This Request for Comment seeks a discussion on the desirability and possible implementation of a fund to allow SuperRareDAO members to receive funding and/or support to put on independent events for the SuperRare community. In addition to the specific discussion points below, this RFC invites general discussion on any further IRL community building tools that we should consider exploring and building within the SuperRare social and protocol layers.
Background and Motivation
As we continue to decentralize, SuperRare Labs wants to enable other people in the SuperRare ecosystem to put on events. We are a global fully remote team however we skew towards North American events due to the location of most of our team and the number of large crypto events in the USā¦ Our community is globally distributed and so I want people from all over the world to be able to have events that are local to them and to strengthen their local crypto community.
The Web3/Crypto community is still niche, and largely takes place online. By enabling folks to put on in person, live events in their own local communities, we can give people from anywhere the opportunity to connect with and grow the Web3 and Crypto community.
Discussion Point 1: Do you want SuperRare to allocate a portion of the DAO Treasury to an Events Fund for the 2023 Calendar year?
The SuperRare DAO has a Treasury which can be utilized by the DAO via SIPs (SuperRare Improvement Proposals). This request for comment is seeking to learn if the SuperRare community has a potential interest in a SIP being put up which would allocate a set amount of tokens to be utilized by the community to put on community events. The total budget of this initiative is yet to be determined. Community input would be valuable in determining the total amount of funds that should be made available, which could be based on the desired number of events and an estimation of the funds required per event. Upon hearing more about what sort of events the community would like to organize, we will be in a better position to make this evaluation.
Discussion Point 2: Which types of events should qualify for funding?
What qualifies something as a ācommunity eventā? In my opinion the event must meet the following:
Be publicly listed and equally accessible (first come, first serve) to all those who are interested (within the limitations of space capacity and budget)
Be posted about / shared in either a dedicated channel (such as in the Discord) or tagging specific accounts/hashtags (such as the SuperRare gov twitter)
With the exception of age restrictions if set by the venue (i.e. a bar) to not discriminate or limit who is able to attend, and to be a safe space for people of all identities
Be aligned with the mission, ethos, and identity of the SuperRare community and DAO
An additional consideration weād like the communityās input on is the degree to which these events may be sponsored by or otherwise promoting brands other than SuperRare. When organizing events, it is not uncommon to seek multiple funding sources. Giving organizers flexibility to seek funding from multiple sources could increase the efficiency of the DAOs investment in these events, as the events may be higher quality, but we must also consider whether we would want funds from the DAO to be used in an event that promotes an unaffiliated brand.
Discussion Point 3: How should qualifying events be identified, how should funds be distributed
What should the process be to submit an event for funding? Something like a google form can be simple but is centralized and opaque - building out a custom voting platform, similar to our Space Race tool or the ENS grants tool can be a heavy lift / long lead time
Who should be appointed to review and validate/approve these events? A council with members appointed by the community with a knowledge of event production, as well as members of the SuperRare Labs team who have worked on our previous events. Inspiration here could be taken from the recently established grants committee, which was introduced in this RFC.
Putting up each event to a vote by the entire DAO such as a space race can be too time restrictive and too heavy a lift for individuals hoping to put on simple events
Discussion Point 4: How much and how often should events be allowed, both overall and by individuals?
Should the events fund fully cover an event (up to X dollar amount) or cover a set percentage of the total cost (up to X dollar amount)?
How often should events be able to be put on by the same person, or in the same city/location?
Should there be a total number of events to be put on each year, or just a set maximum dollar amount per event? (Meaning is the fund a fixed amount for the year or a variable number)
Should each event receive the same amount of funding, or relative to their need?
Discussion Point 2: A tool like Little Atlas can help identify local RARE communities and can hold meet ups/events even without asking for funding from the Treasury. Start with a simple meet up to gauge interest, and then grow into bigger gatherings at conferences would be a good goal to aim towards
Discussion Point 3: Flexibility is key - but there needs to be some sort of guidelines for people to follow. It would be interesting to see how many will be proposed and the Treasury can cap it at X per month. Or start with locations where there are SuperRare Labs representatives so the DAO can ensure the funds are not being abused and is aligned with the mission and ethos of the community/DAO. An events council would be useful here.
Discussion Point 4: crawl, walk, run - so start small with a fixed amount per meet up/event - and assess turnout and collect feedback from attendees. After like 3 to 5 events - evaluate and set fixed budget/# of events for each quarter.
Adding some more context here on how we could help SuperRare amplify the number of community events run around the world.
We launched our community platform 4 weeks ago. The community onboarded 500+ of their members, who found their geographical neighbours and already planned 8 meetups across 6 continents. Hereās what their platform looks like today:
We would love to provide something similar for the SuperRare community. Our product is currently based on token-gating - but we would be interested in exploring making the SuperRare map open and accessible by anyone. We also want to add the ability to request + approve funding directly within our platform - and are quite flexible in how that could be implemented.
Let me know if you have any questions, and Iād be really happy to answer them!
Discussion Point 2:
All of these qualifications look good, but we should spend more time on the fourth. A challenging example: I reaaaalllly want for RarePass holders to start running their own events, but as this only a small sect of the community centered around an initiative thatās outside of the DAO, what criteria would they need to meet for their RarePass event to hav broader community impact and thereby be approved?
Discussion Point 3:
Iād like to raise the reality of event timelines as another critical dimension for proposal submission + approval. Budgets requesting greater than, letās say $15k must be approved a minimum of 60 days in advance. Smaller, low-lift events (2k or under budget) have the flexibility to be more impromptu, approved perhaps 3 weeks min in advance? The necessity of an SRL embed or council may also vary on the scale of āsprintā/ high-lift projects vs āfractionalā/ lower-lift projects.
Discussion Point 4:
Speaking of council membersā¦curious if anyone comes to mind as a talented, IRL connector thatās already known in the community?
I do think we should allow for multiple events to be put on by one person ā if someone wants to bang the drum as a community ambassador on that level, I say, more power to them.
Discussion Point 1: yes. I think this would be great for the community and definitely see demand for this. Nathan and I held a meet up in London at a pub a while ago and people still ask if we will be doing more. Had really good vibes and loved being able to meet up IRL. I assume this would be the case in a lot of other cities.
Discussion Point 2:
Agree with all the points made from Robin. Regarding point 4, I donāt think there is a blanket yes / no answer here. Feel like most events would be smaller meet ups with no other sponsors but where bigger gatherings with wider sponsorship present themselves (eg at conferences), the DAO should deal with those on a case by case basis as they would require more checks and balances and maybe even some follow up approvals once funds had been allocated and organizing was in progress.
Discussion Point 3: I agree that an appointed council to review / approve these events would help keep the process nimble vs having a community vote for each one. Think itās important the council is made up of members appointed by the community who have a knowledge of event production + a member of the SuperRare Labs team who has worked on our previous events.
Discussion point 4: agreed with Tom that we should start small with a fixed amount per meet up/event - and assess turnout and collect feedback from attendees. After a few, evaluate and set fixed budget/# of events for each quarter. I also agree with Lauren that we should allow for members to put on multiple events if they would like to but I would say there should be a preference for spreading the budget out across as many different cities as possible.
Some other thoughts:
there could be a post event feedback process where event organizers evaluate their event and attendees can provide feedback in order to help everyone learn and create a ābest practicesā guide as we go
interested to hear ideas on how the DAO can ensure legal aspects like public liability insurance are covered by each event?
Thoughts on promotion: when applying for the funds, event organizers should demonstrate a plan around promotion of the event themselves (ie. be able to produce promotional assets, build a mailing list, promo plan etc). It isnāt scalable for SRL to create assets for all organizers or be solely relied upon as the main promoter of each event. However:
SRL could create and provide official event organizers with an official logo (and maybe design templates) they can use for their visual assets. This would enable them to market the event as an official SuperRare Community Event and if SRL can provide templates, help with the design of assets.
there could be a page on the DAO hub or main SR.com site with a physical events calendar that official event organizers can add to
SRL could set up a process with official event organizers to ensure support of their promotion eg. SR account retweet their event announcement and mention in the newsletter where possible
I think allocating some funds for community events is really great idea. We might want to try a crawl walk run approach similar to how weāre kickstarting grants.
Good question. We could choose different themes and see what has the highest returns. For example we could focus on on boarding more artists, or engaging collectors.
Having a committee with a specific mandate to grow the community through events might be the most efficient.
Starting small seems like a good idea. I think having a set number with the same budget keeps things simple.
Hi yes, I first discovered this with Friends with Benefits Dao. They even created an APP that people can communicate with. One of the major elements of the beginning of superrare was the telegram group. Breaking up and not utilizing this group scattered the community. A rare gated chat could bring people together in different ways.
Community meetups would be fantastic. Community from the bottom up instead of top down can be a healthy addition.
2: Thanks for sharing the tool - I think definitely leveraging whatās already out there can help us get a minimum viable version (as you mentioned below) of this up and running sooner / easier to see how it goes
3: In discussions I think having an events council comprised of both DAO members and SRL team members seems the best way to keep things accountable / supervised without creating too much rigidity which is key as you say since events are very varied in nature. I think part of the point of this fund would be to expand events beyond where we typically have presence, which is usually where SRL team members already are, so I donāt think weād want to go that route
4: heard, agree for sure, keep it simple to start and just see how the first couple/few go and go from there. I think having a fixed amount initially will likely incentivize (or maybe force) certain types of events to be thrown over others (i.e. low cost low lift) but as a pilot program it seems the most prudent option
So great to be in touch and thanks so much for taking the time to share some more about your company / product
Little Atlas seems exactly in line with what might fit this events fund, and the additions youāre looking to make around funding could provide a streamlined way for community members to request, and the Events Council (assuming thatās the route we go) to approve funding
Is there such thing as an āorganizerā profile on Little Atlas? I.e. instead of looking at the map view you can search all events being thrown by a specific group / person?
2: I think defining what the community+DAO mission / ethos / identity is is going to be a big piece of this, going to need to be crowdsourced / made by the community and likely go through multiple revisionsā¦Is something that benefits only directly a smaller segment of the SuperRare community such as RP holders something that indirectly benefits the community as a whole by drawing in attention or showing what else you can have access to if you become involved at another level (i.e. by buying a RarePass?)
3: Very good point around timelines, I think we need to strike the balance between flexibility and giving time for proper due diligence, especially with higher cost / higher stake events like you flagged
4: Open to any suggestions, in my head someome from the 0xSociety team might come to mind given our existing partnership with them and their history putting on high quality events of various scales
And true on last part, If someone is able to put on multiple events that fall within the guidelines and get approval from the Council (assuming a council is implemented), no reason to restrict them further
1: good to hear people have been asking for more! I think weāll definitely need to find a way to raise awareness / funnel existing interest into this proposal, assuming it moves forward, to get the community involved
2: I think this ties in with what Lauren was saying and raises important concerns around accountability especially for higher cost / higher stakes events. Like Tom mentioned above I think for a first iteration makes sense to keep it simpler and low(er) cost to see what the appetite and potential is before scaling up, but assuming it gets to that point then having proper accountability and checks in place to see that the claims being made by the organizer(s) are actually being upheld once funding is released is importantā¦without something like a contract in place whatās to say someone couldnāt just make a fake event claim and once they receive the money they run off with it?
3: Council with community members + SRL team members seems most popular so far
4: noted! Sounds like a consensus coming up so far on what best first version might look like
for other thoughts:
100% agree having feedback from both the organizers and attendees will be crucial, and I think having these be someplace public, such as this forum, is the perfect place, so others can take their learnings and apply it to their own events
@elo would love to hear your thoughts on the legal question Esmay brings up - I know we discussed it briefly in a Metagov and Chill session in Discord, if Iām remembering correctly it might be possible for the Foundation to appoint community members as agents of the DAO in relation to their event and for the Foundation to hold the liability insurance?
Alternatively working with venues / vendors that already hold liability insurance would be a simpler approach, at least to start
I think having a template created by SRL (and approved by the DAO / Council) that each event is required to use, as well as a marketing guideline template (i.e. timeline and quantity of posts) would be a great help to event organizers and also increase the likelihood of success, win win
In calls with the community, I heard a few people express an interest / need for support in marketing from SRL - for individuals / people new to events it can be hard to break through the noise and get their event see, and having SRL or SR gov accounts support would be very beneficial
good call out to grants program, definitely looking heavily at what Brennan and the team set up there as a basis for how we could pilot this
These are things that are a bit tricky to capture - data capture around events is always a bit difficult even when done all by 1 team (i.e. SRL) but capturing across SuperRare and independent organizers will be a hurdleā¦ I think introducing some type of standard or tools that must be used (i.e. events must be done through eventbrite with total number of RSVPs and Check-Ins) share after the fact, or using tracking links if theyāre doing sign ups at the event to see how many signups came from that event will be key
I hadnāt considered the āMandateā part of the council before, good detail that Iāll include in the next version, it seems the committee is a popular choice but want to make sure itās goals and purpose are strictly outlined
Based on feedback so far, this seems like the route to take for the initial SIP, difficulty will be around figuring out exactly what number is reasonable, I think looking to previous events that @Esmay-SuperRareLabs mentioned or previous events Iāve worked on is a good starting point
FWB is definitely a great place to look for us in creating this. Thanks for mentioning their app, Iāll dive into it further!
Do you feel the Discord server has started serving the same purspose as the Telegram chat used to?
Do you think that events have to be / should be Rare Gated to bring the community together, or do you think that they could be open to anyone to attend? I think the latter might encourage new folks to get into the community, and ideally, eventually buy Rare
Love to hear your enthusiasm around these community events and totally agree that bottom up is a great way for the community to thrive!
Yeah discord is getting ther3. Tech support is great. We need more artist support. Too many onboards diluting the market, new and established artists not selling means its not superrare anymore. There needs to be incentive to come to the chat. I see many artists sharing work but not enough buys. Yes make people collect some rare to come to events. Make rare essential in all things. More utility more adoption more art collectors more amazing art.
any updates on this? i will love to see this come into fruition. it is best to start then continue to refine things from feedbacks till we get it. bottom up approach.
i can also volunteer on this, meetups and events are very valuable
thanks, i can do some meetups in universities around me, we also arts students in them. also i will love to help in structuring this program, i am well experienced in organizing differrent levels of events
collectors more amazing art.