Working meeting, 25th August 2022
Link to Spanish version: Reunión de trabajo CCv3, Jueves 25 agosto 2022
Meeting recording
Present (in order of first speaking)
Nori Nishigaya (facilitator); Joey Chessher (Toolmakers and Maintainers); Felix Weber (CF); Mercy A (Funded Proposers); Steve Lockhart (deputy for Mercy; Funded Proposers); Kriss Baird (IOG); Quasar (ADA Holders subcircle member); Rhys Morgan (stakepool operators); Peter Wolcott (secretary).
Speaker percentages
Steve (19%), Kriss (18%), Quasar (15%), Nori (14%), Rhys (12%), Felix (10%), Mercy (8%), Joey (4%), Peter (<1%)
1. Opening, agenda (0:00)
Check-in (0:02) Agenda item added: Pol.is (Quasar, 1:14)
2. Consent agenda
- Tomi leaving the Circle - Voting delays - Document from Zoe, "Community suggestions for Alternatives to CCv4 structure" - Election process - discussed with the above - Election criteria for CCv4 - not discussed; out of time - Code of Conduct - not discussed; out of time - Pol.is - not discussed; out of time
Summariser's note: In the last Circle meeting, on 18th Aug, a proposal was made to IOG to fund Circle v4 directly from Treasury via a parameter change, at $1,000 per seat per month. Kriss Baird was to put this proposal to IOG and return with an answer in this meeting. However, at the time of writing, it is unclear whether there has been an answer.
Tomi leaving the Circle (3:52)
Since the last Circle meeting on 18th August, Tomi Astikainen (PA subcircle, and lead of Catalyst GPS) has resigned from Circle meetings. No clear knowledge on why he left. Joey (3:52) He was trying to do the right thing; I want him to feel he was valued. Kriss (4:18) Discussions about GPS were people legitimately sharing their opinion. Perhaps he felt it was overly critical; but it shows that we do need community buy-in for big changes. Steve (5:49) GPS was the only thing that had been offered, so that's why we looked at it. (7:48) Dispute between Felix and Quasar about aggression Nori (12:28) Please discuss this outside the meeting if you need to. Joey (13:01) Are we going to seek someone else to fill Tomi's seat? Nori (13:11) We will reach out to the PA subcircle and ask.
Voting delay (13:46)
Felix (13:36) The voting delay is causing harm to proposers who are already building and who have set their budgets to take account of the expected Fund dates. It would be better if it could have been communicated earlier, and if Circle had been consulted. Kriss (13:50) Sometimes flaws and bugs only arise at the last stages of testing. If we had consulted Circle first, it would have added to the delay. For the projects that are affected - there is no guarantee they will get funded, so they should not bank on it. But we can do a retrospective to look at how we could improve; and it's noted that it has caused frustration. Rhys (19:17) In future, Circle could help IOG get information out to the community. Kriss (20:17) Agreed - in future, we'll communicate with Circle first.
ACTION ITEM/AGREED: IOG to communicate delays and similar issues to Circle first, and Circle to help inform the community.
Zoe's doc, "Community suggestions for Alternatives to CCv4 structure" (26:51)
Quasar (28:22) There were some community concerns about Circle voting to shape CCv4 around GPS's "categories" structure; in my opinion we should have considered alternatives. So Zoe created this doc to collate community ideas for other ways to structure Circle.
Opinions on the doc
Steve Lockhart (28:22) I did not read all of it. As an investor, what I care about is the goals, to bank the unbanked and create a new financial operating system for the world. Just like we have the "Things may break" slide at the start of every Town Hall, we should also have those goals stated - and that should provide the basis of the structure for Catalyst, and for Circle itself. Circle should focus on banking the unbanked and building a new financial ecosystem. Rhys (39:50) Some of the ideas in the document are amazing - the Aleatory Circle is a cool idea. It's frustrating that it only came out recently; but maybe now is not a good time to shift direction. Maybe we should ask the next round of Circle to take these suggestions very seriously, and think about the best way to iterate. Nori (42:46) Is there a pressing need to elect a CCv4 now? Or should we slow down, and have more conversations with the community, since they are generating all these great ideas?
The purpose of Circle
Joey (44:17) I don't see any reason why we could not slow down. But we keep hearing the question "what is the purpose of Circle", so - what was it's original purpose? Kriss (44:17) The original idea was very similar to now - a human sensor array to sense problems from the community. A better way to address it is to say where we want to be - we want an entity that represents the community of stakeholders that are involved; similar to Trustees. To reach that state, there must be confidence that the community can operate the Treasury. We need to try these Circle iterations, and learn from them, so that end state is not installed from the top down. Joey (49:04) Maybe we do not communicate the purpose of Circle well enough. Kriss (49:19) Good point. Maybe at the top of every Town Hall and every Circle meeting , we should spend 20 seconds saying what our function is. Nori (50:44) Agreed - we can integrate it into the Agenda template for Circle meetings, and do it every meeting. We should also have a single doc that addresses the who, what, when, where and why of Circle.
ACTION ITEM: In future Circle meetings, facilitator to state briefly the purpose of Circle at the start of the meeting.
Are we ready to elect CCv4?
Mercy (51:42) We have been in Circle too long - 8 months. One problem is our lack of a clear decision-making process - so we should elect a CCv4, and get fresh talent in, who can resolve this. Maybe some of us might need to stay on to support the new people; and maybe also we need a transition period between CCv3 and CCv4 whereby a new group of people - they should be compensated for their time - figure out what v4 should look like. Felix (55:13) I don't feel we are ready for CCv4. We should give it another one or 2 months, and take the best of all the ideas that have been presented - but we should set a deadline. And as Mercy said, we should bring new people in to the discussion. Quasar (57:49) I've been operating on the agreed deadline, so I am annoyed that I have wasted my time. Is there a rule from IOG that this must be done on this timeline? Kriss (59:42) No. We hoped to get it done by September; but I'd rather see it done right, than rushed. Rhys (1:02:43) I think there is a rush to elect CCv4. Circle is hard work, and we're working for free, so we're exhausted; and the same issues keep coming up, so it feels like we are going round in circles. It also causes tension between us. It would be nice to bring new people in.
Roles or categories?
Joey (1:08:56) On the form and function of Circle, the decision is between role-based, as we have now, and category-based, as GPS proposed. Let's decide which would be the best path forward; and allow those who are elected to decide who their sub-circles will be. Going back to role-based would be the easiest, since that already has acceptance. Felix (1:10:13) But there was never any community discussion about the current roles - they were introduced without consultation. Quasar (1:10:49) Let's take a bit from all of the ideas presented. Nori (1:11:20) Should we pause this Circle, open it up to the community, and have this conversation with a bigger working group, meeting on a voluntary basis to design the next Circle? Rather than having the existing Circle continue? Rhys (1:13:33) I feel the current roles are very strictly defined, and don't represent all aspects of the ecosystem; GPS categories are more open-ended. Mercy (1:15:07) Instead of trying to do too much at once, let's start with what we already have - the functional roles. Let's work out what is broken about them, and if we can fix it. If not, let's move on to GPS categories, and look at how they might layer on top of the functional roles. And let's have the expectation for CCv4, deciding the future structure is what they are going to do. Kriss (1:20:46) How about an approach where you "major" in one of the functional roles - say, PA rep - and you minor in one of the GPS categories. Felix (1:23:06) I strongly advocate that we go ahead with the vote using GPS categories, as planned; and that we make it the main purpose of CCv4 to redefine what Circle should be about. Steve (1:25:38) I don't care what you call the different seats - I only care about Circle having worldwide representation. We could just say, we need five elected reps, we're not going to call them anything. Rhys (1:28:42) I think we should go with the new [GPS] groups. If we push that forward, we don't have to think about it any more, and we can focus on defining the purpose of Circle, so the next iteration will have a perfectly defined set of instructions to follow. Kriss (1:30:23) There is another idea - to do away with the labels altogether. As Steve said, there's just 5 roles - that's it - and when they're elected they agree between themselves what to work on. Steve (1:33:13) Those who stand for election would have to state a platform. But how does the vote work - do people stand for Seat 1, or Seat 2; or is it just a general vote and the 5 top-voted people get in? Our job is to is to encourage people to stand for election, so we get some diversity in nominees. (1:35:24) And let's remind people every week in Town Hall about the goal to bank the unbanked, and state that if you're not here to do that, you're not going to be a good fit in the community.
Summariser's note: In this meeting, one idea arose several times (eg Mercy, 51:42; Felix, 55:13; Nori, 1:11:20) of dissolving Circle per se, and creating an interim working group involving more people, to plan CCv4. This idea was not put to the vote. It appears not to have been strongly rejected by anyone, but it seems it may have disappeared or got lost in the discussion.
The proposal: five undefined seats
Nori (1:39:05) So the proposal is, five seats without predefined roles; allow people to state their own platform; and the 5 highest-voted people are elected. Joey (1:39:45) Can we take a first pass, not a permanent vote - and give the community time to think about it? I think if eliminating the roles helps people feel we're not categorising things, I think it's a good idea. Felix (1:40:28) I think we should give the content from GPS, and Zoe, and the Code of Conduct, to new reps as a guide. Rhys (1:41:50) I agree with Felix; and I think we should take the idea of "no labels" to our communities, gather opinions, and discuss and finalise next week. Quasar (1:43:18) Let's let this Circle be of the community; and prioritise the goals. But I don't understand why we are not considering auditing, transparency, and accountability, or addressing the Challenge Team and the QA process. Those are things to be addressed in this next election. And I think we should set the criteria for the nominees next; and I would stress that we ask nominees to be quite aware of the full system of Cardano, of Catalyst, of Circle. Kriss (1:45:20) When we consult with the community on this new Circle model, we should collect all the resources together and present them in a digestible way. I will put them in a slide deck.
ACTION ITEM: Kriss to create a slide deck containing information on all the suggested solutions so far: GPS, all the ideas in Zoe's doc, etc. ACTION ITEM: all Circle reps to get feedback from their communities on the idea of 5 seats with no pre-defined roles, and bring it to next week's Circle meeting.
Checkout and close (1:52:00)
Meeting ends: 1:55:24
Appendix
Abbreviations/Glossary
ATH – After Townhall, the breakout rooms after the regular Wednesday TownHall meeting
CATH – Catalyst Africa Town Hall
Catalyst School – https://thecatalyst.school
CC – Catalyst Circle
CF – Cardano Foundation
CGO - Community Governance Oversight, a F7 and F8 funded proposal that has created a team to discuss and provide oversight of key Catalyst governance processes
CIP – Cardano Improvement Proposal https://cips.cardano.org
CTC - Catalyst Technical Council, a proposed body that will be appointed by IOG to be involved in bicameral governance alongside the Catalyst community.
dRep – delegation representative, a new role that will be introduced for Fund 10; people to whom a voter will be able to delegate their voting power. See the registration form
DIDs – Decentralised identifiers
ETH – Eastern Town Hall
Gimbalabs - https://gimbalabs.com/gimbalgrid
GPS or Catalyst GPS – an F8 Catalyst funded proposal led by current Circle member Tomi https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/398299 which seeks to reorganise Catalyst.
IOG – Input/Output Global
LatAm – the Catalyst community in Latin America. Comprises a regular Town Hall and several other community initiatives.
NFT – non-fungible token
PA - Proposal Assessor, a role open to anyone in Catalyst, to assess proposals in each funding round (previously called CA, Community Advisor).
QA-DAO – Quality Assurance Distributed Autonomous Organisation
SPO – stakepool operator
VPA - Veteran Proposal Assessor; a role open to those who have been a PA in previous rounds, which assesses the PAs’ reviews (previously VCA, Veteran Community Advisor).
Voltaire – the next phase on the Cardano roadmap to decentralisation
Transcript of this meeting
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