Jupiter DAO Microgrants Initiative

Jupiter DAO
41

this is great initiative :metal:

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42

My thinking around this comes from a few places.

1 is that I don’t think the responsibility and burden of being able to nuke a WG should be placed entirely on the team’s shoulders.

2ndly is that I think if the entire grants council votes in unison on nuking a WG, it should very much indicate that there is something majorly wrong.

3rdly is that ultimately there is a massive social responsibility to the DAO that cannot be overlooked. Imagine nuking a workgroup that is widely popular and beloved by the DAO? It would be disastrous.

I think the nuke mechanism is designed for flexibility in the case of emergencies, and in truth would probably not get used often if at all.

However, I do hear what you are saying and in the nature of progressive decentralization I would 100% be on board with transferring this full responsibility to the DAO over time.

Do you think it would be a better mechanism instead of a nuke, that the grants council could instead bring the WG in question to a DAO vote?

The issue in my mind is that this might be too time consuming to deal with the nature of the urgency at hand.

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43

I think there are some great points here that will inform our thinking for any proposal guidelines in the future

Particularly around ensuring there isn’t massive redundancy with the WG’s.

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44

I have a couple thoughts around this question.

1 is that I think we want to ensure that people doing hard work are noticed.

2 is that we don’t have total control over each workgroup’s internal bounty system, which is a bit different from the proposal system.

3 is that in all statistical likelihood, a small % of people will probably complete the majority of grants. That is just nature, look into things such as pareto distributions. But what we don’t want to have happen is for a monopoly or favoritism to occur.

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45

Yes, I agree.

We don’t want bureaucracy to bog down things. However, I think the stepwise motion in which we are proceeding is towards more and more decentralization over time.

As Meow said at today’s uplink call “we want to practicalize DAOs, not romanticize them” and I agree with that notion.

My thinking is best informed by how the Token List System was developed over time. Initially fully team run, then partially team and CWG run, and now its a mix of all 3 and is the best it has ever been.

That is how I would like to see most of the DAO processes progress.

The old system relied on people going from 0 to 2, or rather straight into the intensive trial WG process which is a 3-6 month long commitment.

I think this grants system is a much-needed step in the right direction, and I hope we can avoid the pitfalls you outlined with the help of hte community.

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46

Uplink has garnered millions of views across socials in addition to hosting one of the most watched regular livecasts on Solana, and the CWG has completely revamped the exhausting token list system on behalf of Jupiter from the ground up and gotten significant community administration in the process — quite a huge step in my eyes on the decentralization that people hear when they think of DAOs.

Additionally we put out a quarterly report which you are free to read here:
CWG Quarterly Report #1 - Jupiter DAO - Jupiter Research (jupresear.ch)

As to your 2nd comment, yes we have an excess but it is for additional staff which we are in the process of hiring. Despite that we have given Jup & Juice a microgrant out of our budget. However, what we have cannot adequately meet the needs of the community or the full fledged grant’s process.

The idea behind the DAO, whether you are aligned with it or not, is experimentation. We haven’t figured out DAOs yet, and Jupiter is keen on doing things their own way, and not being afraid to experiment.

I think $150k to fund these grants is a modest amount, and will go a very long way towards getting us more crucial feedback and data, and hopefully many successes along the way.

Perhaps you disagree, and that is your right to do so.

But I would disagree with your disagreement.

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47

Just for clarification, this is not a proposal for a specific WG.

This is the grants system which will act as a pre-trial effectively.

So rather than people having to go from 0 to 2 or 0 to trial, they have a step in between in the form of grants to ensure they can execute, and they enjoy the nature of the work which can be intensive at times.

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48

Could you elaborate on this?

What do you mean “the proposals of new ones will be continuations of old ones”

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49

Here’s a twitter thread I mad summarising the proposal for those looking for a TLDR: x.com

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50

I will admit, I don’t exactly understand what some of these bounties will be.

Could you perhaps give us some examples?

Are we expecting video creation? Are we expecting on boarding users in terms of a measured KPI?
Are we looking for a Discord moderator type vibe?

Even a ballpark example would be fine

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51

Thank you for being a leader who values and incorporates feedback; your willingness to listen and adapt truly strengthens the proposal and empowers the team.

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52

There are only 350,997 views on YouTube—where are you getting the millions from?

You listed something done for the team, but what has the CWG done for the community without asking for more money?

Beyond that, what have the three other workgroups accomplished?

As a holder of the $JUP token, who determines alignment? Is it not the community? Who are you referring to when you say “their own way”? Am I and others not part of this DAO?

54

Uplink operates beyond the scope of the youtube channel, they also create content for the twitter and are moving into instagram and tiktok + streaming numbers

you can view their original budget proposal here for more context:
Proposal: Uplink Working Group Budget [Final] - Jupiter DAO - Jupiter Research (jupresear.ch)

More of the CWG’s accomplishments are laid out in the quarterly report I provided to you

The reddit WG scaled the subreddit to thousands of members, and the web working group added organization to station and kickstarted jup.eco which the CWG will be taking over since they will no longer be continuing

1 Like
55

I believe having a concrete system in place for the establishment of Working Group’s is solid. This way, the establishment of WG’s is not a ‘free for all’.
I can appreciate this outline as I have submitted a proposal for a WG and now have some ideas around how to further proceed.

I do have a suggestion however, for Stage 2- Pre Requisite #4;

I agree it is important to speak to what is proposed and I believe the CWG Office Hours allows the opportunity for this. I suggest having the pitch on Jup&Juice be optional- instead of having to speak on both platforms being mandatory. The reason being, although they have definitely done tremendous work here and I am confident will continue to do so, they are also only following through this process. I understand they are many steps into this pathway, however the pathway for others (like myself in this case), shouldn’t additionally be experiemented through what is essentially already an experiment.

I also want to ask; must the actions stated be done so chronologically?

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56

The DAO and the team are collaborative entities, the DAO could vote for someone who is abjectly opposed or even combative against the team, plunging us into PvP chaos. A

As Slorg said, the nuke button is a nuke — if the team nukes someone it is a worst-case-scenario while we build towards progressive decentralization and the social risk in doing so, to the team, should not be discounted. Ideally there are on-chain measures and on-chain counter-measures in place for all of this but in reality, we have to fill current tech gaps with human action otherwise we’ll be waiting for years to actually get anything done.

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57

100% agreed on ensuring no redundancy, great point and will add it to the current draft guidelines.

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58

What I mean that ; the new set of WG to be introduced, will either be working for Catdet, Core team, Uplink, reddit or web.

No matter how we try to distinguish them , they will still fall under the aforementioned category up there.

So, instead of creating a new set of WG that their action will still tally with the aforementioned category, why not just add those people in to the available category.

Reduce the amount of WG to be created by increasing the work force of the available working Group “since their action will still continuation of former WG”.

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59

To be clear, this is the initial ask to trial the grants system.

At the end of this period, we will have a retrospective with the community to determine next steps. Ideally everything goes excellently, and we can just scale the system up. Additionally, we’re starting the grants process internally — facing the core Jupiter community, we also have drafts for a ecosystem-facing grants program which will come at some point as well. But it’s important for us to figure the internal facing grants first.

Additionally, the CWG and Uplink were both granted trial budgets by the team — as we both have extensive Web3 work history and social reputation, as well as have all received multiple grants from the Solana foundation for our work on prior organizations. So, we’re a bit unique in our composistion.

As far as your questions about trials, my largest takeaway from the Reddit and Web WG’s was that their trials were too short at 3 months. CWG stretched our trial budget to ~5 months, Uplink was even longer. It takes time to establish meaningful work history and a strong relationship with the DAO.

As far as experts who are extremely competent in their field — the nature of public work makes this a difficult task and has made hiring difficult. Most highly competitant people aren’t willing to accept the same level of pay for a much more stressful public work environment. Either that, or, they don’t know the nature of public work — as there are very, very, few people in the world that have ever done it in this fashion. IMO — the grants process is a great introduction to it either way.

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60

The CWG is not being paid a single dollar extra for this work.

The entire budget proposed above is allocated to be paid out in the form of grants to the community.

It is a mischaracterization to say we’re asking for more money, and yes, you as a community member can determine alignment by voting on the final version of this proposal when it goes live.

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61

There’s no specific set of guidelines, but, a few examples of past grants are:

  • Content bounties from Uplink
  • Audio equipment for Wake & Sax
  • Event sponsorship

We’re not going to limit exactly what can get granted for, but, the lodestone is simple: they are paid out for work that expands the Jupiverse.

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