[Discussion] Marketing DAO Council Members Remuneration

Introduction
A brief thread was posted recently by a Marketing council member requesting payout of 400 NEAR each for two Community Council members. This post has prompted some reasonable questions from the community, so I’d like to take this opportunity to elaborate on the nature of the Marketing DAO, Council work, and rational behind remunerations.

Background

  • Marketing DAO is part of a network of DAOs in the NEAR Ecosystem that are in charge of allocating funds to the community.
  • These funds were allocated on NEAR Genesis block, belong to the community, we have a duty to allocate it to appropriate community initiatives in a responsible and transparent manner.
  • Journey to Decentralisation - the Marketing DAO will eventually be fully governed by the community. At the moment, there are three Near Foundation Council Members and two Community Members. This makeup enables us to create and optimise processes and build trust before handing over total control.
  • Marketing DAO work is a non-trivial additional workload for Near team members.
  • During our last weekly call we started discussing a potential timeline for succession (as early as the end of the year), and a strategy for identifying, recruiting and retaining new high-calibre council members.

The Workload
The Marketing DAO has full stack operational demands just like any other organisation - centralised or decentralised - which include but are not limited to:

  • Raising awareness of what we do and invite community members to apply;
  • Liaising with NEAR for request of funds;
  • Receiving, assessing, and voting on proposals.
  • Meeting with projects to discuss their proposals, ask questions, make amendments as necessary
  • Following up on all projects as they submit progress reports (past grants)
  • Soon we will start writing our own (Marketing DAO) accountability and progress reports (to Community Squad + Near Foundation/Treasury).
  • Most importantly, maintain communications with other Council members - 1hr call per week,

The current workload is probably sitting at around 3-4 hours per week. A few notes on this:

  • Workload is dynamic and increasing. This is a good thing, proportional to the number of proposal and funds being disbursed, both of which are key indicator of ecosystem growth.
  • The nature of the work means that there aren’t single stretches of time we can set aside and nearly schedule X number of hours. Instead, it is closer to an always-on mode where we are highly responsive and dependent on proposals coming in (some are time sensitive), on-going communications on Telegram, etc.
  • It is important to maintain these flexibility to grant Council members as much time as they need to deal with the workload. For instance, one week it may be four hours, the week after ten hours.

The Anatomy of a Council Member
It is important to note that Community Council role is open to anyone. We encourage anyone to apply - and this is the core of the discussion:

  1. Who would be an ideal candidate; AND
  2. How can we attract them?

This area is open to interpretation but I would suggest that Council Members are:

  • Deeply embedded in the NEAR Ecosystem: they are simultaneously staking their own personal reputation to generate the trust required to manage large sums of money for the community AND they need an understanding of the trends, players, risks and opportunists in the ecosystem to be able to assess proposals.

How to attract talent is open for suggestions and experimentation. However, there are some things that strike out:

  • The Marketing DAO has had limited success in attracting new Council Members.
  • The ideal profile for a Council Member is someone that by definition does not have much spare time or is interested in doing it purely for financial reasons.
  • Very few people few willing to do meaningful work for free (see challenges in attracting people).

Remuneration
The topic of remunerating Council Members - as a group of people, rather than focusing on the person that occupies the role at the time - should not be controversial. The ideas and frameworks I share here should still hold true for Council Members long after I step down and for Members in other DAOs.

  • Remuneration should be based on the responsibility and expectations of Council Members.
  • Given the workload described above, and the sums of money we are routinely approving for a wide range of proposals, 400 NEAR seemed like a reasonable amount that would: retain Council members and attract new ones. While this amount is open for revision and consideration over time.

Punishing Success:
There is one last topic I wanted to bring up in the realm of Incentives Design.

There seems to be an ongoing trend to look at people’s payout in USD - particularly on the good days - and seeking to reduce the value and cap their potential as the price of NEAR goes up (when we should be reaping the rewards of months, years of hard work). This approach seems inappropriate to me for many reasons: the obvious are that some payouts are retroactive (misleading calculation of USD value) but most importantly: payouts in NEAR aligns incentives.

When the price of NEAR goes up, it goes up for every NEAR holder. However, for the price of NEAR to go up someone has to do the work. There is A LOT of work to be done in a complex and rapidly evolving ecosystem, and it is hard to find people - I can’t stress enough how important it is to be able to attract and retain talent. In a market when people can make 10x simply by holding, you do need special incentives to encourage people to do the work. Instead of looking at it as Person A has received X in remuneration, I would suggest looking at it as the entire market is up X%. This is a team effort, let people doing critical work earn NEAR and capture the same upside as HODLers.

Let me know what you think,

AVB

13 Likes

Awesome post :tada: My only hot take :point_down:

IMO there are very, very, few cases where this should be the case. Proposers shouldn’t really be undertaking work, distributing NEAR to third parties, or promising payment for tasks without the proposal being approved by the Council(s).

This doesn’t occur if there’s USD denominated funding across the board.

Regardless of whether the funding request is denominated in USD or not, the payout is still in NEAR. All the above holds true, however you get the added benefit of:

  • A more responsible distribution of NEAR

  • Far less volatility (downside and upside)

Take this scenario for example:

Proposer x requests funding of 100 N ($1,000) for y project.

In between proposing and the funding payout that 100 N is now valued at $500 and they’re unable to complete the proposed work (OR it’s not worth their time anymore)

What’s the solution here? Increase the amount of NEAR? If that’s the case then the inverse should also be true.

Expressed much of this here :point_down:

I get that everyone is bullish on NEAR, but as a Council member, and a member of NEAR Core, I think it’s essential the responsible distribution of NEAR takes pride of place when considering proposal payouts.

1 Like

Hi @Dacha pleased to see your regular input and involvement in marketing related topics.

Removing community involvement in DAOs is not the way forward. We cannot rely on @David_NEAR @Grace @jcatnear without compromising the long term goal of decentralized governance.

For me personally, if you have time and want to get to know me let’s meet and I am more than happy to explain my involvement…

I believe it is important that the community has understanding and trust in the work of community council members, in a DAO as strategically important as the Marketing Vertical DAO.

So if you want to ‘know what I do here’ lets make a time to chat… :grin:

4 Likes

This is 1000000000(I’d add more 0s but it would be spammy)% the case. The ultimate goal of any of the DAO Verticals which have NEAR Core sitting as a Council member is to pass it over to members of the community who have proven themselves time and time again (see: @cryptocredit && @satojandro )

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I think Carl is being a little modest, too - 30 years+ of marketing experience in the streets of London before he (naturally) left for the good life! :tada:

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Ok, thanks for information.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts Dacha.

While I have been living in a city undergoing an extended, harsh lockdown for several months, resulting in engagement with NEAR being close to 24/7, it is worth breaking down the nature of the engagements.

These are not manual labour type of jobs where you can simply add hours and come up with a defined outcome (i.e. number of bricks laid down). Most of the engagements that you listed require creative thinking, high level problem solving, draw on months and years of experience across different fields and require a lot of experimentation in the implementation. Reasses and repeat.

You get paid by the quality of the input and insights you bring, the responsibility you take on board, the flexibility to adapt to the project’s needs and show up on short notice, etc. A good example would be REF where the engagement per week is much lower than the one you’ve listed, but the nature of the work is much higher value.

It is also worth mentioning at all projects, DAOs, etc. have mechanisms for appointing and removing community members. It should provide some reassurance that none of the other other Council / Team members of the projects I am involved with have expressed concerns to date about a lack of engagement, etc.

Also worth noting that nothing is ever stagnant. In a rapidly evolving ecosystem, the nature of engagement with various projects continues to evolve. I have stepped down as a Degen (although I am still around for high level advise from time to time), and grown the Silicon (Guild) team to a total of five members as we try to keep up with demand - plant the seed and delegate. Win and help win.

I’ll close by stating what David and Carl have already pointed out: the aim of the Marketing DAO is to transition to fully decentralised, driven by community members. Getting rid of the only two current Community Members would seriously detract from this goal.

3 Likes

This is really understand and straight to the point. The marketing Council as in fact changed the way proposals are made and its more of quality and impact and not on quantity with wasted man and material resources so guys good work. Sitting down reading through various proposals looking at the impact on NEAR ECOSYSTEM and the locality in particular isn’t easy

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Actually, will be interesting to read your thoughts about current situation with Marketing in Near. And particular topic about guilds. As you can see, half of them chase money here, without real work. Thanks again

(Not at all guilds)

1 Like

Really nice post, we need to reach out the end users and marketing is an important tool for doing so.

I want to be more involved in the Marketing. I have several ideas/plans. I am also leading a Squad here in Venezuela, and I am deeply embedded in the NEAR Ecosystem: Sent you both @David_NEAR @satojandro a DM to receive more information on how to apply.

I have made a new thread to show all the work and connections on the NEAR ecosystem: Venezuelan Squad

The Anatomy of a Council Member
It is important to note that Community Council role is open to anyone. We encourage anyone to apply - and this is the core of the discussion:

  1. Who would be an ideal candidate; AND
  2. How can we attract them?

This area is open to interpretation but I would suggest that Council Members are:

Deeply embedded in the NEAR Ecosystem: they are simultaneously staking their own personal reputation to generate the trust required to manage large sums of money for the community AND they need an understanding of the trends, players, risks and opportunists in the ecosystem to be able to assess proposals.

3 Likes

Hey hey!

This is great to hear. Let’s jump on a call sometime soon with @marketingdao-council. When works for you? I’m at NEARCON until the 29th

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Great !

When ever you can, please send me the schedule here: fritzmwagner@gmail.com

@marketingdao-council @David_NEAR