Insight Sharing

The Insight Sharing Phase of F8 Improve & Grow Auditability

QADAO in collaboration with Catalyst School prepared an Insight Sharing Workshop as part of the funded proposal "Insight Sharing Workshops - TCS".

What are Insight Sharing Workshops?

Adapted from Source

The Insight Sharing Workshop Series is a new way of brainstorming about Catalyst Challenges, aiming to bring together proposers, community advisors, challenge teams and domain experts into a discussion about specific challenges and how to make the best out of it.

Taking place at the beginning of Fund 8 during the insight sharing phase. Domain experts will have a list of recommended topics to be covered but are free to modify them, include or exclude topics as they see fit.

Execution

The workshops take place in Zoom meetings and will last up to 2 hours. One or two domain experts will be invited to participate, and one or two Catalyst School members will be there to provide all the required support. The meeting recording will be uploaded to Catalyst School’s YouTube channel.

The goal is to have an interactive, open conversation with everyone. Presenters decide the details of the presentation, but the idea is to leave space for everyone to interact and share their perspectives.

Workshop topics (preferable):

Slides
Presentation of the challenge
Proposer perspective (What topics should cover/focus a proposer)
CA perspective (What topics should cover/focus on a CA in the assessments)
Explanation of challenge KPIs
Overview of previously funded proposals / Success stories (if applicable)

Monday, 21st February 2022

The Insight Sharing Workshop Series is a new way of brainstorming about Catalyst Challenges

Aiming to bring together :

Proposers
Community advisors
Challenge teams
Domain experts

into a discussion about specific challenges and how to make the best out of it.

The Series is the product of an "Insight Sharing Workshops - TCS" proposal submitted in the Fund 7 Community Events Challenge and successfully voted for in February 2022.

What is Insight Sharing
A Summary of the Challenge
The Challenge Brief
Key Metrics to measure
What has been funded ?
The Proposer perspective
The Community Advisor perspective

The Insight Sharing phase of each Catalyst Fund provides an opportunity to fill in your unique perspective on a challenge :

What gaps do you see in how this challenge is currently addressed ?
How can we improve the challenge brief ?
What wild thoughts do you have about how to best address this challenge ?

Hopefully this Insight Sharing Workshop will provide you with food for thought to comment in the Insight Sharing Phase.

The Improve & Grow Auditability Challenge

The Improve & Grow Auditability Challenge was first proposed in April 2021 by Rodrigo Pacini in Fund 5 with his F5: Fund 6 & 7 challenge setting Improve and Grow Auditability.

It was successfully voted for in August 2021 with 1800 Wallets, 164,854,742 ADA FOR & 144 Wallets, 41,493,373 AGAINST.

The Challenge has been renewed through Funds 6, 7 and 8.

This presentation addresses the Fund 8 - Improve and Grow Auditability Challenge

Challenge Summary

The Challenge Summary asked

How to make the auditing process of funded proposals

Efficient – to address concerns about reporting & auditing overhead
Distributed – to use the Cadano blockchain technology to innovate auditability
And Transparent – to deliver solutions which provide accountability & to allow open source access

Challenge Brief

The Challenge Brief addresses three main concerns :

1) Audit of Funded Proposal delivery and Return on Intention

When Fund7 happens we will be close to 300 funded proposals. It is extremely important that these proposals are evaluated/audited to see if they are delivering and if the Return on Intention is being in line with what has been established initially.

2) Supporting transfer of reporting from IOHK

Currently, IOG is in charge of monitoring the development of these funded proposals, but when there are hundreds of funded proposals this will be an overwhelming work for IOG. So proposals that support a transfer of reporting from IOHK are a priority.

3) Transparency in the use of Cardano's treasury resources

The Auditability challenge aims to ensure transparency in the use of Cardano's treasury resources, which will allow the Cardano community to have more information on the development of funded proposals through a checks and balances system.

Why is it important?

It's important that the funded proposals are evaluated to see if they are delivering what was established in their mission..

What does success look like?

Several projects evaluating funded proposals, providing reports, articles and metrics on the development and implementation of the projects.

Key Metrics to measure

1) Number of funded proposals audited

2) Sensitivity to different –Challenges

It is notable that emphasis is given to consideration of auditing and reporting in different challenges. Therefore success metrics and assessment approaches need to be thought out in relation to each challenge individually.

3) Number of reports, articles and videos/podcasts on Audit indicators

Such as Performance, Achievements, Financials, Number of onboarded developers. Number of commits in funded proposal repositories (Github),Indicators of: transactions, volume and unique wallets interacting with dapps, Number of smart contracts audited & Social media engagement indicators.

The emphasis here is on documentation, communication, and social media. How to tell the qualitative story as well as quantifying a proposal.

Please note that Auditability may include Auditing, Quality Assurance and Oversight

What got funded in F6 ?

Distributed Auditability – Identify common community standards. Build consistent evaluation tools. Automate funded proposal reporting.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/366707

Treasury & Catalyst Proposal API - A non-gated, filterable repository of all proposals. Funded projects are followed, measured & updated in a public space. API for toolmakers

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/366965

Smart Contract Audit Token SCAT DAO - Incorporate catalyst projects into the audit scope of our decentralized community driven organization and share results through SCATDAO.com

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/367602

PACE: Proposal progress updates - Progress update form

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/367266

Import existing updates and provide a progress update form for proposers to use where the updates will be attached to their proposal data

Auditing African Proposals, by WADA - Secondary support layer in the auditing of African proposals

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/366865

PACE: Proposal media content - tool to attach media content to a given proposal

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/367365

What got funded in F7 ?

DAO-NET: Auditor DAO – an instance of a DAO smart contract

Create a DAO, with sustained funding for auditors, to audit Project Catalyst or DAO Net funded projects as directed by the community.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/381404

Community Governance Oversight - Survey, report & facilitate retrospectives to improve our governance processes.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/383517

Progress and KPI reporting tool - Create a reporting tool for progress and KPI reports that can be used as an alternative reporting process with full open access data

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/382425

Impact Measurements Tool - research

Researching the basis of an Impact Measurements Tool to help define KPIs, measure and report them, with a focus on SDGs impact.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/383628

2MIN REVIEW Integrated Platform - Building an integrated platform and mobile application for accessing Catalyst's contents which are filtered, analyzed by 2Min Review

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384807

A portal to audit and release funds - Proposal is split into work blocks with req. ADA, once finished community/smart contract confirms if next funding is unlocked.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/385201

Catalyst Audit Circle - Audit Governance - Establish a Catalyst auditing circle to guide improvements needed to maximise each funding rounds return on intention.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/381354

Translation for Proposal API DATA - Add a step to the current proposal api to translate data using machine learning. Set aside a fund to incentivize human validators.

https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/383962

Proposer perspective

What topics should a proposer focus on ?

Tools & processes that enable community auditing of proposals
Research, Education & Communication to support the community in auditing
Innovation in governance to achieve auditing and transparency

Community Advisor perspective

What topics should a Community Advisor pay attention to in their assessments ?

Impact – What are the Key impacts expected of the Auditability proposal ?

The key impact is enabling the auditing of proposals & the reform of any associated processes. The Campaign brief prioritizes the Audit of Funded Proposal delivery and verifying each Return on Intention. Auditability proposals that support a transfer of reporting from IOHK & seek transparency in the use of Cardano's treasury resources further supplement and build on this priority.

Feasibility – Is it likely the Auditability solution be implemented

The Community Advisor should assess the capability of the Auditability proposer to implement their solution, innovation or experiment. This would typically include checking evidence of experience, a supporting team, a concise & relevant budget, a realistic timetable or roadmap that effectively communicates a plan of implementation, a description of any required fixed resources, an explanation of any technical aspects or specialist language and that risks have been identified with a mitigation strategy.

Auditability – Does the Auditability solution audit itself ?

An Auditability proposal should demonstrate a thorough understanding of how it can be audited itself. Therefore the proposal should detail how its progress and success will be reported, tracked and effectively communicated to the Cardano community. As a minimum this should cover

A roadmap with milestones and a time horizon for achievement.

Metrics/KPIs that define the success of the proposal

How the roadmap & metrics relate to addressing and solving the targeted problem.