Validator DAO Term 1 Funding Request

I can assure you, at least in vdao, that i don’t know any governor who has ever done anything less than expected and has had the full support of the other serving governors and indeed the validator community every step of the way.

Maybe this is because the validator community is quite close knit in general.

More to the point, if you read the vdao charter, anyone, governor or community member can vote no confidence in any governor if the feel a governor is taking liberties.

Daos are expected to maintain funds after the initial grant but this dao was a core dao setup with the express intention of making harmony decentralised and supporting the core of the protocol, the validators.

Validator dao was promised one already allocated for staking with validators to get new validators bootstrapped and to be self sufficient from the rewards generated of ~500k a month.

Another thing that never materialised and something also detailed in this thread.

We did not make this up, this is Stephen Tse vision and goal for 10k Daos.

We took that seriously and created a true dao which the community had control, not the governors and not Harmony. Here we see harmony trying to assert authority and try to control the vdao.

Harmony wrote articles telling the world this AND that the dao was funded on 11th June 2021. No funds were received.

The vdao should have received 4.5 million one from rewards only by now and never ever have had to rely on any funding from harmony

Even with zero funding, vdao1 achieved an incredible boost to the validator community and to harmony in general.

For vdao1 this meant using our OWN funds and resources to get things done.

Imagine what we could have achieved in 9 months with that funding? Imagine all of this unnecessary time spent being used for furthering the goal of decentralisation.

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I actually agree with this, i was against having so many DAOs and they get a really really good hourly rate at 75$/h. Note that while we worked with harmony our rate was way way lower than that and those that are with harmony from 2019 know how much work that was and how technical it was. So yeah the DAOs get paid too much (imo) too.

BUT, given the terms that were given, they should have still been respected here in this case no matter what anyone thinks of the rate being high etc.

Now im really out :slight_smile:

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I do kind of agree with this, but I think it misses the point to a degree.

Why is Harmony even setting the pay rates for governors of an “autonomous” organisation?

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Can we all stop assuming bad faith?

I know Sam works tirelessly. It’s understandable to be unsatisfied with the current outcome, but I don’t think it’s fair or useful to accuse him of, or imply malfeasance. I understand entirely that some (possibly all) members of VDAO1 are justifiably frustrated with what has happened and is happening, but I don’t think accusing him of anything gets anyone anywhere. I’m not saying this to be condescending, I would probably be just as, if not more, frustrated, and that would affect how I think and communicate. You worked hard and did good things during uncertain times and were told you would be paid and you haven’t yet, ill feelings are entirely justified, just not helpful. I’d like to think you and Sam, in the end, have the same goals, just different ideas of how to get there.

I understand Sam’s concern about setting bad precedents around timesheets, transparency and accountability, however I think going through with the compensation as he listed it and not revising it would set far worse precedents, ones that fundamentally revolve around trust.

The community has to trust that Harmony will honor their agreements and do what they said they were going to.
Perhaps my understanding of the timeline and facts of events is not accurate, but after reading the threads I am under the impression of the following:

1)VDAO was formed, and a set amount of funding was assured by the Harmony foundation.
2)Part of that funding was intended by all parties to be used to pay elected governors for their contributions.
3)Governors were elected, and began work, in accordance with stipulations and requirements that were given to them at the time.
4)At some point after work began or was completed, a stipulation for timesheets that the VDAO governors were either not made aware of before work began, or had not been given the specifics of prior to beginning work, was added.

Assuming all 4 points above are correct:
I understand the timesheet specifications and stipulations being done with the interests of transparency in mind, however I will say this.

Adding any stipulations for payment to work that has already begun OR completed under a different set of expectations is a MUCH worse precedent to set in my opinion than any that would be made by paying the governor’s at the original set rate, or accepting timesheets that are vague because they had to be created months after the time was spent due to requirements not being formalized.

It’s perfectly reasonable to apply even very strict timesheet requirements in order for payment to be distributed for any work done AFTER those requirements were made and communicated. Applying it retroactively to any work done prior would not be considered reasonable in any work for pay transaction I’ve ever done or witnessed in my life, even with the best intentions set behind the new requirements.

Further, I think setting the pay date of a volatile asset at the accepted date of the timesheet would only be acceptable if payment were distributed at the accepted timesheet date. The accepted timesheet date is a seemingly arbitrary one if it isn’t the same date payment is distributed. If you accept my timesheet in November, but don’t pay me until now, basing it on the conversion rate of a volatile asset 4 months ago is not reasonable, unless I agreed to it in November, and also understood I wouldn’t be paid until now. That is not the scenario here.

Doing it based on the accepted timesheet date also leaves too much room for gamesmanship on both sides, and it can fall too far afoul of the original pay rate as to be grossly unfair for either party. Even though I do not think gamesmanship is what’s happening here, it seems like a pointlessly abusable and overly complicated way to approach the problem.

I think there is a simple and elegant solution to prevent that from being an issue going forward, which I will outline at the end of my post.

Based on the 4 points I outlined above, here is what I would suggest.

VDAO1 governors are paid at their original rates ($75/hour) with a conversion rate of ONE that is based on the average of the 1st of Jun and the 31st of August. This would be approximately $0.105. 6% is added to this as interest, based on 8 months of staking. This is significantly less than any penalty would be for being 8 months late on fulfilling any net 30, 60, or 90 contractor pay. While I understand they were not contractors or under such an agreement, I think representing it as a show of good faith and an apology for the tardy the resolution of this matter is appropriate.

Including Mars Initiative at 120 hours, this would result in a payment of approximately 439,142.86 ONE, today’s equivalent value of approximatley $55,000 for work that originally totaled a USD value of $43,500. This is a difference of +278,119.41 ONE from the payment Sam sent that was returned, and a difference of +24,857.14 ONE if they had been paid last year when the work was done. This does not seem unreasonable to me.

Is 278,119.41 ONE worth it to the Harmony foundation to send a message to the community and governors that they will honor agreements made in good faith? I think it is. I understand the original plan would not scale, and needed to be altered. There’s nothing wrong with having to change the structural plans you originally envisioned. But I think paying people what was originally set up before the structure was changed is important.

Furthermore, any timesheets going forward should have an option for payment to be made at the conversion rate of the time of work, or the conversion rate at the time of disbursement. I think the default should be to pay at the conversion rate at the time of disbursement. The person doing the work can check an option that they would like to be paid at the conversion rate at the time of work as this is a riskier option. Since I worded that a bit awkwardly, basically, if I did work for Harmony yesterday, I would have had to submit a timesheet to them outlining the work done that day. By default I will get paid at whatever the conversion rate is when they do pay me. On submitting my timesheet at the end of the work day I could opt in to being paid at the conversion rate as it was when I did the work.

Thank you for reading my novel. I hope this gets resolved in the fairest way possible for everyone.

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Thanks for the detailed reply and support.

This thread and ones prior shows bad faith, no assumptions from me.

Never doubted Sam works hard and it is a shame that he , and / or harmony have some kind of issue with funding vdao1, the FIRST dao, have been outright ignored many times for 9 months.

We all have the same ambition, decentralisation.

Harmony decided this, not the governors.

Literally every other dao and many projects have received funding and attention but not vdao1.

Why do you think this is?

Even worse, it was published that we were already funded and had access to staking rewards. No funds were ever sent and having questioned many times, including 3 times in this very thread, the fate of those funds remain a closly guarded secret by Harmony with questions outright ignored.

We calculated a fair average which is detailed in summary at the top of this post with daily detail in the timesheets.

It was calculated more than fair.

I am serving my 3rd term for vdao and i have never had harmony scrutinise timesheets for us or any dao. This phenomenon is specific to vdao1.

Governors and the community are expected to oversee payments which is what vdao1 and other daos have been told.

Yeah I’m just too dumb to scroll over/expand table and was only basing it on June-August. I think our numbers for that period are somewhat similar. Assuming you actually took the true average for that period rather than just my average of June 1st value + August 31st value, I’d say your numbers are more appropriate/accurate.

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I agree, 75$ per hour seems logical when u fund dapps cause that’s how much devs take to develop and not go elsewhere.
But on funding dao teams, maybe harmony needs to reconsider the pays given out so they can actually go through their 10k daos vision.
At this pace it is not sustainable and most daos have achieved almost none of their goals.

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The only goal the vdao has not achieved is reaching 200 elected validators, although we managed to hit 170.

This is without the bootstrapping funds that we never received whose rewards will sustain vdao indefinitely and would likely have achieved more than 200 elected.

4.5 million rewards have been generated from this fund since vdao1 was elected and < 1 million have reached vdao.

What happened to these funds is a question that is consistently ignored by harmony, including 3 times in this thread and 2 in the previous.

I don’t know what other daos have or have not achieved as they cannot be grouped into 1 entity but as a community member your voice is just as valid to raise any issues with any individual dao.

Harmony decided the rates, not the daos but the community can vote to change this at anytime through the governance process.

The rates for devs are set higher than daos.

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Excellent write up. Hopefully more will read into this as it makes a lot of sense.
Well done @OneVoice

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sorry i should have clarified, your dao is one of the needed ones that had an impact. I was referring to other daos

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No problem and thank you for the kind words of support.

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Interesting information. I actually live in the Netherlands as well and was unaware of this law…

I do know that companies that don’t pay me as a zzper are required to compensate 8% or something…

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Whatever my accountant says :laughing: :rofl: :joy:

Deleted them both because I do not want to be the source of tax information. I am not qualified for it at all. This is so messed up that I wish you good luck.

If anyone wants to read it, you can DM, BUT I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR

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@stse VDAO1 worked for 5 months making YOUR DAO dream a reality.

@Sam publicly stated YOU are refusing to fund VDAO1. - “I don’t pull the purse strings”

After ~10 months, Harmony won’t honour their funding commitments.

Why not?

Why ignore us?

Why ZERO Transparency on this matter?

Hello @HarmonyValidatorDAO, @Maffaz, @easynode, @Wenneson, @Jimbo_JCR.one and @Babylonode;

In consultation with the rest of the Harmony team, this is what we propose.

(a) Regarding the payment for time worked on the August spreadsheet (located here), Harmony will send 161,023.45 ONE tokens to the following multi-sig: 0x65f028CDA0FB723b51edDF8DD852375247eE2f9c

Please confirm this is the multi-sig for the VDAO1 as listed here.

The calculation for those payouts is as it was discussed above here.

(b) Regarding the payment for time worked on the September timesheet, Harmony will send 83,281.4 ONE tokens to the multi-sig address listed above.

(c) Regarding the payment for time worked on the October timesheet, Harmony will send 31,063.6 ONE tokens to the multi-sig address listed above.

In total, that equals 275,368.45 ONE.

Thank you.


Going forward, it is vitally important that we understand some fundamentals regarding how a DAO should work and how Harmony decides to fund various initiatives.

The community vote that is listed is unanimous. Thank you for engaging the community and getting them involved. However, the vote neglected to mention who would be paying the signatories. It is very, very easy for anyone to approve spending other people’s money. As long as it comes out of some others deep pockets, the level of rigor for evaluating the worth of a project is very, very low.

Put another way, the community has nothing at risk approving VDAO1’s compensation. This is not shared responsibility. A DAO succeeds together, or it fails together. It is the responsibility of the DAO to husband their resources to ensure their success.

The Validator DAO was a first step into uncharted, deep waters. And we stumbled. I stumbled in not having the right framework and the tools in place. But, in stumbling, we learned. “Governors” is the wrong word for what these community members should be doing, they are “Signatories”. The lions share of the work should be done by the community. Natural leaders will emerge, but they are not “governors”, they are community members that get recognized, through something like Coordinape, as being valued members of the community.

Thank you again for your help. Thank you for your patience.

Is this sufficient for us to move along?

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I’m speaking for myself alone. I am good with this payment. All timesheets are accounted for. For me it’s time to close this chapter and move on to other projects.

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Hey Sam - Wallet is correct and that sounds good, thanks!

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Can I just say Hallelujah and let’s move on? I am so happy to see a resolution!

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funded: Harmony Blockchain Explorer

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