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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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While I understand your point, the reality is the NF is still heavily involved in the process. I see this “transition” as the next step in moving the process to be fully governed by the community.
The word “dictator” was not the correct term. This is a “transitionary” role that can be defined as the management of the funds are transitioning to the community. Or maybe Erik stays on as an advisor and in a fundraising role.
To be clear Erik mentioned that key members of the guild community would be involved in decision-making from the start. It sounds like the next great steps would be:
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Define the transitionary role Erik will play and when the power will be handed over to the community.
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Identify and vote for the Guild leads that will participate in the early process. I would assume there would need to be turnover from the Community Team as well. Along with a transition plan for the community team.
Overall, the goal of transitioning the administration and funding away from the NF and into the hands of the community makes total sense. I think we can all agree on that. However, there needs to be a transitionary phase and plan to ensure it is a success. I believe this is what Erik is proposing.
The question of why just not transition it to the community now? Has a simple answer, with two parts.
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There is a lot of knowledge within the NF and Community Team about guilds and more specifically specific guilds. This knowledge needs to have a transition.
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There is also the question of incentive alignment. The NF is incentivized to transition funding of guilds to guilds. However individual guilds are incentivized to ensure they have their own funding. With this in mind, there needs to be a governance model.
Maybe the answer is the CommunityDAO, but in either case, it warrants more discovery and discussion.
@ALuhning @Ozymandius please chime in here as well as OG Guild leaders.
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As part of Sankore 2.0 Community and Guild, I’m very happy to contribute as much as we can to this initiative to self-sustain the Guild Ecosystem. As a Guild leader myself, for over 9 months, with a regional presence in East Africa, I see this as an opportunity to expose this ecosystem to more communities and talents in our region.
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This is a crucial point.
If all that was needed was a way of moving N from point A to point B, then a system in which people with staked tokens being allowed to vote, as is currently used in other blockchains, could solve it with much less issues than the ones we are considering.
Since NF does not focus all of it’s spending on dapps, we have to assume there are other components that are being valued.
So we would do well in accepting the complexity of having MANY types of Guilds/DAOs in the ecosystem; they all follow slightly different purposes and their metrics and goals are also slightly different.
As we can see in any democratic system, some things are more valued than others, often to the detriment of those doing the evaluation.
Expertise, and the transfer of knowledge is crucial in maintaining a healthy and complete ecosystem. Not all things can be managed by ‘common sense’.
My request to @erik.near is that, while having discussions with the community about this topic, we go up from fundamentals, and not the other way around.
With any ‘structure provider’, which NF is, a structure has to be provided. I agree that that structure must focus on fundamental rules of engagement, and not micro-managing.
However, it’s on that fundamental level that NF has been lacking, and that is not solved just by transfering the decision-making to the community. (just note on the Vertical DAOs Structure: for many months they have been doing incredible work in growing the ecosystem; they needed only small tweaks, imo. I am still to read a cogent argument on why we should move away from that system)
Guild’s/DAOs need several things in order to grow and continue to be a part of this community, and any structure must be clear and have a vision.
As a Guild leader, I would like to have:
- a clear way forward; sad to see the tiers list were completely scrapped. Not necessarily that system, but some system is needed; if Guild’s/DAOs can see a way for themselves to be rewarded for their growth, they will grow and become an asset to the NEAR ecosystem.
- a system which accepts the complexity of human endeavors. If we have devs asking money to artist-minded-people, maybe they won’t be able to appreaciate what’s being proposed; if we have artists asking $ to lawyers, the same will happen. This is why I’m wary of communities that are too generic, they end up not being communities at all.
- truly decentralized decision-making, based on responsibilty and engagement; the illusion of independence allows only for power transfers between individuals; what we need is groups collaborating with other groups, in interdependent ways.
my 2 cents, thanks
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Wow, lot of interesting points and lots of surprising and not-so surprising initial reactions to the HoG idea. Here’s my perspective on a couple themes raised followed by some thoughts on guilds/guild program in general for consideration.
Point 1 - On Dictators and Leaders
Perhaps dictator wasn’t the best choice of terms; however if we take an objective approach and put aside whatever cultural and experiential baggage is attached to it, then it provides more relevant context here “benevolent dictator - an authoritarian leader who exercises absolute power but is perceived to do so with regard for benefit of the population as a whole.”
Hopefully everyone can achieve some common ground and rally around what I personally consider to be fact - that @erik.near and others that might be involved in this initiative or others have nothing but the best intentions and desire to see the guilds program and all the guilds in it succeed if they are providing value to the ecosystem.
Second point I want to make here is that I don’t care how decentralized a community gets, it’s going to require leadership. That leadership will emerge regardless of how formal a system is put in place to elect, appoint, or otherwise signal a willingness to follow someone into battle. In the beginning, it is hugely beneficial to have one or a few people with a deep understanding and experience with all facets of a system setting the initial course. It gets things going and it’s the way every initiative happens - including the Community DAO referenced several times as the “solution” to all of this. So, in this respect, @blaze is correct in identifying this “benevolent dictator concept” as a transitional appointment.
Quite frankly, as guild leaders, we are lucky to have people like @erik.near and @jlwaugh and others who are willing to run with these experiments in an effort to improve guild coordination, funding, and so on. If people like them hadn’t stepped up to establish the guilds program in the first place, we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion now.
Point 1 Key Takeaways: We all have limitations/strengths, let’s be smart enough to recognize when people have good intentions and value people for what they bring to the table. Leadership inside a community is not a bad thing - it’s a necessary thing and it’s going to show up in some form regardless of the system being used.
Point 2: On Decentralization and Experimentation
I find it amusing or ironical that several reactions focus on how this initiative goes against concepts of self-driven community and decentralization, but then immediately refer to centralizing all operations in a community DAO, or seeing the issuance of various standards for how groups should be setup or operate, or seeing polls posted that are so clearly biased that any result is completely meaningless regardless of the turnout. How about we all be careful about suggesting there is one way to do things and instead focus on facilitating growth in many different ways across many different initiatives and platforms?
There have been many of these types of experiments since the inception of the guilds program (and I know that’s part of the issue) - but let’s consider the benefits of running them instead of focusing on the downsides of yet another change. Every time, good or bad, we learn something We can do a much better job of keeping track of what the lessons learned are so as not to repeat them (seen some of that too), but in general, do not recommend shying away from experimentation.
Enabling experimentation also means being agile enough as a community to run them. So yes, one could try and plan out in detail how this might go and conduct months and months or even years of consultations with every stakeholder to try and make something that pleases everyone, but guess what - that will fail too. It will just take longer to do it and it will therefore take longer to get to what is working.
So, to everyone of you that doesn’t like the HoG concept, or has another suggestion for doing things - why don’t you run your own experiment? At the end of the day, we’ll either have a whole bunch of failed experiments, or a bunch of prosperous community ecosystems running inside the larger NEAR community, or more likely a combination of both. Pretty sure most who have been around for long enough will agree with me when I say that if you have an idea for how to better things, run a community, build a project, or something else - the support from NEAR, the community, the foundation is there if you put the work in to put together a real plan with objectives and value expectations and earn the trust that some seem to think should be granted automatically simply by creating a near account.
Point 2 Key Takeaways: Doubtful there is any such thing as a truly decentralized community. There is no one right way. Experiment lots, fail lots, learn, and improve with each iteration. Agility is important to facilitate innovation.
Point 3 - On Value
Behind everything pertaining to funding is an inherent desire to measure the contribution or value of a guild. I believe that to be a responsible approach to take. It’s problematic though when we compare guilds as discussed in that link above. Rightfully so, guilds should operate in a transparent manner, but before anyone starts pointing fingers or questioning value, they better be very aware of what the guild’s value streams and contributions to the ecosystem actually are. Those metrics need to be designed/agree on collaboratively between the guild and what I would suggest is something akin to an audit/review committee (mentioned more below). No two guilds are the same. Each has unique objectives. Each brings value to the ecosystem in a different way and it’s not always easily observed/measured.
Point 3 Key Takeaways - operate transparently, realize that no two guilds are the same, understand a guild and its objectives before assuming the worst.
On Guilds and the Guild Program
Many of us have had many discussions and opined on guilds and the guilds program since it was put in place. Throughout that time, I see consistent themes that still are not addressed and they all revolve around fundamental process/structure as @frnvpr rightly points out. Address them once and for all and it would go a long way to enabling guilds to follow their own paths in generating measurable and recognized value for the ecosystem:
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the strategic framework isn’t explicitly laid out or understood by all guild leaders. That puts the onus on guild leaders to interpret their role including deciphering norms and expectations. It’s about supplying well-defined intent and then trusting people to understand work towards achieving that intent within whatever constraints/limitations exist (mission command).
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the funding structure is constantly in flux, something HoG is experimenting in rectifying, just as community DAO is experimenting in rectifying through another approach. I’m of the opinion, expressed several times that a budget-based system that a guild can rely on for a set period of time, reviewed periodically, and linked to measurable/demonstrable value is a preferred approach. Project based grants and funding do not take into account the role a guild leader or other staff involved in keeping it running put into it. I’d say the majority of us are going to do it regardless of compensation, but if we can give leaders the ability to devote more time and focus to their guild, then I think the benefits will be seen through better organization, better reporting, and higher guild value in the long-term. Periodic budgets also don’t preclude the guild from coming up with plans and applying for/receiving funding for special projects that are actual projects (have a start/end date and expected deliverables).
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audit/review structure is missing. Part of setting expectations means being very clear about what a guild must provide or how it must behave inside the ecosystem, but it needs to be done carefully so as not to introduce bureaucratic process (producing something just for the sake of the process). It’s basically about measuring the value of a guild in the ecosystem and that value proposition is different for every single guild. I’ve written about the dangers of comparing guilds before here on the forum. Each needs to be looked at individually and measured against objectives they set for themselves while also aligning and measuring the value associated with achieving those objectives to the ecosystem/community.
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operations and training - Some structure in the guilds program is good and desirable and this is the one area where it is essential in order to level the playing field and ensure all guilds start from the same point. I believe it would be an interesting experiment to produce a “Guild Leader’s Course” that basically teaches guild leaders how to run guilds in the NEAR ecosystem. Please don’t interpret that wrong - I’m not saying it should teach one way to run and build a guild, I’m saying it can enlighten guild leaders to many of the ambiguities, values, beliefs, norms, and expectations that currently exist in a more structured way to provide the framework within which a guild operates. It could then serve as the repository of lessons learned over time, getting updated as results from the various experiments are realized. While it would not restrict guild leaders from running and growing their guilds in a certain way, it could provide a pathway for more guild leaders who have vision/passion but no idea of how to run a community/organization with an aide-memoire to follow to get things going. Onboarding of guild leaders is something Vital Point AI is looking to help with, and the on chain guilds platform is working to give guild leaders some basic/common management tools to help grow their communities in whatever manner they choose to do so.
In Summary
I’m sure I’m missing thoughts, but will sum up by saying I agree with a lot that is in this thread and disagree with a lot as well - and that should be ok. I’m pretty confident that whether it’s the HoG experiment, Community DAO, or the next bright idea - we’re going in the right direction.
There’s a lot of smart and intelligent people providing excellent advice and recommendations, but at some point we just need to do things and see how they turn out, take the feedback and adjust. And, of course, we don’t just have to do one thing - do lots.
And above all, it pains me when I see people disrespecting the values/experiences of others even if its not overt. The micro-aggressions cut just as deep. Let’s remember to be kind, patient and respectful towards one another, remaining open and inherently aware that we each have perspectives from backgrounds and experiences that give us unique ways of looking at things and add value from the diversity of thought. It’s when we think our way is the only way or are not open to seeing things from other’s perspectives that we end up creating toxicity and a community none of us will want to be a part of.
Finally, I’ll shut up by providing this which is what I hope could be the start of a discussion about the universal principles that we’d all agree are important for guild leaders to operate under. Thanks for reading.
Cheers.
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Hey! Great, Community Team should be there, of course,
On the DAO groups, with voting power? Sure.
As advisors? Yes, please.
But not total control of the voting or decision process from a high hierarchy mechanism,
You know, right now is already working that way, with the Community Team as councils on the DAOs, so the transition is not what I see proposed here, it seems just a change of hands from one team to another.
Thank you, I fully agree with you here:
We do need to talk about this further.
Suppose the NF management decides to run this initiative without enough conversation with the Guild Leaders and against the community sentiment. In that case, it will be a colossal mistake that could lead to a break in our community.
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Amazing intervention. Thanks!
Important: Family, we need to start trusting in our community. Let’s decentralize the power.
I need to disagree with you in the followings:
I don’t see anything good in a dictator, it is necessary when a community is not ready to be free but it is indeed not a good thing.
We need leaders, of course, but with the same voting power as the community, the community will listen and then will choose. That is decentralization because leaders are really speakers and advisors, and we all share our part here.
On Communities who enjoy freedom:
Leaders are speakers and advisors, but they have the same voting rights. And they are chosen by the communities
I believe you need to recheck the thread:
- The proposal on this thread wants to run a Community DAO too
- The proposal on this thread wants to run it with a dictatorship (not inclusive)
- A community DAO initiative already exists
- The community DAO initiative that already exists is an open and inclusive one where everyone is invited to be part
- The community DAO that already exists is being shaped by the whole community (decentralization)
We do want to do things that don’t exist, we want to build the web3, and we want to improve democracy, we are pioNEARs, so we are not afraid that this doesn’t exist, the main goal is to be decentralized and we are going achieve it.
And to do so, we need to invite over the community to discuss further, so the iteration is beneficial.
Finally, I agree that this is not easy, and because of that, I disagree with you on being more agile if we are going to lose decentralization. Why rush over? IT is not going to work with a rush and without inviting others and being inclusive.
If the House of Guilds team really wants to help, they should be joining the Community DAO that already exists, and then… Later, if they like, they can make a proposal for changes or run another initiative from what was learned, inviting everyone.
A draft document is a way to do so… shared with all the Guild Leaders
but why did they decide to not play with the team? to not play with the community? I am sure they want the best, but It really feels that way now, not inviting.
And hey, for sure, when we jump in on our first meeting together, the House of Guilds proposal team with the Guild Leaders, we will sort this out and we will find ways to go further and grow, as I am sure we all want the best for our NEAR Community.
Now, I totally agree with you from here:
About what you share on Guilds and the Guild Program… yeah, there is a need to build a more strategic framework, funding structure could be budget-based, for sure we need a team to audit and review I proposed an evaluation spreadsheet, we could take a look on that again or generate more ideas @jcatnear @Jessica @Jloc @jiten123321 @simeon4real and these ideas could be voted on by the community, not imposed.
About the operations and training that’s a great proposal, Great one! from Guild Ops Team you could take care of, right? Even you could do it together with the Near University @shashi is leading new initiatives there like the NCE. And it could be also an online course with LearnNear.Club with @sasha you guys from Guild Opos should contact the Education Institutions we have and make that happen!
Love the pic you shared 
Cheers 
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Lots of interesting feedback in this whole topic since my last post! tbh some of it is more constructive than others and I want to echo some other community members who have suggested that we should ascribe good intent to everyone and avoid biased takedown posts or rabble rousing because that cheapens the discourse here. I really appreciate the genuine engagement!
As usual, will react in a batch to some of the themes but want to keep moving forward so am not going to address point-by-point or we’ll just end up on an infinite thread with no shipping.
HoG isn’t the only viable proposal
This isn’t some mandated NF official policy, it’s separate. It’s a proposal I’m running with to fix some ongoing problems and fill a gap that’s likely to exist going forward as the NF has to operate at higher levels of abstraction and will be less able to fund specific guilds or other initiatives. It also provides a way to test-drive something new that could be quite useful later. I’m hoping to be aggressive on shipping it but realize that could be too optimistic.
I think maybe this proposal is interpreted as the only way forward and as if it prevents other things from existing. If you have an experiment that should exist that helps the ecosystem and aligns with the bigger picture, do that too. Things like Community DAO aren’t made impossible because of this.
NF funding questions
I’m trying to focus on HoG in this thread rather than anything related to NF policy or community funding here since those are two totally separate threads*
"benevolent dictator" term
This is a term from within the open source (eg Linux) community that most people maybe didn’t have proper context for, so I didn’t realize it would be so triggering. I’m not trying to make a political point with it… the point of using that term is to acknowledge that there are a million small decisions that come up and someone has to make them. It is better to ship a thing that doesn’t have every single piece figured out and community driven that actually works rather than get bogged down in trying to ship a perfect thing. That’s a bad approach in software and in governance both.
The goal here is thus to focus on shipping and experimenting and bringing in members of the community but without forcing them to deal with all the exceptions and edge cases right away. That’s what kills so many interesting ideas in governance – everyone demands perfection immediately and the proposer or participants just get tired and give up.
This is meant to be transitional. I don’t want to run this thing long-term, I want it to stand on its own. But it has to get there somehow. Startups need founders. So the proper term here is more like “benevolent dictator for now” (to contrast the “benevolent dictator for life” used in OSS), one that Illia coined a few years ago and has stuck around.
Operations
@ALuhning made some really good points about operations and accountability which I want to acknowledge and echo too. My hope is to solve the funding need first then move to how we can help with operations so the community ecosystem (not just “guilds”) runs smoothly and delivers magic.
synchronous call
It’s hard to figure out timezones but I set up a zoom call for tomorrow 2-3pm Eastern US time where anyone interested can chat and obv will have more to come as this develops. DM me for details.
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Having take much time going through all the post, I feel is important we still look into this matter critically, let make a calculated decision, @erik.near thank you for the forsight, but pls still give it another look let not rush things, is an awesome plan, but if executed in a wrong time the community will suffer for that.
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Very interesting indeed. Liked the idea.
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Sweet info!
On behalf of C1 Guild and Writer’s collective i will say this is an epic innovation and we support it 
.
Looking forward to action.
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It’s still in the experimental phase and we won’t know if it would work if we don’t try it first.
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Hey Erik!
I’m a part of Guild Ops of the @ConciergeTeam team.
After reading this post, I appreciate that you are very concerned about the funding mechanism of Guilds because, during most of the meetings with guild leaders, they complain about slow funding from the foundation. You won’t believe some guilds have been waiting for a quarter to pass their proposals so we need to rectify this.
Yes, this is where we are lagging right now.
We as Guild Ops can take charge of this part and right now we are the team who acting as a bridge between NF and the Guild ecosystem. Where we’re helping new/old guilds with every kind of support. We are mainly focusing on making Guild independent and trying to increase coordination between Guild<>Guild and Guild<>Projects.
In my opinion, the proposal by @chronear is the future face of the Guilds where he is saying that “With more than 130 Guilds in our ecosystem, it would be unjustifiable if we don’t have a scalable program to complement this growth of interest in contribution.”
And to solve the scalability issue in the guild program, we Guild ops are working on a plan you can read my comment on the post his post to know more about it.
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Hi Erik, I’m interested in the synchronous call.
For the sake of transparency, I’ll just note a few things publicly.
Like most dictators, benevolent or not, we are now focused on semantics. It really doesn’t matter the particular nuances with which different groups may have attached to the term - while some have the luxury to be familiar with it in the context of linux software, others have actually fled dictartorships and experienced how institutions get corrupted and collapse. At the end of the day, what matters is the substance of the proposal. None of the main points have been addressed:
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How are the powers and responsibilities given to HoG, under your initial supreme command, any different to the powers and responsibilities the NEAR Foundation has had until now, also under your command? Please let’s not deflect all responsibilities to Guilds. The NEAR Foundation has had challenges and many experiments over the last few months, creating an entirely separate entity run by the same person who was ultimately responsible then but with seemingly less accountability leaves many questions to answer.
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The scope of the ‘experiment’ - immediately absorbing everything that existed up until now AND receiving funding in the hundreds of millions runs counter of running an experiment we all acknowledge can (and statistically will) fail. How may we run an actual experiment that does not take all Guilds and funding structures as collateral? What is the minimum viable product? What funding are we talking about initially? ($100m is my initial conservative estimate).
Final note, I have been receiving several messages of support from quite active and senior community members who do not speak out, which is very telling of the nature of the benevolent dictator we fear: at what point does the benevolence end when everyone’s pay check depend upon pleasing the supreme leader? I know it is extremely unfair that having held such high positions actually disqualify you from certain roles, but being out of touch and inaccessible by the community you seek to lead present some major challenges.
Looking forward to discussing some of these during the call,
AVB
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Thanks @chronear, @blaze , @ALuhning and @erik.near a couple of thoughts on my side, that broadly compliment what has been said so far:
Long term time frames:
Guilds are people infrastructure, which is sometimes even more tricky than technical infrastructure to keep engaged over time (people will ghost and rug). Especially in the early days of a new system where it’s not clear how something establishes itself and grows over time, it’s important there is a reliable and unified engine of development in the early days (call it benevolent dictator or gamemaker).
Setting expectations and ‘rules of the game’ for guilds and how they should expect to (or can) operate is important for providing clear pathways to growth and development. Sometimes setting parameters or limitations helps new systems evolve faster.
A couple of other thoughts:
Scope defines conditions and requirements for onboarding.
Incentives define speed of development and adoption.
Ideally, a clean scope and high incentives can jumpstart something like this - but in reality this machinery is a lot like sailing a ship: Raise the sail to go fast = add more incentives, drop the sale to go slow down = lower incentives and be more rigorous with entry conditions.
In my opinion, any House of Guilds needs to ‘sail the ship so to speak’ and be playing a constant iteration game of setting scope and incentives, and then being attentive to whether the desired user base and growth trajectory is on par with expectations and goals.
Macro goals on an ecosystem level, can help clarify certain value propositions.
For example, we know that DAOs are in their infancy, and that Research and Development into DAOs is something that will pay dividends for ALL ecosystem stakeholders over the next 10 years. So a guild along the lines of a Lockheed Martin Skunkworks (call it say, Sput-Works), that does R&D experimentation, guides, and theory around the possibilities of Sputnik V2 and V3 + Astro (i.e. here is how you can put the European Union on Sputnik V2) will be helpful for realizing this infrastructure at scale and with ecosystem projects (when I have questions about what DAO I want, I talk to Sput-works!).
Same goes for Gaming Communities, or ‘teams’ of mercenaries interested in collaborating on certain sectors of crypto.
Glad you are taking the lead of this Erik and excited to see where it can go. Happy to help as I can!
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Hello all,
a couple extra thoughts to add to the discussion.
I think our discussions would be more profitable if we addressed a few topics that might not be exactly shared concepts, looking at previous discussions; something like:
- vision
- decentralization
- operational roles
- decision making/voting
About Vision
Vision is something necessarily unified, or centralized. If a community is large enough, then a vision becomes many visions, and multiple visions compete with each other, since ‘a’ vision is, by it’s own definition, a guiding principle.
I have no strong opinion on who should provide a vision for this ecosystem, but it’s logic that NF fills that role.
As I stated above, the platform provider must provide a platform; therefore, I strongly believe that most Guilds/DAOs in the ecosystem look to NF for this, and not to themselves or their peers.
Decentralized communities dissipate energy. That’s why they provide use cases for the NEAR token and blockchain. They operate mainly outwards. For this reason, they are not the best entities to hold and develop a vision for the entire ecosystem.
Vision exists a priori to the community it creates.
About decentralization
There are, in the NEAR ecosystem, competing visions about decentralization. There are 2 broad concepts:
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Decentralization means decision making is not done at the NF level, but at the community level. This concept looks for independence, anonymity and selflessness as guiding profiles.
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Decentralization means a system that organizes itself in smaller units of decision, independent of a central power. This concept looks for interdependency, group-belonging and collaboration as guiding profiles.
Maybe the way I describe it is less than perfect, but I do think (1) is not decentralization, only an attempt at it. The way I see it, efforts that try to simply change the decision making from one group to another do not seek true decentralization.
For example, the way the Community DAO is organized, at it’s basic level, is not more decentralized than the current NF led systems. One DAO that seeks to include all other groups is mimicking the current system, in which different groups gravitate around NF. I believe it has a strong case to become one of the most important DAOs in the NEAR ecosystem, but not as a replacement of NF.
I do believe the current iteration of the CREATIVES DAO, in which DAOs with proven track record + a team of moderators manage fund delivery, is a superior version of previous governance structures. It follows concept (2), in which groups self-manage inside a larger structure. Plus, it adds to the previous model (Vertical DAOs), makes it more complex, i.e. less centralized. More importantly, it respects the need for responsibilty, inderdependency and collaboration. Groups are encouraged to work outwards, as well as inwards.
About operational roles
Although there are many groups/individuals willing to engage with fundamental governance issues, the vast majority is more interested in bridging NEAR and their own projects. I think it’s paramount that we do not forget this.
Groups working in this ecosystem are more interested in having a clear, stable vision be provided, so that they can operate locally, in the projects that are important to them and to their communities.
They are less worried about the details of how operations are run, and more about fitting in one system and growing in it.
They want to know things like:
- Can my projects be funded?
- What are the ground and the ceiling for Guilds/DAOs, in NF’s vision?
- If my DAO is growing, can I grow even more, or there is cap for that growth in this ecosystem?
- What is expected of a partner (as opposed to a dependent entity; i.e. If I grow a lot, can I become a real player in the ecosystem)?
As a Guild Leader, I feel that the Vertical DAO system answered some questions, the Tier System answered others (sad to see that be eliminated without even being tried), so any system, new or old, must take these into account.
If the relationship between Guilds and NF falls in line with the vision NF has for it’s platform, then we have the ground set for a long and fruitful engagement.
About decision making/voting
It is ofc interesting discussing structures, or competing structures. HoG, Vertical DAOs, etc, are iterations of the same idea.
For most Guilds/DAOs/individuals in our ecosystem, asking supports to a Vertical or to the HoG is operationally the same. Being funded on a proposal-base or on a guild-identity-base is also operationally the same thing. Decentralized groups are inherently flexible, adaptable.
They would not care about ‘endowment’ or ‘overhead’.
All they care about is who votes, and who is being supported.
And about that, @erik.near I again repeat the example of the Creatives DAO or even the experiments @jlwaugh is running with multi-DAOs or DAOs-of-DAOs.
Allowing for complex groups to engage with each other in decision-making is more interesting and less centralized than having chosen Council Members, following a certain protocol.
Currently, under the Vertical DAO system, Creatives DAO vote on certain projects, Marketing DAO votes on certain projects, but some are complex enough that they are voted by both (currently on separate forum topics and $ flows). It would be interesting to have both the Creatives DAO and the Marketing DAO (which in turn have members) be member of a larger DAO.
House of Guilds is an elegant way of describing this scenario, which is already possible on AstroDAO.
The challenge is making this all technically smooth, but that’s kinda the proposition we are making, right? Using web3 technologies to experiment with ‘more complex’ systems, not just taking old models and running them on new platforms.
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That is indeed a great idea, because people from the Creatives DAO discover Marketing DAO by accident or by really looking for it. If all verticals are part of major DAO, this would make the ecosystem easier to understand for those who are entering. I discovered Community DAO just now, for example, and only because the DAO I opened would not be properly a creatives dao, so I was directed to Educational, and then to Community.
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I agree. The custom function calls are hard for many people, so the complexity becomes hard. If Astro had many function calls ready to use, instead of us having to put some json code.
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Thanks for such a thoughtful reply! A few comments…
Yesss! Here is the official NEAR vision (established in 2020): a world where all people control their data, money, and the power of governance.
I’d love to see more “Community DAOs” with open, inclusive membership structures to promote diversity through accessibility.
We should be mindful that NF is part of the community, not separate!
Very important! I believe this could also be said about Community DAO groups, especially those involving other DAOs.
Multi-DAO Governance
That’s my intention for this group of active DAOs in our Community DAO.
Which others might be included?
I’d love to get your feedback on the purpose, vision, and mission of NEAR Community DAO:
Anyone may join us here on the forum and connect with members via Telegram, Discord, etc. Be sure to create a proposal to add your NEAR account to this open Community group, if you haven’t already 
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