# Meeting Notes ## **📅** Tuesday, **July** 6, 2021 **Notes** * Want to make sure we don't over commit with funding proposal, etc. Don't want to fall into trap of feeling like we need to perpetually fundraise. * Want more vision and mission to align behind. Possibly also explain roadmap for what happens if someone donates. * Start by writing a blog post per week, starting with mission / vision post. * Want to start branding / creating an endowment meme. Not sure exactly what. Possibly Pando? Or make it purposefully blank and let community decide? * Ether Cards are cool NFT example. * Want to bring more people into convo, start inviting more. * Seem aligned on using some NFT / community mechanics to fundraise, using those to vote on what protocols to allocate funds to, and relying on some third-party protocol's governance to ultimately allocate funds. * Keep things fun and moving forward. * Thinking about what value community provides. All seem to enjoy discussing philanthropy, DAOs, etc. Perhaps that's the hook? * Be careful not to commit to specifics in blog, more around intentions. **Next steps** * Blog post about mission / vision / high-level roadmap (Based, Greg) * Add donating (and possibly wallet connection and adding name to website) (Jared, Ford) * Start seeding more conversations in Discord and inviting people (All) ## **📅** Tuesday, **June** **29**, 2021 **Notes** * Presented DAO research * Boardroom.info * Parcel.money * Aragon * Colony * DAOHAUS * DAO decision * A lot of solutions are pretty heavy-weight * Decided to start with a gnosis safe with 2 of 5 signers and go from there * NFTs for fundraising and community * Exploring idea of minting NFTs that are sold or given to donors * NFTs could gate access to Discord, events, etc. * Outstanding question around purpose of NFTs and whether it's counter to the mission of the endowment to be exclusive * Idea of getting artists from around world to contribute art * Idea of generative NFTs * Idea of partnering with POAP * Collaboration ideas * Poap for NFTs * Arweave for hosting NFTs * Babylon for treasury management * Gnosis Safe for treasury * Collab Land for gating Discord access * Graph for safe subgraph **Next steps** * Ford work on subgraph * BN set up gnosis safe * Greg look into Arweave and NFTs / Art * Jared add address to site and talk to artists * Mus help mock adding address to site ## **📅** Tuesday, **June** **22**, 2021 **Notes** * Need more momentum. But how? * Start setting smaller goals that enable actions like depositing funds. * Do in parallel to thinking about governance * Open to applying for a grant * Things to differentiate us * Clear objective (What do we want to do? What question to answer?) * Clear funding need (Amount, what for) * Try to get grants from multiple protocols * Ideas * Could apply for research grant to outline project * Could apply for MVP grant to get something off ground (e.g. to fund small overhead costs, maybe some part-time comp) * Could apply for full project team grant (e.g. hire someone full-time) but this seems like too much right now, maybe later * Could donate to the endowment directly as well * Would be cool to get other protocols involved * Can start having exploratory conversations now * But also good to figure out what we want to do * Aligning on experimenting with governance being purpose of Ethdowment * Endowment is a long-term, solid funding mechanism * Do lots of fast, iterative governance experiments on top * “Endowment like ocean current, experiments like waves breaking” * “Experiment to find less bad governance” or “less shitty governance” * Possible MVP * A DAO-as-a-service that we can deposit into and vote (e.g. DAO HAUS) * Vote on what protocols to send funds to (i.e. what wallet address) * Those protocols implement their governance structures to vote on where to allocate the funds * Need to think about the goals and how to measure the effectiveness of the different governance experiments. What’s the north star? * Difficult because how we measure this and how we decide what experiments to allocate to is in effect a form of governance * Regardless, we should have a mission / vision / hypothesis around what is “good” governance. E.g. is it what the most Ethdowment users / donors like? * Transparency is important, will be built into DAO model * Possible roadmap * This week: explore DAO solutions * Next week: decide on DAO solution and implement * Following week: deposit capital into DAO and vote on where to invest * Onwards: start talking to governance recipients for first batch of funds * Next steps * CA to share DAO research so far * Come to next meeting with DAO as as service solutions ## **📅** Tuesday, **June** 15, 2021 **Agenda** * Review [**Roadmap**](https://ethdowment.gitbook.io/ethdowment/overview#roadmap) and align on plan * Next steps for lifecycle, brand, governance * Explore operational funding? **Notes** * What is the core innovation we want to focus on? * Permanence ("around in 1k years") * Sustainability / not having to constantly fundraise * Experiment with radical democracy * Decentralized philanthropy * What are the governance options? * Multi-sig / board of directors * Capital-weighted voting (1 token 1 vote, gov alpha) * Democracy (1 human 1 vote) -- difficult to implement now * Quadratic voting, with or without sybil resistance * Meta governance -- allow people to direct funds to different governance experiments. e.g. direct funds to a 1 vote per token protocol or a 1 vote per human protocol. * Soft-test / mvp democracy via simple Discord vote. Could be good v1. * Could allocate funds based on # votes and not a winner(s) take all system. e.g. some nonprofits could get $10. Some gas price concerns. * Discussion around experimentation * Seems plausible that we can create a protocol for accepting deposits, investing funds, allocating donations, and withdrawing funds. * Governance is harder. Perhaps we approach it as an experiment. Try to create a system that can create a system vs trying to create the perfect system. * Discussion around protocol partnerships / grants * Could protocols allocate grant budgets to us for development? * Could protocols save treasury funds in Ethdowment? * Could protocols use Ethdowment to allocate grants? * Roadmap * [**v1 roadmap**](https://ethdowment.gitbook.io/ethdowment/overview#roadmap) in Gitbook seems ok **Next steps** * Ford and Jared to discuss next steps on protocol development * Everyone try to invite 1 new person to Discord per week * CA explore ethereum foundation partnership ## **📅** Tuesday, **June** 8, 2021 **Participants: CA, Jared, Ford** **Next steps** * ~~Schedule call and share with community (get Zoom link from Jared)~~ * ~~Update Gitbook from free trial~~ * ~~Try to get 5 people on next call~~ * ~~Reach out to pool together~~ * Start to explore operational funding * ~~Look into tax implications of contributing~~ ## **📅** Tuesday, **June** 1, 2021 **Participants: CA, Jared, Mustafa** ### Agenda * Start promoting to people * ETH foundation guys * On Deck * SPC * Friends * What questions do we want to answer? * Voting * Product roadmap * Start proposal system in Discord * CA to write proposal for governance * CA to look up and share example proposals * Jared to write proposal for product lifecycle * CA add cal event and link to next community call so new members can join * Governance ideas * Open to idea of a governance token * Could be nice incentive for early users * Restrict % of returns that could fund overhead to keep aligned with mission * Lock at beginning to ensure used for governance * CA to write proposal * Branding and marketing * Could do profile avatar NFTs for first 1,000 donors as marketing thing * Like permanent aspect of ethdowment and pyramids, aliens, etc. * Want to play up permanence * Think we can also play up fun a bit -- do something unique that helps us stand out. * Have something people can display elsewhere -- NFT, emoji, etc. like being part of a club or having their name on a building -- make giving part of digital identity. * Look at Badger, Yearn, Yam, bored ape yacht club, Index Coop, etc. as examples * **Goals for next week** * Submit proposals * Get 20 total people into Discord (\~14 more) * **Next steps** * Jared lifecycle draft * Mus to brainstorm brand / fun ideas * CA proposal examples and gov token proposal * CA add calendar event and link to Discord / Gitbook * CA write blurb and put in Gitbook * CA add channel descriptions to Discord ## **📅** Tuesday, May 25, 2021 **Participants: CA, Jared, Mustafa** ### Agenda * CA agenda items * What do we want to do this week? * Brand mark across properties * Small site edits * Start twitter * Share with advisors * Spec v1 dapp / protocol? * Any documentation edits? * Add Gitbook to website? ✅ * Ford's saving idea?! * Discuss fun vs professional balance for brand * Add a little spice to landing page? * "Welcome" sign rotating by language? * Song + animation? * What to build brand around? * Start to create a theme to build brand around now? * Brand is explicitly tabula rasa and we wait until community vote? (slight preference for this... e.g. could use white flag for now) * Governance plans re: donor vs human votes * Ok to start sharing site with potential advisors? * Thoughts about general representation (i.e. diversity)? * When we're ready to do intro blog post we should use mirror: ### Notes * Start inviting people soon, but after we update site with brand, twitter link, github link * Like Ford's idea of people being able to save and withdraw from endowment * Product tiers in the future * Funds: save or donate * Governance: multi-sign, gov alpha (1 token 1 vote), forked communities, 1 person 1 vote * MVP is likely save or vote + multi-sig or 1 token one vote gov alpha voting on proposals. Later on figure out 1 vote per human. * Design idea of seedling inside Ethereum logo ### Next Steps * Finish logo - Mus * Add logo to all properties (website, gitbook, github, twitter, discord) - CA and Jared * Add links to all properties to website (keep discord and gitbook primary and secondary CTAs) - Mus and Jared * Product spec and tiers document (in plain english, not technical yet) - CA then send to Jared and Mus for feedback ## **📅 Tuesday, May 18, 2021** **Participants: CA, Jared, Mustafa** ### **Agenda** * Mustafa’s Background * Jared’s Background * Likes the “Permanence” of crypto projects like this DAO * Already built a smart contract * Receive money -- doesn’t do anything with it yet * Meeting Goals * What are we trying to achieve (high level) * Progress tracking * Milestones with dates * How do we want to work * Recurring meetings ### **Notes** * Build website * Forcing function for figuring out copy * Website will be intro * Gitbook will be explanation docs on governance * Let people put in money from Day 1 * Would want to look into a security audit * 75k is cheapest one * Look into southpark commons for someone to look over code * Website will pitch the basic concept * If we can’t hit the milestone, we’ll give money back or donate it to some charities * We frame up the possibilities * Timelines are helpful for establishing trust * We may not have decisions but some timeline will be essential for building trust * This should be one of the most trusted ideas that exist * Good community, trusted, doing good * Hypothesis: People will be supporting the “system” not so much the cause * Keep track of how much each address donated * Could assign tokens for donors so that they can * Governance protocol: * Multi-sig wallet * X-Y confirm transaction, it goes through * Smart contract / governor alpha ### **Action items** * Jared will ask around southpark commons for someone that knows about governor alpha * Agree on language for website * CA to open up discord group for anyone interested in the project * Agreed to new meeting frequency: * 10 AM EST / 7 AM PST * Every Tuesday (can be flexible) * CA to draft and publish documentation