Title: Prime Rating Governance Process & Seasons
Author: @Lavi
Motivation
As outlined in the Prime Vision & Mission statement, having a strong community is a key element for having a successful DAO. And building an efficient governance is seen as the foundation for strong community and engagement. With this post, I’d like to add more color to how the actual governance process can look like and how we can drive engagement and participation for PrimeRating.
Most of the process and structure below were floating around as ideas or were already used previously, however, there’s currently no documentation to summarize it all.
Note: It’s important to clearly distinguish between the overall governance structure of PrimeDAO and the “sub-governance” process for creating, accepting or rejecting rating reports. The following post will only describe the latter.
Introducing the Rating Seasons
At PrimeRating (PR), ratings shall be done in a seasonal manner, much like in traditional sports. In other words, there is a fixed time window throughout which reports can be submitted and reviewed. I propose to start with the following structure:
- The duration of one season is 6 weeks
- The 6 weeks are separated into a 4-week rating season and a 2-week review/recap window. This can be changed later, should it turn out to be too short or long
- Reports can be submitted for 4 weeks after the official start, which is announced on all our social channels
- After the rating period there is a 2-week break. During this break, the “reviewers” will look at all reports that came in last minute and accept/reject all remaining reports
- Moreover, the break is used to curate and upload all reports onto the PR website, to pay out rewards, do a recap of the previous season and to prepare for the next
- To encourage submitting reports early, the rewards will be slightly higher during the first weeks (see details below)
Report-Acceptance Process (RAP)
With the kick-off of the rating season, PR submission process is open for all participants to submit their reports. (The process below is a step-by-step description of the report acceptance process:
- Report template is downloaded from Gitbook, filled out, and uploaded as Google document to the Discord channel → #report-feedback.
- At least two level 2 or level 3 raters look at the report and add their feedback as comments into the document (timeline max. 4 days).
- The party submitting the report can decide to either implement the feedback, stop with the process, or (if feedback was very good) proceed directly to submission.
- The feedback process can be repeated, if the rater wants to make sure the report adheres to the quality standard expected by the reviewers.
- After finalizing the report, it is converted to a .pdf file and uploaded to IPFS. The hash is then sent to the PR governance platform. This will start the voting process.
- Each report will go to a vote. Only level 3 raters are eligible to vote FOR or AGAINST accepting a report. One person = one vote and the group must always be an uneven number (starting with 5).
- If the majority votes FOR, the report will be added to PR website and rewards are paid to the report creator. If the majority votes AGAINST, the report is not accepted. The rater can then actively approach the governing group, ask for feedback, and resubmit.
- The same report can only be resubmitted twice per season. If it was not accepted the second time, that usually means that the report is not of good quality (we will create some guidelines to further explain what makes a good quality report).
Community Contributions & Raters
As outlined here, ensuring high quality of reports is very important for PR. We therefore want to provide the opportunity for more engagement within PR to those raters (and groups), that consistently create high-quality reports.
Further, we want to establish a community that becomes self-sustainable, that can carry this project forward and ensure its future success.
Thus, we want to introduce a system that allows for raters to level up and receive more responsibility within PR. We imagine the following levels should be a good start:
- Level 0: Each person or group that wants to participate in PR starts at level 0. There are no rights or duties associated with this level.
- Level 1: After successfully submitting 5 reports that were accepted, a rater or a group will be granted level 1. Each level-one rater will receive a non-transferable token (NTT). Being a level one rater will increase the rewards by 10%.
- Level 2: After successfully submitting 15 reports that were accepted, a rater or a group will be granted level 2. This will again result in an NTT plus rewards are increased by 25%. In addition, level-two raters are encouraged to become reviewers and provide feedback to any reports being submitted
- Level 3: After successfully submitting 30 reports that were accepted, a rater or a group will be granted level 3. This will again result in an NTT plus rewards are increased by 50%. Level-three raters are encouraged to become reviewers and are eligible to become part of the governing group that decides whether reports are accepted/rejected. The governing group will most likely be subject to elections
- Reviewers: Only level 2 and 3 raters can choose to become reviewers. If they do, it’s their job to look at incoming reports and provide feedback to raters, so that their chances of being accepted are increased. Reviewers will also be rewarded per review (details below).
Other roles within PR:
Prime Stewards: Currently there is also the role of a Prime steward. These are the people that are more involved into the day-to-day business and ensure the progress of PR, e.g., website maintenance, community manager, social media manager, BD/partnerships, etc.
So, when can a rater level up? We imagine that leveling can only occur once during a season, plus once at the end. For example, if a rater starts at level 0, they can submit 5 reports within the first two weeks of the season and will be granted level-one. If the person submits an additional 10 reports until the season ends, leveling-up would only occur at the end, i.e. during the 2-week break and not during the season. The person can then start the next season as a level-2 rater and immediately level-up to level-three (if another 15 reports are submitted).
Rewards & Rules
Rewards are paid out per report and depend on the timing of submission. As mentioned above, to encourage early submission, the first 2 weeks yield slightly higher rewards. Below are the rewards for a level-0 rater (level-1 to 3 will have slightly higher rewards).
Rewards:
- Reward per report: 150 USDC + 200 PRIME
- Rewards in week 1 receive 20% bonus: 180 USDC + 240 PRIME
- Rewards in week 2 receive 10% bonus in PRIME: 165 USDC + 220 PRIME
- Reward per review: 100 USDC + 100 PRIME
Prizes:
Like in our most recent rate-athon, there will be prizes to win for two main categories. The first one is quality, and the second one is quantity:
- The three best reports – chosen by the governing group (name to be defined later) – will receive 2500 USDC + 2000 PRIME each
- The three parties that submitted the most reports, will receive 2500USDC + 2000 PRIME for the 1st place, 2000 USDC + 2000PRIME for the 2nd place, and 1500 USDC + 2000 PRIME for the 3rd place
Other rules:
- A project can only be submitted once per rater
- A project cannot be submitted more than 3 times per season. The first 3 submissions (that get accepted) will receive the rewards
- The list of projects eligible for rating will be released in due time before the season
What do we hope to achieve with this?
- Gamification – First of all, we think that the seasonal approach and the chance to win prizes adds an attractive gamification element to it, which has proven to be quite successful in our most recent rate-athon
- Engagement – Having clear rules and a clear path for leveling-up within PR, is expected to increase engagement and adds an additional element of motivation besides the monetary rewards
- Quantity & Quality – By having longer time windows (6-weeks) to create and improve reports, we hope to increase the amount and the quality of report submissions
- Up-to-date Report – Given the fact that projects can be rated on every season, we ensure that our rating scores are up-to-date and allow the reports to include the newest developments form this fast-paced environment
- Wisdom of the Crowd – Allowing a project to be rated by 3 different raters is applying the wisdom of the crowd theory to ensure our scores reflect “the truth” more accurately
- Improve Fraud-proof – With the structure outlined above that has clear rules, limits, and a quality assurance process in place, we should decrease the chances of malicious or poor-quality reports
- Sustainable and longterm contributions – Last but not least, we also see this as a great opportunity to attract new talents and contributors to PR
Next steps
This post outlines the basis for how we imagine PR is going to be run in the coming months. This is a first draft intended to get feedback from the community. If we find consensus on the most important details, we can move forward to creating an official announcement on our social channels, get the submission form ready and create all the necessary documentation to facilitate participation as much as possible.
Looking forward to your comments and feedback!
*edited [September 28, 2021]:
- changed from 6 to 4 weeks
- adjusted rewards for early submission accordingly
- typos corrected