The sCoop - Contributor Newsletter - 2021.11.10 Wednesday

Fresh Owlpha, curated daily. This is @HOWweDAO . (previous issue )

What a day! @Crypto_Texan hosted a CwtC featuring Arif Khan of alethea.ai. Business Development WG got working group meetings going with some strong, positive @Mringz vibes and then handed things off to the day’s main event, Leadership Forum, the new Index Coop 2.0 framework for leadership, governance, and decision making was introduced.

Tomorrow Governance Operations WG kickstarts the day. Women + NB of Index WG meets up followed by the New Joiner Call (EU/US) and bi-weekly meeting of the GMWG wraps up a full slate of IC events for your Thursday.

Announcements:

Product Spotlight:

Business Development (22 attendees) notion | BDWG Dune by @anthonyb.eth

@miza started the call off by discussing peak performance vibes. No sports team cliches or titans of industry here. He gave kudos to @Mringz for his work ethic and for being the beating heart of BD at Index Coop. Not to mention a great sense of style (see photo at the bottom of the sCoop).

@Mringz updated us on the Vesper DPI vault vote upcoming this month on the 15th and things look positive. Index Cooperative was also added to the current Tokemak C.o.R.E. event. @bax86 reiterated that it would be a huge win for us and for the liquidity of $INDEX. So if you currently have any $TOKE, please go over and vote. At the time of publishing, we’re currently sitting outside the top 5 spots needed to start the reactor and are ranked #42 out of 45.

@Mringz said that discussions are ongoing for the creation of two Polygon vaults. @overanalyser broke down the opportunity with Bancor. By either contributors or the treasury depositing $INDEX into Bancor about a ~1% yield with impermanent loss protection could be gained. Other positives include improving liquidity and showing support for the Bancor community.

With regards to methodologist relations, Token Terminal will go to DG1 on Monday. Polygon Index is still on hold, while JPEG is likely to go to DG2 very soon. After their community call last week, the next step for The Daoist is their DG1. And there are very early conversations about an ecosystem index with the likes of Solana, Binance, and Fantom.

@miza summarized the mission of DAO treasury relations as they continue to make efforts to help other DAOs diversify treasury holdings. The BD group would love to have some additional contributors in this area to strike up conversations with other treasuries, help educate them and create an ongoing conversation.

@funkmasterflex touched on the onboarding process of BD and that the self-learning section within the notion has been a helpful tool in getting new contributors up to speed. Gaining contributors from a wide geographic area and expanding into Asia and Africa is a big priority.

Ongoing dialogue and some partnerships with university blockchain clubs are still happening organically. @BigSky7 will talk at a Blockchain at McGill meetup. And there’s been communication with UC-Berkeley and Columbia blockchain clubs. Internship 2.0 initiative is a great opportunity for university students to learn and contribute to Index Coop.

Leadership Forum (40 attendees) slides | video
I’ve provided a summary with some of the highlights, but I highly suggest both reading the slides and watching the video from today’s session. A lot of great ideas and insights were shared along with the introduction of a new decision-making framework for Index Cooperative.

A lot of thought, hard work, and many Owl hours have gone into the framework presented today around a new approach to leadership, governance, and decision making at Index Coop.

@Pepperoni_Joe walked the group through:

  • A recap of the Leadership & Governance Workshop
  • Challenges we’ve faced with our current framework
  • An overview of a new way to organize to address these challenges
  • Confirm next steps

When it comes to the key takeaways from the workshop, @Pepperoni_Joe summarized the 10 steps into 1 quote, " Getting the right people to make the calls, but anyone can be the right person."

The problems surrounding token-based voting within a Product/Creation DAO were introduced and discussed. Contributors with domain expertise and the highest context are being left out of decisions. Despite our growing maturity as an organization, our governance and decision-making processes have not evolved at all since inception.

For example, Felix (CEO of Set Labs) has to step in during a renegotiation with DeFi pulse because there was no clear process for making that decision.

Questions around liquidity, OWL levels, and what the path is to become a full-time contributor remain unclear. Plus there is a considerable about of weight and bloat that happens when there are 14+ groups that need to pass budgets, decisions, and feedback through our current decision-making/governance model.

So in order to progress as an organization, a shift is needed to move more of a product-focused pure DAO. This new framework will consist of: Pods, Nests, and Wise Owls. The goal is not to create a hierarchical structure. Rather, it’s to enable more autonomous and decentralized entities to flourish by focusing on stewardship.

Pods can be thought of as mini-DAOs. Pods are highly accountable for performance, with clear objectives, success metrics, and initiatives that they must deliver against.

Nests are almost like Index Coop sub-DAOs, comprised of highly autonomous pods. Each Nest has between 3-7 coordinators, nominated and accountable to the community. Nest Coordinators are the highest context contributors for a given area.

Seven Wise Owls will be nominated to address our immediate decisions making needs, provide overarching strategic direction and explore issues that span across the organization. Short term: This is an experiment and the community may choose to retire the Wise Owls model once the Nest structure is implemented. Additional specifics can be found in slides/video.

Index Coop’s continued operations are enabled through the value of the $INDEX token. We must ensure any changes don’t undermine this value. For clarity, Nest Coordinators and Wise Owls aren’t executives, they are community members trusted and empowered to guide Index Coop towards success. They are accountable to and can be replaced by, the community.

Dates were provided about the next steps to start the process introducing the Nests (Nov. 17th) through to an IIP proposal (Jan. 21st). Wise Owl nominations are open until Nov 16th with voting from the 17th-22nd and results on the 23rd.

A number of questions were raised during the discussion portion. @fallow8 long with others had questions to the exact role of the Wise Owls and have them more clearly defined. @Pepperoni_Joe gave an example that the Wise Owls will function assist in making decisions cross-functional issues or bigger challenges across working groups. But the majority of decisions that are within the scope of a specific Nest will be made by that specific Nest. @MrMadila shared the idea of a secondary token or some tooling to assure that when deciding about our challenges and objectives that we have a way to gauge community sentiment.

@mel.eth shared that he sees where the proposed structure will benefit the group by increased awareness and coordination but hopes this delegation of decision-making does not lessen the buy-in or alignment with the DAO. He also stressed the importance of dissent and honest feedback which could be gathered anonymously.

@Metfanmike sees the Wise Owls as having context to unblock blockers and give their Nest a voice in cross-functional discussions. But 99% of the time a Nest is making decisions that are within their scope. @bradwmorris brought up the fact that this is not a long-term elected role or replaces the IIP process. The Wise Owls will assist in strategy and moving the Coop forward and be held accountable for their successes and failures. This will allow up to move on from our current operational issues to more strategies opportunities.

Keep an eye out for a forum post with additional details and information in the coming days.

Thursday Meetings: (UTC/1-hr, UON)
1500 - Governance Operations WG Meeting
1600 - Women + NB of Index WG
2000 - GMWG Bi-Weekly Meeting

OOO: @jdcook: Nov 10-23, @ElliottWatts Nov 11-13, @emault Nov 13-19, @DocHabanero Nov 19-26, @Cavalier_Eth Nov 22-28 (getting hitched)

Daily DAOwlpha: The beauty of web3 is for the first time all the data is open…contributors own the platform, instead of corporations…and all the people who are pro-coop should be embracing this. Now we can own the platforms that we’re actually building with our collective creative efforts.

:bird: @naval on the Tim Ferris Show

Hoot Hoot!


@Mringz Vibes

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Massive day at the coop! big kudos to @Pepperoni_Joe for all the coordination, research & passion put into this and the ongoing continuous improvement. @mel.eth & @kindeagle too for their diligence & candor keeping any willing & eager owls up to speed.

I just want to pull this out & highlight it, as I think there’s clearly an opportunity here for an L1 index to cater to big passive money that wants to own the whole smart contract space. I’d like to see Luna & Avalanche included personally.

Eth L2 index too if arbitrum optimism ever let us know wen token.

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