Proposal: šŸ•µ Research Guild (Q4 2022) - N3BI

Governance City Hall
19

I feel very sorry for bringing this here, as I am no one in this community. I definitely lack information on the whole situation of the DAO, but as a token holder with the opportunity to voice my opinions I want to provide my thoughts on this proposal and why I voted negatively last time.

**TLDR: ** Focus. Focus. Focus.

Small organizations struggle really hard when they are shipping, most startups fail for a reason. Dangers await in every corner and choosing the right battles at the right times is critic. Iā€™m not against N3BI research whatsoever, I actually love reading about it and how it could be integrated. But, shipping a product and finding its PMF is hard enough for dispersing the energy in several projects in this early stage. When shipping everyone attention should be on the details, BD, design, vision, development, funding, GTMā€¦ Itā€™s a titanic effort from a whole team!
You are building an amazing team building an amazing product as court is. Why not doubling down on it? Why not focusing everyoneā€™s efforts in its success? Otherwise I find it hard to see how that product can survive such an arduous battle against the establishment and provide a more open and efficient system.
Iā€™ve seen many organizations fail due to the lack of focus, thatā€™s why I believe the research Nation3 should be doing should be on types of legal contract that can be ported into the service, business development, legal abstractions, UI/UX, product, development, fundingā€¦ All the things that will help Court to succeed.

I understand that ā€œdiversificationā€ is key in a DAO, yet I canā€™t stop thinking thereā€™s a time for everything and seems to me Court, as the base of this organization (imo) right now, needs the love from everyone. Anything that brings any small distraction from its success should be scrutinized and deeply studied to ensure how it adds value. And in this proposal, I can only see (and correct me if Iā€™m wrong) the NationCred research as valuable, potentially improving the community and contributor scene across DAOā€™s if well executed.

With this I donā€™t want to discourage anyone from Nation3, but actually the opposite, nudge into what I feel is tapping the biggest opportunity and ensuring its success, for the sake of our community. I would love this research team to center their efforts into Court so sooner than later DAOā€™s and individuals across the world can access a fair system. There are tasks available for everyone present in this proposal in that project. Like, business development for Court is probably going to be even harder than the pure product development. I hope the mission at hand motives everyone here, as I would love to see each one of you one working together in it to see how far we can get this. Once that base is done, it will be a robust base for any other project, to expand and tap into other dark forests.

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You are right about this, and I would argue that this is equally as important as the development of court. I understand your perspective on the importance of being focused in the early stage of a startup, but as we scale we also need to be aware that the right incentive structure for contributors and community members would also promote talent retention.

Moreover, this research is not out of scope for our milestone in phase one.

Again, I understand that the court system is a critical infrastructure, but it shouldnā€™t negate further progress in other areas in the milestone. The court is still under development and continuous progress is being made in some of the area you mentioned above.

22

Echoing @0xPaella 's comment.

Timing (Not if but when)

Itā€™s not that N3BI is something we donā€™t want. It just doesnā€™t feel like the right timing. Please donā€™t take my disagreement in a negative way. I have nothing but happy and positive wishes for N3, otherwise I wouldnā€™t put my time into writing this.

Self reflecting questions

  1. Is our first core product Court or N3BI? (Prioritization: If we can only have one right now which do we choose?)
  2. Will creating a working and balanced UBI be easy or hard? [cost]
  3. How much value will a working UBI create for N3? [benefit]
  4. How risky for N3ā€™s survival will spending time and resources on a UBI be at our current stage? ( Are we at the stage where UBI is something we can easily afford if it fails? ) [risk]
  5. Is the cost to benefit to risk ratio high enough to justify resource allocation right now?
  6. Are we thinking objectively? Is researching and building a UBI an objective strategic product decision that shows it makes the most sense to do now, or are we pushing it forward for an alternate reason?

Current proposal

This proposal is lacking a detailed explanation as to why itā€™s needed so early in development. I donā€™t see a compelling product idea, I see that the theory that a N3BI will increase activity, but that is not a validated idea yet. It may work out that paying people to be active through N3BI would bring in a group of extractors who do the bare minimum required to game the system to collect their N3BI.

I think it canā€™t be overstated how risky a UBI is to N3. UBI is not an easy thing to create, itā€™s actually never been successfully done before. I know we want a UBI, but if we rush in too quickly we might blow up N3 before it has a chance to get off the ground.

Missionaries and Focus, Focus, Focus

At our stage itā€™s critical we build a team of passionate missionaries dedicated to building a core value adding product to sustain N3 from.

Court serves a clear value prop and acts as the base level for everything else to be built on. I agree that we should be thinking about doubling down on court to ensure maximum chance of success.

Proposal

What do you think of revisiting N3BI research in 6-12 months once the court system is running and has established a basic product-market-fit? ( @luis @anastasiya @aahna )

In the mean time there have been some great discussions around UBI in Agora, we could keep the discussion going to evolve our thinking on this more before spending money on research/building.

23

I saw this too late (gonna set up notifications for the forum!) but hereā€™s my take:

Focus in a small organization is paramount. However, if thereā€™s one thing that DAOs are good for, is exploring multiple parallel routes. This is possible by having different guilds (some of them more open, some full-time, etc.). All guilds are focused on the OKRs, but each guild has its own scope. Within that scope, the guild should be laser-focused.

I believe that even if we wanted to have everyone in this proposal work in the Court right now, it would be useless. Why? Because I believe that Nation3 Court doesnā€™t need 7 people working on it part-time right now. What it needs is 3 people working on it full-time, with some others contributing in the sidelines.

But besides that, why is it useful to explore N3BI? Few reasons:

  • This proposal will lead to an active citizens metric, which we donā€™t have now, therefore making it impossible to meet this quarterā€™s OKRs.
  • Research around NationCred and measuring active citizens might take us to some Sybil-resistance, privacy-preserving way of introducing 1-person 1-vote. This can be a powerful tool to introduce more checks and balances. Checks and balances are what gives Nation3 Court legitimacy.
  • N3BI can be a powerful user acquisition and incentives mechanism for Nation3 Court. For example, N3BI recipients could receive added $NATION collateral for participating in higher-stake agreements, instead of just getting cash. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

Iā€™m personally very excited about how synergistic this proposal is with Nation3 Court and the current OKRs. If most of the contributors who will work on it where meant to work on Nation3 Court, Iā€™d oppose, since launching the Court is more important than building stronger checks and balances or incentives mechanisms on top of it. Said otherwise, with no Court this proposal wouldnā€™t make a lot of sense to me, but having the Court being launched soon, it seems quite complimentary.

2 Likes
24

Thanks for the detailed reply @luis.

However, if thereā€™s one thing that DAOs are good for, is exploring multiple parallel routes. This is possible by having different guilds (some of them more open, some full-time, etc.). All guilds are focused on the OKRs, but each guild has its own scope. Within that scope, the guild should be laser-focused .

I can agree with that.

I believe that even if we wanted to have everyone in this proposal work in the Court right now, it would be useless. Why? Because I believe that Nation3 Court doesnā€™t need 7 people working on it part-time right now. What it needs is 3 people working on it full-time, with some others contributing in the sidelines.

I wasnā€™t aware those members the N3BI research team wouldnā€™t be useful in helping out the court system. This new context helps understand the reasoning better.

  • This proposal will lead to an active citizens metric, which we donā€™t have now, therefore making it impossible to meet this quarterā€™s OKRs.

A correctly balanced activity metric might be extremely difficult to achieve. What is the goal of citizen activity metric? To solve for voter apathy?

  • Research around NationCred and measuring active citizens might take us to some Sybil-resistance, privacy-preserving way of introducing 1-person 1-vote. This can be a powerful tool to introduce more checks and balances. Checks and balances are what gives Nation3 Court legitimacy.

Good news! The privacy-preserving and anti-bribery voting system is a solved problem. MACI (Minimum Anti-Collusion Infrastructure) has extensive research behind it and is built by the Ethereum Foundationā€™s PSE team. Hereā€™s the github: GitHub - privacy-scaling-explorations/maci: Minimal anti collusion infrastructure

N3BI can be a powerful user acquisition and incentives mechanism for Nation3 Court.

I agree that it can bring users in. This is the most powerful argument in favor of bringing in a N3BI.

Youā€™ve convinced me to change my vote to a yes on this.

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To specify, I think they would be extremely useful if they were not even more useful in what they are doing now. Said otherwise, having contributors keeping the citizen app afloat, research UBI and other endeavors helps keep the contributors working on the Court full-time more focused.

Itā€™s a meta-goal to build a community (more Proposal: Set Nation3's North Star metrics).

We just need Sybil resistance then! Which BTW I donā€™t think it needs to be perfect ā€“ it just needs to be good enough to sustain attacks.

:rocket:

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26

Thanks for surfacing this!

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What public services can Nation3 now provide?

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One of my main concern for UBI was sustainability and scalability, which was slightly addressed in this post.

  • We can also consider building ā€œpublicā€ revenue generating digital infrastructures by Nation3 to go to the UBI treasury.

@zhaojiayi.eth I made the above comment a while ago when I was new to Nation3 and also the concept of UBI. I have since realized that this comment/suggestion is not a sustainable way to fund a UBI program.

That aside, to your current question, Nation3 core contributors have been focused on building Nation3 Court and research into N3BI, so to the best of my knowledge there are no priorities on other public services till the launch of at least the Court.

You can sign up for Nation3 court launch phase whitelist on the jurisdiction page on our new website.

Feel free to also leave suggestions on some of the public services you expect from Nation3, preferably in a new post outside of this if you donā€™t mind.

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Published a summary of the N3BI research here: Clarity ā€” Simple docs & tasks for decentralized teams

Most of the work went into researching and developing a Sybil protection mechanismā€“NationCred.

A natural next priority for development work would be to focus on the Citizen Directory, because that is the UI that Nation3 citizens will be using for activating their SourceCred identities. Initially we signed up people manually for SourceCred, but that is no longer a scalable solution, and we can use the Citizen Directory + smart contracts for automating this step.

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@aahna Very interesting research, thanks!

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@luis During our N3BI research, we found a 50-page study made on the UBI + PoH governance drama: BlockchainGov Observations on PoH DAO Governance// Observaciones de BlockchainGov sobre la gobernanza De La PoH DAO - Proof of Humanity - Proof of Humanity and UBI

They were using 1-person 1-vote ā€œdemocracy,ā€ so if we want to eventually introduce a similar voting strategy for Nation3, we need to be careful.

I personally participated in the UBI + PoH project last year because I found it really interesting, but I had to leave after a few weeks because of the unkind/aggressive community culture (especially their Telegram group). My take on this, after personally observing, is that the immature behavior amongst leaders/admins was the main reason the whole project collapsed.

While on this tangent, I think you and @anastasiya are being excellent role models when it comes to communication styles. It feels so much more pleasant to form part of an organization where the members are kind and respectful with each other, and not constantly criticizing/attacking. It makes an enormous difference :clap:

This makes me think that we should have some form of Code of Conduct for Nation3 that makes it crystal clear that abusive/offensive/mean language is not accepted in Nation3, and that you will be banned if you attempt to introduce that kind of culture.

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Thank you for the kind words Aahna! I do think some lightweight code of conduct could be beneficial. It could be a law, and whenever/if we token gate the forum (probably after the launch of standard passports), citizens who verbally attack others could get slashed.

That way participation is rewarded (w/ NationCred) but toxic behavior is penalized.

The reason I think the code of conduct should be quite lite is so itā€™s quickly readable. I think a few paragraphs (4-6?) is probably a good amount. Iā€™ve seen communities with massive code of conducts and no one ends up really knowing whatā€™s right and wrong.

4 Likes
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The table below summarizes the number of weeks where we had active contributors during the Research Guild project:

Aahna Ashina Tony Stark JohnMark13 AbuUsama
Epoch #4: Oct 16 - 22 120 $RESEARCH 100 $RESEARCH 20 $RESEARCH 0 $RESEARCH
Epoch #5: Oct 23 - 29 130 $RESEARCH 120 $RESEARCH 40 $RESEARCH 97 $RESEARCH
Epoch #6: Oct 30 - Nov 5 105 $RESEARCH 72 $RESEARCH 35 $RESEARCH 135 $RESEARCH
Epoch #7: Nov 6 - 12 110 $RESEARCH 80 $RESEARCH 122 $RESEARCH 75 $RESEARCH
Epoch #8: Nov 13 - 19 112 $RESEARCH 105 $RESEARCH 152 $RESEARCH 0 $RESEARCH
Epoch #9: Nov 20 - 26 50 $RESEARCH 147 $RESEARCH 0 $RESEARCH 0 $RESEARCH
Epoch #10: Nov 27 - Dec 3 120 $RESEARCH 44 $RESEARCH 90 $RESEARCH 43 $RESEARCH
Epoch #11: Dec 4 - 10 145 $RESEARCH 37 $RESEARCH 115 $RESEARCH 0 $RESEARCH
Epoch #12: Dec 11 - 17 148 $RESEARCH 89 $RESEARCH 150 $RESEARCH 0 $RESEARCH
Summarized 8 x $200 = $1,600 4 x $200 = $800 4 x $200 = $800 1 x $200 = $200

The $200 per week were meant to cover daily expenses for contributors dedicating most of their time on this. And since we typically had 4 contributors per week, and a total of 400 $RESEARCH to allocate per week, I used 100 $RESEARCH received as a threshold for someone actively contributing.

Total for all epochs: 3,400 USDC

@luis The multi-sig only holds 2,180 USDC at the moment, so it wouldnā€™t cover these payouts. How do you suggest we handle the payouts?

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Why do the guilds/DAO have more liabilities than assets? That shouldnā€™t happen.

That was one of the design principles for GitHub - nation3/gov: Governance process for Nation3.

EDIT: I understand now, read post below.

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I understand this was the initial proposal for Q4 2022, and the amounts you presented are from Oct to Dec, so they do seem to add up. I see no USDC was previously paid out for this proposal, so 3,400 USDC is within budget (as you mentioned before, it indeed ended up being less since there were weeks with inactive contributors).

So if we are sort of $1,220, my proposal would be to ask which contributors would be okay receiving $NATION for that value instead. If not, we could use some of the ETH that 3.nation3.eth was holding from a treasury diversification proposal from back in the day. Both options make sense to me.

Anyway, I thought back in the day of building a dashboard to track liabilities/assets based on governance proposals. Would be useful!

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@luis Receiving the remaining $1,220 as $NATION instead of $USDC seems like the simplest solution here, so I would be okay with that :+1:

@TonyStark @johnmark13 @AbuUsama How about you guys?

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Whatever works out the best economically for you @aahna and N3 works best for me, I am easy, thanks for asking!

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I agree you. The simplest solution is use $Nation, so that works

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Done, added the payouts to the multi-sig queue:

$2,180 (64%) in $USDC

$1,220 (36%) in $NATION