Foundation Org - Q4 2023 Update

đź“Ł Updates & Reporting đź’Ş Org Updates
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General Announcements & Updates

The Foundation’s 2024 Proposal was voted on and passed by the Radworks community. In 2024, the Foundation will be made up of four bodies: the Foundation Council, the Ops Committee (led by @sllyllyd), the Governance Committee (led by @abbey), and the Strategy Committee (led by @abbey). Marketing objectives will be part of the Strategy Committee. The Committees adjusted their 2024 quarterly deliverables to take into account the feedback on the Foundation Org Proposal from key stakeholders.

Quarterly Objectives Updates

Ops Committee

  • Foundation Health: The Foundation is healthy, runs smoothly, and processes continue to be streamlined! This quarter, we worked on finalizing the Ops Committee 2024 Proposal and Budget, while also supporting Committees with their own budget creation (thanks to @sllyllyd and @wendy!); continued streamlining operations and compliance by documenting our processes, preparing monthly internal reports, and rolling out security protocols; kicked-off the Foundation’s annual audit.
  • Org Transition: The [Radicle and Drips] Org operations are up and running. We also onboarded the accountant to the Radicle Org and Drips Org - therefore, the Orgs will no longer require support from the Foundation in 2024 (besides the Radworks Financial Monthly Reporting, which will continue to be completed by @Yuvalis at the Foundation Org through Q2). The Ops Committee also supported Radicle Org and Drips Org in drafting their budgets for their (successful) 2024 Radworks proposals.
  • Radworks Support: The monthly Radworks Financial Report by @Yuvalis continues to enhance accountability within the ecosystem. Meanwhile, the Committee reviewed website and documentation language for Drips and moved forward Radworks and Drips trademark applications.

Marketing Committee

  • Develop & deploy content strategy for Radworks. In Q4, we started experimenting with more, new types of blog content, including “A Radworks Inquiry: Towards Internet Freedom” written in collaboration with Sam McCarthy, “Radworks Gives $1M to FOSS Dependencies with Drips” and “Octant Teams Up with Drips to Fund its Dependencies” (all written & edited by @sean with help from @abbey and others!)
  • Product marketing for Drips & Radicle
    • We spent a significant amount of time on Drips product marketing in Q4. Key deliverables included: Radworks/Drips case study (mentioned above); Octant case study (mentioned above); interviews/videos with Drips users (Ric Moo from Ethers.js and Luca from Open Zeppelin).
    • Also participated in organizing and networking for industry events: Berlin Blockchain Week, Funding the Commons Taipei & Taipei Blockchain Week.
    • Spent significant cycles on thorough hiring process for social media manager, which was subsequently delayed/cancelled due to changing priorities.
    • Did not engage with Radicle in any meaningful capacity.
  • Develop experimentation & tracking infrastructure for Radworks, Drips & Radicle. Cancelled / did not start due to changed priorities.

Governance Support Committee

  • The 2024 Org proposal season was our most intense proposal cycle we have experienced yet. We have started collecting feedback from contributors and proposal authors on the Org proposal process and planning ways we can improve it for next year.
  • Throughout the past year, numerous additional resources and clarifications have been added to the governance stack. @shelb_ee has started gathering feedback from contributors to gain a deeper understanding of how resources are utilized and to identify lingering pain points in the governance experience. She is also working on a survey that can be shared with a wider audience of stakeholders, aiming to gather a more comprehensive and diversified range of feedback. This feedback will be used to improve the overall Radworks governance experience going forward.
  • We have been supporting the Scopelift team as they prepare for the governance contract upgrade. They will deploy a candidate governor, update their tests, and ask for the team/community to do a review of the code in anticipation of a proposal in Q1.
  • We launched a Voting Analysis project with the GovAlpha team to conduct a power/voting analysis of Radworks’ current token-voting based governance system, as well as to update useful graphics, such as the “Token Allocation” graph found in the original Introducing RAD post.
  • Q4 Radworks Governance Proposal Summary
  • Upcoming Radworks Governance Proposals
    • 2024 Grants Org Proposal: An updated version of the 2024 Grants Org proposal will be posted to the forum this week. After failing to gain support from key stakeholder during the November cycle, the new draft has been meticulously drafted to take into account critical feedback from major stakeholders. The proposal will be discussed during next week’s Proposal Review Call, and will be voted on later this month.
    • Governance Contract Update: We are expecting an executable proposal to finalize the governance contract upgrade by the end of Q1. See note re Scopelift below.

Timeline & Budget Update

Ops Committee

  • In short: We underestimated certain costly cost centers. We have learned a lot this year about how we need to be budgeting - and thanks to the expertise on our team, we feel confident in our more comprehensive and informed 2024 budget.
  • Year to Date, the Ops Committee has exceeded its budget. This is due to significant Legal Costs - approximately CHF 190,000 spent year to date (YtD), which were incurred in light of the (legal) complexities of the “Transition to the DAO.” This overspend will result in the Ops Committee being over budget at the conclusion of the budgeting year. Other notable areas over-budget YtD include bank fees and custody and exchange fees - due to under-budgeting and no budget being set in last budget cycle.
  • While the Legal expenditure has gone over budget year to date by 138k, the Ops budget is only 66k over budget year to date meaning significant savings have been made elsewhere in the budget. Notable savings through end-of-year are:
    • Accounting costs: it is anticipated that this will under-budget year end. The significant savings here are due to the Ops Committee taking on more of the work in-house.
    • Contributor costs: team hours are lower than anticipated at budget setting, and it is anticipated that this will remain under budget at year end.

Marketing Committee

  • In Q4 2023, consistent with the previous 2 quarters, the Marketing Committee spent slightly over 60% of our budget; this is due to ramping more conservatively than predicted, using our allotted budget conservatively as the Foundation Org & product Orgs are still in experimental, early stages.
  • Approximately 2/3 of Q4 underspend is due to contributor expenses, most of which is due to postponed or cancelled hires. This is mostly unchanged from last quarter (because we did not hire the social media manager as planned and we parted ways with a brand marketing contributor). The other 1/3 of underspend comes to lower event expenses vs budget, also similar to Q2 & Q3.

Governance Support Committee

  • As of 30 November 2023, the Governance Support Committee has spent 82% of its 2023 budget. Therefore, the Committee expects to come in within-budget for 2023 - or even slightly under. While there was some under-budgeting related to attendance at external events and conferences, these areas will be balanced out by some under-spending related to contributor costs.
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