last year and early this year, can you replace them?

It would be great to have your input in the ongoing conversation here Community-driven DAOs: Proposed Structure for Community Fund DAOs as of Jan 2022 - #49 by INFINITY if you’re up for it! These are some great views on how we can be building a better approach overall to payout reviews and empowering active DAO councils with engaged community members.

[JThompson123]

Implementing KYC is a great idea.

[Vladislav_vl25]

@mecsbecs

It would be great to have your input in the ongoing conversation here Community-driven DAOs: Proposed Structure for Community Fund DAOs as of Jan 2022 - #49 by INFINITY if you’re up for it! These are some great views on how we can be building a better approach overall to payout reviews and empowering active DAO councils with engaged community members.

Of course. Respecting everyone’s opinion, we must find the best solution to create a comfortable path for both participants and consuls.

[Vladislav_vl25]

And I have another question, if the guild have public people working for the NEAR, do they have to go through KYC if the NEAR has their data.

I can make the proposal for example and the beneficiary will be Vadim as the leader of the guild.