Meeting 3 - December 9th, 2021

Meeting recording

Minutes of Catalyst Circle V2 Meeting #3

Present (in order of first speaking)

Stephen Whitenstall (representing Catalyst Coordinator, funded proposers); Allison Fromm (representing general ADA holders); Nori Nishigaya (facilitator); Matthias Sieber (representing Cardano Foundation); Tevo Saks (representing Toolmakers and Maintainers); Kenric Nelson (representing Community Advisors); Harris Warren (representing IOG); Raymond Mata (representing Stake Pool Operators); JP (secretary).

Speaker percentages

Nori (18%), Harris (17%), Kenric (13%), Allison (13%), Stephen (12%), Raymond (9%), Tevo (9%), Matthias (6%), JP (3%)

Abbreviations used / Glossary

API – Application Programming Interface (a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other)

ATH – After Town Hall (breakout sessions that take place after the Town Hall on Wednesdays on Zoom)

CA – Community Advisor

CC – Catalyst Circle

CF – Cardano Foundation

CTC – Catalyst Technical Council (a proposed body that will be appointed by IOG to be involved in bicameral governance)

DIDs – Decentralised identifiers

IOG – Input/Output Global

Q&A – question and answer session

QA-DAO – Quality Assurance Distributed Autonomous Organisation

SDK – software development kit

SPO – stakepool operator

VCA – Veteran Community Advisor

Voltaire – the final stage of the Cardano roadmap

1) Opening and agenda (0:00)

Opening check-in 0:19
Agenda 4:55

2) Circle members' work

The "CC Stand-Up" - each person says

what they have worked on since last meeting
what they will be working on next
any blocks, or anything they need help with.

Allison (9:14)

Proposals submission, particularly for a Voter Survey; creating a roadmap to how to create a legal entity; and working with Kenric on an Atala PRISM DIDs project for CAs
Office Hours – more advance notice and more time zones; working on survey data; preparing for next CC election.
Blocks: need email address for General ADA Voters role; website; other infrastructure. CC Admin team are fixing this; QA-DAO GitBook also functions as a CC landing page.

Stephen (16:56)

Created list of proposals to be considered for CC sponsorship https://github.com/Catalyst-Circle/Catalyst-Circle-Coordination/issues/1; wrote and submitted governance-related proposals with Dor Garbash and QA-DAO

https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Community-Governance-Oversight/383517-48088 ,

https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Catalyst-Audit-Circle/381354-48088

https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Catalyst-Coordinator-Hub/382324-48088

https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Catalyst-Fund-8-Challenge-Team-Hub/383377-48088

Gathering feedback from Funded Cohort https://github.com/Catalyst-Coordinator/Feedback/issues
No blocks.

Matthias (19:38)

Met with Frederik Gregaard, CEO of Cardano Foundation; ATH with Ambassadors’ Guild; Fund 8 challenge submissions on Open-Source Development Ecosystem and general Developer Ecosystem; decided to set the challenge budget for the Open-Source version higher ($1.2M) than the general ($1M) to reflect the commitment to open-source.
Working with Ambassadors’ Guild to redefine ambassadorship; continue dialogue with Catalyst community.
No blocks.

Tevo (22:58)

Berlin trip with several ex-CC members, lots of useful conversations. Proposal submissions; proposal workshops, and supporting others to complete their proposals.
Continued proposal and CA education and support.
Block – not sure how to leverage Admin team support when needed; and process is not clear for progressing problem-sensing or “tool sensing” (identifying the tools that the Catalyst community uses).

Kenric (27:17)

Atala PRISM Pioneers course, and developing DIDs for CAs with Allison; hosted a CAs’ Q&A session at ATH
Similar Q&A for VCAs next week; CA feedback meeting in 2 or 3 weeks
No blocks.

Harris (30:20)

Working on Voltaire roadmap and mechanisms; contributed to proposal writing on this but I could have done more; worked on governance APIs and governance SDK that will help teams both inside and outside IO to build tools e.g. for voting mechanisms
Want to discuss the governance parameters pilot in this meeting; would have been better if this meeting had been before proposal deadline so CC could have agreed proposals before they went in; also want to share more on the data from feedback; and support the definition of Catalyst Technical Council
No blocks.

Raymond (35:18)

About a week behind due to family issues; many SPOs missed deadlines for proposals. Problem-sensing: some SPOs see the funding process as a popularity contest they cannot win. Twitter Spaces have been effective to raise awareness of CC in the SPO community.
Developing Office Hours, and holding Twitter Spaces regularly
No blocks.

Postpone next CC meeting due to Christmas? (40:32)

41:42 Consensus is to keep it on 23rd Dec.

Criteria for which proposals should be Catalyst-sponsored (42:08)

Allison (42:16) How do we promote CC proposals effectively; and how do we ensure CC only promotes CC-related proposals and doesn’t become a platform for our individual interest? Process for deciding which proposals are “CC-sponsored”?
Tevo (43:55) Should we sponsor proposals that emerge from the community? I developed a chain vote application to enable us to vote on which proposals are CC-sponsored.
Nori (46:46) Historically, proposals emerged from problem-sensing – this gave more visibility and legitimacy.
Stephen (47:47) CC should only support CC-specific proposals, i.e. related to our infrastructure or emerging from problem-sensing.
Kenric (48:43) Distinction between funding for operational expenses of CC, and funding that is specific to an initiative. How is CC currently funded?
Nori (49:34) CCv2 is funded via a Fund 6 proposal; but is currently running at a deficit, is costing more than that proposal's budget.
Kenric (51:07) CC operational expenses are essential - should they be funded outside of the proposal process, the same way rewards to CAs and voters are?
Matthias (55:44) No - *Catalyst* Circle should not be taken outside the *Catalyst* funding process. (57:38) CCv2 is too early to make CC’s existence set in stone.
Kenric (59:01) If we put it to a vote to compensate CC members via an award, like CAs, then we should also put it to the vote whether there should be a Circle at all.
Allison (1:00:58) CC members could be elected via IdeaScale; the Challenge Setting budget would be the budget to compensate CC members, and each “proposal” would be each candidate’s nomination.
Raymond (1:02:38) For proposals currently in fund 7, we should meet separately to discuss them specifically.
Tevo (1:03:53) We should use a voting system to cover proposals from CC and proposals from the community that improve the Catalyst system itself.
Harris (1:05:32) We need CC, or some kind of group that represents the Catalyst community, to enable transfer of governance from IOG.
Nori (1:06:43) We should discuss the Catalyst parameters; and as Raymond suggested, we should meet separately to discuss the fund 7 proposals and develop criteria for how we select which proposals should be “CC-sponsored”.
Harris (1:08:15) We should return to a focus in these CC meetings on problem-sensing and the Trello board.

ACTION ITEM: Allison, with support from Tevo, Raymond, Harris and Stephen, to set up meeting to discuss criteria for what should be a CC-sponsored proposal.

Should IOG, Cardano Foundation and Emurgo vote in Catalyst? (1:10:52)

Key points:

Kenric (1:12:38) Influence of large wallets is problematic
Stephen (1:13:13) There’s a perception in the community that they *do* vote; is this justified?
Harris (1:13:49) There is nothing official to prevent it – anyone can vote – but IOG are researching on protecting against influence of whales.
Kenric (1:16:52) Voting power is not just about amount of ADA; it’s about how likely it is that your vote will be decisive in deciding “yes” or “no” on a particular proposal; and that increases quadratically. We could develop processes to avoid that centralisation, but we are not there yet.
Allison (1:18:32) If Cardano and IOG do vote, there should be rigorous and transparent processes about it, same as for how they stake their ADA
Harris (1:20:21) I don’t believe the Treasury is doing any type of voting. But eventually that decision should be made by the proposed bicameral governance structure.

ACTION ITEM: All CC members to formulate a position for a future discussion on this, with the aim of making recommendations as a Circle.

Discussion of Circle bicameral model (1:23:43)

Allison (1:24:52) Clarification on the proposed audit body – is it elected? (1:29:10) Is this a fleshing-out of the Governance Oversight body proposed by Harris last week; and what happens if it doesn’t get funded?
Stephen (1:25:43) In the Community Governance Oversight proposal the proposed team is from the Catalyst “audit community” – those in Catalyst with relevant knowledge and skills. There is also a separate Audit Circle proposal, for audit of the Funded Proposal process specifically. (1:29:33) If it doesn’t get funded then the sustainability of Catalyst audit is at risk.
Kenric (1:30:56) I feel the proposed Technical Council should be appointed rather than elected – what should the appointment process be?
Harris (1:33:14) We cannot transition decision-making away from IOG too quickly, but we do want to do it quickly.
Raymond (1:36: 44) I am open to the bicameral model, but we need to keep it as simple and elegant as possible.
Stephen (1:38:16) We could use delegated voting [i.e. ADA-holders vote for a representative, and the representative selects the Technical Council].

ACTION ITEM (1:39:50): For clarity, CC members to add their name next to agenda items they add to the agenda in future.

Concerns about increased work for CC admin team (1:40:04)

Stephen (1:40:12) Concerns were raised at Admin team meeting on Friday that IOG had not discussed the Admin Team Scope Expansion proposal enough with the Admin team; workload expanding too fast; community money being used to support an IOG directed project; Admin team don;t want to become IOG employees.
JP (1:41:54) We support the transition to community governance but we need time to develop our supporting structures. Also we are not being paid: it’s not sustainable. Also being heard - we wanted to raise concerns, but found the decision had already been made without us. We would like to be included.
Harris (1:44:32) We can pace the changes. And we intend to find ways to compensate the Admin team.
Nori (1:46:32) The Admin team have also set up a stakepool as a way to try and make things more sustainable; the ticker is Admin
Kenric (1:47:51) When we define new roles, we should be clear how they are funded.
Stephen (1:48:32) There is a legacy of volunteerism in Catalyst, for good reasons, but we are moving into a new phase where that is not sustainable.
Nori (1:49:09) Need to find mechanisms for communication and joint decision making, especially on subjects that affect us directly. (1:49:33) Also – a mix-up with time zones, we missed submission deadline for CC Admin Team’s Fund 7 proposal; so what was submitted is an earlier version that does not include budget for the additional CTC work. So it’s $10k short.
Stephen (1:51:23) Possibly we could use a rapid funding mechanism to cover the shortfall.

GitHub tasks (1:52:52)

Nori (1:51:59) Admin team will resolve issues around websites, email accounts etc, probably next week.
Tevo (1:53:04) Does everyone have access to the GitHub repository which has the copy of the Trello board?
Stephen (1:55:15) GitHub board is set up to replace Trello. I agree with Harris earlier, that we should return to focusing on problem-sensing via this board in CC meetings. Put “Prioritise Problems” first on the agenda, and focus on sensing problems from the community.