[REPORT] 5 Months as a Creatives DAO Moderator

Creatives Creatives DAO
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I was onboarded as a Moderator of the Creatives DAO 5 months ago when there was an open call for trusted members from the community.

I have learned and grown here with the community, and shared monthly reports. Today I will share the experience and my opinion on how to move forward.

Creatives DAO story

Last year the Creatives DAO councils were a group of 5 trusted members with a similar structure as the Marketing DAO

Then, from February 2022 the founders took a step out from the council positions and onboarded DAOs as councils to build decentralization.

It was when I was onboarded as a Moderator of the Creatives DAO. The Moderator role didnā€™t include approving or rejecting proposals on the DAO. Just to approve or reject proposals here on the forum depending if the proposals were ā€œwell writtenā€.

Feedback from outsider where I can agree:

DAOs approve proposals without any critical thinking in assessing proposals, and much is approved with little questioning.

Here is something that never should had been approved in June:

I understood that the community needed more education on the role of council and was waiting for us to do the reviews, so take the opportunity at the beginning of June to push forward changes because we onboarded 5 more moderators.

It was not easy and we still were not on the same page, there was resistance from the previous batch of moderators to accept changes and to be more critical on the review of the proposals, basically some resistance to assume the leadership and accepting the role of doing more critical analysis on the proposals.

More feedback from outsiders:

Someone has to take ownership of the decision being made. I am under the impression that thereā€™s been a lot of things being approved passively

I can understand the position that the Creative value is hard to measure with metrics, but for sure if we are building the web3 there can be a lot of metrics from smart contract transactions, views, and users. Organization of an on-chain community can also be meassured.
So, the most important from my point of view: # of active on-chain community members.

Then, I made a great effort on a decentralization review to find out that many of the DAOs receiving funding have not even 3 unique members, many members repeating on several DAOs.

Basically, much of what we have are not on-chain communities but teams being part of several DAOs as councils.

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Resistance to evolve

Previously we had 1 weekly call, but in June I scheduled 3 meetings per week for a whole month with the 10 Moderators to build together the next steps. But was still resistance from the community and from our moderator group to making changes.

Total resistance to defining how many members should have a DAO to be considered a community and to making a restriction for funding regarding it. We, Moderators, donā€™t feel entitled to make those decisions.

The sentiment from the moderation team is that we should go slowly to avoid trauma in the community where is difficult to digest changes and that we are making too many changes.

Personally, I canā€™t really see the big changes in asking DAOs to fill 2 google forms and enforcing the guidelines regarding funding distribution and deadlines which are the only changes we are making.

There was a proposal from a new Moderator to stop the operations, not distribute more funding in July, to make a deep review and intervention, and focus all the community efforts on building a new structure and our plan for the following months. I fully supported this idea but it was left aside because the sentiment was that it could affect the communities health.

Canā€™t understand that because the Guild program stopped and still the real communities are there and keep running their activities. Real communities who care about the NEAR Ecosystem are going to keep building with us.

We have been spending around $150k monthly for over a year and the only clear metric I could find is 260 wallets connected to Creatives DAO (with 104 forum users).

We are not mature

The structure we have right now is not allowing any space for efficient movement.

DAOs are very active in approving funds for their own but do not care about funding a proposal to create a Legal Wrapper for the Creatives DAO, a website, and the kick start of a dapp development for creators, so the proposal was expired without community feedback.

Edit: After this report, Moderators push forward again the proposal for legal wrapper+website+dapp. that also allow having the voice of the former councils together with the moderators.

When we shared the changes we need to implement and that we need to create a new DAO tooling with a clear leadership there was also resistance because the proposal was seen as a centralization. I launched a poll but still, things keep moving slowly.

My experience on the Onboarding DAO

Onboarding DAO is also one of the many councils in the Creatives DAO structure.

The same month I was onboarded, I also joined the onboarding-dao councils, what I did was to help with the onboarding, but I never asked for a council reward or any reward from the Onboarding-DAO, as I saw the moderator role soft for the reward received and was happy to assume the advisor position in the Onboarding DAO as part of my Moderation role for the Creatives.

My participation there also helped to gather more information about a bad actor inside the creatives who then was banned from the NEAR Community.

Education and Onboarding are key for Blockchain adoption.

list of my onboardings into the NEAR forum
Invited User Redeemed Seen Topics Viewed Posts Read Read Time Days Visited Invitation
roshi Jun 24 13 hours 2 12 8m 6 / 6 link
SirMartin Jun 9 Jun 9 0 0 < 1m 1 / 21 link
x5ensei May 20 Jun 17 4 6 1m 2 / 41 link
Nacho_Figx May 19 2 days 32 125 3h 32 / 42 link
MochiBean Apr 27 Apr 29 1 2 1m 2 / 64 link
LucasBolt Apr 7 Apr 8 1 7 2m 2 / 84 link
Ache Mar 24 Mar 25 1 0 < 1m 1 / 98 link
robinnagpal Mar 16 Mar 29 11 45 21m 5 / 106 link
jlmk Mar 14 2 days 4 24 1h 12 / 108 link
corsur Mar 14 Mar 16 1 0 < 1m 3 / 108 link
Itsalllove Feb 25 Feb 25 0 0 < 1m 1 / 125 link
Tpavon12 Feb 25 Feb 27 3 17 < 1m 3 / 125 link
GdizzyTre Feb 25 Jun 19 30 133 1h 18 / 125 link
northam Feb 11 Mar 11 8 40 1h 21 / 139 link
PaulinoDelgado Feb 8 Feb 8 0 0 < 1m 1 / 142 link
RichardDelgado Jan 25 Jan 25 1 29 2m 1 / 156 link
prestoluke Jan 22 Feb 14 11 29 23m 9 / 159 link
EmilyRdgz Jan 16 2 days 9 169 1h 19 / 165 link
nacho.near Jan 2 3 hours 138 1.1k 13h 141 / 179 link
yawondao3 Dec 28, '21 Feb 1 5 40 44m 18 / 184 link
chad Dec 27, '21 Dec 27, '21 2 3 < 1m 1 / 185 link
lalacat Dec 27, '21 Apr 23 1 0 < 1m 3 / 185 link
deadshot Dec 26, '21 Dec 26, '21 0 0 < 1m 1 / 186 link
Enrico Dec 13, '21 Dec 13, '21 0 0 < 1m 1 / 199 link
Prod_Solo7 Dec 12, '21 Feb 4 10 31 16m 5 / 200 link
user3 Dec 12, '21 0 0 < 1m 0 / 200 link
JacopoB Dec 9, '21 Dec 9, '21 0 0 < 1m 1 / 203 link
isiah Dec 8, '21 Jan 10 17 62 7m 5 / 204 link
ChainFights Dec 5, '21 Mar 8 6 8 18m 11 / 207 link
nacho963 Dec 5, '21 Dec 18, '21 5 20 6m 4 / 207 link
user2 Dec 2, '21 Dec 20, '21 2 10 16m 7 / 210 link
ame9986 Dec 1, '21 2 days 257 2.0k 1d 136 / 211 link
King1 Nov 30, '21 Dec 19, '21 5 18 15m 8 / 212 link
Leozamorat Nov 27, '21 Nov 27, '21 2 7 8m 1 / 215 link
Savageftc Nov 27, '21 Jan 8 7 18 15m 3 / 215 link
Mingua Nov 26, '21 Nov 27, '21 1 15 2m 1 / 215 link
Nathbruz Nov 26, '21 Nov 28, '21 2 8 3m 2 / 215 link
Jkbg Nov 26, '21 Nov 26, '21 1 8 1m 1 / 216 link
Alecorcega Nov 26, '21 Nov 26, '21 1 3 3m 1 / 216 link
Estevan17 Nov 26, '21 Mar 6 8 81 12m 8 / 216 link
Ouail.M Nov 25, '21 Nov 26, '21 2 23 13m 1 / 217 link
user1 Nov 25, '21 2 days 166 1.1k 13h 118 / 217 link
NelzoRamirez Nov 25, '21 Feb 5 33 301 1h 9 / 217 link
TheQueen Nov 24, '21 1 day 26 145 4h 59 / 218 link
Benmurri Nov 24, '21 Nov 26, '21 0 0 < 1m 1 / 218 link
Developer Nov 17, '21 3 hours 106 473 7h 105 / 225 link
abdresdom Nov 17, '21 Feb 1 28 126 38m 19 / 225 link
leyner Nov 17, '21 Dec 10, '21 3 3 1m 2 / 225 link
mavimorantes Nov 15, '21 Nov 25, '21 3 25 9m 5 / 227 link
Tibyparedes Nov 15, '21 Jan 25 3 24 1h 14 / 227 link
ArianaVictoriaMoreno Nov 11, '21 Mar 3 9 106 3h 32 / 231 link
Alfredonet Nov 8, '21 Jan 26 8 28 24m 6 / 234 link
Arturoahs Nov 8, '21 3 hours 118 1.1k 11h 145 / 234 link
Giselle059 Nov 7, '21 Nov 8, '21 1 2 1m 2 / 235 link
Charles96 Nov 6, '21 Nov 6, '21 1 2 < 1m 1 / 236 link
Guarata Nov 6, '21 Nov 6, '21 0 0 < 1m 1 / 236 link
Arnelys Nov 6, '21 Nov 17, '21 7 15 14m 4 / 236 link
Butneversaved Nov 6, '21 12 hours 251 2.6k 20h 164 / 236 link
sebasgr Nov 6, '21 May 31 132 478 3h 80 / 236 link
blad1 Nov 6, '21 5 hours 83 509 7h 114 / 236 link
grex Nov 6, '21 Jun 24 50 159 3h 44 / 236 link
LuisAponte99 Oct 21, '21 Jun 19 152 1.3k 15h 129 / 252 link
Gastonromano Oct 13, '21 Feb 23 39 213 1h 33 / 260 link
Mary.dancr Oct 9, '21 Mar 4 38 308 1h 45 / 264 link
MarcoPerezP Sep 30, '21 Sep 30, '21 1 0 2m 1 / 273 link
yehosua.near Sep 29, '21 1 hour 80 676 9h 130 / 274 link
DiegoEleizalde Aug 25, '21 Feb 18 18 72 42m 6 / 309 link
Portes Jul 6, '21 May 24 64 189 3h 86 / 358 link
pranav Jul 6, '21 Jul 6, '21 1 0 < 1m 1 / 359 link
NEXC Jul 5, '21 Jun 10 16 114 2h 59 / 360 link
Nicolasp2 Jun 22, '21 11 hours 280 1.7k 14h 243 / 373 link

Suggestion on how to move forward

I really believe in decentralization, we are building something good for human society, this is very new and for sure we are going to make mistakes.

Here are my 2 cents, a draft proposal on how the community could move forward.

If we care and we want to keep growing, we need to identify those mistakes as quickly as possible to address them, make the corrections and continue evolving.

Creative DAO is formed by on-chain communities that are adding great value to the ecosystem, building real decentralization, with the values we share. But we are going to allow those real communities to be damaged by a few bad actors and lack of organization.

The Creatives DAO funding must be stopped, NF should not give any more funding until a complete review can be addressed and a grant proposal with a clear roadmap is delivered.

If we fail in doing so we are not giving a good example for NEARcommers who are going to invite others just for our blood and not to really build the web3.

Kindly reminder

To the Creatives community:

I hope u can give more support and feedback to the Moderators team who worked non stop the last month to build the documents to kick start changes, to allow the gathering of information for a report, and offering the next steps that as a group were deeply discussed.

The moderation team even without a clear guideline on what NF expects from the Creatives DAO nor a clear role, is giving the best to mantain the Creatives DAO functional and evolving, regardless the inefficient structure.

Creatives DAO has never promised anyone a ā€˜stable jobā€™ or an opportunity to cover the bills, this has never been an agreement.

We donā€™t even know if the Moderatorā€™s roles are going to be rewarded next month or for how long.

We are just trying to be fair with the DAOs, and we want to show NF that we are indeed doing good use of all the fundingā€¦ It is very hard, the easiest to do is to approve all and avoid confrontations, but that will not work in the long run.

I am sharing this because I really care and I can understand that there are different opinions, this is just one voice (my own).

Making the example by stepping down from the Moderator role, but here still to help as an advisor or with any means. I love our community and I know we will achieve great success in the long run.

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My two cents
Iā€™ve been on this blockchain since January 2022 and have been a passive participant in the blockchain. Helping our guild in the sidelines, recently, Iā€™ve been elected as one of the council members of Filipino Artist Guild.

Prior to that, Iā€™ve also been silently observing the Creatives DAO telegram group and as stated above for the past couple of weeks of meeting and trying to establish a more decentralized approach by onboarding more heads in the decision making, there are still people who are missing the bigger picture and are reacting based on what they ā€œTHINKā€ is right. Iā€™m not saying that they have to stop saying what their thoughts are but, for you to be a good leader, you have to first be a good listener and that behavior was not present on all the meetings that was led these past few weeks.

There are people who havenā€™t even read the proposal that was made by @FritzWorm but are reacting aggressively on the discussion and purely disagreeing with whatever is being presented by the Moderators.

Yes, identifying problem is one thing but thatā€™s just 20% of the total picture, 80% of that is the point that should address the question ā€œwe identified the problem, what are we going to do about it?ā€ which has been discussed already if they have only read the totality of the proposal, Fritz has made.

Too much democracy is detrimental to development
Web3 is indeed the benchmark of decentralization which is something that everyone wants, but have we ever thought whatā€™s really happening on a decentralized environment or what it really looks like?

Near Foundation is the one funding Creatives DAO thatā€™s 100%.

Moderators are the one who are creating the reports, projects, implementing house rules, and managing the general public of a specific DAO without those thinking bodies, a DAO/Guild is doom to collapse.

Community should also take part on the decision making, but as previously discussed, they should have the proper knowledge on how the world works.

Giving 100% decision to community without the help of moderators just by voting is something that is a 100% wrong thinking. We are not living on a utopia kind of environment where everyone is kind, general public can easily be manipulated by fake news, sad sob stories and people who just wants to take advantage of everything without the governing bodies of Moderators, DAOā€™s are doomed to collapse.

There is a reason why there are the legislative branch (the law-making body), the executive branch (the law-enforcing body), and the judicial branch (the law-interpreting body) in a democratic country, because you canā€™t just give everything to the community there should be people overseeing the community.

Now we have identified the problem
How can we move forward?

Moderators needs the approval of the community
Community needs the help of the moderators to maintain order.

If the moderators are corrupt, the community can oust them.
If the community doesnā€™t have the proper knowledge about something, the moderators can help them.

There should be metrics or baseline, on how the funding request be approved.
DAOā€™s should have a clear roadmap, and a way for a self sustainability.

Yes, these were all discussed on the proposal that was made, and the calls to the community were supposed to be plans on how the metrics should look like.

Itā€™s not about giving the community every decision, it doesnā€™t work like that.

Bottom line

READ BEFORE YOU REACT

Have a nice day everyone! Thank you for reading and more power!

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Heyhey, thank you for posting here your experience and vision with the community. Iā€™d like to comment on some of the ideas:

Someone has to take ownership of the decision being made. I am under the impression that thereā€™s been a lot of things being approved passively

In my perspective the idea of giving DAOs the means to vote on others is a very powerful one, even if just in theory. That makes sense in my opinion, given the fact that we are all building on the same ecosystem. I understand this quote here, cause I have the same feeling. The proposals are being passed passively because the simple fact that in order to pass, DAOs got to pass others, plus we all have to approve dozens of proposals at the same time and the council feel pressure to be fast, not to be critical. The DAOs are voting yes yes yes to the proposals because they simply donā€™t have time to review so many ideas in so little time PLUS to push forward their own DAO and projects. And when a NO happened, it was a huge discussion in the community resulting in a banned member. So I agree we should rethink this process.

I donā€™t think itā€™s a bad idea that DAOs are voting on other DAOs. Actually I think itā€™s an awesome experiment. The problem I see with the funding ecosystem is the timelines and deadlines. I am sure that if the funding process would be tri-monthly (1 proposal + 3 reports per quarter) we all would have more time, including the moderators, to get real access to the projects proposed. We would have time to ask for improvements and even to give the community more tools to achieve sustainability. Right now it is not super possible due to lack of knowledge on finances, for example. I say that for myself, we are all facing a dip which is a real problem for the maintenance of our DAO. We are facing lost of funds, for example. How can we think about sustainability if we are very concerned with the future of our projects (artistic projects, people we collaborate, partnerships we are constantly trying to make, etc)? We should not forget that itā€™s a CREATIVE community. So we are talking about artists, creatives, musicians, writers and so on, not devs, tech educated people or marketeers. Of course we are all learning. We are bringing another type of value to NEAR. If itā€™s not worthy, we should be informed of that.

The sentiment from the moderation team is that we should go slowly to avoid trauma in the community where is difficult to digest changes and that we are making too many changes.

Personally, I canā€™t really see the big changes in asking DAOs to fill 2 google forms and enforcing the guidelines regarding funding distribution and deadlines which are the only changes we are making.

I totally agree with the sentiment from the moderation team. I personally donā€™t think it is just about google forms and guidelines, we are facing Astro DAO issues some times, the upgrade to v3, onboarding newcomers and educating the ongoing members to the new platforms in the ecosystem, reading and approving other DAOs proposals, dealing with the fluctuation (mental health and anxiety) and financial issues and so on. Changes are good of course, but if we really want to be a real community, first we should take all of this as real things and do not forget about accessibility and care.

because the sentiment was that it could affect the community health.

DAOs are very active in approving funds for their own but do not care about funding a proposal to create a Legal Wrapper for the Creatives DAO, a website, and the kick start of a dapp development for creators, so the proposal was expired without community feedback.

A Legal wrapper would mean that someone (or a legal wrapped DAO) would take legal responsibility for it. So if the idea is to be decentralized, changing the moderators once in a while and to be flexible with constant changes all the time and embracing contradictory ideas, I understand why one would not want to take the risks of that. Thereā€™s no identity, no common vision of how to make it sustainable. Actually Creatives is a Vertical, not a real DAO. The website would be interesting, but not essential for the same reasons. Creatives DAO was created to be a vertical, therefore the nature of it is not compatible with the developments of whole new projects as for example a dapp.

The Creatives DAO funding must be stopped , NF should not give any more funding until a complete review can be addressed and a grant proposal with a clear roadmap is delivered.

We are just trying to be fair with the DAOs, and we want to show NF that we are indeed doing good use of all the fundingā€¦ It is very hard, the easiest to do is to approve all and avoid confrontations, but that will not work in the long run.

I completely disagree.

Again, the core nature of the Creatives DAO is to be a Vertical. The only goal is to support proposals, so if the funding stops thereā€™s nothing left and the DAO is basically dead.
Furthermore the whole NEAR ecosystem will feel the consequences of community backlash and we are going to lose all trust and empathy from our members. I think thereā€™s other ways to make the funding process more efficient, and the moderators role is to find out that. Without supporting the community, thereā€™s no point in having moderators at all.
As said before the DAOs donā€™t have means to be sustainable yet. NFT market is silent, we are losing funds because of the market crisis, DeFI is not a granted subject matter for everyone yet and so on. Stopping the funds before having a roadmap is shooting on our own feet.

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Hello Fritz and community,

(for reference, I was council and then moderator of the Creatives DAO for 8 months; these opinions are my own, I have no trace of responsibility other than being on the council of a DAO that sits on the council of the Creatives DAO)

first of all, thank you Fritz for all the work you have put into the Creatives DAO. You have certainly pushed things forward and tried to help the Creatives DAO grow in new ways.

I am critical of some of the ideas flowing around for the future of the DAO, thought. Not because I think they are necessarily wrong, but I believe they are somewhat based on premisses I think are false.

My reading is that different people are operating under different assumptions, and therefore a consensus is hard (or impossible) to reach.

There are a few points I want to touch on, so that the community can, perhaps, ponder some issues that might not be obvious to newcomers:

  1. About Creatives DAO being a Vertical

  • Creatives DAO was founded and has been operating as a DAO Vertical; this means it didnā€™t have the configuration most of the community members are used to seeing on all the other DAOs we see floating around. This means it was a way for NF to manage incoming proposals in a way that was not too far-fetched. It was, at its inception, run by members of NF with the goal of spreading tokens, not withhold them.

  • It then stopped having NF employees on its council, but the main goal was maintained. As a previous council and then moderator, I can say multiple times we felt we were providing tokens to under-par projects, but felt that being too harsh was against NFs will.

  • After NF changed the rules for funding, itā€™s not even the case, any more, that the funds allocated to the Creatives DAO are being used. Therefore, itā€™s simply not true that the Creatives DAO is giving out funds. It is simply providing validation, that in turn NF uses to distribute funds.

  • Suggesting that the Creatives DAO should stop providing that validation in order to change from a Vertical to something else is based on the false premiss that it should stop being a Vertical. I am not aware of the community voicing their intention on that. Furthermore, if there is information coming from NF that the Creatives DAO can no longer act as a Vertical, than the current moderators should pass that information along to the community.

  • If, and only if, the Creatives DAO is to cease being a Vertical, then it might change into something else. Until then, some of the recent efforts are contrary to the Creatives DAO community goals, even if those pursuing them think they are doing the right thing. Not being clear about this issue leads to confusion.

  1. On voting

  • I have voiced my concern multiple times about the lack of engagement in voting and approving proposals; I have also voiced my concern that the way we/they moderators demand it, or demand better proposals from DAOs, is too rooted in traditional power systems. I find this truly problematic (for example, if a council/moderator becomes too prominent, people will try to please them in order to get their proposal passed, even if their individual stances do not respect the will of the council/moderator teams.

  • As long as there are no caps on funding (there is a 5k cap on monthly funding, but no cap established on # of proposals accepted by NF) then DAOs have no incentive for voting NO other than a generic vision about what the community should be.

  • If a kind of cap was put into place, like in other blockchains, establishing a limit of tokens to
    be delivered by epoch, or a limit of DAOs to be supported, than voting would become
    meaningful. For example, if only 10 DAOs would be supported by epoch (e.g. trimester) this kind of competition would be beneficial to the ecosystem, in terms of innovation (ofc 90% of DAOs
    would find this terrible). Or if only x amount of tokens were delivered, a system could exist
    in which a few DAOs would get a lot and then the rest of the tokens could be given out in
    decreasing % (e.g. 20%, 20%, 10%, 10% 10%, 5%, 5%, 3%, 3%, 2%, 2%, 2%, 2%, 1%, 1%, 1%,
    1%, 1%, 1% or any other system). However, at this time, no such cap exist, and it removes all value in voting.

  • In the current system, imho, moderators should focus on establishing clearer and clearer guidelines and ways for voting to regain its meaningfulness. There are plenty of ways to do this, either with tokens, NFTs, on-chain dapps, limiting the number of votes for each DAO (this would mean that each DAO chooses x projects it wants to support), or many other ways that maintain the core identity of the Creatives DAO as a Vertical.

  • I honestly think moderators are giving their best and I applaud everyoneā€™s efforts. Itā€™s not easy to engage with complex systems that aim to increase 1) decentralization and at the same time 2) efficiency.

  • I feel there are simpler ways of improving the current state of the Creatives DAO, without forcing big changes; plus, NF itself is changing and this leads to unclear planning.

Thank you Fritz, and everyone that has been willing to engage with these issues.

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Thatā€™s a good point. If the previous idea was to spread tokens and now it is not anymore, there must be some kind of clear communication about it. Naturally a downvoting flow will happen on proposals that are not providing real value and the voting process would become more meaningful. When I say value, Iā€™m not just talking about users or metrics here, Iā€™m also talking about community values, long-term collaborations, consistent projects that can provide sustainability to the ecosystem. And when I say sustainability I am not only talking about financial sustainability, but also trust and real sharing. Collaborations are not just doing one project together once in a while, or voting yes to to receive another yes. Collaboration is about growing together, nurturing each other, creating a healthy environment. Without a healthy ecosystem, itā€™s impossible to grow. Of course we can speculate, we can provide numbers. But this is fragile and this is creating a huge bubble that would explode as soon as something traumatic happens, as for example stopping the funding process. People would not trust the ecosystem anymore, Iā€™m sure a lot of projects will step back or simply die.

for example

Canā€™t understand that because the Guild program stopped and still the real communities are there and keep running their activities. Real communities who care about the NEAR Ecosystem are going to keep building with us.

Thatā€™s not true. That could be true if we are talking about companies or profit-oriented projects, even so it depends on the type of project. I know a real case of a profit-oriented project that would be damaged by such a cut. Imagine the creative community that the main goal is to develop creative projects.
No one said the community would receive salaries, I agree on that. But we canā€™t pretend that what weā€™ve been done is not labor. It is. We are bringing people. So we need a stable ecosystem so these people donā€™t disappear. Its an exchange, it is not solidarity. We are cleary exchanging funds for usage of the platforms and the coin, no?

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I will say no. There is where many can confuse because there is no announcement with clear expectations about it.

The idea is to incentivice the use of the platforms yes, but for your own benefit, I mean it is your own project or your own community, so the funds are not in exchange of the use of the platform but to invite you to use the platform for your own benefit.

I totally agree here: when you are making a great effort to help the grow of the NEAR Ecosystem you have to be rewarded.

But there should be a report. I mean, if this is seen as a service exchange, there should be a full report and review of the work we have done.

Examples for more clarity:

  1. You have community offering an educational service where u onboard artist into the web3, you can charge to the participants and have your own revenue or self-sustainable model.

And yes, if you are going to onboard into NEAR Protocol then NF should be willing to reward your community.

  1. Another example will be, you are an artist and you create a NFT Collection, so you launch the NFT Collection and you will receive the benefits from the gains and royalties.

Again, the NEAR Community is willing to help, to connect you with the right partners, and even to provide funding to help you (yes it is a gift not an exchange, of course it is a gift with expectations).

  1. Different background. A trader community loves price discussions, they will keep discussing prices and they will keep trading on NEAR for their benefit regardless of any reward.

Then, if they are spreading the word about NEAR, then why not support them with a reward/gift.

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Thisā€¦ Itā€™s already happening, Sad :confused:

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oh really? Is it something you would like to share? :frowning: @LulucaL

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Hey @FritzWorm , first of all, thank you for all of your insight and the conversations weā€™ve had over the past few months. Itā€™s been a huge learning curve, and I really appreciate the knowledge and perspective you brought to the Creatives DAO moderators team!

I think, overall, we can agree that the DAO of DAOs model, is not working as intended, but it is definitely carving a path in the right direction. As was said in our group chat several times ā€œprogress not perfectionā€. Practically speaking, I think the actual barrier to vote ā€œNOā€ on a proposal in the astrodao has a big effect on how the current model works. There is a lot more work involved in voting ā€œNOā€ than there is in voting ā€œYESā€ on a custom function call that was proposed to a DAO on the council.

Iā€™d just like to give my perspective on a few things here:

I think ā€œresistanceā€ here somewhat implies that one point of view was correct, which is not the case. The resistance referred to here was and is insightful conversations about different ways to approach the matters, and in my opinion, a discussion should be allowed the time it needs for solutions to be figured out in a somewhat decentralized manner, otherwise, itā€™s one person leading the way!

The same can be said about the conversation about decentralization, and how some DAOs are a lot closer to being decentralized than others in terms of numbers of council, but as we have seen, a DAO with a huge amount of voting council doesnā€™t always worked as planned, and so the Creatives DAO has a community of DAOs experimenting with different forms of DAO organisation, which is essential to learning and progression.

Not just avoid trauma, but encourage the existing community to build and engage in the process. One of the main functions of the moderators is representing the community, not deciding for them. There is no quick fix to issues with a community of this size!

The nature of this is ā€œbuilding as we goā€, as you quite often say yourself, and this is what we are doing in the moderators team and the wider community, maybe not at the desired pace, but this is a conversation of many people and communities. What real benefit would stopping funding give? As @frnvpr says below, who are we to say ā€œstopā€ altogether when our primary duty is to represent the community, such a decision would be counter-intuitive to the idea of decentralisation:

Finally, I think what @JulianaM says here, is key to this conversation and sometimes overlooked! The same rules from other communities cannot be applied, but we can share a vision and learn from each other.

These are just a few thoughts that came to mind while reading through the post. I would just like to thank you again for all the insights over the past few months and hope that you continue to engage with the DAO as it moves forward, as I personally have learned a lot from them.

To sign off with a signature Fritz-phrase: ā€œMay the force be NEAR you!ā€

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Hey @FritzWorm,

will just also leave some points here and thank you for the work that you have done as a moderator.

I appreciate the fact that you entered the space with a more analytical thought and brought up the metrics as this is something that has been missing in my opinion. Regardless I can understand why the community is reacting the way it does at the moment, as most of the folks - me included - come from the artistic and cultural side and it can be very hard to create criteria/numbers in that sense. In addition a lot of them do not have previous web3 experience so they are all still learning.

I disagree that the funding should be stopped though as the creative community has brought a big movement into the ecosystem, in ways that developers wouldnā€™t have been able to do it - simply because they have a different field of expertise and artists use the existing platforms, create traction and promotion and new use cases. But again, this is up to NF to decide.

I also think that if Creatives DAO simply stays a vertical, no grant would be needed. It is hard for people to see it as their responsibility to work on the Creatives DAO self-sustainability if there are no work contracts and no security, and if it is only about the money. So I understand the resistance. I would guess it would be more helpful to give the creative DAO tools on how to become self-sustainable once the funding stops so that they can grow and work on the projects while still using N. And I am happy to see that this is slowly happening, with collaborations and workshops.

So as a summary, I think using metrics is a good way to go, but finding metrics that are actually applicable for creative groups within N, such as onboarded and active wallets, NFTs minted, transactions/ platforms used, events that include web3 development, use cases etc. Those are numbers that all DAOs can give and until NF says otherwise, those seem senseful to me at least.

Thanks again for your work an passion, see you in the ecosystem :slight_smile:

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I want to share how confusing it was for new projects to get organized during the last few months. It seems to me that the focus was very much on what was already happening in the community and the new initiatives were thrown into a limbo of waiting and doubts.

I was able to bring to the ecosystem a unique Museum in the world, we had a whole plan to operate in the Nearverse, we made an onboarding with more than 50 people and now we are stagnant because the only way forward would be to transform the museum into a DAO. Weā€™re talking about a non-profit initiative that feeds a foundation that helps people in need. And yes, the idea was based on getting NF funding for this project.

Imagine me being the person inside Near, full of expectations because I saw so many amazing projects being financed, trying to learn how things work, I invite an institution that takes time from its real organization, allocates people to work and suddenly nothing matters anymore.

Itā€™s taking too much time, itā€™s all very strange, I donā€™t feel safe to defend anything else to the museum staff until the rules are clearly and established and they decided to back off, wait a few months and only then go back to dealing with Near.

Itā€™s sad because I put my hand in the fire for this community and I got burned. Mintbase bet on the project and is burning along with me.

Thatā€™s where this kind of conversation here, although super necessary, is also scary because it shows that maybe thereā€™s no way out.

And deep inside I feel that something is not being said, I donā€™t knowā€¦ All so strange, confused, doubtful, limboā€¦ Sad :confused:

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Oh, and finallyā€¦ My personal concern is having to deal with projects here as I had to deal with projects in real life, I even heard the word EDITAL (public notice?) in one of the chats about. Please, donā€™t! Fear of our Nearverse becoming a place full of standard projects, closed in rules and metrics and lacking in creativity. Iā€™m an artist and I see the community in an artistic way, and maybe thatā€™s my problem.

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On Point, The points you mentioned as a outsider is what many of NEARians feel but didnā€™t say much.

Thanks for being the voice of them @FritzWorm ! :clap:

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@tabear, I really appreciate your input. Thanks

But 2 months ago we were asked by @mecsbecs to build a report and a grant proposal and that we needed a legal wrapper, that NF was expecting that from us. In that sense, even as a vertical, we need to improve the communications to show the value we are adding to NF.

Knowing we needed a Legal Wrapper, Report and Grant Request:

I organized AMA with OTOCO.IO who can be the solution for a legal wrapper and later with more hands to work (10 moderators) did push the evolution needed organizing 3 meetings per week, from there the whole moderation team participated in building some needed documents like google form to gather information for a complete report and google form to automatize the monthly proposal review system.

I do want Creatives DAO to endure.

I do try to give my best, personally love what we are doing: Building Decentralization.

In that sense, I totally understand @JulianaM with:

the idea of giving DAOs the means to vote on others is a very powerful one

Experimenting is good, but accepting now it was a mistake as soon as possible and making the changes is also necessary

Proposed changes to keep going on a decentralized structure here:

image
image750Ɨ607 40.7 KB

Also, this commissionerā€™s roles should be discussed further adding an assessment procedure to evaluate the performance of what could be the core team.

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First of all, @FritzWorm I really appreciate the effort you have been consistently pouring into Creatives DAO. Youā€™ve been a driving force in pushing us forward lately and I honor your work ethic.

I agree that we need better reporting to not only show our value but also understand, ourselves, what we have accomplished. Metrics seem to be needed imo but not as the most powerful god-like factor in analyzing value. Like @JulianaM said, other factors that have to do with the human side of this are very important too. Letā€™s find a balance.

Organizing on this size is going to take time. I personally enjoy moving slow and creating channels for everyone to feel comfortable with transition but will admit that I have been moving quicker with the moderation team due to this:

At this point, after hearing the thoughts of @JulianaM @frnvpr and @tabear I myself feel a bit confused as to what exactly is expected of us from NF and what direction they are wanting us to go in. For the last 2 months I was under the impression that we needed to begin moving toward becoming self sustainable and prove our worth to NF - this lead to me to be more supportive of stricter analysis of reports, pausing the acceptance of new DAOs in order to do our housekeeping, legalizing, building a website, creating the Moderators DAO etc.

I think all of our work has been really productive and caused the community to engage in deeper ways than they had been before. I am looking forward to receiving some clarity around what NF is expecting and finding balanced ways for all the community to shape what our future looks like.

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hey!

There are so many changes happening in the ecosystem and NF itself that my intuition tells me that moves like creating a legal wrapper and so on were a kind of preparation for a world with stricter funding policies and legal demands. Meaning that itā€™s not necessarily NF pushing for change in the Vertical DAOs for operative reasons, but external pressure from States driving that need.

However, I would suggest that a ā€˜future-needā€™ should not destabilize operations to the point of rupture; if that happens it means that fear might be the driving force commanding our choices; since NF is the one providing tokens and the present council is only providing curatorship, there seems to be no reason to worry about legal implications.

This is not to say that this specific model and those who run it should not prepare for future changes, however it is to say that changes rely on a vision, and that vision is hard to produce with sub-par information about NFs plans.

The community needs super-clarity about changes, because most, and specially newcomers, might not understand what they mean.

  • At this moment, Creatives DAO works as a Vertical, meaning that it manages information, decides on which projects are OK to ask $ to NF, then NF provides those tokens. There is a council, composed of several established DAOs, and a moderators team, whose work is to manage information, guidelines and help the community engage with voting.

  • Nothing of this points towards any kind of financial independence; precisely the point of a Vertical is to be a way to manage tokens going from point A (NF) and point B (individual DAOs). Therefore, if this was to change in significant ways (for example if the Creatives DAO no longer had Vertical status - awarded by NF) then we should all ask: what would be the benefit of the Creatives DAO for the DAOs in the ecosystem?

  • Using one suggestion made by Fritz to exemplify my point: letā€™s imagine that the Creatives DAO becomes the creator of a Marketplace, whose sales would then revert to a treasury-pool, and then that that pool would be used to support projects. A fine idea, and imho worth pursuing. However, and assuming its hard work managing such a system (ask Mintbase, who is in the space for some time) would current DAOs be willing to stop work on their own projects and become focused on this? My definite answer is of course not (at least for most of them). At that moment, Creatives DAO would be so different than it is today, that no transition would be possible, and a start-over would be needed, with a new team, leadership, etc; Creatives DAO is on-boarding artists and creative people to web3 so that they can work on their projects in new ways, using NEAR, itā€™s not hiring those people to work on a contract-based-project.

  • Then, I have 2 proposals: one, that as long as this DAO retains Vertical status, moderators focus on representing the council in this context, and second, that if several people in the community think there is a way forward which brings greater value and can combine both the vertical-status and greater efficiency and superior models, they create a spin-off, which alows for folks to engage with such changes while operations continue. >> For example, why not create a future-Creatives-DAO team that asks funding for the sole purpose of preparing the future? (like the moderators-dao that @FritzWorm created, but not necessarily moderators working on it; >>> I even suggest we council create an open call for future-visions, and the proposal/team with the most votes gets funding to work on a complete dossier) :point_left: :point_left: :point_left:

    • To finish, let me just say that I agree that current operations need improving, specially in regards to voting, and that we have the tools to improve that without reinventing the wheel. This DAO is pushing the limits on what community governance means, and people should not forget that. Pushing the limits means that operations are unstable, and that is normal. Just look at all the changes astrodao had to implement just because of us. That is good, not bad. It would be easy for myself, @JulianaM @chloe and @tabear to still be seated on the council, making decisions based on our own ideas and goals (since NF never asked us to rotate, it was our own will), and everything would be fast and smooth, but that would not have been as interesting and open as what we have now.

Thank you all.

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So many important thing were told here, so many thoughts shared, but here i would like to mentioned that if NF will stop to funding projects they will be not exist. It is simple. For example fritz not approve the unique nft/real thing project from d-layer because there was no Astro in d-layer in that time but now it is and not because of Fritz but because the time has come. And now the 10 musical instruments will not bring the joy of creating some were in the world. 10 real instruments with NFT passport and unique design from another artist are not exist. See? Not only one creator was ā€œkilledā€ but the collaboration of artist too. 10 potential people will not get to know about Near and share their knowledge about it with other potential artists. Now we donā€™t have funds and there are no any new comers in the ecosystem.
NF give me a little for my project and i made only one part of it. Now i donā€™t want to create more, it is not because of money, it is because iā€™m very sad that some one told artists to fill tons of metric forms because some guy told to do that.
An artist can do nothing and suffer from a lack of inspiration for six months or more, and then give out a masterpiece in a week.
Want artists to be helped to make masterpieces? Put curators next to them, pay local curators to produce artists and tell them about the importance of the protocol and the whole system. Give a simple form for the curators to fill in. We will show where the treasure goes, but whatā€™s the difference?If project is dead. The artist must have something to eat and somewhere to live, and he will have to choose where to focus his efforts - on creating something special for NEAR ecosystem or filling out forms.
Do all of you knows what happens in Belarus now with the artists? They goes out of country without livelihood now because they just donā€™t want to live another 5 years with last Europe Dictator.
With all respect to the community. Thx

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i can bring tons of bots in the social and show it in the metrics, but iā€™m honest with the community and bring only real humans-artist, and it is mater of time to get them understand how this system works, when i told them to create a wallet they smiling and tell me that it is hard to understand. Iā€™m a producer of many artist and projects in the real world and i know how hard to click artistā€™s mind to that metrics stuff. Iā€™ll do it for them but only with funding of course.
Make it easier and u will involve people to the ecosystem. Now it is not place for creative people now it is only cryproworld with hard rules. Ok. Nobody told it will be easy but people have their lives and got no time to fill such a forms.
We only start to work and gathering people and what we need to say them now?

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D-Layer received funding without being a DAO. You operate and then you made your report but without enough transparency.

Later you request funding again but havenā€™t built the DAO, which is way beyond what we can support. This means you are lost on what is expected from the Creatives DAO, you might not have been properly onboarded into our community, therefore we need to use your feedback to improve, I believe we need a standard onboarding for Creatives: Near Certified Creatives.

Creatives DAO is a community of communities made up of creators building on NEAR.

The idea is to distribute funding into on-chain communities, not teams. Teams can request funding from the on-chain communities.

Creatives DAO is not for one artist, the help we aim to provide is for artist communities building the web3 and growing the NEAR Ecosystemā€¦ meaning direct support for on-chain communities of artists (DAOs).

We cannot ā€œkillā€ an artist even in a figurative way. Artist should keep doing what they do, why an artist should stop because a rejection from Creatives DAO, where there should be many places for this artist to work and evolve.

Again: Creatives DAO has never promised anyone a ā€˜stable jobā€™ or an opportunity to cover the bills, this has never been an agreement.

Saying you could cheat and then you are honest is not constructive feedback.

We should find ways of receiving support and deliver proper reports with full explanations of the value generated. One expected way to explain it is through metrics. This is web3, we interact with art and the dapps so there are metrics like views but also transactions, and if there is no clear metric there could be also a subjective assessment where you can gather information like running a poll.

There are many dapps on NEAR that our people can use as tools to spread their art to the whole world.

I also made a huge onboarding, and I can prove that there is a real on-chain community because there is a DAO tooling with 21 councils and their presentations on the forumā€¦ we have dapps on mainnet and testnet, artists, traders, and professors.

What we are doing without NEAR Foundation funds? We are building our service offering as a community, having price for blockchain certifications (we already did proper onboarding into Near University and now we have more than 50 active members who are certified, and around 200 members certified) and we are running our projects in a self-sustainable way.

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If you donā€™t understood my emotions: Of course the artist will create but without you, so he will continue his work but out of the ecosystem, youā€™ve ā€œkilledā€ not the artist but his future in the NEAR blockchain.