F8 - Assessments
Flagged or filtered out assessments not included
Assessment One
Impact / Alignment
Looking through the proposal one can see that the problem was well stated and their corresponding or proposed solutions have the effective measures to solve the problems. It's obvious that Project Catalyst evolves through rapidly scaling funds, improvements to and innovations in Catalyst Governance processes need oversight and assessment from the community hence the need for a governance oversight if the proposers are given funds.
Feasibility
The plans presented looks attainable with definite timelines and broad deliverables. I'm also happy about the inclusion of the experiences that the proposers bring to the table. They have diverse backgrounds and that can help bring innovation to the project. I however think they should have included some challenges they think they might face in the implementation of the proposal and how they can work it out to be solved.
Auditability
Given the problem statement the solutions provided, the plans and the experiences I think the proposal can be a success. It's clear there are some KPIs presented and they were obviously they can paint a picture of the success of the project.
Assessment Two
Impact / Alignment
Providing the community oversight of Catalyst governance processes is certainly an audit issue that needs addressing as lack of it we are told by this team, we will stagnate and lack accountability which is a risk that needs to be mitigated
Feasibility
The team comprises of a wide range of expertise from various fields of study and experience in areas such as finance, academic research, accountancy, project management, entrepreneurship, community outreach, facilitation and development. This team seems to have a lot of goodwill towards the community and does not want it to fail in any way, I am confident that they will implement what they outline in the plan outlines as the oversight process and timelines outlined in the proposal
Auditability
The proposal outlines the methods that they will use for the Oversight group to allow the Cardano community to have more information at a high level on the effectiveness of the proposal process & the Catalyst innovation fund in general. This group plays a critical role in the evolving decentralized Catalyst governance process, and will serve as an important area to test experiments that will flow into the Voltaire processes. The team has provided a detailed and sufficient plan for this to work
Assessment Three
Impact / Alignment
This proposal is in line with the challenge setting. The group’s goal is to provide more transparency to the cardano’s treasury resources by providing higher level information to the community. This part of the proposal does address the financial metric from the challenge setting. The group will also provide insight into the improvements and innovations in catalyst. By providing these insights, the group can help the cardano community better audit proposals and their success. I also think that this proposal has the potential to be very impactful for the cardano community because of the many utilities it provides, such as oversight into new catalyst governance initiatives. Although there are some additional aspects of the proposal that are not directly related to the challenge setting of auditing funded proposals, such as increasing interest and engagement with cardano governance processes, the proposal overall can make an impact on auditing funded proposals. Since the proposal had a few components that don’t directly affect auditing (in my opinion), I can’t give a full score for impact. (score given: 4)
Feasibility
Given the information provided, I believe that this proposal will be implemented successfully. The proposers all have many years of experience in the necessary fields to complete this project, such as finance, decision-making, accountancy, and community engagement, just to name a few. The proposers also have a dedicated subteam of two members to offer accountant and financial services to catalyst projects. The main deliverables/duties of the oversight group are surveys, workshops, internal retrospectives, final reports, and research. Each has a part in the overall goal of the proposal, and I think that they can all be achieved in the given timeframe. There is a roadmap that is thoroughly laid out starting from before fund8 going up until fund9. The information was very easy for me to read and gives me confidence that the proposers have thought out their plans and know what they are doing. The funding breakdown of the proposal was also very well done. All costs were considered, ranging from logistical costs to costs for certain tasks. It was very clear to me where the money was going, so I think that this proposal can operate smoothly and be successful. Although I do not have experience with a group doing this kind of work, I think that the funds requested are sufficient given the amount of work that will be going into this proposal. (score given: 5)
Auditability
Given the information provided, I think that this proposal is highly auditable. The proposers plan to publish their documents and work on a gitbook page for the entire cardano community to observe. They plan to document their research, their meeting notes, workshop summaries, and a few other important trackable components that will allow for good auditability. The most important output for auditability will definitely be the Project Close Report that will provide an overview of the progress made and the lessons learned throughout the process. Additionally, the proposers listed some slightly more measures of success, such as making governance transparent. The intangible metrics are very good to include, but are slightly more subjective in their “success.” Despite this, I think that the cardano community will be able to keep up with this proposal to see if they were successful in their goals. (score given: 5)
Assessment Four
Impact / Alignment
This proposal requires a bit of background to understand. I’m not 100% familiar with the topic but here is my take on it. As Cardano moves more and more towards a decentralized system, there are several efforts being pursued by the community that try to, one by one, boost the inner mechanisms / experiments towards a growing independence from their initial creators / institutions / companies that now have a big influence in how they work, towards the rest of Cardano stakeholders. Here we have a good example, where the Catalyst governance process is asking for funds for a new oversight and assessment process. Being a process led fully by members extremely active and knowledgeable of the Cardano ecosystem and Catalyst in particular, I have great confidence that their proposed improvements will be highly beneficial in the long run, potentially with the ability to scale parts of them towards other systems in need of similar improvements. mechanisms inside of it that try to, sort of, find their wings and fly away from the gravity of their creator (IOG, IOHK, etc). This proposal intends to oversee proposed changes to governance in Catalyst and the Oversight group, and will not be in charge of designing or implementing these changes - that’s very important to understand.
Feasibility
The team behind this proposal consists of heavy weights from the Cardano / Catalyst communities, so in terms or skills / competency / know-how I would rate is as amongst the top 1% from all the teams that stand behind current projects. The project has already received funding under previous rounds, so current work (and funded) is already scheduled until April 2022). Funding it further (this round) would extend the work until August 2022. Remuneration for members is roughly 1k USD / person (up to 8 max) for 1.5 days of work (@ 8 hours) comprising meetings and preparation. The rest of the budget goes towards deliverables (survey, reports) and other fixed costs.
Auditability
Being a project already up and running, there is a known fact what kind of reporting / tracking the team does and how that information can be utilized to audit the activity. There is a public record of past work already available (link in Ideascale if you’re curious) and this project would be tracked and documented in a similar fashion. Success factors are measured by excellent indicators, and here a few below: - Lack of central entity that control improvements to the Catalyst governance - all groups being represented in decision making (pools, voters, proposers, etc) - minimizing risk of the system being captured by one / a few of ill-intended parties - transparent governance and simple to understand. My key takeaway is that if you wish for the Catalyst community to become stronger over time, voting for this proposal is an absolute must.
Assessment Five
Impact / Alignment
And the experiment in Catalyst self-governance marches on. This continuation of the funded Community Governance Oversight group has seen even more growth and adoption with several CCv2 members joining and the formal addition of the Treasury participants. As the name implies, this is not a governing body (in Catalyst, the governing body is whatever body is acting without contradiction to the underlying blockchain and its expressiveness, so it can be anyone and everyone. Try not to hurt yourself thinking about it.) but a means of capturing governance as it is happening and subjecting it to inquiry and observation with a healthy dose of evaluation. That information is then relayed back into the community, who then reform and reorganize their governance as necessary to abide by the deeper principles in place. Its intent is neither to prescribe laws in Catalyst, nor proscribe them, but to abide and educate, and in the process, learn. To this end they so far mostly maintain documentation, both of governance within Catalyst, like CCvX archiving, but of governance without, such as papers analyzing the governance theories of blockchain in general. With this new round of funding they seek to organize their efforts to capture the new dRep protocols and theory, as well as the Catalyst Governance Parameters, a collection of adjustable parameters that ties Catalyst to the blockchain, including voting, representation by stake and others. If any of this sounds interesting to you, or even scary, it is experiments like CGO that, like a flashlight in the dark, slowly let us learn our way forward.
Feasibility
The rapid organization of this group and the governance principles they parse since being funded in fund 7 has been impressive, and with the addition of even more engaged members there is no reason to think they will slow down. But there are risks that can build up for these kinds of initiatives. For one, governance oversight is, itself, a type of governance, and the more people you add to it, the more likely it is that the organizing concepts behind it need to be explicitly formalized. You don't discover those formulations when teams are small and everyone likes eachother and everyone agrees. The evolutionary flags of governance pop up when there is disagreement, when people don't like eachother, and yet progress can still be made. That is like finding an X on treasure map...it is a signal saying "Dig Here!" With so many more governance concepts coming on the scene in Voltaire there is much to do, and many ides to parse and wrangle, and you need people, lots of people, to parse that complexity. And that layer of needed calculating power brings with it all the little differences in protocols that make us who we are, and those differences add up and if that growth exceeds the speed at which we reach agreement on the new governance principles that are being introduced, the whole process goes sideways and starts to churn with little progress and too many setbacks. It is good we have this CGO group spinning up, and it is good to see they have detailed understanding of the processes that they are undertaking, and trying to capture for us. They clearly have been acquiring a lot of the tools and skills needed, now we see how it keeps coming together. Any concern I have regarding efforts like this lie in the background with the slef-awareness of groups like this to understand that they fall under their own oversight, and should be evaluated no less thoroughly or lightly.
Auditability
Steady as she goes' is easy enough to predict and measure, but what will mark each phase of this CG Oversight is what discoveries come along. With Voltaire ushering in dReps and Catalyst technical parameters, these discoveries are expected to be fast and furious. How do we measure these and audit progress? CGO maintains a Gitbook where all their activities are being entered and tracked (even ones that probably don't need to be in there...better safe than sorry, I suppose). As well there is active work being done to move many things to the even more opensource Github, which will make things not only trackable but highly interactive as well. Lastly, if you haven't already done so, scroll down their proposal to the bottom, and under [Auditability] "What does success look like?" read the bulleted list. This list isn't just their job: its all of ours.
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