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:
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.
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).
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.
Hey @FritzWorm , first of all, thank you for all of your insight and the conversations we’ve had over the past few months. It’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 “progress not perfection”. Practically speaking, I think the actual barrier to vote “NO” 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 “NO” than there is in voting “YES” on a custom function call that was proposed to a DAO on the council.
I’d just like to give my perspective on a few things here:
I think “resistance” 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, it’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 doesn’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 “building as we go”, 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 “stop” 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: “May the force be NEAR you!”
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 wouldn’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
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. We’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.
It’s taking too much time, it’s all very strange, I don’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.
It’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.
That’s where this kind of conversation here, although super necessary, is also scary because it shows that maybe there’s no way out.
And deep inside I feel that something is not being said, I don’t know… All so strange, confused, doubtful, limbo… Sad
Oh, and finally… 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, don’t! Fear of our Nearverse becoming a place full of standard projects, closed in rules and metrics and lacking in creativity. I’m an artist and I see the community in an artistic way, and maybe that’s my problem.
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:
First of all, @FritzWorm I really appreciate the effort you have been consistently pouring into Creatives DAO. You’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. Let’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.
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 it’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 ‘future-need’ 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: let’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, it’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)
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.
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 “killed” 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 don’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 don’t want to create more, it is not because of money, it is because i’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 what’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 don’t want to live another 5 years with last Europe Dictator.
With all respect to the community. Thx
i can bring tons of bots in the social and show it in the metrics, but i’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. I’m a producer of many artist and projects in the real world and i know how hard to click artist’s mind to that metrics stuff. I’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?
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 haven’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 Ecosystem… meaning direct support for on-chain communities of artists (DAOs).
We cannot “kill” 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 ‘stable job’ 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 forum… 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.
If you don’t understood my emotions: Of course the artist will create but without you, so he will continue his work but out of the ecosystem, you’ve “killed” not the artist but his future in the NEAR blockchain.
you have a team call with us, but i was out for some reasons, ok something i’ve miss, as you dont know that there was no any rules to make astro in the guides.
Thx for @Jull-gull she filled this metric google form.
From UnitedBelarusDAO with love))
We continue doing our job, with or without funding
People first-world countries do not understand what does it means to fight for. But we hope on it.
I understand your desires and goals, I myself was quite strict in reporting metrics in previous life.
We will try to do our best, but not because of metrics, but out of a desire to help real creative people from our country.
P.S.: sometimes, behind the pursuit of metrics, we can lose the real goal. I often make mistakes somewhere, please clarify if something is wrong. And the fact that the account on Astrodao for the D-Layer was not created on time is my fault, I like to rush people and force things)
True, let’s never forget the important things. The blockchain space is a very new one, we are building some very nice stuff that never existed before. Let’s learn together and enjoy our time here sharing our core with each other.
Thank you for your inaluable feedback Fritz and for services!
I havent been son involved with Creatives dao but as far as I observe as a Forum Mod all I can say is amount of proposals are mindblowing (not saying they are too much nor unefficient but not so scaleable from my perspective)
thank you.