Joint TEA-TEC Plan for AI-Powered Token Engineering and $TEC Utility

[lee0007]

I love the vision here! AI + Allo + TEC + TEA
I found TEA via TEC, so it took me a while to realise they were not officially one and the same commons. It’s great to see the merger as I value education, collaboration and open knowledge sharing as a strength for any commons. Few questions, though…

On the feedback loop, I can follow the reinforcing flow from NFT Proof through to attracting higher quality projects… but I am a bit confused as to what leads to more scholarships,

@gideonro

which leads to more money attracting higher quality projects and more scholarships, which then closes the loop by creating more demand for NFTs and $TEC.

1. The feedback loop appears to depict that ‘Higher Quality projects’ convert to more ‘Scholarships’ Is that correct?
2. Or does attracting interest from funding partners and more money reinforce scholarships?
3. And in what way are more scholarships limited based on either grants or funding?
4. Based on Q2 have we closed all the loops? and objectively considered where/if negative feedback is present. Where/how does removing funds from the common pool play in here?

I’m stoked & surprised to see my name here. And because my name is linked to strategy and fundraising, I am going to raise the concern that the proposal lacks the information I would need to make an informed funding decision for a budget of this size.

There are multiple proposals here linked together by a shared vision. It appears to be a proposal to fund several interdependent but quite different streams of work, and although there’s plenty of information, there’s very little transparency on how funding will be distributed across/within

• TEAIC
• Gitcoin Allo
• TEC Operation
• TEA Operations

I would recommend 1) a shared vision statement and then four (4) separate proposals to simplify, clarify and provide funding and operational transparency with precise information on what work is being funded and who is accountable for the delivery of milestones &/or OKR. Happy to help, if needed &/or if this is part of the fundraising I’m tagged on?

[roro]

I am really excited about this idea! Super pumped to see this come through. In my recent discussion with @akrtws we ideated through some of the potential use cases of GPT4 in the Token design process and I want to share them here to bounce ideas with the community.

1. The image to text module of GPT4 could be used to convert visual maps or stock and flow diagrams into CadCAD code, We could think of giving context to GPT 4 on how to solve simple examples and show it the expected code as output. Then expose that trained API to the end users where they would just have to send in their visual map in a defined format and GPT4 returns structured code with context and comments. Something like this was done in this customer study: https://openai.com/customer-stories/be-my-eyes. I’m confident we can already do this for simple models.

2. Use GPT4 for analyzing the models once they are built. I’ve personally used ChatGPT the last few months to guide me through the analysis cadCAD models and it helped me run Monte Carlo and parameter sweeps too! I could chat with it and ask it what kind of analysis is possible and it would help me ideate through the steps!! Most of my code in the CadCAD and Machinations article was done using chatGPT as well including the API calls, Clustering of trading data and data visualizations: https://medium.com/@e4rohan/a-conversion-guide-for-machinations-and-cadcad-a-translation-layer-bf562f67ff73. I would only imagine GPT4 with higher context window could aid us way better and guide others with their data analysis.

3. We could even use GPT4 like Khan academy does in this example: https://openai.com/customer-stories/khan-academy to guide the teams through the process of thinking through stakeholder mapping, incentives and disincentives etc. In the khan academy user story, they were able to restrict certain outputs like giving direct answers to students and instead guiding them through the process of thinking about the problem. I was amazed at how well GPT4 is able to play a role of a tutor understand instructions and this could be super useful in our use cases too.

These are just some of the ideas I have and I would love to hear how others are imagining the use cases of GPT4 for Token Engineering.

[akrtws]

Thanks for sharing @roro , I hope this makes the idea of AI-powered TE more tangible for @everyone.
Let me add that these are first ideas - I’m sure @roro and others will find more.
For the PoC we should select one/several use cases that:

• solve a problem for TEs (like visual maps > coding)
• solve a problem for projects (like actionable simulation results)
• solve a problem for our community (like showcase how important & relevant token engineering is for any project)

This is part of the strategy work needed for “AI-Powered Token Engineering”, part II of the proposal.

[akrtws]

Thanks for your questions @lee0007, valid questions.

On feedback loops:

• The feedback loop appears to depict that ‘Higher Quality projects’ convert to more ‘Scholarships’ Is that correct?
• Or does attracting interest from funding partners and more money reinforce scholarships?
• And in what way are more scholarships limited based on either grants or funding?

First, let’s see who’s receiving TE Academy NFTs at the moment:
a) students for completing the TE Fundamentals course
b) course authors at TE Academy
c) study group hosts at TE Academy
Minting a) student NFTs is charged with a fee aka a funds community contribution, while minting b) and c) is free, as the community contribution is work, such as creating the educational material or running study groups in work.
Goal is to make all parties contributing to the value of our community, and to enable future activities.
We acknowledge that not all students can afford paying fees, that’s why we’re raising funds for scholarships via 3rd parties. Think of the partners we had on board for building TE Fundamentals, Web3 protocols, accelerators, and our own community, the professional token engineers who can afford supporting others with a donation and want to give back.
Now how will great projects support fundraising for scholarships? With great projects at TE Grants Rounds with Gitcoin Allo we increase the likelyhood of scholarship funding. The projects are proofs of the value token engineers can provide to the Web3 sector. And - since experts are scarce - proofs that token engineering education matters, and that training token engineers will pay off for the whole Web3 ecosystem. That’s how great projects at Token Engineering Grants on Gitcoin’s new Allo Protocol will be drivers for scholarships fundraising.

Based on Q2 have we closed all the loops? and objectively considered where/if negative feedback is present. Where/how does removing funds from the common pool play in here?

I would not claim to have closed all possible the loops by Q2. We’ll find more! In fact, building the $TEC economy needs ongoing token engineering iterations, including analyzing the results, growing token utility etc.
I hope to see more token engineering at TE Commons! With the proposal we aim to start building this loop - for the first time. And we’ll start collecting data to draw conclusions and further iterate.
On removing funds from the Common Pool: technically, it’s a negative/balancing feedback loop - yes, any successful grant proposal decreases the amount of funds available on the Common Pool. However, it’s not “negative” at the core, isn’t it?
Spending funds is an investment in growing our economy. Ideally, any grants proposal at TEC adds value to the commons, and we – this is the new thing we’re starting here! – we can capture the value created and fuel the Common Pool.

There are multiple proposals here linked together by a shared vision. It appears to be a proposal to fund several interdependent but quite different streams of work, and although there’s plenty of information, there’s very little transparency on how funding will be distributed across/within

• TEAIC
• Gitcoin Allo
• TEC Operation
• TEA Operations
  I would recommend 1) a shared vision statement and then four (4) separate proposals to simplify, clarify and provide funding and operational transparency with precise information on what work is being funded and who is accountable for the delivery of milestones &/or OKR. Happy to help, if needed &/or if this is part of the fundraising I’m tagged on?

Yes, it is!
Note there’s a separate Allo/Token Engineering Grants Round proposal.
For the operational part of it, we decided to not put up separate proposals,
because if only some these proposals would pass, and others not, the passed proposal(s) would be pointless, because joint activities are interconnected.
We need both, TEC and TEA to close the loop at TE Grants Round, and to make the AI-powered TE PoC happen.
In both workstreams, we (TEC x TEA) will have to collaborate to get results, and in both cases we can make the most of it if we collaborate - that’s why we’re proposing a joint effort.

That said we’d like to invite @everyone to the AMA session tomorrow - come with your questions!

Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities

[gideonro]

Reposting that link to tomorrow’s Discord AMA about this proposal, just to make sure everyone sees it:

Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities

[stratatrader]

This is fantastic news, and congratulations the core team putting this together! I’m happy to see such an important and ambitious plan. I see this as a transformation between two digital entities. As a technology enthusiast and systems thinker, we should consider the importance of taking a holistic and systems thinking approach to this transformation. With the proposed 4-month operating budget for TEC and TEA, I would like to share some thoughts around certain areas that were not explicitly addressed. I understand that the work might be underway (in progress), but in the case that it isn’t, I’d like to offer a few tidbits to consider. My only goal is to offer some thoughts to elevate the proposal and ensure a successful transformation.

Embracing Change - Successful digital transformation goes beyond technology and involves understanding the human aspect of change. Let’s consider the impact of change on stakeholders and their expectations during the integration of TEC and TEA, possibly a change management plan to address this.

Safeguarding Data - In the age of AI and GPT-4, security and privacy are crucial. For AI-powered TE, we should reflect on the measures needed to protect sensitive information and comply with relevant regs & principles in the token design process. This might be a sticky issue.

Future-Proofing - While focusing on a 4-month operating budget, possibly consider long-term scalability and extensibility. A vision for growth and increasing demand is essential for sustainable success. Post merger what is the plan to develop a continuous pipeline of use-case opportunities, new students, partnerships?

Resource Orchestration - Efficient resource allocation and management are key to a successful transformation, which I think was mentioned in another comment. Thinking about using human and financial resources across workstreams effectively. Possibly establish a tiger team to facilitate rapid problem-solving sessions in multiple workstreams.

Encouraging adaptability - Continuous improvement and feedback are essential for success. Which I think was identified in comments by Angela. Happy that she addressed this point, to establish mechanisms for ongoing learning and adaptation based on feedback and monitoring results (monitoring is a difficult challenge).

Preparedness for uncertainty – Assessing risks and contingency planning are needed for navigating unexpected challenges. Has the broader team considered an assessment of potential risks and the plans to address them.

Thank you for sharing this plan with the community so that we may collectively offer our thoughts and ideas. When I think about the plan, it reminds me that building a strong community is what will make this shift successful. The proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” comes to mind. In this case, it takes the combined work, intelligence, and support of the entire community to foster the growth and development of the TEC and TEA ecosystem.

Excited to see how we can secure success and foster a healthy atmosphere for creativity and collaboration in token engineering by cooperating, sharing information, and welcoming change.

Thanks Angela and Gideon for prompting me to offer my two cents (apologies for any typos or grammar mistakes).

Adam.

[gideonro]

Really great points, @stratatrader. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

@stratatrader

The proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” comes to mind.

In this case, it may actually be more than just a proverb. If this works, we will be raising an intelligent TE agent – as a community. This is one of the great advantages that an economic commons might just have in this newly emerging space.

[lee0007]

I recognise I’ve been quiet here since joining Dec 21. but I have been following the TEC progress and contributing when needed as a quantifier. Until only recently, I have seen no reason to raise concerns or share my limited perspective. To be clear, my recommendation for presenting separate proposals is based on concerns around

1. Financial Transparency
2. Operational Accountability
3. Governance Legitimacy

Financial Transparency & Operational Accountability

@akrtws

if only some of these proposals would pass and others not, the passed proposal(s) would be pointless because joint activities are interconnected.

While I respect the need for speed here and the potential risk of not passing all three proposals, even as a possible recipient of funds, I have concerns about this omnibus proposal’s lack of financial transparency and operational accountability. I value transparency, especially in governance.

See Values expressed in the TEC Community Covenant

Q: Based on this proposal, are stakeholders fairly informed on the value creation I @lee0007 am accountable for and the cost exchange?

Governance Legitimacy & Due Process

@liviade

Current Conviction Voting Parameters

Parameter	Value
Conviction Growth	7 day(s)
Minimum Conviction	4.0%
Spending Limit	11.0%

I recognise we have a proposal to sideline conviction voting which is yet to be voted on? And a Proposals Road Map, that indicates that three proposals were to move via the TAO Voting to ‘test’ the process.

@natesuits

The next step will be to run three more Tao Voting tests, using the other proposals outlined in the “Proposals Roadmap

This proposal changes that to one

Q: Is further testing justifiable?

Because unlike the 25K small grants proposal this proposal is well outside of the 11% spending limit that would apply to conviction voting. Hence the recommendation is to create three or more proposals that could adhere to the spending limitation and provide transparency.

Token Engineering Grants Program v1 First Round Funding Proposal

this is very much out of our governance process and it’s unfair with the bonding curve proposal too. I see there was a test proposal there for 1DAI to @enti which would be enough for a test. I hate to bring a blocker and this proposal is SO important, but I think if we open a hole like this in our process we lose legitimacy. Sorry but I’ll vote no for it and I think it should be removed.

I’m going to surface @liviade concerns because I agree we are undermining the foundations of TEC governance legitimacy as established Dec 2021 with Polycentric Governance Framework

I recognise this is a time of positive and significant change - and I STRONGLY SUPPORT the vision direction and opportunities presented here - but I do not see any reason that justifies abandoning long-established governance processes that everyone else to date has had to adhere to - until such time as a vote is passed.

I’d love to hear from @liviade @Juankbell @Jeremygospelofchange @ZeptimusQ @natesuits for additional community and governance perspective.

[stratatrader]

I love the vision; I’ll definitely get the tattoo !

[ZeptimusQ]

So, about those previous agreements – they’re definitely important, but I think it’s okay to adapt them as long as we respect them to do those changes.

Here’s what I’m thinking if we want them to change: let’s run a vote on TAO Voting to tweak any previous agreements, but we’ll stick to the TAO Voting parameters we set up before. That way, we’re still respecting the whole “god mode” thing, and our governance stays legit.

I was kinda disconnected from the TEC for a bit. By using TAO Voting for any changes, we’ll keep everything transparent and accountable, which is what we’re all about.

Love you fam

[gideonro]

Hi @lee0007. I’m about to jump on a couple of calls, so let me just respond to your point about financial transparency and operational accountability. When you look at the sections on “how the funds will be used,” you will find that there is a good deal of detail here. In fact, if you look at other proposals that have gone through the TEC, there are very few that have provided this much detail.

What we haven’t done is break out here what each person will be doing, and when, over the course of this 4-month period. But I don’t think that is an appropriate expectation for a funding proposal and I’m guessing that that’s not what you’re asking for.

As for this:

@lee0007

Q: Based on this proposal, are stakeholders fairly informed on the value creation I @lee0007 am accountable for and the cost exchange?

There is a certain level of operational trust that the community must have with the teams that are stepping up to do this work. In your case, I don’t think that Angela would have nominated you to play a role in this undertaking if she thought that you were unworthy of that community trust or the value that you would create as part of it.

[liviade]

thanks for raising this concerns @lee0007

I think there was a confusion on how to move forward with so many proposals. What should have happened was for the proposal to sideline Conviction Voting to be submitted first to Tao Voting.
Then if this proposal passed, all the other financial proposals could follow to Tao voting because the governance process would have been successfully updated.

I’m positive everyone is operating on their best fate, and that we had a coordination failure on how to handle all the proposed changes. We are trying to understand exactly what happened and how we can rewind things back to a solid place in terms of governance and still don’t lose the work being proposed for all these initiatives.

[liviade]

We had a meeting now with @Griff @gideonro @akrtws — Sounds like the most reasonable path forward is to understand what we are going through as a transition moment. Conviction Voting wasn’t working for us and shutting it down has been a consensus for the past few months, no one has opposed it. The proposal to Tao Voting will just execute that consensus technically. Griff offered this way of looking at it, which I was resistant at first but it makes sense.

Tao voting always had the capability to pass funding proposals although we didn’t recommend it to be used that way - it’s parameters weren’t designed for it during the Hatch. but because Tao Voting has God mode, params are very strict, so this shouldn’t represent any risk for us, since it will be even harder to pass proposals there.

What would be nice is to take a look again at Tao Voting params soon and question if there is anything that could be changed to use for funding proposals or even if a new module with different params should be installed.

I acknowledge and praise the coordination team for all the work they’ve been putting to make sure everyone is taken care of and praise Gideon and Angela for writing this proposal for the joint operations, considering the urgency and stress involved.

Challenging processes, taking all opinions into consideration and evolving them can be messy but the openness in which all this is being discussed seems like a healthy route.

[akrtws]

After the comments in the forum, and the AMA session we’ve update TEA’s team setup in the proposal above to reflect the most up-to-date status for the voting.
I’m sorry that we didn’t have a chance to confirm @lee0007 willingness to be part of this proposal before it went up. We have been collaborating on TEA comms since Jan. She has asked not to be included on it.

TE Academy Team:

• Program, Study Groups, Ecosystem, Marketing/Comms – @akrtws, @pat.zip, +1 TBD
• Strategy, PoC scope, fundraising – @akrtws, @roro
• TEA Tech – General Magic
• Legal – Ana

[gideonro]

As @liviade notes above, she, @Griff, @akrtws, and I met today for an hour today and discussed at length @lee0007’s legitimate concern about governance process. Our conclusion was that we should proceed, as planned, with the vote on this proposal tomorrow.

Making this transition from Conviction Voting to Tao Voting while proposals are actively moving through the commons has been a complex and difficult process to manage, but it’s something that we have been actively getting public feedback on since January 24th. Through that advice process and the ensuing March 20th Tao Voting proposal, there has been no community objection to moving forward with this plan.

The challenge has been in sequencing. We wanted to ensure a transition period so that projects currently planning to use Conviction Voting will have until April 20th to complete the process. Pulling that date in sooner would have been unfair to any such projects. The challenge was that waiting until after that time to submit this proposal to Tao Voting would have put team members within the TEA and TEC at risk of not being paid in April. After going through an extensive advice process, the Coordination Team genuinely believed that Tao Voting was always a viable option for Common Pool funding decisions, even if it wasn’t what we were using in practice. And so, that was the plan that we made public here in the forum on March 20th – and received no objections.

This has not been an easy process, but I think that as a community we have shown that we continue to balance the needs for transparency, vigilance, accountability, practicality, and fairness in our governance. And as Livia notes above, this path with Tao voting has very strict params and we will want to continue to assess how it works over time for community funding decisions.

[Griff]

I think there are practical realities. Let me throw out some of them in bullet point form:

• Gideon is out for a well deserved vacation for 2-3 weeks in the middle of April
• Gideon is also one of the largest token holders and will be AFK (away from keys) for 14 days
• There is no one speaking against moving away from CV
• There are people that will need to be paid at the end of the month
• It seems like on it’s face people generally want all of these things to happen
• We talked about turning off CV for several months
• We did advice process to wait till April 20th to turn off CV
• Everyone is working with positive intent

IMO this is a procedural oversight where we made agreements that maybe given all this info we shouldn’t have agreed to… specifically waiting till April 20th to turn off CV. We can’t know everyone who was making plans based on that signaling.

It feels like there is a practical reality conflicting with our documentation of processes. Technically, Tao Voting is able to send money, in fact it can turn our DAO into a so sending 100k was always in the technical reality even tho it was culturally considered out of scope.

Also there is a small team of people in the day to day that is supporting this DAO and they will run out of funding at the end of April, given all this I hope we can just put the normal procedures aside in this transition and do what causes the least stress in order to get to the out come that the DAO wants.

We could have done a better job at formally announcing/creating a transition time where the day-today contributors use Tao Voting for governance while we leave CV open for more external contributors, but oh well… DAOing is hard.

This article really summs it up well:

Decisions in DAOs - What Causes the Pain?

[enti]

The vote for this proposal is now up on Gardens! https://gardensdao.eth.limo/#/xdai/garden/0x1fc7e8d8e4bbbef77a4d035aec189373b52125a8/vote/25

[lee0007]

Great article from the RnDAO crew. There are certainly issues identified that resonate with me and I also found this applicable

Cryptocurrency is powerful because it lets us summon up large pools of capital by collective economic will, and these pools of capital are, at the beginning, not controlled by any person. Rather, these pools of capital are controlled directly by concepts of legitimacy.

The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy

[gideonro]

Happy to report that this proposal has passed with resounding support from $TEC token holders:

Now, onto the exciting part!

[Marine3wwq]

This is a very promising direction. The idea of combining TEA and TEC efforts to create a more robust framework for AI-powered token engineering feels like the kind of forward-thinking approach the space really needs. It’s not just about technology—it’s about building trust, utility, and sustainable value for the community. Also, having a clear early-stage validation process, like a proper proof of concept ai, can help ensure that new features and mechanisms are grounded in reality before scaling. I’m curious to see how this plan will translate into practical use cases and whether it will inspire similar collaborations across the Web3 ecosystem.