30 ETH Loan From Griff to Governance
The plan here is for the Governance circle to create a Milestone for the exact amount it will receive once the Aragon Nest grant funds arrive.
This sheet clearly shows how much each circle will receive from the Nest grant, the budget split is one we have agreed to historically: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GHNepVqNGgWpMreIddTMGOvz7dSzjcwzrQdeNM1wZpE/edit#gid=0
So the proposal is that the Governance Circle creates a Milestone for future expenses, which cannot exceed 30 ETH because that's all that is eligible for reimbursement.
The understanding needs to be clear that the Governance Circle will only receive 30 ETH, because that's all we have transparently accounted for in the Nest Grant. We simply can't spend more than we have.
This is a crucial time for circles and budgets, It will be necessary for circle leads to make difficult decisions ( for example choosing whether to support an event or hiring a new person) the way we handle this now will help people think hard about where their budgets are being spent and help us keep the level of transparency and accountability high.
Budget spreadsheet for circles (needs to be updated)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12gNVXobMLrYpeIAFC9NIG9EYFeEVjvB8yH_syMGhCFM/edit#gid=0
See attached photo for current status after last payout.
Yalor Tackson Thu 14 Jun 2018 8:28PM
Kris: The Milestone is important for transparency, because griff is fronting the ETH to his own circle. The DApp is the best place for this kind of agreement to live, otherwise it just disappears if you think about it this is kind of how the Milestone system is designed to work.
Also I'm not promoting a "scarcity mental" I don't believe I mentioned anything about not having enough, simply facing "hard decisions" which are not something to fear or avoid, just facts of life. But this is a separate conversation I would be happy to have outside of this context.
Kris is Thu 14 Jun 2018 9:18PM
Woops now I'm confused - your proposal says '30 ETH Loan From All Circles To Governance Circle', so your proposal is that Griff is not fronting this, right?
Yalor Tackson Thu 14 Jun 2018 10:17PM
Yeah I didn't take into consideration that the actual amount of ETH we're getting from Aragon is still flexible depending on price. So if Griff fronts ETH then he can get ETH back, if the circles front ETH and the prices go up then the Governance Circle might not be able to pay the circles back. So I'm just amending my proposal :laughing:
Griff Green Thu 14 Jun 2018 6:26PM
"We simply can't spend more than we have." Thats the biggest part that scares me with this proposal...
We do not have the Aragon money yet and taking out a loan against money we dont have is sketch... Esp considering that when we do get this money do we know that all of it will be ETH? Will some will be ANT maybe?
Most importantly though, there are a lot of unknowns around the price of ETH (In just the last hour the price of eth changed from $470 to $520!!) and we have a 1 ETH = 1 ETH system.... Does that mean Gov is going to get 10% less ETH then? What happens if ETH goes to 1000? Gov will only get 15 ETH...
We should get a big donation this week or next from them, and then another big donation upon launching live... maybe a loan could be made against the second big donation once we have some clarity about the size of the deficit (which will be dependent on the length of time that it takes for the DApp to launch the next version).
Yalor Tackson Thu 14 Jun 2018 8:51PM
Ahh I see your point @griffgreen since the price is fluctuating a lot, but since the Multisig accounting is denominated in ETH if you give the loan directly to the Multisig then we can just do ETH in and ETH out.
Assuming the price of ETH stays around $500 how long could you operate the Gov circle with existing expenses?
Satya Fri 15 Jun 2018 8:03AM
For me the most important is that we behave like we want other projects to behave on our platform:
A - Do we want individuals in other projects fund their own campaign and at the same time raise donations? It leads to questions such as 'if they have (unlimited) money, why are they raising more funds?' or maybe even 'is this a money laundry construction?'
B - Do we want to support loan constructions, which are basically donations that are being paid back later on? Loans can really turn into serious shit especially when the conditions are not transparent, agreed upon by both parties and not enforced.
I feel we shouldn't allow both constructions, so I'm against this proposal.
But I do realise there's no way we can stop the 'fund-your-own-campaign' (A), any person can just donate through whatever address.
That said,
I really agree with @yalormewn: a major responsibility of a campaign / circle lead is to watch the budget closely and to plan expenses upfront. If you've run out of money it means you're too late!!!
This issue could have been forecasted weeks if not months ago so I personally don't feel a strong urge that we need to solve this instantly.
So my proposal would be to
A) take the pain, reflect on how to do better, and wait for the grant to arrive
or alternatively
B) create a couple of milestones for the Cardona and the Zug event so the other circles can donate to that.
Last,
I feel Giveth should not behave as if we have an infinite money supply, it's excessive behaviour that we have already enough of in this (crypto) world. So lets be responsible and set an example. We have transparency, and we have limited funds. The 2 are a beautiful, world-changing combination.
Yalor Tackson Fri 15 Jun 2018 9:46AM
This great feedback @satyavanheummen I agree "suffering a little" is something that can actually serve as a great lesson. So the question is, should the contributors of that circle suffer by not receiving their payouts ?
I'm actually going to start those other Milestones right now, I think we need to stop letting one circle fund all of our expenses for travel and events. It should be if you go to the event you or your circle contributes to the Milestone.
I agree we all love the events, but maybe asking people put their funds up to support them would create a little more awareness around the reality of how funds are spent.
Satya Fri 15 Jun 2018 3:33PM
It’s clear where the money went :-)
"The Gov campaign does what needs to get done to make sure Giveth stays afloat and tries to act as a buffer to support the rest of the circles”
Wouldn’t you agree that the buffer should be the last to run out of money…and be spending it in the most responsible and transparent way as an example for the other circles?
The fact that we have this ‘drama’ now raises questions about the management of resources and funds by the ‘buffer’.
"I really don’t understand what kind of perspective is against allowing me to donate a bunch of extra money to giveth to save us from all this drama…”
I don’t think Giveth can stop you from donating to your own campaign, but drama is a very good thing, it drives change.
It might help if there was evidence that the gov circle creates a plan of how to improve handling their funds in the future, but I haven’t heard of any remorse about being out of money. All I hear is 'lets add more money' to fix the problem, which will only lead to another round of drama in a couple of months.
Yalor Tackson Fri 15 Jun 2018 4:21PM
Yeah I am not afraid of having "dramatic" conversations if they lead to productive results. That's pretty much my idea of the Milestone (this way we have some type of plan that we can look back at and say "hey this is how much money we have, and this is how long it should last) because according to this sheet the funds had a clear path for how they were to be spent. So we need to make sure that this doesn't happen again in 3 or 4 months.
I also don't understand how the governance circle "keeps Giveth afloat" when it seems like now the Governance and soon the Comms circle will be completely out of money. We should all be held accountable for this budget though because as Griff says, Gov was forced to cover a lot of issues that we are currently facing as well as events and extra stuff.
But I think it's important to make a clear distinction between things that are "nice to have" and "must have" this may be a separate issue but I think using the advice process around decisions that effect the group is essential and also away to say "Hey we spoke about this remember?" Instead of saying " Well I did this for all of you and now you all need to pay for it"
Kris is · Thu 14 Jun 2018 6:24PM
Thanks for this proposal! If 30 eth is what is allocated for Governance, I don't completely understand what that Milestone is needed for. If the Governance Circle just continues to create Milestones and just does not go over '-30' in the running total, does this not suffice? Who would be the funder of that specific Milestone otherwise? The funds come from the total available in the Giveth DAC, no? But maybe I'm missing something. In any case all for this, in the sense that the funds are coming and that the DAC still has enough funds in total.
Apart from this Aragon has committed to fund the Aragon DAC with $ 250K to start (and confirmed they will support comms, gov & social coding initiatives with this) plus in total Luis mentioned they are thinking about 1-2mio USD. And then we are indeed not even mentioning other grants or individual donors, like Griff, who has once again declared wanting to donate any needed budget to Giveth.
So when you mention 'it will be necessary for circle leads to make difficult decisions etc' - in what way do you see there is an issue or scarcity here?
So yes, all for transparency (so indeed maybe easier for now that gov uses the available budget, which is still 30eth) and yes for accountability (= our Milestone system), but no to scarcity mindsets, as this is not really needed, it is actually what we're trying to take out of the equation.