CONTRIBUTION TOKEN ENGAGEMENT MODEL

The main problem we seek to solve:

Open-source projects need a scalable way to recognize, reward & bolster reputation of committed contributors & incentivize quality decision-making.

The proposed solution we will implement:

Develop a contribution token. This is a staged approach to tokenomics that will start simply and progress to intermediate and eventually become a full complex governance token incentive method.

BACKGROUND NFT-DAO is emerging from the Project Catalyst community as a collective of 300+ like-minded individuals looking to pool resources and develop an NFT framework on Cardano. Since forming, NFT-DAO has merged or collaborated with 18 Catalyst proposers from Funds 2-5. NFT-DAO is an emergent organisation that is constantly iterating and learning how to work with new and diverse individuals, and considering a range of different viewpoints and ideas. We have looked to Cardano and Project Catalyst as an inspiration for what a collaborative community is and can become. We are also aware of the challenges Project Catalyst faces as it grows in scale and reach, including the challenges of maintaining standards of quality in such a fast-growing environment. Our goal is not only to watch and learn from these challenges, but to align any solutions that may arise between our organisations, and that may apply to other current or prospective DAO's forming in the space.

In our commitment to develop a collaborative economy dedicated to NFT's, we registered NFT-DAO as a DAO-LLC under Wyoming law in March 2021.

This is a Proposal by: NFT-DAO, a Project Catalyst Fund3 Recipient for a Comprehensive NFT Framework Collab to build a penultimate composable NFT Framework on Cardano. NFT-DAO is a community of 300+ members composed of Developer, UX/UI, Governance, Creative and Marketing holons (working groups). Our motto: 'We work better together'.

NFT-DAO Fund3 Proposal: https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Comprehensive-NFT-Framework-Collab/334521-48088 We have also been very humbled by the vote of support by the Catalyst community in receiving a Fund3 budget allocation. Our holon-teams are busy working toward our major milestones, including delivering a composable marketplace for the community to build on.

CURRENT OPPORTUNITIES Although we are not near the scale of Project Catalyst, NFT-DAO does have a community of 300+ members, each with varying degrees of engagement and activity within the DAO. Some of the early challenges we have found in building a collaborative community has been: 1–how we communicate and make decisions within a large community? 2–how we balance people's right to open discussion (to have a voice and be heard) with finding closure and initiating action? 3–how to onboard newcomers who may feel overwhelmed by a proliferation of information? 4–how to implement fair and equitable consensus mechanisms in relation to varying degrees of community input and investment? 5–how to navigate centralised leadership with distributed ideals? 6–how to manage dissent, disillusionment or conflicts of interest/ideals? 7–how to reward contributions for members who are volunteering their time?

It is apparent that some of the challenges we have experienced in establishing an emerging DAO align with Fund 5's Distributed Decision-Making challenge.

PROPOSED SOLUTION As our goal from the start has been to transition toward a decentralised, self-governing and self-organising DAO – as patterned after Cardano – with members being rewarded in proportion to their contributions. Rewards can be distributed in the form of token utilities for contributions made or governance voting/decision-making. The NFT-DAO has been working on a multi-tiered tokenomics model that can be templated and applied within Project Catalyst, and other DAO's who see fit to use it. The principal tiers of the tokenomics model are:

1–A Project Roadmap; 2–Business Development Stages; 3–Business Milestones; 4–Token Sale Rounds; 5–Token Circulation, with percentage splits; 6–A Token Utility Development Cycle: a) Contribution Token, b) Governance Voting Token, c) Pro-bono Token, d) Kudos Token, e) Retail Investment Token; 7–Contribution Metrics captured per Token Development Cycle; 8–Decentralisation; 9–Metrics of member engagement levels; 10–Onboarding Incentives.

A staged approach to tokenomics (that progresses from simple, through intermediate to complex token templates) will enable delivery of tokens in the near, intermediate and long term. Our process for tracking tokens in the near-term will adapt existing solutions such as the Cardano Registry GitHub to capture contributions. Further research and development will be required to explore cross-DAO auditing options, as metric capture will also need to take quantitative and qualitative contributions into account.

Note: A quantitative contribution is objective, material, untrusted, trackable, accountable (something that can be automated in principle). A qualitative contribution is subjective, involves trust, differences, ranges, balances (something that requires human intervention or representation in the form of voting etc.). A quantitative contribution can always be extracted from data.

How do we encourage people to participate in decision making? Within this tokenomics model, the high-level goal is to eventually develop a machine-assisted collaborative economy, with automation of voting and engagement mechanisms and tokenised rewards. As this is a more advanced stage of development, this proposal aims to implement a holistic tokenomics framework to incentivise Tier 1 level contributions from community members. This means that a Cardano DAO (C-DAO) native token will be minted for the purposes of distributing to Catalyst community members (and other C-DAO's). The distribution of these tokens will be in accordance with contribution metrics, which will also be determined by member engagement levels within Catalyst (and other C-DAO's). Participation will be incentivised through gamification, that allows members to unlock higher tiers and token utility/rewards as they progress through the member pathway.

How do we ensure the group of decision makers is diverse and accessible to newcomers? Admittedly, this is a meritocratic tokenomic model. We have found from experience that, despite our best intentions at inclusivity, the core actors and decision-makers in the community are comprised of a 'coalition of the willing'. Therefore, a tiered membership pathway will be better able to attract diversity and newcomers by incentivising their contributions, and providing more opportunities for reward as they contribute more.

How can we ensure that the Catalyst process keeps iterating to improve? The NFT-DAO are developing ways to improve member engagement and rewards via a native NFT-DAO token. Catalyst uses proposals as a means to provide solutions to problems posed by the Catalyst team and the community. One of the tiers within the member pathway is to unlock Bounty Access. The work we are doing in NFT-DAO can also be leveraged across Catalyst if the community agrees with the approach. One approach is, at a certain tier of engagement, the Catalyst team and community can place Bounties for initiatives, solutions or jobs that need to be done in the community (to iterate or improve on an existing idea), and that contributors will be rewarded in C-DAO, ADA or a Pro-Bono native token. Bounties can then be signed off by Community QA's, who also receive a Pro-Bono token for their service. This is our initial idea and can be influenced by collaboration as we move forward.

How will we include the community in decision making? One of the utilities to be unlocked is governance. This not only means voting for proposals, but for anything. This can potentially work on two fronts:

1–Lower Member Engagement: Contribution tokens can provide a nominal contribution token payment for a lower tier of member engagement in the community, such as voting on a poll. Polls can support a casual form of decision-forming, that can be incentivised;

2–Higher Member Engagement: Governance tokens can provide members with a weighted vote on more pressing community issues, such as voting on a policy. These higher tier utilities require a consistent degree of engagement within the community to be earned (not just the amount of ADA held) so that members with less ADA can build merit and make equitable contributions toward more impactful outcomes.

A solution may arise in the form of a more robust voting dApp (or enhancement of the current one) so that polls can be made available (for Level 1 Contribution Token holders) or governance votes (for higher-level Governance Token holders). A linked wallet can allow members to receive nominal payments for contributions.

ROADMAP / COSTS To support the implementation of a holistic tokenisation model for Project Catalyst within the next two Catalyst Rounds, NFT-DAO will merge our own tokenomics development:

 

MAY 2021 | FUND 5 CLOSE + FUND 6 OPEN

• Dev Team: Contribution token minting/test/pre-distribution (pre-alpha) • Dev Team: Token minting policy • Gov Holon: NFT-DAO Charter: terms of engagement • Gov Holon: Finalise Tokenomics model • Open-source policy (with QA-DAO)

 

MONTH COSTS: $7,000

JUNE 2021 | FUND 6 CLOSE + FUND 5 PAYMENT • Tokenomics Roll-out / troubleshooting (alpha) • C-DAO tokenomics discussion (with DAO Council) • Project Catalyst team meetings • Metrics capture implementation strategy • Ideation with Project Catalyst Voting app team • Voting dApp research project • Bounty system flow-chart • Finalise Rewards system • Gamification system design

 

MONTH COSTS: $12,000

JULY 2021 | FUND 7 OPEN • Tokenomics Roll-out / troubleshooting (beta)

 

MONTH COSTS: $5,000

AUG 2021 | FUND 7 CLOSE + FUND 6 PAYMENT • Full Tokenomics Roll-out / maintenance

 

MONTH COSTS: $5,000

OCT 2021 | FUND 7 PAYMENT

KEY METRICS

Project Metrics will include but are not limited to: • Establishing auditable Github repos for all core project tasks; • Number of tokens minted; • Collaborative partnerships (Catalyst, DAO's); • Community consensus/ratification/participation on token rollout; • Contribution Metrics per Token Development Cycle; • Proof of iteration via rollout staging.

DEFINED SUCCESS REPORTING

3-month: Post funding much of this work will be available to see first hand and can be followed in the Github repository. 6-month: Active usage of contribution tokens in NFT-DAO. 12-month: Launch ready governance tokens in NFT-DAO and the stretch goal of Catalyst actually adopting our model for use with the wider community as suggested herein.

 

CONCLUSION NFT-DAO is an emerging, self-organising community that is patterned after Cardano and Project Catalyst. Having experienced the challenges of building a collaborative community from scratch, we are positioned to support Project Catalyst using a native token model to reward community members for their voluntary contributions. Beginning with the pre-alpha minting of contribution tokens, this project will have potential to stage out into a larger project that supports multiple tiered token utilities and member pathways that incentivise community engagement and higher quality decision-making. In the spirit of collaboration, we aim to do this by working with the Project Catalyst team and community, the QA-DAO (for quality assurance and open-sourcing standards), the Council of Catalyst DAO's; and by testing and trouble-shooting within the NFT-DAO itself.

 

TEAM Troy Egan (NFT-DAO) Troy is an NFT-DAO Co-Proposer and Catalyst Fund3 Co-Recipient; NFT-DAO Governance Holon Lead; PhD student studying collaborative strategies within the creative economies; 20 years' experience in the creative, health and community development sectors in New Zealand and Australia. Troy is supporting NFT-DAO's tokenomics model and roll-out.

 

Dan Verowski (NFT-DAO)

Dan is a high-frequency contributor within the NFT-DAO and member of the UX/UI, marketing and governance holons. He is a scrum master, business analyst, an agile PM in software development and blockchain entrepreneur (one of his businesses won the 2019 aeternity Starfleet accelerator program). Dan is supporting NFT-DAO's tokenomics model and roll-out.

Stephen Whitenstall (QA-DAO)

Stephen has 30 years' experience in organizing academic, community and business projects. Most recently he has been building the Governance HOLON GitHub in collaboration with NFT-DAO. He is also submitting a proposal for his own QA-DAO and is a co-proposer for A Council of Catalyst DAO's and NFTDAO: Industry Standards 1. Stephen is supporting NFT-DAO QA. QA-DAO https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Quality-Assurance-DAO/351678-48088

 

Rich Kopcho (NFT-DAO) A life-long entrepreneur building 18 start-ups in his career. He has owned and managed a development shop and open-sourced the successful 'Restore' backup solution. He taught manufacturers around the world Holonic manufacturing (1997-2007); a heterarchical systems and technology approach that is the foundation DAOs are based on. He currently operates a venture studio in Laramie WY building technology solutions with partners. Rich is the executive producer of the Wyoming Blockchain Stampede - an annual conference by UWYO that IOHK/Cardano/Emurgo and others sponsor to educate the blockchain community.

APPENDIX | Working Documents

NFT-DAO https://nft-dao.org/ NFT-DAO Discord: https://discord.gg/SNeYGYNR Contribution Token Governance Model https://github.com/NFT-DAO/Governance-HOLON/projects/7 DAO Models https://stephen-rowan.gitbook.io/nft-dao/governance/dao-models#govern Draft NFT-DAO Charter https://github.com/NFT-DAO/Governance-HOLON/issues/29 Getting Paid for Open-Source Work https://opensource.guide/getting-paid/ Nemethi, B. (2018) Token Engineering Canvas & Agent Behaviour Map + basics for Token Engineering https://medium.com/@nembal/token-engineering-canvas-agent-behaviour-map-basics-for-token-engineering-59a413001222 Rachmany, G. R. (2020). The Good, the Bad and the DAOs Only a Founder Could Love in 2020 https://www.coindesk.com/daos-2020-good-bad-ugly Triaging Consensus Levels https://github.com/NFT-DAO/Governance-HOLON/issues/37 Whitenstall, S. (2021) Keep-It-Simple: Non-Fungible Token Design https://github.com/Quality-Assurance-DAO/DAO-Open-Source/blob/main/Documents/Tokens/01-Keep-It-Simple.md

Received emails from [email protected], How my proposal impacts the challenge metrics, Broken down my budget requirements, Defined expected public launch date., How I address the challenge question, Submitted this proposal to only one challenge, Definition of success after 3, 6 and 12 months, Included identifying information about all proposers