Seed Minting Discussion - May 2021

[peth]

A lot of people wanted more context into why we are giving Gitcoin & MetaCartel a good chunk of Seeds, where did this “debt” come from etc; so here we go!

Gitcoin

We owe a bunch of money to Gitcoin. We discussed & voted for paying back this debt more than 6 months ago but it ended up getting lost in the noise & we never followed through.
Why do we owe it:

• They charge $5k for hosting hackathons & we did 2 hackathons on Gitcoin. The first one was almost a year ago & for that one they didn’t want to charge us anything, but for MetaFest they wanted those $5k.
• They airdropped us about $15k worth of GTC.
• We raised a lot of funds through Gitcoin. We currently still have $100k worth of eth in the DAO & probably something like $50k securing the Seed pool. You could say they weren’t the ones to give us that money, but they are the ones who built quadratic matching, gathered the matching pool, built a platform for it & promoted it.
• We also got a lot of attention through Gitcoin in the early days. The first grant round got us from something like 300 members on Discord to 900. Also pretty much doubled our twitter followers.

How much do we owe?
Its hard to say how much exactly should be paid back to them, but we certainly owe them a lot. They enabled us to raise the money that is still sustaining MetaGame & hosted our hackathons.

MetaCartel

We owe a bunch to MetaCartel. With MetaCartel, its less about the money we received through them and more about social support & credibility.
Why we owe them:

• If it weren’t for MetaCartel, I never would have started MetaGame. They are the whole reason I started working on the idea & was ballsy enough to actually started. Without MetaCartel, there’d be no MetaGame.
• A lot of the people that got in early, came through MetaCartel. A lot of the patrons are from MetaCartel.
• It was easier to gain credibility when we were able to say “we got started from MetaCartel”
• I think we got about 13eth from them which was slowly put inside the pool. Its hard to say how much of the current 60eth in the pool is that original 13eth, but even if its just 5, that’s $12.5 (which is about how much the current calculation suggests we give them)

How much do we owe?
Again, pretty much impossible to calculate. You could also again argue that we owe them 0 as all of the things they gave us were given with no strings attached, but imo that would be a really lame thing to say.

DoinGud

We also owe some Seeds to the world. From day 1 of MetaGame, the idea was that we’d be putting a % of our tokens into ecological & philanthropic initiatives.
Why we owe it:

• For starters, again, we owe everything to the stability that our wider ecosystems provide. We’re claiming to be building a better future - better future means making sure the ecosystems stay stable & other people are provided with similar opportunities that we had.
• We made it an explicit part of the mission by having it in the manifesto. We are expected to put our money where our mouth is.
• We agreed to at least offset our carbon footprint back at MetaFest & we haven’t done it. Let’s fucking do it already.

How much do we owe?
All of it? Ok, ok, not all. But I do think we should perpetually be putting 2-3% of Seeds into these kinds of initiatives. If some more self-preservation minded people disagree, we can count some of that as marketing for MetaGame

Concerns

Other then “where did this come from?”, it seems that the main concern was how much impact this has on the distribution.
Contrary to popular belief, the reason everyone is getting less Seeds this month is because there were less active players (“Total Seeds minted” is calculated “per-active-player”, to be “an active player”, you need to be earning at least 20XP)
While it would have been true that we’d be getting less because of the big initiatives, MD upped the “Seeds per active player” to mitigate for this.
To dispel the concern that GTC & MC were the reason everyone is getting less, he made another calculation. The far right calculation is “without Gitcoin & MetaCartel, with the same number of Seeds per active player”

Left column: First calculation with debt initiatives & Seeds-minted increased to accommodate
Middle column: Calculation with debt initiatives & Seeds-minted increased to accommodate that as well as for the fact there were less active players
Right column: Calculation without debt initiatives & with Seeds-minted same as last month

Now what

I should have started this thread before going on to ask Hammad to add these iniatives.
The reason I haven’t is because we never did that before & always did it this way:

1. Added initiatives
2. Made the first calculation
3. Asked people for feedback, what initiatives are missing, what should be removed or balanced.
4. Made the second calculation
5. Minted
   But obviously, people want to be included even before the first calculation happens.
   So, I will never do that again!

From now on, there will be a thread for adding & discussing initiatives before each minting.
Maybe also a call to discuss? Though imo discussing on the forums seems fairer as not everyone can attend the calls.

As for the current calculation, my suggestion is that we put up another one, this time voting on one of the 3 calculations displayed in the sheet.
Anyone got a better idea?

In either case, to me personally, even the highest minting calculation seems low.

• In the left case, we’re giving them less than $10k worth of Seeds & in the middle calculation, we’re giving them $12k. Imo, this is nowhere near the value we received from them.

[luxumbra]

TL;DR - Thanks. Damn right we should be giving back. Option/Calculation 1

Firstly, thank you so much for this info & clearing this up @peth.

Gitcoin & MetaCartel

We totally, 110% should be recognising the impact these two entities have had on the birth and ongoing existence of MG and their value generated for the wider community.
I think the MG community’s knee jerk reaction was a perfect storm of most folks not being around when these discussions were happening, less active players last month making it look like the ‘debt’ payback hit the allocation to players and ongoing mild confusion (myself included) of the nuances of Sourcecred.

My main concern with this mint was that some players who seemed to be working their butts off for MG in May and were relying on the mint were going to get less than they perhaps deserved for their input. But then I wasn’t around much in April/May so was not aware of Metarrrhizzzzal initiatives and shiz being discussed.

DoinGud

Hell yeah! We really should be offsetting carbon and meta-philanthropising the world. I’ve been doing 2x personal offsetting via Creol since they came on at MetaFest.

I the idea of a monthly DoinGud fund although I think calling it ‘DoinGud’ makes it sound to me like it’s linked/affiliated to Manu Alzarus FightPandemics/DoinGud DAO. Not that we don’t want to be associated with those guys ( i am a big fan of their work and the way they have grown) but should maybe call it something that doesn’t sound like we are giving funds to another DAO and is perhaps more MetaGame-y.

Minting options

We definitely should not go with option 3. On whether we go for the 500 or 600 SEED p/w options but we definitely should be flowing that value back to those entities who halped MG come into existence. Increasing the seeds minted just so players get more SEEDs for the month seems wrong and a little FED-esque.
Like you said the other day @peth we all need to be more disciplined around posting our untracked work in #did-a-thing and there should may be a template for posting so we avoid ambiguous posts that either look like comments on someones thing or don’t give enough info to enable accurate application of emojis.

[Bacon]

Thanks for posting this and taking charge of clearing up this convo! I don’t think anyone questions the need to give back, just the details around it.

Gitcoin

I’m glad you detailed this as it looks like we have two separate things going on here. It looks like we have an actual fee we need to pay for services rendered, as well as the need to give back for their support. If that’s the case, and they’ll immediately sell 5k worth of seeds to cover their expenses/fee, I think we should separate the two; pay their fee from the treasury, then mint them seeds in exchange for their support. I generally like the idea of minting seeds to other orgs in exchange for their support, particularly if they’ll hold or plant them; as it’s low cost to us, makes them almost like partners, and grows the use of seeds. I don’t think we should be paying actual fees with seeds yet though, as I feel like that will just crater the value of seeds. I could be wrong though.

MetaCartel

Basically just ditto the above. Since we don’t seem to literally owe them anything, I 100% support minting seeds to recognize their support. Have we been in communique with them though? It would be great if we could create a mutually beneficial arrangement where they plant all/most of what we give them.

We should also set in stone some hard numbers before doing payouts. Is the current calculation the full amount we intend to give back to these organizations?

DoinGud

I think I 100% agree with @luxumbra here. “Nova Reach” maybe?

[Dave]

Thanks for the detailed explanation @peth
IMHO nothing from what you explained is questionable. We should give back, 100%.

And I hope we’ll keep having these seed minting discussions moving forward. Just so everyone is on the same page before the seeds and XP are counted.

[blazingthirdeye]

The more communication the better and this kind of discussion will avoid aggravating issues and probably strengthen the Metafam.

I agree with the max payback options but I am just a lowly engaged octo. Carbon offsetting is cool but 2x Luxumbra ?!? You a wild man!

It is neat to see the history and how Gitcoin was so important in funding MG. Very cool😎

[geleeroyale]

Very nice initiative!

Gitcoin
I totally agree to instantly pay gitcoin for the hackathon + some interest maybe?

MetaCartel
Because you mention nothing is owed, it would be very interesting to hear what MetaCartel would actually like to have - that would make it easier. If they do need funds a steady small fraction could be distributed to them when minting?

Doin Gud
It would be awesome to take this as a point to fully onboard Giveth as a guild to Metagame. Not sure if someone is running a carbon offset project on there yet - but there are great initiatives already, like Manu’s campaign to help local families after huge Wildfires and it would be cool if more players were considering opening their own projects to improve something they care about.

[MLIBTY]

I wasn’t aware of this and there’s no question about giving back.

[c0mput3rxz]

Thank you for breaking down the numbers and each bin. I am all for supporting our founders, paying gotcoin for their services and following through on our promises. I think as you suggested having the discussion before proposal is critical for making sure things work smoothly and with less confusion.

For reference is there a lifespan for the the new patron initiatives? Are these permanent, temporary or limited in any way?

Most activity happens on discord and we have a ton of calls but this was not mentioned in any of them. Having some voice space for reviewing and discussing proposals still feels like a nice step. It is nice to have a thread for single focused discussion, but this should also not be the only place that discussion happens.

I think open communication is key, even having the initial discussion about the $5k budget for MetaFest hackathon should have been discussed and agreed upon at least with soft concensus.

[drllau]

This is called moral integrity … in IT, it’s easy to do the (technical) thing right but hard to do the (non-technical) right thing. If @peth feels it is the honorable act to compensate even though no accounting obligation, then it is certainly worth discussion and coming to consensus. Obviously the process could have generated less friction and more transparency but that’s what the learning curve is about.

been busy with new angel/mentor job so just dashing through

[defileZebra]

I would rather have seen these initiatives sip from the XP of the first 28k seeds that were minted than swig off the effort of the last few weeks, when our average number of contributors was reduced relative to the mint that included Metafest. However, I recognize that is now water under the bridge. Even though I want more Seed, I do not think its appropriate to increase the number of seeds minted per active player in reaction to this additional information.

I emphatically agree that we should deliver on our commitments and recognize those that generously and graciously helped us stand up.

I do have a couple questions on the seed minting calculation:
1) Are we still currently looking at 15 seeds per average active contributor, per week?
2) An active contributor is defined as earning >20XP for the period represented in the mint (or for the week)?

Bigger picture and looking forward:
3) Do we have any other past/future events that we have committed funds to, that need to be disclosed/reviewed?
4) What do we want consensus to look like for making financial commitments on behalf of Metafam in the future?

[Bacon]

Yeah, just to add on here I, personally, think we should:

• Pay Gitcoin back the $5k from the treasury. (In Eth I guess)

• Discuss with MetaCartel what they would like from us. Hopefully an agreement to mint them seeds they will plant. Determine and document a hard number, then mint accordingly.

• Repeat the above step, but discussing with Gitcoin this time for their support.

• Create a procedure for doing one-time and recurring payouts not related to player activity. Document and implement this procedure.

I’m also new though, and have little stake/involvement in this minting. I also know several members are depending on this mint, so I don’t want to hold it up any longer. I also don’t want to punt our debts further down the road, but that might be the better choice at this point to give us time to discuss with the other orgs, and/or develop the payment process.

Anyway, just my 2 cents, as it were.

[Michiel]

Thanks for this thorough explanation.

First, I don’t know too much about the kind of relationship between GC and MG so keep that in mind

Gitcoin
The $5k isn’t up for discussion it’s just the price to be payed.
Did Gitcoin earn anything on the funds we raised?
I dunno but could imagine they get a small percentage of the raised funds for using their platform. If this is not the case and we used the platform for free without them getting anything from the funds I feel we can say we owe them that percentage.

MetaCartel
I agree with everything you say about MetaCartel.
About the 13eth, were they given to us or planted?

DoingGud
I feel this would be a very good industry standard! All good
Would be good if there were suggestions and there was a vote on where we put the funds.

About the call to discuss initiatives, I would say keep it on the forum per initiative and do one call before the minting to finalise. This discussion could involve the complete finalization of the minting. The discussion can be planned long before hand so people have time to schedule it. A post on the forum where the call is announced and people can post points they feel need to be discussed (also mention thoughts or opinions when they are unavailable to attent)?

Minting
The 3rd option is a clear no
As of the other two, I’m more for keeping the amount of seeds minted. This is the rule put in place and cause we feel the pay is too less shouldn’t be a reason for increasing. If the reason is cause we feel GC and MC aren’t getting enough then I would rather choose to give them another piece in the next minting