Project Champion: senad.eth
Board of Directors: senad.eth, Bananachain, sandeepdas, Shaun/dancing_penguin.eth
Authors & Editors: senad.eth, Bananachain
Date Created: Sept 3rd, 2022
Date Posted: Oct 14th, 2022

Table of Contents

1. TL;DR
2. SUMMARY OF S5 ACTIVITIES
3. GOALS FOR S6
4. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
5. NEXT STEPS

TL;DR

Project Description
We are the research focused externally facing entity of BanklessDAO, a collective of aligned and professional Bankless Members who aim to accrual value to BANK by drafting Crypto insight research reports for BANK/tlBANK-holders and custom research reports for projects & protocols in Web3.

Project Goal
Producing the highest quality research content in Web3 that helps customers to cut through the noise and make smart decisions

Total funding requested
780.000,00 BANK

Gnosis multisig wallet
0x2Ec31d709ECE9449EB57039BE05B023559bF3CB6

• Bankless Research notion page here
• Capabilities Deck [DRAFT] here
• Landing Page Outline here
• Management Planning Outline here

SUMMARY OF S5 ACTIVITIES

…infrastructure/administration

• Defined our MVV - mission, vision, values
• Ratified working agreement by poll decision
• Created & maintained Bankless Research Notion Page
• Secured banklessresearch.com/banklessresearch.xyz domain
• Created emails for directors
• Conducted a S5 retrospective
• Created a Bankless Research Transaction Ledger
• Document positioning Bankless Research within bDAO structure
• Started member onboarding project

…grants/client procurement

• Established a Bankless Research Grants List
• Submitted our Grants Proposal for Gitcoin R15
• Kickstarted grants working group/pod
• Started grant hunting process workstream

…research/product offerings

• Crafted a writing style guide outline
• Mapped out our product offerings
• Started working on a pitch deck
• Started working on a playbook V1

GOALS FOR S6

We are striving to be cash-flow positive by the end of S6. Funds will primarily be used for compensating the squad members who will be working on the following tasks in S6.

• Finalizing and disseminating the capabilities deck to external audiences (and also internally within BanklessDAO)
• Finalizing a simple landing page
• Finalize a first version of the website, which will outline the vision, capabilities, team profiles and offer
• Craft, implement and action a brand strategy
• Craft and activate an initial marketing strategy, focusing on developing a social media presence, create thought leadership content, identify and activate partnerships, and initiate 1-1 conversations with potential clients
• Build a sales funnel
• Identify, write and submit focused grant applications
• Establish a research roster
• Participate & engage in IRL crypto events
• Seek interview-opportunities in online / offline web3 events & participate in AMAs

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Directors are role holders and will be compensated in a lump sum. Team members will be compensated via coordinape and other incentive structures where applicable. Role holder salaries as well as coordinape rounds will be paid/conducted on a monthly basis.

COMPENSATION BREAKDOWN

S6 KPIs

Commitments

Bankless Research is committed to adding to the revenue stream/utility of banklessDAO thus bringing back value for funding received by adhering to the respective policies in place at the time.

We are open to explore further value alignment options with banklessDAO if and when they arise in the future, in line with other projects.

banklessDAO is also committed in supporting the locking of BANK tokens - time locked BANK (tlBANK/veBANK) in its quest to generate stronger alignment of its members with banklessDAO and increase the number of transitions of guest pass holders to L1 membership tier level. To this end, Bankless Research will commit starting with season 6, to fill paid senior role holder positions only with members holding and retaining at least an L1 membership level throughout the same season. Once the tlBANK system is in place, only L1 members upward who have locked their tokens will be eligible for paid senior role holder positions.

NEXT STEPS

• Recruit more talent for the project
• Update & optimize our workstreams
• Finalize the capabilities deck outlining our offer
• Finalize the 1st version of the website for launch
• Activate the social media presence

How do we feel about approving this grant?

@senad.eth @Bananachain
As a current member of Bankless Research, I voted NO here’s why:

• This budget proposal was drafted at an unannounced, gated call. As a member of Bankless research (before it even was Bankless research) who has not missed any of the 3 weekly meetings, is “support” for the “treasurer”, why is it that myself and the other br members were not given the option to provide input.

• Our ratified working agreement (which is referenced to as such in this budget proposal) seems to have been deemed antiquated after its long 3 month life. (Although it is referenced to being ratified in this proposal), was replaced yesterday, without any discussion/consensus about changing our existing governance. The disregard for our current working agreement concerns me.

• This budget is not parallel with the number of role holders or the requirements of the role holders as outlined in the linked document of this proposal.

• There are also multiple linked documents in this budget proposal that have not been presented/discussed with the project members. I am concerned with the lack of transparency.

• In this budget proposal, you outline that e-mails have been created for directors. This would also promote non-transparency, which is not in align with either the ratified or the rogue working agreement.

• The details of Season 5 accomplishments stated in this proposal is semi-true at best.

• Moreover, the members you have stated are active members are not the active members of Bankless research and there has not been a single discussion of a member onboarding project (unless this was also implemented at the gated meeting)

• The details of the Season 6 goals in this proposal has not been discussed with the members of Bankless research.

Please keep in mind that I would have loved to vote yes, as I have dedicated a large amount of time to Bankless research. However, I was not given the opportunity to have my voice heard on the changes that have been made, affecting the budget and the project overall. I still would have loved to vote yes, with hopes that my and other br members voices would be heard, but the sheer unawareness of the fact that all of the things above are contradictions to the working agreement and the lack of consideration for the contributors of the project, a project that is a group effort in decentralized-land-ia, not a dictatorship or monarchy.

Without going into the details here I can only say to every single bDAO member that none of her accusations are true and I’m more than ready to disprove every single one of them. I’m ready to have any open discussions. I can’t believe that one can attempt to sabotage a budget proposal and ruin a bankless citizens’ reputation by posting such a post without a) providing any evidence & b) without the fear of fearing any consequences.

@Sprinklesforwinners this is unacceptable and should have consequences for you.

Instead of addressing her concerns you attacked her. Disappointed

This is actually very concerning for me personally because I have worked with both @senad.eth and @Sprinklesforwinners and both of them are exceptionally hardworking, fully committed to bDAO and have high levels of integrity. It is sad to see both of them as warring factions. Can we address each of the concerns raised one by one, remove any misconceptions that may have been caused, and action anything that is needed to end this strife? BR has a lot of potential as a project, and I personally (as one of the Directors entrusted with an important responsibility) wouldn’t like this kind of a beginning.

Have the discussions here? Who are you trying to punish?

Senad.

This response has been thought provoking at best.

You’ve managed to not respond to any of her questions. You’ve managed to call her questions accusations, and you finish it up with stating that she should have consequences. I truly hope you can reread your response and create a proper response, discussing her questions.

You’ve mentioned “without going into details”. The entire point of this proposal is for people to vote on things they understand. They shouldnt be afraid to respond to you! This is nuts! I see these words you’ve posted here

b) without the fear of fearing any consequences.

@Sprinklesforwinners this is unacceptable and should have consequences for you.

If there is a question that anyone in bDAO who wants to vote on this proposal, they should be allowed to ask that question, and receive an answer without fear of repercussions from the author.

I can’t believe that one can attempt to sabotage a budget proposal and ruin a bankless citizens’ reputation by posting such a post without …

Provide the evidence you’ve said that you have to prove her wrong, if she is wrong.

This is not Corporate America, we aren’t subject to the “reprocussions up to and including dismissal that i’m inundated with during every compliance course i’m forced to take at work”.

Like @sandeepdas9179 has stated, we need to take a look at the proposal, go through the issues, (which apparently starts with whether Bankless Research actually even agreed on this proposal before it was posted on forum) and find a pathway forward for this project.

Without further ado, Let’s dig into the proposal.

In order for me to vote yes on this proposal, I would want to see the pathway to self-sovereignty. There are holes when it comes to this proposal, and understanding the point of Bankless Research in bDAO.

where have you done this so far? I know of the FEI proposal, which i believe was put int he stablecoin research multi sig? has any of that gone to any other project, or to the dao treasury? (please correct me if it has)

what are these other incentive structures where applicable? Applicable to what?

is this along the lines of bankless consulting?

what offer? was this completed with the 240k bank that was given to you in S5?

Almost everything that is stated in S5 doesnt amount to any work that can be brought back in value to the DAO. (although I’ve seen the work that @dancingpenguin.eth has done and i see the talent there), but you’ve obtained 240k and I dont see a reason why that amount need grow 3X when you havent brought that much to the table.

do not get me wrong by any means. I’ve seen the talent behind bankless research, and what they are able to do. Its frankly top notch. But it almost seems like they’re being hamstrung by decision making at the top. Is this a decentralized project? should there even be a top? You’ve asked for 240k, haven’t brought forward much for that as bankless research, and now you’re looking for more bank to get it right this time.

this, and the actions I’ve seen in this particular post are unacceptable. I’m a very long way from saying yes for this proposal.

Hi friends!

Just trying to put some context on this discussion, and put some light on some points that @Sprinklesforwinners brought up. Please note that I can’t speak to everything, as I have not been a part of many of these activities:

1. My understanding is that the V2 working agreement is still a draft that senad was going to bring forth to the group, and everyone on the bankless research team agrees that it needs more editing, input, and ratification before it is official. The V1 proposal currently says that it is depreciated, which is not true and it is very reasonable that anyone could take that at face value!

2. Re: onboarding. The member onboarding project is my responsibility. I have discussed what this process can be with people (I can dig up discord mentions if wanted) this for a few months with people, at meetings, and senad has created a great google form for us to assist in onboarding as we are forming a more formal system with catapult.xyz . My apologies to banklessDAO for being slow on this: I was devoting time to developing grants streams (Which often take several months!) so that we can fund ourselves externally. I strongly believe that there will be a complete onboarding funnel in place by S5 end, and I believe we will have a best-in-class onboarding system in S6.

3. Bankless research emails are mainly useful, in my eyes, for external communication outside of BanklessDAO and bankless research. I think we have also used them for notion permissions. They have not been used to my knowledge for any gated communication.

4. There are some draft documents linked to in this grant proposal that represent significant work by subgroups within the team, but have not been discussed by the whole team. As they are not represented to be finalized, I personally don’t see a problem with this.

5. Communication could have clearly been better, some workstreams could have been handled more transparently, and there are some changes in the budget proposal that are different than the working agreement, such as the number of directors (we had two leave recently due to overcommitments in other areas of their lives). This is clearly a deficit by the BR lead coordinators, including myself. That being said, I do believe that this grants proposal document aligns with the spirit of the working agreement, and with the work done by the group as a whole. I’m happy to have discussions here or otherwise, as to specifics where misalignments exist.

6. Like @sandeepdas9179 has mentioned, I strongly believe that everyone who has been working in bankless research has only the best intentions for everyone in the project and wants to work in a decentralized manner.

Yeah, we are both service entities, and we gotta get people to buy our service.

The obvious one is getting paid for working on external projects!

I believe this is the services on offer?

Thanks for this. A couple of follow up question.

Is this proposal reflective of working agreement 1, or agreement 2.

I’m not going to get into the meeting that occurred today, that’s a different animal.

Getting paid working on external projects, how is that getting paid out? Externally or internally, I assume from clients.

In season 5 there was a proposal completed for 240k bank. I was asking where those funds went.

and building on @dancingpenguin.eth 's thoughtful response, first of all this has become a mud slinging match on the forum, when these could have been resolved better in private or small group discussions. None of us are enjoying writing this, keeping in mind that we are trying to build something.

Like @dancingpenguin.eth I have not been involved in Bankless Research, so I am not going to comment on the 240k, but let me clear up some semantics here:

1. The offer is Bankless Research’s offer / suite of services / capabilities that we are going to provide to external paying clients AND to any bDAO Guild approaching us for research work. For any entity being built up, our offer is fluid and evolving. The V1 doc that @senad.eth has attached is being finalised as we speak by me and @dancingpenguin.eth along with help with some interested BR members. It has got nothing to do with this funding proposal. We are not stopping this work till the time a decision on this funding proposal comes

2. Same for talent onboarding - We have folks joining BR weekly calls and @dancingpenguin.eth is putting together a dedicated onboarding workflow and process for which we are even evaluating best practice tools. Again this workstream is not dependent on the outcome of this proposal because we are continuing with it now

3. Yes, we will be going down the route of Bankless Consulting because @senad.eth mentions achieving self sufficiency by earning our own revenues is the goal. This is exactly what Bankless Consulting does. It will take us time to reach that destination, which is again outlined in the funding proposal

4. When we get external projects from paying clients (in our road to self sufficiency), teams will be staffed on the project along with a Research Lead and PM. The team will be incentivised like the way a consulting team is done in a consulting framework (aka Bankless Consulting model)

The whole objective of why BR started seems to have been lost in this whole mud slinging match. BR originated with the vision of becoming an external client facing, revenue earning entity with its genesis in bDAO (aka Bankless Consulting). When we reach that stage, our incentive structures will be different (aka Bankless Consulting). Because we have just started and we haven’t reached that self sufficiency is the driver behind this funding proposal, where the request is for BANK as the currency of compensation.

I am not sure where we will end up now with this, but I personally promise that I will endeavour to continue what we have started even if it requires a rebirth or a transformation (hopefully not).

We don’t have any single external projects yet. That is a proposed paid out suggestion, which has not been implemented because there is no single external paying client yet

@dancingpenguin.eth @sandeepdas9179 I appreciate you both and your efforts here. Also, please note that I still want to vote yes here, and could, Assuming the proposal can be edited to reflect correct/current information or the contributions are allowed to vote on any changes that directly impact the budget

@dancingpenguin.eth Thanks for that clarification with the email addresses.
I can see here that I read it as e-mails as electronic messages, but it seems that e-mail addresses - simple error! Thanks for clarifying!!

@sandeepdas9179 and @dancingpenguin.eth

Always appreciative! Thanks for that.

Here’s the post for the 240k

Bankless Research S5 Budget Proposal

First let’s address the elephant in the room. @Sprinklesforwinners and I are women, in a male dominated area.

We’ve both been subject to manipulation, condescending attitudes, discrimination (super weird when we’re all supposed to be anon) and negativity.

You can call it general mudslinging, but it (and what you see above) is deeper than that, and unacceptable.

I’m disappointed that it’s now marred a proposal that has potential, but it’s an important issue that has to be addressed.

However! What you and @dancingpenguin.eth are doing, is what should have been done in the first place! Address the questions!

So my main sticking points (aside from generalized misogyny that has nothing to do with this proposal)

1. Whether bankless research actually agrees on the structure that has been provided in the proposal (I don’t see it, but it’s getting there)

2. Is bankless research working as a department, a project, or…

3. Do you have a set game plan with a higher than 33% win rate or a higher than 6 grant application, or is there a reason why you’ve settled on this.

4. Do you perhaps have any potential clients that warrant a large ask?

5. This proposal, and answers, sound close to bankless consulting with a sprinkle of research guild. Why doesn’t this just go into research, or why doesn’t this just serve as a grants department or client facing department, for research guild?

I could get closer to agreeing to this if there was an answer for 240k… I’m concerned that there are directors in bankless research who don’t know what the previous ask was about.

But it’s not out of the ordinary.

Sorry, if we knew about the 240, plus the questions. I believe in you two, and the others I’ve seen. So you can get there.

Dear sprinklesforwinners

thank you for your comments to the S6 Bankless Research budget proposal. You have raised issues which I would like to address.

The budget proposal draft was submitted to the Bankless Research channel 7 September by me. Since then it had been out in the Bankless Research channels available to anyone interested to comment or add their views. Bananachain then, given that the budget proposals needed to be handed in by 14 October, started working on it. To conduct a first revision a meeting was held between myself and Bananachain on 4 October. Following this a second and final work session took place on 14 October. The document was always accessible - at any time. The second work session was specifically announced during the all teams weekly meeting on the 11 October. The only “gated” aspect about the meetings was probably the choice of time, since Bananachain and I have aligned time zones and therefore chose to meet in the early morning when both are available. Had others been interested in taking part, they would have chosen a time to accommodate these members.

The ratified working agreement for S5 is still in force. I have created a Working Agreement Version 2 draft in anticipation for S6 in response to two directors who had stepped down from their Bankless Research positions requiring minor adaptations. This version 2 Working agreement was announced in yesterday’s (18 October) all-team weekly call and is now open for feedback by the Bankless Research members.

We assume you’re relating to the Bankless Research Working Agreement V1 when you refer to “as outlined in the linked document”. I (the project champion) have voted to appoint 6 directors to the board in September. Two of these have since stepped down. As they didn’t appoint successors as stipulated in the Working Agreement V1 (p.11f.), I have chosen to not fill these roles.

All the Bankless Research documents are publicly available and have at some point been introduced to and discussed by the community.

The emails were introduced for the directors to communicate with third parties outside of Bankless Research to fulfill their respective tasks and mandates.

We cannot verify the claim you are making above and would invite you to provide more specific details.

See comments above.

This post has probably been your most active contribution to the issue so far and we hope to see more of it at Bankless Research going forward.

You are absolutely right, a more detailed reply is in order here.

How were the season 5 funds used?

hey homie,

Allocated funds were used in accordance with our S5 funding request. No payouts have been conducted yet.