Gravity DAO Second funding proposal from the TEC

Proposal title

Gravity DAO second funding proposal from the TEC

TL;DR

Our goal is for Gravity to be a self-sustainable organization in the mid term, and with this proposal, we want to continue our DAOification process, through requesting TECs common pool funds.

We have identified the need for conflict management and trust creation in the wider web3 space, and see this as an opportunity to steward our working group into a commons, learning and iterating from the TECs frameworks.

Proposal description

Our goal is the creation of our own ethical, safe and resilient economic system around conflict management as a commons. To do that, we need two things.

  1. Continue DAO community development and provision of services (this is intended to be funded through the TECs common pool)

  2. Design and launch our economy (We intend to fund this through external funding mechanisms)

Additional information to add

https://twitter.com/GravityDAO

http://gravitydao.org/

Giveth project

Gitcoin grant

CLR funds

How does this proposal benefit the community and/or the field of Token Engineering?

Gravity becoming a self-sustainable service DAO, benefits the TE community by supporting coordination within the social layer of tokenized projects. Giving them access to tools we create, information coming from research activities, free conflict management courses, and other types of education and support for individual and collective wellbeing.

As Gravity is a product of TEC, we will provide conflict management services without further cost to this community until March/2023, and in the future TEC can get Gravityā€™s services at a premium fee.

Gravity can also be shown as a product of the TEC in the way that we are supporting its mission and vision by creating standards for tokenized projects and enabling the creation of ethical, safe and resilient economic systems. Starting from a working group that found a need in the space and now is trying to provide value by tackling that need in a wider range.

Gravity is supporting the TE field contributing with knowledge in conflict management, Psychology and Decision Science field.

Where we come from:

Starting proposal: posted on jan 12 - 2022 on the TEC forum

Gravity 6 month funding from the TEC

When our starting proposal was approved in the TEC gardens we received 51k WXDAI that have been planned to last until November 2022.

Here we present some of the achievements made by GravityDAO thanks to this initial proposal:

  • Active case mediation (TEC + other communities): So far Gravity has mediated 28 cases in conflict management amongst multiple communities

  • Psychology research: Bianca and Annanna have been working around the idea of the implementation of psychology in web3, seeing a space and a need for mental health care in the DAOspace. We got a collaboration with Universidade de BrasĆ­lia- Brazil to develop a survey and publish the research also in an academic way.

  • Graviton training: we had 3 cohorts of The Graviton training that is a 10-session course that deep dives into tools and skills to prevent and manage conflict amongst DAO contributors. This course aims to engage people around non violent communication, comprehension of conflicts and techniques to manage it internally, individually and collectively.

  • Active Gravitons (AnnAnna, Bends, and Aloysious) Are points of contact for reporting issues in the TEC and related communities and mediate conflicts in those spaces.

  • Website (Work in progress):

    • Weā€™ve created and bought a domain and installed some of the plugins on the Tech Choices tab of the spreadsheet, and continue to evaluate Web3 tech and plugins.
    • We created a Focus Matrix to organize and get a clear idea on what we need and want from our webpage and our narrative.
    • Working with 40 Acres DAO to gather back end development talent to help push some of the ambitious aspects of this forward.
    • Got our hosting for communication strategies.
  • Community building: Onboarding new members and helping them to fit their skills to help the project to grow. During this last proposal we created Gravityā€™s own email, twitter and calendar which slowly starts to make it more independent from TEC.

  • Participation in the commons prize: Gravity participated in the commons prize from Commons Stack. Even though we didnā€™t get the prize, it was great to see how many people believed in a conflict management as a public good.

  • Outreach service: We are actively looking at multiple funding streams. We have our Gitcoin and Giveth pages active, we have gained experience on working with Aragon and other communities. We have also participated in grants, looking for opportunities in the space (like CLR. funds grant at devcon, in Arbitrum)

  • 2 Book clubs: Nonviolent communication by M. Rosenberg, and Who do we choose to be by M. Wheatley. Suggested by Durgadas and Leen.

  • 1 Practice group: Led by Jeremy and Leen, about Deep Democracy and Liberating Structures.

  • Various presentations of Gravity in conferences and in online community events: Gravity is starting to be noticed like an independent DAO

  • Twitter spaces: We promoted and participated in several twitter spaces, about welfare at work, Suicide Prevention Awareness, conflict management, and mental health as a public good.

  • Total of 21 different contributors being rewarded in Dework:

Amount requested (Only for Conviction Voting)

How much in wxDAI are you requesting?

25,800.00 WXDAI

How will these funds be used? (Only for conviction voting)

Planned execution of the budget

These funds are going to be used for the continued development of GravityDAO. In the best case scenario, this would be our last proposal to the TEC.

The budget breakdown

Service Role Budget Rationale Monthly 3-Mo
Gravity case management N/A monthly rate 2 cases per month (500 DAI per case) (300 DAI for principal graviton & 200 for SME) 1000 3000
Graviton training Instructors 10-sessions 2000 DAI for facilitators & 1000 for coordination team 3000
WG Outreach manager monthly rate 2 hours a day, (mon-fri) (20 DAI per hour) 800 2400
WG Coordination manager monthly rate 2 hours a day, (mon-fri) (20 DAI per hour) 800 2400
WG Operations manager monthly rate 2 hours a day, (mon-fri) (20 DAI per hour) 800 2400
WG Treasury manager monthly rate 2 hours a day, (mon-fri) (20 DAI per hour) 800 2400
WG Case manager monthly rate 2 hours a day, (mon-fri) (20 DAI per hour) 800 2400
Active Graviton Ambassadors in other communities Monthly rate 1 hour a day, (mon-fri) (20 DAI per hour) 200 DAI per person 600 1800
Bounties N/A Pool Bounties distributed according to contributions 3000 9000
Totals: 8600 25800
*All leftover or additional funding will go to the bounties pool

Milestones:

  • 4th Graviton Training

  • Analysis of the Gravity Mental Health Survey

  • Analysis of Conflict Resolution Survey

  • Content creation and research

  • Trust creation and educational activities

  • Creation of multiple funding streams to feed our economy

  • Outreach to multiple DAOs to acquire our services

  • Presence in different online and in person events

  • Continue providing conflict management services

  • Continued participation and engagement for Gravitons (get togethers & Subject matter content)

  • Launching our website.

What does success look like?

Gravity success looks like when all the activities planned get executed and we can keep the community involved in them.

With this funds we want to get recognition in the web3 space, finish the webpage infrastructure and make the analysis of surveys.

This goes together with expanding our resources around web3 so more people know about our offerings.

We aim to spread the knowledge of conflict management and well-being within DAOs. By doing this, more communities will have access to our work and be impacted by our growth.

How will you share progress?

  • Progress will be shared on this forum thread and communicated with the audience in the TEC community calls.

  • Through the TEC forum, we will make updates of the execution of the budget.

  • Through our Zenhub board we will keep track of the cases managed.

  • Through the Dework space and execution of bounty payments.

  • Through our Gravity Calendar and the execution of the planned activities.

  • Through new generations of Gravitons.

  • Feedback loops between contributors (to be assigned a monthly call, a form or a chat for this matter)

Team Information

All Gravitons from first, second and third generations can claim bounties.

We will be working with roles and a pool of bounties:

**Roles:

**Bounties:

  • Leading book clubs (50 DAI per session) - 1 per week Approx 200 per month
  • Creating Safe spaces (100 DAI per session) - 1 per week Approx 400 per month
  • Content creation (blogs, guides, designs, transcripts In coordination with TEAMs) - Approx 800 per month
  • Practice groups (100 DAI per session) - Approx 400 per month
  • Role plays (200 DAI per session) - once a month, Approx 200 per month
  • Continued education activities (100 DAI per session) - 1 per week approx 400 per month
  • Active Gravitons 200 DAI for being an ambassador in other communities
  • Complexity bonus: 100 DAI per case if Gravitons request it.
  • Platform maintenance costs: Approx 100 month
  • Graviton to graviton support: (100 per session) 1 per week approx 400 per month
  • Research initiatives & proposal iteration (400 xDAI per month)
  • Business development bounties (400 xDAI per month)
  • Integration/bot development/ support ops (400 xDAI per month)
  • Platform management 20 DAI/H

*New bounties can be created based on identified necessities

Makers of this proposal:

Juank + Bianca + Zeptimus + Durgadas

6 Likes

Proposal Update:

  1. We have decided that the next graviton training will come in the form of an online course, so that people can take the training in an async way, and not having to wait for cohorts, like we have done until now. This will also allow us to make better use of online time for advanced trainings, role plays, practice groups, continued education, mental health and support on conflict management. The resources that were thought to design the Graviton training will be used to design the online course.

  2. We have decided that we will take the last 2 weeks of 2022 as holidays to come back in 2023 with renewed energies. So we wont have calls between december 14th and january 4th. This also means that the funds of the proposal will start to be used in 2023, even if the proposal passes in 2022. The funding from our first proposal lasted to recognize the work done until the first days of December.

  3. We will continue hacking async on some working streams, like our narrative and page design, content creation, drafting proposals for other communities, and research around online courses preparation. The conflict management service will remain open, but may prioritize urgent cases until 2023.

2 Likes

Hello everyone in the TEC! Iā€™m writing in the name of Gravity DAO to follow up on the execution of the proposal.

Gravity DAO is a project born in this community. We love and respect the Commons and for us, the support that has been given is a blessing. We assumed the responsibility of committing to some actions and we think itā€™s a good moment to share an analysis of our actions.

Thing that went well:

  • We launched a free online course about conflict management in DAOs (that is the 4th iteration of the Graviton training) - With this, we are providing 24/7 opportunities to develop skills and learn to use tools for conflict management in everyday life.

  • The proposal was initially drafted to support our work for 3-4 months, and it really has allowed us to work over 7 months due to a reduction of the initial human group and an agreement to reduce some bounties. We also started participating in various Grants and outreaching other DAOs, trying to receive additional funding streams.

  • We have an MVP of our DAO. With working platforms like: Our Twitter, our own Discord server, and our website with services and the online course.

  • A Swag Shop worked with the General Magic team

  • We have had transparency on the use of funds,

  • We have made several blog posts around our subject of matter, and we have facilitated several trust creation and educational activities on web3 communities.

  • We have supported the implementation of our framework in other communities, and we continue providing conflict management services, with continued participation opportunities for enthusiasts that would like to contribute.

  • Managing conflict is not easy and we have gone through sticky situations with sufficient care to protect the goodwill of Gravity and its contributors.

Things that are still in the works:

  • Weā€™ve made two surveys to map mental health and perceptions related to conflict management on web3 communities, and we have made an internal analysis of the results, but we are still working on a formal paper to present the findings and share our positions regarding the state of mental health and conflict management in web3, in an academic paper.

  • Our goal has been to try to include conflict management in the DNA of DAOs and we are slowly reaching more ears, but we think our message hasnā€™t really gotten the visibility we would desire.

  • Economic sustainability, even though weā€™ve worked agreements with other communities and weā€™ve participated in several grants, our economic engine is still not generating enough profits to have a mid to long-term stable strategy. Still, the TEC has been the community who has supported us the most, and we might face some reduction in operations in the following months if we donā€™t receive further support from the space.

Things that we look for in the future:

  • Participating in other communities: We think that our work can be highly impactful on more communities and that we can benefit from expanding our area of reach.

  • Rotation and carrying the flag to keep the fire lit. Most of the core members of Gravity DAO are still the same that have been working for more than 2 years on the project. We think that for long-term sustainability, there need to be new leaders coming to the project to take over the flag from what is already built and build more. All in life are cycles, and itā€™s good for our core contributors, and for the project, to be open to new cycles.

For us, it is really important to care for the reputation of all our members in Gravity DAO and to state that we are well-intentioned contributors to the web3 space that commit to delivering on the responsibilities we assume.

We are accountable to the Commons for the provision of value as a consequence of the appropriation of shared resources.

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