Maty, writer of Nounsletter, founding member of Nouncil, creator of nounish poker deck, and a self proclaimed watchdog. As some of you might’ve noticed, I have been active in Nouns since I joined, and I am always trying to promote healthy conversations. I try to provide feedback, onboard newcomers, follow up with prop builders, and do what I can to reduce spam in the Discord.
Problem:
There’s an accountability gap between the DAO and its funded projects. There have been multiple conversations about the benefit of having a dedicated person in charge of bridging the gap. Holding builders accountable will help create a healthier and open ecosystem, foster trust, and set up standards for what the proposal-to-project pipeline should look like. I have started doing this type of work and would like to continue doing so in a more formal way.
Scope of work:
Follow-up with builders of proposals, prop house auctions (and maybe small grants), about their funded project’s status.
Maintain a public spreadsheet to better document the progress and timeline.
Report findings regularly on a biweekly basis with a simple status update and more detailed info where necessary.
Funding:
2.5 ETH/month for 3 months as a trial run (via small grants)
I think this is great. Most nouners don’t have the time to make builders accountable for what they commit to do. Having a paid role to make sure that we get reports on the status of all the projects we fund will be very valuable - will increase the likelihood of delivery and will help us identify builders who execute (and those who don’t).
I trust maty to do a great job given his dedication to nouns.
2.5 Eth a month for herding cats and keeping track of so many things is a bargain and Maty has been an amazing resource and a trusted member of the community.
While I like the idea of seeing the progress of all the projects that have been funded, I do not like the wording of a single person “holding builders accountable.” I do not like the authority of an “officer” or a “watchdog.”
Recently Nouners have been adding themselves to proposals as point person to liaise between the DAO and the builder(s). I think this is a much healthier model going forward. For proposals that came earlier, I think it is ok that we use them as learning experience if their progress is slower than we would expect.
The problem we have is that no one has a handle on the state of all the things, where they sit, what progress looks like, and in that environment, a Nouner is incapable of knowing what has has happened much less what is happening and we will be worse at course correcting and making better informed future decisions.
I don’t @maty will be a bulldog, he will be a friendly cat herder. Perhaps that is what the role should be called. Cat Herder and Kitten Accountant.
Hey 9999,
I don’t think this would give me any special authority over anyone. I also didn´t mean for it to sound like I will be “going after” anyone, quite the opposite, I am interested in what people are building and this would allow me to dedicate more of my time to them.
I would like to create a list of all the stuff Nouns are funding (have funded) and track the progress of these projects (the list would include builder’s socials, links to updates (discord, social media posts, external), the results, media coverage, etc).
This would highlight the wonderful projects that we funded and let us celebrate but also allow us as a group to learn from our mistakes. A lot of people lose track of the projects we fund after they vote because it’s hard to keep up with everything, my work would allow anyone to see what´s going on just by taking a quick glance.
As a builder I think your interest has helped us move forward and deliver, so I trust that you are a good fit for the task. It is true that we need to create some accountability for all proposals to make sure we increase our rate of success.
But I also agree with 9999 and I am not sure this should be concentrated in one resident “officer”.
“to see what´s going on just by taking a quick glance” we could build an app that tracks proposal delivery and builders score. Some interesting data to have would be: funding, nouner sponsor, milestones, deadline, deadline extensions etc.
We could do a small grant to kick things off, start with a spreadsheet with Maty and get input from the community. Maybe Maty can assemble a nounish team to build this project management app and become a builder himself? Im sure it would be helpful to have you as a prop builder as well.
Thank you. Yes that sounds useful and that list should probably live somewhere on Nouns Center (cc @Coralorca@cdt.eth)
Again, my only concern is with the language of “auditor”, “officer”, “devil’s advocate”, “watchdog”, etc. and any official status that such adversarial terms convey.
In summery: NO to the racoon wearing the police uniform, YES to the cat taking notes on progress.
wrt prop house, we have plans to implement systems to incentivize accountability and would prefer not have one person “watching” over builders. ultimately, i think high quality builders will build, regardless of needing to report or not.
echoing 99’s thoughts, i am against any sort of protocol-wide role (“officer”) holding people accountable. i am for documenting what’s happening within the ecosystem (similar to what nouns.center is doing). in that regard, you have my full support!
love the idea of a publicly available dashboard that is neutral and credibly maintained for on-chain props, and agree with 9999 and others that this shouldn’t any singular role/title, but I would support a prop that is funding maty to build this type of thing out.
as the data set grows (and we potentially add new columns/data points) this could be a powerful tool for various insights
check out “additional information” sections for valuable info about reading these lists
you can find updated info on uncomplete proposals like On-chain prop 7, 11, 28, 36 and Prop House props Coffee Mugs and Nounify bot.
Any feedback is appreciated. Is there any info missing?
While creating the lists/databases of proposals, I thought it would be cool to have the option of looking at “profiles” of individual builders, so I created a third list called Nounfolk where you can see all these builders. Most of the profiles don’t have much information (apart from the automatically synced Proposals), but I tried to get Nouncillors to personalize their profiles, so feel free to take a look at these. A list like this could be used in projects like Prop 63, Nouncil´s proposals etc, since it contains basic data about builders (discord and twitter IDs, ENS, proposals).
As someone making a proposal right now I have to say having a clear single or limited number of folks to keep in sync with about progress is really valuable. For us it’s important that the DAO as our client knows and understands that we are doing what we promised to do. Raising awareness around project updates can be its own significant effort in addition to whatever work we’ve committed. Having a clear, semi-centralized process for project updates and accountability where we can feel like we’ve made reasonable efforts to be transparent and keep our client up to date is really important for us and reduces friction for prop creators IMO.
