[Proposal] Social/Community-focused Earnestness Concept

As we slowly drift towards Season 2, I thought I’d make a suggestion for a method of tracking social earnestness. I believe that we should try to track earnest behaviour both on-chain and off, and while I leave the specifics of on-chain earnestness up to the team, I think I have an idea on how to better implement social earnestness while avoiding spammy/bad interactions in the discord.

First, I’d like to recap some common criticisms leveled against the earnest mechanics of Season 1, to add context on some of the choices in this concept. I’d describe the primary complaints as follows:

  • No transparency as to how ‘earnest’ social behaviour was calculated.
  • Perceived inequality of awarded tokens (“I posted all day and got nothing while X influencer gets awarded for one thread”)
  • No rewards for the “quietly earnest” population.
  • Big push at the end to ‘tally everything up’ felt manual & sloppy, ‘No cloud left behind’ program tacitly reinforced that assumption as a seeming admission from the team at their own imperfection.

To counter, I’d like to propose a solution that solves all of these issues without disrupting our core principles, that being to provide more allocation towards users aligned with the protocol, not just large users.

First, I propose we split the earnest allocation into a “community drop” and a “protocol drop”. The “community drop” rewards users who actively participate in threads, proposals, discussion, etc. or are otherwise seen as pillars of our community who can be relied on to help organise us. The “protocol drop” is an on-chain analysis of holding activity of both $CLOUD and our LSTs, Primarily this is to sort out mercenary capital from loyal capital, and reward loyal capital more heavily. Personally I’d also recommend using the Sanctum Profile system to ban sybils upfront and then use a tiered system, as they bring much higher social goodwill from average participants vs a linear drop.

Second, I’d like to focus in on the “community drop”, as I believe I have a system that fixes all the existing complaints. The system is to create a hierarchy of Roles in the discord that are public. as an example, something like:

  • Cloud Newcomer
  • Cloud Apprentice
  • Cloud Member
  • Cloud Acolyte
  • Cloud Master

The naming can be changed to be cloud themed, sanctum themed, etc. The main idea is that we create a clear system of ranking which indicated how aligned you’ve been to the community.

As Season 2 progresses, we allow staff, cloud masters, and the highest-ranked cloud role to award ‘points’ to people in the discord who have done something worthy, such as a thoughtful post/discussion, new ideas for the protocol, dashboards, or other aligned activity. These points are easily made and tracked using a variety of discord bots. Higher ranks should take more points to achieve, creating a clear tiered system for how much different communitiy members have contributed.

The advantages of this system are as follows:

For the community:

  • Transparent and verifiable rankings based on public activity, creating trust between members.
  • Hierarchy helps dissipate questions from being only directed at the team, instead newbies can view the roles and ask high ranked community members simple questions, opening up more bandwidth for mods.
  • No ‘bad surprises’. Since everyone can see their ranking as the season progresses, everyone knows roughly where they are. This invalidates a lot of common complaints about some people not getting what they expected.
  • Any perceived inequality doesn’t all swell up at the end. Since these results happen in real time, any complaint over something not being rewarding is a small issue that can be addressed there and then, preventing a large buildup/outcry.
  • Community members get immediate positive feedback for good ideas/contributions, making more contributions more likely. Many folks I think burnt out as they had no signal for whether their actions mattered at all.

For the team:

  • A system that creates more trusted members allows the team to focus on product and messaging, while aligned users are given the public clout to help manage newcomers and trolls.
  • The ‘points’ system allows tallying in real-time, so contributions don’t get lost in the flood of messages, and tallying isn’t some massive crunch that leaves the community impatiently waiting.
  • Creating a public alignment system actually lowers the spam/troll rate, as poor behaviour can easily be reprimanded with real-time loss of points. This ought to stop most low-quality contributions, as they quickly see better contributions getting rewarded while they aren’t, encouraging them to either create meaningful work or spam elsewhere.

In conclusion, I think a public alignment system better rewards and encourages good behaviour, while reducing bad surprises and increasing communal trust.

For an example of a mature system, I’d like to mentation TempleDAO, who has a much more complex but very organized community, within which everyone feels they have a role, and a ladder up should they choose to contribute more.
See more here: Roles | Temple Rituals

Id also like to shoutout the Pathfinders community on creating roles to increase public trust. While less hierarchical, many newcomers seem to immediately catch on to the fact that members with impressive-sounding roles can be trusted for FAQs and other info when mods are offline or otherwise occupied. There also seems to be a lot of inherent respect paid to these members, and their words are taken with more clout than the beginner roles (which again encourages order over chaos).

Let me know what you all think!

:cloud: The Earnest Shall Build Our New World :cloud:

7 Likes

Mimyk, my brother! This was truly thoughtful and presented excellently.

Server roles has been suggested many times now. Hopefully @fplee and the team are hearing our beckoning calls and almost ready to make something like this a reality. I for one think it would be a huge game changer to have a public alignment system (PAS). This is a solid idea that I can fully get behind, and I would love to help develop it.

Unfortunately, this is one of those things that don’t fall under the “just do it” from fp, due to the PAS development being heavily dependent on server privileges, otherwise I think it would already be in full swing.

I hope we can get this pushed to the front of the priority list.

2 Likes

This is a great write up my fren.

I completely agree and would love to see this in action

2 Likes

It’s such a difficult thing to manage when money is involved. The roles will get farmed and groups will attack the Discord just as many have attacked governance all over crypto. The poorer people are the less time costs them.

None of this means you shouldn’t try, but it’s good to keep in mind this will happen and be ready for it.

I think everything you award through this earnest stuff should be ultimately linked to metrics that you decide will shift the needle for Sanctum as a viable business.
If it were up to me (which it isn’t to be clear) I’d give multipliers to earnest allocations based on fees generated/TVL in LSTs. The more those numbers go up the better earnest rewards are. But if they don’t go up then it’s not going to make anyone much money.

And as harsh as that might sound it’s not really. If you’re posting every day on the Discord and socials and trying to be “earnest” and it’s not shifting the needle for Sanctum then you’re highly incentivised to change your approach and start looking at ways your contributions can actually positively influence your airdrop. It’s not thescammy people you want to focus; it’s the genuine users who aren’t contributing the value they really should be due to lack of direction.

4 Likes

always tough with any sort of points system with discord servers, usually I am dead against them, they get farmed, make the servers a absolute mess of spam, the same question beig answered by dozens of users, then some users get angry if they don’t recieve

but having said that, this is a more interesting and potenitally viable take on that, and something that could warrant further investigation into, to see if it can acheive a outcome that serves our needs re earnestness recognition without decending the server into a total mess

5 Likes

First of all thank you for your time to create such a good and big topic.

I couldn’t agree to all points but in general clear rules and criteria are good to exist and implemented.

From my point of view an hybridic model is needed that will be consisted all the activities (discord’s roles + socials’ media contribution + wonderland II + other kind of contribution).
To each of the above section must be allocated a % of the rewards (discord roles will be one of them)
For example 50% to wonderland II + 10% discord roles + 15% social + 15% other contribution).

Team must find a fair formula/model to make happy as more participants as it possible (there is no airdrop without complains, no way to make all participants happy).

Just my thoughts

2 Likes

Good evening my fren. I would love to share some thoughts about your concept. :slight_smile:

By implementing a public role hierarchy, the system would offer a transparent way to see who contributes and to what extent, potentially fostering trust and reducing the sense of unfairness in reward distribution. This visibility could indeed lead to more accountability and less manipulation or misinterpretation of how contributions are valued.

The system where points are awarded for meaningful contributions like thoughtful posts or new ideas could motivate members to engage more deeply with the community rather than just increasing volume. This could lead to a higher quality of interaction and discussion within the community.

Immediate recognition through points could serve as positive reinforcement, encouraging ongoing participation. This is particularly beneficial in keeping members engaged over time, especially those who might feel their efforts go unnoticed in less structured environments.

By fostering a tiered system, you’re effectively creating a network of community leaders or experts who can handle a portion of the community’s needs, thus freeing up official team members to focus on broader strategic goals. This could be particularly effective in managing community growth and maintaining order.

Potential Challenges
Introducing a points system with various roles might add complexity to community management. There would be a need for clear rules on how points are awarded, who can award points, and how disputes are resolved. This could lead to additional workload for moderators or community leaders.

Despite good intentions, any system can be gamed. The “points” might attract individuals who focus more on gaining points rather than contributing genuinely, potentially leading to a new form of spam or superficial engagement.

A hierarchical structure, while rewarding, might foster elitism or a sense of exclusion among newer or less vocal members. This could demotivate those who feel they can’t climb the ranks quickly or perceive the system as biased towards those already established.

A hierarchical structure, while rewarding, might foster elitism or a sense of exclusion among newer or less vocal members. This could demotivate those who feel they can’t climb the ranks quickly or perceive the system as biased towards those already established.

TempleDAO/Pathfinders
While drawing inspiration from other communities like TempleDAO and Pathfinders is wise, it’s crucial to tailor these systems to fit your community’s unique culture and needs. Their success in different contexts doesn’t guarantee the same outcomes in Sanctum, but they do provide a blueprint for potential success if adapted correctly.

TLDR
Your proposed system has the potential to significantly improve community dynamics by fostering engagement, transparency, and rewarding quality contributions, it’s essential to monitor its implementation closely for unintended consequences like system gaming or community division. Regular feedback loops and adjustments based on community response will be key to its success.

:vulcan_salute:

2 Likes

Completely agree in terms of many of the systems I’ve seen. Maybe I should be more clear about this, but I feel the big difference is instead of some automated ‘ranking’ system which just encourages spam, this would be an exclusive thing awarded just a few times per day, manually, by mods/team.

Things like long-form educational blogs, novel & serious community proposals, or even just a long day of helping moderate the community might be worth the award, but the trick is to make it a Rare Event, rather than something grindable. The perception of the system is often what dictates behaviour, and a strong bias against endless yapping will go a long way I believe. This isn’t about farming engagement, its about community building.

Personally I’d even combo it with timeouts for perceived spammers being doled out liberally by the mods. The message should be clear: Quality work is rewarded, spam is extinguished.

3 Likes

There should definitely be a large drop for people who move the needle on the protocol side. Admittedly I rushed past that in the post to get to the area of focus, but it does bear repeating that we need to create metrics for ‘on-chain earnestness / economic earnestness’.

Some nuance there however is we want to avoid mercenary capital that plays along to get the airdrop, then dumps the tokens and abandons the protocol. To me, this is also where community comes in. Having a strong culture with many thought leaders, not just the Team ↔ Community dynamic, is what really gets projects to move into the big leagues. If we want to get that moving, we need to actually make it exciting and emotionally worthwhile to fly the sanctum banner as a non-team member.

As for farming, I address this a bit below, but most of the farming I see is due to a mixture of ‘automated points systems’ which are garbage, and lax moderation. IMO, limit promotions to 2-3 per day manually picked by moderator for quality not quantity and timeout spammers for 1-2 days heavy-handedly. After the first week or so of wonderland I think the spammers will boil off as its not worth their time to keep getting banned and get no recognition while genuine members of our community get their flowers.

3 Likes

@andrewsaul @nik4 guys, I’m pretty sure the idea here has nothing to do with allocations or airdrops. This is meant to be purely a server/community ranking, with no connection to monetary rewards. I realy wish that people wouldn’t always associate a rank or role hierarchy with monetary rewards?

There is a measure of fun and satisfaction from growing and being recognized in a community. Step away from always trying to make gains or profit. This is why it would likely not be farmed because there is no monetary value. This is why Pathfinders, for example, is successful. It’s fun guys!

@Mimyk please correct me if I am misunderstanding your ideas here.

Update: Okay, so I just read your later comment @Mimyk and I guess I was wrong. So I will have to disagree with much of the proposal if it involves monetary value, which will always be gamed. The desperate or unscrupulous can fake earnestness in many ways, especially if they know the metrics. The only earnest metrics that would work are the ones not made public by the team. This is why season 1 worked, and also pissed off the non-earnest.

So just to be clear, my opinion is that a public alignment system should not include monetary rewards.

3 Likes

It’s a nice thought that you could run this as a purely recognition model, and maybe that can be done, but ultimately it’ll be a lot of effort to simply make good contributors feel nice.

Crypto’s superpower is the financial incentives (cause it still sucks majorly as a product in most ways) and Sanctum should keeping leaning into that as it’s fuelling good growth.
The issue is managing and directing those incentives for the best outcomes.

The issue with all the ideas about moderating for good and bad is that you’re moderating for good and bad. That is difficult and takes time and people (I know this from experience). I don’t know that Sanctum has enough people willing to give up that much time.

Sanctum probably do need to invest in coordination platform such as Zealy and such. Not as a mass engagement effort but as a way to manage those earnest community members. The leader boards all these have are great in helping define to participants what shifts the needle for Sanctum.
By running small test campaigns out of there you can fine tune for what you want in a broader program.

1 Like

Hey this is a great writeup! I think that executing this on a level that is sybil-resistant without dismissing the lower lever roles is a massive task that will take lots of resources. Would be a huge risk to give this a shot for that reason - this isn’t all that different from other discord role/leveling systems that platforms like intract/rep3/galxe offer. For that reason I think it won’t be a great approach.

2 Likes

This sounds perfect tbh

2 Likes