Hi @DonaFlorinda!
I appreciate you taking the time to share your remarks. I think this is your first contribution to the DAO and the LatAm community-related posts on the Forum, and this gives me and some folks in the community the opportunity to bring more context to what is being proposed based on our joint experience, and adjust the proposal.
Anything that is not trolling and is fact based, aimed at the development of LatAm in a more comprehensive and mature way is more than welcome. Learning from past mistakes (from others and from oneself) is the best way to expand.
This is a long post that I suggest anyone interested in the topic reads carefully. But, if you are in a hurry and want the basics, this summary may give you some visibility about what’s further detailed.
[Summary]
Upcoming Amendments to the Proposal
- Funds received in tranches
- Budgets with target allocation (no pre fixed rate per action anymore)
- “Support Personal” wording switched to Ambassadors
- Clarifications re. governance
No Party Budget
(i) While the original DAO proposal did NOT FORESEE ANY TYPE OF BUDGET FOR PARTIES, given the mixed feedback about the topic (some people want it!) there is a proposition to ADD party budget.
- If you have a doubt about what the “event” on Focus Area 1 means please feel free to ask. But as disclosed these are onboarding and educational events.
“Help onboard new community members and developers, and guide them through the ecosystem.”
Budget Target Allocation & Payment in Tranches
(ii) Budgets will be edited and to display a milestones-based approach and target allocations, and not fixed “budgets per event/hack”. We all know very well LatAm has very different realities within itself, and that despite the scenario expenses will always be a sensitive topic – meaning strategy accountability and transparency are key;
(iii) Community money should be allocated to the DAO in tranches, upon milestone completion and validation. This will be also updated.
Social Media & Ambassadors
(iv) The social media budget suggested (content creation/ adds/ moderation/ Ambassadors) is roughly 1k USD per media per language, if you make a rough math. This is modest according to our expertise, and allows flexibility to onboard local talent. In any case, we relocated around 40k to the Web3 VB Section and lowered the suggested spending in this regard.
(v) Did you know that LatAm is the only region where Ambassadors were responsible for independent social media content production and localization of all Celo related things in two foreign languages, in a rather differentiated pace of delivery?
- I am personally an AVID advocate for more ambassadors. On the DAO proposal, “Support Personal” budget means “Ambassador” budget.
- We had awesome Ambassadors collaborating with us (and some are commenting on this post), but no current policy on this (meaning no clear budget allocation/rule). As this has been a point of conflict I think crucial that we obtain this budget to be able to make choices in a grassroots way.
(v) Did you know that every week we meet on Celo Discord office hours in Portuguese and in Spanish? I think we hosted over 30 of these sessions. I would like to invite you to join: its a place where we talk a lot about all the above and more, including founders support and other relevant topics.
- To be noted: LatAm is the only community that does this at this frequency, and also prioritizes a multi-channel approach. If you add to these numbers the Instagram Lives and Twitter Spaces, you will realize the tremendous effort being done to translate/localize/raise Celo awareness across different platforms, enabling people who think differently. If these numbers are not satisfactory for you yet, this is another reason why this DAO is super necessary.
Thank you for keeping up with me this far. If you are here, you may want to continue reading and have access to some insightful information about other Regional DAOs, differences in Foundation/Community efforts, and more!
[Initial Remarks]
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Given your post and your tone, It becomes clear there is a huge lack of visibility about what is done in LatAm, and how we (yes, a lot of people and ambassadors were involved!) do it. We probably should be posting here more about the discord office hours, the community led meet ups, the countless talks we do with projects and developers. We should also post about the awesome projects that onboard into Celo after such initiatives (you can see some on the comments below). W/o resources, however, it is impossible to achieve such and also report on it, also on a foreign language. This is another reason why this DAO proposal is up.
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I see your post addresses different topics, and some not related to the DAO or its scope. Most seem based on your experience with other dApps in the ecosystem and/or Foundation initiatives. To better allocate your critiques and previous learning, I think this post here can help you direct suggestions to the different verticals and responsible stakeholders. From Ambassadors Program, Hackathons, NFTs initiatives, MarComms - you will find the strategy, paths and responsible parties there. Also keep in mind I am the only Foundation member on this DAO and, if you want to know what my circle is working on (and why) please refer to this post here.
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For cStables, you may want to talk to the Mento team or engage in any of the discussions here in the forum. So many relevant ones have taken place and the LatAm community have engaged – including a Colombian Peso proposition you may be interested on. Usually topics discussed are liquidity, exchange listings, integrations and others related to actual use cases. To have meaningful conversations, however, its crucial that you are addressing stakeholders in pertinent topics.
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You may also want to check, in case you have not yet, that the Regional DAOs are a global movement and initiative on Celo. Here you can get inspired by the Africa and India proposals and discussions.
Finally, and prior to assessing your points, I just wanted to share an excerpt of another post I made on the forum:
“While blockchain is a global technology, we believe that the Purpose of Celo as a community can only be fulfilled when grassroots actions are undertaken by the local communities. Our role in this journey is to provide the tools (e.g. incentives, structure, support) so that innovation and growth opportunities arise from within the communities that will be developing, using and profiting from such technologies created – starting from a local standpoint, but with potential for global impact in the broader Celo community – and beyond.”
Lets further dive into your comments.
[Dona Florinda’s Points]
- CELO should not finance more party-makers than engineers and social inovators.
- This party-first approach are creating a barrier within (far from expensive conferences) purposeful latam on-the-ground innovators. And they do exist!
- LatAm needs more social-technologists (hackers) than NFT makers.
- The 2000’s “internet community” sense is been reapropriated by web3 as a dystopic creators-consumers mass now, 20 years later.
No Party Budget
- This DAO proposal never set any budget for parties. However, given the mixed different feedback about we would like to propose a discussion about ADDING budget to parties. All: pls comment below if you think allocating 10% of events budget towards parties (meaning music/dance/drinks/laughter/bad crypto jokes on the dancefloor) is a good idea.
The Doer’s
- We are super happy to have doers on the initial DAO multisig formation, with proven track record in and out of Celo community. True social, technological and nature innovators. The profiles are different and complementary, from governance/accountability experts, to hackathon and crypto events masters, to new voices on web 3 and Celo community building leaders, and green (not washing) project executors. Not only that, but we already see here in this post so many volunteer contributors (community members and past Ambassadors) are ready to engage and co-host such initiatives.
No More NFTs - personal take
- As regards the no more NFTs comment,*, my personal view is to incentivize that more opportunities continue reaching reach top tier builders, thought leaders and entrepreneurs. This posture of not interfering on communities and founders decisions - but rather supporting them in what they see as best is one I will personally preserve – also as a show of respect to local knowledge and initiatives.
No More NFTs - DAO take
- I am one in many, and this is a DAO based not only on sacred economics but also Teal. Meaning: feedback is part of the process and will take place. When the hackathons are up, the challenges and prizes will be subject to community input. Technology, time and organization allowing, hackathon prizes will also be subject to community feedback.
- 90k per hackathon? when the mediators are just “git clone” and “yarn run” the already open-sourced celo-compose or celo-web3-stacks? 90k can bootstrap one-year companies in Latam!!
- Past CELO hackatons already brought controversies, as some $100k winners barely had a git commit.
Budget Allocation
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You have a very good point here: every opportunity is unique. Some initiatives need more capital, while others don’t. Specially when the community can leverage on the connections the DAO members bring to the table.
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We tried to be extra prescriptive about costs bc we are concerned with transparency. On the practical side of things, however, you energized a good idea on how to present the budgets: adjust all to suggested target allocation, and put a minimum deliverable standard. This way you and all can join us in the transparency and accountability journey.
Hackathon Best Practices
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On the hackathon commits issue: super agreed. I see for instance that the latest Celo Hackathon has milestones related to commits - meaning a clear evolution from what you mentioned. Wdyt about this newmodel to solve the tension you pointed? Do you have any other suggestions you want to share at this moment?
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I co-organized two hackathons on Celo. In one, in around 3 weeks 300 developers from Brasil enrolled. This was the first hackathon ever on Celo community done in Portuguese. While I am most proud of this, I learned that w/o constant and dedicated support in Portuguese there is no way for the dev community to grow. @ewertonLP Joined our ecosystem in the occasion. He build a company, successfully fundraised and now is also a Dev Rel Ambassador!
Note: Ignoring the need for localization and translation and its costs, but also and the opportunity to nurture a local community is a very good way not to achieve any progress and miss some relevant “competitive advantages”.
Lack of Community Awareness
- There is a reported and proven lack of awareness and positioning of Celo in LatAm / lack of docs translated to Portuguese and Spanish / lack of enough local DevRel support / lack of sufficient Dev Ambassadors / lack of infra – among so many other details are relevant for the success of any of the endeavors listed here. The savvier we are unfortunately doesn’t make any of these cheaper - but indeed help us make better choices.
This is actually very good prep for your next questions.
- One million and a half brazilian reais ($240k) to run social media? you can buy a dedicated agency for daily work for 5 years.
- What is the sense of doing “Instagram lives” { sorry, why endorse Meta’s platforms-as-vigilance first? }, or Twitter lives, when this lives today dont pass 5 people beyond the invited’s crews.
Oi / Hola! Aqui Falamos Outras Linguas…
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LatAm has independent Portuguese and Spanish contents being produced outside the Foundation. Although this is an extremely complex matter and a point of pain to any Web3 solution, me and others energized an initiative never seen before on Celo community:
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Ambassadors were leading the Portuguese and Spanish social media channels since its launch! Focusing on grass roots awareness and education, using a bottom up approach. I think you will appreciate to know this, as you seem to be a supporter of Ambassadors work. Sadly their grants are all over and this work was paused. This DAO aims at putting back comms on the communities hands.
Meta concerns: Meta in Portuguese means GOAL, and the goal is to grow
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We have learned a lot together, an sustain that a budget of 10k for Portuguese and 10k for Spanish a month, to encompass: content creation / localization / traffic adds / support material for hackathons and awareness endeavors in the following platforms: Twitter / Telegram / Instagram / Discord / TikTok is not only shy but rather tight (around 1k per media per language). Unless you want to keep all discussions and growth subject to people speaking English (what is questionable and not supported by the community here on the Forum, on Discord, on TG/IG and Twitter) an effort needs to be made.
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Community feedback on this topic is that ignoring social media in LatAm is a questionable and superficial strategy, constantly undertaken by foreigners that don’t understand the locals culture and adopt a very US/European-centric view of crypto. This has been widely discussed in Discord. I would like to invite you to join every Tuesday 11:15am GMT-3. Discussions are held in Portuguese and Spanish, so you will feel home.
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If you have any social media agencies that would do Web3 work for this price for 5 years please send their contact and proposal. In any case, maybe you want to get to know a little more about the amazing work that was done by the Ambassadors in social media for LatAm and may even praise their hard work of “landing” Celo for the first time in Portuguese and Spanish.
- I am really afraid the one-million-dollars Mila-proposal are going to benefit just her NTF-makers friends-of-friends, while reading their discord.
- Do you want to share a link to “their discord” so we can preserve the good faith in this discussions?
- $100/hour is a mockery, in a place where the fulltime-month salary (160h work) is around $200. Of course many of her new “friends” want a piece of the cake.
What can you buy with minimum wage? If you think your basic needs is the answer, thats probably bc you don’t live in LatAm
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Can you share a link to this claim? This is below minimum wage in some LatAm countries. So foreigners can relate, here is a good article. Click and check - you will see what a minimum wage can buy, among other info.
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On a more objective front, given the “remuneration” of the DAO is capped at 10% max of its value (or around USD 100k year or less than 5k a month per language (ignoring that we are talking about at least 4 very relevant target countries), you can see how modest this proposition is.
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Its a rather high accomplishment to deliver all the above w/o proper compensation and incentives. I praise all who volunteered to this and state that maybe we need to find a model in the future where there is proper compensation (and prosperity for this DAO too) for the extreme heavy lifting this proposal will entail.
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Another relevant point you might want to consider: If you believe LatAm people should be remunerated less than some standard international DAOs its certainly your right - but not something we agree with. We should not Tier Celo community globally, based on 1st world/second class type of approach.
On a personal note: Although I waived receiving any pay for this your comment made me think maybe this is not fair given the amount of work I will have to undertake.Thus, I will reconsider this point.
- There is a “prosperity as luxurious” aesthetics been performed that creates an aversion on the technologists/hackers scene where I presented the exciting cStables.
The Opportunities and the Roadblocks
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Re. cStables: Interesting. Since the stables model is unique in terms of accessibility. On cReal for instance was launched with the largest number of partners integrated, and encompassed adoption by centralized and decentralized solutions. A real astonishing accomplishment, given you can pay any utility bill or on/off ramp using local dApps.
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I unfortunately don’t see any of the points you are raising being discussed here in the Forum, or contributions to open cStables discussions (past and current such as the cCOP one, that could be of interest to you given you say you are from Colombia). I don’t quite understand what you are talking about, or why you are bringing this to the context of this DAO that has super clear and straightforward goals and responsibilities.
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You might want to direct your comments re. cStables to the Mento team (another example of how relevant it is to address tensions to the stakeholders responsible), or make comments to the cCOP open discussions above (or to any other cStables discussions myself and the community have engaged on. Usually such discussions relate to: liquidity / fees / slippage / integration / opportunities).
- I did read Eisenstein book and it is sad that the Carbon-Credit market is full of mercenaries far from the real preoccupation with our sacred forests, and Celo should be very careful to avoid green-washing involvements.
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Relevant point. DAO and supporting people on the comments that have expertise on the space may be interested to exchange ideas with you on how to advance areas of mutual interest and relevance. Can you share the projects you have been involved in this space and or learnings to help us grow?
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We host a lot of these conversations on the Discord on Tuesdays. I would like to invite you to join the spaces in Portuguese and Spanish.
“We do want -and need- financial inclusion and new fair FinTechs and platforms! My suggestion would rather to endorse Federated Ambassadors /Leads per country (rather than One Queen)”"
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I am #1 fan of the Ambassadors initiative and, although the budget for it is out of my scope in the Foundation I was lucky to work and energize initiatives with several - such as social media channels in PT/Spanish being led by Ambassadors. This was a first, and something I strongly advocated for and supported.
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We will propose a wording switch from “Support Personal” to “Ambassadors” on the above - as this is more true to the collaboration they will perform. If you want to be an Ambassador for the hackathons, for example, we would be happy to consider.
Funny last note: My name, Camila, means “The Servant”. So “Queen Camila” is actually a very interesting thing to think about. Camila, Mila, Queen: feel free to call me whichever - specially if you are calling me to propose solutions to existing factual tensions that are hindering the growth of LatAm community and initiatives.
think in Local Currency.
