A review of payment methods for CRE8R DAO

TheReadingApe · January 27, 2022, 12:40am

Recently, some creators have expressed some unhappiness with the existing Coordinape-based payment system.

We will discuss here the problems we have encountered and the solutions a group of creators have explored.

The Current Coordinape Problem

The Coordinape system can be summarized as a system where the creators involved in a client project are given “GIVES” to distribute to their fellow creators. Each give carries with it monetary value (USD) and is a fraction of the total client budget.

The problem arises when new creators do not fully give out their “GIVES” or allocate them in a non-systematic manner, introducing skewness to the payment of the group members.

Project managers have explicitly mentioned how these “GIVES” are to be given out in formal channels as well as through DMs with erring creators.

Still, the issue persists today.

The following is a list of problems that we have encountered over several projects:

Creators giving 0 GIVES / did not participate in the Coordinape circle
Creators giving GIVES only to people that they have worked with
Creators giving partial GIVES (using game theory, creators that give partial GIVES stand to benefit more relative to those who give out their GIVES fully)
Creators giving more GIVES to the person who onboarded them/their friend
Creators giving more GIVES to another person for outstanding work done in another project/CRE8R DAO internal work
Creators giving everyone the same amount of GIVES regardless of the work done
Creators giving more gives to collab projects (because shared between various people) than for individual projects
Creators not explaining their work and being underpaid for that
Creators over-describing their work in order to get more GIVES

The DAO has implemented a few solutions. But like all solutions, they have their drawbacks. In addition, a few members of the DAO have brainstormed other solutions. We will be detailing them below.

Solution #1: Weighted GIVES

Weighted GIVES involve tweaking the existing Coordinape system in such a way that certain individuals are given more GIVES to distribute relative to other individuals. The motivation behind weighted GIVES is to give experienced creators more GIVES than newcomers as they are more active in the DAO, know who the other creators are, have a better grasp of the value of each piece of content that is produced, and are more attuned to the value of the GIVES.

Drawbacks

There is a problem when creators do not give out all of their GIVES. Various formula adjustments were tried but no solution was found yet.

Solution #2: Self-determination of payment

Another method that the DAO has employed is to individually enquire from each creator how much they think their work is to be valued. This would require a switch in the current process where we “book” creators in advance in order to be able to respect the client budget.

Drawbacks

This solution does not work if creators are given the freedom to produce content for a project. We could end up with a situation where the client budget is not able to pay out each creator at a rate that they think their work is to be valued at. Hence, we need to define in advance who would work on a project and to disqualify others once the project budget is reached.

Solution #3: Fixed price for some creators that do regular content. Coordinape payment for other stuff

This method involves a mix between Solutions #1 and #2. There will be a fixed remuneration for creators that do regular content. Once regular content creators are paid for, the surplus budget will be disbursed to everyone involved using Coordinape.

Drawbacks

This is a time-consuming process and burdens the Project Manager to both establish the fixed remuneration rates for regular creators and the logistics to facilitate the subsequent Coordinape Circle.

Solution #4: Expert Rating

This involves the creation of a committee of project managers with experience to understand, read, discuss, and evaluate each piece of content created for the client. Project managers are in constant communication with the client and would be in a better position to judge what makes a good content. In addition, project managers would have gone through multiple rounds of project management and would have seen a breadth of content to make informed judgments.

Drawbacks

This method involves trusting the committee of project managers to be objective in their judgement.

What’s next?

The project managers decided to try out Solution #4 for creators involved with the Vader Protocol project. It was quick to test, reduced the workload for creators (so that they can focus on content creation), and solved most of the current issues. It will be tested on a few more epochs and feedback is welcome.

PVMihalache · January 27, 2022, 12:47am

I think Coordinape was created exactly for this purpose… to simplify payments. Yes, sometimes there where discrepancies between effort and payments but I think this could be sorted with a bit of Coordinape training for those involved. Maybe the PM highlighting the CRE8Rs that went above and beyond for that epoch could “guide” the ones that will vote without a general analysis of who created what.

Twiin · January 27, 2022, 11:38am

The freedom of CRE8Rs to respond to the pillar content and client projects in whichever way matches their skills is one of the core unique value propositions of the DAO. This should be preserved as much as possible when looking to change the incentive model.

But, we are still helping clients get eyeballs on their product at the end of the day. Not achieve this, and there isn’t any way to pay CRE8Rs anyway (well, until $BRICK moons).

An idea would be for the difficult curation work to happen up front. A team takes the client brief, decides what the best mix of content might be to achieve the KPIs, then details that out in Trello with corresponding ‘sizes’ that end up relating to the weighting in Coordinape. Any peripheral content might have a set size so there is still the option of making things outside the brief, but CRE8Rs would be incentivised to focus on the core content first. We would have an idea from the outset what kind of content was most ‘valuable’ to the clients campaign and have the choice to make that (if it suited our skills), or follow our inspiration towards another style of content that may not have been conceived byt the client or PMs but could end up being equally magnificent.

Its really hard to fairly evaluate the effort people go to to make all this great content. Inevitably, some will be disappointed with what they end up receiving for their work. But perhaps if there is a little more data for us to make decisions on what we put our energies to, it may lessen the surprise factor when receiving coordinape votes.

(edit: hmmm, not a bad idea after reading that. I might try and implement it IRL. Thanks DAO!)

b05crypto · January 28, 2022, 5:48am

Really glad to hear you guys are working on a solution. Thank you.

Before I make my suggestion, I will say from the beginning that I have selfish biases around these concepts and I also understand these variables could be difficult to weight, but I do think it might be a consideration.

I do like the idea of #4 as a base to build upon, because I spent a lot of time on Gives trying to evaluate the amount of time and effort and impact for the client of the other work that was done, but I also knew I couldn’t go through everything and I also could not see data around impact.

We are all selling our time to the DAO’s clients. The amount of time and effort the work takes to do for a client in my opinion should be a consideration. Having creators account for their time is difficult, but at the very least having a basic gauge of time needed per task could be helpful. I try to spend 1-2 hours preparing for interviews, spend 2-3 hours editing and preparing my content, and then spend more time promoting it on my channels. While none of us want to get into using a time tracking and reporting every minute we spend on a client I do think adding time spent summaries to it would give the committee or fellow members the ability to determine whether the work put in was worth it and whether it is something that is needed for each client or worth offering.
Impact - Our clients hire us to create content, but more importantly they hire us to get attention to their projects. Building an ongoing relationship instead of one month deals likely needs to have some metrics around how well we performed for clients. In addition, being able to book multiple months for clients also gives us insights into what works for them strategically. I do think though, that we should consider the overall reach of content we create for clients, the impact on their project, and whether it helped them meet their goals. Having a user base that can provide value to the client would be in my biased opinion a good way to think through at least one scoring component among several.
We may really want to consider having a menu list of items we sell at set prices for specific creators that may put more time in or that is likely to have more impact for the client. Discuss the value of each with the client and let them choose those and then have a required menu item where the rest of the funds go to the group for brainstorming and creating new ideas that aren’t on the menu.

As part of the sales process, I think we really should be focusing on pitching longer engagement with potentially some set goals. We know we have amazingly talented people on the team, but we also need to think about whether we are actually accomplishing their goals. We also need to consider the value of design, editing, and other work that is done to enhance content that is created and shared.

Just wanted to express these thoughts I’ve had on the process when going through it in the past. Thank you for addressing the issue and working to find a solution. We know inherently that anything created will have problems, but it looks to me like you are on the right path.