Roadmap & Strategy Ad Hoc Committee

Governance
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As @ken pointed out, the team asked the community to help out with brainstorming next steps for Rocket Pool.

I propose electing a committee with representation from the pDAO, the oDAO, and the Rocket Pool core team, with a mandate to define a roadmap and strategy for Rocket Pool to serve as guidance over the coming 6-12 months.

A few key points:

  • I am suggesting that this be an ad hoc committee firstly because there was a call for community input that may not occur again in the same way, in the future, and secondly because it would provide potentially-useful data about whether having a strategy committee is effective, and what shape an effective strategy committee may take.
  • Dimensions of strategy are already accounted for, to an extent, in that the team, the IMC, the GMC, and the oDAO each strategize independently within their domains. Determining the specifics of the relationships between existing structures and the strategy committee should be one of its goals.
  • The committee would be tasked with presenting strategic guidance and a roadmap to the community, after which it would be disbanded.
  • For now, this is a call for discussion before formally proposing an RPIP.

The goal of this post is not to create more processes, but to induce progress toward an effective roadmap for Rocket Pool. If a strategy committee seems like a poor solution, then please share any other ideas you have in this thread!

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I think that’s a very good idea. Roadmaps give the developers a rough direction and it gives the public more confidence that the product is constantly being improved and improvements are well thought out.

So having the multiple parties define next steps together seems logical.

However, I propose to have more of a long-term roadmap of 1-X years. 6 months is basically just 1 or 2 big version iterations and hardly qualifies as roadmap.

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I like this idea. I think this is a great way to better use the bounty system to leverage community skills and passion. I think 6-12 months is appropriate in cryptoland. My concern is that without further guidance from the pDAO, the mandate would be: ‘do what you feel is best’. I think ways to better ascertain the strategic priorities of the pDAO itself (ie to preserve decentralized identity) could include (in my order of preference):

  1. concurrent snapshot vote with a list of strategic goals (aka Ken’s list), with multiple choice or ranked choice voting. The elected committee would then have a mandate to execute on the priorities laid out by the pDAO.
  2. have a single open but stable committee: anyone can commit to join/participate, but further enrollment is closed before discussions start. This ensures a wider array of voices but prevents the noETH/pETH problem of people jumping in at the last minute wanting to contribute without understanding how decisions were arrived upon.
  3. have nominees explicitly list their strategic priorities-essentially what they will fight for on a roadmap; thus the pDAO is indirectly signaling its priorities, rather than voting for the most active/smartest/best looking members
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bump

end 2005 flashback

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omg I can’t believe there was a call for this so far back in time. We really need some kind of Protocol Steering Committee still. Now more than ever.

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If you want anything to happen I think you at least need to write an RPIP. Although even that is not sufficient.

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< New management committee for pDAO planning>

I think it’s one of those things where it’s been recognized as a huge weakness, and multiple people have put forward ideas (including yourself), but there hasn’t been a concerted effort to hammer out differences and come up with a working model. GMC has become the de facto steering committee; so we are doing what we can, but I think most of us feel that is not the best organizational structure.

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My concerns remain the same as ever (see New management committee for pDAO planning - #3 by Valdorff for a fuller version).

The work of this committee already exists in practice. The ad hoc soft power is held by the people willing and able to do the work.

I don’t think this would change much with a committee. If someone off the committee was willing and able to do the work, they could do so regardless of the committee’s preferences (surely we’re not looking to stifle good work). If the committee can’t motivate someone willing and able to do the work, then it won’t happen regardless of the committee’s preferences.

This is definitely subjective, but I see this as likely to add friction and make us less good at getting new talent empowered (eg, @samus has taken the reins significantly for tokenomics, @LongForWisdom helping with tokenomics and a lot of governance focused things, etc). I acknowledge this outcome is nearly the opposite of the premise for the committee, but that’s how I see it playing out.

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Maybe this is one of those times that we should argue about the problem before the solution, because I certainly disagree that anyone is “willing and able to do the work” of coordinating the pDAO or forming any strategic approach whatsoever.

If someone off the committee was willing and able to do the work, they could do so regardless of the committee’s preferences (surely we’re not looking to stifle good work)

I also don’t quite understand this :point_up_2:. The role of the GMC is effectively to stifle good work that we don’t feel benefits RP; if someone asks for 30k and we say no, they are unlikely to do it for free. Similarly, if you want to do work that is unrelated to the strategic priorities, well you probably shouldn’t be strongly encouraged in that (although it’s permissionless, you can still do it).

People are doing many incredible things for RP- but it’s like a bunch of people in the water trying to pull a boat- a few working at cross purposes, many tangential, all inefficient. I would like to see a bit of effort to tell them “go that way.”

Tokenomics is an example of something where we have (slowly) figured out the direction we want to go. But the DAO can’t spend 8 months singularly focused on a single problem when we have a lot on our plate, and those lesser, non-“house on fire” things need coordination to deal with before they become “house on fire”.

And since he was mentioned, LFW has also had frustration with unclarity of directions https://discord.com/channels/1109303903767507016/1109303904547655724/1242089898303950850
I’m sure he’ll comment, but my suspicion is he would like better guidance about what the DAO wants, rather than having to always guess. And I would say the same as a GMC member.

4 Likes
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I really disagree with this and want to echo epineph’s response. A committee could provide the following things that are currently missing:

  • A discretionary budget
  • An avenue for paying and getting commitment from people who will do the work
  • Process for documenting priorities, roadmap, direction, etc.
  • Process for getting input from the pDAO to legitimise the above
  • including at least pDAO oversight on membership

To the extent we already have some of these things, it’s pretty ad-hoc and less organised than I imagine it could be.

And letting some of the steering fall effectively to what the GMC decides to fund is not a good status quo, unless the GMC decides to step up to be (and feels empowered to be) the protocol steering committee itself.

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If the teeth pointed to is $ (pointed to once by epi and twice by ramana in their last responses), then this feels like the GMC

The GMC’s chief mission SHALL be to distribute Grants and Bounties, retrospectively and prospectively, in order to harness the community’s talent to further the goals of the protocol.

Are we simply asking for a committee that tells this committee what to focus on? Ie, someone that defines “the goals of the protocol”?

I would like to see a bit of effort to tell them “go that way.”

Me too. I’ve asked the GMC to do things like: ask for certain topics (we’ve done some asking to avoid certain topics like dashboards), have visible multipliers (up/down) on topics to show priority, and (as pDAO members) submit bounties for things they consider important and underserviced since they’re thinking about it.

Process for documenting priorities, roadmap, direction, etc.

I know this isn’t your intent, but what I’m reading is “Val: You need to convince this extra committee about a direction before you start working. You also need to do more documentation for it.” This is fine, fwiw. It sounds like doing the work under a grant structure rather than a retro structure, and I think we already have support for that. It’s slower than working under a retro structure, in exchange for more directional certainty etc. I understand you’re talking about a higher level thing, but it needs to drive the lower level stuff for it to have any impact, and that’s where I see overhead.

Alternatively, would it work from the opposite direction? Ie, people work as is, and someone documents, categorizes, summarizes, etc the work that is ongoing?

A committee could provide the following things that are currently missing:

The GMC provides 4 of the 5 bullets, with only the “documenting” bullet above missed.

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I’ve thought about this a bit over the past year. In no particular order, I think:

  • GMC members would generally be qualified to participate in steering.
  • GMC members are unsure about how much pDAO steering by the GMC is appropriate.
  • The GMC itself would benefit greatly from steering, to inform its decision-making.
  • The act of steering: steering is a sufficiently different exercise from evaluating grant applications that I don’t think it would necessarily be a lot easier or more efficient for a GMC member to take on steering than a non-GMC member.
  • Coordinating steering: the GMC is a well-established governance structure that may work well for steering, by swapping out the task of processing grants with steering. I can therefore imagine a steering committee as a branch within the GMC or fork of the GMC.
  • A proper steering process should involve more collaboration with the core team than the GMC has had.
  • A proper steering process should involve more collaboration with other pDAO entities than the GMC has had (e.g. IMC).
  • GMC sub-committees give GMC members a more myopic and fragmented view of the state and goals of the protocol than when there were no sub-committees.
6 Likes
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Wanted to chime in with my perspective as well as a relatively newcomer…

From Epi:

Maybe this is one of those times that we should argue about the problem before the solution

The biggest problem to me seems to be coordination. We have the RP core team, the IMC, the GMC, the oDAO, and more recently an informal tokenomics rework effort (with a grant currently proposed to better formalize “core contributors”). Another important party to coordinate with is any “L2s” building on top of RP (NodeSet). As the pDAO matures I think coordination between all parties (especially with the RP core team) becomes more essential. My guess is that it is difficult for any one party to efficiently gauge the priorities/efforts of others.

Simple hypothetical examples of that dynamic playing out:

  • The “pDAO” being out of the loop with the priorities/goals of RP core team/NodeSet.

  • The “informal” nature of community planning/discussions over discord chats making it impractical or difficult for RP core team/NodeSet to keep up with/contribute to.

And as Dondo pointed out from more of a “GMC” perspective:

  • The team, the IMC, the GMC, and the oDAO each strategize independently within their domains
  • The GMC itself would benefit greatly from steering, to inform its decision-making
  • A proper steering process should involve more collaboration with the core team than the GMC has had.
  • A proper steering process should involve more collaboration with other pDAO entities than the GMC has had (e.g. IMC).

Or Epi’s general summary:

People are doing many incredible things for RP- but it’s like a bunch of people in the water trying to pull a boat- a few working at cross purposes, many tangential, all inefficient. I would like to see a bit of effort to tell them “go that way.”

The best example of large scale decentralized coordination to me is Ethereum itself. A couple of practical things utilized for “Project Management” are bi-weekly All Core Devs Call’s, with some behind the scenes coordination/documentation at Ethereum Project Management

Rocket Pool doesn’t have nearly as many people/parties to coordinate with so the scale would look different, but at the least I think it could be helpful to have a semi regular public call (monthly?) where there are unique members from major parties present (Core team/IMC/GMC/oDAO/RPIP editors or contributors/NodeSet or other L2’s/Rocket Scientists/anyone else I’m not thinking of?). Some coordination on the front end/back end of those calls would probably be necessary to ensure they are effective, and it could provide a good platform to help track “Rocket Pool Project Management”. There are already “community calls” semi regularly but those tend to be more “news” oriented where existing work/updates (mostly from the team, some from IMC/Defi updates) are communicated, but they aren’t used for “planning/decision making” or “Project Management”.

Ideally this type of effort should not replace any existing activities but instead improve coordination between parties and efficiency as a whole. It could make sure not to gatekeep ideas/contributions, and things should be planned in such a way to prevent Val’s concern that this could be:

likely to add friction and make us less good at getting new talent empowered (eg, @samus …)

I’ll note that (partly out of my own ignorance/assumptions) I didn’t think there was a place for me to contribute/get more involved until there was more coordination/organization with the Rapid Research Incubator, and a specific invitation from a generic Jasper tweet promoting the bounty and encouraging people to get involved.

From a newcomer perspective the discord can be a bit overwhelming at first, and there is not much guidance currently on how to become more involved (in retrospect there are plenty of opportunities for anyone willing and able to contribute), but a simple example is I didn’t pay attention (or even know much about) the forum website until the Rapid Research Incubator provided a reason for me to.

Overall I think there could definitely be some benefit to greater “Project Management” which includes coordinating/facilitating/documenting productive discussions at least, and steering/decision making on behalf of the pDAO at most.

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To be explicit, this type of coordination is fantastic and I fully support it. It is tactical and specific and I think that makes it dramatically easier to contribute. I think that’s very different from the strategic steering that I think is mostly being discussed.

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I think the connection would be that the Rapid Research Incubator came due to an “emergency” where it was very clear what the priority was, and the GMC acted accordingly by setting up the bounty. There may be similar “tactical/specific” bounties that could be setup to address other (non-emergency) priorities but the GMC would benefit from better coordination to help identify what those are and how best to support them.

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There is some discussion ongoing about this topic in the GMC discord server: Discord