Streamlined Rewards for Guild Contributors
This post will explain how (and why) guild leaders may create Sputnik DAOs and request budgets for distribution to individual contributors. While teaching others about our new process, you can help our community experiment with decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
Earlier this year, we introduced a more open system for guild reports on the forum. However, payouts are still managed through a centralized process that relies on traditional invoices. Given the ability of v1 Sputnik DAOs to allocate resources according to the results of proposals, we are inviting contributors to make forum posts and receive NEAR if a project coordinator submits a proposal that is approved. This additional source of rewards is open to to anyone sharing value with our ecosystem.
Delving further into the possibilities, NEAR staking pools are smart contracts, which means you can imagine DAOs representing delegators, who elect council members to decide whether to execute specific actions ~ arbitrary functions of any / all NEAR applications.
Guild Project DAOs
Here is my recommendation for guild leaders and project coordinators who enable their communities / contributors by supporting them financially. You are more than welcome to request funds via the Community Squad DAO, and it’s easy to send them into your own DAO! Just follow the process detailed in the forum post below. That way, members of your guild (or anyone) can submit proposals to pay contributors.
Guild leaders and project coordinators may submit proposals to DAOs on behalf of their fellow contributors, or they ask individual contributors to submit on their own proposals. Here are some guidelines for any proposal:
- Start discussion by joining a guild and / or creating a forum topic
- Review available Sputnik DAOs to better understand their purposes and resources
- Ask council members for opinions regarding the proposal in development
- Submit proposal to the appropriate Sputnik DAO
- Consider all feedback and never give up!
Categories of DAOs a.k.a. ‘DAO verticals’
- Artists, Designers, Musicians, etc. → Creatives DAO
- Privacy Experts and Enthusiasts → Cypherpunk Guild
- Marketing Professionals → Marketing DAO - coming soon
- Education Efforts → Education DAO - coming soon
- Creators / Earners → Human Guild
- Whatever You Need → Community Squad
Remember, we’ve got your back! Let’s all help each other build a better internet for everyone.
How To Submit a Payout Proposal
Here is a detailed guide with information about the DAO proposal input fields:
Target: NEAR account ID of recipient, can be .sputnikdao.near
Job / Proposal Description (max 240 characters): This field should contain a brief explanation of the proposal, summarizing the objective and key results.
Forum Link: Be sure to include the number after the backslash, and keep in mind, Discourse links can be shortened like this: https://gov.near.org/t/451/3
Payout in NEAR: This field contains the amount of NEAR requested in the proposal.
Bond: Minimum amount required to submit a proposal to the council. When a proposal gets approved, this amount is returned to you. However, if the proposal is not approved, it goes into the DAO account.
Gratitude: The Attitude
Thanks for all your contributions! Let us know if you have any questions. You’re welcome to join our weekly calls in the NEAR community Discord, and we look forward to discussing feedback here on the forum.
ACTIONABLE ITEM: DAO council members, please create a forum topic with details of your DAOs, along with descriptions of what kinds of proposals you will fund and (more importantly) what kinds you will not fund.
… in other words, tell us about your goals and how you’re planning to achieve them.
Example:
What is the name of your DAO?
What is your mission statement?
The DAO purpose: “We want every human to be rewarded for bringing their creations to the world.” According to DAO council member Aliaksandr Hudzilin, they are building the NEAR future of work.
Who are the council members?
- vlad.near
- aliaksandrh.near
- root.near
What do you fund?
HG normally funds contributors building new apps in categories like art, music, film, gaming, etc. One example is NEARcrowd, which resembles a mechanical turk style user experience.
What do you NOT fund?
Another important consideration is HG doesn’t fund projects without a clear timeline for launch and rough estimation of potential usage. Furthermore, HG does not want to have people joining the community who are “there to get paid.”
Objectives and Key Results
Human Guild is focused on increasing the number of earners across all apps. They believe that community participation requires recurring, participatory, purposeful activities. DAOs are one way to bootstrap community engagement.
Their experimental Yolo DAO received 38 proposals, and 26 were approved. 60,000 NEAR was distributed to various recipients. As v2 Sputnik DAOs become accessible, Human Guild plans to introduce another forum post with details of their new DAO, applying what they learn from the Yolo DAO experiment. There is already a new v1 Sputnik DAO for Human Guild:
Other Guilds:
Human Guild is just one of many for you to explore! Allow us to highlight a few others, representing major categories of the community budget:
Privacy
The Cypherpunk Guild aspires to bring the following to NEAR:
- Private transactions for NEAR smart contracts
- Developer, entrepreneur, and enterprise support for privacy solutions in Web3
- A hub for new and existing Cypherpunks
- Starting new conversations, hosting events, and enabling the next generation of Cypherpunks through meetups, forum discussions, and virtual events
Recently, the Cypherpunk Guild has expressed interested in sponsoring a private-voting feature, and they are inviting contributors to learn more:
Creatives
Createbase and related guilds are focused on supporting all kinds of creatives in our ecosystem. Have a look through proposals to their DAOs, and get involved in the ongoing #OpenWebHack!
Guide for participating in the new Creatives DAO:
Marketing
Developers
For engineers, we have our Discord and a group on Telegram. We’d love to see a “Hacker Guild” form and continue building momentum after special events. This would mean rewarding developers who help others create useful applications on NEAR. Best place to start is GitHub:
Community
And last but not least, if you need anything at all, you are welcome to connect with our Community Squad. Our general purpose DAO empowers anyone to discover opportunities and experiment with solutions. Your success is our success!
Let us know any ideas or questions 
Feel free to send a DM to anyone in the Community Squad group here on the NEAR forum.