Hello @bordumb,
Thank you for the detailed feedback. I believe it is also important to give our perspective on the process to find a way toward resolution.
Smart contract work
To begin the discussions, it will be relevant to bring here the story of how we have been communicating with Radicle on multiple fronts throughout the grant process.
To mention a little about the Proposal Inverter; it is initiated as a research project, 8 months ago, in collaboration with Blockscience, Curve Labs, TEC, Longtail Finance and Prime DAO. BlockScience, Curve Labs, and Long Tail Finance as contributor organizations all have expertise in their areas of contribution, from product development to mechanism design specification.
Once we decided to turn the initial research into a product, we reached out to one of the key members of the Radicle team to introduce us to Radicle Drips team to talk about potential integrations.
As our mission is to bring co-funding opportunities and investments to the web3 ecosystem, we decided to always integrate features to Proposal Inverter either with organizations that will co-fund the product (grants) or co-build with us.
In one of our first calls we met with Andrew, with whom we started to build a more serious relationship towards exploring collaboration and seeing the possibility of interest in case we wanted to apply for a grant. We decided to apply for a grant and asked Andrew if he would advise us throughout the process by participating in one of our work sessions once a month to have eyes on our development and product roadmap.
For the last 3 months this has been an ongoing activity, and the next call was supposed to be within these weeks, where we were planning to present the backend spec to complete the second milestone presented on our proposal.
After we applied for a grant, it was communicated with us in such a manner that we, all of the 9 members of the Proposal Inverter team, thought we were going to get the grants based on milestones completed / when they are completed. And we initiated the changes to the MVP spec to integrate Radicle Drips mechanism. Once the mechanism design specs were completed, we shared that with Andrew, then with his advisory we decided to kick start the backend and design phase earlier on (wireframes, user stories, etc)
We started to work with Byterocket Team, our long-time collaborator from different projects such as PrimeDAO and Kolektivo. We started to work closely working with byterocket’s founder Marvin Kruse. You can check Marvin’s linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marvinkruse/?locale=en_US) and github (marvinkruse (Marvin Kruse) · GitHub)!
Marvin’s involvement has been communicated with Radicle team members. For example, in our latest call with Andrew on July 7, we talked about the development of the technical spec of the product and stated that “ Around mid-next week the spec would be ready.” However, due to the conferences and unexpected events our development has been delayed. And again, we mentioned to the Radicle team that we would present milestone 1 and 2 together to not create a burden on the proposal process. So this made us believe that the trust was established by both teams and everything was going according to the plan.
We understand that the feedback loops with the Radicle team and planning could be updated more openly, but we never had an insight around our team’s technical expertise being a major concern to the Radicle team or that our grant process was rejected. We therefore thought it was enough to communicate with Radicle team members we were directly engaging with, and submit the milestone deliverables as we complete them.
In the end, in fact, our team has finished the tech spec. You can check from here : Proposal Inverter Tech Spec! Also, currently Byterocket and our engineering team are continuing to develop the project contracts.
On top of Byterocket’s team, our Engineering Team currently consists of;
Baran- 8 years in Vodafone as a solution architect lead to a 12 people team (https://www.linkedin.com/in/barancanbaloglu/?originalSubdomain=tr
Sarah- She working with Longtail Finance and DataUnion (SarahKay99 (Sarah Kay) · GitHub)
Nuggan- Working with Token Engineering Commons; one of the core developers of Praise Reward System
Feedback:
“We had some positive feedback on Discourse here, which is why I started the vote.
But dissenting opinions came up on discord and group calls once the vote was actually started. Ultimately, we could not reach quorum and ultimately rejected this grant.”
We have had high-level conversations with the Radicle team since the initial kick-off of the project. We have a group chat that includes core team members to provide a direct communication line and ensure alignment. Moreover, we have had multiple sessions with Andrew, such that we have had serious feedback sessions to make sure Proposal Inverter is aligned with the Radicle community’s needs and Drip functionality.
As you mentioned, we have paid serious attention to the feedback that came from the Radicle community and tried to keep ourselves as accountable as possible. This is why we have been trying to be active on both Discourse and Discord, the only visible channels of the DAO to ensure we address any concern that arises. In relation to Discord, both during and after the grant progress, we have been unable to find any dissenting opinions that you mention, so if you could reference them it would be great. I don’t think there is a need to post all the discord links where Proposal Inverter is mentioned, but going over previous chats where “Proposal Inverter” is mentioned gives a definite clue.
One might actually see an organic use case demand for the Proposal Inverter, apart from the Drip integration, as a multi grant payment flow architecture identified by you. As Andrew mentions, “I agree that joint funding of grants is a super interesting problem. The main project/team I’m aware of that’s working on this is Proposal Inverter.” Discord, managing projects with multiple funders is what the Proposal Inverter is trying to solve, and this again signals an approval of what we are trying to achieve together.
Overall, it is hard to understand how can teams collaborate with the RadicleDAO throughout the grant process when there are positive responses on all public channels, there is an ongoing engagement with core team members that signal towards consent of the continuation of the collaboration, and there is no provided link to track the voting of the fund.
Moreover, the lack of transparency in this process is not only a feedback for RadicleDAO’s process, but also a big risk for projects that make budget plannings and hires accordingly to complete the milestones.
By relying on the fact that our grant would be funded based on milestone completion, we hired two more engineers, and had talks for adding on new team members. The rejection of the grant leaves us with nothing but confusion.
Unironically, Proposal Inverter Could Have Alleviated Some of the Problems We Faced in This Process
1. Adding and Removing Contributors can be transparently viewed by anyone, thus providing the most up to date composition of the team and changes that happen throughout the project’s process.
2. It is transparently visible from the Day1 of the project whether a funder commits to fund the project for the outlined deliverables, and has deposited the funds. Therefore, there wouldn’t have been need to rely on assumptions or unverified signals of commitment to build over the promises of a funder, and face the budgeting uncertainty in the middle of a started project.
3. Not directly a replica of what proceeded here, but if a funder decides to withdraw their funding, the contributors can still have time to secure a time to either a) progress on the initial stage of the project through guaranteed minimum working period or b) the buffer period they set as the duration, say 14 days, within which the funds continue to drip after a funder decides to withdraw. This way, a change in funder’s decision can still give the project team some time to continue progress and perhaps recoup by using the provided time to find new funders.
Suggestions for Moving Forward
We are both people committed to transparency and we personally care about the people in the Radicle team, and it is our hope that we can form a common understanding about how to move forward. Below is what we want to recommend as follow up action steps;
- Have a transparent and an open call next week all of us with our engineering team as well to go over the work that was done by the Proposal Inverter team. If we can find a middle ground, perfect. If the requested grant doesn’t make sense to Radicle treasury anymore, at least let’s have that communication clear.
Since we made plans and hirings according to the grant that was expected we would prefer the middle ground but if not, no hard feelings if we communicate transparently and come to a conclusion together.
- Anyone from the Radicle team that wants to build an internal structure, please let’s arrange a user review for Proposal Inverter to hear all of your pain points, how you envision the product adding value to the problem you are trying to solve, and let’s pinpoint needs and build this in coordination and collaboratively.
Since day one, we are aiming to build interoperable parts of Proposal Inverter partnering with DAOs and builders, openly, collaboratively, and again with love and respect to all the work that’s being done by those web3 free agents that are trying to bring prosperity to the ecosystem. Our actions represent our values. Our value is to build in open and build with collaboration.
Thank you in advance !
-Tree
For Radicle Grant
