Please find the Q3 budget hosted by the GWG to steward the delivery of NDC V1 Gov led by the NEAR Community. The GWG will steward and facilitate Gigs, RFPs, and Roles to BuiDL and deliver NDC V1 Gov by late Q3 '23.
About the NDC
The NDC is a Community-Led movement to BuiDL Web3 Gov on NEAR.
Thanks for your questions AVB. And apologies for the delay in responding, I’m not often checking in on the forum.
We presented a new and detailed GWG spend reporting page in one of our recent public Tuesday calls. The page currently has five sections:
All of our quarterly budgets since inception of GWG
The monthly Community Treasury Requests since April. That’s when we started drawing from the Community Treasury instead of NF, and these can be thought of as “updated budgets” on a monthly basis
Off-chain spend reporting, which is an open view into the AirTable where we process the bounty requests
On-chain spend tracking. We’ve built a widget together with PikesPeak that allows for easy viewing and spend analytics
NDC spend towards the $1.5M cap we were provided to deliver v0, which includes the spend of the first two grassroots DAOs (CDAO and MDAO) as well.
I’m hoping the airtable reports in section 3 will give you most of the answers you are looking for. Each contributor have provided a short summary or “justification” to their bounties. For April, May and June you can find these in the links titled “Individual Bounties” in section 3. The Core Contributors recently also started providing longer individual transparency reports, some on GovForum and others on SayAlot. The links to these reports are also included.
We haven’t typically been publishing names of contributors online out of respect for their privacy. Let me know if you are still interested in knowing more after having gone through the provided reports.
Here are some more specific answers to your questions:
who is occupying these roles?
what are their duties, KPIs, etc.?
A: The Governance line item is a placeholder for Ozy, our chief governance architect since inception and also General Manager of GWG since it’s v3 charter since v3 was ratified in early June.
A: The UX Design line item is a placeholder for Lit Collective who has been helping out in the Tech WG.
A: one part of this is for unforeseen or extraordinary expenses, while the other part is for FX fluctuations.
What are some examples of acceptable use of contingency funds?
A: unforeseen or extraordinary expenses should be not already been budgeted for, or represent a scope increase / budget overrun, and must still fall within the GWG mandate. The FX contingency gets triggered in cases where the Near FX goes down between the time of CT Transfer and the actual bounty payment.
What lessons can be drawn from all the previous budgets and the Contingency funds provisions there?
How much money of the previous budgets contingency funds was used?
A: We have not had to use any contingency for unforeseen expenses between Jan-May, and these wern’t even budgeted for in Q4. We did have to use some $1,700 of contingency in the June period.
A: Between the two types, the FX fluctuation would have been more widely used, since the Near rate has dropped more frequently than it has increased. But due to most other expenses coming in below budget and the one singular and small actual use of contingency, it’s hard to draw any further conclusions.
Where are the reports for the use of contingency funds?
What is the status of any unused contingency funds?
A: During Q4 and Q1 the contingency funds simply didn’t set aside nor get triggered, it was just a number in the budget that didn’t get used and nothing else. The un-spent funds part of the April, May and June funds were repaid to the Community Treasury, at 11,000, 20,000 and 11,000 Near respectively. We didn’t do a full and exact GAAP-compliant account of how much went towards budget overruns vs spending below budget vs. FX-related gains/losses. But it’s easy to see on chain that we only spent what we said we would spend and that we then repaid almost everything else each month. When determining how much to repay we simply relied on common sense and rounding to the nearest 1,000 Near, leaving the rest in the GWG treasury to cover any other possible incidental requirements.
Can you provide a list of all the Admin tools and their respective cost?
A: I’m working on providing a comprehensive report of this, to be published soon. Some of the tools that come to mind include Notion, ReadAI, AirTable, Combot, Netlify, Supabase, Typeform, Google Cloud, Zoom, Trello.
Are there reports detailing the reasoning and decision makers behind the selection of these tools?
A: Most of them were simply selected by the GWG group in conversation and as part of our regular meetings. Others were simply activated and paid for by members, and then when the team found them useful we started subsidising the subscription costs. Whenever we can, we rely on free or freemium options instead. Examples of this include GitBook, G-suite, etc.
Are there usage reports? Are the tools still needed, relevant, etc.?
A: Most of them are still useful. We try and stay diligent with the cost, not extending paid seats to folks that don’t need them and revoking the license once they no longer need them. To my knowledge, Typeform and Combot are examples of tools where we did not renew the subscription once the intended usage was completed.
Are all the receipts for these services and tools available somewhere in a data room?
A: Yes. I’m currently in the process of putting them all into one place and will make them available once this process is done.
Any more details on this bounty? Can anyone apply or is it ongoing engagement with an existing party?
Reports of previous legal work done, cost per hour, etc.
A: This is a placeholder for legal counsel retained by Blaze in pursuit of setting up a new legal entity to be capable of entering contractual obligations with the NDC, which we currently can’t do. Some providers require us to sign contracts, example of such being Fractal and OtterSec.
who occupies this role?
what are their duties, KPIs, etc.
A: I hold this role. I’ve held many responsibilitities in the NDC in the past, but as of late I’ve focused on getting the funding process established and up and running. Payment on time would be the main KPI. The process for bounty payments has been sped up with every passing month so far, while at the same time implementing more rigor to the process each month. For the July process, the new measure we implemented was the Gigs listing and the requirement that all bounty claims be cross referenced to a pre-vetted and properly budgeted gig rather than applied for “out of the blue”.
A: Yuen holds the Master Scheduler position since it was created about two months back, which also includes oversight of all our mods. He stays on top of all GWG and WG TG channels, which you’ll understand takes quite some time. He facilitates setting up meeting logistics, adds the AI note taker, attends as many meetings as possible, and publishes the meeting minutes thereafter. As mentioned, he also oversees all mods and leads the weekly Mods meeting.
records on who were the decision makers on creating this role?
records on how they pay was determined?
A: The GWG group determined that a master scheduler role was required in collaboration with Blaze. Our criteria for hiring allows hiring community members to roles if they have previously received a bounty and have shown interest and are capable for a role. Yuen was interviewed by several Core Contributors and was voted in by majority vote. We initially set his monthly bounty to $4.5k which has become the normal part time bounty, on top of the note taker bounty he was already receiving. We then at the end of July removed the note taker roles, added the mods oversight responsibility, and agreed on a total of $6k for his full time involvement.
who occupies this role?
what kind of services do they provide?
A: Illu holds this role. He started out with a responsibility to help all WGs in their charter drafting process. His role has since changed and he is now involved in many more aspects of GWG, including drafting most of the future NDC processes, coordinating with NF and many other things.
discussions or documented decision making in designing this role and approving pay.
A: Illu made a public appeal to the community justifying his $10k bounty here on the GovForum
previous reports of actual work performed
A: Illu publishes his transparency reports on GovForum
can you provide more details on what this entails? My understanding is that the GWG is meant to be dissolved by the end of this quarter.
A: This is again related to potentially setting up a new legal entity as mentioned above. While the external counsel to Blaze is $8k, this $22k pertains to the actual costs and fees of setting up the entity (or potentially multiple entities, in which case the cost might be higher)
what is the structure of this bounties? (Are they public, can anyone apply?)
A: This is to be split up between five separate marketing efforts in Q3: Content creation, candidate education, voter education, content syndication, and election turnout. These are all open to community contribution and coordinated in the MarCom WG. During July Kdot was leading the group and coordinating the efforts. He then stepped down, and Ant volunteered to step into his place and now coordinates this effort.
Documented discussions and decision makers on approving this bounties
A: We’ve had a plug for “guerilla marketing” of $25k per month for many months now, though never fully used. This was simply an extension of that same budget plug, as we knew that the required marketing effort related to launching v1 would have to ramp up.
Reports on all previous marketing Bounties spending including - how much money was spent, which bounties, what was the impact, etc.
A: I see there was some unintended truncation there. The Community Manager role is held by OGruss. The Comms role was held by Sarah, who resigned at the end of July but retained some partial responsibilities for a max of $3k in July. The Growth role was a full Core Contributor role back when Matt held it, but should have been renamed Contributor role when subsequently assumed by Kdot and then by Ant, both of which were/are Contributors but not full Core Contributors.
what are their taks, KPIs, etc.
previous reports for funding including actual work performed and impact
A: RO was involved with NDC from day one as a voluenteer and one of the first to step up to drive the tech designs with several others, myself included. Zarmade was recruited by way of posting an open role, running through several interviews in competition with many other candidates and finally voted in by majority vote in GWG.
documented decision making into the hiring choice and establishing the remuneration package
A: I belive RO’s rate was established early on in negotiation with Blaze. Zarmade was recruited at $6.5k/m and accepted the role as such, but then quickly realized the role required more and made a public appeal in accordance with the GWG Charter for an increase to $13k/m
reports of actual work done, impact, etc.
A: All TechWG members post a daily doing/done update in the TechWG TG channel and they manage their work on an ongoing basis in PivotaTracker (where Zarmade shows up as ZN). Zarmade also posts regularly on SayAlot
who occupies these roles?
A: The $12.5k covers the other four regular devs in the TechWG: AF, ME, ST and AS. The $7.8 is for INC4 working on IAH. The open role was for two intended new hires, one back end engineer role and one dev ops role, which were open but have since been hired by Zarmade and RO.
what was the recruitment process like?
A: Most of the devs picked up a tech gig at some point and delivered good work, after which Zarmade and RO brought them on as regulars, giving them more work.
documented decision making into the hiring choice and establishing the remuneration package
reports of actual work done, impact, etc.
A: All TechWG members post a daily doing/done update in the TechWG TG channel and they manage their work on an ongoing basis in PivotaTracker
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