The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We are voting FOR this proposal, but our support is conditional and limited only to an online event.
To begin with, we want to clarify that for us, the most important factor of this whole discussion is the value that we might be able to get from hosting a DAO offsite as the one described rather than the cost associated with hosting one. That said, we also want to note that although we’ve had several meetings in the past that could be considered successful, they were nowhere near a point that would justify spending as much as it’s budgeted in this proposal for them.
That isn’t necessarily just a function of the meetings or the people facilitating them. Instead, we might not be in a position as an organization where the DAO can capture the full extent of the value such a meeting could bring.
Ultimately, the goal isn’t to have an event just for the sake of having an event. The goal is to have an event that can push the needle forward and deliver value that would be hard, if not impossible, for us to get differently. Although not directly comparable to an IRL meeting, an online event could help us test the waters in the sense of what we get from it.
With all that in mind, we still believe that the requested budget, even for the facilitation of an online event, is too high relative to the value we believe we’ll be able to get from it. We can’t afford to spend ~$10k per online workshop. While we understand there’s a cost for planning and facilitating, it should be way lower than what is asked right now.
Furthermore, we’d like to note that the success of this meeting depends largely not only on the organizer putting enough effort to make the event successful but also on the participants - even the best-facilitated event will not be fruitful if not enough right people attend it or if those people are not prepared enough to use this time efficiently.