Governance Calls with TFL

Community Initiatives
1

Hi Everyone,

I recently caught the Yield Labs ANC call with Matt Cantieri- @mcantieri. It was amazing: the depth, clarity, and vision here laid out calmed a lot of things I had been pondering over how we might fix it as a community, many of things actually being talked about on these forums such as the ANC value needing to be addressed.

That, however, brought up another point: We have a forum of people dreaming up ideas unaware of what TFL is working on behind the scenes. I have talked with @dokwon in the past about how the community isn’t always informed enough to make decisions that are in line with what might be best for the community. If we can address this, it offers up an area of improvement that could yield great efficiencies on how new ideas evolve.

As it stands, ANC gov community and TFL are in a strange relationship. I have heard on this forum that many feel in the dark and have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. Ideas are being created in two separate silos, which in some ways is good, but for the most part, has inefficiencies, as the community has at times - myself included - proposed things that are not feasible or not in line with what TFL is working on. It’s a waste of the community’s intellectual and planning resources and it doesn’t really reflect true decentralization - not that this doesn’t have its own set of issues, the tragedy of the commons etc.

Just as public corporations have a responsibility to report to shareholders, TFL labs could benefit from setting up monthly or quarterly conference calls with ANC governance stakers. This will help strategically drive the forum and community proposals/questions/feedback towards what is happening (what is feasible in a lot of cases) and helps TFL further deepen and refine its strategy. It would be a more effective use of the communities time to have a debate and propose things in relation to what TFL is working on since they are still the major driver of the project despite it being “decentralized”

The trade-offs here are obvious: centralization has its efficiencies. Requiring TFL to report on everything they are doing or on a too frequent basis would hamper and bog down all the great work they are doing. However, I believe there could be a good balance on setting up monthly or quarterly calls, similar to what @mcantieri did with Yield labs but in a more focused way that gives strategic guidance to ANC gov communities planning and proposals. After all, TFL has the guidance from a wealth of knowledge and research the community doesn’t such as Delphi, etc. If done with the right balance, this knowledge would help more efficiently shape communities’ time and efforts. It would be a boon to the whole community, creating better synergies and cross-pollination of shared knowledge and planning.

I would propose anyone with staked holdings would be able to join the call similar to corporate earnings calls. Wallet address would slate an opening invite to the conference call. How the call would be shaped here I will loosely layout but is open for input from the community here.

  1. Initiative overview @mcantieri similar to the yield labs overview
  2. Strategic guidance, i.e. what community ideas have value
  3. Discussion and questions from the community about what is happening.

@mcantieri @dokwon @ryanology045 and the rest of the community, please share your thoughts.

Thanks,

Nate

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I think with any type of decentralization, transparency to some degree is essential to keep the community informed, and integrated. Unfortunately as you state this poses several problems on each end of the spectrum, but must importantly the loss of ideas, and time spent on ideas that cannot/will not be used.

I think a solution to this could be a conference call. However, something that may be bit more effective would be something like a monthly interactive blog post, or even forum post by TFL. This does not have to be a extremely detailed post, but more an outline with bullet points of current projects with hopes and dreams to be accomplished, and future projects and goals. Simple bullet points could outline some of the essential specifics that would allow the community to be engaged, as well as TFL to see all ideas.

Another possibility would be to have a small conference call to eliminate a waterfall of diluted ideas. This smaller group would allow for someone to take meeting minutes in a public post format that would allow many more users to be engaged.

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I think this is a great idea, and it could help set the guidance for a quarterly conference call center around similar ideas, instead of the current path of some non-strategically guided community planning.

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Random idea thrown out there, but maybe have people go through a class about Terra’s ecosystem and only then they will have ability to propose ideas?

I am hesitant to propose any new ideas because like you stated, probably proposing things that aren’t actually feasible. I think those that make the best decision for the community are those with the most knowledge about it. Majority like myself don’t know a lot about Terra.

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Thanks for the feedback @Arcadia24. However, I see where you are coming from (the tragedy of the commons situations) but don’t think the solution would be making aptitude tests. I think this would be exclusionary and push away good ideas that sometimes come from a fresh mind not bogged down with all the rhetoric and defi logic.

What I do think though, is as a community we could probably compile a better list of links for the community that would guide people through learning Anchor, perhaps even a module class.

That said, the research is all out there if you put in the time. A lot won’t and that’s the tragedy of the commons that defi governance is starting to have to grapple with now.

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Sounds like a good idea.

Couple things that would be great to discuss with the community:

  • What would be a suitable frequency for the calls? Having them too often hurts productivity, while having them sparse leads to lack of updates
  • Who will be allowed to listen in and who will be allowed to speak?
  • Which timezone should the call target? I’d suggest one that fits the US and asia, but perhaps a poll can be set up for this.
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Thanks, @ryanology045 for taking the time to outline these very important questions.

I’ll start with my general thoughts on this and then the community can chime in and evolve it.

  1. I like to borrow @Joshuahughes idea of monthly blog posts outlining what TFL is working on. Nothing complex or in-depth, just general project direction ideas and ideas you are thinking about adding or retooling with the team’s thoughts on the direction. This would then bridge into quarterly progress calls.
  2. Anyone with a stake ANC in governance would get an invite to perhaps a discord or telegram governance voice call chat group. This would take some logic thinking through how to register to get a link based on your wallet address gov stake but shouldn’t be too hard to figure out. I think TFL could set it up and white list the delegated members to speak (outlined below)
  3. I would propose the community vote on 1-3 members max from the forum here that would be delegated to ask questions. This could be in the form of a governance poll vote and would give a 1-year delegation to these 1-3 members. This could also make point 2. redundant because all people could join the call, but only delegated members could speak and ask questions.
  4. I agree to try to slate to meet all time zones both Asian and Americas as the main focus, ideally morning in Asia so it’s evening in the US and can grab Euro too. but agree this should be a pool

@mcantieri What are you thoughts?

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One thing that can be useful would be a thread where people can submit questions a few days ahead of the regular call - like a Reddit AMA.

Everyone could upvote what they are interested in, then these points can get addressed during the call in the order of how many upvotes they got. Can be timeboxed, i.e. let’s get through as many as we can in 20 minutes.

If you’d like to set something like this up and you could use some help, I’d be happy to volunteer organizing/moderating this AMA style thread and preparing the Q&A ahead of the call.

Then, flipping it around a bit, I’d also be interested in giving TFL time for their asks - how can the community help, what are the problems and opportunities top of mind, any other commentary on current events.

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This a great addition and streamline the call questions and help the community formulate more well pointed thoughts ahead of time.

Agreed. Unless this is exactly what I was going for when you need more of a two-way dynamic where TFL actually empowers the community by giving them tasks to think about and research based on their ideas or perhaps even challenging some of the ideas that they put up that might not be in the best community interest.

As this comes closer we’ll keep you in the loop for getting this part setup🙏

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Hey @Kamil - this is great! Do you mind reaching out to @ryanology045 on Telegram?

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Thanks, Nate. @ryanology045 and I are actually in the process of setting up a more formal communications program with the community. We will do this on a cadence. The first interview will be early / mid-October. In the spirit of being ultra-transparent, the plan is give you insight into how we’re thinking about all the important issues and let you ask top-of-mind questions.

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All of this is really exciting. @mcantieri Your call with Yield Labs was so fruitful. I think it would benefit everyone to hear more of this, more often. It might ruin the aspect of ‘stakeholder information’, but it’d be great to get these monthly calls transcribed or summarized in written format, too.

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That’s great @mcantieri . Really excited about getting this going

@ajcheshier I totally agree with you about getting the calls summarized. Ideally even posted on external blogs and social mediums such as loop which I know you’re really active in creating really useful content there. Would be great if the community agrees to appoint you to summarize this on loop and your medium blog.

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Terra has a strong and dedicated community. It would be clearly a mistake not using the know how and ideas of the community in order to improve existing products (especially as the third party product development section is thriving!). Anchor is a great product but IMO we all learned a lot in the last 6 months and we need V2 to improve some sections: new ANC use cases, probably burn mechanisms to make in deflationary and any other areas we can think of! Everything would be easier and more efficient using the community’s imput

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@bitn8 This is a sweet idea.

An idea borrowed from the TradFi industry - made useful and engaging in crypto.

By doing a quarterly call, it would allow community and developers to align needs and interests, reaffirming a common vision for the future of Anchor.

Seems like a beneficial add.

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I’d like to follow up if there is any update on this issue? Just as @Kamil I am happy to volunteer organizing the calls.

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Hi there, I’ve been in touch with Ryan. So far, the main focus has been to get Col-5 released. Now as it’s looking stable, the team can focus more on the AMA; we’re currently thinking of doing that in the second half of October.
Will share a proper update on the plans soon.

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Perfect! I was going to ask if there was still some follow through happening on the Reddit AMA strategy.

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Yes. Thanks for the continued interest. We are tying up the loose ends and @Kamil it’s working on a questionnaire to get out and it’s going to be cycled around the community for the Twitter spaces call with the ANC TFL team. More details to come

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Thanks everyone for all the ideas + special shoutout to @bitn8 for spearheading the initiative. Here’s a thread with the schedule and agenda: Oct 28: Community AMA with the Anchor team - post your questions here!

Let’s make this an awesome event. If successful, this could be a regular occurrence.

Let’s also monitor the format - for now we have agreed a fairly simple plan but if anyone has ideas/observations about how it can be improved in future, please share.

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