PoolTogether DAO Happiness Survey
Introduction
The PoolTogether DAO and its structures keep growing and we are collectively working on many fronts to improve our abilities to collaborate, coordinate, and share information as well as resources.
Like most other DAOs PoolTogether is a network of ever increasing complexity and various efforts are being made simultaneously at any time with the purpose of building something bigger. Nonetheless no network sustainably function if its individual nodes suffer from wear and tear.
The DAO Happiness Survey was conducted with the intention to check on our community health and filter through the noise of daily Discord interactions and Crypto Twitter. We aimed to keep it as short as possible while retaining the ability to tie individual responses to potential feedback and improvements.
We expected that naturally the most involved and dedicated contributors would show their interest in participation and therefor help gather meaningful insight, while finding out what those contributors most desperately want at this moment of time. We wanted to identify the pains contributors have right now and identify what can we actually do to help contributors make progress on the goals they have.
The Survey
The form contained 12 statements to answer on a liker scale and open ended questions. Likert scales are effective to gauge the respondents’ opinions and feelings and work well to understand specific feedback. The different statements and questions covered multiple areas of interest: Feelings, Contributions, Compensation, Goals, Decisions, Information, Governance and Structure. The survey was open for participation between January 21st and 25th, and received 36 responses within that time.
The Results
In a nutshell the results prove that PoolTogether lives a strong and welcoming community vibe, offers a clear governance process, and provides options to contribute and and get rewarded. The results also indicate room for improvement in our rewards structure, flow of information, decision making, and the transparency of short term goals.
Let’s tackle the most important question first: The overall happiness over the participation in our DAO comes to an average of 7.7 out of 10, based on the survey responses. That’s 25 of 35 responses in the top box (8-10). Unfortunately one of the survey participants didn’t reply.
The happiness among us is strong, although three contributors state they are currently not happy with their participation in PoolTogether. Zooming in on their responses to the open ended questions their responses seem to be driven by the performance of the POOL token.
With an average of 4.4 of possible 5 the statement “I feel welcomed in the DAO” is the most agreeable to all participants of the survey. The absolute majority strongly agrees to be feeling welcomed in the DAO, and not one participant strongly disagrees. Three respondents disagree and two are neutral to this statement.
That mostly confirms PoolTogether’s welcoming community vibe. Contributors have the possibility to join our weekly Community Call & Swim Meet, the DAO Onboarding Calls, and are encouraged to apply for a grant with PoolGrants. Newer undertakings include the Welcome Wagon (a Community-led Tipping Committee) to further encourage contributions and help new contributors to get their first recognition.
The absolute majority of contributors either strongly agrees (38,9%) or agrees (33.3%) that it’s easy to contribute to the DAO. One participant strongly disagrees, three participants disagree and six remained neutral to this statement. The average is a 4 out of 5, marking the third highest score amongst the statements.
While it looks like people find ways to contribute, it is also important for us to know how people feel about the contributions they make.
41.7% (15) of contributors in this survey strongly agree to be feeling appreciated for their contributions, 27.8% (10) agree. Four contributors (11.1%) neither agree or disagree. With an average of 3.9 we are still on the good side, nonetheless this the overall second most disagreed statement with six participants disagreeing and one participant strongly disagreeing.
As a community-led DAO we can explore new ways to showcase and highlight contributions to provide poolers with a stronger sense of belonging.
The majority feels compensated for their contributions, with 27,8% of participants strongly agreeing and 30.6% (11 responses) agreeing to the statement made. With 8.3% of participants (three responses) strongly disagreeing, the question is among the most strongly disagreed questions. 30.6% of the respondents are undecided signalizing they feel there is work to be done.
Currently our main mechanism to reward contributors is Coordinape. Besides a budget increase, Lonser is doing intensive work to improve the Coordinape experience for poolers, including regular updates in the #coordinape-channel on Discord. Additionally we should explore how we can question our own biases while distributing GIVE on coordinape, and how to establish fair compensations even for the less visible contributions.
In a prefect world contributors should always feel encouraged to share their work, although it can be hard for some new poolers to gain visibility around known core-contributors. We should enable contributors to speak up if they’re not feeling fairly rewarded and keep a vibe where it’s okay to step forward for the things you did.
30.6% (11) of survey participants either strongly agree or agree to be clear on the goals and objectives of PoolTogether. 27.8% (10 responses) were neutral, and 5.6% each (two responses) disagree and strongly disagree. The overall average comes to 3.8.
Good examples of the ongoing transparency are the open discussion that are being held on Discord as well as on the governance forum. In addition to that PoolTogether Inc has recently shared their Vision and Roadmap for 2022.
Eight contributors strongly agree and 17 contributors (47.2%) agree of having a good idea of what’s happening at PoolTogether. Nine contributors (25%) remain neutral, while two contributors strongly disagree. With an average of 3.8 that roughly matches the results of the previous statement.
The weekly Community Call & Swim Meet offers contributors regular updates on current happenings as well as an open stage for questions. Further the official PoolTogether Twitter, the Discord #Announcements-channel and the Community Newsletter are available to stay in the loop.
A total of 77.7% (28 contributors) agree or strongly agree to be feeling good about PoolTogether’s progress towards its goals. Five contributors are neutral to the statement, three strongly disagree. With an average of 3.9 this statement surprisingly tops the scores of the statements concerning the awareness about PoolTogether’s progress and goals.
21 contributors either agree or strongly agree to the statement “I feel empowered to make decisions”. Nonetheless it sticks out as the overall least best rated, with 7 contributors in the bottom box (strongly disagree - disagree) and 8 contributors remaining neutral, suggesting issues in the visibility of our decision making processes and the need for a clearer definition of responsibilities, roles and teams within the DAO.
What stops contributors from making decisions? What does it take for a DAO to elevate decision making in a decentralized manner?
The majority of all respondents strongly disagrees (11 responses) or disagrees (10 responses) to running into many roadblocks while trying to contribute, however for 41.6% of our DAO contributors roadblocks seem to be an issue or happen on a regular basis.
Based on the results we should ask further questions:
- What are those roadblocks?
- What do contributors usually do when they run into those?
- Where do we discuss these roadblocks?
- How can we spot roadblocks in advance?
- Can we take out any more intermediates and empower contributors managing those roadblocks on their own?
Roadblocks cause demotivation so we should strengthen our abilities to spot and work around those.
The general understanding of the PoolTogether’s governance process turns out to be very positive. 38.9% (14) strongly agree and 36.1% (13) agree they do understand how it works. 19.4% (seven contributors) are neutral to that statement, while 5.6% (two contributors) disagree. Nobody strongly disagrees.
The responses confirm the findings of the Otherinternet Offchain Report, which highlighted PoolTogether’s clearly articulated and easily accessible governance process. Contributors do seem to understand the DAO’s governance process, resulting in the second best score out of all questions (not including overall happiness).
The structure of the DAO is clear to 24 of 36 respondents. 11 strongly agree (30.6%) and 13 agree (36.1%), eight respondents remain neutral (22.2%), while two each disagree or strongly disagree (5.6%).
Feedback taken from the 22.2% of contributors that are still undecided suggests that gaps might lie in the visibility of our DAO related information.
Open Ended Questions
Kicking off the open ended questions, we’ve asked for any recommendations for improving the DAO. We wanted to know what thing contributors would change right now if they could.
To be able to understand the recommendations for improving the DAO they have been divided by their overarching topics:
The one thing PoolTogether contributors would like to change most evolves around our sources of information for the DAO. So far the resources seem to have been spread across many platforms and documents. The survey responses indicate that contributors are missing a single source of truth and more visibility for the existing information and thus I’m personally excited to share dao.pooltogether.com as a part of the solution. This space is meant to accommodate all information around the PoolTogether DAO and provide contributors and everybody interested with all they need.
Another commonly mentioned keyword in replies is POOL Tokenomics. The whole DAO will agree that improving the experience for POOL token holders is our absolute priority besides our efforts towards the protocol itself.
Current activities on Discord and our governance forum show that the work is being done, nonetheless the amount of comments suggests we should continue to transparently update the community on the developments and time estimations for that topic.
- Better POOL Tokenomics through gPOOL, Staking, Prizes, and Liquidity
- Direction for PoolTogether + POOL Tokenomics
- PT Inc. Vision and Roadmap for 2022
Interestingly the responses including POOL Tokenomics are also accounting for most of the extreme negatives among all statements.
Partnerships was the theme around two out of 16 responses. It’s a widely agreed idea that the DAO should build a position or team focussing on partnerships and integrations. PoolTogether Inc has already offered their help achieving this goal.
Two responses mention the protocol & DAO could do more for its accessibility from different demographics. Currently our marketing is free-floating and contributor driven. Although we have strong contributors that make up most of our market or language-specific efforts (Gustavo, Pedro & Chippi (Portuguese & Brazilian), Neken (Chinese), Bronder, Gus & Anita348 (Spanish), Noxe (French), and Mon (Filipino)), we rely on contributors stepping forward and could offer more support to build the foundations.
Two responses recommended to scale up on Giveaways & Events. Until now all giveaways were community-led and either privately funded or sponsored by PoolGrants. The proof of value for giveaways was currently given by the Christmas Card Delegations and all the hype around the Valentines Day NFTs.
The newly emerging Marketing Working Group will play a big role in aligning, enhancing and streamlining all those efforts, and hopefully help to generate regular community engagement while growing our reach. The group is inviting all interested contributors to get involved.
Lastly we fully opened it up and asked for any other feedback the survey respondents would like to add.
Nine comments were sharing their love for PoolTogether & its community, three comments were again aimed toward the POOL Tokenomics, one comment mentioned collaboration spaces, one was expressing confusion towards the governance process, and a last comment was suggesting R&D for a long term growth strategy.
Calling all DAO Contributors
As any other DAO PoolTogether is facing challenges with the big Cs: coordination, collaboration, compensation and communication. This involves thinking thoughts no one has thought of before and interaction with other players in the space. Closing in on the first birthday of our DAO PoolTogether has already achieved a lot. PoolTogether Inc and early core-contributors have paved the way to enable anyone to get involved in the future of the protocol.
Thanks to all participants, readers & poolers! We will run the DAO Happiness Survey again in three months. This allows us to compare the results and keep track of our community health.
For now I’d like to invite you all into an open discussion about the DAO Happiness Survey.
What are your thoughts on the results?
Where do you see our areas of improvement?
What actions should we take?
Where you would like to get involved?
How can we further reduce friction and make this more fun for everyone?
Let’s pool together our skills and learnings and grow!
Be a Contributooor:
- Want to know more about the PoolTogether DAO? Check dao.pooltogether.com.
- Join the Community Call & Swim Meet (every Friday).
- New here? Come to one of our DAO Onboarding Calls (every Wednesday).
- Do you already have an idea that could bring value to the DAO? Apply for a grant with PoolGrants.
