Funding suggestions
A list of funding process suggestions
The funding analysis has compared a number of approaches that could be adopted in a funding process. The following is a list of some of the most promising approaches that have been identified.
1. Funding process experiment - Open source contributor funding
Combining the suggestions below led to the suggestion of experimenting with an open source contributor funding process. Contributor funding represents a far simpler funding process than idea funding for both the contributors and voters. Contributor funding can help with reducing budgeting and governance complexities, reducing the amount of duplicated efforts, increasing the amount of flexibility that contributors have to make impact across an ecosystem and can also help with reducing the amount of game theory risks there are in the funding process. Open source contributor funding proposal:
2. Funding contributions - Independent submissions
Independent submissions mean that a funding process would enable contributors to submit any knowledge, priority, idea or contributor related information in separate submissions from one another. The analysis helped to highlight how enabling independent submissions where information could be submitted at any time could be effective at reducing the complexity and required participation time to make contributions and also it can help with increasing the expressiveness of contributors by enabling them to contribute in any way that they prefer. This approach was by far the most flexible and supportive for inviting a wide range of contributors to participate in a way that was most suitable for them. Relevant resources:
3. Community preferences & opinions - Preferences and opinions invited throughout funding process
An important part of funding for Web3 ecosystems is considering how community members are able to express their preferences and opinions about the information that has been shared during funding. Enabling community members to provide their feedback and comments anywhere in the funding process on any piece of information that gets submitted has a number of clear advantages. These advantages include that it can help with generating clearer sentiment & approvals, faster feedback & learning, creating a more inclusive environment and can increase the amount of contributor accountability and community representation, engagement and responsiveness. Relevant resources:
4. Decision making - Delegated idea selection
There are many different decisions that can occur during funding and a range of different ways that these decisions could be handled. Some of the key decisions that happen across a funding process include the selection of knowledge, priorities, ideas and contributors. The most promising approach for reducing the amount of voter participation time required and voting complexity whilst also increasing the amount of voter expressiveness was the delegated idea selection approach. This approach focuses on pushing the responsibility of selecting ideas to work on towards the contributors that the community have selected. The community should still be able to express their preferences and opinions on these ideas as mentioned in the above suggestion. The community would be responsible for selecting the most important priorities and most suitable contributors. This approach provided high flexibility and also dramatically helped with making the funding process more scalable by making it much easier and quicker for voters to participate in the most important funding decisions. Relevant resources:
5. Incentives - Contributor time incentives
How incentives get attached during the funding process has a large influence on the budgeting, decision and governance complexities and the flexibility there is for contribution efforts to change as needed. The most promising approach was the usage of contributor time incentives. Contributor time incentives means contributors are paid for the time they contribute towards executing ideas and supporting an ecosystem. This approach was the most effective for reducing the overall complexities and risks involved whilst also increasing the flexibility to handle a fast changing environment. Relevant resources:
6. Contribution verification approaches - Individual time based contribution logs
When treasury assets get allocated to help with executing impactful initiatives a community can benefit from being able to verify that those funds have been used responsibly and that they have actually been used to pay for meaningful contribution efforts. There were a number of approaches that could be used to help with recording and verifying the contribution efforts that are made by ecosystem contributors. One of the most effective approaches for increasing the measurability and accuracy of the contribution logs is when individuals are requested to submit a record of their monthly contribution efforts. Relevant resources:
7. Impact measurement approaches - Contributor impact measurement
Every approach that has been compared are all important for funding processes that want to effectively improve how they measure impact. Measuring the impact generated by addressed priorities, executed ideas and individuals contribution efforts can all help with improving the funding process and future decision making. However one approach that showed a stronger opportunity for improving future decision making was the approach that focused on contributor impact measurement. Measuring the amount of impact a contributor has been able to generate has a large opportunity to improve future decision making. The contributors who consistently generate the most impact can be repeatedly selected and funded to continue their execution efforts in future decisions. Relevant resources:
8. Idea ownership approaches - Shared ideas
A goal of Web3 technology is to help with increasing the amount of decentralization of the networks and technology that society is increasingly relying on. Instead of a group of founders and board members being able to control the direction and usage of certain services the users of these services could be given more ownership and influence over these networks and services. To achieve this outcome it will become increasingly important that ideas are owned by communities of people rather than a few individuals. Shared ideas with elected leadership or emergent leadership are two approaches that are well aligned with the ethos of the Web3 movement. Experimenting with contributor funding instead of idea based funding is one way that more shared ownership of ideas could be better explored. Relevant resources:
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