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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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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