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From YouTube: Core Unit Launch Pod Sessions - Session #8: Sustainable Ecosystem Scaling Core Unit, SES-001

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Core Unit Launch Pod Sessions - Session #8: Sustainable Ecosystem Scaling Core Unit, SES-001

This time juanjuan and wouter join us to introduce the Sustainable Ecosystem Scaling Core Unit
Mandate: https://forum.makerdao.com/t/mip39c2-sp10-adding-sustainable-ecosystem-scaling-core-unit/7368

Agenda: https://forum.makerdao.com/t/core-unit-launch-pod-sessions-session-8-sustainable-ecosystem-scaling-core-unit-ses-001/7545

Governance Forum:
https://forum.makerdao.com/

Disclaimer: These calls and the summaries are produced and hosted by MakerDAO community members. Content produced by the community are not the statements or views of the Maker Foundation.

A

All right here we go uh welcome. Everybody uh looks like we're up to the core unit launch pod session. Number. Eight uh really excited here to have the sustainable ecosystem scaling core unit with us. uh They'll be talking to us a bit about their proposal and uh yeah. I don't want to take away too much of the thunder so with that I'll. Kick it over to uh juan and uh feel free everyone to kind of interrupt ask questions as we go along. I believe we got some sides to start with, so we'll go with that.

B

Thank you, bros uh yeah, I'm very happy to to finally be presenting here on this call, um there's a big team that put a lot of work and effort into this. So today, uh lenka voutra myself are going to be presenting, but we're speaking on the name of many others, uh but yeah without uh without further ado, let's jump into the agenda and what we're going to be covering today. In case, you want to structure your your questions and interruptions, so the first one is uh the. Why? How and what so?

B

Why do you think that this is important? How do we want to achieve it and um and well? What is that we're trying to build here uh then? Well we're going to be going over this, but uh we we put a lot of focus on research on applied research and there are a lot of models that we've been working on, that we would like to continue working on, so we're going to be presenting um some drafts for the centralized capital, work and workforce.

B

And finally, we will go more in detail into things that we've been doing the next steps um and how we're planning to to achieve this. So yes, without further ado, voter.

C

Yes, thank you juan um soon, hi, everyone for those who don't know me, I'm voter, I'm currently working as the head of engineering at the maker foundation and uh looking forward for the next stage, which is uh uh making this core unit happen.

C

So um I wanna talk about the uh the mission and vision that we've created, but uh first, let's start with the kind of the background question that got all this started to go on. If you can go to the next slide,.

C

So, as you might imagine, the sustainable ecosystem scaling coordinate is about uh scaling the decentralized ecosystem and the the starting point that we have here is to think about uh scaling, centralized organizations first.

C

um So we uh we think that, uh with the introduction of the die, stable coin maker made its first contribution and now the next one is really to to scale up and make the ecosystem bigger.

C

And if we compare that indeed to a centralized organization, then we might say that in a centralized organization, this is a well-known recipe. How to scale up.

C

You start with a single team people start to specialize and then, of course, the the different teams they split out in the typical hierarchical structure, and that structure has clearly defined communication lines up and down the hierarchy and, ultimately, managing a centralized organization at scale means working around alignment, autonomy and accountability of all these different teams, and there are well-known tools for that. So one if you go to the next slide, um moving down the hierarchy.

C

Typically, we get alignment via the mission, vision and strategy that is broken down into objectives, and that is is further fed down the hierarchy of the teams into smaller objectives. Top down. We're also allocating the capital that is necessary to make sure that the teams can function. They have the necessary resources and then bottom up.

C

The teams are delivering the key results by contributing the expertise that they have and they're also reporting on the work that they're doing so that the there can be a form of evaluation which really brings these three uh elements of alignment, autonomy and accountability, but um going to the next slide.

C

If we think about this in a decentralized organization, it's very different and while the the starting point is the same in the beginning, we might think that the decentralized organization with just one team, maybe splitting up in a few teams- is not that different from a centralized organization.

C

But especially the lines of communication are a lot more chaotic. And the question is: how do we get these three things: the alignment, autonomy and accountability so going to the next slide again.

C

um This is a a recipe that is not well known and that we believe requires a lot of research and a lot of work from everyone in the dao to figure out how we, uh how we should go about this.

C

um As you think about alignment you, may you may imagine that in a decentralized organization, maybe we will be using different tools than in a centralized organization. For example, we will work more around culture, probably uh more with education, to align people in the dow and, of course, in crypto. We know that we want to install the positive feedback loops that really encourage the behavior that we want to see and that discourage the the behavior that we don't want to see um it's about putting these incentives in place and yeah.

C

It's what I call a carrot economy, because everyone is um is participating on a voluntary basis. There really are no sticks. We can't force people to do anything. uh The only thing we can do is put the carrots in place to uh to to make people do what we would like them uh to to do.

C

Autonomy, of course, is kind of the the default in a decentralized organization, but that also leads to some challenges because, as everyone is basically doing what they like to do on a voluntary basis, um what might happen is that there might be responsibility gaps.

C

So this is uh equivalent to maybe living together in the same house and- and everyone has a few tasks and someone needs to take out the trash and no one likes doing it in a decentralized organization. There are also certain tasks that need to be done, and the question is: how do we?

C

How do we make sure these tasks happen? If there's no one there to enforce it?

C

If we want to to do that, it's to protect the common infrastructure and, of course to avoid the the failure of the protocol, these critical failure scenarios- and that brings us to the last point- which is the accountability, which is, I think, typically the first challenge that people think about in a decentralized organization.

C

uh And we may think that we require the necessary checks and balances that we require a lot of transparency, maybe auditing mechanisms and ultimately count on competition and budget, slashing to uh to make sure that the teams in the ecosystem are somehow held accountable and that they deliver good quality.

C

So um these are all complicated questions in a domain that really needs to be explored a lot further and that's what we hope to contribute to with the sustainable ecosystem scaling core unit. So this brings us to our mission, which is to sustainably grow the maker protocols modes, and we want to do that by removing barriers between the decentralized workforce, the capital and the work.

C

If we look at the division that we want to work towards, so we want to support to decentralize the effective and scalable economy. On top of the maker protocol that continues to push forward the growth in a sustainable manner and yeah, we believe there are basically three aspects to that and decentralized, effective and scalable economy. We want to see the best and most successful onboarding experience for new participants, so we know how important it is to attract new talent and also to retain it.

C

So we want to have the highest retention rate in the industry now once people are. Onboarded comes a question of efficiency. So how do you make sure that people who are onboarded into this decentralized economy? How can they find the capital they need to work on the best projects to work on and by the best projects? We mean those projects that work that optimally drives vertical growth and also that is most fulfilling for its participants, because we do want that high retention rate and specifically in the context of the maker protocol.

C

We we have always that extra requirement, which is that we need to make sure that we avoid those critical failure scenarios. So we need resilient safety mechanisms in place to prevent protocol failure, but at the same time, as we've seen, sometimes that can lead to a slow pace of innovation and that's something, of course, that we also need to avoid, because that doesn't work in the long term. So we need to combine uh preventing protocol failure in a decentralized context, with ample space for rapid innovation and experimentation.

C

Needless to say, that's quite a challenge and yeah: that's what we want to participate in as the sustainable ecosystem scaling core unit so um uh juan. Do you want to talk a bit about the strategy.

B

Yeah, so that was a little bit on the on the y, and this is uh this is the how right. So, how do we think that we can achieve this? So we focused a lot of energy on on building this uh continuous improvement uh scale uh kind of like a circle uh where or yeah where we can actually retrofit, with the things that we've learned.

B

So, as you may notice in the very center, is the research and we're going to be speaking about this, uh a lot during our presentation and and in general, because we believe that's the the way forward, but it's of course applied research.

B

So, at the very beginning, we need to identify the opportunities and do a risk assessment, set priorities, uh identify bottlenecks um and and move forward with the things that are worth the most at every single time then apply this research that we that we're doing and and help the whole the whole maker down ecosystem grow in that way. And, finally, the the last part would be the incubation, which is, if uh we notice that there's a need that needs to be served.

B

uh We want to be there to help uh talent, become this uh independent core unit that can subsist on on its own, and we want to be there to facilitate that. um The other two things that we want to do, uh which we believe that they are complementary. Is the sponsorship part, and we can speak about that more later.

B

But it's having this budget to yeah to fund these projects that are limited in scope and eventually can become core units or if we, if we decide that they're not worth it uh kind of like kill it with a with very quick and fast iterations.

B

And finally, the other thing with all this research and all this knowledge that we're producing. We want to be very open and transparent and focus on the conscious improvement, self-accountability and auditing we've been speaking about this about uh allowing people or core units to to set their own standards and and be held accountable versus what they said for themselves and uh yeah. The other pillar would be allowing people to, or or making everything very transparently, transparent and sharing the best practices.

B

And finally, we want to become to a trusted third party in case that we need, for example, um to execute a dark spell and and again we can.

B

We can speak more about this in the future and yeah going back to the research as I was mentioning, we have been analyzing and kind of drafting different models, and we would like to have this these conversations around these research models, so we're going to introduce uh very quickly as an as a kind of like showing you the draft and how we want to work and how we want to focus the the discussions, this new release, capital, the centralized work and then decentralized workforce.

B

So if we go to the first one, which is the decentralized capital right now, we are seeing this as um as a protocol that uh it's uh relatively hard to find sustainable growth. So as water was mentioning, we already saw a really really good growth, but it will be a challenge to this in a decentralized way and reaching the next, uh the next 10x right. So we've been already seeing some some challenges. The first one is that maker holders have limited bandwidth.

B

uh This results in low uh voting um turn up, so there are not a lot of voters that uh that have the time and the and the energy to go through the through the whole process. So we see that uh we should limited the options to this uh to these voters. Ideally then- and this goes back to to what valtteri was saying- uh we need to connect uh vision, goals and work. So there's this uh fluid things that uh that we that we can see in in changing and establishing the vision.

B

So we we've been seeing already sep, for example, that uh mentioned this last year, then there was a group uh to establish the division of maker dao, and we see that this is uh not an easy task and to get all these decentralized contributors behind that it's kind of a hard task, um then, on the on the impact right. So it's uh it's extremely hard to measure the impact that each contributor has. We have this experiment going on with source cred and it's going well again.

B

I recommend you to go back to the forum and read more about it. If you, if you want a very interesting results, but by no means it's a comprehensive and and it should be improved as well and finally, something that we would like to mention is that uh right now the delegates is something that that's coming to life, but um it's or we believe it's a full-time job, and not only for a person but potentially for a whole team of people. Doing data analytics uh inspecting what's happening and and whatnot.

B

So those are things that we definitely need to consider and our challenges for for the capital, location and, finally, the the funding barriers and continuity. We have this uh these two things uh that we need to consider.

B

One of them is the access to capital, so the best pro uh well, the best project that can uh help make it out the most uh or that has the most impact, should be getting the capital in ideally an easy way and on the other hand, we need to think about the job security of of the contributors and make sure that they feel that they can contribute in a in a safe way um so again and as a draft model.

B

um This is something we've been working on, uh which well I'll, try to to explain it, um but the maker voters basically are delegating their votes to different parties or or delegates, and potentially you could delegate different amounts of uh of maker to different parties based on what they promised that they are going to fund. So then the whole part or the the yeah. The majority of the work is done by these governance parties that are going to end up funding, domain teams and core units which can, on their own turn, fund uh each other.

B

If, if that's what what they need, but there's a lot of coordination and allocation that will need to be done by by somewhere by someone. So we believe that this is potentially one of the of the things that should be considered.

B

The other thing that we've been um speaking with with the larger community is setting up a budget cup. uh Again. Seb is working on a financial model for maker dao, including the the expenses, and this is potentially something that could be useful for the maker voters, saying like the whole uh expenses of the dow should be capped at this amount.

B

Ideally, it will be less so there's a there's, a control of the finances and then, of course, what we're speaking before is that the maker voters would be able to have this liquid plutocratic election, so they can change uh whenever they want their their votes from one to the next, but to help the the core units and the contributors, there will be this quarterly capital allocation, so at least there is some stability in in what's happening in the yeah in the in the scene.

B

I don't know if, if this is clear or we should take questions or maybe just move to the next model and and tackle them at the end,.

B

I guess you can keep going without him.

C

Yes, um so, as one was talking about the uh the first aspect, which is decentralized capital, uh looking at the the bottlenecks that we're facing today um with mkr voters having limited bandwidth and coming up with models that might better scale, the governance around us, uh a second um second element to look at is the way that we currently do work in the dao and how we can once again avoid bottlenecks that would inhibit growth.

C

uh One thing that we noticed in the past, and currently as uh for example, with the um the launch of liquidations 2.0, is that the the work is quite focused um around the work that the smart contracts team is doing and that the throughput really is is limited uh to what the team can handle in a safe way and yeah.

C

We would like to start a few conversations that can help to increase that throughput of work and, at the same time improve further improve the security of the system, and this is basically what uh what is presented here in the model. So uh today we are uh treating everything with uh fort knox security level, uh because we we assume that when there is even a you know, there's even a small change of uh of a failure in the protocol. Then we might put the entire value uh the total value locked in the protocol at risk.

C

However, if we can structure the work differently, then it should be possible to basically create multiple tiers that reduce the risk for the team working on releasing work in that tier, and in that way you can actually have multiple teams working on smart contract development, and we don't.

C

We don't need to to have everything passed through the same team that is already overburdened with the actual critical functionality that they should be reviewing, and this is the model as presented here, so what we could do, instead of treating everything as if it's in the main tier 3 that has the entire 9 billion value at risk, we can create a second tier main tier 2.

C

That would actually guarantee, for example, through formal verification that the damage that can be done with any smart contract that is deployed in that tier can never be bigger than 900 million, for example.

C

And of course you can go a step further and say, then we have a tier one, that is for experiments, and that would only put just one percent of the capital at risk.

C

You can go further and and parallelize the the work by having teams delivering to the covent test net instead of delivering to the mainnet and entire features can be developed and uh deployed to the covent test net and already have our integrators, for example, uh work with that version.

C

While um this adds no extra burden to the uh the work of the the smart contracts team that controls access to to the highest mainnet tier.

C

um It's even the case that uh for testing out features that you can go a step further and just do rapid prototyping. That may require no smart contracts at all, but instead apply a well-known practice from software engineering, which is to to stop the back end and basically have fake contracts that would be used to build a fully functional ui.

C

On top of so that, instead of today, us building like a single ui that that that is the final version of the product and that we only validate at the very end of the funnel uh that we can run multiple experiments and that multiple teams can work on that, and so once again improving the throughput of the work and then around the um the feature requirements and and what we would actually build.

C

um Yeah. There is a lot of work that can be parallelized there as well. So the technical analysis, for example, doesn't need to happen necessarily by the the core smart contracts team that manages access to to the highest security tier.

C

So this is uh next to the uh kind of the the delegation and voting model that we have to allocate capital is another example of a model uh that we've been working on, in this case, to reduce the bottlenecks in the workflow and to allow for a higher throughput in the ecosystem and more participants and more parallelization.

C

One thing to notice is that this particular model will also introduce additional roles into the ecosystem, and that brings us to the question: how how do we actually onboard a talent not just smart contract developers, but also all these other profiles that can help with all the work that can be done in the ecosystem in parallel, and this is what lenka will be talking about next.

A

Awesome I did notice, we did have a few questions in the chat. I don't know if anyone had a mic and wanted to hop on. If not I'm happy to read as well.

A

Saw a couple from jordan and uh you lie there.

C

C

The question is, uh how do you foresee different projects being prioritized within different tiers? Yes, well that actually goes back to the to the previous model, which is the capital allocation.

C

um So if we go back to that slide to just very quickly walk through it, um so you have these uh governance parties as we've called it here that really do two things: they uh they define their vision for the future of the protocol and just like a political party, it could be very specific or it could be um yeah, just the comprehensive vision of the entire maker maker ecosystem.

C

So let's say that the the protocol growth party believes that there are a number of priorities that we should set to to safeguard the growth of the protocol, and then uh they would. They would collect support for that uh by by campaigning with the mkr voters and then, um as they receive proportionally uh a slice of the budget, then they would use that budget and they would have, for example, a team of analysts that figures out which projects would optimally uh contribute to that to those goals that they are setting.

C

So that's the thing that you can't really uh simplify or like automate easily, and it's it's quite a lot of work to figure out as the the number of teams is growing, as the work that is being done in parallel uh has higher bandwidth everything that's happening at the same time, um what exactly contributes the most to the the objectives that we have that's a very difficult uh question to answer, and that would exactly be the um the the job of these.

C

uh These governance parties to, in the one hand, define the vision with the objectives and, on the other hand, figure out given those objectives. Where should we allocate our capital, which leads to the prioritization of the work so in in this case, this party would of course, prioritize the work that improves the growth of the protocol and would de-prioritize and maybe not allocate capital to work that that does not contribute to the growth of the protocol.

C

The second question was: are you planning on integrating or incubating all of the mentioned teams into the ses core unit, for example, smart contract, dev security, auditors, etc?

C

um No, so the vision we have is that there will be like the the pattern of being an incubator or having an incubator program as a career unit, that that will be a pattern that is repeated throughout the ecosystem, with um with multiple core units and yeah, it's important that we clearly define a scope of the kind of projects that would um that would go through our own incubation program and the way that we uh we want to prioritize.

C

It is that we look at our our mission, which is to um to make sure that the maker protocol can grow sustainably and that we remove those bottlenecks that inhibit growth.

C

So um we do the research to identify those bottlenecks, and then we uh explore potential solutions to uh to remove those bottlenecks, and that's that those are the kind of projects, the ones that work on those solutions that we would like to see in our incubation core unit.

C

So, for example, if we uh identify the need for- let's say legal advice for core units, because our research has shown that um new teams are people are hesitant to join because they uh they have questions around liability.

C

Well, then, we would conclude that it's a it's a priority to um have a legal core unit that works around liability and takes away uh the concerns that people may be having and in that way, uh removing that bottleneck and making sure that the ecosystem can grow faster in a sustainable way. So that's the kind of process that we would follow to determine uh which projects would have a place in our incubation program. The assumption is that there will be many other core units that also run incubation programs to further their objectives.

C

So um it's not because you know you're a team that wants to start something that doesn't fit in what we are trying to achieve, that there isn't another core unit where you can join the incubation program.

C

We do believe that incubation programs are are critical elements to help onboard new teams in the ecosystem, uh mostly because uh yeah. It's it's just not easy to get from zero to the point where uh you know everything uh to put in your mip and then ultimately get your budget approved.

A

And sorry, for any background noise, and thank you for for the answer, walter, a follow-up question would be. um What are the plans for when car units leave the incubation program? Are they simply released into the wild and act as a separate car units or what's the relation between the scs core unit and the incubated co units? Thank you.

C

Yeah, so when they go through the incubation program, of course, we offer support in the form of our our domain, knowledge, our expertise about to make our ecosystem so to make sure that their you know, their business model makes sense uh that the the budget that they created makes sense that um ultimately, the mip that they write up, that we believe that it's uh yeah it's a good proposal.

C

um We support them financially throughout the process, and we also by giving our our vote of confidence and uh hopefully building a reputation for ourselves of um spinning out um valuable core units uh that hopefully would increase the chances of that that new core unit receiving ultimately the funding from governance and not no longer through our own incubation program.

C

And that really is the point of graduation. That's the moment when uh the core unit and the team has fully figured out what they want to do, that they have written everything up in a coherent proposal and that they are now ready to receive the funds through governance instead of through our own incubation program.

C

Now, your question is: is uh it's very relevant so then? Do it just like drop them? Like a stone and wish them good luck, uh not at all, so that's the reason why we have these these other elements, and you may have noticed the advisory uh advisory area and the strategy that was presented, which is exactly uh aimed at continuing support to these core units, even after they have spun out.

C

So we really like to gently onboard people make sure that they are set up for maximum success and then, even as they quote, unquote graduated by now receiving their budget directly through governance that we can still further support them through the advisory program.

B

Ana has seen another question, but I think it fits better after lenka goes through the decentralize, the the workforce.

D

Absolutely hello, everyone, I'm lenka, I'm part of the x-ray research project and I will just very briefly touched upon the decentralized workforce domain and how this particular project addresses it. So, if we, if we zoom out to the strategy and vision of the core unit, then we are focusing on the sustainable growth of maker dial protocols molds through research, and our focus in particular, is on the workforce and, more specifically, tech talent.

D

The main objective that we are trying to achieve with x-ray is to end up with the best and most successful onboarding experience for the new participants in this ecosystem and also ensuring the highest possible retention rate in the industry and the sub objectives that I would consider as the high-level ones for for the x-ray research not going into too much detail would be understanding what are the best practices out there so that we can establish the best-in-class standards for our developer, onboarding and retention for specific to the maker now protocol.

D

Secondly, is collection of data that can that can lead to delivering a model with metrics and bottlenecks that is close to real time and accurate picture snapshot, overview of the tech, talent, onboarding and retention that can help us to understand where we're at and base our decision. And thirdly, using these findings to propose a set of future projects that can address this detected bottlenecks that we come across and rank them by the importance and the resources we have available.

D

um This is the high level um introduction into the x-ray and in the next slide, I want to show you the the the draft of the of the model that we would use to address this issue so um as well.

D

To mention uh we'll be also introducing the new roles into the ecosystem so for by tech talent, you can um you can consider a group of developers be that smart contract engineers, back-end developers, front developers integrations engineers etc, but also other tech, girls, and these were, as mentioned, business analysts, project, architects, quality assurance leads, researchers, tech, community stewards or ux ui designers.

D

What do you see in this funnel just very briefly, different stages that we need to get the tactile through or to towards, and then also the processes which are focusing on different goals? So just to give an example, for instance, in the awareness stage um you can see that the process that is ongoing is marketing. So a marketing process is all about visibility and discoverability.

D

So here the main goal or focus will be making sure that the community outside of the crypto uh crypto community, that we're part of is aware of the opportunities that they are in the maker ecosystem and one possible bottleneck we can identify in the awareness stage would be that maybe these talents, which are potential candidates, heard about blockchain, bitcoin, ethereum and b5, but never heard about maker.

D

So one of the way to identify this could be possible to do more marketing efforts to make sure that maker comes up as a possible option to consider, um then, just touching about the let's say, onboarding process. The focus here is all about smooth experience and habit building.

D

So we want to make sure that it is easy to understand what is needed and it easy to get started for these talents, so, for instance, in the in the consideration stage, we might run into the identification of a bottleneck that these potential candidates they do not consider working for maker as a real job. So we need to make sure that this is a clear option for them and show them examples and demonstrate how they can get involved for the commitment part. Maybe they do not know how to actually plug into the system.

D

Maybe, as valter mentioned, they have legal concerns or they need other support. This could be through the incubator, etc or help with the information. So this could be other way to to address these. So this is just the high level uh model we'll be working with um to share with you and uh yeah to cover the decentralized workforce which spends further on because, as you see, all the different elements of the core unit efforts are connected. But this is the part that the x-ray plays in.

B

D

B

To ask your question: I'm not sure if you have a mic. Oh.

D

Sorry I haven't seen the question.

A

Yeah I just asked a question earlier uh before you presented this uh all of these slides lenka, but um I was curious because you mentioned um that one of your highest priorities is onboarding and retaining top talent to grow the protocol. And so I was just curious if that extended to individuals or if it was strictly about incubating teams and incubating core units. That will then benefit the protocol.

A

But I think you largely answered that question, but if you want to expand a little bit more about that versus individual versus core unit incubation, that was kind of my question.

D

Absolutely I believe that the best start is to focus on the individuals, but of course there uh there are parts that could be relevant to the teams and and and individuals that are looking to form a team so definitely relevant. But we will start the research with focus on the individuals.

B

And and the reason why I put back this slide- and I oh sorry, I just wanted to add that that yeah, the sponsorship covers the whole spectrum, because we believe that we might catch different uh individuals or ideas at different stages and uh there are different uh ways of testing or exploring these different opportunities with different experiments and finally see if, if there's something to work with uh or not right.

B

So it's it's a bit of uh of uh of doing that in a in a controlled way that that can scale- and this goes a little bit to what uh vault was explaining on the on the final about uh working.

C

uh Actually, if you go to the next slide that we uh we're going to show with the implementations, uh what you will notice is that uh sponsorship is is not just the incubation program. uh It also contains a number of brands and there are different grants for different situations.

C

So you have the microgrants for really small tasks, basically something you know something that needs to be done. Someone wants to do it and we can give just a limited budget to to make that particular thing happen.

C

The individuals that you are talking about may go a step further and not just do one thing but try and get a scholarship trend um or, if there's a somewhat larger project that that we believe would be useful to improve the sustainable scaling of the ecosystem.

C

Then a team could uh could apply for uh development grant, for example, to to build uh a job platform, for example, if that would be useful for the scaling of the ecosystem and the incubation program is um that's kind of the full-blown thing uh that that incorporates all that, uh but then ultimately leads into the creation of an independent core unit and so yeah. I hope it's clear that we're trying to to cover the whole range from not just an individual, even but individual tasks up to the point of uh permanent new coordinate, coordinates.

A

Yeah, I think that really answers my question. My follow-up was that how do you imagine this incubation of talent and is it more about like helping map people to projects or is it about helping people navigate, how they can propose their own and then um start their own units and join teams?

A

But I think he also kind of covered that in as well.

B

C

B

C

We have a more detailed slide about how we envision uh the incubation program, but uh maybe we can go through the rest of the presentation. First.

B

um Just to complete the idea on this slide, there are a lot of this research project or applied research that we are we've already started with and we'll share the the link for with all the all the work that we've been doing. So everything is open, but um yeah, as we mentioned in the beginning. We want to do the backlog and the roadmap and make sure that this is very open for everyone to to come and start working on the on issues that the dao has then the dog food program.

B

This is how would you create a core unit, so we're documenting everything that we are doing to make sure that it's easier for for the coming core units, uh and- and this doesn't relate to the inquiries right, but any core unit that or any person that wants to create a core unit. They can use this documentation that dogfoot will generate to to do that.

B

uh Well, then, link already covered x-ray and how do we attract talent and how we nurture that funnel and finally, the guardrail is about uh making sure that we are resilient enough and we have enough security from the workforce. Point of view to to make sure that uh the dao is actually decentralized, um voucher already covered the sponsorship arm quite well, and the last thing is the advisory, which I I kind of uh touched upon in the very beginning about these reporting standards and best practices with the self-accountability audit.

B

So those three are linked together and we want to to make sure that we do that ourselves and uh and start uh yeah make sure that that becomes the best practice. So we have a way of uh of uh controlling each other. Then another thing that we want to do is the ceremony facilitation.

B

uh Our team has a lot of people that have been working with this uh with these methodologies for for quite a while, so we can, we can help other co-units to get started with that and, finally, the the dark spells that I mentioned in the beginning.

B

So that's for the research part and for the incubation part, we've already started doing some research about that about. If you want to explain a little bit more about this.

C

Yes, so as it stands, the uh the ses core unit, when assuming that the proposal is accepted, then we will start in june, not just with the research projects that we touched on, but already with a number of teams.

C

As a part of the incubation program, um a few of these teams are people who uh previously worked at the foundation and um yeah are looking for some additional guidance and some synergies that can happen there before they actually start their own core unit, and then we have a few new ones that, as I mentioned, fit within the scope of our incubation program, which is to work on specific uh issues, bottlenecks that we identify to um that inhibit the growth of the ecosystem.

C

So, as you can see, we have the integrations team people, all people from the foundation with nikolai manuel and petru.

C

We have the javascript product development team, which is a really nice mix of people who have been working at the foundation for quite a while also new, joiners and so raphael, for example, doesn't currently work for the foundation, but is involved in the new javascript product development core unit.

C

We have adam who recently joined the foundation, and then we have our og's phil, tyler and thiago, who have been working at the foundation for quite a while.

C

So one of the things I mentioned is that the scope for our own incubation program is quite uh focused. It's focused on uh those are those um uh solutions to the bottlenecks that uh that we identify in the growth of the the ecosystem.

C

So we believe that the the incubation program pattern will be applied by multiple core units, not just ourselves, potentially with different focus points and different scopes for the their incubation programs. These incubation programs. They also contribute to the capital allocation problem because it helps to have a more experienced team that can take decisions as to how the capital is allocated.

C

You know which projects receive funding uh to become their own core units, so um yeah, that's why we believe that it would be useful to have a separate core unit that focuses specifically on the incubation part and that doesn't have the specific scope that we are trying to cater to.

C

So uh that's why there is an incubation core unit, also in our own incubation program, with a number of people who have experience in building remote teams and making that work.

C

So that's partly, but kathleen and yellow who I've worked with before I joined the maker foundation and who, I know have quite a lot of experience in this area, then other teams that we are looking to form in the context of the incubation program is a second smart contracts, development team next to, uh of course, the political engineering core unit. That is, uh that is starting quite soon now.

C

uh The reason why we believe that the second smart contracts, development team would greatly contribute to the scalability of the ecosystem.

C

Is that that bottleneck that we talked about the fact that everything currently every new functionality needs to pass through the protocol engineering core unit and with this smart contracts team in the incubator program, we want to figure out how we can work in parallel, how we can have multiple smart contract core units working next to each other, uh increasing that that throughput that the work throughput that we talked about and, of course the funnel that I presented is- um uh is very relevant in that respect, because that would be the work model.

C

That would allow us to do that and then, as we have also alluded to. Of course, there are a lot of open questions around the legal structure of the dao as everything that we're doing is very new. So we are working with a number of people to explore possibilities to form uh one or more legal core units that would specifically target those challenges that are inhibiting the growth of the ecosystem.

C

So all these teams are supported by uh the ses permanent team and that's uh that's one- that's myself lenka and then the many people who are also working hard to make this happen. uh I think almost all of them on this call so uh jordan and the amy juan carlos.

C

uh We have a legal strategy advisor who um yeah, who will announce on a later stage and then we're also looking for other additional profiles, such as a tech profile, additional tech profile to join us and also a junior higher and potentially other roles, so that that will be the state when we, when we start as a core unit. So we will really hit the ground running and make sure that things happen. Quite.

B

Soon, if there are no questions about that, we would like to code the next steps so yeah. We got some feedback and we are looking for more.

B

So if you have any feedback, please let us know either in the forums or or directly messaging us, but one of the things that we need to do is specify the budget implementation, uh the limits and the process uh nikola and vow to have been working about doing this in a in a good way, and we believe that this way could be potentially one of the best practices until something more sophisticated can be created at the smart contract level.

B

Then we need to update the budget map so as uh as we just mentioned, there are some newly recruited members and we are happy to to welcome them. We we think that uh they make our team much much stronger. So we need to include that as well, and we also are going to include a preliminary maker compensation plan following what the smart contracts team did and waiting for the for this framework that the working group is doing.

B

What's more we're going to approach uh to share the approach that we are using with the working group? We think that it's a very fair approach, so we'll be sharing it with them in case they want to either use it or or be inspired by it.

B

um Finally, yes, uh one week from now exactly it's the the deadline, so we need to incorporate all the feedback that we get and uh make sure that it goes in before the free state or freeze deadline. I guess, and then a week later, we'll we'll make the the formal submission so the 5th of may and then yeah. The rest is waiting for the for the decision of governance and any fun practical preparation such as setting up multisigs and legal entities and finally launching well.

B

We, we kind of believe that we launched already because we've been working a lot of on different things, but it will be the official launch um if you want to contact us. uh Everyone is on this discord channel, um so you're welcome to join us um and ask as many questions as you would like, and we have this public drive that I commented earlier. So if you want to see what we're working on on our our work, it's uh it's open over there.

B

Our emails and rocket chat and forum aliases are below the page and with three minutes left to the top of the hour, do you guys have any questions? We apologize for the for the lengthy presentation.

C

Yeah, I know you had additional questions about the um the incubation program, so maybe juan you can just show the overview of the the incubation program as we currently.

C

Envision so right now we are seeing basically four different uh tracks that the every uh team in the incubation program would go through. uh One is the business model track that would make sure that the mission vision strategy makes sense uh that if there are any products and services that are offered that these are clearly defined, that there is a good roadmap with okrs and so on, and that the timeline is is sufficiently defined.

C

Of course, another part of going through the incubation program is the people aspect so which roles and responsibilities are necessary in the team. um We will support the team and the hiring of the right people, making sure that commitments are made and gradually commitments are made to it to actually join the core unit and then offer support in terms of compensation and recruiting uh to make sure that we yeah. As I mentioned, we set the uh new core unit up for success with the best people that we can find um on a more practical level.

C

We have the operations track uh that deals with things like the um and the kind of reporting that is necessary as a as a core unit.

C

um What the budget should look like in the the legal structure, uh the processes, project management, the tools, uh a lot of emphasis, for example, on on remote work and how to make that work successfully, uh and then the the fourth track uh would be around uh education, learning about the the maker ecosystem, the governance infrastructure about core units budgets and so on, um but also for specialized roles such as, for example, when you want to start as a smart contract developer, uh which kind of resources should you use and which skills should you have before you can get started?

C

um Thinking back about the tiered model, like? Would you work as a as a tier three, two or one uh smart contract developer, and what exactly does that entail? uh Smart contract developers are, of course, only one role, so we have. We have backend service developers. We have um a whole range of people, including also unique dowel roles such as the facilitator and the the core unit team lead roles.

C

uh So, there's a lot a lot to learn, uh making sure that that people really have all the gaps covered in their their prior experience and knowledge that they can also hit the ground running and get started as a fully functional core unit. And then, when everything is in place, we believe that the team should be ready to do the maker improvement proposal and then submit that for their own independent budget from the governance community.

C

So that's in a nutshell, the the process that we have in mind.

B

A

Questions yeah we caught instead of the time, but also, if you do have questions, feel free to ask them um the forum links are always live. I know we push them at the start of the meeting. Maybe they can send them out again. uh That way, you can ask your questions and get them answered if you think of them later.

B

All right so either everything is super, clear or or completely obscure.

B

I hope it's the first one, but again, if you, if you guys, want to join us in the conversation, we really appreciate any feedback that you might have uh here or in the in the forum um and yeah we'll be formally submitting this very soon. So stay tuned.

C

Yeah, second, that everyone uh thanks for joining and- uh and there was a lot of information to process or if there is anything else, then feel free to post. Your question or comments in the forum.

B

Thank you guys.

A