Early this year, we pioneered the idea of decentralized work groups to invent a way to give talent from the community the autonomy, resources, and legitimacy they need to create a meaningful impact.
We believe that if we get the workgroup model right, we can unlock massive execution capacity in a manner that is practically impossible otherwise yet maintain full accountability to the DAO.
Of course, this is an entirely new concept we are pioneering, so this is very much an experiment we are figuring out in real time together!
So far, we have 2 confirmed workgroups and 3 trial ones. Lets do a quick retrospect on the trial workgroups so far!
J.U.P: The 5 Pillars Of The Jupiter United Planet
The Trial Work Groups: Progress Updates
In May this year, the DAO voted for 3 separate trial WGs to be instantiated – Reddit WG, Web WG and Catdet WG. Here are some updates:
1. Reddit WG (not continuing after trial)
The Reddit WG (RWG) was set-up to initiate and grow Jupiter’s presence on Reddit, a critical platform for community engagement to a fundamentally different target audience from CT. They succeeded in getting the new subreddit off the ground and into the top 11% of all subreddits, by size. Regular AMAs hosted by the RWG also added a great human-touch to the J.U.P as many catdets and team members were given the chance to share and be vulnerable.
The RWG Lead (@TheCity777) decided to not continue after the trial and responsibly returned 45k of unused funds (XX% of the approved budget) to the DAO.
2. Web WG (not continuing after trial)
The Web WG (WWG) tackled several important pieces of work, including improving the Jupiter Station and collaborating with the CWG to create and manage jup.eco. They also focused heavily on SEO optimization and backend content organization — tasks that are often invisible but are essential for any thriving platform.
After discussions with the team and CWG, an agreement was reached for the WWG to not continue beyond the trial due to the scope of work not being suitable for a full work group.
3. Catdet WG (ongoing trial )
The Catdet WG (CAWG) remains in its trial phase and has made good progress towards defining and growing the J.U.P community’s culture. Their initiatives they experimented with so far included weekly Jupiverse summaries, organizing community events, and defining the ethos for Catdets, helping to solidify the identity and culture of the community. The CAWG continues to work on developing new ways for Catdets to interact and appreciate members in the community with Discord tooling and apps as well as leading initiatives such as the PPP token list.
The upcoming vote after Breakpoint will determine whether their work continues, and whether they can secure the trust and buy-in from the community needed to make a lasting impact.
While the WWG and RWG ultimately decided not to continue beyond the trial, they have been successful at delivering several key pieces of work for the DAO, and laid important foundations necessary for future expansion. The process itself and experimentation with the WG trial concept has also created learnings that can be brought forward.
Areas of Improvements with the Current Processes
1. Need for familiarity with community and each other
Most members of the community would generally not have experience working in public and would also not have had the opportunity to build with the community, gain familiarity and develop trust. The trial WGs will have a lot more legitimacy and the vibes will be a lot more PPP if there were more familiarity between the community and the WG members even before the trials.
2. Need for tighter scope, especially to start with
Instead of having trial WGs immediately committing to 3-5 months of work, a better alternative could be to have tighter-scoped experiments. There is a need for WG members to have the space to figure out if they are the right fit, in terms of their disposition to work in public, whether their personality and values fit the DAO’s and finally if they have the needed skills to execute.
3. Need for regular accountability and continuance votes
Even though WGs do not necessarily need to have concrete/fixed KPIs, so that they can be responsive to the changes in both the external crypto environment and also internal needs of the community, it is only fair to both the community and the WG members that there are regular accountability checks to ensure that good work is done and that the space shuttle is moving in the right direction.
Hence, key metrics in relation to their progress can be surfaced and discussed in regular retrospectives and also regular accountability votes could be used to measure the less quantifiable aspects of their work with the community.
4. Need for many more WGs to form
Currently, the process involving proposals and votes for each trial WG is too slow. There is an abundance of talent in the community wanting to contribute and there is a need for many more WGs to form over time to serve the needs of growing the Jupiverse.
Next Step: Letting a thousand (micro pretrial) WGs bloom
The WG model remains crucial for J.U.P.’s growth and we want to expand on its success and address certain areas of needs.
First off, we expect to install regular accountability and continuance votes for all workgroups. A good process is needed for this without being a pain in the ass for everyone (particularly as workgroups scale), but i am confident that we will figure out.
Next, to address the other needed improvements, the CWG has put up a new microgrants budget proposal to do so. If passed, the smaller-sized grants will allow community contributors more time to build familiarity and trust with the community, sufficient opportunities to figure out if they are a good fit for the WGs model, and reinforce accountability of contributors to the community on many levels.
The fact that these grants can be given to many more tightly scoped initiatives and teams will also address the need for the DAO to tap into the huge pool of community talent and let many more WGs form more nimbly.
If the proposal passes, we do not expect all of them to become trial workgroups - just like how most trial workgroups might not become full workgroups. But we do expect many more community members to get the chance to showcase themselves, get to work with each other and figure out how to do the best work for the Jupiverse.
Working in Public
One more thing to highlight here is that the ability to work in public and rally the comunity is necessary for Working Groups to thrive but it can be very difficult. Transparency breeds trust, but it also opens the door to criticism, FUD or even outright PvP behaviour.
There are a few things that I think workgroups (particularly ones new to the process) need to lear
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Contributors can learn to become more thick-skinned and able to filter out constructive feedback from outright negativity
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At the same time, an open, safe and productive culture/ethos can be reinforced within the DAO by catdets and moderators
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The community can become more familiar with potential WG members to establish mutual trust/understanding before they are thrust into a vote under the microscope.
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Contributors get used to public accountability – by having regular retrospectives to share their success and struggles via key metrics.
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Community can participate in the entire co-creation process as well by offering support to various initiatives
Conclusion
At Jupiter, one of the things we spend an incredible amount of time on is figuring out the best ways to activate the innate passion, talent and desire for purpose inside everyone and build the best community in crypto and beyond.
I strongly believe in the work group model, and while there has been a lot of rocky debates and extremely strong opinions so far, there can be no question that we will be a far, far less interesting community without this experiment.
So we will experiment, get all the nuances right, prove out a new model for harnessing decentralized leadership and have a ton of fun growing the Jupiverse in the meantime!
