SIP-224: KPI based Ambassador Mandate

Simple Summary

This proposal aims to create a more structured approach to the Ambassador Council role based on a number of key performance indicators.

Abstract

The Ambassador role is a community facing council position which is accountable to token holders directly. In order to boost token holder confidence and increase transparency as well as accountability, the Ambassadors must make a commitment to the growth of a number of KPIs (Key performance indicators) on an epoch over epoch basis.

Motivation

Since the inception of the Ambassador DAO in March of 2021, the Ambassador position has matured significantly, initially the purpose of the aDAO, was to rally support from the community for external governance proposals and encourage/seek delegation of governance tokens for those respective protocols. A year later and the scope of the mandate has expanded significantly (see sip-157) to include things such as community outreach, protocol integrations, building on DAO2DAO relations and other growth strategies. The addition of those ambassador functions however, did not come with a structured approach on how to gauge any progress or growth in those areas since it wasn't clear at the time where it's best to concentrate efforts. Now that the Ambassadors Council has found it's niche within the Synthetix DAO architecture, it's time to formalize some of their functions and track the growth that their endeavours are bringing for Synthetix.

Specification

Overview

I propose the Ambassador Council's performance be tracked by a number of KPIs which fall within the existing mandate and can be used to quantify the value created by the Council.

The KPIs that are to be used for tracking the Ambassadors' performance are as follows:

1. Total delegated voting power of all ecosystem governance tokens
2. Number of social events and their audience/viewership count (Town Halls, DAO 2 DAO community calls, Twitter spaces)
3. Sum of Protocol integrations, grants referrals and contributor referrals
4. Use of the Synthetix Councils' and CC's Coordinape circle as an indicator for non public contributions and productive Discord engagement
5. Various approved SIPs written by members of the Ambassador Council

Rationale

KPI 1: This performance indicator is at the core of the Ambassador mandate since inception and is very representative of the Ambassador's integrity and level of trust within the DeFi ecosystem. Generally, only well known/trusted community delegates have significant governance power delegated to them by gov token holders and usually it's for having a track record of integrity or ecosystem alignment. Having governance power of external protocols in the DeFi space can be highly resourceful for a DAO, in that it allows the protocol to have meaningful influence in the ecosystem and leverage it for certain integrations.

KPI 2: Social events have become a main stay of the Ambassador Council in recent epochs with very high community engagement and lots of positive feedback. From Town Hall events with ecosystem partners and open discussions with other DAOs/protocols, to themed Twitter Spaces that harness community interest in Synthetix, these social events have probably been the most successful of Ambassador lead initiatives. It's important for future Ambassador council members to continue this tradition and help maintain Synthetix's relevance with up and coming projects as well as raising awareness about Synthetix's potential in a social light.

KPI 3: This performance indicator is very powerful for Synthetix as a whole and easily quantifiable in terms of results. Just this past epoch the Ambassadors spear headed a couple integrations that may have promise (though they haven't come to fruition yet due to some technical restraints) and it's evident that there's lots potential in this area for many tangible benefits to be had. In addition to protocol integrations, the number of Grant and Contributor referrals that end up yielding results, are another way to quantify direct value being added by Ambassadors and thus serve as a great performance indicator of the council, for the community.

KPI 4: Coordinape is a DAO tool made by DAO specialists for internal accounting and performance tracking. It's a powerful way to express appreciation for efforts of contributors and signal support for their work. Coordinape is a purely on-chain and gas-less tool which allows for members of a "Circle" (a DAO or group of contributors) to allocate "GIVES" (units of rewards) to others in the Circle. Coordinape is a completely non-binding method of expressing approval for the contribution of DAO members and does not require any funds to operate (as it's fully gas-less). The purpose of using coordinape as a performance indicator is that it offers a layer of accountability due to the fact that the voting/allocating process is fully transparent and uses on-chain signatures to keep track of allocations. DAO members/Contributors will be assigned with a set amount of GIVES each epoch and can allocate them based on anything that they deem adds value but isn't otherwise quantifiable from the community’s perspective (eg. providing technical support to CCs/other DAO members privately or for productive discord engagement)

KPI 5: This final performance indicator is easily trackable through the Synthetix GitHub and represents the type of improvements the Ambassadors propose and the value that's being added by their proposals. It's important to note that this KPI metric is not solely based on quantity of SIPs submitted but also based on the level of technicality and scale of improvement that's being proposed by the Ambassadors.

Expectations

The above mentioned KPIs are meant to offer accountability from the Ambassador Council to token holders and provide transparency into the performance of its members, the goal of this SIP is not to set hard targets at first, but to strive for growth in these key areas which have proven to bring value to Synthetix historically. The idea is that these metrics are to grow and improve over time and give token holders/community members a reference point for the past, present and future performance of Ambassador Council members. Obviously the KPI metrics in this proposal cannot grow exponentially for ever and that's not the expectation here, the main point is that there's always a guideline to follow and structure to abide by for the Ambassadors, in an accountable and transparent manner. As long as the trajectory of growth of the KPIs in this SIP are in a positive direction, then the Ambassador Council is serving it's mandate.

At one end of the spectrum we have a scenario where the Ambassadors fall behind on many of these KPI metrics and are clearly underperforming on their duties and in that case the community/other DAO members can hold them accountable and not re-elect them. At the other end of the spectrum, the Ambassador Council may be going above and beyond and showing tremendous growth in these key metrics, in such an event the community may suggest to increase the number of Ambassador seats on the council to scale the growth further.

Test Cases

Case1) Alice, Bob and Charlie are elected as Ambassadors, the three of them severely underperform on the KPIs in this SIP compared to the council in previous epochs and all they manage to do is "concern troll" in various Synthetix Discord channels. SnxWeave obviously documents all their behaviour during the epoch and the token holders and community can see the clear lack of performance. New candidates step up in a bid to make improvements where Alice, Bob and Charlie failed and all (or some) of the incumbents are NOT re-elected.

Case 2) Damion, Earl and Fantasia are elected as Ambassadors, they make huge strides and show growth in every KPI metric and the community can now clearly see in a transparent way that their elected DAO members are bringing in amazing value :greenWojak:. Perhaps it's a good time to onboard more Ambassadors and increase the number of seats on the council.

Case 3) Three fresh ambassadors are elected to the council and they're eager to contribute, unfortunately they don't know where to start and how to best make an impact, but that's okay because based on the previous epoch's performance indicators, they can see which areas may need improvement and which initiatives can be used as a reference for quality contribution. They make the necessary adjustments and are able to follow a clear guideline of what's expected from the community in order have a greater impact and get re-elected.

Configurable Values (Via SCCP)

• Ability to hard targets/expectations

• Addition of more KPIs

Copyright

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