Free interpretation of working group rules

🗳️ Meta-Governance DAO-Governance
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Hello everyone. I’d like to leave a note regarding working group rules.

Last summer I wrote a study regarding ENS. I carried out this work under the delusion that Ecosystem WG would consider funding it. This misconception was caused by the fact that neither the forum topics nor the rules (relevant at that moment) of the working groups say that the project should be of a technical nature.

The existence of such a condition is indicated only by the old rules of the working groups that have lost their legal force. If I had known that the rules have no direct influence, but are only a tool of the stewards and can be interpreted by them as they wish, I certainly would not have written this study.

This misconception has cost me dearly. During the time I wrote the research, I earned less than I would have if I had free time. I got problems with family, health and housing. Today, six months later, it is the imbalance of expenses generated by this delusion that has led me to a situation in which the only way to not live the next month on the street is to return to Russia, into the clutches of a totalitarian regime, to which address I publicly said extremely unpleasant things. I don’t know whether there’s actually a prison waiting for me there or a forced conscription into the army, but I can say for sure that this place cannot be called safe for a person with my background and views.

I personally pointed this out to the stewards of the ecosystem working group, because I did not want to make this discussion public, but they did not consider it important to answer me anything. It is worth noting that Slobo pointed out the imperative of the technical focus of the project in a recent topic regarding fifth term grants. I believe this was done to avoid future situations like this. However, what to do with my situation remains unclear.

The fact is that ENS grants are a public offer. And the fact that the stewards of the working group preventively refused to consider my application citing a non-existent rule is a violation of the rules of a public offer in any country in which such a legal category exists at all. In an ordinary situation, I would go to court, but a number of factors, such as the legal location of ENS in an offshore zone, the imbalance of resources of the parties and the potential insignificance of the cost of the claim, are unlikely to bring anything other than trouble for ENS, most of whose representatives are not even related to the situation described above.

Accordingly, I do not have working protection tools, but nevertheless, I would like to share this story with you. Thank you for reading.

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Hi Danch.

The page is of the rules proposed back then. The current update working group rules should be maintained in this page. I don’t believe there’s a clear rule against non-technical projects, but that doesn’t mean that any work done is automatically funded. It is at the discretion of the stewards of that working group.

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Of course, I am simply referring to the version of the rules that was relevant at the time of the situation described.

I never said that it does.

In my message above, I point out that I was not even given the opportunity to present my project. I was preparing a presentation, a roadmap and an estimate, and planned to present it all at the weekly WG ecosystem call.

I asked Slobo to guide me on further actions, to which I received a response stating that there was a «clear rule against non-technical projects». The correspondence is below in the screenshot and is available via the link.

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Danch, I just read your analysis, which I hadn’t seen the first time. It seems like you really dedicated yourself to it, and it feels very competently done. Congratulations.

I believe that your true question is not on the rules for ecosystem funding, as these are essentially decisions done under the discretion of the respective stewards, but rather on how to move forward.

  1. Make a DAO proposal for funding. Any proposal for requesting funds from the DAO, even from the stewards themselves, require the same process: you define what you want, post a heat check on the forum, then if that’s well received you post a social proposal on the forum and finally an executable on Tally. Keep in mind however that we just had a selection process for Service Providers and among the candidates there were some marketing and research projects who were not chosen.

  2. Request grants from working groups: it seems you went through this process already, but you can always find other sources

  3. Use your excellent work to see if your talent is appreciated among one of the many companies that currently work with ENS, including labs, the service providers and others. Maybe they need an in-house researcher, or even a one off freelance job on a topic.

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It was good thorough work. It was sad to see it go unappreciated and the feedback was particularly abrasive and mindless. NameSys would have been happy to fund your idea and helped with more data, but we didn’t get funds for ourselves either :people_hugging:

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Alex, thank you for your kind words regarding the quality of my work.

Of course, I considered all the options you offer.

I was going to ask for funds directly from the DAO in this thread.

I communicated with delegates and almost everyone who answered me was delighted with my work. But the problem was that no one was ready to put forward an offer on my behalf. This is absolutely understandable - with such a proposal, anyone can ruin their relationship with ENSLabs, whose responsibility includes marketing. I would have asked you to launch Snapshot voting, but you were against my proposal then.

I requested funds from Ecosystem WG. They turned me down for the same reason - they don’t fund non-technical projects. At the same time, they did not consider the project itself, as I can judge from the view statistics from Medium.

Over the past three months, I have written two studies for ENS service providers. One concerned marketing, the other Business Development. In total, I spent a month on them and earned $150, due to the limited budget of these companies. I don’t think it’s even worth saying that this is very little money.

The fact is that many providers exist only on ENS money. For example, if at the same time ENS allocates 200-300 thousand dollars to it, I don’t quite understand how you can hire a researcher or marketer beyond the original budget that was planned to be spent on the Core Team.

You say that now it is important not to sort out the past, but to think about what to do next. So, I’ve been thinking for the last six months and constantly doing something until the situation became critical a couple of days ago. That’s why I wrote this post, because I have nothing left to lose and no good options for the future.

The damage from this situation has already been done and, as you said, there are already service providers who focus on marketing. My data is no longer completely up to date. The solutions I propose in my proposal are already partially solved. I have ruined relationships with many people because I asked them to finance me personally, which makes me look like a beggar. I have much less authority now than I had six months ago.

So I don’t really understand how I can now get funds for an irrelevant project.

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