🧑‍💼Ambassador Learnings - Stakeborg DAO Summit

The StakeborgDAO Summit took place on the 22nd of September 2022 in Bucharest, Romania.

Core-team participants: Vlad, Evelyne, Matei, Cornel, Cosmin, Shinmen & Endi.

StakeborgDAO Ambassadors: ostanescu.eth, 1johnnyvault.eth, freefly.eth and eugenptr.eth.

Community Moderators: MTK

StakeborgDAO Members: about 25-30 community members were present, including a couple of Blockchain course graduates.

I have to start by saying that I went to this summit relatively angry and frustrated on how previous events in our DAO were handled by the core-team as well as very skeptical on moving forward.

I went to the summit determined to ask all my questions and be able to make a decision based on the answers received.

Although the Summit was not organized in the format that most of us expected, I believe that at the moment where we are now, that wouldn't have helped too much. Although I didn’t particularly like the location, I quickly focused on why I was there, rather than how things look.

Part 1 - Vlad’s opening

The Summit was opened by Vlad which gave us a speech where he underlined how the game is played in crypto (from his perspective). I learnt that I have reported wrongly at the idea of DAO and what I thought to be normal was actually idealistic thinking, most of the time.

Although it’s fine and worthy to have idealistic goals, the hard truth is that nothing is perfect nor can be from the beginning. I was naive in my thinking.

Conclusion: I think we should focus on what we can do, rather than asking things to be done by others (no matter who these might be). Also, it’s important that we educate ourselves better on how things actually work. And this has to be done on an individual level.

I had at least two moments where I couldn’t understand how I did not think of some business aspects and their mechanisms and implications.

Part 2 - MTK presentation over TDI (The DAO Insider)

After Vlad's speech, MTK took the stage where he pointed out TDI and how this community project could add value to our DAO in the future. Thus, if you want to get involved, please reach out to MTK.

Part 3 - Ambassadors Letter

Then it came time for the Ambassador’s Letter, which was read to the audience by Eugen (thank you for that). More on this will come as a common message from the Ambassadors team.

But it’s important to mention here that the Ambassadors team took on the responsibility of making some points known and took care that these aspects were brought to the core-team’s attention.

Personally I want to say that I answered most of my questions at this Summit and it’s much more clear to me in which waters I am swimming. After this summit, I have changed my perspective on how to refer to DAOs in general as well as the crypto industry.

Part 4 - Bootstrapping Team

After the letter was read, it was let to sink in, and Endi took the stage. An official announcement will come soon about the recent changes in the bootstrapping team.

Part 5 - Construct and I-1

Then it was time to talk about Construct. Vlad offered some insights into what the tool will do, what problem it solves and it's the current status. What I can say here is that it’s important for us to understand that the launch of a new product has to be in line with the market conditions, thus finding the right moment to launch is extremely important. Also, before finalizing the product, the community will have the chance of providing their input and feedback. More on this will come in the next period.

Besides Construct, there is another project that’s cooking in the oven. I1 (ione - to be read in English). This is a B2B tool for DAOs, which solves a problem identified by Matei during his research on other DAOs/ projects.

It’s a solution that will provide the user with different sorts of metrics and data about DAOs/ projects and present them in a user-friendly format. If you would like to give a hand, feel free to contact Matei or Ioan.

Part 6 - Round Table

After these two presentations of future StakeborgDAO products, the focus was brought back on the Ambassador’s Open Letter and we took the time to go through all the points mentioned there and all questions were touched and discussed. The outcome of this will be presented in a Summit Summary by the Ambassadors team that will be made available on the DOERS channel.

Now, I would like to come back to my personal learnings from this Summit:

  1. We should all put some more work into educating ourselves on how things really work.

  2. As a StakeborgDAO community we should focus more on what we (every single one of us) can do and how we can develop within the DAO, next to what the bootstrapping team is working on.

  3. If you have an initiative, after discussing it, put it on the Agora. I made a shift from discussing things for hours in meetings and calls, but little deliverables. Less talk, more action.

  4. Let’s think less in an ideal mindset, and be more aware (realistic) of the real picture regarding the crypto industry.

  5. Vlad and the core-team have still some work to do to improve communication with StakeborgDAO, but although I don’t agree with his leadership style, I have a better understanding now on how we, as StakeborgDAO community can work towards this as well.

Conclusion / Decision

I will finish with this:

As mentioned above, this Summit for me was decisive. I was about 75% decided to leave StakeborgDAO before the Summit.

After the Summit, I changed my relationship with StakeborgDAO and decided that I would stick around for a while, putting my efforts into helping the community to have a better relationship with the bootstrapping team and make sure that contributors efforts are being incentivized.

PS

As per Vlad’s words regarding the location, we felt a bit as the resistance, in a Polish basement around 1943. I couldn’t help myself to ask Midjourney to show how this would have looked like. Here’s what came out:

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And as always, I leave you with a bit of inspiration and optimism:

Faith and doubt are two sides of the same coin. — Ryan Nicodemus

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