Questions about Plurality Labs Milestone 2

[DisruptionJoe]

@thedevanshmehta

My most high level feedback is there is not enough discussion of how you are working yourself out of a job and developing capture resistance governance, which was one of the selling points when the PL program was proposed 6 months ago (3 milestones and we are done).

Interesting feedback. I had considered everything that we are discussing here to be part of that discussion. The opening statement to the problem we are discussing is:

@DisruptionJoe

PROBLEM:

Frameworks should aid in our ability to find talent, double down on winners, and cut what isn’t working. There is a fundamental mismatch between the risk taking innovation needed to build capture-resistance and the community led governance of a DAO.

For example, watch 20 seconds of this discussion where they discuss Elon Musk’s ability to blow up rockets vs Nasa.

To build capture-resistant governance we need the ability to run experiments. The DAO has made it known that it prefers frameworks for hiring service providers. This is one of the most likely areas for capture. The issue is that different work requires different types of funding mechanisms. The desire to bucket service providers as one type of funding may seem natural, but it is not the optimal variable to use to determine how we fund the work.

Are you looking for exact experiments we will conduct in decentralizing components of the system? We intentionally left this vague at this point. Here is what we intended as stated in the discussion from AIP - 3.

@DisruptionJoe

Looking Ahead: Milestone 2 & 3

The overall plan is to deploy a pluralist grants framework which operates in a politically decentralized & capture resistant way. This will fund grants programs in a continuous way that minimizes bureaucracy and increases action while providing accountability as part of the system.

Prior to releasing funds for milestone 2 to begin, Plurality Labs will offer a review of the previous milestone accomplishments and failures… The same process will occur before Milestone 3.

Milestones 2 & 3 are about scaling the frameworks and models we use while iteratively testing them. By the end of Milestone 3, we hope to have built the needed components for the entire process to run autonomously onchain.

We had to work with the foundation to create systems for compliance which ended up with us not being able to fund anything until November, most not until December. This meant that programs intended to start in Oct/Nov had delayed start dates and therefore finish dates.

I understand that it would be better if we had fully completed all programs and had a final review before asking for Milestone 2 funding, but we believe there is enough corpus of work for people to review here to be an intelligent decision about the direction they would like us to go.

Have you ever had someone ask you how much it will cost to do something and they want you to do it for less? This conversation isn’t about the amount Plurality Labs is charging. I’m directly asking delegates to consider allowing us to allocate an amount that I think would best position us for success in finding solutions for capture-resistance.

What would you like to see?

@thedevanshmehta

After the 1st milestone, what programs if any can be now delegated to the DAO without Plurality Labs managing them? If none, which programs do you foresee the DAO managing by itself at the end of milestone 2?

I’d say none right now which as was the intention of milestone 1. The programs I foresee being managed by the DAO by the end of Milestone 2 is almost all of them. For milestone 3 we would have more of an “admin switch” type of relationship to how we manage the funds, though there may still be some unresolved experimentation.

@thedevanshmehta

I’ve voted for option 3, a 1.5x increase from milestone 1, on the grounds that more is not always better. As we now know which programs work better than others, I’d like details on what experiments will NOT be repeated in milestone 2 as they were deemed to be a low RoI in milestone 1. I’ve not seen enough reflections on failures from the 1st milestone and how flab will be cut by doubling down on those that worked at the expense of those which were found wanting.

We won’t know which programs we won’t do in milestone 2 until we:

• Review grant success/impact. This is happening in January, then will be continuous thereafter.
• Review program success. This has to happen after programs end. Any that resolve before Jan 15th will be in our Milestone 1 report which will be posted in February.
• Align strategic priorities with delegates

The point of this post is to gauge if we have earned enough trust from the DAO with the work that has been done so far to ask for the amount that we feel would best empower us to provide capture-resistance and would offer the DAO best results as far as unleashing us to make maximum impact.

We don’t want to post a proposal with an amount that the DAO doesn’t support. We do want to have this conversation to figure out what the best path forward is.