Not the same kind of weather that you're under right now. Hey, Senad. So far, I would say mostly Thrive team member board meeting. But eventually that'll change soon. So you're looking very slick today, sir.
I've been in back to back meetings since 10am, which is six hours ago. So. Oh, you said slick. So thank you.
Even more impressive given the circumstances.
Thank you. It's a special day. It's a special day.
Nice. Let's give it another couple of minutes to see who else shows up. I don't know. Mashal, have you met everybody here yet? Maybe not. So, these are the members of the ThankARB team who are all here with you today. So there's Rebecca, who is our architect. And Katharina, who is the program manager, Senate who does everything I don't know how do we describe what you do Senate I don't even know.
Well, I got a question i According to role description, leading the BD function at thrive, and I joined as the 10th employee and we're like, about 40 people almost forgotten about I did about real thing or still am so
40 people, really? That's amazing.
Yay. Yep. And hello, Joe, and Krzysztof. Welcome everybody. Celebrating momentarily having a meeting with more women than men and we did it for a second. Uhm, So I think this might be all of us for today. I'm going to jump into sharing my screen. Great to have you back with us Mashal. Welcome back to the eastern standard time zone. Uhm.. okay... So let's see sharing my screen. Do who would help if I actually had the agenda open? No more 10 to 11pm. How to get totally. Timezones can be rough. Okay, just one more sec. here for me. And then I'll start recording. How's everybody doing today? I say as I'm trying to get some time while I open up this thing. Everybody doing okay? I see nodding heads. Alright, cool. So I don't know if you saw my message earlier. Maybe even just before I share the my screen. I just wanted to recognize that we're going to have to have a shorter meeting today. Unfortunately, I have something else that's booked that I cannot change today. That's at the halfway mark. Just a personal appointment that I need to go to. Krzysztof, I know that you also have a hard stop at the half hour and we have been talking about moving this meeting a half an hour or an hour earlier. So maybe just to like actually finalize that decision. While we're at least some of us are here. I just wanted to check in with you all about, you know, potentially whether half hour or an hour would work for you and then we could sort of lock that in moving forward for future meetings. Would any preference have a half hour or an hour does that not work for anybody? All good. Let's do it. Mashal nodding Krzysztof, thoughts on what would work for you, sir?
Yeah, an hour earlier would be even better because I have literally like now another meeting. Half an hour is good as well.
Okay. Does anybody have a strong preference for an hour versus half hour an hour early works for me? hour earlier? hour earlier hour earlier? Okay. Sounds like we have something that is approaching consensus. So let's, let's go with an hour earlier. I'm actually going to have to create a new calendar event. Joe created the last calendar event and he is completely offline, although he didn't seem to pop up and tweet something earlier today. So I did send him a message asking him to change the calendar invite but I'm assuming he is basically not reachable for the next little while. So you may just have to manually delete the calendar invite on your on your end because I'm not sure if I'll be able to do it. But I will send a new calendar invite for everybody. And, you know, and hopefully Joe is having some well deserved time off and we'll be back. Bright eyed and bushy tailed in the not too distant future. Okay, so, sharing my screen. Stay tuned for a new calendar invite. Soon. Blue presenting starting slideshow, okay. So we have the basically the exact same agenda from last week. Oops, I'm gonna kill a cord cord. Start Recording the the main thing that has happened in the time since last week, is that we have taken steps forward on the RFP process. So I think probably the most significant thing we could do is just jump into updates on that you will see that there is the RFP process overview document as well as this new air table which should be on your dashboard. Mashal, you said you had an issue of getting into the dashboard. This morning. I'll circle back and make sure that you have access to it. It should be the publicly viewable link that we shared but a confluence and all Atlassian tools can be a little bit weird.
It worked on my laptop there were issues on on my phone. Okay,
cool. All right. Well, glad you got in. So just for your FYI. I mean that is where you're going to be able to find everything from this point forward. You know, the weekly reading will always be there, as well as the links to the recordings and everything else that happened in previous meetings. So, you know, if there's anything that you would like to see there that you're not seeing, you know, definitely don't hesitate. To reach out. Always happy to you know, add stuff if there's things that you'd like to see but you know, by and large, basically everything you need will be there. Rebecca would you be okay with me putting you on the spot to talk about the RFP stuff? I just know that you did all the work on the table. So for one I don't want to take credit. We'll probably do a better job document than I will.
That's fine. So the main update here is we just wanted to give you all a way to actually start going in and looking at some of those applications. We've tried to anonymize it as much as possible to make them blind. Some of them did provide identifying information, but you will see that there is a link to our planning grants shortlist. So these are the 22 top applicants that we have at the moment. We have invited them to submit the final final program application. And in terms of the planning grants, we've mentioned this for the last couple of weeks. That is a 1000 ARB grant that we're giving them to attend to coaching workshops with us, where we will actually comb through that program application with them and the goal here and Joe talked about this a lot is ready just even if they don't make it to the next stage. These are potentially grants that they could either go to the foundation with or apply to future programs with so the like these are strong applicants. But at the end of the day, we need to make a final selection from them and we really welcome your comments on this process. So you should be able to go in there and add a comment if you have strong thoughts. You know, when these get to the stage, we present that final list of applicants that actually get funded. That will be a veto process depending on how much they asked for, but it is helpful for us even now, just to get a sense of how the board feels about some of these and we are currently internally just thinking about ways that we can potentially open this up either right now or after we made the final selection on programs because we do want to open this up to public commentary.
The other thing, just for the sake of adding it for context of Katharina has been individually messaging everybody who's applied so we had over 100 applicants, there's a shortlist of 25 some of the we basically broken them down into four different subcategories. You know, the folks that were asking for more information and getting that planning grant that we just talked about applied, but their project, their program was actually more like a project that probably should apply for funding as a project as opposed to just like, you know, not a fit for what we're doing. And, you know, thanks for applying but not spam but just not a fit. So there's there's these four different sort of segments of messages that are going out to people. Everybody is just, yes, you definitely will have the opportunity to provide feedback prior to the final selection. You know, basically we're just at the point now where we're asking people to, to give us the more detailed plan, which includes a budget and you know, a step by step breakdown of all the activities. Krzysztof Go ahead, sir.
Yeah, I can't access this list. Like when I click on the link, it told me to sign up to table
I think you need to have an air table account to be able to see it. You don't have to have like a paid account, but like basically an account already. You just have to create one and then you should have a physical.
Krzysztof, I just got through just linking it to my Google account.
Okay. Thank you.
We should be getting referral fees from airtable here for signing you all up. But yeah, no, thank you for all the work that's gone into this, Rebecca, and to create this view so that people have the ability to take a look and add their comments. This is just like a small comment like this just want to make clear that this is not how we're getting your feedback. Ultimately, for sign off. It's really just an opportunity to take a look at who's been shortlisted out of the 25. Ultimately, we're probably talking about a 10 that would actually get funded. And that'll be you know, a couple of weeks down the road once people have actually gone through the process and filled out the forms and then we'll have a more formal way for you all to weigh in on the various applicants. Yeah, Joe.
Question Ben. How many of the programs from 1 a are being continued into one be
good question. I wouldn't say there's a lot of them that are a direct one to one overlap. There's definitely a lot of the same people running sort of different variations of programs. There we will be bringing to you a proposal for the firestarters program. Which was the one that was run by Joe in the team. Previously, we now have a decentralized version of fire starters that we're going to bring back to you. So that's probably the most direct kind of one to one like carryover from the previous milestone. That being said, let's see who else grant ships I think would be one of them. So anybody else I'm not thinking about guys. I don't think there's any others that are like a direct continuation of what was done in the last milestone, but definitely a bunch of the same people with different ideas or different approaches.
Yeah, I know the ones that haven't continued. What's the rationale behind not continuing with them?
It really just came down to whether people applied for funding or not. And the you know, because the the goal was to decentralize and to make less of this being done by us the ones that were run by our team directly in the past, we just did not put in RFP proposals for with the one exception being the firestarters program, which we will not be running directly and making decisions in sort of a top down way. So that's really the rationale behind it.
Yeah, just because this crops up to a conversation with Daniel about that rnDAO program, which was a program in one area and is now being pursued as an independent, an independent proposal to the Dow. And I just wasn't sure why there wasn't continued as part of this program.
Did they apply for the RFP? I don't remember seeing an application from them. Rebecca, Kat Do you remember if they'd actually applied as part of the RFP? I think Rebecca is frozen
Because I spoke to Daniel and he said that. He said that he'd been told the board, the board seems to think you should be we should be funding more one off things and your program should go to the DAO where it sort of ticks me off a little bit because I wasn't under the impression that something we could add
Definitely didn't say that. Daniel directly myself, or I don't think anybody else on our team did. So I'm
I probably did okay. Yeah. I'm not sure because I've noticed I've been looking into the list I'm not following fully. But if we are talking about rnDAO, then like, you know, they did a pilot with plurality labs in the past. So you know, right now it will be like, but my personal opinion I told him it's my personal opinion. That like right now, I like I don't think the plurality labs especially in this form should be like the funding source for any long term going programs.
Yeah, I would say Krzysztof that probably stemmed from the work. Daniel has done outside of PL but it's quite active on the forum, but I looked through all of their docs and thought rnDAO was actually like a perfect sort of candidate for this pluralistic framework. And I think that messaging came from Joe that may have been conveyed as a result of a conversation with you Krzysztof, but I just didn't like the fact. You know, it was like, Oh, the board says you can't be a part of this program. When it wasn't something that we were that we discussed.
Yeah, like I you know, but like I was discussing this with him like half a year ago, as well. So before the 1 B that overall, like I don't know, and they weren't thinking about getting more funds. Than the whole PL program right now is because like, initially, it was something small and then they were thinking about millions. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure that like, you shouldn't be funding just rnDAO in PL.
Yeah totally. And I am Krzysztof I'm not I'm not pinning this on you but more
I'm still standing by this this like this, this opinion that like, you know, when PL is like 3 million $3 million grants, we like I'm looking for example right now into this proposal and simply, you know, while it sounds interesting 500k Ask for this program seems like a bit too high.
Yeah, so maybe Ben just the thing to take away like outside of the evaluation of that specific program, just like how stuff has been communicated, because it just rubs me upside wrong way when it's sort of it feels like the responsibility for the decision has been abstracted away from PL where there's this should be a rationale behind why they're not being continued. Not great, but you know, the board says you have to go elsewhere.
Thank you for that Joe and definitely agree with the sentiment. Katarina just took a look through the data and actually saw that rnDAO did apply, and we actually didn't shortlist. So. Something about their proposal. I think they weren't including a novel mechanism and it didn't fit within the timelines.
So that works. That's exactly the reason that it's a good enough reason and you guys have the autonomy to make that decision.
So thank you Kat for helping me parse the data. Lots of lots of information floating around at the same time right now. Anything else about this shortlist just I think, basically, you know, it'd be great if you all have the time to give it a read through to take a look. Any comments or thoughts you have this will give you a sense of, you know, sort of the the types of projects that we've shortlisted. We also will be putting together a list of the different mechanisms like a big part of what we're looking at here is trying to get a plurality of different allocation methodologies or decision making mechanisms. So you know, we'll also try to give you a sense of like, you know, actually, I think you see that a little bit already in the in the tags, you know, the different approaches that people are taking to these, the these sort of novel mechanisms. And I have to say, I mean we definitely had a a plethora of of interesting proposals. You know, the fact that we said no to rnDAO now I think is actually a indicative of like, how many good proposals that were, you know, so it was a good problem to have we are seeing a lot of interesting stuff coming forward. And here's some more information from Kat. And that's where we're M1 payments, we're touching milestones and our team verified them before. He said it 1B the earliest to have to support as validators working through milestones are met before making payments. Yes. Thank you for that. Mashal.
Yeah, my question was going to be around just projects and in due diligence around how funds are used like it's a project to say they're gonna use those funds for that round. How's that checked? And if there's any personal usage because I do see a at least one name here, but I wouldn't want to just name out but part of a another grants Council and where there's been misuse of funds so just wondering what the process for that look like.
That is a great thing. We should just privately flag I don't know if just go to.. just comment be like, you know, so yeah, that's,
I mean, yeah, definitely. Feel free to privately flag you know, I I'm an advocate for accountability and building in public. You know, I think to a certain extent, that's just a question of your own comfort level and sort of, you know, what feels like, you know, sort of safe to say publicly, you know, we're saying that we are recording these calls and you know, they're available to our members. So, you know, I think just I would I would use your own sense of sort of propriety like sort of what's appropriate to say or not, although, you know, something to be said for accountability and transparency in terms of mechanisms for ensuring that funds are allocated responsibly. You know, I mean, a lot of that really comes down to the validation that takes place at the end of the round as well as the work that we do before the round to, you know, harness the wisdom of the crowd in terms of you know, the community members and delegates who will be helping to make the final decisions about what actually gets funded. So, hopefully, you know, having people like yourself who have that kind of context helping, you know, should give us some, at least sense of red flags. You know, the in terms of how the funds are actually distributed. You know, it is possible that we could give out funds, that sort of milestones, I think currently basically the plan is that we're just, you know, paying out the projects that request the funds, you know, at the time that they're requested once they've been approved. You know, but I don't.. Kat you're actually a little bit closer to the the process than I than I am in my reflecting that accurately, is there a before and after funding as part of the money go in first
to put in the chat. So before we had for each program, we had several milestones and we would pay out for each milestone that they met and it was like between two and eight milestones, I think, depending on the program. So I think it really depends on the program, whether we split it up into multiple payments. I think it does make sense to split it up. Just in case something does go wrong. It means we didn't lose all our money. But it's definitely something we have to decide on.
Yeah. And I mean, part of what we're doing here also is trying to give people a sense that there's a bigger pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Like we've really tried to communicate to people that like this is a bridge milestone that we're looking for the things that are scalable. Thank you for the heads up around a time, you know, so like it definitely we're trying to be as responsible as possible with how those funds go out the door right now, but our hope is that the majority of folks here are seeing this as just a step towards something bigger that they could be doing if they can actually demonstrate their value and generate results within the timeframe. So hopefully that also encourages prudence on behalf of many of these folks, Joe and then Krzysztof
one thought around sharing your guys's research and feedback on the programs you accept or reject. I think it'd be really useful just to not necessarily prevent people going round and houses but if there's a no prompt to that the reasons behind that no then being used to inform if that same program or grant goes to another one. Because we have a lot going on. And yeah, we can't just have these applications continue to be viewed in a silo it should build up with
Completely, especially as we get to the validation phase. You know, our goal is actually at some point to have like on chain data stations and impact assessments associated with all of this too. That could be sort of, you know, more scalable way applied. To lots of other decisions people are making. But yeah, definitely we can record out on sort of our methodology, the rubric, the decisions we made, why they were made. And that will absolutely be the case as as this program rolls out, Krzysztof, go ahead, sir. Yeah,
so I would like to this but let me start by saying that I really like this list. Like this is something that I was actually waiting for from the very beginning. So that that's great, great job. What I would, however, I would like to stress out that yes, like, we like documenting this process of how are you how do you actually ended up on that list? And what was your decision making process? This is the essence of this program. Like how I understand this program, is this program is about this process, not about this list, but about this process. And what will be as delegates, as a delegate today will be assessing at the end of this program is not whether the final list is okay, but whether the progress is okay, so even if their final list would be perfect. If the process is not documented. And it's not like you know, solid and like for me from the success having said that, like I realized that list but I would like to have included on it as the rounds like what is the aftermath? And also what is the management you know, operational however we call it and we had the spread before I think we have it right now as well. But we have a, like an amount for funds to be distributed, and amount of funds to be for the operational costs of this program. Right. So those programs should have funds that they're supposed to distribute and funds that they're supposed to eat and having this table like this, you know, this comparison of what is the asset amount and what is the operational costs within the problem would be probably useful. Also, like as I said, like, I would like to understand what was the long list and how did we end up here? How did you evaluate this? Like this process is as I said, ideas and support looking for? And also like, I would like to echo Mashal's comment about the accountability of those projects. Something that I would like to understand before any of those projects got accepted, is how do we actually keep them accountable? And you know, having distributed process is like, I understand that you have this idea of having processes distributed into different validators. But it is only possible if those validators know what they do, what they're doing and if those those you know, program managers know what they should be reporting on, and this will be an important topic. I see it already because like we are doing in ARBC we are doing right now. You know, cross checking the programs from FPIP and we will need to have better procedures in the future. So, here we should take into account that and procedures across so, for example, if any of these programs misuses the funds, like funds, their friends and family and that's it, how do we find out and how do we make them report it so that we are able to find out? That's kind of stuff we need procedures for that.
Point really well taken and definitely agreed with with everything you just said there in terms of the importance of documentation. And I will say that, like as we're doing all of this, our intention is to create Runbooks and documentation all the way through with scalability of this program being sort of front and center and you know, a big part of that is the accountability and the structure. So yeah, we will definitely in the next step of this, I mean, there'll be a governance post with a sort of description of where things are at currently and how decisions were made. And you will see in the next phase with the the sort of fulsome version of each of these, there's a lot of checks and balances and accountability requested in the in the next phase from all of these projects. You know, so definitely we'll share all of that with the with all of you in much more detail. You know, next week and beyond, as you know, we start actually getting the information from the forum folks and we have more to share in terms of the process and the Governance Forum and elsewhere. And with that, unfortunately, i i My apologies that we only had a half an hour for this. You will see in the milestone tracker that we have updated the milestone tracker from last week. Sorry to not be able to go through that together with the limited time we had today. I just thought it was important to dive into the RFPs because that's kind of the most sort of immediate and urgent thing that's happening but you know, please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions that you might have about anything in the milestone tracker or even just add comments directly in the in the Google Sheet. And with that maybe we can take any other conversation a saint over the over the next week before next week's meeting. If there's anything that comes up for any of you sounds good. Okay. Yeah. Apologies again for for having to cut the meeting short this week. But looking forward to continuing the conversation and Thanks all for the for the input and feedback as usual. impact evaluation of the program under one I had planned one Yeah, absolutely joke we can definitely do that. And by the way, I loved your proposal that I saw it on the form Congrats on getting that out there. Very well thought out and articulate proposal you put together. Okay with that. All right. All the best everybody. See you next week and probably before that on Telegram, and we'll follow up with any other updates that we didn't manage to get to you today. And during the meeting Async in telegram cheers. Cheers. I'll see you guys
