The Catalyst Circle represents Cardano’s first experiment in community governance and is designed to explore mechanisms and processes to support the transition of decision making authority from IOG to the community. Given the central role played by the Circle, we are requesting that the community fund the operation, administration, and management of the Catalyst Circle, specifically the supporting entities that are vital to its success: the CC Admin Team, CC Treasury Team, and CC Mentors, for a three (3) month period from April 2022 to June 2022.
<u>Description of each entity comprising the Catalyst Circle:</u>
The Catalyst Circle is a community body composed of elected and appointed representatives from each of the key stakeholder groups. The elected seats include: Community Advisors, General ADA Holders, Funded Proposers, Toolmakers and Maintainers, and Stakepool Operators; while the appointed seats represent: Input-Output Global (IOG) and the Cardano Foundation.
Currently, in its third iteration, the Circle works to identify Catalyst-wide and sector-specific problems by working across the diverse set of communities to find solutions, and implementing these solutions through a constant learning process. Over the next several iterations, we will see this problem-sensing body take on more of a decision-making role for the management and operation of the Catalyst funds. The Circle continues to be highlighted by both IOG and the community as valuable mechanism for bringing stakeholder groups together as we work towards achieving our mutual objectives for community governance. For reference, all Circle activities, including meetings, discussions, and action points can be found here: <https://github.com/Catalyst-Circle>. As the Circle continues to provide value to the entire Catalyst ecosystem, it is important that the community continue to support the circle, and associated entities, to ensure its success.
Like the Circle was born out of a need for communication between key stakeholder community groups within Catalyst, the CC Admin Team was created to facilitate, track, and record interactions within the Circle itself. By acting as the memory and logistics layer, the CC Admin Team allows the elected Circle members more time to focus on finding solutions to community-identified problems, rather than spending that time completing tasks that are administrative or operational in nature. The CC Admin Team is responsible for supporting the project management of the Circle on a weekly basis, which is in itself an ever-growing task. In addition, the CC Admin Team organizes and runs the election of Circle members, and also is responsible for their onboarding.
The CC Admin Team has also expanded to include a group of accounting-focused individuals to work on the treasury and financial management needs of the Circle, across all its activities. The CC Treasurers play a necessary role in ensuring that all finances allocated from the community are managed in a clear, open, and transparent manner. With this team in place, community members from across the ecosystem are free and able to easily see what money has been received, how it was spent, and for what it was spent. This is an essential transparency layer that can give community members trust that all activities are conducted above board and are justified.
The final body we are seeking funding for within this proposal, in support of the Circle, is the CC Mentors. This group is composed of former CC members from previous iterations who will continue to work with and support current Circle members to provide continuity and build up a cadre of expertise related to community governance.
Like Catalyst itself, this initiative is an experiment. We are testing new modes and ways of doing governance. There is no guidebook explaining how these activities should take shape or why some avenues are more preferable than others, but that's what we are here to find out. We are working to prepare all of Catalyst for a future of true community governance and management of the fund, and eventually the entire protocol. It is our hope that through these efforts, the community will be well prepared to assume the responsibility when the time arises.
This proposal addresses the following challenge through creating a network of core governance entities that will be vital for the transition and control of the Catalyst treasury. Each component entity, individually as well as all in totality, are focused on the following key directions as outlined in the challenge brief:
- Education for development in the Cardano & Catalyst ecosystem
- Developing common tools, frameworks, core infrastructures, or proof of concepts
- Common audited repositories & overviews of existing solutions
- Organizing events to bring the development ecosystem together
- Collaboration to improve interoperability within the ecosystem
<u>Education for development in the Cardano & Catalyst ecosystem</u>
The proposal will address education for development in the Cardano and Catalyst ecosystems by building the capacity of each of the Catalyst stakeholder groups represented by the Circle in identifying, developing, and testing out governance solutions. Through this iterative process, the Circle will directly engage large sections of the community to better understand their challenges while gathering their ideas for how to address them. This will help ensure that the entire community becomes active in the creation and operationalization of solutions, thereby raising the overall education and expertise levels of the community. Interested community members can expect updates from the Circle during weekly town halls and various Catalyst-related events.
The CC Admin Team also addresses education and development of the Cardano and Catalyst ecosystems by fulfilling necessary administrative and information roles to ensure that the community has consistent access to the workings of the Circle. The CC Admin Team attends all CC meetings and is responsible for the facilitating and note taking of the meeting. The team tracks action items, circle member commitments, and helps build bridges into community learning through activities such as Election Fest and Governance Day. The CC Admin Team also works closely with the Quality-Assurance DAO (a separate oversight body) to ensure that the information collected and relayed to the community is accurate and easily accessible. Through these activities, the CC Admin Team, in collaboration with other Circle entities, are engaged in iterative knowledge production and reproduction so that it, and the wider ecosystem, are in a continual state of learning and knowledge transfer.
The CC Treasurers play an integral role in education for development in the Cardano and Catalyst ecosystems by developing and implementing accounting and reporting structures that are transparent, so that the community can easily see where the money allotted for governance is being spent. Even though they comprise a new team, the CC Treasurers have quickly managed to create an accounting system through github that is open source, so that payments going in and out are tracked, and over the next funding cycle, will work to automate this tool where appropriate. In addition, the CC Treasurers are developing, “treasury as a service” so the broader community can take the model developed by the CC Treasurers and apply it (with CC Treasurer’s help) to their own context, further reproducing the information and knowledge through this initiative.
The Mentors also have a crucial role in education for development in the Cardano and Catalyst ecosystems but creating a network of previous circle members who provide invaluable assistance to new cohorts, and assisting in the distribution of Circle-related activities and information. The value of the Mentors within the governance proposal is to provide a streamlined transition process from one Circle to the next. Previous iterations of the Circle, without mentors, were not able to mobilize as quickly during the start of their term, and by introducing mentors, many of the lessons learned from previous iterations are shared and applied more immediately.
<u>Developing common tools, frameworks, core infrastructures, or proof of concepts</u>
A key function of each of the groups above, is to create tooling, frameworks, infrastructures, and then test them in real world settings to determine their effectiveness and success. Some examples of common tools, frameworks, and core infrastructures that are already under develop or actively being employed by the Circle, CC Admin Team, CC Treasurers, and Mentors are:
- Open source Github meeting documentation repository
- Open source Github problem sensing board
- Open source accounting system with tracking and reporting system for funding acquisition and dispensing
- Training to other
- Process guidance for documenting and implementing Catalyst Circle elections
- Development of a CC Admin Team playbook which will outline all processes, documents, and procedures for running the Catalyst Circle and its administrative requirements.
<u>Common audited repositories & overviews of existing solutions</u>
As highlighted in the previous section, the Catalyst Circle, CC Admin Team, and the CC Treasurers have committed to using only open source tooling, unless no open source tool exists. By having this commitment at the forefront, the community can have confidence in being able to access the information and review it for themselves. This is an important part of our ethos as we strive to grow governance in a community-driven, community-centric way.
By keeping the process transparent in an open source fashion, each problem only needs to be solved once and added to the repository for other community members to see, and if appropriate put into action. This is the joy of open source. We believe that by maximizing the community’s collective brainpower we are much likelier to be successful through a spirit of collaboration, instead of competition. By working together we can achieve our goals much faster than by each going our separate ways. We believe that this is true to the essence of Catalyst writ-large and therefore is a foundational component of our Ethos.
<u>Organizing events to bring the development ecosystem together</u>
At its very core, the Catalyst Circle and the CC Admin Team are designed to bridge the gaps that exist across the development ecosystem and work towards our collective challenge of community governance. One core function of both of these groups is to bring people together, raise awareness across the different stakeholder groups, and garner as much community feedback as is possible. One could consider that each time the Circle meets, it is achieving this objective, for Circle meetings are a rare space where each stakeholder group is represented across mutual challenges and identifies potential solutions. As a central entity, there can be deep conversations on issues facing one or more of the Catalyst communities.
The CC Admin Team takes this one step further by supporting Circle members in their engagement with their constituents and by facilitating and implementing the nomination and election of new Circle members. We also garner feedback from all participants during our governance day events to learn and improve for the next iteration. The CC Admin Team also plays a very present role in after town halls in support of the Catalyst Swarm, where diverse groups of community members come together to discuss myriad issues.
<u>Collaboration to improve interoperability within the ecosystem</u>
It is only through collaboration that the Catalyst Circle, CC Admin Team, CC Treasurers, and Mentors are able to improve interoperability within the system by ensuring that the governance layer of Project Catalyst is representative of all stakeholder groups and a broad diversity of voices. As we tear down silos between each of the key groups, the community is better able to hear and understand each other, to clarify points of confusion and find solutions, and in doing so, strengthen the ties between the communities themselves. Since each of the members of the governance teams wear multiple hats across their roles, they can also gain a deeper insight into the different requirements and supports for each community.
<u>Challenge: Sustainability</u>
The main challenges foreseen with the delivery of this project is a lack of funding could lead to a breakdown in its effectiveness. Until this last iteration, the work of the Catalyst Circle, CC Admin Team, and CC Treasurers has largely been voluntary. While the teams remain very committed, they are not remunerated in a way that makes their involvement sustainable. The reliance on funding every 12 weeks through Catalyst requires a substantial amount of time and resources that go into writing proposals, rather than addressing the key governance needs of the community. If this proposal was not to get funded, it could seriously threaten the long term durability and resilience of this governance layer.
<u>Mitigation:</u>
It is true that funding remains a challenge for this type of initiative as it is not as tangible as many other projects. This project will largely occur under the radar and not have big flashy moments, such as the release of a DEX or other dApp. To mitigate this, we are working directly with all the community reps, including IOG and CF to ensure we are getting the information out to ADA holders so they understand its value. If, as a community, we want to assume control of Catalyst and eventually Cardano, we need to ensure that when the time comes, we are well prepared to step into this role. The Catalyst Circle, with the support of the CC Admin Team, and the CC Treasurers are one of the first experiments in developing this process.
<u>Challenge: Technical Acumen</u>
Another challenge in delivering this project successfully is the more technical nature of what is required to operate this governance layer. Given that many of the issues discussed are quite technical and take a significant amount of brain power to discuss, ideate, and then implement solutions, it is possible the community will not want to engage in such technical discussions as they see them as difficult or unappealing. However, no matter how difficult or unappealing this governance work may be, it is a necessary component in the transition of decision making power from IOG to the community.
<u>Mitigation:</u>
One key way that we plan to mitigate the technical nature of this proposal is to ensure that all documentation, meeting notes, meeting recordings, etc… are open and available to all. The CC Admin Team is also drafting an open source playbook to highlight all the processes and procedures that need to be undertaken to operate efficiently. This playbook will then be downloadable for any other community groups/entities looking to form their own governance layer, either for a project or community led initiative. This type of collaboration and information sharing will help the entire ecosystem advance in a way that would be much more challenging if it were closed.
<u>Challenge: Stagnation</u>
Funding a Catalyst Governance and Administration layer will introduce a centralized bureaucracy.
<u>Mitigation:</u>
To mitigate the ossification of the Catalyst governance later, the CC Admin Team will hold regular (monthly/bi-monthly) onboarding events to encourage new community members to participate in the governance process. We will maximize existing venues such as the After Town Halls, IdeaFest, Saturday Swarm sessions, and where appropriate will develop new onboarding events. In addition, the CC Admin commits to specifying how onboarding & training works via the playbook, by June 2022.