Fixing Coordinape

[Tjark]

Why

The Happiness Survey identified “I feel compensated for my contributions” as the third weakest statement of all. Our Coordinape incentive system feels broken. Coordinape isn’t perceived as a great incentive to contribute/pay it forward by getting involved anymore.

On top of that

• The circle suffers from a general allocation fatigue
• Contributions are often not shared on Coordinape
• Poolers opt out while they are actually contributing

I am confident that we can fix this by tweaking some of our timing, settings and rules around Coordinape. Let’s bring Coordinape back to its old glory!

Compensation

Through Coordinape contributors are getting paid for work that was done in the past. Currently, this work is compensated with option tokens you can redeem in the future. That practice created a disconnect in incentives.

The Coordinape circle has proven that it can be a powerful onboarding tool. We want new contributors to feel rewarded early.

Right now contributors might have to wait up to three months to redeem their POOL and be eligible to enter our hodlers-hangout, participate in governance voting, or join the Polygon POOL pool.

Suggestion: Let’s switch back to POOL.

Vesting makes sense for teams we want to foster long-term alignment with. We could consider adapting options tokens for our team budgets instead.

Circle Size

We currently have a giant circle with 54 members. For larger organizations smaller circles are recommended. This goes back to:

• Work Opaqueness: The larger a Circle is, the less accurate the team member’s assessment of each other may be. Members tend to be the MOST familiar with the teammates’ work they interact with the most often.
• Various Areas of Expertise: Members do not always have experience with the effort required of all disciplines within the organization. For example, a developer may not know the rigor required of a marketer managing an active campaign. Due to this lack of experience, they may tend to under-allocate to members doing marketing.

This aside, multiple circles do introduce new problems. It is harder to track who receives funding from other sources (double-dipping) and each circle needs a dedicated admin.

Suggestion: Let’s iron out the details of how multiple circles can work together, before adding complexity.

Epoch Duration

We experimented with different epoch durations. Four weeks turned out to be too long and took a lot of the excitement away.

For choosing an epoch duration there are mainly two things to consider:

• Recency Bias: Members tend to allocate based on their recent experiences. If the epochs are too long, members may forget about work completed at the beginning of the epoch.
• Process Fatigue: Every epoch requires contributors to record contributions and allocate to team members. In a large circle, a frequent allocation process could lead to burnout.

Two weeks seems to be ideal if we:

• keep up with frequent updates and payouts
• get members to routinely enter their contributions

Suggestion: Let’s bring it back to two weeks!

Rules

We don’t have many. Are there any? We should improve that and make it more clear what is allowed and what isn’t.

Suggestion: Create some simple rules.

These could serve as a baseline:

• You must have contributed previously to join the Coordinape Circle
• Epoch Statements are mandatory (better use contributions & statements as TLDR)
• Other sources of income within PoolTogether must be disclosed in the Epoch Statement

We can enforce our rules by opting out members that don’t comply.

Communication

A very easy fix is our communication. We should communicate more in all directions: The current state of an epoch, updates, and contributions.

Suggestions:

1. As a contributor, it feels good to get regular and timely updates about Coordinape. We can honor that more. Coordinape can get a segment during our Community Call every two weeks.

2. Contributors should feel encouraged to share what they are working on. PoolTogether has celebrating wins in its DNA - so we should go hard on celebrating personal wins and contributions. Don’t hold back from sharing what you’re doing with others on Discord!

3. Coordinape can be overwhelming. I am creating better onboarding documentation to help new contributors get started.

4. Coordinape offers the feature to add contributions and an epoch statement - we should use it more!

Best Practices

• Enter your contributions regularly to Coordinape so you don’t forget about it.
• Better overshare than undershare! Let others judge the impact of what you did, no matter how big or small.
• The Epoch statement can function as a TLDR of all of your contributions.

Next steps

I’m inviting all coordinape circle members to share their opinion. What has been great, what hasn’t been so great, and what can we do to improve?

An open discussion should help us to move forward together. This way we can make sure Coordinape has an impact on anyone who wants to contribute to PoolTogether.

[Creed]

i don’t really have much to say on this but i believe that whatever rules given to us are something we should abide to.

[Shivansh]

Will definitely support and follow the new rules made. I really like the cutting of wait time from 3 months to immediate incentives!

[TheRealTuna]

I feel like the Pooltogether KPI options have worked well in rewarding long term aligned participants and it has been a great partnership with UMA that we should keep going. Perhaps reshaping the metrics used would be a good idea but changing back to short term payouts will bring more short term participants.

[LiviuC]

From my experience with coordinape on larger scale, this is very limited and tends to not work properly, so for sure much smaller and concentrate team will have much better results!
What do you think about having to join each time a new epoch is created? This can increase participation and also will have members active.
@TheRealTuna has a good point, but until we experiment with stuff we will never know

[DaBoom]

Thanks for the write-up @Tjark.

I am thinking along the lines of you in terms of smaller circles. However, I think even that adds a bit of complexity that may overwhelm a system like our coordinape compensating. I think if we took it a step further and had a coordinape team that kept track of tasks thought the epoch and allocated GIVE where they saw a shortage, would have a better impact.

You mention a lack of expertise for givers not understanding certain tasks and recency bias, both of which I truly believe depreciate the value of a lot of work in the community. I’d like to play contrarian by pointing out that if our givers took the time to seek out what was involved in a task and how it impacted the community, it wouldn’t take an expert to gauge what GIVE was worth that task. The problem is, no one (or very few) is going to take that next step to find all the tasks and understand them…unless they are compensated for it. Coordinape may be stagnating and deflating because it is actually a bit of work to complete giving, unless you hit the distribute evenly button…which defeats the purpose.

All this to say, I think a coordinape team overseeing shortfalls of GIVE is a solution.

I’d also like to point out that the idea behind KPI was to maintaining long term alignment. This naturally builds in a disconnect between the beginning of the epoch and when the option can be called. It also relieves sell pressure from the token by elongating the time between when you receive anything, and when it becomes exchangeable. This gives the contributor time to get “long term aligned” (aka, not sell)

[Tjark]

@TheRealTuna

I feel like the Pooltogether KPI options have worked well in rewarding long term aligned participants and it has been a great partnership with UMA that we should keep going.

I do believe KPI options would work well for team setups. Currently team members are compensated in USDC & POOL based on this compensation spreadsheet.
It seems to be best practice between current teams to steam the compensation via Llamapay. I’d suggest using the KPI options to stream uGMI instead of POOL.

@LiviuC

What do you think about having to join each time a new epoch is created? This can increase participation and also will have members active.

I think this how it’s done at the moment.

@DaBoom

All this to say, I think a coordinape team overseeing shortfalls of GIVE is a solution.

This sounds like a lot of work for a team! Giving more power to distribute GIVE to a team puts the weight to decide what counts as value onto the shoulders of few. The purpose of Coordinape is to allow contributors to transparently reward the value they see created in an organization.

I actually believe the root of this problem goes back to our communication. We should share more about what happens on Coordinape, we should encourage people to share what they’re working on more, we should celebrate this work more, we should keep reminding poolers about how Coordinape works, when it’s time for allocations, who were the MVPs & rising stars.

This makes me aware that I forgot to add a suggestion to the initial post. Coordinapers should be allowed to give by default.
We are missing out on the input from a few very active and motivated contributors by denying them to distribute GIVE. The earlier we allow active involvement, the more likely it will stick.

@DaBoom

I’d also like to point out that the idea behind KPI was to maintaining long term alignment. This naturally builds in a disconnect between the beginning of the epoch and when the option can be called. It also relieves sell pressure from the token by elongating the time between when you receive anything, and when it becomes exchangeable. This gives the contributor time to get “long term aligned” (aka, not sell)

I fully agree to this! Long term alignment is what we want.

With the TBR process in place more contributors are moving from Coordinape compensation to being compensated through their team’s budgets. I think these are the people where long time alignment is most important.

For new community members long term alignment is not forged through vested options, but rather through validation, early gratification, and making meaningful connections.
By distributing POOL these new contributors can vote, pool, access the hodlers hangout & other hodler benefits from time to time, and can feel like they make an impact straight away.

That’s why options feel like a much better fit for our TBRs vs Coordinape. Coordinape makes it easy to onboard & reward new poolers!

[Shivansh]

Hey,
After Reading all the comments, i would also agree to them and not with my original opinion. The 3 months or so long period of converting to POOL promotes long term contributions and commitment. Which i think is great and i have no problems with it staying the same in the future!

[Mon]

thanks for writing this up ser @Tjark, I also agree on tweaking of coordinape compensation to 2 weeks, this change will also give chance to contributors to join/follow other pool strategies created by the community.

[Creed]

agreed with @Shivansh.

[underthesea]

@Tjark

Coordinape isn’t perceived as a great incentive to contribute/pay it forward by getting involved anymore.

Agreed

I think that vesting pay for Coordinape can be good. The uGMI is kinda messy with different tokens and the actual KPI part of it has not been relevant thus far. Ideally vested POOL could vote. Not sure if there is an alternative system for this? Any token could be added to Snapshot - I’m guessing majority of people getting coordinape are not bridging to mainnet to vote onchain. I don’t think the payment token (uGMI) is a big problem but it’s not a big added feature at this point either.

Agree 2 weeks instead of 1 month.

Agree with the rules - onboarding/offboarding is always going to be difficult. Someone should really see how other circles are handling this, but generally YES it should be required that someone has contributed to the protocol to be added to the circle. Epoch statements should be mandatory. Other incomes ok. Enforcement by opting out those who don’t comply - ok.

I really think the updates are important. @lonser was doing some great updates but it seems like it has been less so over recent epochs. Perhaps at one week into the two week epoch all of the epoch statements could be posted on Discord.

Generally I think the number of people contributing has dwindled and that’s ok. I think we should have a budget that is reflexive to number of contributors.

Everyone should only have 100 GIVE.

I am all for using coordinape on teams, but that should be viewed completely separately from the community circle. Those contributions should be separated as well and defined in epoch statements like mentioned above. For the general community coordinape I do not think we need to split it up at this time. There’s not that many people contributing outside of the teams. I think it’s ok if people are only GIVEing to those they are familiar with or working closely with. In fact it should be clear that GIVEing is to recognize specific contributions. It will all balance out if we all have 100 GIVE and we keep up with epoch statements and allocations. Bringing back more updates on Discord and community calls can go a long way.

[TheRealTuna]

Agree with 2 week epochs and more announcements. Do some people have more than 100 GIVE to give? That seems a bit ridiculous and kind of defeats the purpose if true. That just depreciates everyone else’s giving ability and sets an unfair playing field.

My suggestion if we continue with KPI options would be to se an achievable goal for the next quarter and give the options a lower floor but with solid upside. A metric like increasing unique depositors would influence contributors to get out there and spread the word about Pooltogether.

[PVMihalache]

I am a huge fan of both PoolTogether and KPI options, and I think this combination has an unique synergy.
PoolTogether always looked for innovation and a fair reward for contributors or valued community members. KPI options took care of both. Maybe Coordinape complicated a bit the distribution, and maybe KPI shared directly would be more efficient

[Tjark]

Awesome discussion so far!

@underthesea

Ideally vested POOL could vote. Not sure if there is an alternative system for this?

I agree - this would change my perspective about the options a lot.

The previous discussion around adding uGMI to the off-chain snapshot sadly went flat. The reason for opposing seemed to be, that it should not have voting power as it’s value is undetermined.

My opinion is, that if we distribute option tokens to our most active new community members - those contributors should be eligible to vote with them.
One of the main metrics for Coordinape should be incentivizing active involvement. Blocking out those that are very engaged right now works against that.

@underthesea

Generally I think the number of people contributing has dwindled and that’s ok. I think we should have a budget that is reflexive to number of contributors.

This is what we have - correct me if I’m wrong, @Lonser

The Coordinape budget is capped at $10,000 worth of POOL per month. $400 per active circle member is being distributed per month

@underthesea

I think it’s ok if people are only GIVEing to those they are familiar with or working closely with. In fact it should be clear that GIVEing is to recognize specific contributions. It will all balance out if we all have 100 GIVE and we keep up with epoch statements and allocations.

Yes This should be highlighted!

@TheRealTuna

Do some people have more than 100 GIVE to give?

Everyone has 200 GIVE currently. Back to 100 sounds good!

@PVMihalache

Maybe Coordinape complicated a bit the distribution, and maybe KPI shared directly would be more efficient

Coordinape is actually what makes the distribution possible in the first place. Taking out this piece would break a lot more than it would fix. Coordinape is helping us to solve the problem of fair compensation and onboarding contributors in a decentralized way. We want to reward those most efficiently who would otherwise potentially receive no compensation.

–
Disclaimer: I am not receiving GIVE, nor uGMI. I’m not an active member of either the Coordinape or UMA community. My sole intention is to accumulate past learnings and gather feedback, so more contributors can identify with the statement I feel compensated for my contributions.

[Leighton]

Suggestion: Let’s switch back to POOL.

Agreed.

Suggestion: Let’s iron out the details of how multiple circles can work together, before adding complexity.

Not sure I understand what this means? Do you mean iron out those details right now? Or do you mean just keep one big circle for now?

Suggestion: Let’s bring it back to two weeks!

I’m good with two weeks but I’d also suggest one week! Might be fun and easier to make it a habit.

Rules

I like the ones you have suggested! Specifically other forms of compensation.

Communication

Again, I think moving to a weekly cadence might help this… make it more of a habit. We could have it end on Thursdays to correspond with the community call.

[underthesea]

Agree with @Leighton that weekly is nice for habit. Bi-weekly gets confusing which week it is.

What if we had a weekly call for Coordinape similar to the council weekly call. People can share what they are working on and that would give good context for allocations and also serve as a reminder for epoch statements / reminders.

[alxx]

Just wanted to share my 2cents as a new team member and former Coordinaper

@Tjark

Suggestion: Let’s switch back to POOL.

This seems like a good idea, options tokens seem pretty complex for your average user.

@Tjark

We currently have a giant circle with 54 members. For larger organizations smaller circles are recommended.

It’s true that we often saw less “accurate” compensation when circles got bigger but it can also go the other way if circles get too small, and more circles means more work to maintain.

One solution might be to have strict rules on how to remain in a circle and stay opt-ed in. I know many teams required everyone to write an epoch statement with detailed contributions, every epoch, or they would be opted out by the admin in the following epoch.

@Tjark

Two weeks seems to be ideal

Agree this seems like a good cadence

@Tjark

Epoch Statements are mandatory (better use contributions & statements as TLDR)

I think this is a good idea

[Tjark]

Thanks a lot for the participation so far @Creed @Shivansh @TheRealTuna @LiviuC @DaBoom @mon @underthesea @PVMihalache @Leighton @alxx @Lonser

Great to see the attendance in Coordinape going up for the last epoch! Wrapping up the discussion so far:

Cycle Settings

• Weekly epochs
• 100 GIVE per member
• All contributors can give by default
• Clearly communicated rules

Rules

• You must have contributed previously to join the Coordinape Circle
• Epoch Statements are mandatory (better use contributions & statements as TLDR)
• Other sources of income within PoolTogether must be disclosed in the Epoch Statement

Enforcement: Members that don’t comply may be opted out from receiving compensation by admins.

Communication

• For Contributors: weekly updates
• From Contributors: detailed contributions & epoch statement TL;DR mandatory
• Contributors who aren’t filling in their contributions/epoch statements or aren’t disclosing income from other PoolTogether sources may be opted out by admins
• Onboarding guide for new joiners
• Potentially start hosting a contributor call
  • Talk about epoch
  • Share & comment done work
  • Look for contributors or exchange ideas

Compensation

• Currently, the Coordinape budget is capped at $10,000 worth of POOL per month. Per active circle member $400 is being distributed.
• The max budget for the current quarter is 31,579 POOL.
• For the next three months, Lonser minted another set of uGMI options.

Can we add uGMI to the Snapshot? My suggestion would be to weigh it 1:1 with POOL. I think that’s fair and allows new contributors to participate in off-chain governance.

Multiple Circles

@Leighton

Not sure I understand what this means? Do you mean iron out those details right now? Or do you mean just keep one big circle for now?

The Growth Team created a dedicated Coordinape circle. It could be that other groups of contributors decide to create circles as well. We should have a general process for that to ensure budgeting, administration and communication work well.

For example, the Growth Team has a quarterly Coordinape budget of 22,500 POOL.

• Does this mean, we should adjust the quarterly budget for the community cycle?
• How do we make sure the budget between different cycles is fairly distributed?

We could adapt a general $ cap per contributor.

[tim]

I agree with @Tjark: Individual Epoch statements should reflect which teams are compensating the contributor and how. Growth team contributions shouldn’t be listed in the main circle.

Example
@DenicioDelToro1 lists podcast production on Growth Team Contributions and not on the Main Circle, and lists a PlayTogether contribution on Main Circle (and not Growth).

However, @DenicioDelToro1 just upped the podcast highlights and @underthesea is blown away by how sick they are now. I think @underthesea can throw a lil give to DDT even though that is a Growth contribution.

End of Example

Also, those who desire to join a team should be able to do so freely at the weekly/biweekly reset.

Coordinape feature request: Allow everyone to see the amount of GIVE given to each contributor across circles and how that translates into POOL based on current GIVE distribution.

[tim]

Given my experience with the leading the Growth Team and syncing up with @Lonser on using Coordinape for compensation for the team: here are some thoughts.

I think we should continue a main circle that is like a tipping system for Poolers. Some Poolers won’t be on a team, some will, some won’t be receiving any compensation, some will. The main circle is for little bits of encouragement (notes and GIVE) and that should be open to all contributors if they want to be included. Those who opt out and still contribute have their reasons, but default mode should be on for all contribs who post epoch statements.

I agree with @Tjark 's baseline here for the main circle

@Tjark

• You must have contributed previously to join the Coordinape Circle
• Epoch Statements are mandatory (better use contributions & statements as TLDR)
• Other sources of income within PoolTogether must be disclosed in the Epoch Statement

For the Growth Team Circle, we’ve used it as a compensation distribution method for contributors, and I think it’s worked pretty well for a first run! Spreadsheet Summary

What I think that’s worked really well is setting up an onramp for contributors. Those interested in contributing will first contribute. Then, based on that contribution they can join the Main Circle and continue contributing. After ~2 epochs, the contributor can join the Growth Team and find a way to contribute toward the Growth Strategy, and eventually they receive a GIVE allotment distribute to their teammates.

We’ve switched to two week epochs, and I don’t recommend going shorter than that! I also think that one month epochs are too long and don’t allow for recalibration. I think I would like to try three week epochs, but I think we’ll do this when I feel comfortable with team member objectives clarity and more defined ownership.

What do I think doesn’t work well? I think quite contributors can be overlooked, especially if they’re working directly with a team lead and not connected to the broader community. It’s my job as lead to continue to highlight the work of quiet contributors, along with encouraging these quiet contributors to… not be so quiet!

Conversely, I think there are also very loud contributors… ones who speak up in meetings, share ideas, aren’t afraid to hit the unmute microphone button or chat it up at length in governance and Discord. Those will continue to get GIVE, and I think it’s cool to see the loud ones advocate for the quiet ones.

Specifically with the Growth Team, a static Coordinape amount of POOL distributed each epoch could lead to the team finding work to do rather than contributing to the overall strategy, but I don’t see it happening this way. The team is asking for ways to contribute, we’ve identified those ways, and we have weekly meetings to touch base for innovation, strategy alignment and adjustment. I’ve budgeted 180 POOL (4 hours at 45 POOL per hour) per person per week, but remember that the Growth Team designates how that is divvied up based on contributions to the overall Growth Team Strategy, and I think that’s a deal for the PoolTogether Community to have an innovation engine up and running and shipping.

For Q2, the Growth Team will exit the Main Circle, but I dream of a day where we can have multiple Circles for teams and a Main Circle for a lil tipping bb.