I understand your perspective on the importance of following guidelines. However following the discussions I realize that it is salutary to exercise possibilities within what is presented as navigational challenges arise to make everyone’s work possible.
Guidelines are important because they are collective constructions. I think that they serve as important parameters that serve to guide conduct. There are practical issues that seem to bring up the perception of the need for flexibility of the guidelines and this also serves as a reflective exercise.
I really liked the way you expressed your thoughts in this debate. The very important observation that a DAO should not be seen as a personal project.
A decentralized operation does not exclude the fact that sometimes some centralization is necessary, centralize, decentralize, build, deconstruct, rebuild…
I think it is natural to the process that issues like this arise, and this is great.
You have raised very good questions that, from my humble perspective, cannot be answered by one person alone. It is really a collective process.
I decided to participate in this discussion exactly to point that out. Looking for more participation from people from different DAOs might be a way forward.
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.
Let me agree with you here: Around $2 Million dollars spent to build an on-chain community of around 200 members is far from a success. Good thing is that there are many good members onboarded that can contribute to making the Creatives DAO grow if we can acknowledge the mistakes, make some fixes and keep going.
It doesn’t need Creatives DAO to be self-sustainable as a vertical, but DAOs (on-chain communities do should be self-sustainable)
One of the main intentions of onboarding DAOs (on-chain communities) is to build decentralization and allow creators to find their path in the NEAR Ecosystem.
This is not meant to have only 60 DAOs (tooling) without more than 3 unique members receiving funding forever, there should be room for new DAOs (on-chain communities) to get involve and be onboarded.
So, basically: Self-sustainability for your communities is necessary, I will not count on infinite funding from Near Foundation.
you will see that there is no restrictions in the number of people that a DAO must have; they say many, but not how much. So I don’t know why the number of people matters; the important thing is not centralization in one individual and splitted and diffused responsibilities over the DAO’s members. Each DAO has a mission in the ecosystem. For example, Mintbase maybe have 6 council members, but its work for the entire ecosystem is wonderful. Metaverse DAO has only 4 council members, and its work is of historical importance for the all the DAOs in the ecosystem with some presence on metaverse. The mission of Mintbase involves it to be self-sustainable in the long term, but other DAOs’ missions dont. For example, Metaverse DAO is like a museum, a historical museum, with activities of a historical museum. How should it be self-sustainable? Would you request from a museum to be self-sustainable? It is probable that no historical museum is self-sustainable (all of them sponsored by the Estate or private means), nevertheless it is of large importance to researchers, to the culture, to know our own past, to publicize history. So not all DAOs are self-sustainable or had how to be. Of course we can make moves to improve our external income, as trying to sell services to other people, but look that it could drive us off from our mission of recording, keeping, and creating near metaverse presence. But as historical museum, with historical activities, it must be funded to exist. Which other DAO already made an event with this kind of presence (even having 4 members in the council)?
Not every value is on self-sustainability, and self-sustainability is not the main value for NEAR. Maybe it is for the moderators in that position right now, but not officially for NEAR. For them, the main value is to grow the community. Of course we must avoid frauds in this process and approve valuable projects, but there are many values we should take into consideration when we think about the kinds of DAOs and their funding proposals.
Concerning the other DAO from which I am a part, the mission is another one, it is to onboard philosophers on the blockchain. So the number of people of this DAO is going to grow (we are almost getting to 10 members), differently from a historical museum DAO, that could work with less people in the team and making bounties for the community. The Philosophers DAO and Gambiarra DAO, for example, are DAOs which the mission is to onboard people, so they are always growing. Other DAOs, with other missions, like Metaverse DAO or Mintbase DAO, could be harmed by the necessity of constantly growing the team.
So, the main thing I would like to answer to you is that self-sustainability is a good valeu, but not the only one, and that the value of growing the community, broadly speaking, is more important than self-sustainability and the number of people in the DAOs.
One more thing, about the resources you talked about. You talked about 2 million dollars for 200 people, but that is not an adequate calculus. 200 people are the people on astro maybe. So these are the people that really want to take part in the administration of the DAOs. But our community, as I said before, is larger than that. For example, Mintbase DAO has 6 members, but the resources they received from NEAR were transformed in the entire community of artists and collectors that have a profile on Mintbase. So there is a DAO with 6 people from this 200 people that has a community of certainly more than 1,000 people with profiles on mintbase. I dont know if Paras is a DAO too, but how many people are there? I bet a lot of people. So 2 million dollars were not just for the 200 people on Astro, but they were used to onboard the entire community that we have on astro and outside astro.
Nevertheless, just 10 moderators will receive 300,000 usd from this 2 million in one year. Moderators receive 250 NEAR per month. Now we have 10 moderators. If we use a middle ground between the historical max of 20 and min of 2 usd from NEAR, 250 NEAR would be 2,500 USD (1 near = 10 usd). 10 moderators gives us 25,000 usd per month. In one year, 300,000 USD, which is more than 1/8 of these 2 million dollars for 10 people. This maybe is not so cool, according to your own point of view. Now I am really thinking if we should have so many moderators and if moderators should spend their time building projects instead of technically evaluating our proposals and reports. If moderators have the time to make projects, so they have too much time, and we could have less moderators and they could focus in the work that is important for us, DAOs from the Creatives Council: technically evaluating proposals and reports, making a general report from all individual DAO reports, and making the community call.
And another question: how would Moderators DAO be self-sustainable? If the marketplace is for the Creatives and also the Metaverse, Moderators DAO has no source of income, so no way to build sustainability. Do you see how to value so much sustainability in the moment that we are in the blockchain could be troubling for many DAOs, including the own DAO that you want to build?
So I return to my main point: no rush to decide and change things while there is no official statement from NEAR. And we need to discuss much more in order to get to good point. You know that I already heard about at least 5 DAOs looking for funding on other blockchains? So I think we should be careful not to disrupt and destroy with unforeseen consequences what we are building for so much time. Again, we need time to discuss our values, what matters to us, which are the official statements from NEAR, for then, after an extensive discussion, we could officially make a decision through the proper means, i.e., AstroDAO.
If this is an experiment, as you said, let’s take it in easy way, and only if the DAOs want to take that experiment.
Another thing I would like to say is that I did not get what to have 60 daos on astro have something to do with new daos coming onboard. We want new DAOs to be formed. But as far as I remember, the moderators decided without any vote on astro, that there would be no approval for new DAOs for some time that nobody knows how much. You all brought uncertainty and fear for all new DAOs and old DAOs, you made barriers. So I do not get your point. If you want new DAOs, there shouldnt be a rule to forbid funding new daos, and also there shouldnt be any sustainability rule, if the idea is to grow the community. My opinion is that we should take one step at a time, and in te proper moment. As I said before, first to grow, than to stabilize and maintain. Then, and only than, self-sustainability (if it is the case – as I already talked about the museum case).
I understand that self-sustainability will be necessary in some point, because NEAR will not give funds forever, but as far as it is giving funds to our projects, the actual moderators self-sustainability ideals should be merely suggestions on how to achieve that, and not norms that all DAOs should follow. For me, moderators should moderate, suggest, and not trying to manage each DAO with some rules not debated enough and not approved on astro.
Kind regards, buddy, and with the best of intentions.
<3
The issue we are having right now to understand each other is the concepts.
DAOs (tooling) dont need any self sustainability, DAOs (tooling) are just a tool.
DAOs (on-chain communities) are groups of people having something in common, and each communtiy should find their own path according to their own values, vision and goals. If you belong a community you will prefer it to be independent than a dependent community. In that sense they should look out for self-sustainability.
Creatives DAO as a vertical should be the support for the growth of new on-chain communties of creators that want to create on NEAR. This means the goal is not to give funding always to the same community, but to help the growth of news to find their path and build their own way (self-sustainable).
Nothing can last if it is not self-sustainable.
You are confused, we never said that we stopped the use of the Creatives DAO v2, people voted on the telegram group to create the DAO v3 to learn by doing, the benefits were discussed in the group, CFC are making things difficult and many creatives are being left aside with this system. I also encourage you to create the POLL to go against this in the DAO v2.
You make this statement for all? of from yourself? Or because you belong to several DAO (tooling)? I mean saying “all” new DAOs and old DAOs is quite a big statement. Again, encourage you to use the Creative DAO v2 to launch a poll against the Moderators DAO or the Creatives DAO v3.
Let’s agree that we have different point of views and that is a good thing, diversity of thinking is good.
is this DAO (moderators) live, or the proposal didn’t pass?
If not, are there plans from the moderators team for making it useful in the future?
–
Which Creatives DAO has voting power on proposals coming from DAOs (V2 or V3)?
will the new Creatives DAO dao on astrodao add DAOs to the council?
If yes, when, if not, why not?
(note: since current Creatives DAO is stuck in V2 I agree with the creation of a new one; I’m also super ok with having different voting groups, as long as the council remains composed of DAOs. Until those DAOs vote to cancel that system, ofc. If it’s the case that those present in that call voted and the council (DAOs) were bypassed, then we have a problem in our hands.)
I’m going to take the cue and launch here the question I asked there on Telegram.
Have you measured how many new projects and new DAOs have stopped happening since the financial apocalypse of self-sustainability began to ravage our community?
I’m here, reading, absorbing, trying to understand. But it’s too much information on somany different channels… complicated. And finally: Decentralize, yes. But centralize all information about what is happening. Let’s make it easy, fellows?
As far as I could understand, Moderators DAO was approved by the own moderators, in violation to the rules that the own moderators applied in the entire Creatives during this time. They are requesting fundings when they did not let new daos request for funding, they are asking for 5,000 usd instead of the 2,000 for new daos, they didnt split introduction and proposal, and they did not answer any of my questions here about the project. Even with my questions here, they requested 5,000 usd on astro, which I dont know if it was already approved, but I saw some votes, including votes from other DAOs from which the moderators are part.
About the plans, I saw no plan for Moderators DAO in the future and I saw no links in the proposal to the projects, explaining them.
According to what I understood from Fritz, both Creatives DAOs would have power, but the one they created has another group more powerful than the DAOs from the Creatives Council. They decided without any extensive discussion and without any votings on astro that they would be the real councils of Creatives DAO. So a few group of people are considered now “TRUSTED” people, and these people have VETO power over all DAOs from the Creatives Council. It seems pretty similar to what happens on Community DAO, where if I am not wrong, Fritz also is a council and has VETO power over all the people from this DAO. For the Creatives, their idea is to have 3 groups: one for people, one for DAOs, and one for them with VETO power over all the other groups. As far as I could understand.
OK, so from my understanding the 5k that were approved are to kickstart operations regarding a NFT marketplace. Honestly, as I expressed on other topics, I feel this is an entire new project, unrelated to the Creatives DAO. I think it’s an interesting project, however I doubt that moderators (new, current, old) are the best people to push this forward, i.e. there might be other people who are a better fit to integrate this kind of team. I, at least, am not, and will request that I’m no longer on the astrodao council.
Why not call this other name than moderators dao, since it doesn’t look related to ‘moderation’?
(don’t exactly care if the limit it’s 2k or 5k, but please be aware that other incoming projects might find this unfair; however, the council has voted, and that is what’s most important).
@thephilosopher thank you for yout perspective. I will wait for further clarification, but let me just say that if the new Creatives DAO is supposed to substitute the current one, therefore applying changes in the voting process, I am against it, since the council did not vote on that. I request that a poll is created on the current Creratives DAO astrodao asking if the Council agrees with the changes.
If the new DAO is supposed to substitute the current one, due to V3 issues, and the current council is to be added as council, I don’t mind that there are other people with limited voting power, as long as there are checks and balances.
I ask the current moderators to please clarify these issues, since it seems a big change being implemented on a fairly non-democratic way (not sure about this, thus the waiting for clarification).
(just a further note: I find a bit troubling that people are added to DAOs where they are supposed to have responsibility without they being informed/asked; I kindly request that people ask me first before adding me to groups, since I might not be interested in being part of)
Hello, this Moderators DAO was approved by the official Creatives DAO as any other DAO in a poll made by @williamx
About Marketplace from conversation with @marianeu it seems Mintbase can fully work for self-sustainability so those fundings could be used to kick start another different self sustainable initiatives.
The Moderator DAO meaning is to solve the legal wrapper and other activities of the Creatives DAO but not of the singles DAOs, the whole. Like website and self-sustainability kick starts and full cross Collabs like the NCC.
In addition to be a place to get more feedback from the former councils.
But no meeting was scheduled nor group with the former councils created, so not enough to make it work. Now, the information I have is that even when this was approved and with the intentions to be used for the whole community is still going to get cancelled and funds send back to NF @Cryptonaut can update us because not sure if I get it right.
