Discord Handle: Mickey#1707
Summary Experience in DeFi/DAOs: Phonon DAO
Reason for applying: Provide a neutral transparent service for the DAO
Describe your involvement thus far in the Phonon DAO:
Member of PDBG, DAO Multi-sig, Comms Multi-sig, Comms Leader.
Qualifications - What will you bring to the DAO as a Community Leader?
My goal is to unlock our potential, by supporting our talent and bringing in outside talent when necessary.
Confirmation that the applicant can commit the time required for the position; Other projects they are working on: I will meet the 30 Hour per week requirement, and will hand any external duties in communication to another leader.
Other Background: Incredibly passionate about Phonon, our community, our people, our talent, and our potential. 15 years’ experience building technology companies, exceeding $20M in annual revenue, raised $40M in equity, invested $5M of personal funds in early-stage companies. 7 years’ experience in crypto, believer in freedom, autonomy, and want to be of service.
Other:
Payments go beyond point-of-sale purchasing of your morning coffee. They also settle global accounts, provide capital markets, banking services, and more. Global payments infrastructure was built before the internet, and modern banking services essentially still leverage the same payments infrastructure as banks used 30 years ago.
Phonon can leverage the world’s most modern technology to provide payments rails which are one hundred or even one thousand times cheaper, more secure, more scalable, and more efficient.
There is only one way for us to get from where we are to where we want to go, and that is together.
My Take on our Vision & Mission:
Vision: A payments protocol native to that which the internet was intended to be: open, transparent, secure, scalable, and continuously evolving.
Mission: To collectively build technology that leverages secure hardware to provide the most secure, robust, scalable, and low-cost payments infrastructure the world has ever seen.
The Role of a DAO Leader (as defined by PhIP-06)
• Leading the process for updating the Long-Term Strategic Plan.
• Provide operational services to the DAO, including budget management, engaging with the foundation, and legal counsel.
• Work with various entities wishing to engage with the DAO as they arise, including VCs, manufacturers, and others.
• Review, manage, and guide funding requests from Working Groups, should they arise.
• Organize and co-lead Council Meetings.
• Engage with Community Leaders as needed to keep them informed of DAO progress.
• Engage with Working Group Leads as needed to keep activities synched, overcome operational roadblocks, etc.
• DAO Leaders serve a mandate of two terms.
• DAO Leaders are responsible for maintaining operational and strategic consistency as Working Group Leads cycle in and out of projects/initiatives.
• Expected time commitment: 20-30 hours/week per Director.
The DAO Leader:.
The DAO Leader Position can be summarized as providing guidance, support and engagement. Guidance to working groups and working group leaders, providing support to members looking to utilize their talents, and engaging with outside entities and organizations. The most important role for the DAO leader in my mind is to make sure the people doing the work are fairly treated, and that we are properly unlocking our talent. I don’t believe we need a dictator to make decisions on everyone’s behalf, but I do think there is value in a neutral third party ensuring we reward and retain our best people and that we are in keeping with the ethos of decentralized autonomy.
My goals as the DAO leader would be to be neutral, objective, helpful, and attentive guide to help ensure our community, working groups, leaders and members have guidance, leadership and a voice.
As the DAO Leader, my goal would be to help define the objectives of the DAO, and then help make sure the most talented people available, within or outside of the DAO, are in a position to solve those issues. Once the right people are in the right seat, it would be my job to ensure they are rewarded and retained for the long term benefit of the DAO.
Additional Priority Tasks:
In addition to the defined responsibilities of the DAO Leader, I propose 4 additional tasks to be accomplished by year end.
Task 1: Defining a Mission and Vision.
Task 2: Organization and Governance Review
Task 3: Build a product roadmap
Task 3a: Appoint eSim task-force to build Phonon MVP using eSim.
Task 4: Using our technology roadmap, define financial needs of the DAO, and if necessary, look to outside funding sources.
Organizational Structure:
A DAO is different from a corporation or a collection of loose volunteers, with distinct advantages and disadvantages. At its best, a DAO leverages and unlocks global talent, and creates the world’s most innovative products. At its worst there are perverse incentives, political infighting, and moral hazards.
To unlock talent, and to build a peer-to-peer payments infrastructure for the world, Phonon must unlock it’s capabilities by organizing its talent.
The Example of Comms:
In April of this year we were facing a community that had quieted down, and we were in need of a project to help unite and connect our team. By working together on Comms, so many talented members were able to showcase their abilities, and including them in a multi-sig, governance and DAO payments helped us keep our most valuable asset, our community members.
The guiding principle of the Comms team is to have the comms leader define and set the communications goals for the DAO, with bounties or tasks set for DAO members to take down. To avoid any moral hazard, the comms leader cannot claim bounties, to avoid any temptation for self-dealing and to maximize our use and connection to our community.
In addition, the comms budget is held by the comms-multi-sig, where trusted DAO members can act as a check-and-balance to spending. I think the DAO leader should operate similarly, unable to claim bounties, but able to ensure that the hard-working members of the DAO are fairly rewarded and retained, while respectfully pushing back on items which aren’t a priority.
Leadership Team:
I will form an informal leadership team who can both provide insight, but also protect the interests of the DAO.
Technology Advisor: Rake
Responsible to provide technical leadership to the DAO, ensuring the technical roadmap is sensible, that Phonon’s tech can meet the expectations of users, and to oversee the DAO’s repo, and ensure technical staff are delivering on behalf of the DAO.
Community Advisor: Reddest Rooster
The DAO Lead is there to ensure our community is being listened to, that our members have a voice, and to provide assurances that I will be meeting the needs of the community. I believe Rooster is the heart and soul of the DAO and would like him in an advisory role to ensure we are never compromising our ethos as a decentralized community.
I would like to include Rake and Rooster into this advisory group, but would also certainly like to expand it based on everyone availability.
Compensation:
I leave the compensation to the DAO to determine, and am happy to work without compensation for now until we have a clear idea of our budget and our compensation plan. I will also roll out a vested token compensation plan for all DAO members doing the work of the DAO.