The advantages of retroactive rewards using meta governance and result based outcomes

TLDR

This rage report dives into the advantages and mechanics of an open bazaar of retroactive rewards. The idea is to create a more inclusive and diverse DAO by directly rewarding contributors retroactively with more governance power. Contributions can be anything that aligns with our manifesto (not only objectives). This mechanic can help spread the mission of a DAO manifesto and build community through killer parties of celebration and recognition.

Problem

Recognizing and rewarding contributors is very heavy in overhead and is a centralized processes. This usually results in grant committees, scout teams or bounty boards. The result and effectiveness of these mechanics vary but they all require some amount of operational overhead.

• This overhead is expensive and ultimately is incentivizing the wrong thing.

• Paying people for work in a governance token creates a more transactional relationship, something more like an employer/employee relationship.

• These types of work contracts attract more extrinsically motivated people.

• Ultimately extrinsic relationships end up with the major power in the DAO held by inactive speculators, looking for the best time to exit their position. There is some value in this but skews the purpose of the DAO to “up only” instead of longer term goals and purposes.

• Retro active rewards might be gamed so there needs to be some amount of buy in and secondary mechanics that can further curate nominations

The cathedral and the bazaar

• There is a strange duality in DAOs focusing on rewards that only match with internal objectives and with more open statements in a purpose/manifesto.

• Focusing on only internal objectives creates a closed loop instead of an expanding network

• Internal focus only may cause tunnel vision and missed opportunities to push a DAOs ultimate vision/mission forward

Framing

• We can have on hell of a party to recognize and celebrate the communities accomplishments

• We can become missionaries to evangelize and spread the good news about our goals and indoctrinate others along the way.

• An expanding network creates more momentum to the DAOs ultimate goals.

• We leverage mechanics that expand and diversify holders/stakers

• We should recognize contributions to our mission and manifesto.

• We can crowdsource the DAOs general populace in retroactive rewards participation and lower overall overhead

Assumptions

If we build it they will come

• This requires that members will participate in the retroactive reward sessions

• People will need to trust this process is working and efficient to participate.

• Having more open applications for rewards will help introduce the larger community to our mission and will surface relationships with aligned people.

• Retroactively rewarding people, projects, members, orgs and delegates creates a more intrinsic motivation to participate in the DAO, and it creates a flywheel of a ‘pay it forward’ attitude.

• Ultimately we have a more diverse and value aligned power and diversification in the DAO.

• People will not take advantage of the situation by trying to game the outcomes, and see the value in this working.

DAOhaus Experiment - The Field of Dreams

Retroactive Rewards Event

Members submit nominations. Any person or team can be nominated for a reward, including Champions (elected delegates). All general members can then signal with their points (on chain snapshot of loot and shares at the start of the event). Champions, although they do not have a larger stake than any other member in signaling events, have the added responsibility of vouching for a nomination. The top nominations, after the time boxed event, will be rewarded up to 3% of the HAUS uncirculating supply of the token (12% a year), split between winners by percent total points allocated (more participation by members, more rewards). This rewards winners with more HAUS that can equate to more governance power(PUB) to delegate to themselves or to someone else.

Reward distributions will be scheduled and automated through seasonal proposals to launch signal events and doing automatic distribution based on results.

Open Bazaar Party

Once a season we throw a full day event. The structure is similar to a condensed Daocember.

• Highlight teams, projects and interesting ideas in the space.

• Have demos

• Reward ceremonies

• Networking

• Blood of Moloch happy hour

Who is eligible for rewards?

Anything that is aligned with our manifesto.

• Could include well funded startups, or independent builders.

• Could include the actions of an exceptional member or Champions(delegate).

• Internal projects and external, integrations and forks

• Any kind of content, ranging from marketing, research and/or development

• EOAs, smart wallets and DAOs

Not going to reward the most basic acts of participation like participating in voting signaling or coming to meetings.

There can be other rewards like reputational badges, sbts, and nfts

How do we participate?

By being staked at the on chain snapshot for retroactive rewards session and receive points. signal the choices that best match your incentives and the collectives.

How do we grade nominations?

Nomination choices should be graded mainly on two factors, how well it aligns with our high level objectives and how well it aligns with our manifesto

Other Definitions:

General Member or Non-delegate members - Voting(Shares) or Non-Voting(loot) holder of the DAO. Share holders can vote on all direct execution proposals unless they have delegated.

Delegate -  a general member that has been awarded more voting power from another general member. A delegate is a general member but a general member is not always a delegate.

Champion - a ‘verified’ delegate through DAO governance.

Points - On chain snapshot points, this is a snapshot of current general members token holdings, this does not account for any power delegation that has been made. For example: Alice has 100 voting shares and 100 non voting loot, they delegate their voting power to Bob who has 10 voting shares. Bob now has 110 voting power but at the next snapshot Alice will have 200 points and Bob will have 10.

Choice Vouching - a Champion can vouch for a choice to give it more weight by staking at least 1 point on it.

Meta Governance - A governance event that adds context and fidelity to the DAO

Sub Signals - In between the main events there may be sub signal events that are used to find higher definition on winning Objectives and execution tactics.

OKR - Objective and Key Results

Season - period of OKR setting, execution, and rewards

Waypoint - the point of rolling over from one season to the next

Token Curated List (TCR) - a list of choices where members can allocate different weights to those choices based on token holdings. The result is a list weighted from highest priority to lowest based on the collective signal.

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