Open letter with questions about Proposal - Hire Clayboyn as DAO Community and Project Manager
First of all, I want to say that I have absolutely no negativity towards clayboyn. I even like some of his ideas.
BUT
$60,000 is too expensive. That's a lot of money for a year. Maybe Matt or other whales living in the US think this is a normal salary, but this is a huge salary in most of the world. And if you take into account the salary in Thailand, then with this money you can hire 4 good programmers. Perhaps clayboyn deserves such a big salary - I don't argue with that. But why would we hire such an expensive specialist for this position?
With this money you can complete soul keep (tower defense) or complete/remake the Splinterlands mobile application. Both are very important for the entire Splinterlands ecosystem, as they will help bring a LOT more people here. While some may disagree about the importance of TD, it is a super popular type of game.
Why is there no open vacancy, but just hiring a specific person? It may be possible to find someone more qualified or with the same qualifications, but at a lower salary. This doesn't look right.
Who and how will evaluate the result of the work? What are the KPIs for this position? How can the community evaluate his performance in listing negotiations if there is an NDA?
If he is hired, then if the contract is terminated early, what penalties will be paid? How much will the community have to pay to terminate the contract early?
Responsibilities:
6.1. Why does the DAO need a representative in relations with Splinterlands? If the community wants something, it creates proposals.
6.2. "provide feedback on player sentiments and desires". Even without this position, Splinterlands knows and understands perfectly well what the community wants:
a. The Secret of Praetoria Expansion
b. Attracting and retaining new players
c.Soulkeep
d. SPS Validators
e. Mobile application
The community also wants deadlines to be strictly adhered to and promises to be kept.
6.3. You don't need a person to create tournaments. Everything can be automated. Unique tournaments happen very rarely for some event, and then they are created by Splinterlands. The community can pay 1 time for someone to create a tournament schedule for a long time (and then just repeat).
6.4. There are many volunteer moderators on the Splinterlands discord. Why do you need someone else?
7.Qualifications:
7.1. If he really was engaged in managing and growing social media accounts, then it’s still better for us to look for someone else, because all the previous promotions on social networks were not very good (no offense).
7.2. $900,000 was allocated for listing on new exchanges and 7 months have already passed, but no progress is visible. Although (if I remember correctly) since then sps have already been removed from one of the exchanges.
A listing negotiator is important, but is he the right person for the job? What experience does he have with this? What coins/tokens did he manage to list and on which exchanges?
7.3. "He has over 10 years of experience in crypto working with multiple projects to build communities" - how successful was this experience?
7.4. "handling strategic partnerships Splinterlands" - what kind of partnership?
With all due respect to clayboyn (whom I have no negativity towards), for now the proposal looks like a clear NO, but if @yabapmatt or @clayboyn can answer all the questions, then the decision may change.
Link to proposal: https://peakd.com/spsproposal/@yabapmatt.sps/sps-governance-proposal-hire-clayboyn-as-dao-community-and-project-manager
Thank you for putting this together. I am sure @clayboyn and @yabapmatt can answer most of this.
$60K is not an expensive salary. This has nothing to do with the US but with the field in general. This is actually a very low ask. Finding a different qualified, experienced and trustworthy person to do the job he’s proposing at this cost would be near impossible in the crypto space.
This is not accurate. It will cost a lot more than this to finish Soulkeep, and a LOT more to develop a quality mobile app. I mean finishing Rebellion (which had a lot of work already done) cost $250K.
I don’t understand why people are so hung up on this. Go ahead and propose whatever you want if you really feel it’s important. Be aware that ‘headhunting’ to fill a position is a VERY expensive and time consuming process. DO you expect to lay that responsibility on Matt? The team? Do you want to distract them from delivering for SPL right now?
Clay came up with the idea and proposed it as such. Matt liked it enough to make the proposal himself. The term ‘if the shoe fits…’ comes to mind.
Hiring Clay would be one less (and very large) concern for Matt to be distracted by.
Community evaluation by performance. We’ll see how this goes and what value we get out of it. If the community feels he’s not doing what is expected the contract can be terminated at any point.
It’s literally proposed that monthly termination option is part of the contract itself.
Has a lot of statements as opposed to questions, but the reasons the position is important have been widely discussed for the past week. I’d also suggest watching Aftersound’s interview with Clay for insight into this question:
The DAO approved funds to be used for exchange listing when the right opportunity was presented. Thus far this has not happened, and it’s great to see we did not just waste that money simply because it had been earmarked for that purpose.
The rest of this question is definitely important and not my place to answer, but understand that this job goes far beyond just listing. But he does have experience working and communicating with exchanges, which is actually very hard to do. Just trying to communicate with exchanges regarding basic customer service can be incredibly difficult. Having lines of communication already open is a major asset. And he’s also in a unique position to dive right in w/out draining time and energy from the company by having to be ‘brought up to speed’ as would be required of a new hire from outside.
I should have precluded my reply with "These are all excellent questions to ask"!
The value proposition is for everyone to vote on and decide. There are certainly alternative ways to use the funds. This is simply the number that I will accept. On a personal note, this would be a lower salary than I can get elsewhere and will likely have higher tax liabilities for me. I would rather do a job that I'm passionate about and continue to work to build value for the community.
The issue with Soulkeep is Splinterlands already got the money for developing that project. It is there responsibility to deliver that, not the DAOs.
I agree that a mobile app is incredibly important and being in Southeast Asia has made that more apparent to me. I've also shared why mobile apps and Web3 are not really compatible. That said, I think the team's tech modernization work will make for a better mobile experience via website.
I've even discussed the possibility of the DAO trying to hire someone like stoodkev to fork Hive Keychain's mobile app and create a "Splinterlands Wallet" that is like Hive Keychain but themed for Splinterlands with some quick access features for example. This is a way I could actually see the DAO building a mobile app for Splinterlands.
I think to some extent this is "right place right time." I happen to have the experience and connections from already doing these tasks for the company and personally feel as well as Matt does that there has to be a clear separation between Splinterlands and the SPS DAO.
I can't look to him for decisions on what the DAO should be doing, that has to all come from the DAO. Working for Splinterlands can cause conflicts of interest, for example Matt and Agg were not trying to ban bots, I still chose to work with community members and use the DAO for us to get that change implemented. If the DAO wants something, you shouldn't have someone with conflicting interests dictating the outcome or how it should happen.
I will be very visible in this role with the community. Part of the problem with trying to have targets and KPIs for this position is that the position itself is on some level exploratory. We don't know what all it will require.
My first order of business is will be organizing the DAO communications and figuring out what the DAO wants to be working towards and then working with the community to put those ideas into actionable proposals and then executing on them.
There is also the ability to fire me at any point, so if after a month or two the community feels I am not providing value or delivering anything of substance, the position can easily go away or someone else could try to do better.
I am not asking for any guarantees or severance. I assume all risk in the case of early termination. It was actually my intention to de-risk this proposal as much as possible for the DAO. I care about the DAOs success and personally wouldn't vote for a proposal I felt put all of the risk on the DAO, such as requiring $60,000 upfront and a locked 1 year position.
I view it as the DAO having $5,000 USD risk exposure at any given time. I will have no key access and I can't "decide" things for the DAO. I will have to organize the DAO and make proposals like anyone else to accomplish goals.
Responsibilities:
6.1. This is true, the DAO can operate without a representative. The current issue is that there's a lot of unproductive conversations that tend to lead nowhere. There are often times proposals being created that are not actionable or well constructed, such as the recent card burning proposal.
Having someone with enough technical knowledge and understanding of how the blockchain operates and what is and isn't really feasible in the scope of the DAO as a point of contact to assist anyone wanting help in creating proposals should lead to better quality proposals being made that are actionable.
6.2. This again ties into creating actionable change in my opinion. Does Splinterlands hear thousands of people saying what they want and get pulled in too many directions? Sure. For example, we heard people complaining about bots for the whole 2 years I worked for them. That said, what made progress in resolving the issue? Working with community members to get an actionable proposal passed.
This is also a great example of the conflict of interest thing. As I already said the cofounders of the game who I worked for did not want that change. It was arguably easier for them to sell more spellbooks and cards to bots than to do what the community wanted and make changes.
It is better for the DAO to have someone without that conflict of interest (or to take responsibility for itself) and create that change. Can it do it without me? Sure. Could someone else do what I'm offering to do? Sure. The question I have for you is... why aren't they?
6.3. To some extent I agree and think tournaments should probably be automated. That said I also feel strongly that the SPS DAO has never actually properly apportioned those funds. There is a set amount of tokens going to tournaments, but we haven't even voted or approved the structure.
For example: Do we want x% of those tokens going to ghost card tournaments? Do we want x% of those going to alpha gf tournaments? Do we want a novice tournament every day with smaller rewards so people can stay active and participate more or do we want 1 a week with bigger prizes?
6.4. I think if anyone spends a significant amount of time in that Discord server the question will answer itself, but I'll elaborate further. The few mods we have are all volunteers and have zero incentive and to some extent may be disincentivized to actually get involved and moderate. For example they may face retaliatory flagging on HIVE. The are often met with all sorts of abuse. In general it's an extremely thankless job.
What I'd like to do is work on finding more volunteer mods, even if I have to approach them, and empower them to help keep our Discord server friendly, respectful, and hopefully more productive. I would also like to look into potential proposals for allocating some small reward for the community moderators on a regular basis. Say 10 Riftwatchers packs every so often or a bit of SPS. We obviously can't outright pay a salary for all of them, but we can do something.
7.1. What I was able to do has been a bit limited in the past. The company didn't have vast resources to "buy followers" or "engagement." Even if it did, those aren't real sustainable metrics. The official Twitter account was banned previously before I came on and it has been an uphill battle since. We took the organic approach with Twitter and have gained about 30,000 followers in the year and half that I have operated it.
Facebook is actually being hindered because they allow bots to impersonate the official page and scam people... on the official page. This means comments have to be disabled which automatically hinders growth there. It's limit growth or allow our community to get scammed there.
Currently Isaria runs the Instagram account.
One important thing to keep in mind as well is that if we don't have and operate "official" social media accounts on a regular basis, we lost brand ownership and allow impersonators to move in. This is the main reason the Facebook page is still operated. It takes them months to take action on the spam reports we make, but if there is no one there to do it, the community will simply have fake Splinterlands socials that scam people and no real socials to combat them.
We get thousands of impressions on every Twitter post. The Facebook, even though being limited, has been doing much better since the restructuring ironically. It seems that somehow brought more attention back from the Facebook community. It's also worth noting that many people get their Splinterlands news from social media feeds and not Discord.
7.2. Those funds are still allocated and we actually haven't been delisted from an exchange yet. I've spent countless hours fighting to keep us from being delisted on a few and it's one of the reasons I am stressing to the community that we need a vote to decide if we want to pursue a new market maker or if we're okay being delisted. There are NDAs in place so I can't say too much specifically as far as the exchange side, but I will say that we are with all certainty going to lose our biggest exchange listings without very swift action.
Regardless of how this proposal goes, the community needs to decide which course it wants to take and likely encourage Aly to use those funds to secure a market maker if it wants to retain those listings. If not, I'd highly advise not pursuing any more listings for the foreseeable future as they are worthless spends without a market maker.
As far as experience, this again gets into a lot of NDA area, but I can tell you that I've had conversations with pretty much every top 20 exchange and can communicate "reasonable estimates" of what it would cost for SPS to get listed on any of them. I've worked with several market makers and had conversations with at least 10 in the last few months trying to gather information for having them service SPS specifically.
As far as accountability on my "reasonable estimates" you would be able to track the SPS wallets on any expenditures and likely figure out the exact cost for yourself. If I do this on the DAOs behalf, it will need to be understood that most companies are not going to let me share the contract with you as most of them won't even let me disclose that I spoke to them. That isn't me specific, that is anyone that would be doing this.
7.3. Many of them have been around STEEM/HIVE, such as Minnow Support Project, NFT Showroom, and Splinterlands. Success is varied I suppose. NFT Showroom started off pretty strong, but the NFT Art scene in general has died down significantly this bear market, even on ETH. The Minnow Support Project/PAL had a very good run and is technically still operational, but this last bear market has left it and many other projects with much fewer users. The Spanish community that we've built in PAL has been going very strong and still has a large active presence.
Before starting to build communities/projects on STEEM/HIVE I spent years learning and engaging with many projects in unofficial capacities simply out of a desire to learn about this new tech and understand what was even possible. I was around for the launch of ETH, Monero and many other projects and active in outreach and education in those early days, which really cemented that this is what I want to do with my life. Splinterlands was the first company I officially contracted with.
7.4. This is actually for the community to decide. I don't want to tell you guys what partnerships we should pursue. I want to give options and receive suggestions and if the community likes something I can be the guy to go and get details, be the point of contact, and then we make proposals based on what is available and collectively decide if they should be pursued or not.
Hopefully these answers are acceptable and if you see the value you can support the proposal and if you still don't see it I understand and have no hard feelings if you vote against it. I just want to give the community a choice and be of service.
Edited to fix the formatting, it was being weird.
Thank you for your effort in answering the entire list. However, there are a few questions that arise for me there. For example, the social media accounts and Discord belong to Splinterlands and not to the Dao. But then you work for the Dao and not for Splinterlands. What I mean is, I don't think I need to explain further. Even though we all say, yes, this is important. This is the task of Splinterlands and not the Dao. So I would say that something is not right here. If Splinterlands no longer wants or can offer this service, then the proposal should look different. Where the Dao provides money for an employee for Splinterlands. But this is not the case here. It has been repeatedly pointed out that we need to hire someone to take over the Dao tasks because Splinterlands can no longer undertake them.
Matt said in the Town Hall he's open to the DAO and Splinterlands both existing in the one community Discord server. It should have its own reps there as well. As far as the social media accounts, I would consider this the DAO picking up a service that would likely no longer have regular if any coverage if we don't. Should Splinterlands be the one doing it? Yea I would agree with that. It doesn't change the fact it needs to be done and affects the DAO if it isn't. All major crypto projects have to combat spam and scams that masquerade as official accounts. I don't think we should leave that to "maybe someone will handle it or do something when they have extra time." It's something I am still constantly monitoring because I know how important it is.
To sum up, yes I agree some of these items were and maybe still should be "Splinterlands jobs." It doesn't change the fact that they have chopped down to developers and a few creative employees and having them distracted by things like this also hurts the DAO as they could be getting things like Land, Rebellion and Soulkeep out faster which leads to more sinks and more value for SPS.
Initially I voted NAY for the proposal because it seemed like an excessive amount, but after reading you and listening to your vision, I loved your good judgment and ability to reflect. I have been more aware of the situation of the role you must play, and I have changed my vote to YES.
I appreciate the open-mindedness. Thanks for your support!
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