Proposal: enable the new TogetherCrew functionality: Free* summarizer and Q&A for delegates telegram chat

Proposals
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Non-Constitutional

Abstract
Delegates often miss important discussions buried in 100+ messages per day or spend hours looking for a link shared somewhere. What if we could fix this?

Through a previous proposal, Abritrum DAO enabled TogetherCrew (a venture incubated by RnDAO) to conduct research using Arbitrum’s public Discord channels and Discourse data and provide Arbitrum with a community dashboard at no cost. The research is advancing, led by our academic partners at UC Santa Barbara who will likely have some results by the end of April/early May.
Meanwhile, the team has been focused on expanding the product and developing a solution for active Telegram and Discord chats, enabling delegates and other stakeholders to keep up with what’s happening.

This proposal asks the Arbitrum DAO to support one of its ecosystem projects by:

  1. Adding to the connected data sources (Discord and Discourse) the delegates’ Telegram chat and the Arbitrum.io Website. And give the foundation authority to add additional sources (e.g. websites, telegram chats, Notion pages).
  2. Enable the TogetherCrew’s telegram bot to provide knowledge management functionality in the telegram chat (automated Q&A and on-demand summaries).

These are low-risk actions (more on that below) and will be done at no cost to the Arbitrum DAO (more on this below).

Motivation

Have you ever spent a bunch of time scrolling, trying to find a link someone had shared? Or did you ever come back to the telegram chat to find 100+ unread messages?

Delegate overwhelm is very real, negatively impacting discussion and decision-making. We’re addressing overwhelm by surfacing relevant information buried across platforms.

Rationale

We’ve spent months finding ways to reduce AI hallucinations and provide more reliable and trustworthy solutions to manage knowledge in DAOs and are now ready to start offering this back to the Arbitrum ecosystem. We aim to gain valuable feedback, and as our solution improves, we hope to build trust and demonstrate value.

This is a low-risk solution:

  • Access to Arbitrum Website is done via a scraper bot. No write nor edit access of any kind is needed. Any questions that reference the website will include a link back to the website. Based on the Arbitrum website’s ToS, permission is needed for scraping the content by OCL (more on this below).
  • Access to Telegram is done via a simple bot: no permission to manage members, moderate the group, or do anything beyond reading and posting messages is granted. The Arbitrum Foundation controls the permission the bot has (posting answers to questions, posting summaries). The Arbitrum Foundation will be able to suspend the bot if needed.

The TogetherCrew telegram bot has already been deployed safely in multiple communities, including Near an Avail. Based on early feedback we received, we have improved our question detection mechanism, resulting in fewer false positives (e.g. the bot replying to irrelevant questions).

The conversations in the delegates’ chat will remain accessible exclusively to members of said chat unless configured otherwise by the Foundation (multiple accounts can be created with different permissions, so a devrel bot could be set up in the future without access to the delegates telegram).

Easy implementation and opt-out:

  • Delegates won’t need to engage with the bot if they don’t desire to. There’s no change needed to their regular activities unless they wish to use the summariser or other knowledge management features.
  • The Arbitrum Foundation can complete the process in less than 5 minutes. The admin of the Telegram group only needs to post a verification token to attest their ownership of the channel.
  • People who wish their data to not be included may request so at any moment. To request your data not to be included, please email us your Discord and Telegram handle to info@togethercrew.com or, for extra anonymity, message Daniel via Discord and/or Telegram (in both @ mrjackalop). Please be aware that this means that your expertise is not available to the Telegram bot and will not be included when creating summaries of what’s happening or when answering questions.

Specifications

  • Ask OCL permission to scrape the website. (if refused the proposal continues the same minus the website).
  • Arbitrum Foundation to use their community account on the TogetherCrew app to add the delegates Telegram group and the Arbitrum websites, and enable the knowledge management features (automated Q&A and summaries).
  • After approval, the TogetherCrew team will notify all delegates via telegram in addition to this proposal’s snapshot vote and give them 2 weeks to opt-out.

Overall Cost

No cost to Arbitrum DAO:

  • We’re making this solution available for free to the DAO for a minimum of 3 months.
  • Our sustainability strategy involves paywalling premium features for individual users (i.e. in the future, delegates may choose to subscribe to the premium features we may develop). If our plan changed from charging individuals to purchase by organisations, after the 3 month period, the Arbitrum Foundation or OpCo could choose at their discretion to pay for the service or not.
1 Like
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I fully support the idea of making this type of information available.

I belive in information being accessible. I don’t like the idea of people opting out, and I’m also curious how it can be demonstrated that we didn’t take information from someone in particular. You can tell the bot not to mention that person, but their knowledge and their lessons will still be accessible - and they should be (unless you truly erase the data, witch isnt fun).

I’m personally asking for a grant on Questbook. As a delegate myself, I see the need for this type of tooling, and I personally don’t want to pay for the service, and I feel it might be the same for other delegates. I like the idea of making it open and accessible.

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I assume you are referring to the Telegram group chat called “Arbitrum DAO Delegates” that started here and is, by its very nature, a private chat.

Having a bot that consumes and processes the content of that chat will change the private nature of that chat and, therefore, make it less useful and rich overall, as people won’t feel comfortable in sharing as they do right now.

Also, the chat is not currently owned by the @Arbitrum Foundation, but by me, individually. I’ve been requesting the AF to set up a trusted device to be the actual owner of that chat, so that I can transfer the ownership of the chat to that device’s telegram account.

That private chat has clear membership criteria defined here, and they don’t include bots of any kind.

6 Likes
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hey @danielo - thanks for this. i believe this tool is valuable; it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with the delegate chat and this could help with that.
is it possible to share a demo of how this tool works? this could help us appreciate it even more.
also, when the bot is queried, does everyone else in the chat see the query and the bot’s response? this imo wouldn’t be ideal.

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Thanks for the comments

For GDPR reasons, we need people to be able to be ignored by the bot. So personal preferences aside, this is a must. That being said, in all our history of operating, the only person ever who asked for their data to be ignored was @paulofonseca. And he even did so while declaring he actually didn’t care that much but it was a matter of principle. So I don’t expect many people to opt out.

As a simple test, you can ask questions and see that data is not included. An audit would also reveal the data absent in our database (and if anyone wanted to check that’s fine by us).

I think for now it’s simpler for us to enable individuals to pay than having communities do it. But we have discussed the idea of having communities be able to pay too. So there’s flexibility. To start, we haven’t developed any specific revenue model, so that will take some time and we hope to get more user sentiment before making any decisions.

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I think you’ll have to decide about control, as you had mentioned somewhere you didn’t see yourself as the owner but were simply setting this up for the DAO as it was needed.
If the AF/DAO are meant to own the chat, then the proposal is binding. If the chat is owned by you and the decision is not binding, we’ll add to the proposal setting up a chat under the control of the DAO.
Please clarify your position so we can move forward.

Personally, I think it would be easier if the AF governed and we could simply ask them, but in the past they recommended we make DAO proposals for using the data from Discord/Discouse so here we are.

1 Like
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You can see the togethercrew dashboard at app.togethercrew.com. However, the summariser feature is not live yet. The minimum viable feature is expected this week and I’ll share a video when ready (likely next week).

Thanks for the feedback. We have heard this from others. The first version will indeed have public queries for simplicity, but we hope to include additional features for private queries (chatting with the bot in DMs) as we progress. Private queries is likely to become a premium feature so we can be sustainable but as mentioned above, everything about pricing/revenue model is yet to be defined (we have crossed off selling personal data or doing advertising though. And the AF can turn the bot off if there are protests about any future decision we might take).

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The chat should be owned by the DAO yes, to prevent what happened previously. I’ve asked the @Arbitrum Foundation to setup a trusted device to own it, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Regarding setting up the bot, we’ve had this kind of discussion multiple times in the past. My position is that each user of the chat needs to give explicit consent for the bot to use their data, and every new user should also give that explicit consent. And all the users who don’t give consent shouldn’t have their messages included.

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Hi @danielo , as mentioned previously, because of the nature of the delegates chat, I don’t think this needs to be an official proposal. A poll on the delegates chat and/or a post in the General or Governance channels would suffice.

3 Likes
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Thanks for clarifying

I hear you. This would make sense to me if the content was private and personal data, but we’re talking about enabling people to search through messages shared in a group they’re already part of. Those posting already chose to share the messages with the group. We’re simply enabling group members to search through the content better. So there’s no change to access (no person who didn’t already have access is being given access and we’re explicitly not selling any data).

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Hey @raam I’m a bit lost here.

Paulo has clarified the chat is property of the DAO

How can the DAO decide without a proposal?

Making governance decisions via a poll would set a strange precedent and risks giving people less of a voice, no?
I understand that the DAO directly managing a chat is not ideal (the chat governance could be transferred to OpCo or the AF or someone for active management, but that hasn’t happened and would likely require a proposal for that specific purpose, which is a different concern to ours).

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Thanks for your reply.

I struggle to see how this chat is “owned” by the DAO. The DAO did not vote to create it in the first place and there is nothing in the constitution that would suggest that the DAO owns it either. Rather, its an informal group chat that was created by Paulo, who then made a handful of other members, admins. Also, Paulo said it should* be owned, not that it is currently owned by the DAO. :smiley:

Therefore, IMO, a rough sentiment check on the forum or TG chat, would suffice. It doesn’t need to go to Snapshot and require the attention of 1000s of delegates to vote on.

3 Likes
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That content is private and personal. Together Crew, their team, and their data processors, will have access to the data, and once they do, they can use that data however they see fit. That’s the issue.

And the chat is not property of the DAO yet. It’s still owned by me.

Also, if you remember, there were already conversations in this private chat about installing a bot like this, and the sentiment at the time was not very favorable, if I remember correctly.

I recommend that delegates who want telegram chat summarization use a personal summarization telegram chat tool, like 3Sum.me, for example, where they can setup their own preferences and AI summarization context for all of their Telegram chats.

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This is inaccurate. We can’t use the data however we see fit. There’s a policy that’s in place for that reason and should we depart from it (i.e. announce a new policy) the AF who manages the TogetherCrew account could immediately delete the data and remove access. We already agreed to a minimum notice policy in the proposal we passed with the DAO.

So are you claiming autocratic control of the chat or letting the delegates decide? which one is it? This was exactly my fear, having someone become a ‘little tyrant’ dictating their will on an important platform for coordination of the DAO.

3sum.me has less reliable summarisation. They use more of a basic GPT wrapper while togethercrew has been advancing techniques to reduce hallucination and improve reliability for a while.
Ultimately, we’re giving delegates the option. Once the TogetherCrew bot is added (which allows safeguards by the AF, unlike with 3sum.me who might also be violating GDPR), delegates have the option to use it or not.

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I was referring to your data processors, aka, the companies that run the AI models you will use. Unless Together Crew runs their own self-hosted AI models where they run this type of AI summarization.

I will execute whatever the delegates decide, yes. As I’ve always done in regards to that chat. No need to resort to name calling @danielo.

I would also recommend making a poll in the chat about this because since that private chat is not yet under the ownership of the AF/DAO, its matters can just be decided by the delegates in that chat. And then again, as the owner of the chat, I will execute whatever is decided by the delegates.

I would also recommend sharing first the outcomes of the previous Together Crew proposal, so that the delegates can assess if it’s worthwhile or not, as a whole, before Together Crew asks for more of the delegates private data.

1 Like
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This really isn’t something that needs to go through a formal DAO governance process. Tooling improvements like this can (and arguably should) happen permissionlessly or through informal coordination among interested delegates, without requiring DAO approval.

It’s kinda like submitting a proposal asking for permission to add an AI note-taker to Arbitrum governance calls, cool idea, but not something that needs DAO consensus to happen.

2 Likes
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Hmm i think we should defer to Paolo here as it’s a private chat he setup.

It would actually be useful if this kind of bot or technology was used on the forum.

But for privacy and consent concerns have to defer to Paolo here. If it’s’ meant to be a private chat this is probably not suitable.

1 Like
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At first glance, the initiative to reduce delegate overwhelm seems promising, particularly in its eagerness to centralize information and responses in an automated fashion. However, I am concerned about certain details that, when digging deeper into the responses, seem to merit further analysis. For example:

it is evident that, from the outset, public conversations would be imposed to simplify the initial implementation, making communication rather invasive. If a large part of the community feels uneasy about being forced to share questions that could be of a sensitive or strategic nature in front of everyone, it is not difficult to imagine a partial adoption or even a rejection leading to an unequal use of the tool. In addition, stating that private queries are “likely to become a premium feature” introduces the possibility of a gap between those who could afford advanced functions and those who could not, which would generate divisions or asymmetries in access to information.

This suggests that the product is still in an embryonic stage. While continued development is normal for such initiatives, I wonder to what extent the DAO can rely on the effectiveness of automated summaries, considering that decision making in these spaces demands reliability and accuracy.

It is mentioned that, in case of disagreements about future business decisions this can happen, which may give the impression (and makes me think) that the bot adoption is based on a fragile compromise. In other words, while this option reduces the risk of an unexpected or detrimental change to the community, it also exposes the long-term insecurity: a noticeable friction is enough to nip the tool in the bud, which would generate additional confusion.

The proposal, in principle, provides practical solutions for managing large volumes of messages. But I believe that assurances are still needed that the public queries modality does not undermine privacy or affect the quality of the discussion; that the transition to premium features does not segregate delegates; and that the “free” trial period is accompanied by a well-defined plan that communicates, with transparency, the eventual business model. The truth is that I recognize the value of the product in alleviating information saturation in the DAO, which I find useful, functional and correct, but if these issues are not clearly addressed, the implementation of the solution could lead to uncertainties and a lower level of adoption than you would like.