NDC Community Pulse: March 8, 2023

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NDC COMMUNITY PULSE

March 8, 2023

Dear Community,

Every Wednesday I provide a weekly snapshot about what we are hearing and learning in GWG (Governance Working Group) about the NEAR Digital Collective (NDC) for the entire community. This will NOT be a comprehensive, deep dive into everything that is happening, but insights, ideas, and questions for the entire community for a quick update.

Snapshot of how to learn more and get involved:

Tuesday: Community Call to Learn What’s Happening in the NDC

Wednesday: This Community Pulse goes live

Thursday: Live Polls from the GWG goes live

Friday: Matt’s Friday Reflections goes live

THIS WEEK

1. EthDenver

EthDenver was this past week and from the sounds of it it was a blast. For the GWG, we were able to test our I AM HUMAN technology for strategic use for the NDC, as well as have over 50 conversations with people about how we all are the NDC. Key things we did and learned include:

  • The Speed of the NDC is OK. It’s going to take time
  • A clearer funding request process for Grassroots DAOs is needed
  • We are continuing to clarify that our role is temporary (GWG) and that the NDC really is everyone
  • We have been asked to develop a workshop session with validators and investors to collaborate on the NDC development and constitution

HERE is the presentation for your review. ETH Denver - NDC - Google Slides

2. Upcoming Town Halls “Power of Collaboration: How the Community Treasury Is a Fresh Start”

Our first of 2 Town Halls (via Twitter) will be on March 27th (3pm CTE)

These Town Halls are a 60 min call to learn more about the community treasury, how it can be a positive new start for the community, and to review the new proposal for Community Conduct to support collaboration.

3. Key learnings from Active Listening to the Governance DAOs

As we’ve been sharing here, in V0 of the NDC we will have three DAOs that will take proposals and award funds: Developer DAO, Marketing DAO, Creatives DAO.

To that end, we’ve been listening to and working with two of those three (Marketing and Creatives) to support their development of a charter, Legal Wrapping, and the future of their DAOs in the context of self-governance.

Here are the key points we learned or questions we hear need exploration:

  • Every grassroots DAO should have a term, election, and removal process for the council
  • Transparency is a fuzzy term. If everything is posted, does it mean there is understanding? Autonomy belongs to the DAOs to make final decisions.
  • The community has the ability to challenge any charter while in the formation phase and feedback should be considered and not blindly closed or rejected
  • There should be guidelines about conflict of interest in every charter to ensure the community knows if there are conflicts of interest.
  • Can grassroots DAOs councils be members of other DAOs?
  • The purpose of a GDAO and Charter should have a strongly defined purpose
  • The approval criteria for approval should be objective and not easily gamed. Outcome-based bounties ensure this
  • What criteria should be created for when a DAO funds DAOs or individuals or a mix of both?
  • A process for inter-DAO collaboration and conflict resolution is needed.

CONCLUSION

That’s it for this week. Please tell us BELOW what you think of these initiatives - Also - What’s on your mind? How can we support your leanings and involvement? What’s something we should keep in mind?

Best to you all -

Sarah

GWG Comms

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Hello @sarahkornfeld could you please share Q4 rewards report and list of NDC trustees? Thanks !

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Hi @sarahkornfeld

Since GWG is a grassroots DAO, will the NDC take proposals from GWG as well or its treasury is secured? In what way?

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The Q4 bounties have not been published; one contributor is still waiting to receive theirs. I have asked if we can release them and indicate theirs as pending.

The Trustees can not be released until the signing of the Treasury is complete, as that determines who the final trustees will be. Until then, changes can be made. A few signatures remain.

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The GWG is a Working Group and does not fall under the Grassroots DAO umbrella. It issues bounties to its members and opens RFPs to the broader community to help build specific needs. The GWG does directly accept grant requests from the community.

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It would be great to know the trustees’ election process. I couldn’t find any posts here or anything else. Who was invited? Where? Criteria? Was it an open invitation process?

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Thank you, @blaze for your reply.

@williamx and @Dacha to provide some more insight into your questions here is the roadmap we are following as provided by the transition of NF to the NDC:

  1. NF owns the funding transition plan from NF to the Community Treasury to support the NDC. So, there’s little we have to control in that respect. We have been following the legal leads to create the trust instrument guidelines that we all will be following. Therefore, none of the legal explorations stem from the GWG individuals but the process that we must follow legally. (Here is NF’s recent post on the NDC, Decentralization, Incubator etc – Update on Near Decentralized Funding, DAOs, and Accelerator – NEAR Protocol)

  2. The GWG gives framework insights and support as collaborative problem solvers. We will not have a vote on who is funded and are here as a function of listening, framing, and supporting. The budget that is currently allocated to GWG will NOT remove funds for the GDAOs. The GWG budget reflects the needs for creating a governance platform – largely the technology for voting which is the crucial element of our collective success. There are RFPs out now for engagement with the community in the technology dev for voting, and this will continue.

  3. The Trustees have been through a lengthy and rigorous vetting procedure conducted by a working group within the GWG: the Legal Working Group, a group of legal professionals with ties to the NEAR community. Initially, the community was asked to put forward names of prominent community members, eventually, five people were asked and were happy to take on the role of becoming a Trustee of the Community Treasury. The GWG will shortly be permitted to release a beginners guide to the Community Treasury outlining more details on the Trustee vetting procedure. We are not legally allowed to provide those names or details until the legal instrument has been signed and launched. The trustees will NOT be permanent members and are engaged to START this crucial project of having community-led governance.

  4. We posted our WHO WE ARE bios, background, and intentions for the entire community, and believe we bring ethical practices, the experience that’s valuable, and a sincere desire to be of service to the community.

  5. We will provide the Q4 bounties list to the community, and we have let the person who has not collected their bounty know that they have 24 hours to do so or default. Once that timeframe has cleared we will certainly share it here. We will be providing much more information on the Community Treasury when we have the go-ahead from legal – again, we do not make that call within our group.

I hope that this has helped to give more information, and context and supports our dialog in general.

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Could you please share a link where the Community was asked? And full list of candidates with election procedure, criteria. I believe they were elected against NDC Manifesto and Constitution.

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Questions to Near Community

Have you been informed about the NDC trustees’ election?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

Would you like to participate in the NDC trustees’ election?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

Did the trustees’ election process against the NDC manifesto and constitution?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

Should the Community reelect NDC trustees?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

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Sadly, as one of the most active members of the community, I didn’t know about this through any communication channel, both on forum & NDC’s TG groups. I doubt if the larger community was informed and put forwards the names.

Is NDC Manifesto just a paper work with no application value?

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Was the Foundation aware of this & totally fine with it? @shreyas @DammnThatsCrazy

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There was no “trustee election” with regards to the trust instrument creating the Community Treasury. It would also not make any sense to have an election in this regard given that trustees are not politicians, they have to safeguard assets and act within the boundaries that are set out in the trust instrument. You need to have capable and professional individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to NEAR and its community. Once signing procedure is completed both GWG and NF will send out press releases, you will be able to see the trust instrument, information on the vetting procedure and on the trustees of the Community Treasury. Please also note that once a viable voting mechanism is live, the community will be able to remove and appoint trustees to the Community Treasury.

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@williamx @Dacha

Some responses to your questions:

  1. Here are two links to a call to action and update re the Trust where community leaders interested in the NDC had been part of a TG group with the intention to share and have community leaders announce the process –

https://t.me/c/1811690567/468

https://t.me/c/1616423917/518

  1. The GWG is learning as we go, and some have even suggested we had too many threads and not just 1 place to share updates. We are developing one Hub and process for a distribution network as quickly as possible. So apologies to all of you in advance, we are trying our best.

  2. To restate from my initial post, the trustees were needed to START the trust — one could not be opened without them. And they need to be professionals with experience in finance and management. Though, they are NOT permanent. They can and should be elected when we will have a voting platform that can support the process.

  3. The Trustees are NOT primarily there to make funding decisions. That’s what the House of Merit will do. The Trustees are there to execute decisions made by the HoM. Their role is in safeguarding the Community Treasury is largely to ensure that decisions taken are in line with the frameworks and policies prior to executing a transfer.

  4. The process of voting is the most crucial of all the things we need to create and actual use to make voting possible, transparent, and fair. We need your support in developing and testing it.

  5. Finally, the foundation is fully aware of all we are doing. Again, they own the process of the transfer to the Community Treasury. The GWG is following the rules put before us.

That said, your questions are all, of course, fair, and hope this was helpful.

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Hi Dacha, I changed the title back to the one I originally wrote because I was not making a call to vote. I respect your call to vote, though I want to honor what I originally wrote. Thanks.

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@Dacha and all – here is a list of the Q4 Bounties for GWG activities.

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Transparency Openess Community: here is that actually Community feeling, but who care about it ?

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The links are not working , probably following to internal groups. Openness?

Instead of apologies - do something. This is issue with trustees, what the call to action ?

It’s why Community doesn’t need to understand who are people and how were selected?

I’m not sure that NF aware about this particular issue.

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Hi Dacha, you were a member of this group: NDC Governance Working Group – a group of roughly 300+ people.

https://t.me/c/1811690567/468

https://t.me/c/1616423917/518

I can share screenshots here or, perhaps better, you join again and then can open them all? Whatever works best.

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lfg Sadly, as one of the most active members of the community

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