Loomio
Tue 30 Jul 2019 5:30PM

Giveth on pause (maintenance mode)

KI Kris is Public Seen by 179

So, I want to start this thread so we can possibly come to a clear proposal on Thursday. First note: this is just the START of a proposal.

Tension:

For the last few months the focus of our main donor/Giver (Griff) has been mostly on the Commons Stack (= a project that will enable the creation of community-driven economies with sustainable funding and novel governance infrastructure), because he believes in it for all the reasons you have heard before. Together with Griff more resources have been focused on this initiative (I'm on of those people, so is jeff, loie, .. ).

Right now Giveth is entirely out of funding and we are fully dependent on just one person for regular and ad-hoc rewards. This has caused quite some stress for all of us, which pains me, because each and everyone I work with within Giveth is bringing crazy talents and skills to the table, and are in it for the right reasons. I don't think we've ever been so value-aligned. But splitting myself in two ànd trying to not be a financial burden on Griff has been not the best for my personal state of mind. And I think I'm not alone in this (but again, only speaking for myself).

Personally I've come to realize that if we want to sustain Giveth (as a larger initiative as well as building of the Donation Application itself), we need to focus on finding new - and possibly better - ways of funding ourselves, so we can - together - reach the goals we set for ourselves during our Barcelona gettogether, long but just as much short term.

Proposal:

Putting Giveth 'on hold' for now, so we can achieve our goals long-term, allowing the people involved to focus 100% on the Commons Stack, and other people to focus on funding for Giveth or allow them to find other sources of income for themselves.
This pause will allow us to get funding for the Commons Stack, which will not only bring funding to us on the long term (see above), but even mid-term, because in the Fundraising Iterations for the CS, a big chunk will go to the Giveth DApp integration as an escrow & proposal mechanism.

Some extra thoughts on this:
- Any initiatives that could bring Funding to Giveth (grants, paid presentations, more grants, … :) ) should definitely continue, and I understood that Dani wants to focus on this. Loie also just submitted a proposal. I'll support anyone who's working on funding ofc with reviewing/editing etc.
- The DApp meeting would continue in this proposal, because we're in bug fixing mode, and Alibre might play a bigger role in here in the near future to support us there and hopefully we can work on the next steps as well.
- All other meetings would be put 'on hold' for now (comms, community, unicorn dac, rewarddao, social coding, dapp redesign, … )
- My personal proposal would be that this effectively halts all regular rewards (as of a certain date we agree on), if they're not directly related to funding. Commons Stack tasks are covered by the CS budget. (which is for now - again - just Griff covering costs, until (and if) we raise enough funds).
- This is a temporary pause: until we get funding for the further development of the Giveth DApp (and further Giveth Galaxy initiatives). I have personally no intention whatsoever to ever stop working on Giveth projects, ever.

Gonna stop writing now, still missing loads of nuance and pieces, but that's why we're a bunch of decentralized unicorns with great minds. Please add any & all thoughts.

GG

Griff Green Thu 1 Aug 2019 3:11PM

For the most part I agree with this... There are a lot of smaller pieces... Like pausing the Unicorn DAC process and the Reward DAO process.

Also, for this month Burning Man is a huge priority and so is the Commons Stack. Anything anyone can do to help make these 2 things happen, I am super down to support.... but sadly, Giveth Community expectations and patterns are getting in the way more then they are assisting.

Freeing Lorelei, Jeff, Kris, Kay, and myself up to do Commons Stack work, and Bowen and Dani for Burning Man (they can go back to supporting the DApp afterwards) would work out without minimal issue. I could see Bowen as working with Dani for whatever needs to be done, maybe supporting with articles. And Kay would probably also support the DApp from a devops side.

I would call this a Unicorn DAC Hibernation more than a Giveth Pause because the DApp will keep going, like nothing is happening. And I hope to keep supporting everyone that is receiving regular rewards now.

I think we should keep this going until at least after Devcon and then we reassess and refocus our efforts.... I am going to do a Thailand Adventure again, but earlier this year... probably from late October thru November. That would be the ideal time to reassess.

GG

Griff Green Thu 1 Aug 2019 3:45PM

Oh except i guess we pause on the 150 extra every week for unicorns

L

Loie Thu 1 Aug 2019 3:59PM

I think this definitely requires some strategizing re: payments - how will DApp folks be paid? Will reward DAO continue? Will givether's milestones that are as of yet incomplete be funded to completion before the pause? (There is still backlog pay being caught up thru U-DAC delegations.) How will that be executed?
And now for voicing fears!
I fear we would lose people - people that we don't want to lose! What if the Commons Stack funding comes through big time for Giveth, but we no longer have the focus of all these amazing people we have collected, because they had to get other jobs, and sometimes other jobs can't be temporary...
Ok, I think that fear is mostly irrational bc it sounds like we're re-allocating just about everybody to other work within the galaxy that will regenerate them.
And my support:
I'm a big FUCK YES to observing past patterns and responding accordingly! Last year the August slow down hurt us because we weren't prepared for it! I'm so proud of the people i'm around knowing this and planning for it this time XD
I have a hard time believing Giveth work can completely pause, since we all hold pieces that need to be tapped upon, even if fundraising and dapp are the only active work zones. Is there a way to account for that? Perhaps an understanding that say 10% of your time will still be spent on Giveth things, and that will be compensated for by x. X could be part of the decentral/commons stack perks. it could be a promised bonus if we get the funding to restart things in the fall, then those ~5 hours a week you spent thru aug-sept will be paid in a reward milestone...

KI

Kris is Thu 1 Aug 2019 5:11PM

Outcome of the meeting - plz answer the 3 questions below by next week (in the loomio, take 5 minutes plz). Any other thoughts you have - plz add them! We can then during our community meeting of next week do a sort of roles/souls meeting and discuss the given feedback during a group chat. Unless someone makes a proposal beforehand based on the below comments.
The Questions:
- What processes do you feel need to continue during hibernation period?
- What roles of yours should continue during hibernation period?
- How do you see yourself being funded during hibernation period?

Link to notes: https://hackmd.io/@I6RWe-LyRea7NAlORlk9Aw/BJkz3Le7S
Link to stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys__stwFmTY&feature=youtu.be

PL

Pol Lanski Fri 2 Aug 2019 4:47AM

Read the comments here and the meeting notes.
I'm glad this conversation is happening! I know how tough it can be to find funding for this sort of projects and I think focusing on Commons Stack could make sense as it might actually end up raising funds for the DApp too.
Giveth as a community is a great meme, can't be stopped. The Social Coding group has brought together amazing projects and the DApp will be an integral piece of the Stack... that stack for the Commons, you know which one.
If we were a more traditional startup, though, we'd have to choose a metric - and for sustainability/regenerability, a money metric. @danibelle knows much more how many orgs we have onboarded and the volumes that are managed through our DApp, but probably not an astonishing number. Also, probably most of these organizations have other sources of funding and can live without the DApp for a while. So if we don't hurt anyone by putting it in hibernation, and we are freeing resources for more revenue-making actions, I'm all in for it!

KI

Kris is Thu 8 Aug 2019 2:26PM

just to be clear - dapp is definitely going on, so those Campaigns can/should continue on there

D

Dani Sun 4 Aug 2019 4:29AM

My three answers:
The processes that need to continue during hibernation period are:
1.) Campaign Management of the DApp, which supports the dev team continuing work on GitHub Issues.
2.) DApp meetings for devs to review, assign, update and discuss open issues.
3.) Community/user response and support in Riot channels.. would we put a bot up for the weeks of Burning Man, or is there anyone staying behind that wants to manage this? At a minimum the Dapp Dev channel can be live with Andre.
4.) A degree of Comms to not go silent.. pretty sure Tweets can be scheduled, perhaps we set up a few preplanned messages to go out about our hiatus and a pointer to our donation link for those who want to show support for a return ;)
What roles of yours should continue during hibernation period?

DApp Onboarding - this is a misnomer as we aren't technically onboarding anymore, but yet we are bigtime on Decentral for which i have the Campaign Manager role. I am Reviewer on a host of Campaigns and Milestones currently live and provide support as needed. This overlaps with my Contributor Engagement role (Governance) which was designed for the RewardDAO Campaign. Putting RewardDAO on hold would simply shift any work from there over to DApp Onboarding.
DApp Whitelist - When something needs to happen there I'll do it.
How do you see yourself being funded during hibernation period? Well, I'll still be full time Decentral which is on the DApp, and I'll create Milestones for what I do and just not call them Regular Rewards like I did before April. And if they keep getting funded I won't wander off to look for something else.

MR

Michael Roberts Wed 7 Aug 2019 4:14PM

This makes a lot of sense to me. As many people know I've withdrawn myself from the DAPP manager unicorn role before this Loomio came about and I feel focusing on the Common Stack makes total sense until more funding exists. re: questions: 1) and 2) I agree with Dani - that there should be some level of critical maintenance of the DAPP and I suspect Andre can manage most of that perfectly. I think there has to be some degree of comms, however minor. 3) I don't see myself being funded during this period and I've resigned myself from being a regular reward person. If I can find funding for Giveth, maybe I can receive a reward for that effort, but otherwise really happy to be part of the community and help as best as I can and as time permits. Overall this shift in Giveth to me seems like an opportunity to regroup and refocus and a very healthy pivot as a kinda startup of sorts. It also reinforces this idea to me that moving towards an investment model .ie the common stack makes so much sense. It should be noted that the UN itself believes it cannot achieve the SDG targets by 2030 through public money alone and would require private sector investments, and so innovative models around 'blended finance' are very much needed.

KI

Kris is Thu 8 Aug 2019 2:35PM

  • What processes do you feel need to continue during hibernation period? Paying out ALL remaining Milestones, set deadline to get them in!! (Loie) RewardDAO, minimum of conversation mgmt (everyone!), external comms (kris), DApp maintenance (andre, kay, ..) and dapp/onboarding support (dani)
  • What roles of yours should continue during hibernation period? external comms (minimum) & conv mgmt
  • How do you see yourself being funded during hibernation period? CS
K

Kay Mon 12 Aug 2019 10:52AM

  1. What processes do you feel need to continue during hibernation period? I already factored in my own roles here
  • DApp development is highest priority.
  • More stability in our deploys (also outside the DApp). This is still mostly DApp infrstructure, but includes other little deployments as well as services, i.e. chat bridging. Basically anything that is on digitalocean. All netlify deploys are very stable, but need to be watched.
  • Other web stuff does not need so much maintenance, like DNS, github, email, website, wiki - but one never knows what comes next and some emergency fixing might be required.
  • All our accounts still need curation and small maintenance. This is mostly youtube and concerns naming. Would be less without community meeting, but The Commons Stack was using the same channel for quite some time.
  • Aside from that onboarding to the DApp should continue (right now Camp D E C E N T R A L), as well as work of security guard.

We can put quite some stuff on hold, but not for long, because we need development there as well. This includes:

  • roles process
  • Unicorn DAC
  • gov-lab
  • unicorn blueprint
  • community meeting
  • communications meeting
  • website redesign (although I still might push my changes to review soon, because I nearly finished already)
  • Reward DAO
  • social coding intiatives
  1. What roles of yours should continue during hibernation period?

    • Admin and monitoring
  2. How do you see yourself being funded during hibernation period?

Started to split accountabilites a while ago. Already joined and partly organized hackathon teams for the commons stack. I run the deployment of jupyterhub (cadCAD) in constant contact with block-science. All of this has been funded by Giveth so far.

Because TCS is in heavy build mode, I will continue to fill little to medium importance roles as they come, like youtube channel admin, getting schwag, frontend design for the fundraising DApp(s), etc.

I don't feel like being the person to decide "how I will be funded", but I would suggest half of my current regular reward to come from the commons stack, as it is likely that I will stay with that project in a similar capacity like in Giveth.