OceanDAO Roadmap Update: Q3 2021 to EOY 2022

18-Month Plan Towards a Fully-Decentralized and Long-Term Sustainable Grants DAO

1. Introduction

OceanDAO is a community-curated grants DAO that is key to Ocean’s long-term sustainability. We aim for OceanDAO to be fully decentralized by the end of 2022, with the future up to the Ocean ecosystem. This post describes how we plan to get there.

The rest of this post is organized as follows.

• Section 2 gives an overview of past to future. It reviews how OceanDAO started from a small number of teams, and has grown and evolved since. It also outlines a future of greater scale, stability, and decentralization
• Section 3 elaborates on target outcomes
• Section 4 reviews tools towards the target outcomes
• Section 5 gives the specific roadmap, quarter by quarter to the end of 2022
• Section 6 concludes.

2. Overview, from Past to Future

From 0->1 (The Past)

Based on the Web3 Sustainability Loop design, it has been operational since Q4 2020. In early 2021 we published our 2021 Q1/Q2 roadmap. It outlined several key challenges; candidate solutions; and a cohesive plan to move forward. By Round 7 (late summer 2021) we had delivered on the plan’s targets.

Let’s review the major items.

In early summer 2021, we introduced a variety of changes in order to scale out OceanDAO. These three mechanisms together enabled the DAO to improve funding and gather sufficient capital efficiency to enable positive growth.

• Granular Y/N voting enabled each project to be more thoroughly curated.
• Variable funding enabled both small and large projects to easily access funding.
• Burning the remainder of funds not granted, introduced an ROI floor.

The impact of these updates has been significant. Internal processes to execute the monthly operations have steadily improved, and are beginning to scale out. Most importantly, projects have been able to increase their ability to access funds, and funds have been burned by the DAO as expectations from contributors continue to increase.

To 1->N (The Future — Scaling)

Where to from here? The overall goals are to scale funding, retain average ROI > 1.0 (necessary for growth), and to fully decentralize. We want successful community teams to access greater funding in order to scale aggressively. We want internal OPF teams to eventually be funded by the DAO, eroding differences between “core” and “community”. All teams that are delivering should feel “safe” with stable / reliable funding; so we need to update voting systems towards less volatile outcomes. To access greater funding, DAO projects need to more easily report updates and metrics, while voters should be able to improve efficiency by more effectively navigating this data. When voters are able to easily understand ROI, and projects can measurably prove fundamental outcomes, then funding can grow with impunity.

To summarize, the focus for OceanDAO in 2021–2022 is stability, scale, and decentralization.

We’ve already started in the stability and scale path as teams can now request larger amounts of funding, an increase from $20K cap to $50K (as of R10), adjustments to the funding distribution were also implemented to continue growing the number of returning teams contributing in OceanDAO. The introduction of a reporting process to maintain good standing will help participants reconcile their deliverables and outcomes for the DAO. Decentralized teams such as Ocean Pearl, are working on a comprehensive UX to bring the underlying mechanisms to life.

These are near term approaches to improve stability, scale, and decentralize. Let’s discuss the strategy more rigorously for longer time periods.

3. Target Outcomes 2021–2022

During the summer of 2021, the OceanDAO team continued identifying a wide range of challenges while identifying forward-looking solutions to achieve our growth and sustainability goals. Stability, scale, and decentralization were key concepts identified. The following outcomes emerged as North Stars, directing the evolution of the DAO.

Stability

• OceanDAO needs to have sustainable voting and funding systems to enable existing DAO and OPF teams to be funded by the DAO.
• Grantees should signal progress to the DAO in a consistent manner, while incentivizing projects to reach completion.
• Whale voting and the impact of onboarding new projects, should be softened.

Scale

• An UX that reflects the underlying mechanisms and supports the growing OceanDAO ecosystem needs to be built.
• A snowball effect of new projects and proposals entering the DAO.
• Multiple funding tiers should be introduced to facilitate the scaling of a wider range of projects.
• New methods to calculate and report ROI to reduce friction, and introduce new funding mechanisms.

Decentralization

• Automate grants program process to reduce overhead and human interaction.
• Decentralize grants program and funding distribution to enable new web3 functionality and interoperability to be developed.

4. Candidate Tools

With these outcomes defined, we identified many candidate tools to help drive these outcomes. Here are several promising ones, grouped by the target outcomes of Stability, Scale, and Decentralization.

Stability

Stability enables a stream of continuous funding for OceanDAO teams, aligning projects towards delivering outcomes, while improving proposal and voting efficiency.

• Voting and Funding Stability. Conviction Voting for more stable funding available to support larger teams. Shift over internal OPF teams to be funded by the DAO.
• Systems of accountability. Implement “Standing”. Teams submit updates to reconcile their grant deliverables. Integrate a decentralized dispute mechanism to remove OPF as a Certificate Authority. DAO can easily identify teams that are in good standing. Projects need to complete deliverables before applying for more funding.
• Soften whale voting and activity. Implement Quadratic Voting. Group all proposals under a single ballot. Full voting power can only be deployed once towards New and Existing teams.

Scale

Scale delivers important mechanisms that drive Ocean bottom-up initiatives. By improving ROI transparency and expanding funding tiers, OceanDAO can deliver funding more effectively. As incoming proposals snowball and the DAO grows in size, improvements to the UX will make significant impacts to every participant.

• Ocean Pearl. Define initial UX requirements and make them transparent. Formalize OceanDAO tech stack + FE/BE layers. Integrate Pearl team into Zenhub. Improve design and roadmap transparency. Decentralize FE.
• Expand funding tiers. Add lower and higher funding tiers. Make it easier for smaller projects to access funding. Increase the ceiling to fund larger teams. Increase transparency of each layer.
• Improve ROI transparency. Implement project standings. Develop new metrics and KPIs to report ROI. Improve FE/reporting systems.
• Grant Proposals “snowballs”. Develop new growth strategies. Build relationships with universities and other institutions. Implement DAO Week. Launch proposal referral program to incentivize virality.

Decentralization

Decentralization transforms manual processes into automated & scalable systems enabling further DAO decentralization with projects like Pearl. It enables us to better leverage emerging Web3 / DAO tooling.

• Automate grants program. Write grants program into code and reduce ongoing overhead. Remove human interaction. Integrate Pearl data.
• Decentralize grants program. Make grants web3 native. Decentralize fund distribution. Integrate systems like Kleros to decentralize conflict resolution while leveraging the right mechanisms.

5. Specific Plans By Quarter 2021–2022

With Stability, Scale, and Decentralization oriented outcomes, the OceanDAO Product Team did extensive planning. We reconciled this with internal challenges, community expectations, governance best practices, and the latest DAO designs.

Below is the result, for our 2021–2022 plans, organized quarterly. These plans support these three DAO pillars, and in turn (we hope) help to drive the outcomes. We also reserve the right to change our plans based on learnings in the rapidly evolving DAO environment.

The plans focus on OceanDAO products; dovetailing these are extensive activities in voting, funding, and communications towards the 2021–2022 OceanDAO goals.

Summary

This image summarizes the aims per quarter. It includes outreach (row 1), monthly ops (row 2) , and product work (remaining rows). The following subsections elaborate on product work, per quarter.

Q3 2021 Targets

We aim to complete the following by the end of Q3/2021. In fact, good news: the end of Q3 2021 is near; we can report that these are already complete. Highlights are automating the grants process, expanding available funding, and aligning Pearl.

• Project “Standings”. Give a means for teams to report their grant deliverables, so the DAO can better understand how well a team is delivering on its target outcomes. This helps align every participant towards ROI > 1.0, and reduces friction across the DAO. It’s a foundational element about team track record, on which future features can build.
• Automate via DAOBot. This is an activity to migrate grants ops from being done by hand to being executed by code. Proposals are deployed automatically, winners are calculated and reported on time, and the schedule is executed as intended. Anyone can read the code base, or visit the Airtable configuration, to see what is being designed and deployed.
• Ocean Pearl Alignment. The Pearl team is building a high-quality webapp to encompass key OceanDAO tasks, such as reviewing projects. They are working closely with the OceanDAO Team to align Pearl product goals with OceanDAO goals, and planning that results from it. This has improved transparency between teams and early communication around new features, while Pearl works towards onboarding initial users.
• Expand Available Funding: add $50k tier. The new mechanisms to increase transparency on team track record give the opportunity to raise the funding cap for teams that are delivering. So for round 10 we expand the ceiling to $50k for projects that have completed >= 3 proposals, with more to come in the future.

Q4 2021 Targets

We have the following goals for Q4/2021. The highlights include improving ROI measures, referrals, and softening whale voting.

• Easier for Teams to Calculate ROI. OceanDAO must handle softer and squishier goals, complementing the extreme precision of Ocean Data Farming. However, toward the “ROI > 1” goal, we can still make it easier for teams to report metrics, by providing them with more off-the-shelf tools. That’s the aim here.
• Referrals to Drive proposals. To continue growing, we must increase the number of proposals and new teams entering OceanDAO. The tactic here is to incentivize the DAO community to get New Teams to submit proposals that receive funding.
• Ocean Pearl Integration. Pearl is scheduled to be further integrated in Q4. OceanDAO teams will be able to register, update, and submit their proposals to the grants program through Pearl.
• Soften Effect of Whale Voting. Voting should reconcile skin-in-the-game (1-token 1-vote), with democratic ideals (people having sufficient voice). The Quadratic Voting (QV) mechanism balances these. We will implement it here, plus initial Sybil protection (needed once you go beyond 1-token 1-vote).

Q1 2022 Targets

We aim to complete the following by the end of Q1/2022. The highlights are launching a stable funding stream to make it safer to work in OceanDAO long-term.

• Stable / reliable income via Conviction Voting (CV). We want to make it feel “safer” to work for OceanDAO over longer time frames. This is critical to long-term ecosystem health. The general idea is to soften monthly binary yes/no funding outcomes. The specific approach is Conviction Voting . CV gives an effect of a “lowpass filter” over time: a voter’s weight on a project depends on their amount staked and length of time staked into the project. The overall setup is: OceanDAO would have two funding tracks: monthly “batch” voting (status quo), plus “continuous” voting (CV). CV funding allocations will start small, and increase based on learnings / feedback. ROI > 1.0 will be a key constraint in the CV track too.
• Refine Ocean Pearl. Keep working with Ocean Pearl team to support more OceanDAO user stories. This is a prerequisite to full decentralization.

Q2 2022 Targets

We aim to complete the following by the end of Q2/2022. The focus will continue to be around Conviction Voting to improve the overall system.

• Refine “stable / reliable income”. The “batch” voting track has been evolved and refined for the better part of a year, to get continually better at serving the community. We expect similar for “continuous” (Conviction Voting) track. Accordingly, this roadmap allocates two quarters worth of work to arrive at a CV system that we’re sufficiently comfortable with in order to scale funding.
• Decentralize Dispute Resolution. Currently, disputes on team “standing” are handled via community discussion, with the OceanDAO core team as the final arbiter if needed. The latter is centralized; fortunately it hasn’t been needed yet. To be fully decentralized, OceanDAO needs to decentralize this. Kleros decentralized arbitration is one way. Approach or timing is subject to change.
• Refine Ocean Pearl. Keep working with Ocean Pearl team to support more OceanDAO user stories.

Q3/Q4 2022 Targets

We aim to complete the following by the end of Q3/2022 & Q4/2022. The focus will be shifting existing systems into a web3 native stack, that may interoperate between other contracts and primitives.

• Decentralize OceanDAO. Here, we do all remaining things for the DAO to be fully decentralized. This includes decentralizing some ops tasks like “filter projects for voting” and final transfer of funds to teams. There will likely be more tasks.

6. Conclusion & Looking Forward

Until recently, OceanDAO focused on getting initial product-market fit (0->1) using some key components and mechanisms. Those are now in place. The aim now is to scale in traction (0->1) along with improving stability and becoming fully decentralized. This article summarized how we plan to achieve that.

We aim for OceanDAO to be fully decentralized by the end of 2022. At this point, there will no longer be a distinction between “community” and “core” teams, it will simply be the Ocean ecosystem. Future improvements will be up to anyone in the ecosystem. Some teams may be chasing their own business models, such as a product for a given vertical (e.g. DeFi) or for a particular user base (e.g. Gaia-X). Others may do “public goods” work for the benefit of the ecosystem. The OceanDAO voting community can vote to bias funding towards what they feel will help drive growth the most. The only constraints are to ensure growth (ROI > 1.0) and being in line with Ocean mission & values. The future is up to the Ocean ecosystem.

Notes

[ 1 ] “0 → 1” is a concept popularized by Peter Thiel in his book Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.

This blog was written in consideration of all staff, teams, and community members, whose commitment and feedback allows OceanDAO to continue improving. It would also not have been possible without the insights and contributions from Trent McConaghy and Alex Napheys.

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