clawback powers of capitol contributors funding small projects 

TLDR

Bounty funder clawback powers 

capitol has majority stake in small project DAOs but the executing team has agency to fulfill milestones. with this the DAO has the power to rug a weak executing team in the most powerful governance mechanic there is... ragequit

Problem

Accountability on DAO funded projects and bounties is a major problem. How many grants are made and the receiving team ends up squandering the money, not meeting stated milestones or fuck off all together? It happens more than we like to admit and the only recourse is to avoid funding that team again (if we did the DD in the first place). The other option is fund projects retroactively, this makes it hard for builders to commit because there is no guarantee that they will actually eventually get paid. 

For high demand builders that many times need to be paid up front to prioritize work and buy shoes or whatever, retroactive can be a deal breaker.

For funders that want to see real results from the capitol they contribute, paying up front without guaranteed accountability is a dealbreaker.

Furthermore, funding bounties is usually not pluralistic. In a world of “public good” protocols, open source projects where work should benefit many parties, a single funder does not make sense. Funds should be able to come from many individuals, daos, yield, streams whatever

Finally funders should be rewarded not only builders. Especially in retroactive, and in the case where builders take money up front then maybe only the funders should be retroactively awarded, at least the large majority.

Framing

• Small project should be able to receive funding from many angles

• Teams should be able to form around project while they receive funding

• Spending funds on building should have a level of accountability

• If a project goes south funders should be able to remove funds

• Builders should be paid as they complete milestones

• Building should be transparent

Assumptions

• This mechanic allows builders to request funds as needed, through making proposals as milestones or resources are needed.

• This mechanic also allows funders to hold builder accountable, because they can ragequit during any proposal

• This might not work in larger initiatives because funders have to see a longer term vision

• Funders won’t bail at the first sign of issues when the builders are working the best they can

• Every bounty/grant/specific project is a DAO, that is not too much overhead

• People actually care about more liquid work flows like this

Example

A band of merry misfits that have created a new hallucinogenic feather that when placed on the tongue throws their consciousness into an organic shared metaverse reality. These magic feathers need to be programmed at the cellular level to create these shared reality experiences. The purple feather propels you into a nightmarish futuristic world where everyone are grotesque monsters that eat each other (some people are in to this). The red feather puts you in a peaceful cloud world, where everyone is a bean stock waving in the gentle breeze.
One of the major feather uses has a new idea they would like developed, its a gold feather that lets you see life through a igneous rock and all its permutations over several million years. They know it will take time to develop and offer up 1000 lulu bucks to make it happen. Several other feather droppers think this is also an awesome idea, so they put in 100 lulus each. A team of qualified feather builders and cellular engineers take on the bounty and say it will cost 1500 lulus to complete, they lay out a detailed spec with several milestones of R&D and user testing.

The first milestone approaches and the team has built a feather to test, only thing is it is not gold it’s more of a brown color. User tests come back and the experience is more like slowly sinking in a vat of jello. The team explains the igneous rock thing is not really doable and they want to pivot to the jello drowning brown feather. The funders think this is lame, the builders failed and are doing something different now. So the funders rugquit taking their remaining funds and repurposing to a team that can execute.

Experiment

We are doing a first POC with this exact mechanic now. A person requested the ability to have custom names and symbols for LOOT tokens in moloch v3 contracts and funded the prop with 1 eth, a few others liked the idea and funded it with .01 eth. The project is now almost complete.

**
See the interface here
[https://pby-custom-loot--luminous-stroopwafel-650483.netlify.app/#/

](https://pby-custom-loot--luminous-stroopwafel-650483.netlify.app/#/)And the builders Govern board here https://govrn.app/#/dao/177**