It seems the House of guild and NF forgot the importance of guilds over the years.
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Hello!
@erik.near thank you for this proposal!
Let me share my part, here Alejandro is right, I myself had a hard time this last month with the new payment process it had some delays, I know we are all trying our best, but in order to really improve on the next iteration you have to listen to us, this is a good point here:
Without taking enough time and further discussion with the community, with the Guild Leaders, the final mechanism will fail.
I am very active all around and I really feel I am missing this or not taken into account.
And hey ! I love some parts of the proposal, like this:
And I have been talking a lot that of course we should become self-sustainable asap, but not by the end of the second quarter! That is too soon!
And I am talking from my experience, from NEAR VENEZUELA, where we have a lot of members with full engagement and proven contributions.
We have a translation team working with the Legal Guild and OWS, a Marketing team working with Metapool and Near Hispano, we have a big development team now with several dapps like NEAR P2P going to be launched very very soon thanks to the guidance of @Cristian with Near University!
The dapps will allow us to generate funds in the future and we will become self-sustainable, yes!
We even want to run a Beer company owned by the community and the company will be doing marketing and generating dividends, we talk about this with @David_NEAR and he told us to not rush, that the funding will still be there for marketing, and yeah we are following the advice from you partners, we are now also learning from the Near Certified Entrepreneur program to be able to launch this, we do want to be self-sustainable and generating value for the Near Ecosystem forever, but we still need more help from you guys from NF on our first steps!
So, please please! Don’t rush!
Let’s Talk more about this with the Guild Leaders, let’s invite them to an open meeting to discuss this, 1 to 1 meetings are not enough, meetings, where I can hear what other Guild Leaders have to say. The forum is a great communication channel but why not use other channels in order to exchange all the information possible and generate new information from the interactions.
Conclusion:
I am afraid that NF will share here a (take it or leave it) proposal, that will not match the real expectations or will not work out for the goals the NF has.
When you are hiring someone you also want to hear what are the expectations on you, because everything needs to match, to work out for both.
This should be an open conversation where we shape the NEAR future all together as a community, this is the main idea of having Guilds, little communities forming the big one.
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Indeed NEAR Guilds have been the major platforms that have been marketing for the last couple of years. But let’s see how things unfold
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I support this idea, but spare us a little patience 
!
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pls give us time, and watch over our deliveries 
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Thanks all. Some quick reactions/clarifications and then my action items 
quick reactions/clarifications –
- "things are changing too fast/often…" - I know it’s been a moving target to keep funding for guilds and I sympathize. I hope this will be a simpler approach overall but I do acknowledge that it’s Yet Another Thing. That’s why I’d rather keep it small and simple at first and just deliver funding quickly. We can expand scope if it’s successful and helpful.
- "You ran the NF, what’s up?" Part of separating myself from the foundation was to be able to play more actively within the product and community space as an independent (and “on the ground”) member. I’m trying to fix some of the problems I see across the ecosystem with pragmatic solutions and I hope I can help get them implemented, including by using the knowledge and relationships I have from running the NF. Remember that the goal of the NF from the beginning has been to launch the ecosystem then step out of the way (over time). To do that, there has to be something there to catch that burden, so I’m trying to help make that happen. I hope I can help run experiments that move fast, learn fast, and can scale up to support the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars worth of capital allocations the ecosystem needs. You have to start small but think big.
- "Benevolent Dictator == Full control?" The voting members will be driving the distribution of funds and there’s no direct financial upside to the HoG structure itself (no carry % or anything). During early days, we’ll be using string and duct tape to hold it together so we’ll have to make some centralization shortcuts just to get it going but that’s how everything starts anyway. The experiments should start small enough to justify this and then as we get more controls (aka stronger/broader governance) in place we can scale them up.
- "This is fixed amount of funding / what about budgets?" Great observation! This is definitely different… rather than just funding a Guild’s fixed $1k budget, it’s pointing (for example) 10% of the $10k monthly staking allocation to that Guild. That works one month, but if the price of $NEAR fluctuates widely, there will be a mismatch between what the Guild needs and what’s being paid. This is the challenge with this proposal - it optimizes for easy decision making but is totally dependent (like all DAOs) on the underlying exchange rate of the currency and the number of eligible recipients in a given period. I think over time we’ll figure out better ways to smooth this out (eg with a $NEAR-based stablecoin) but for now we’ll have to ride the fluctuations and see how it goes.
- "the NF…" Not commenting on any NF-oriented stuff. That’s a separate thread. This is an independent proposal to help get Guilds funded, and it’s particularly relevant given that the NF working to help Guilds stand on their own at the same time. But I’d rather think of this as a new experiment.
- Y U No use Community DAO? I think that’s a great proposal and I’d love to run both in parallel to try them as different experiments. Despite the additional complexity of doing so, I think having more options (especially during early days of experimentation) is better than few. Let’s diversify the places that good community efforts can get funded! @Dasha1 what’s the best way to get involved in Community DAO?
- Guilds can vote for themselves? Yes, I think the benefits of having skin in the game where you must vote to receive funds is better than the disadvantage of having people able to vote for themselves. The algorithm can be simple but effective, eg removing the highest and lowest allocation outliers, rotating members and publicizing votes, to reduce the problem where people vote too much allocation to their own guilds.
Action items
Here are the things I’m working to do now. Some days it’s easier to create space to ship but I’m hoping to get all this sorted by end of week:
- Gather some small conversations to help answer questions and make this better. I’m working with Chronear to help get an AMA/call set up
- Find initial funding for this so we can get some $NEAR in the bank earning rewards for the first alpha vote.
- Spin up the wiki with some more detailed information about this
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Good morning. Dear @erik.near I believe every community member is tired from NF’s experiments. Give us a chance organize community-driven DAO. One place- Community DAO. No more any not transparent verticals DAO’s , please. Active community members are able to organize effective work. WE SEE PROBLEMS, and understand how can we resolve them. You can join the DAO, as well as community member or council.
Unfortunately, I don’t know who should make the decision, and can I ask @illia ‘s opinion about it.
We can create a poll on Astro DAO and Near community members vote for the proposal.
Thanks.
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Wanted to give my thoughts on this ongoing conversation as we all try to figure out the best way forward for the NEAR community, Guilds and awareness/adoption of NEAR in general.
I have been reading all the posted about proposed changes and systems with a mixed reaction:
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On the one hand, since starting to be an advisor to the @marketingdao-council in January, I have seen how much complexity there is to the current proposal/funding/report process not only for Guilds, but also for individual community members with their own projects.
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Streamlining and systematizing operations is a great way forward in many ways.
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When it comes to Guilds specifically, I do see value in funding the Guilds on a monthly basis and not their individual projects. Would give them more flexibility and freedom to adapt/react to their unique situations as they implement activities.
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It is unclear to me where that leaves individual projects seeking Community funding – that is probably a subject for another post, so I will not elaborate here. but to say that I think that is a huge issue that is potentially being overlooked.
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In terms of the Community DAO structure proposed by @Dacha, if the individual DAOs are going to be dissolved (which is sounds like is a foregone conclusion? It’s unclear to me when/how that decision was made) then I see this as a good alternative.
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That said, I STILL think you are going to end up needing sub-groups (whether formal or informal) within a Community DAO or any core group tasked with making community funding decisions. I say this because the process of fairly, adequately reviewing proposals, reading reports and tracking activity from Guild and community projects and initiatives takes time, familiarity and expertise.
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Regarding the voting members must be Guild members, I can see your point on this. But I also think there are a lot of community members like myself who are very interested in supporting the NEAR community, but are not part of Guild leadership for one reason or another. I would like to see avenues going forward to allow for more diverse participation.
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I also think in this discussion there is somewhat unrealistic expectation around how much time and effort is involved in shifting gears and enacting swift, system-wide change. I say that with hesitation, because I do not see the point in doubling-down on a problematic system. But at the same time, from my POV working with the MarketingDAO, we have been working for months to streamline and adjust the proposal evaluation process – hours of conversations, lots of great ideas, but the bottom line is community-driven processes and decisions take time. There are a lot of stakeholders, people have schedules, life situations, timing conflicts that make it hard to change their operations within a week’s time – and when it comes to actual proposals, there is so much work and orchestration that many have underway (events, hiring people, traveling to conferences). I hope as future changes roll out this month, there is consideration for the proposals and Guilds that were expecting to be able to continue and already working toward a certain event, goal, etc., that the changes may interrupt and prevent from happening.
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Yes repeated change of mechanisms, standards and principles has slowed down the progress and developments of Guilds, I hope this would be the solution to that and makes things easier.
Really hope this becomes the turning point to GUILDs becoming self-sustained and independent regarding certain projects
In an event this is going as fast as it seems, there should be special treatment to the proposals already on ground made by Guilds, their proposals should be seen through, that way the fast changing mechanism won’t cripple their activities
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Going through all the reactions - I would like to opine that the House of Guilds is in essence, going to be a Community DAO and any/all experiments that are aligned will be supported!
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This please:
Thank you Erik and @chronear an AMA is 100% necessary, and even more conversations inviting the Guilds representatives, and this should be open, not a leader driven initiative/meeting, but a discussion with decisions to be launched in a Poll
Peace, and cheers 
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Hey! Thanks for your intervention. 
Please join our telegram, and you can also join our Friday meeting:
5:30-6pm UTC ~ @CommunityDAO Study Group
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This is clearly stated here. I would love to see that NF considers the community DAO.
The ever-changing ways of doing things have affected guilds recently.
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Sir, if you want to run nimble experiments, I would strongly encourage you to go start your own Guild and go through the funding process like the rest of us. It is a bit of a stretch to want to overtake the entire Guilds structure AND DAO Verticals and call it a ’ small experiment’. Please don’t jeopardise the entire community and everything that has been built name as part of a ‘small experiment’.
The voting members that have been handpicked by the Benevolent Dictator behind closed doors… Seems like full control to me.
This makes no sense at all. There are billions of dollars to be distributed and the Foundation coffers are growing by 10% every Epoch: this is 10% of ALL NEAR rewards being created - hardcoded into the code. People or institutions that deposit NEAR for staking split the remaining 90%. Funding should not be tied to ‘exchange rates’ - can you really expect anyone to commit to doing consistent work if there is zero predictability on funding? Why should the user take ALL the risk of market movement when the funds are meant to be distributed to the community, not managed like a hedge fund by the former CEO.
This should be a priority.
I’d like to see the House of Guilds set up meetings with actual community members, in particular, the dissenting voices who are present on this thread.
It will be interesting to see whether a proposal with so much uncertainty and resistance from the community gets funded, as it would obviously be funded based on the proposer and not the substance.
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This is certain, there is not just resistance, but lack of engagement too.
I will like to invite the ones interested to vote:
- We like this proposal to go further. Erik be our dictator.
- We don’t like this proposal at all. Nothing make sense.
- We need to discuss this further! With the other Guild Leaders together.
- Why you don’t just join the CommunityDAO initiative?
0 voters
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Erik, thanks for the forward-thinking!
I agree that the amount of administration needed by the NF, Guilds, and their members is very significant and not sustainable at the current rate. We need a better mechanism that is managed fully by the community. I welcome this new experiment!
In terms of funding, I do agree that we need to determine a reasonable amount to endow this new experiment with to sustain existing guilds. If it’s purely going off of staking rewards it would need to be a considerable endowment to make sense.
In my mind, this is moving more towards a budget-oriented system which is needed. In some cases, things take months to deliver, not days.
@satojandro let’s not forget that Erik was the original creator of guilds and helped them get off the ground along with the community. He is more than qualified to lead this initiative.
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We are grateful to him, and with all the Community Team, and with all our great members from our great Community!
And we want to acomplish the main goal for the NEAR Community:
To be a self driven community, with decentralized powered decisions.
We have now more members, more engagement than in the beginning, and we have run our own initiatives like CommunityDAO that started prior to this proposal, so I am 100% against this statement:
We don’t need dictators anymore, we are many members of the NEAR community with full commitment, capables of running our community.
If @erik.near wants to work with the team, as part of the community, we welcome him on the team and his ideas or initiatives to be discussed and voted on.
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Exactly 
Absolutely
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Just btw, can this be made more clear in the sense of; are guilds to ask for EXTRA funding prior to Q2 to help them get to this height or NF is doing this to see how guilds can fulfill the core reasons why they are formed.
I see this leading to where guilds are in some way tempted to ask for HUGE sums to be able to stand strong in Q2.
Also, this could lead to the death of many guilds. That is, guilds that have nothing to do with raising self funds.
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