Validator DAO Term 1 Compensation

[Jimbo_JCR.one]

VDAO Compensation Term 1

Open letter to Harmony Core Team.

The initial Governors for the Validator DAO served from June 1st to October 18th of 2021. During that term these are our accomplishments:

• Facilitated 5 Harmony Improvement Proposals (HIP)
• 3 node binary upgrades
• Validator tooling (EasyNode)
• Validator outreach and participation
• Diverse Validator profile growth from 105 avg to 143 avg (ATH 147)
• Framework and DAO management
• Open communications channels on all platforms
• Medium articles

We were informed the Validator DAO would be both paid and funded for initiatives during our time as Governors. We self funded these measures:

• Validator DAO branding and logo/banner combination
• Memes and all other social media content
• Seeding new validators with our own coins to move them up slots
• Validator Tooling
• Data analytics tooling
• Test nodes

We spent considerable time devoted to this operation. With each vote, node binary upgrade and even just monitoring the network for validators falling out of consensus, we did a significant amount of direct communications with the validator community through email, and direct messaging across multiple platforms. We each spent a considerable amount of time directly assisting new validators troubleshooting and launching their nodes. We advocated for conservation of BLS keys in order for diverse validators to gain election in an environment with a recalcitrant and entrenched senior validator core.

During our time as Validator DAO Governors, we received very little information and almost no support and yet were still able to gain traction and reach a tipping point of participation in protocol governance, decentralization, and security.

We were provided timesheets to fill out and we provided them filled out as requested.

PUBLIC Validator DAO Tracking -- August '21

PUBLIC Validator DAO Tracking -- September '21

PUBLIC Validator DAO Tracking -- October '21

We have not been compensated and do not feel it should be the burden of the latest term of Governors to request funding for retroactively paying us. We feel the new Governors have enough work to keep them fully employed for the given amount of weekly hours and should seek funding for their initiatives and not carry the burden of seeking our compensation.

Sincerely,

VDAO term 1

[BrotherOne]

Thank you VDAO Team 1. Wish this wasn’t the case but you all have my respect. Thank for taking the time and dedication to fulfill your duties as Governors for the first term. I hope this issue can be resolved swiftly.

[ONE4All]

Thank for your work during the term 1.

[Maffaz]

I might add that the funds in question have been allocated since June and therefore VDAO1 should be paid at the price that ONE was at the start / end of each month in question, as promised.

Otherwise, it begs the question, if those funds were allocated to the VDAO and they were not paid at the time. Where / to Whom did these funds go to and why not to the VDAO

[Sam]

Hello @Jimbo_JCR.one, @Maffaz and the whole V-DAO Term 1 Team –

Thank you for submitting this proposal. While I have been absolutely swamped, I have had multiple conversations around making sure you and the team get compensated for your work.

Thank you for linking to the timesheets. We will have a much better way of reporting time soon as the tooling becomes available but let me ask a few questions and, I think, in so doing you will see why this is taking longer than normal.

All of these screen shots below can be found in the google spreadsheets that were linked.

First, this is the summary for the Validator DAO. This time period covers both July and August.

As you can see - everyone has the exact same amount of time and compensation for this work. That is terrific. I am glad you are all working closely together. But you can see my concern when you look at the following two screen shots:

I don’t mean to pick on anyone here - but as you can see, they are EXACTLY the same. Same number of meetings, same amount of “Community Validator Work”.

I know that the Validator DAO did good work during that first term. However, based on the timesheets reported - I have NO idea WHAT you did during that time. And - more importantly - the community wouldn’t either.

What worries me is that, with the exception of @Jimbo_JCR.one, every single report is exactly the same. If someone was a governor during that term, they claimed the exact same amount of time worked doing exactly the same thing as everyone else. That feels a little bit like “collective bargaining” and a little less like “I accurately reported the amount of time I worked on furthering the mandates of the DAO”

As an example, take a look at how Aaron Li does his timesheets here.

Let’s figure this out so we can get you all paid for your hard work!

Sam

[Jimbo_JCR.one]

@Sam I can speak to that a bit. We didn’t get the time sheets until September 14th. Given that I was operating on “all channels” it was significantly easier for me to go back and find at least a partial record of my activities in the various groups etc. It took some extensive digging to collect and catalog everything vs filling them out in real time as we went. I think this comes down to lack of tooling at the time and us not understanding how the funding was going to work or be tracked.

[Babylonode]

hey @Sam,
thank you very much that you finally find time to check everything we sent to you over 2 months ago and started asking us why it’s so - highly appreciated

but reading your reply makes me think that we still have not taken a DAO trip, which means:

• the validators are the only source of power in VDAO and those who make decisions;

• the community of validators shows appreciation/depreciation of done work by the Council members;

• the Council manage a multi-sig and pays all DAO’s expenses and bounties - council members salary included;

and many other things that the PARADIGM OF DAOs includes and the main thing it excludes it’s a centralised managing authority.

We accepted this paradigm and started doing our best to implement the VDAO MANDATES. We worked as a team and for the past few months, we have built our own VDAO culture. VDAO culture through too many joint calls and communications via messengers and social media. And as a result, now, everyone in the VDAO1 knows and is 100% sure what his teammate did and how much time that took him, because he knows how much time he has been spending himself. All those sheets are posted above by @Jimbo_JCR.one is the biggest evidence that we’ve spent that amount of hours (even more in separate cases) and all of us are agreed that each VDAO1 council member has contributed and invested enough of his time and strengths to be paid accordingly.

Side Note: according to the DAO way, we’re, the Council, is responsible to evaluate and control the Council members and as a result to make pay outs to them. Is not that correct?

Back to your reply, again, I feel like you match us with the ‘cartel of cheaters’ who have on their purpose to cheat their manager. It kinda hurts us. I don’t think you’re our manager, but I’m certain we’re VDAO1 was the origin of DAOs time on Harmony even if we were not supplied with tools and funds.

I also don’t see any obvious reasons to refill my sheet as Aaron’s, because that will require me additional hours. You just sent sheets on 14th September and you can simply imagine how it’s time-consuming to recap what was done if there were no records. I have a lot of things to do with another DAO initiative I’m currently working for.

Where were you Sam with Aaron’s sheets when we asked you so many times ‘how the team is going to receive reports on VDAO hours’?

PS:
I’m personally the only one VDAO1 Council Member who was not even funded with the initial stipend and even haven’t received any response on that matter but asked a few months ago. But I’m still around and focusing on another DAO initiative atm. Just want you to know who are ppl around the project and why we contribute. My guess is we are here not for greed.

[DKValidator]

What you seem to be saying here @Sam is that the Harmony DAOs are nether decentralised or autonomous.

They are ultimately at the mercy of you approving timesheets?

How can a DAO be a DAO if the money is controlled by one person?

I’m still getting my head round the concept of DAOs, so perhaps they aren’t quite what I thought they were…

[easynode]

I’ve added some notes onto July/August but as the other governors stated it’s hard to quantify the time 3.5 months earlier than when we knew about the timesheet requirements and started recording the events.

We far from agreed on much the entire time we operated but we do all know that each person put in far more than 10 hours each week recorded. Babylon came in later and has that accounted for on his sheets, so the time entry does seem 100% accurate to me.

We’re the only Harmony DAO that has a charter approved by the Harmony Foundation and Publicly voted in but other DAOs and validators secured funding much faster than we did even though we’ve met every requirement the Harmony Foundation wanted to add (9 governors, 3 months per cycle) while having many different funding plans put forth that never came to fruition.

[Validity]

Just my quick 2 cents…

1. Fair or not, as a potential candidate to run for DAO governor, seeing this thread gives me pause. I once gave months of development time to a start-up without pay at one point in my career

2. I don’t believe Harmony is trying to be cheap here, but it does point out a lack of decentralization / larger-corporation-type red tape that will slow Harmony down.

If I were a governor, I’d be asking myself: “Should I spend hours of my time filling out a time-sheet, or submitting another PR? Or adding better tests to a PR? Or tracking down the last X validators that haven’t updated?”

I’d be much more inclined to push Harmony forward than extra spend time on timesheets. And I’d know that a validator would never be elected again if they were to abuse it.

[null]

Thank you VDAO term 1 team for your work.

Just my opinion but if the VDAO team agreed by the rules of compensation, I think it’s fair that they follow those rules even if the rules involve centralized checking of timesheets.

Maybe moving forward, the decision to follow those rules should be arrived at in a decentralized way and a vote should be done via a DAO proposal. I see Sam’s logic and it is important that we also protect the DAO funds from bad actors.

[easynode]

Thanks null - The community agreed on our original compensation plan included in our charter but Harmony changed how DAOs are getting paid ($75/hr for up to 10 hours per governor) after our charter was approved by the foundation and put up for a vote on governance.

Regardless of what harmony decides to pay governors, we have followed their rules of timesheets (they are posted above and are all public) and other additional changes many times over to include all the things they required.

The VDAO charter was passed via a DAO proposal by all validators, great idea! In fact it’s the only DAO with a community approved charter, read it anytime at vdao.one

We of course want to keep funds from bad actors which is why each DAO has a multi-signature wallet for their treasury.

The point of our request here is to highlight all of our “pro-bono accomplishments” at this point which include:

The initial Governors for the Validator DAO served from June 1st to October 18th of 2021. During that term these are our accomplishments:

• Facilitated 5 Harmony Improvement Proposals (HIP)
• 3 node binary upgrades
• Validator tooling (EasyNode)
• Validator outreach and participation
• Diverse Validator profile growth from 105 avg to 143 avg (ATH 147)
• Framework and DAO management
• Open communications channels on all platforms
• Medium articles

We were informed the Validator DAO would be both paid and funded for initiatives during our time as Governors. We self funded these measures:

• Validator DAO branding and logo/banner combination
• Memes and all other social media content
• Seeding new validators with our own coins to move them up slots
• Validator Tooling
• Data analytics tooling
• Test nodes

We got all of this done, in 5 months, while constantly having to shift gears and debate new theories that never played out and are still just theories at this point.

I’ve spent over $1,000 out of pocket on testing myself, I can only imagine what the rest of the team has put into being in a DAO to help progress validators to onboard 1000 by the end of next year.

[easynode]

@Sam @lij can we get an update on where this stands? Just checking to see if you need anything further from us as this has gone silent, thanks!

[Jimbo_JCR.one]

Based on the lack of response, I can only assume this will not be getting resolved. This is disheartening given the time and personal funding put forth in good faith that vdao would get funded. Now it has for future operations, but the original governors are left as injured parties.

[Sam]

No - I was just in NFT.NYC for a while so I am working on resolving it now.

More replies in a minute

[Jimbo_JCR.one]

[Maffaz]

1 min == 1 week.

You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone

[Sam]

Working on it

[bigwhle]

@Jimbo_JCR.one i still remember Internet Explorer.

[Maffaz]

What about Netscape?