Here is a link to a Google document providing responses to the specific questions raised by each of the community members.
Our task was to create a fit-for-purpose organizational design and legal structure that meets the following objectives:
Can legally work with $ATOM community pool as origin and owner of funds,
Supports AADAO mandate to provide stewardship of $ATOM community owned resources,
Mitigates risks from nation state attacks on those resources in areas of regulatory, tax, liability, and AML that could harm $ATOM community and also its contributors,
Provides legacy world anchoring in a narrowly-defined way related to mitigating risks, but without subjecting all the DAOâs organizational protocols to legacy world org designs (flexibility to innovate DAO protocols beyond what corporations, LLCs, and foundations provide is necessary due to the technology we are building on)
Embraces multisig system for making payments out of the DAO,
Can work with the idea of sub-multsigs with different sets of team members having membership and accountability on each sub-multisig (eg. Oversight needs to be 100% financially independent),
Enables a roadmap to evolve the workflows so we can bring on more decentralized governance capabilities afforded by DAO DAO tooling as the tooling and AADAO both mature,
Established in a way that supports DAO DAO tooling for transactional workflows dovetailing with host country law to achieve the risk mitigation benefits sought,
Supports best-in-class old-world organizational design elements integrated smartly to deliver a culture of accountability, integrity, results, and professionalism in how the DAO operates,
All designed in a way that can be feasible, functional, efficient, and antifragile straight out of the gate
Creating a hybrid org and legal design architecture that meets all of these objectives simultaneously is not a small intellectual feat, and we are proud as AADAO founders to have opened up a new pathway for the community.
We believe the design will serve the $ATOM community brilliantly and can become a model for other on-chain organizations.
Following your valuable feedback, weâre happy to share that weâve updated the proposalâs sections around the Oversight Committee and the legal structure and have also attached full documentation that cover in greater details those 2 sections.
What are the promises / pledges AADAO can make at this stage in regards to fair and non selective grants? As of today, according to many out there, and myself included, the grant issuing process seems not just selective, but at places very institutionalized (mentioned above) and seems to have a âsideâ agenda. As a validator and token holder, I would love to understand how such entities as AADAO, can promise to not be selective and can be verified (that they indeed are not).
I have a bunch of thoughts on the proposal, both shout outs and areas for improvement, but unfortunately havenât had the time to put them all in writing yet (although I have shared them orally to AADAO members). Iâll try to do so before a prop goes on-chain - but regardless wanted to swing by and clarify that AADAO did indeed play a crucial role in ensuring the unclaimed NTRN airdrop tokens would go to the Cosmos Hub community pool. They were the primary advocates who pushed for this to happen.
I donât know if people want more details but if people are interested in a little more backgroundâŚ
During the proposal for Neutron to join ICS a number of the team had questions around the allocation of tokens to atom stakers. In the first public version of Neutron tokenomics the clawback was going to the neutron dao and I floated the idea that it should go to the hub cp instead.
Youssef took it to Spaydh with my suggestion that it should go atom as the aim was to get Neutron into the hands of the atom community. Spaydh went away to check if it wasnât too late to change the code. 48 hours later came back and agreed it was sensible and viable.
During the process it was originally the AADAO wallet (for the avoidance of doubt we would have moved it all straight to the cp) that would have received the neutron rather than the hub cp for technical reasons. Neutron then updated that contract to change it to the cp once that was viable because both parties wanted a trustless solution.
Do I in my heart of hearts believe that I am responsible for the hub having those Neutron? Yes. Amongst others.
Things are always about teams and the teamwork between AADAO and neutron is why those tokens are in the hubâs cp.
Our agenda has been funding grants we believe drive value to cosmos hub. In our selection process we established various rules and guidelines to ensure a fair selection. We are by no means perfect but have consistently improved and implemented changes to minimize errors:
First letâs talk about biases: Each batch of open grants undergoes a multi-step review process led by the DAOâs seven-member Reviewer Committee, supervised by the Oversight Committee. To reduce potential biases, two Reviewers are randomly selected and an objective Rating Methodology is used to score an application. Out of a total of 16 points, applicants must get an average score of 12 or higher to proceed to the interview phase.
If the gap between the two reviewers ratings is too large, this triggers an alert for the Oversight Committee, which then examines the reasons for the significant variance in the ratings. Discussions are then initiated at a team level to reconcile differing perspectives, and the applications in question are subsequently reassessed by alternate reviewers to guarantee an impartial evaluation.
In the interview, applicants undergo further screening by a Program Manager and one of the selected Reviewers who form an interview team and may also loop in other technical and due diligence resources as deemed necessary. Besides a method of basic evaluation, interviews serve as a forum between the AADAO and grant applicants to discuss team qualifications, scope of work, and requested funding based on milestones.
Applicants that successfully pass the interview are finally held to a majority-vote (please refer to our Voting Policy by all seven Reviewer Committee members before a grant is approved. Reviewers must self-assess any Conflicts of Interest before the final vote (e.g., financial gain from voting âYESâ) and recuse themselves by reporting any perceived conflicts to Oversight.
We acknowledge the opportunity to expand external grant process communications with the ATOM community, which is one of the primary activities that our new Marketing Lead set to undertake in 2024. We welcome suggestions from the community regarding how we can improve the grant program communications with the broader ATOM community, and are noting all the recommendations emerging in this proposalâs feedback process.
I hope this answers your question and if you have any specific concerns Iâm happy to elaborate further
Reasonable size ask.
It seems like the North Star win is the 22MM worth of NTRN to the community pool. Well Done!
2023 Impact report is not loading on your website isnât loading.
Going to ask a series of questions that are generally asked of AlphaGrowth when engaging with Chains to help with Ecosystem Growth. Many of these topics and metrics may have been covered already apologize.
My main goal is to help raise awareness to the community on new ways deploying grants and ways to evaluate the efficacy of a grants program.
On chain metrics Goals:
So what is the north star this year?
Which on chain metrics will the AADAO grow, and which chain will they grow them?
How would you order rank the importance of the following metrics?
Fees, Transactions, Users, Tokens returned from investments
Past Success
How many transactions and gas was spent on the projects funded?
How much revenue was generated from all grantees funded?
How many users came from all the grantees funded?
What is the expected return on the Grant DAO, Growth DAO?
Whatâs your biggest success story?
Whatâs your biggest mistakes and what did you learn in the past year?
Developer Acquisition & Investment:
What investments will be considered and what does investment criteria look like?
How many inbound applications are you getting each month?
Are you happy with the quantity of inbound projects?
How are you finding dApps to build in cosmos?
Will you be looking to fund other L1 appchains launching?
How do you put together prospect lists?
How do you typically reach out to devs?
What are the biggest blockers that teams encounter during the onboarding process?
What RFPs are you looking to put out to resolve the biggest blockers?
How much in grants and incentives do you plan to deploy this year, by amount or percentage?
Whatâs your KPI of success?
How do you get YOUR bonus?
Growth & Marketing Spend:
Whatâs your current user acquisition cost from the marketing spend?
Whatâs your cost per impression you are aiming for?
Who is your target persona?
Whatâs the Lifetime Value(LTV) for the different marketing campaigns you ran?
What campaigns and grants were successful?
What were your biggest lessons you can bring back to the community?
What marketing campaign was your biggest success?
What marketing campaign was your biggest failure?
What will you do more of and less of?
Feedback
These findings and questions arenât really being asked. Would love to learn and share notes.
A Growth team without KPIs are not a growth team.
A year ago the main concerns brought forth are the same issues again in this proposal. Pages of content and copy written around process, compliance and CYA without committing to really any KPIs.
Have you considered a metric based grants program based on the metrics on chain?
Pretty convinced after running ecosystem growth for chains last couple years that a Grant & Growth programs need to be evaluated by 2 characteristics:
The on chain metrics generated
Returns from investments into projects in the form of token value.
Met with @CuriousJ on the comments.
Really appreciate the conversation we had on pushing forward projects in Cosmos.
The amount of operations and âcustomer successâ they are taking on is daunting.
Looking forward to learn from all these experiments.
Thanks for your feedback @bryancolligan, appreciate especially your suggestions around on-chain data driven metrics for the growth/marketing objectives.
We actually had an AADAO team vote yesterday and we decided to put the Growth subDAO part of the renewal mandate proposal on hold, as the community has had many valid points of feedback about that part of our proposal, and we want to respect the community voice.
Also, one item Iâd like to comment on, because Iâve seen two or three people mention it now too, is the reference to the neutron unclaimed aidrop item as AADAOâs âNorth Star winâ.
For us, we like to think that our North Star win was building a process-based open grant program, awarding 39 grants, processing 7 batches of grants in 8 months, including structuring of milestones for every grantee, and doing all of the grantee administration that you chatted with @CuriousJ about.
Definitely we also structured a handful of deals that bring revenue-share and airdrops back to the $atom pool, and surely, the easiest item for $atom community to assess in terms of ROI of the program is the neutron unclaimed airdrop that we returned to $atom pool as one of those deals.
Anyways, we hope the community will remember our work not only for bringing a 3-4x multiple back to $ATOM pool within the first 9 months (which is a multiple that will likely keep growing as more of the grants come to fruition), but also for our work to establish a process-based grant program for the community.
Again, thanks for stopping by to share your feedback.
Lean into the wins. Take bigger risks.
â3-4x multiple back to $ATOM poolâ in 9 Months is amazing!
Talking about process is mundane.
What I am really pushing for are the expected value calculations & the thesis associated with each grant deployment.
Will it bring 50MM TVL, 10k users, transaction volume, assets back to the community pool?
The estimate will likely be off on size or timing, but by making a calculated guess it forces discipline in getting the right price.
Anything with Off Chain impact should be tagged and tracked like traditional marketing campaigns.
The best practices around grants seem to be evolving and leaning towards traditional VC investment approach.
Thank you for the response again and looking forward to see your team go more risk on!
Assuming the budget listed in the original post will be updated shortly with the revised ask?
I agree, the grants are a big thing for AADAO. Is there a public doc with your grant making criteria? People grumble about grants being made âonly to friendsâ - but TBF, thatâs probably because builders in the ecosystem is small. Grant evaluation guidelines will help dispel those grievances (maybe).
Additionally, can we discuss clawing back the liquidity from Cosmos Millions? Or did I miss itâs ROI figure?
As we continue refining the AADAO funding proposal for 2024, we want to share some key updates that directly address the communityâs feedback.
Community representation in the Oversight Committee
Weâre taking a significant step towards community representation by introducing a community-elected member to the Oversight Committee. You can refer to the Oversight section in the original post for more details. DAO DAO tooling gives us more optionality as a DAO, including more streamlined control of AADAO via public governance.
Weâre happy to explore more ways to ensure public governance is more involved in the shaping of AADAO as it further professionalizes and solidifies. This initiative responds to the concerns of AADAO not being inclusive or representative enough of the ATOM community and is aimed at increasing the legitimacy of AADAOâs oversight committee.
Removal of the Growth Sub DAO
Guided by the constructive feedback from the ATOM community, we have decided to remove the Growth subDAO component from our current proposal. This decision reflects our commitment to listening to and acting upon the communityâs insights.
Recognizing the importance of alignment with community expectations, we understand that the concept and scope of the subDAO require more in-depth discussion. The ATOM community also has to agree on a shared narrative on which to rally around.
Several interesting narratives have been mentioned in the past few months: AEZ, ATOM as the interchain money (@effortcapital , @Noam, @Carter_Lee_Woetzel) or more recently ATOM as the most powerful governance token in crypto (@sunnya97 ). Agreeing on a shared narrative will result in the consolidation of available resources to work on that very narrative, hence increasing the likelihood of success. Iâm also throwing around the idea of a signaling proposal that crystallizes and formalizes on-chain the narrative itself. This will add legitimacy to any subsequent initiatives built around the adopted path.
On growth and BD, we still believe there is an urgent need for more resources towards BD in the Cosmos. Currently, there is a significant gap in this area, hindering adoption and the Interchain long-term success. Addressing this gap is crucial for positioning Cosmos at the forefront. We are exploring ways to effectively bridge this gap while ensuring the ATOM community is more involved in the design of the framework. As such, we intend to publicly discuss in the future here on the forum a BD roadmap.
Enhanced disclosure and KPIs
We have taken note of the communityâs feedback regarding the suggested compensation and more specifically the bonuses. Many expressed that the proposed bonuses lacked clearly defined KPIs to measure performance. We will soon provide a more detailed plan that aligns bonus distributions with clear, measurable achievements and community-oriented goals. Bonuses are neither automatic nor unilateral and the Oversight Committee will be involved in the sign off before any distribution.
Hey Damien,
It was very nice to read about these additional details. But, I believe the proposal has so many legs that it should be divided among multiple proposals. The first proposal should be the selection of a team for a term.
I as an investor only know CP did the funding a year ago, and now we are a discussion for another term, if we had the chance to choose the caretakers of CP funds we would have been delighted, but I fear it will be internal hiring for next time too and it is not a good situation.
Thank you for the updates @Youssef
To be clear, Growth SubDAO is tabled for reconsideration later, but the Marketing SubDAO still stays in the 2024 picture, correct?
Can Oversight committee membersâ votes with respect to the above be made public?
I do think it is important for transparency purposes. And will help community understand the relevant and evolving evaluation criteria.
Hi @Cosmos_Nanny such votes are already made public when a grant is discontinued. Our Oversight has discontinued one grant so far and you can find it in the transparency report #4 following the decision.
A veto on a new grant hasnât happened yet. If this was to happen, weâll make sure it is published in due time in our transparency reports.
At present thereâs limited and inconsistent accountability with respect to the hub funding space and culture. In addition to empowering a more independent oversight committee for AADAO, I think thereâs an invaluable opportunity to promote and normalize essential transparency best practices more broadly.
To this end, Iâd like to recommend the following â
Grantee Education: Educate grantees about good corporate governance, Itâs my observation and belief, that many grantees are not well versed or practiced in matters of good corporate/organizational governance in general, and the AADAO has an opportunity here to adopt an âeducateâ first and âprosecuteâ later approach at the outset.
The AADAO Oversight Committee should act as a central point for educating grantees about responsible fiscal management and practices resistant to conflicts and corruption. Oversight should establish a clear definition of âConflicts of Interestâ and the internal controls necessary to avoid them.
Standardization of Transparency Measures: It is imperative to establish standardized reporting protocols for transparency, including the adoption of uniform transparency measures. This will involve delineating clear guidelines for information disclosure and reporting by grantees.
The Oversight committee should define minimum reporting requirements, establish reporting frequencies, set evidence requirements, and create standard templates for grantees. Reporting requirements can vary depending on the type of funded organization and the level of funding received. Establish a system where grantees are given a standard reporting template and responsible for their own progress reporting. This can also help reduce the reporting burden and information bottlenecks created by subjecting AADAO to report on behalf of all grantees.
Enforcement of Reporting Requirements: Grantees should accept these reporting requirements as a condition for receiving AADAO funding.
Oversightâs Auditing Authority: Oversight should have the authority to conduct COI audits with grant recipients when appropriate.
Streamline & Formalize Communityâs Information Requests: Develop a coherent and structured process for handling and responding to community demands regarding AADAO/grantee transparency and information requests. This can be one of the primary responsibilities of the community elected member on Oversight.
On 12/04, I had a one hour call with @Youssef and @Better_Future. The conversation disarmed my initial concerns re: appropriateness of Guernsey Purpose Trust for AADAO legal form, or risk of centralization via role of Enforcer.
No governance documents have been produced. Please read the preliminary org design documents shared. AADAO confirms they will continue to seek review and approval from community before formalizing via establishment papers.