Pooltogether grants program renewal

[TheRealTuna]

I have posted a proposal that relates to grants. Please read very carefully and let me know your thoughts. I am very excited about this idea and it’s very low risk as if the grants committee doesn’t use these options as payouts then the funds come back to our treasury.

[Proposal] Trial KPI options with the grants committee

Objective: Trial $150,000(Max Payout $150,000, Min. payout $50,000) in KPI options to be used by the grants committee in the upcoming quarter. My hope is upon successful use of the KPI options by the grants committee we can expand the use of options in future grants budgets. Grants committee would attempt to pay some contributors. If the options aren’t used then they come back to treasury but it would be great to see if we can pay contributors with options even if its for a portion of the payme…

[drcpu]

@Torgin

How to interpret our mandate and hour caps.

I think we should aim to have a process that is as efficient as possible, maximizing the value we get out of every hour worked. If I can get something done 90% as well in half the time, that’s a big win. It is not the goal to reach the cap of hours every week, that’s just an option in case there is an extraordinary week with more going on than usual.

Blake aims to maximize the total output by utilizing all available resources. If something can be done better by spending more time on it and there are still hours left in the budget, then they should be utilized. The goal is to hit the maximum cap of hours. Otherwise, there is wasted potential to “be even better”.

I think in itself this is not a problem, it can be healthy to have a mix of approaches and that may lead to a better overall result. Combined, the approaches of some members maximizing output and others maximizing efficiency can still lead to an overall healthy functioning of the committee.

I also get the impression that Blake’s hours logged don’t match the output we get to see from him. This may be due to actually working inefficiently or due to not effectively communicating the value he is bringing. Blake has hit his cap of 80hrs per month in both months that have been paid out, meaning his wages alone have been approximately equal to the other 5 committee members combined. I don’t think he has done half the productive work of the committee.

However, coupled with this, I am inclined to say it constitutes a problem. In my opinion, it should not be possible for one person to spend as much of the operating budget as 5 other persons, especially not if (at least) two members seem to think that the budget was not spent optimally.

Blake thinks that trust should be implicit in being chosen to be on the grants committee. It was earned through past contributions, before being elected. It shouldn’t be necessary to share or prove the work you are doing, as long as it gets done. Time tracking could be done by just including the Date and Hours, with no description. It is assumed something useful was done with the time. “Clock in, clock out. Like every job ever”.

Overall, I agree and think there should be some leeway. I imagine this is a completely new construct for all of you, and people need to grow into their roles. However, this being a completely new role also means that we also should not give blanket trust, we should be able to verify work is done properly. There should be a form of accountability, but whether that is through time sheets or any other form of active reporting, I don’t really have a preference since all of it will be lacking in some aspect.

I feel like there is a (hard) question that needs to be resolved before this goes to a PTIP vote. Do you, as the grants committee, think the current approach is still fine? Are the issues that arose in the first quarter solveable internally? Is it necessary to adjust some of the parameters of the initial PTIP (e.g. maximum billable hours per member)?

[Leighton]

Thanks for sharing your perspective!

As the original proposal laid out, it is up to the discretion of the grants committee if they want to make member changes during the pilot program:

Members may be replaced during the pilot program, for example, if they find they are not able to dedicate sufficient time to the program. We aim to be as transparent as possible and get feedback on the PoolTogether forum and Discord if there are any changes to the committee during the program. LINK

So that at least clarifies that there is room to make changes if changes are warranted. I think we should expect during a trial period we should find optimizations that we want to implement.

In terms of how changes should be implemented. If a majority of grant’s committee members feel it should then do it! I don’t think it needs to be over analyzed or made into something personal. Making a change at a natural interval like this makes sense.

Finally, on the last question of what changes should be made.

Based on what I’ve read I think making some changes are warranted. It’s very clear that the divergence around how time should be used and tracking of time is distracting from the overall goals of the committee. Outside of time tracking, it also sounds like there are performance concerns (missing meetings, etc.) which are serious. So I would like to see some changes implemented. I think it would be an unhealthy precedent to have a clear identification and articulation of sub-optimal outcomes and not do anything to address them.

There’s probably a few ways those could be addressed (adjusting hourly caps, changing members, changing roles for members). I think which change is most appropriate is up to the committee members but I fully support making some changes. I wouldn’t feel comfortable voting to approve the next phase of grants without adjusts being made given everything I’ve read here.

[underthesea]

Really impressed with the transparency and the grants team has done an obvious good job at funding a variety of projects that have grown the PT ecosystem. Also very happy to see @taliskye added to the team and excited to see what the next quarter brings.

I have some feedback on some specific grants funding numbers, and generally curious how those payout amounts are derived, but I will try to communicate that with y’all directly as I don’t think it will help this thread.

@Torgin

We are happy with our current team.

Is this the case? It’s hard to gauge the gravity of the sentiments presented here. Given that the majority of the grants team is not using the max hours it seems like a lower cap, as @drcpu and @Leighton suggested, would be the easiest change to make. It looks like the community wants to push the responsibility back to the grants team to sort this out but the folks expressing grievances are pretty clear that they have tried with no luck. I wonder if this is where the HR DAO comes in? On a high-level, I think people should feel free to express their feelings publicly, rain or shine.

[Taliskye]

First let me say I really appreciate the support from everyone and I’m happy to be able to jump into the Grants Committee.
Second, the committee approached me prior to this post to gauge my interest, which I was totally stoked about. Since then I’ve dug into their different trackers even more than I usually do and I feel there’s some context to add regarding the hours, I’m not going to defend any position.

Some Notes on Hours:

• Everyone’s hours trend downward, except Gabor
• Gabor is consistent and at the lower half of the averages (10.9 hours/month)
• Blake had a significant decrease in hours from Month 2 (81) to Month 3 (65)
• McOso has also had a significant decrease Month 1 (24) to Month 2 (9), in Month 1 he looked to have built out some of the infrastructure
• Praneeth has 1/5 the hours of the other reviewers on average, 2.3 compared to 10-13 hours for other reviewers
• Torgin averages half the hours of Blake
• Andy doesn’t have anything of interest, cheers
• Reviewers spend anywhere between 6 minutes to 3 hours doing stuff, with an average of 51 minutes and median of 1 hour on the days they are putting towards Grants

Outside of all this, I just want to say I’ve really enjoyed many of the grants that have gone through. Bankless media blitz, Orange wallet, supporting SharingNotes, LlamaDAO being particularly interesting. I’m hoping to rework/redefine the RFPs and start building out a good hub to bring the ideas to the devs and make it happen.

[blakeburrito]

I think the suggestion from @Leighton and @underthesea would be viable… that being to reduce the lead role hours. I’d suggest to set them to 15 hours weekly instead of the current 20.

I would be in agreement to that change. As long as @Torgin and the rest of the grants team can agree then this could be a great resolution!

[Abuchtela]

If my opinion from “community member” helps, then I’ll say I think you make a very good point here and I suppose if there’s questions on someone’s longed hours or time tracking then ask for a simple explaination in reguards to the time tracked but having said on the forum here could potentially lead to a bigger problem of attacking on person publicly and ruin there integrity within the community of which could have just simply been someone else’s misinterpretation of one’s actual contributions in which I think then should be held internally