Membership Tiers Discussion

[Klamt.eth]

I would like to open a discussion on how we could structure the value creation for the Fingerprints community considering different stakeholders/investors tiers. This is intended to be a brainstorming, with this rough draft including ideas from other DAO members as well.

THE FINGERPRINTS MEMBERSHIP - 5k $PRINTS or more

• Able to participate in the DAO governance through soft and Snapshot vote
• Value driven not only by Fingerprints’ NFT projects, but also by Fingerprints’ NFT Collection
• Access to all Discord channels (including curation committee once figure out how to address issues like front running)
• Priority in membership perks (invitations to events, airdrops, whitelists, merchandise, etc.)
• Eligibility to work and be compensated by the DAO
• Eligibility to THE FINGERPRINTS PASS by staking 5k $PRINTS

Introducing THE FINGERPRINTS PASS MEMBERSHIP

• A new pass will be delivered to 5k $PRINTS stakers every new season of Fingerprints NFT Projects
• By staking the pass, holders will receive NFTs from all projects launched by Fingerprints in that season
• By staking 5k $PRINTS together with passes from previous seasons, the staker will receive a higher tier pass for the season
• The more previous passes staked with the 5k $PRINTS, the higher tier will be the new pass. For example, to receive a Bronze Pass you need to stake two passes and 5k $PRINTS for a whole season and to receive a Silver Pass, three passes and 5K $PRINTS
• Higher tier passes will have special perks, to be defined
• The pass can be traded with its tier maintained
• Participate in the DAO governance through soft vote only, only $PRINTS holders can participate in Snapshot votes
• Access to all Discord channels (except curation committee)
• Priority in membership perks (invitations to events, airdrops, whitelists, merchandise, etc.) – after 5k $PRINTS membership
• Eligibility to work and be compensated by the DAO

Stakers of Fingerprints NFTs – future launches

• Read-only access to all Discord channels (except curation committee)
• Priority in membership perks (invitations to events, airdrops, whitelists, merchandise, etc.) – after PASS holders
• Eligibility to work and be compensated by the DAO (see rules in the “CONTRIBUTOR MEMBERSHIP”)
• Introducing the royalties utility of the future NFTs launched by Fingerprints, aligning interests of Fingerprints DAO and Fingerprints NFT holders
• By staking Fingerprints NFTs, holders will be eligible to a percentage of the royalties earned by that project and the next ones, paid directly to their wallets (20% goes to the staking pool?)
• Season 1 Project 1 NFT holders will receive part of the royalties of the secondary sales of that project and part of the primary sales of all next projects of that season. Season 1 Project 2 NFT holders will also receive such royalties, but will not receive a percentage of its own primary sales royalties, only from the next projects, rewarding early investors
• Fingerprints NFTs holders will be not only encouraged to promote the project which they own the NFT, but also the next ones, given that the holders will also receive royalties from the next projects
• It’s a concept that could deliver to the NFT holder an appreciation in value in the long run based on the NFT value as a blue-chip art combined with a passive income that generates value to the holder without having to sell the NFT

Stakers of Fingerprints NFTs – past launches

• Read-only access to all Discord channels (except curation committee)
• Priority in membership perks (invitations to events, airdrops, whitelists, merchandise, etc.) – after PASS holders
• Eligibility to work and be compensated by the DAO (see rules in the “CONTRIBUTOR MEMBERSHIP”)

Introducing the CONTRIBUTOR MEMBERSHIP – Stakers of 100 $PRINTS or more (less than 5k $PRINTS)

• Able to participate in the DAO governance through soft and Snapshot vote
• Value driven not only by Fingerprints’ NFT projects, but also by Fingerprints’ NFT Collection
• Read-only access to all Discord channels (except curation committee)
• Priority in membership perks (invitations to events, airdrops, whitelists, merchandise, etc.) – after Fingerprints NFT holders
• Eligibility to work and be compensated by the DAO
• There will be a specific public channel where contributors will be able to pitch to the community how they can help
• The pitch will trigger a soft voting process whereby achieving X votes a read and write access (except curation committee channel) and the right to be compensated will be granted
• Creation of a bounty/activities board to facilitate potential contributors to identify how they can help. The board must contain the compensation model for each activity, either by Coordinape or a specific amount
• Contributors to report on their activities on a weekly basis
• The access and right to be compensated can be revoked by the DAO anytime by reaching X votes on a soft voting process

[glory]

This is a fantastic start @Klamt.eth – thanks for putting it together.

Here are a couple of points that I think we should consider more deeply:

First - there is one stakeholder in this ecosystem that is not mentioned, and that is the artist. What is the perception of this model by the artists that we would partner with? I think one of the first things we should do is talk to some of the artists we have close relationships with and get their candid feedback on this system. It’s critical that we get buy-in from that group.

Second - the NFT staking to earn royalties. I think this is a really interesting concept that aligns members and purchasers in the same direction. But if we go down that route I think we’d have to significantly reduce the size of NFT releases. To illustrate - in aggregate, our existing launched projects have ~3,500 total pieces. If we assume future launches in 2022 had similar supply, 200 ETH in royalty revs for 2022, and even if we assume ALL of that was distributed out, that totals to 0.05 ETH per NFT holder. So in order to make that a really compelling value proposition, I think we’d have to tweak the balance of holders vs pieces issued vs royalty rates, etc. Just something to think about in terms of design.

The 100 PRINTS contributor membership tier I think makes a ton of sense and is something that shouldn’t be too hard to implement. I think this is something we should work on getting set up as soon as we can.

One last thing is that for this to work we’d need a way for potential members to acquire PRINTS tokens. There are a few ways to do that (AMM, OTC, etc), but it would be a critical piece to this plan.

Great stuff overall - I think this is a great topic for conversation!

[Klamt.eth]

Thanks for the inputs @glory , very valuable.

Good point about getting feedback from the artists, I agree it is essential.

Regarding the royalties, the idea is that this feature along with an amazing art could make our projects more successful, generating higher fees enough to make it work without having to reduce the number of pieces per project. That strategy could work if we consider the numbers from successful projects such as Grails from PROOF.

I completely agree with you in the sense that if we go for the 100 $PRINTS contributor membership we need to create a way for them to acquire the tokens. Maybe the simplest way to begin with, although not automated, is for the DAO to be the market maker. The DAO could sell the $PRINTS in treasury to contributors and use that money to buy $PRINTS in the OTC.

[luiz]

Thanks for initiating this discussion @Klamt.eth and I agree with your comments as well @glory .

My suggestion would be to dramatically simplify it all for a v0 and to really get us to a roadmap to how actually execute it all. We need to have the whole DAO participating on the discussion and not simply staff members

My rough view of how this should work is to have at the center of our community, with the highest amount of benefits, (1) the full member (5k PRINTS or more). Currently, there are 245 wallets holding 5k PRINTS or more. What’s the current and what’s the future value proposition to then?

Then, we need to create a value proposition for (2) people who hold 1 to 4999 PRINTS. Currently we have ~155 wallets holding that amount. What’s the current and what’s the future value proposition to then?

Then, we need to create a value proposition for Fingerprints Drop Holders, i.e. the people who hold the NFTs we have released: Avid Lines, The Jims etc. What’s the current and what’s the future value proposition to then?

Finally, I believe all has to tie with other stakeholders extremely important to the DAO: artists. What’s the current and what’s the future value proposition to then?

When we agree that, then we move to discuss the idea of staking, passes and everything else. We need to get to an actionable roadmap, because there are too many ideas at once. So I suggest we get to a consensus on the basic levels and work from there.

[bamboo]

Lots of great ideas in here @Klamt.eth, thanks!

On first impressions, I like the idea of “staking” PRINTS for a season for a season pass to drops. Quite a few interesting ways of achieving this, anything from burning your prints for a lifetime NFT, through to traditional staking lock-ups.

Also love the idea of contributor tier through a minimal NFT/PRINTS entry.

Things I don’t like so much: royalty shares (legal issues + complexity; plus I feel these should go to the DAO); multi-layer / upgraded passes (seems complex).

Overall I’d agree with @luiz on this, a simplified version to appeal to those groups he outlines is the first step, can layer on the more exciting stuff later.

[Klamt.eth]

I agree that the best way to do this is by achieving consensus on the basic concepts first and then maybe add complexity. I just wanted to throw some innovative ideas as well to promote a more open brainstorming and because I feel that sometimes it can create excitement in the community.

I also agree that this topic should be thoroughly discussed within the DAO with a broad participation of its members. Daily remainders on Discord and even a post in our Twitter might help to gain attention.

In a simpler value proposition framework, we could offer airdrops of future projects to full-members (5k $PRINTS), full access to Discord to 1,000-4,999k $PRINTS holders and read-only access to Discord, except the curation channel, along with the opportunity to work in the DAO to FP NFT holders. We could also stablish a lower tier of $PRINTS holders to have the same perks as FP NFT holders.

[lucaspon]

@Klamt.eth

In a simpler value proposition framework, we could offer airdrops of future projects to full-members (5k $PRINTS), full access to Discord to 1,000-4,999k $PRINTS holders and read-only access to Discord, except the curation channel, along with the opportunity to work in the DAO to FP NFT holders. We could also stablish a lower tier of $PRINTS holders to have the same perks as FP NFT holders.

I really like this, but I think that for Drop Holders to be able to work in the DAO they’d need more than “read-only” access to the Discord.

What do you think of these value propositions?

• 5k $PRINTS and above: Full membership with free airdrops of future projects.
  I think we could increase the number of NFTs airdropped based on how many multiples of 5k $PRINTS the member holds. So, 5k = 1 NFT; 10k = 2NFTs, 15k = 3NFTs and so on.
  I just made the calculations and, if we cap it at 5 per wallet, we’d be airdropping 474 NFTs per drop, as per our current tokenholder table.
  We can add more perks to this later.
• 1k to 5k $PRINTS: full access to Discord/Discourse and ability to work for the DAO, but with no expectation of engagement/performance.
• less than 1k $PRINTS + Drop Holders: full access to Discord/Discourse conditional to engagement/performance in decentralized compensation. We could easily track and prune this tier based on results every end-of-month.

[Klamt.eth]

I like where this is going.

I think we should try to gather more feedback from the community on the “less than 1k $PRINTS + Drop Holders” tier.
My concern in enabling anyone with any $PRINTS amount to automatically have full access to discord is that it could make the 1k to 5k $PRINTS holders feel that they don’t have a value proposition that is very different from a holder of 1 $PRINTS.

Additionally, it could consume a lot of time and energy to constantly track engagement/performance of everyone on Discord and having to expel the ones who didn’t perform could create a not so good environment in the community.

That’s why I think it’s easier to control the onboarding than to let anyone in and control it afterwards. We could have a bounties board where holders of a given amount of $PRINTS or FP NFTs could choose an activity to contribute, getting paid and have full access to Discord. The read-only access would be only to facilitate contributors to understand how they could help, but we could remove that feature.
The bounties board is something @glory suggested is his post about this topic. Discussion - Lowering barriers to entry for members who want to join and contribute to the DAO

Finally, I would also have e minimum number of $PRINTS tokens for the last tier, as we are offering the same value proposition for holders of FP NFTs. That could devalue our NFTs in the market, as opposed to appreciating them if we have a reasonable price floor.

[lucaspon]

@Klamt.eth

Additionally, it could consume a lot of time and energy to constantly track engagement/performance of everyone on Discord and having to expel the ones who didn’t perform could create a not so good environment in the community.

This is actually quite simple, only a few minutes per month assuming we’ll be using a decentralized coordinape compensation system similar to RAW.
It’s the same work to track and reward top performers.

@Klamt.eth

That’s why I think it’s easier to control the onboarding than to let anyone in and control it afterwards.

I think we can somewhat filter by increasing the bottom range from 1 to 50 or 100 $PRINTS. Having people invest a tiny bit before joining is a kind of commitment that I believe can work to keep away those who aren’t serious or really excited to join.

@Klamt.eth

Finally, I would also have e minimum number of $PRINTS tokens for the last tier…

Yes I think so too, but @luiz is opposed to this because he doesn’t believe people should be required to buy anything in order to be able to work for us.

I think we must remind ourselves of the main goals for membership tiering:

1. create progressive incentives for acquiring and holding more $PRINTS
2. create an alternative that allows workers/builders to join the DAO without having to invest unreasonable amounts in a membership. However, do this in a way that holds them accountable

So, the question is, what’s the best way to hold people accountable for their contributions?
I don’t see any easier (decentralized) way to do this other than tracking coordinape performance, unless we cave and assign centralized power to certain members to judge others.

[Klamt.eth]

@lucaspon

This is actually quite simple, only a few minutes per month assuming we’ll be using a decentralized coordinape compensation system similar to RAW.
It’s the same work to track and reward top performers.

I would prefer to compensate through bounties (one-off or recurring) than Coordinape. How can people closely follow the work being carried out by each individual member in the whole month to cast a fair vote?

@lucaspon

think we can somewhat filter by increasing the bottom range from 1 to 50 or 100 $PRINTS. Having people invest a tiny bit before joining is a kind of commitment that I believe can work to keep away those who aren’t serious or really excited to join.

Completely agree.

@lucaspon

So, the question is, what’s the best way to hold people accountable for their contributions?

I agree with you, I would have a minimum amount of tokens required to join that tier.

[lucaspon]

@Klamt.eth

I would prefer to compensate through bounties (one-off or recurring) than Coordinape.

There are a few problems with a bounties system:

• who will set the bounties and their amounts?
  We’d likely have to grant power to certain members to control this system, which touches on the issue of legitimacy.
• how will you judge whether or not a bounty has been properly completed?
  For example, say “building a website” is a bounty. That can be accomplished with extreme variance of results, and you’d likely not be willing to grant the bounty amount to a poor result. The incentives of bounties are set to make people accomplish things with the least amount of quality possible, specially with the absence of any long-term commitment.
• how to compensate work that wasn’t predicted in a bounty?
  You don’t usually have perfect visibility into what work will be important during a specific month. As such, some members will perform work that wasn’t known to be desirable when the bounties were being set, and thus won’t get compensated for it. We’d have to be constantly managing the bounties, which would likely create controversy over what should and shouldn’t be a bounty. These would only be manageable with centralized power.
• how to incentivize long-term contribution?
  Bounties work well as short-term incentives for certain, very specific and predictable tasks. It doesn’t work for more complex and unpredictable activities (say, managing and organizing the marketing area), and also won’t be enough to retain or interest the most talented members.
• how to make bounties predictable and reliable?
  The unpredictability of future bounties and their amounts will also deter those who wish to build a long-term “career” or contribution relationship with our DAO, since they won’t be able to rely on it to pay their bills on an ongoing basis.

So basically, bounties can work somewhat fine for small demands, but it’s definitely a very incomplete system. We’d have to create a different set of rules to accomodate existing staff positions and centralize managerial power over the bounties system to them, which might be complex and controversial.

With the Coordinape system, we can have a single unified system where top performers level-up until they can become staff and pledge for full-time fixed-income positions. We can easily accomodate the existing staff by inheriting their staff roles into this new system.

@Klamt.eth

How can people closely follow the work being carried out by each individual member in the whole month to cast a fair vote?

People wouldn’t need to follow everyone else’s work, just for people in their immediate working group. They don’t need to vote in areas in which they’re not participating or keeping track of.

More active members will earn more votes than less active members, improving accuracy and reliability of results through time. Staff will also be able to wield more votes from the get-go.

[glory]

I think these are all good points - there are obviously shortfalls to the bounty system, but I do think it has a role to play. It’s good at incentivizing (and compensating) short-term, specific, discrete tasks that only require one person (much of this you’ve already recognized above)

Personally I think the optimal structure is to have both the bounties and Coordinape running in parallel.

Frankly though I think the most important thing at this point is to just get something in place, up and running - whether it’s Coordinape or Bounties - we want to re-engage and incentivize people, and we can always iterate over time. I don’t feel too strongly about which we use. But I do feel strongly that we need to implement one of them ASAP.

[isaacB]

All great points above, showing that both bounties and coordinape have upsides and downsides. I think there isn’t a risk to starting with bounties and seeing how much having them in place checks both boxes we are talking about: 1) engaging DAO members and 2) making sure important things are getting done.

We can later decide to also bring Coordinape back if we think that we have a lot of additional work thats needs to be done and DAO members who would do the work if we had it in place.

[Klamt.eth]

Great points Lucas, I will try to answer them.

@lucaspon

who will set the bounties and their amounts?

I believe the same people who would also set the tasks and compensation for Coordinape, the DAO members.

@lucaspon

how will you judge whether or not a bounty has been properly completed?

How would we measure the quality of a work through Coordinape? In this case we could either have the contributor present the resultods for the DAO and request the payment or assign someone form the staff team.

@lucaspon

how to compensate work that wasn’t predicted in a bounty?

You could just add it to the Bounty board? Anyone can suggest new bounties.

@lucaspon

how to incentivize long-term contribution?

The same way it would be done in any other compensation method. Reward the ones that contributed the most over a predetermined period of time.

@lucaspon

how to make bounties predictable and reliable?

I think this is more of an issue with Coordinape, not with Bounties. Bounties can be used with one-off or recurring tasks, whereas it would be 100% predictable. With Coordinape, one can do exactly the same job every month and it will probably get paid a different amount every time…

@isaacB

All great points above, showing that both bounties and coordinape have upsides and downsides. I think there isn’t a risk to starting with bounties and seeing how much having them in place checks both boxes we are talking about: 1) engaging DAO members and 2) making sure important things are getting done.

We can later decide to also bring Coordinape back if we think that we have a lot of additional work thats needs to be done and DAO members who would do the work if we had it in place.

I fully support this.

[Unit]

How would bounties be approached for tasks that are considered abstract rather than purely executional? For example, working on a general marketing strategy or community-building efforts versus executing on social media campaigns, calendars, etc.? Bounties seem skewed towards task-based accomplishments versus more conceptual work. Do we have examples of the latter working out in other DAO setups? Additionally, how is the value/cost of said work discovered? Think we may run into some inefficiency on that front.

[glory]

I’ll add some detail here as I’ve been researching the bounty process.

@lucaspon

who will set the bounties and their amounts?

The most efficient way (in my view), is to have a system where any DAO member can propose a bounty (the task, scope, reward amount, etc), but each bounty has to be approved by a staff member before becoming active.

There would be rough guidelines for ‘recommended reward amounts’ - eg the scope of the job, the expertise required, the time required, etc

@lucaspon

how will you judge whether or not a bounty has been properly completed?

The member who proposed the bounty would generally be the judge of completion.

[lucaspon]

@Unit

Bounties seem skewed towards task-based accomplishments versus more conceptual work.

Yes you’ve hit the bullseye on what I believe is the largest limitation. There are many things for which we can’t easily put a price on, I see it happen all the time with dev work where lay people are willing to overpay for unknowingly trivial tasks.

@Klamt.eth

How would we measure the quality of a work through Coordinape?

That is done by active members allocating more votes to those who do better work. It’s the sum of qualitative judgements of those closer to the work.

This is also kept in check by the performance-based tranche of compensation, which btw, is already very similar to bounties: every area sets goals at the start of every month and the more goals are achieved, the higher the compensation for the area.

I think the RAW coordinape system already presents a nice balance of bounty-based and regular compensation, specially considering the Honors system too (where the DAO can award exceptional acts of contribution with honors + one-off bonuses).

@Klamt.eth

Bounties can be used with one-off or recurring tasks, whereas it would be 100% predictable.

This creates an incentive for members to not automate or simplify their recurring tasks, otherwise they’d lose the bounty and their compensation would decrease.

Using bounties for everything incentivizes people coming up with and charging for anything, even in the presence of a budget cap.

Bounties also generate additional complication when a specific goal can only be achieved through the collaboration of many members: how to split the bounty?

There is little incentive to collaborate with other members for bounties when the split isn’t clear. If it’s going to be split equally, then it incentivizes free-riding. If it’s left for members to decide, then a negotiation must ensue prior to tackling any bounty.

@Klamt.eth

You could just add it to the Bounty board? Anyone can suggest new bounties.

Adding it retroactively is problematic, as we’d owe for something which we didn’t agree on the cost of. Adding it on the spot, specially when it requires a decentralized consensus-formation, might slow down our operations. This can easily become a mess.

@Klamt.eth

With Coordinape, one can do exactly the same job every month and it will probably get paid a different amount every time…

Only if people’s relative perceptions of the importance of that work versus other work being undertaken shifts, in which case, the value of the work performed really changed.

But members who remain top performers can eventually pledge to join staff and obtain fixed compensation, which can be easily benchmarked against average compensation obtained in the previous rounds of Coordinape.

Another thing that merely introducing bounties doesn’t address: staff roles. What’s the basis for their existance and for the current salaries? As of now, it’s very centralized around @luiz and it doesn’t have to be.

I’d prefer having everything be governed by a single system of rules.

We can try to have everything revolve around bounties, but I think it’ll take more work to develop, more work to run and will be needlessly riskier in the end. It will also not be scalable.

[glory]

I think I’ve said it before, but I think there is space for both bounties and Coordinape.

But in my view, setting up a bounty system right now will at least allow us the flexibility to compensate people ad hoc - right now without any system in place it’s very difficult to pay people for work.

Why don’t we just set up a simple bounty system, and then iterate over time? We could improve the system, or add a Coordinape system, or both.

[luiz]

I think this discussion deviated from the intended purpose: i.e. Membership tiers. Can we go back to that and try get consensus on the value proposition for the different tiers?

How to compensate for work is a completely different topic.

[Klamt.eth]

To simplify the discussion, we could have only 2 membership tiers for now, 1,000-4,999 $PRINTS with access to our Discord and 5,000 $PRINTS or more with access to Discord and airdrops of our future NFT projects.