MetaCartel in 2023 & beyond

đź•Ż Community
1

Lolwut

I won’t be recapping the shitshow in the group chat but I think we can all agree it surfaced the issues that have been bubbling below the surface for a while now, here’s a few:

  • Lack of engagement among senior members
  • Lack of processes & context for newcomers to run things (kudos to those that are succeeding)
  • Lack of available talent & people’s willingness to work in general
  • Long term sustainability - the above leading to no new money flowing in
  • The need to rethink & restructure how MetaCartel operates & where it sees itself in months/years ahead

The issues seem so numerous a number of members declared it is best we either fork or dismember the DAO altogether & return the remaining funds.

I personally disagree. I think what made MetaCartel great was the community itself, not the grants program.

However, I also think we failed at scaling the community bonds as we were onboarding new people & projects. Highly doubt newer members are as connected or aligned with OGs, same goes for newer grantees. We claimed grant is a small part of our value-add & the bigger one being the signal, support from other members, expertise etc. - but was it? Sure some grantees came purely for signal but I didn’t really see us provide much to grantees beyond a grant. Maybe we should cull membership & stop accepting new members for a bit? Maybe grantees shouldn’t join the DAO by default but only upon building rapport by reporting their progress back to the community?

Either way, we need to figure out what maintaining MetaCartel as a community would mean - if we want to maintain MetaCartel as a community. We need to revisit the manifesto, maybe give it an update & think about how to actually live it instead of bickering among ourselves.

1. Rethink & restructure

Looks like having 2 grant-giving systems running in parallel is a given at this point. Not a bad thing imo.

a) Minimum viable change

  • Have both grant-giving systems follow-up with grantees & compile reports
    • First, a month or whenever their “grant money spent” milestone is
    • Then again, maybe 6 months later
  • Make sure new proposals are pinned & members notified
    • Maybe add a bot that surfaces a proposal again before the voting time ends
  • Continue the newsletter so people who pledged 10 eth to MetaCartel can properly be kept in the loop on the grants status & grantee progress

b) Proper restructure

We should probably do a) before doing b) but here’s what b) might look like:

  • Revisit & update the manifesto, think about how to better live it
  • Rethink our value-add but also requirement for new members & member-projects
    • Do we still want it be 10 eth? How much sweat should that be? Should we resurrect the ChiliPod or support members & grantees in other ways?
  • Figure out exactly how new members are onboarded & connected
  • Have someone in charge of taking the above reports, turning them into a deck of our track record & do active outreach to high profile Ethereum people, whales & successful projects that maybe interested
  • Make sure new grantees are aligned with the idea of paying it forward to new fledgling projects if/once they are successful themselves

2. Gut the Chili

I think there are 2 main ways in which the “gut the Chili” road splits into…

a) Decomposition - Gut the Chili & spread the seeds

First one is decomposition of MetaCartel into the community which kind of already happened through OGs starting their own DAOs - this would be taking it a step further by having funds follow the workforce.

Candidates:

  • DAOhaus - probably did more for the DAO ecosystem than MetaCartel or any other project in the DAO ecosystem.
  • Raid Guild - a huge pool of talent offering essential services to dApps & DAOs, could probably make a lot of impact if given $ to work on projects of their own or scale RG.
  • MetaFactory - the most successful shop in the DAO space, building its own supply chain & supply chain tracking system, could do a lot with bringing DAOs into the physical space
  • MetaCartel Ventures - a natural evolution of MetaCartel into an investment DAO. I’d argue less pure as their interest is purely making $ vs. supporting the ecosystem through giving grants or doing cool shit, but maybe they could start a value-add service or a small grants program to give before investing
  • MetaGame - we’ve been building the onboarding & navigation system for the DAO/Web3 space, kind of the flipside of DAOhaus where our interest is serving individuals rather than DAOs. Just shipped 1.0 & could def use some funding to scale & onboard a shitload more people into the DAO space.

Unborn candidates

  • MetaEvents - between MetaCartel & MetaGame alone, we have already organized 6 conferences with over 400 speakers in total. This resulted in lots of knowledge shared, content created, connections made etc; could be taken a step further & evolve into a DAO of its own.
  • MetaMedia - we’ve been publishing recordings of the above mentioned events as well as recording podcasts through MetaMedia. We have 15k subscribers between MG & MC alone and I’m sure other DAOs that are a part of the MetaCartel ecosystem have their own newsletters &/or podcasts. MetaMedia could easily evolve into a DAO of its own.
  • ChiliPod - originally made as an additional support program for our grantees, ChiliPod could easily turn into MetaCartel’s mini incubator with all the talent & connections we have around the community.

b) Disintegration - Gut the Chili & give back the seeds

From my understanding, this would simply imply ragekicking everyone & giving the eth back to the people that pledged it.

Conclusion

Main problem with 1. is that we might simply not have enough people willing to work on it.
I took time to write this post because I care about MetaCartel but I still won’t have time to contribute more than say 1h/week & I suspect vast majority of members are in the same boat.

MetaCartel lives on through the people & DAOs it incubated as well as remains a part of the DAO history.
Even if it is to decompose or disintegrate, it will still live on in this way.
But, should it disintegrate? :man_shrugging:
What do you think we should do?

Let’s come together as a community at least for the one last time & try to figure this out. :pray:

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First of all, nicely done with the post pETH! Thank you for your thoughtful explanation of the Telegram conversation shit-show, and for providing potential solutions.

From my purview, I think MetaCartel would benefit significantly from creating (reviving, if previously existed?) working groups. There is, clearly, a lot of work that needs to be done – and a lot of people who could do it-- but a lack of organizational structure to get the ball rolling and to keep the ball rolling.

MetaFactory is a great example of a DAO that thrives on the working group structure, as is Wildfire. The value of creating small autonomous pods of people with common interests and skillsets, seems like a no-brainer. It could activate the potential energy, currently laying dormant, in the vast talent that we have in this group. Plus, the concept of “bridge-builders” / “roaming wizards” that connect the dots between working groups and also the broader DAO ecosystem, is already well established in Spicy DAOs.

I agree with you that better communication (and perhaps also direct reaching out) to dormant members is critical right now. Keeping these members in the loop via the newsletter and MetaMedia (maybe even personal emails for OGs who have poured a lot of sweat previously) will help to awaken the bears and get us the momentum and excitement that we desperately need.

Here’s the article I wrote that digs deeper into the value of working groups in autonomous and anarchic orgs. :hot_pepper::hot_pepper::hot_pepper::hot_pepper:

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Operational Overhead

This is something we want to help ease for organizations creating an impact in the world as MetaCartel. Operational headaches are obstacles that are common in every organization, no matter the size. You can’t avoid this, but you can actually “control” it by hiring the best people for the task. Web2 companies may have a structure to make things happen in the smoothest way possible, from departments dedicated to every part of the organization to income streams that fund the operations expenses. Web3 organizations lack this “Income Stream” so they can take care of the “Operational Overheads” that come with running a Decentralized Organization; Kokonut DAO fixes this.

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