Introducing Coordinape

[Chrissu]

Something more than a rewarding mechanism

Abstract
We aim to incentivize the community members to help the DAO and support each other through effective collaboration and teamwork. For that, we suggest using coordinape.com .

What is Coordinape
Coordinape is a tool to scale your community with tools to reward contributors, incentivize participation and manage resources.

Coordinape allows DAOs to vote on who is providing the most value, thereby we measure in a decentralized way what activities and individuals should be compensated the most.

Every workstream or product should define the budget needed. From there, tokens can be distributed, at a regular interval - say at the end of the month. These tokens are distributed according to the value creation in the DAO and the added value to the teams. Each contributor gets allocated a number of $GIVE to distribute to their fellow team members according to their contribution.

Read more about Coordinape

Details
If you ask everyone in the ecosystem who is doing good work, their collective answers will give a good sense of where the value is.
This also provides valuable insights for the DAO about what kinds of work are prioritized, what the ecosystem finds most valuable, and who are the key contributors. These insights provide the team with the key elements and observation to develop and adjust our strategies leading us toward our long-term vision.

Additionally, the shared visual display also enables everyone in the community to see the daily focuses and find opportunities for collaboration or reduce duplication of effort.

Challenges

• Our ecosystem is too big to control everything.
• Usually, teams observe a popularity game or a learning curve for new contributors. As new contributors join us we might see key contributors thrive, but new or introverted contributors to tend to fade into the background for the long-term or for some time.
• Long-term members, stability vs engagement. We need to ensure that ecosystem contributors feel safe with their compensation.

Solutions

• Separate the cycles into smaller teams. Each product or initiative will have its own core team and budget to allocate between them.
• Core members get rewarded with bonuses. Full-time contributors receive basic compensation and they get rewarded with Coordinape on top of that to ensure that they feel secure and motivated to contribute more.

Plan
We propose to separate working groups from 1-10 people. This will help the teams control and manage their resources due to their size and the collaboration between all members. Each team gets allocated a budget and at the end of the month, every team member has to vote and distribute their rewards.

We, in the ecosystem, suggest a basic compensation of $2k/individual and a bonus of 500-1000k/person under the ecosystem.

It is worth mentioning that each workstream or product can choose a different number or ratio between their rewards and basic compensation.

Audience
Mainly ecosystem contributors who are compensated by the DAO every month.

Note: In the Mix & Match section we suggest using the tool for Onboarding Community Contributors too.

Proposed working groups

• Prime Launch
• Prime Deals
• Prime Pools
• Prime Rating
• Proposal Inverter

Mix & Match

We can use Coordinape in collaboration with Dework or Wonderverse either to onboard people to different workstreams to increase our cross-collaboration.

Cycles: Cycles are separated into 3 different categories.
1. Products
Each product squad gets a specific budget that the team members can distribute within the group.
Team members get a basic compensation and on top of that, the team decides on their BONUS.

2. Onboarding Cycle
To tackle the learning curve or the popularity issue we suggest treating the onboarding working group as a separate cycle.
Every month a specific budget is distributed to the onboarding WG to allocate and reward community contributors. The community contributors can only receive rewards from the onboarding team.
What we propose is utilizing the voting mechanism Coordinape provides to reward tasks instead of early contributors. This will help create an objective process until the community contributors get familiar with the DAO, and vice versa.
The community contributors will get compensated in D2D. When the contributors reach a threshold of 200 D2D they will be able to apply for a full-time position or they will be able to participate in the DAO initiatives(introduced below), supported by the DAO.

3 Initiatives
What is an initiative?
An initiative is an effort created by the workstreams or DAO contributors aimed to support and promote the products, vision, and mission of PrimeDAO. This could include the beginning of a podcast, book club, etc.
When creating a new initiative, a proposal with the team, budget, goal, and an action plan have to be in place. If and when the proposal is approved, we can use Coordinape to fund and manage the process. The team inside the initiative will allocate their budget independently and according to the efforts. The initiative should have at least 1 lead overseeing the process and after 1-2 months the DAO will re-evaluate the initiative.

Steps towards Implementation
Decision on who is involved in the Coordinape structure.
Decision on the number of funds to allocate for the rewards. I would suggest starting with a small amount and increasing every month so that using of the tool grows organically.
Setting up the Coordinape basic structure
Create an analytics board
Assign the responsibility to allocate the funds to the teams.
Create a tracking board to moderate the process

Timeline
Beginning of July

Overall Cost
TBA

Feedback welcome

Hopefully, this structure will increase the decentralization in our DAO and incentivize contributors to take action. feedback and suggestions are always welcome, most specifically if the above proposal affects you.
What tools and processes do you suggest for scaling coordination? What should be explained further on the above proposal?

Resources

DAOs - The New Coordination Frontier

DAOs - The New Coordination Frontier

8 Ideas for DAO Work @ Maximum Coordination ™️ - 8 Ideas for DAO Work @ Maximum Coordination ™️ - 🤖 DAO Governance and Vision - Gitcoin Governance
Coordinape: An overview - https://forum.tecommons.org/t/coordinape-an-overview/616
Reward Systems - Reward systems - Google Slides

[xm3van]

Big fan of coordinape - would love to see it in Prime! Depending on the scope - happy to support on the Analytics Dashboard.

@Lavi @mm3729 @Salome under “Mix and Match” - we could apply the same principle within the planned SCRUM framework within rating. Wdyt? (just fractal it down)

[Salome]

Thanks for putting up this proposal @Chrissu
I am personally not convinced of Coordinape and I have seen many DAOs fail using it successfully. I think that coordinape and other reputation tools are great in some decision making (like for example technical or marketing). I think that using reputation for money decisions (budget/treasury/salaries/bonuses) is not a good option because it turns financial decisions into a sort of popularity contest that is controlled by a SMALLER number of individuals and therefore can be manipulated or gamified.
Also it can create conflicts in teams I think and might result in scenarios where ppl only reward ppl they also get rewards from.

[Lavi]

I also share the same concern tbh.
The exercise of distributing GIVE to your colleagues is quite fun, but as Salomé mentions, it also introduces potential for conflict if you connect monetary impact to the outcome of such a contest. Also ppl tend to be extra active or visible the days before the decision. I’ve witnessed similar behaviour when your rewards are depending on the impression that other ppl have about your contributions. I’m not a fan of this kind of rewarding. But I’m also open to experiments, maybe this can used for other non-monetary rewards, or for a small bonus or something

[papa_raw]

I don’t think of Coordinape as a very good tool, for the reasons folks have mentioned.

[mm3729]

Thanks for putting this proposal up, Chrissu. I don’t have experience with Coordinape, but used a Web 2.0 tool called “Small Improvements” that is based on similar principles. Observed the following issues:
i) Quid pro quo rewarding: those who give me rewards will get reward votes from me
ii) Certain functions such as data, finance and legal which operate “behind the scenes” felt left out since the rewards went to those who were loudest/most visible

I like the idea of getting stakeholder feedback very much to instil a meritocratic culture. Just wondering if there are other ways this can be accomplished. One suggestion would be to make the reward amounts smaller and more symbolic. Another would be that this is piloted in one group (e.g. Eco Contributors) and measured against the above concerns, before being rolled out across the DAO.

[maerg.eth]

Supportive of the proposal and excited to integrate Coordinape. Been a fan of the work since Yearn times. Couple of questions to clarify;

@Chrissu

We, in the ecosystem, suggest a basic compensation of $2k/individual and a bonus of 500-1000k/person under the ecosystem.

I assume basic compensation per individual refers to the Prime full-time contributors. So the baseline compensation for a full-time hire would be 2k and they can receive an amount of 500 to 1k USD (1000k is not correct) as a bonus? And this bonus amount would differ from workstream/squad to workstream/squad?

Plus I think it’s important to mention who won’t be compensated by such a mechanism;

• For example, Prime Deals BD people are heavily incentivized by receiving half of the fees collected from the individuals they bring onboard. I think it is important to prevent double-rewarding.

• Also, Prime Launch BD people are heavily incentivized by receiving 25% of the fees collected from the launching partners.

• Proposal Inverter isn’t a fully Prime integrated product. I do not see them as a part of this mechanism since they already have their internal policies for rewards.

• Prime rating also has its rewarding mechanism for these types of activities. And the DAO has provided a great amount of funding for them. So I don’t see them as a part of this proposal as well.

Rather than focusing on product-level bonuses, I would focus on task force/squad level focus. Involve community managers, coordinators, content creators, social media managers, event organizers, and so on. So the budgets can be assigned to product squads but should be distributed among task forces rather than the whole team. So the bonuses could go to Squads rather than individuals. And those squads can off-chain decide how to spend their bonuses. They can save it for a retreat, they can share equally, and they can try to build their own mechanism to split it however they seem fit. But the freedom must remain with the squads rather than a mechanism.

@Chrissu

The community contributors will get compensated in D2D. When the contributors reach a threshold of 200 D2D they will be able to apply for a full-time position or they will be able to participate in the DAO initiatives(introduced below), supported by the DAO.

Also on the quote above, I think 200 D2D is an extremely low amount to be able to “qualify” to apply for a full-time position. I don’t think we should encourage community members for full-time positions but rather incentivize them to contribute as free agents of the space.

Also,

@Salome

I think that using a reputation for money decisions (budget/treasury/salaries/bonuses) is not a good option because it turns financial decisions into a sort of popularity contest that is controlled by a SMALLER number of individuals and therefore can be manipulated or gamified.

Agreed with Salome here, but I believe this could be a signaling option for contributors. I agree that most of the DAOs I interacted with over the years failed to use Coordinape properly but I also believe that it is safe enough for Prime to try. The gamification and manipulation won’t be the case if we focus on Task Force and Squad level since those will be highly interconnected to other squads and task forces.

But overall, I really like the approach and support of it in general, given a little more thought put into the planning of a general long-term strategy for the implementation of Coordinape. Also, would like to see a community event with the coordinape team as well to celebrate our adoption once its established.

[bparlan]

Thank you for this well-prepared proposal. I agree with @Salome and @Lavi’s concerns. Personally, I don’t have Coordinape experience, but I hear mixed feedback from the BanklessDAO community since they do utilize it heavily. Especially ones who do not feel comfortable under spotlights usually do not get rewarded. But as a shy member of the community I can easily clarify that those concerns are related to philosophy rather than the tool itself. Those concerns are issues that usually get solved by the behavior or the actions of the participants who adopt blockchain philosophy in their mindset. From this perspective, plus positives such as DeWork integration, I would love to see Coordinape integration, and include information about the above-mentioned concerns in the demonstration of the Coordinape within PrimeDAO prior to the tool usage.

We need to take the coordination scaling aspect seriously. I consider working groups of PrimeDAO as SubDAO’s, and I wish to emphasize that the PrimeDAOs visual branding is amazingly designed to adapt this kind of structure.

Lastly,

@maerg.eth

I don’t think we should encourage community members for full-time positions but rather incentivize them to contribute as free agents of the space.

I just wanted to emphasize the importance of @maerg.eth’s message. ‘Full-time’ should be something DAOs avoid as much as they can, and focus on creating tasks/bounties accessible to as many participants as possible.

[papa_raw]

@bparlan

. ‘Full-time’ should be something DAOs avoid as much as they can, and focus on creating tasks/bounties accessible to as many participants as possible.

Certain groups in PrimeDAO operate with the explicit opposite philosophy – that bounties and tasks generally fail to build healthy, sustainable relationships between a DAO and its contributors, and that building a particularized corpus of experience is more practical than privileging widespread access.

I will openly state here that Prime has been able to ship Launch and Deals because it has explicitly disregarded the labor thesis that [access > regularity]. Rating is another story.

Food for thought.

[Chrissu]

Thank you for the feedback. I see your concerns about the tool. When the tool, is been used by large teams with no clear individual objectives this could result in a popularity game.

I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this.

@Salome

I think that coordinape and other reputation tools are great in some decision-making (like for example technical or marketing).

[Chrissu]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I’d love to hear more about this. Do you think that the rewards should be related to your overall performance and dedication to the DAO, the impact that your actions have, or prioritizing tasks based on the DAO’s overall values and goals?

@Lavi

But I’m also open to experiments, maybe this can be used for other non-monetary rewards, or for a small bonus or something

Do you have a tool in mind that you have seen working efficiently in decentralized communities?

[Chrissu]

Gotcha!

This can be definitely a solution. We can experiment with this or a similar tool in a smaller group of contributors and based on the outcomes, we can take action.

[xm3van]

I am wondering whether there are a any empirical studies/ literature on Coordinape (or something analogous) and it’s impact and if not - would it be worth investigating this before introducing Coordinape? Can we have RoD investigating this @mm3729 ? From the conversation thus far I feel that context will be key for assessing the whether coordinape affords itself in Prime and it’s Sub-DAO (or we just trying it in a limited scope )

Personally I like to see the proposal go further, as I see the beauty in Coordinape in bottom up approach paired with a feedback mechanism to direct GIVE to value adding activities perceived by others within the community (Zach from coordinape explains it well here). I think this is powerful as a DAO represent a community for me and ideally value is reflective of what the community thinks is valuable, which I think can only be expressed limited through a few.

I do admit that a collective can be victim to popularity contest but it seems to me that we exchanging biases of the individual with biases of the collective. And while may have a individual who is able to do this at a given time - I am not sure if it is robust long-term (sometimes you have good boss sometimes you don’t).

I am also wondering whether biases as such can be prevented by actively monitoring metrics defined to a narrow scope within context and reflecting on them periodically as a community over time and limiting or weighting the decision making power of the individuals within their community to function where they informed in.

I share sentiment with this a lot:

@maerg.eth

So the bonuses could go to Squads rather than individuals.

Also brief side comments on this:

@maerg.eth

Prime rating also has its rewarding mechanism for these types of activities. And the DAO has provided a great amount of funding for them. So I don’t see them as a part of this proposal as well.

and this:

@papa_raw

Rating is another story.

This is true for raters writing report however not for the operational side behind rating imo. Personally, I feel that especially as Rating scales Coordinape may be valuable there.

[ataberk]

Although I am in favor of experimenting with new forms of reward policy, I do not think that this proposal takes into account the operational realities that characterize PrimeDAO, and the coordination methods employed. And making a proposal that transforms the already working system radically with no clear certainty around whether it will make the system better or break it, is a bit dangerous in my opinion.

I would, however, support a proposal that would request a small budget for one single work stream to experiment with Coordinate, and report the results, have learnings in regards to how it might work for the broader DAO. I think this reward distribution should not be for USDC but for extra D2D rewards.

[Chrissu]

Firstly, thank you so much for the detailed message. It’s great to hear your thoughts and how you see this moving forward!

@maerg.eth

I assume basic compensation per individual refers to the Prime full-time contributors. So the baseline compensation for a full-time hire would be 2k and they can receive an amount of 500 to 1k USD (1000k is not correct) as a bonus? And this bonus amount would differ from workstream/squad to workstream/squad?

Correct.

@maerg.eth

Rather than focusing on product-level bonuses, I would focus on task force/squad level focus. Involve community managers, coordinators, content creators, social media managers, event organizers, and so on. So the budgets can be assigned to product squads but should be distributed among task forces rather than the whole team. So the bonuses could go to Squads rather than individuals. And those squads can off-chain decide how to spend their bonuses. They can save it for a retreat, they can share equally, and they can try to build their own mechanism to split it however they seem fit. But the freedom must remain with the squads rather than as a mechanism.

I like this approach, rewarding squads instead of individuals. It will connect the teams and it can be used to elevate the teams instead of individuals.
In this case tho I was considering keeping the individual compensation stable and add a total reward of (1k)-(>1k) for each squad. What are your thoughts on this?

What is the size of the squad or the working group you have in mind?
Do you mean the community and support squad or the event working group? Additionally, what are the squads you this approach be implemented on?

@maerg.eth

Also on the quote above, I think 200 D2D is an extremely low amount to be able to “qualify” to apply for a full-time position. I don’t think we should encourage community members for full-time positions but rather incentivize them to contribute as free agents of the space.

I hear you on that. I’d be happy to increase the threshold to more D2D or change it to a task or time-oriented threshold.

At the same time, I think its a great space to express how I envision this process working:

This process works as a funnel for us to recruit Prime educated talent. During the last couple of months we were seeking for dedicated contributors in multiple occasions, reaching out to people who are not familiar with PrimeDAO.

At the same time, its needed to be mentioned that community contributors, shouldn’t consider PrimeDAO as a full-time job. Rather, a hobby or a project that they would like to see succeeding and contribute on its success.
Community contributors can start as free agents and work by getting bounties from Wonderverse.

During this time, they learn about PrimeDAO, our language and processes. This equips them with all information and skillset needed to join our Product teams or initiatives and be 100% productive from day1, once PrimeDAO is seeking for full-time contributors.
It’s important to mention that this doesn’t stop them from being free agents forever, if they want to.

On the contrary, being able to apply to full-time roles or propose their own initiative work as reward. The reward of being involve on the mission of the project and keep being productive, because they always have something to expect and to work for.

@maerg.eth

But overall, I really like the approach and support of it in general, given a little more thought put into the planning of a general long-term strategy for the implementation of Coordinape. Also, would like to see a community event with the coordinape team as well to celebrate our adoption once its established.

Absolutely! An event to answer all of our questions will be planned within the month.

[Chrissu]

@ataberk

I would, however, support a proposal that would request a small budget for one single workstream to experiment with Coordinate, and report the results, have learnings in regards to how it might work for the broader DAO. I think this reward distribution should not be for USDC but for extra D2D rewards

Based on the overall feedback, and this message specifically, I’d love to discuss further how we can implement Coordinape in a very small group of people and as suggested, report the learnings.

A few points that we can keep in mind moving forward:

• Reward in D2D
• A symbolic D2D reward
• Maybe rewarding the team, instead of the individuals, giving freedom to the team to decide how they will utilize their reward.

[maerg.eth]

Also, thank you @Chrissu for bringing life to the forum.

[luizfernando]

Thanks for putting up the proposal and opening up the discussion @chrissu!

Although I share some of the concerns mentioned about having it used for contributors to reward each other, I’d love to see it being implemented in the squad/working group level. excited to see how each squad would be managing and allocating their rewards.

@maerg.eth

but should be distributed among task forces rather than the whole team

I think it could be a great way to incentivize contributors to take part in taskforces and initiatives that are not their main role/work!

@Chrissu

Cycles: Cycles are separated into 3 different categories.

Are these “cycles” maybe the Coordinape circles?

@Chrissu

the community contributors will get compensated in D2D. When the contributors reach a threshold of 200 D2D they will be able to apply for a full-time position

I like the idea of having an onboarding circle for extra rewards on top of bounties in D2D. I just wonder if it makes sense to have a D2D threshold for becoming a full-time contributor - as the token can be bought, transferred, swapped…

@Lavi

maybe this can used for other non-monetary rewards

I like the idea of using Coordinape to give non-monetary rewards. I think it would be interesting to see if this could be used between contributors to distribute REP.

Maybe then also have it on the onboarding circle and define a threshold in REP for becoming a full-time contributor, instead of in D2D.

I’d love to see the following implementations:
a) D2D circle between squads
b) REP circle between contributors
c) D2D+REP circle for onboarding

For planning up the implementation I think it would be great to have the squads and its members mapped out.

Also I think it could be relevant to compare Coordinape with similar tools/mechanisms, such as TEC’s praise, for example. We could then discuss what its differences would mean for the usability and results of the implementation.

Again thanks a lot @Chrissu for putting it up!