Regional DAO Review Template by LuukDAO

Ecosystem DAOs
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Celo Regional DAOs Background
The Celo Regional DAOs were proposed as a program to empower local communities to spearhead Celo adoption and growth in their region. This comes from the belief that regional teams, with existing networks and a good understanding of regional needs, are better positioned to attract users, builders, and partners in these locations.

After several months of drafting proposals, the first Regional DAOs (Africa and Latam) received funding from the Celo Community Treasury in early 2023. Later that year, Europe and Korea also passed a proposal to run a Regional DAO.

While still early and not without occasional tension, the Regional DAOs showed signs of success in engaging, attracting, and nurturing regional users and stakeholders on Celo.

Regional DAOs as Celo Public Goods
Following CGP115, Celo Community Treasury has created a budget of up to $500,000 cUSD to fund regional DAOs for the first half of 2024.

Personal Review Rubric
Because of the high interest in the Regional DAO category (currently 5 drafts on Forum for a total budget > $500,000), I have produced a Regional DAO Rubric, which I (LuukDAO) will use to review and vote on Regional DAO proposals. This Rubric aims to increase the overall quality and efficiency of Regional DAOs by providing best practices and pointers while making evaluation easier for Celo Voters.

Based on my experience incubating several local and regional ecosystems and playing a leading role in Celo Europe Season 0, I have produced the following Rubric to evaluate Regional DAO Proposals:

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Regional Relevancy The region is not relevant for Celo. The region has some relevance for Celo. The region is important for Celo adoption. Critical region for Celo adoption.
Program Outline The program is not clear and has no track record. The program has a clear outline The program has a clear outline with some proven plans. Clear program with proven and relevant plans.
Budget Unclear and overpriced budget. The budget can be understood. Clear budget with sufficient detail. Clear and detailed budget with reasonable prices.
Team No details about the team included. Some details are provided about the team. A clear overview of team members and their track records was provided. Strong team with a proven track record and regional network.
Accountability No milestones and payment terms were provided. Some milestones were provided, and payment terms were written out. Easy to track milestones provided. Clear program-related milestones and adequate payment terms.
Celo Relationship No previous relationship with Celo. Limited previous relationship with Celo. Existing relationship with Celo. Strong relationship with Celo and previously funded.

As always, this is an initial draft, and I’m eager to get a broader perspective and potentially update the Rubric before Celo Public Goods voting starts.

How I intend to use the Rubric
I will personally review each Regional DAO’s proposal using the Rubric and provide a write-up of my review and my resulting vote on the Celo Forum. In general, I aim to vote no on any proposal that doesn’t score at least 2 points on each item, as I see the ability to write a good proposal that includes all elements to be a must for a Regional DAO to exist.

I will review the Celo Europe Proposal and hope it can serve as a benchmark for other proposals. However, as I’m personally involved in Celo Europe, I will vote "Abstain" in Snapshot to not influence the outcome.

A final note on the Regional DAO program
I believe it’s relevant for the Celo Community Treasury to review the Regional Program as a whole in the next period. I am hopeful the Regional DAO insights produced in the following months will give us the required insights to determine if and how we want to continue the program.

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This is great! My only comment is around the ‘regional relevancy’ point, and how that can be better understood. Im sure lots of DAOs applying will all believe they are relevant, so how can we make it easier for people to check if their geographic status is ‘relevant’?

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That’s a great point. I was thinking about this a bit more yesterday.

As a starting point, I think information such as the Global Crypto Adoption Index combined with some GDP/population numbers could help showcase the “market size” of a specific region.

In addition, elements may make a region better fit for Celo and Vise-Versa, such as high degrees of remittances, the need for digital payment solutions, or large institutional partners looking for solutions that can exist on Celo.

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sounds like a great starting point to help future Celo DAOs better understand their chances of funding.

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My feeling is that the current regional DAO model is not adequate anymore, I think at some point at the end of H1 / beginning of H2… We should really consider moving away from DAOs to Projects / Initiatives instead!

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Hey @pcbo !

Airu here, what do you mean with projects is it just the terminology or a new approach?

Bless Airu

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I believe we need a entirely new approach :fire:

Regional DAOs were a cool experiment :test_tube: but didn’t 10x CELO.

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Intrigued! But also curious (still new to the Celo forum history),

What are the indicators that Regional DAOs are a failed experiment?

And what metric does 10x CELO mean? Is this token price, amount of unique Celo users, new projects building on Celo or people engaging with governance?

Care to share more about the new approach? :smiley:

Excited to hear more!

Bless Airu

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Great questions:

Re regional DAOs: they’ve been criticised as lacking accountability to the ecosystem, basically someone would come up with a ‘DAO idea’ and gets community funds and the ROI wouldn’t be palpable. Also, why use the term ‘DAO’? Most of the teams behind activities do not act as DAOs at all, there’s little decentralization as opposed to a lot of autonomy. I’m glad it was done, but this community should be able to learn & let go of legacy.

Re metric: it would depend from DAO to DAO, I advise you to go into every DAO proposal and see what ROI came out of it. DYOR.

Re new model/approach: up to the CGP Stewards to find out and proposing something – the sooner the better imo.

Hope this helps :pray:

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Hi @pcbo ,

Defentily helps!

I agree that reducing the use of the term DAO and focusing more on what the funds are used for (impact) is key.

I have to be honest I would love to go and see how each proposal performed on their deliverables. I have seen some reports pass by but it has been hard to find a place where we can follow how well people hold up to their commitments post-proposal acceptance.

I am also looking forward to this ‘new model/approach’ and would be keen to brainstorm about it and propose it to save the CPG stewards some time.

Bless Airu

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Hi @LuukDAO,

Hope you’re doing well! :star2:

Just wanted to share some thoughts on the template for reviewing Regional DAO proposals. I’m grateful for having such a helpful tool in place. It’s super important to establish some foundational metrics for analysis.

I did have a little concern regarding the ‘Celo Relationship’ section at the bottom of the rubric. My worry stems from the fact that newcomers to the Celo community might not have prior relationships with Celo, which could potentially lower their proposal score. However, being new to the Celo ecosystem could signal fresh opportunities for community growth, don’t you think?

So, a suggestion: What if we considered adding an inverse version of this row? This way, having less of a Celo relationship could score higher, valuing the creation of new regional DAOs a tad more. Or use other social credibility signals that could build trust between the community and new comer, listing previous work, etc.

Of course, this doesn’t mean existing initiatives shouldn’t get support – they definitely should!

I hope this makes sense and resonates with you! :seedling:

Bless Airu

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Hey @Airu !

Would be nice to create & maintain an accountability hub somewhere focused on regional DAOs and any other project or entity supported by the CELO ecosystem/community.

Maybe the Stewards can add it to the CGP notion?

Or maybe there’s something already like this @LuukDAO? Lmk.

Let’s do this.

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Hi @pcbo ,

Yes, Accountability practices and research are the most underfunded areas in web3 imho.

I would love to see a hub or at least clear examples around the usage and misuse of Celo community funds. I haven’t stumbled upon any document or list with these yet. The new Celo Governance system is very inspired by Optimism’s high-quality transparency and accountability practices (Optimism Code of Conduct) therefore it would be great to bring some of these optimistic governance practices into Celo governance. e.g Partial fund lockups, trust tiers, and conflict of interest reduction to name a few.

Curious to know if there is already work done on this or if there needs to be a sprint to build an essential governance pillar for the Celo Community to be voted in.

Curious to know more @LuukDAO

Bless Airu

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In the past, Celo Africa, Europe, and Latam have submitted progress reports (often every 3 months. You can find the most recent reports on those groups on the Celo Forum.

In the current proposals, Celo Africa, Europe, India, and Thailand all add an element of accountability by having the budget split into two tranches dependent on submitting a progress report.

In addition, the Active CeloPG Stewards are looking into leveraging Web3 native reporting tools, such as Hypercerts, to have more granular accountability and impact assessment of Regional DAOs. I imagine we can run an initial trial for better progress accounting already in Q1.

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Having personally engaged with the OP ecosystem, I don’t think their current Trust Tier and lockup structure are improving resource coordination in the majority of cases.

I imagine iterating on the current Celo Public Goods process and potentially moving to a structure focusing more on Strategies / Intent than SafeDAO and Optimism.

However, adopting a structure like that would mean significant changes for groups funded by the Celo Community treasury for the past years, and we need more discourse around it.

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From my perspective, running a regional growth initiative means you need the right understanding of the context of the Celo ecosystem. As such, I consider groups with positive prior relationships to be a less risky bet.

A previous relevant background would increase a group’s “team” score. Operating in a region that doesn’t have a lot of activity yet could increase the “regional relevancy score.”

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