GIP-17: New Community Management, Roles and Backpay (#2)

Authors: parallacs, RP

Summary

It is a proposal for a new community management structure, a way of defining the members of the community who will have appropriate roles in the management structure. This proposal is also made in accordance with the comments given to the first version of the proposal.

Motivation

With the expiration of the authority of current Community Management members on June 14, 2022, whose terms of reference were given to them after approval by Council the successful vote on GIP-08: New Community Management, Roles and Backpay proposal we propose a new Community Management structure that will help further to achieve the goals outlined in the GIP-06 Proposed Goldfinch Roadmap and any subsequent initiatives by the community.

Specification & Requirements

Key Requirements

  • Optimal community management structure that is aligned to the protocol needs of high-level community management, governance, answering technical questions related with the protocol and global debt capital markets, reporting, among others.
  • Backpay to previous community management members starting from June 15, 2022 until August 1, 2022.

Specification

Estimated Stats of Community (as of August 1, 2022)

Discord Members: 40k+

Twitter Followers: ~49k

Language Discord Telegram
Russian 10k+ 2,2k+
English 8k+ 5,8k+
Ukrainian 4,8k+ <50

Other language channels in discord or telegram have low participation to count.

New Community Management

We propose the following roles based on the statistics above as well as our interactions with community members. Each role has an owner, a set of duties and responsibilities, and expected hours. Members of the new community management structure are required to engage in asynchronous communication in Discord and meet once a week to casually discuss topics related to community management. All of the proposed candidates for the roles have proven their dedication and involvement in the project. In addition, all of the candidates have shown great interest in becoming part of the DAO, putting the second proposal on the voting.

Term of authority: 3 months.

Roles: Community Manager, Community Moderator

Role description

Community Manager

Owners: parallacs, RP

Estimated hours per week: 7 hours for parallacs, 15 hours for RP

Responsibilities:

  1. Evangelizing Goldfinch: responding to concerns / questions about Goldfinch on Youtube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, and other social media channels;
  2. Designing engagement initiatives for Goldfinch:
  • Working closely with other community stakeholders to provide feedback on / design initiatives on community engagement;
  • Creating and describing engagement processes and coordinating their implementation using various tools (e.g. Notion);
  • Keeping track of all Community Management tasks;
  1. Evaluation of the activity Community Moderators according to the reports in notion;
  2. Interacting with / providing feedback on governance proposals on https://gov.goldfinch.finance/;
  3. Running election cycle for next Community Management cohort;
  4. Maintaining election process documentation;
  5. Connecting community members on Discord with responsible for the relevant areas members then the larger community is looking for specific support or partnership opportunities;
  6. Proposal tracking: keeping a public tracker that enlists all past proposals and their status;
  7. Updating news about the proposals in the #proposal-announcement channel on Discord;
  8. Updating Snapshot to reflect when governance proposals go live;
  9. Manage discord server, bots, channels, etc. as necessary;
  10. Community management to meet in weekly 60 - 90 minute syncs to discuss issues / surface community pain points;
  11. Misc. tasks as determined and agreed on by the Community Management.

Community Moderator

Owners: mcegor13, Eloquent

Estimated hours per week each: 7 hours

Responsibilities:

  1. Follow the Goldfinch server rules on Discord and Telegram channels of Goldfinch according to the moderation rules, rules in Goldfinch Discord server and the rules in the Telegram channels, if such rules are announced in them;
  2. Leave no question unanswered in Discord, and flagging responsible for the relevant areas members through DM in Discord or in the Community Management / admin channels if a Moderator cannot respond to specific questions;
  3. Surfacing community FAQs to the rest of the Community Management;
  4. Interacting with /providing feedback on governance proposals on https://gov.goldfinch.finance/;
  5. Welcoming individuals in the #introduce-yourself channel in Discord and answering protocol related and other questions in the #support, #discussion and when possible other categories in Discord;
  6. Answering / surfacing community complaints / questions in respective local (Telegram) channels to the larger Community Management in the weekly meeting;
  7. Supporting community members in #proposal-ideas channel on Discord to form a group, author, and push forward proposals;
  8. Translating announcements in the Discord servers to respective language channels in the Goldfinch Discord, especially around big launches / community events. Translation of Goldfinch articles / Tweets in local language channels i.e. localized Goldfinch Medium or Twitter. This should only be done if a) the community is large enough; b) the platforms used are popular in the said location;
  9. Reporting progress / work being done using tools proposed by Community Managers (e.g. Notion) once a week at least one day in advance before the regular meeting with the rest of the Community Management;
  10. Community management to meet in weekly 60 - 90 minute syncs to discuss issues / surface community pain points;
  11. Misc. tasks as determined and agreed on by the Community Management.

About Community Management Members:

Eloquent - Iā€™m an economist involved in research in fields of strategic management and marketing, advised brands on media planning during the last 3 years. Iā€™ve been in Goldfinch since the beginning of Flight Academy, which Iā€™m lucky enough to be a contributor and help a lot of great participants figure out how to work on this project. During my time at Goldfinch, Iā€™ve studied the protocol and needs of our community, so I know where to begin to build a truly international and professional community. Will be glad to continue my work with you!

mcegor13 - This is Egor. I started actively participating in the Goldfinch protocol in September 2021 during the Flight Academy. While participating in the Flight Academy, I was able not only to understand the mechanics of the protocol but also actively helped manage the community as a Contributor. My interests also include research, investment, and active participation in DeFi and Web 3.0 related projects.

parallacs - This is Ian. I have been involved in the Goldfinch project for a long time as Community Manager during and after Flight Academy, after that for 3 (4,5 in fact) months I was an Admin in 1st cohort of Community Management. I also have experience in many projects as a person who is involved in organizing and developing the community. I have a masterā€™s degree in economics, and of course the goal of the Goldfinch project is very interesting for me from a professional point of view. I like the idea of Goldfinch providing loans without collateral and what has already been built around that idea - which is a working protocol that has increased lending capital by more than 400 times in one year. But most importantly, I like the vision of the protocol expressed in the Goldfinch Roadmap and I would like to keep on working toward those goals of moving all private debt to the chain. ā€œThe whole multi-trillion dollar market of itā€¦ Goldfinch will be that protocolā€ Ā©

RP2743 - This is Robert. Serving as Community Manager in the very best interests of the community, I have been involved in the GoldFinch Protocol since the Flight Academy. I also have real-life experience and a proven track record in finance and general management. I have always been exposed to other cultures and diversity either through learning new languages or through traveling and working across the globe.

Compensation for New Community Management

The compensation of each Community Management member has two components - USDC + GFI. Each member has a base USDC hourly pay. To make things simple and also give community management members exposure to GFI and potentially participate in governance, the compensation of GFI is set at 5% of the monthly USDC base taking the GFI value of $1.22 (30-day trailing average as of August 1, 2022).

We propose the following USDC hourly rate - $40 for Community Manager and $35 for Community Moderator. The bonus amount of GFI is adjusted proportionally to the estimated monthly wage. The number, hours, and wage is decided based on the current community stats as mentioned above. We are also influenced by guidelines from the previous proposal. The proposed wage structure for each role is detailed in the sheet.

For compensating members of new community management, we request budget for 3 months of 18 300 USDC (6 100 * 3) and 810 GFI (270 * 3) to be transferred from protocol reserves/treasury to community management multisig. We propose the following members in the 3 multisig - parallacs, RP, ahuelsen.

We propose to make the payment twice, 50% USDC + 100% GFI within the first month and 50% USDC within the 3rd month. And the second payment is only to be done if responsibilities are adequately fulfilled, as determined by the members in the multisig. We also believe that renewal of community management mandate should be made possible, but the community management most likely coming up with another proposal before the end of the 3-months term, justifying the case for renewal and with or without changes as necessary.

Community management must update the task tracker and have evidence of their contributions in order to be paid out. Reviews will happen for Community Moderators at the 1st month and 3rd month marks; lack of ownership of responsibilities may lead to termination of term instantly.

Backpay for previous community management members

Backpay is calculated according to the previous proposal and the sheet for the period from June 15, 2022 until August 1, 2022 (a month and a half). Hereā€™s a calculation of backpay for a month and a half, plus a bonus calculated by the number of messages of each participant during this period, plus a bonus for Community Managers for managing the voting process for the 2nd cohort of Community Management and a backpay to parallacs in return for creating bots for the Goldfinch discord server. The calculation is based on the assumption that members of Community Management can write 20 high-quality messages per hour.

Estimated Gas fees

The gas fees are estimated as of August 1, 2022. This may vary with Ethereum (ETH) price and the network effects. And so, we also propose a 25% buffer to cover up. Because of the limited liquidity of the GFI/ETH pair in Uniswap, we request USDC instead of GFI in order to swap with less slippage.

USDC to ETH Swap in Uniswap: 1 time

Estimated transaction cost: 7$ in ETH

Approx number of ERC-20 transfers in a 3-months term, including backpay: 29 times

Estimated cost of ERC-20 transfer: 3$ in ETH

Estimated total cost: 94$ in ETH

Estimated total cost + 25% buffer = 118$ in ETH

Budget Summary

New community management compensation: 18 300 USDC + 810 GFI

Backpay: 19 418 USDC + 1 580 GFI

Estimated gas fees: 118 USDC (to be converted to ETH)

Total to transfer to multisig: 37 836 USDC + 2 390 GFI

Benefits

  • The selected Community Management are self-empowered and sufficient to collaborate in a ā€˜flat structureā€™ with community;
  • Community is financially compensated for the work they are putting in the form of USDC and GFI;
  • Community Management becomes the voice of the community and surfaces complaints.

Drawbacks and Risks

We see no drawbacks in having an optimal Community Management structure and paying previous community management members for the deserved effort.

Voting:

"Yesā€ - Approve the New Community Management mandate and backpay.

ā€œNoā€ - Donā€™t approve.

Resources:

First version of the proposal

Announcement of approval of the previous Community Management proposal

GIP-08: New Community Management, Roles and Backpay

GIP-06 Proposed Goldfinch Roadmap

Goldfinch Governance

Goldfinch Discord server rules

Indicative_Payment_Proposal (from GIP-08)

Proposal Payment

Backpay

I believe this proposal to be very legit. We took into consideration all comments under the first version of proposal. Now the total costs on new CM are 53% less than it used to be in GIP-17 #1 and 67% less that it was in GIP-08. Total amount of hours is decreased by 60% compared to GIP-17 #1 and by 70% compared to GIP-08. Total number of CM team members is decreased by 20% compared to GIP-17 #1 and by 64% compared to GIP-08.

What metrics and goals will be tracked for community managers?
Right now it all looks like an abstract set, which was the case for the previous times as well.

Are there any concrete steps or plans to eliminate the mistakes you made in the previous season or do you plan on doing the same?
The basic metrics of your performance that I showed in the previous proposal look very bad.

The current stack consists entirely of Russian-speaking community, how do you plan to interact with other communities ?

I vote ā€œYesā€ for this Proposal. As @RP2743 correctly noted above, all comments from the last version of the proposal have been considered and reflected in the current version.

Is it possible to put some CPI ? Or how will you evaluate the performance ?

Hello @brdg and @Ol4ik!
Itā€™s nice to see that you both keep an eye on this proposal. Our community would be happy to see you participating in governance discussions on other proposals as well. I am definitely sure that this will only empower our community more. However, most of your questions were already addressed under GIP-17 (#1).
The proposed CM stack is able to communicate almost fluently in five languages: English, Arabic,Russian,Italian and French. Hence, we consider it to be an advantage, rather than a disadvantage. Now most local Goldfinch communities are relatively not big and that is why English and Russian work perfectly to keep folks informed on all news related to the protocol.
As you might know, the Governance Council approved Goldfinch Roadmap under GIP-6. We are pretty much sure, that both the Protocol and local communities will keep evolving as many things are expected to roll according to the Roadmap.
In case some local Goldfinch communities will start growing up quickly, the community is strongly encouraged to draft another proposal to include some folks from these communities to be a part of the next CM stack.

specifically some of my questions were ignored, or the answers were right out of context.
As now, I see no answer to the second part of my question regarding metrics.

I would like to understand what exactly the community leaders will do. Yes I see a set of abstract phrases ā€˜Evangelizingā€™, ā€˜engagementā€™, ā€˜Creatingā€™, ā€˜Maintainingā€™.

Once again, the same things you did, according to the previous proposal in the last term.
I gave you the statistic of your work in the previous proposal .

  1. How do you rate your performance on the previous term?
  2. What metrics, not abstract concepts, did you use to evaluate your work?
  3. Judging by this(v2) and the previous proposal(v1), you think there were no mistakes and you are going to work in the same vector as you did before.
    This vector should naturally lead to a linear drop in engagement and community activity according to the statistics I showed earlier.
  4. What metrics will we use to measure your performance at the end of the new term?

I think the authors did a great job in this 2nd version reducing hours / headcount to the lowest amount possible while still being able to handle the various responsibilities required to maintain a healthy Discord community.

Regarding KPIs, I think the measure of success is how well the community management executes the responsibilities outlined in this proposal.

More quantitative KPIs e.g. average handling time etc. arenā€™t really possible with current tooling and donā€™t seem required given the current size of the community.

Growing the community and increasing community engagement may be goals for ambassadors who could be selected via a future community grants program, but these goals are not a part of the core responsibilities of community management currently.

This proposal has my support and I hope to see this go to a snapshot vote soon.

2 Likes

Mostly I agree, but I oppose giving out more GFIs.
So, I will abstain from voting this time.
Please donā€™t sacrifice any more GFI holders.

Council has approved the proposal!