Proposal: February 2022 Airdrop

It’s been almost a month since the last emergency airdrop and there are still many decisions to be made about the very critical Funding Allocation Proposal that @rachel has put a ton of effort into putting together. In the meantime, we need money to bridge the time gap until next steps are decided upon collectively. So! @ezraU and @zevi propose an airdrop!

February 2022 Emergency Airdrop Proposal

:ocean: Introduction :ocean:

Previous airdrops have calculated payout based on cred scores. This makes sense… when the cred scores are accurate. Right now, our cred scores are wildly out of whack. People haven’t been doing did-a-things or props very much, so the algorithm isn’t actually representing the profound work that’s been happening around here lately. Using those systems to accurately account for work done over the past month would require a ton of work, and after it’s done we would probably still need to tweak the numbers.

We’re about to jump into a new CredSperiment involving a new algorithm and need-based payment. And in the spirit of becoming scientists together, we thought, “why not try a different system for this airdrop?” SO…

:sailboat: We propose a mutual aid-based model. :sailboat:

:coral: The Basics :coral:

We propose a one-time airdrop distributing a total of $40,000 USDC to all contributors who opt-in by the end of day Sunday 2/27. (This is effectively payment for the month of February at a rate of $10,000 per week for all 4 weeks.) The airdrop would occur on Monday, February 28th, 2022 and would distribute $40k of the $200k of bridge funding from PL. By Ezra’s calculations, this would leave a remaining $51k unallocated from the bridge funding. Due to gas fees, no amount under $150 will be paid. This airdrop would not initially be accounted for on the SourceCred instance ledger, but will be added retroactively later.

Figuring out how much each contributor gets paid is going to look different under this model.

:tropical_fish: Opting In & How Much You’ll Get Paid :tropical_fish:

All contributors who opt in need to fill out this form by the end of day Sunday 2/27. The form asks about your current level of need, the work you have done over the past 4 weeks, and what amount of money feels fair to receive with both these factors in mind. Then, we will have a meeting to discuss these numbers to make sure everyone knows what’s up.

:hook: Okay, but what if it doesn’t add up to $40k? :hook:

If the total comes out below $40k – huzzah, everyone above the cutoff gets an equal share of the leftover money! If the total comes out above $40k, we could either (a) ask people with the highest numbers if they can drop their numbers, or (b) take an equal proportion of the excess out of each person’s cut.

[Example: There will be an airdrop of $40,000. Contributors A, B, and C work at SourceCred. A asks for $20,000; B asks for $15,000; C asks for $10,000. That’s $45,000 total. By percentage of that sum, A asked for 44%; B for 33%; and C for 22%. Since the sum is over the payout amount ($40,000), they would instead get that percentage of the payout. This would come out to A getting $17,600; B getting $13,200; and C getting $8,800.]

Option B isn’t great, but it’s better than doing an equal cut.

:beach_umbrella: Final note :beach_umbrella:

This system is… overall, not great. It’s pretty susceptible to bad actors. Hence, the meeting. If this weren’t a high-trust group, I wouldn’t suggest it. But people need to be paid, and using cred scores would, in Ezra’s opinion, be using a veneer of authority and still get us bullshit numbers. I’m excited to start the experiment outlined by Rachel’s proposal, and thereby build better systems.

This is not a ratified proposal. It’s a little slapdash, and until/unless it is ratified, it is open to change via feedback. Other proposals are also possible. If you aren’t in favor of this, please propose changes or an alternate proposal.

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I think this is an excellent proposal to pay people while awaiting larger-scale solutions. I would even go as far as to suggest ratifying this (or what this becomes after more deliberation) as the monthly backup until another allocation policy is decided so that the issue doesn’t need to be brought up monthly until a grander plan is decided upon.

Questions for anyone who may know: Do people need to re-opt-in if they opted in to the last airdrop? Are we still using the bot? Does the observable from Thena represent the current opt-ins as they stand? If so, how do folks opt out if they’d like to?

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Good questions!

People who want to be included do need to opt in via the linked form whether or not they were in the last airdrop. In order to opt out of this round, people should either (a) not respond to the form or (b) respond to it and ask for no money.

But as for getting their payout address set… I’m not sure! That bot does seem like the best tool for the job. I think we could just have people make sure the address is accurate, and update it via the bot if they didn’t opt in last round. But I’m also not super knowledgeable about bots and don’t know how to make sure things are set up for that.

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Ah, I forgot to update here. We are asking for addresses via the opt-in form and via DM. I’m creating the .CSV file for the airdrop by hand.

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Update: Questionnaire Closed

Good morning! The questionnaire is now closed. We received responses from 16 users. The sum of the maximum ask for all requestors is $30,000. (Yes, that is the exact sum.) That’s $10k less than we aimed for! Since we’re below the cap, we have options.

A) Split the remaining 10k

This is the only one I proposed earlier! In this option, we split the remaining 10k equally across all contributors who passed the $150 mark.

B) Leave 5k for the upcoming UBI experiment, and split the remaining 5k

This one is a little different! Since we are still waiting on PL’s grant-matching to come through, it might be nice to have a little extra money on-hand. We would split 5k equally between all contributors who passed the $150 mark, and leave the other 5k for the 8-week UBI experiment.

Let’s Talk About It…

…at today’s finalization meeting! It’s happening TODAY, 2:30 - 4 PM PST in the Discord Meeting Room. Join us there!

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Update: Finalization

At 2:30 PM PST, @zevi, @HartVyne, @AL0YSI0US, @rachel, @s_ben, @MorganicMovement, @merrick and I gathered and finalized the airdrop! Not everyone who opted in came to the finalization. If you aren’t happy with the outcome, please do say so.

Responses to the Questionnaire

We received responses to the questionnaire from 16 total users. 1 user requested 0 dollars, and another had not yet contributed to the project. This left 14 contributors requesting funds.

Me, Zevi, and Rachel forgot to explicitly ask on the form if people felt comfortable with their responses being shared. As such, I don’t feel comfortable sharing the entire sheet; if all contributors consent, I would be down to share them. In the meantime, though – it is common practice at SourceCred to share how much money each contributor receives from payouts. As such, I’m sharing the maximum amount people requested and the math we did to arrive at final payouts, but currently not sharing the other info from the questionnaire (namely, full need and contributions over the past month).

Some contributors were open to payment within a range. We took everyone’s maximum request, which came out to a total of $31,200. Maximum requests were as follows:

Name Max Requested Amount USDC
ezrau 3000
saintmedusa 1200
sandra 1000
Nav 1200
Willow 1400
rachelll 4500
Marcie 650
AL0YSI0US 4000
zevi 5500
kingdamieth 150
Ryeder 3000
s_ben 1000
MorganicMovement 900
HartVyne 3700

Leftovers & Bonuses

I originally proposed that we allocate $40k for this airdrop. The total request came out to $31,200. This means we had $8,800 left over.

At the meeting, we discussed a few options for what to do with the remaining money. Several options came up: turning it into a mutual aid fund, putting it towards specific projects, doing DeFi, etc. Since the original proposal called for a bonus if we went under $40k, I proposed we splitting the remainder in half and sending one half to bonuses, and reserving the other half for… something else.

So, for the moment, we went ahead and and put $4,400 into bonuses. Divided between the 14 recipients, that’s $314.28 per person. One participant opted to give their bonus to another participant. This came out to the final payouts:

Name Final Airdrop Amount USDC
ezrau 3314.28
saintmedusa 1514.28
sandra 1314.28
Nav 1514.28
Willow 1714.28
rachelll 4814.28
Marcie 964.28
AL0YSI0US 4000
zevi 5814.28
kingdamieth 778.56
Ryeder 3314.28
s_ben 1314.28
MorganicMovement 1214.28
HartVyne 4014.28

Payments were sent out at 4:50PM today… except for @HartVyne’s payment, because I did a clerical error and accidentally left them off the .CSV. We’re working on fixing that.

But back to that remaining $4,400. What are we doing with that?

What will that “something” be?

A few options came up:

  • Just use the rest as a bonus
  • Turn it into a mutual aid fund
  • Use it for decentralized finance
  • Apply it to the upcoming 8-week UBI experiment

Because the experiment is coming up next week, we’re about to have a BUNCH of questions and answers about what money goes where. I personally think it makes sense to fold this conversation in with that one.

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UPDATE: A contributor at the wayside

@merrick, meant to get an airdrop request in before the deadline, but due to a bunch of circumstances was not able to do so. He requests $2000. I put forward that we pay him from the $4,400 mystery pot. (Merrick consented to forgoing the bonus.) This puts the final payouts at:

Name Final Airdrop Amount USDC
ezrau 3314.28
saintmedusa 1514.28
sandra 1314.28
Nav 1514.28
Willow 1714.28
rachelll 4814.28
Marcie 964.28
AL0YSI0US 4000
zevi 5814.28
kingdamieth 778.56
Ryeder 3314.28
s_ben 1314.28
MorganicMovement 1214.28
HartVyne 4014.28
merrick 2000

This leaves $2,400 in the mystery pot.

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@ezraU thank you for all your hard work friend. Thanks for distilling information, herding cool cats, doing csv / pay brainstorming / math / emotional support comms / calandar stuff and so so much more. You are a rockstar.

I really enjoy working collaborating with you.

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