Community Contribution & Steward Performance (CCSP) Awards Campaign

Purpose

This proposal is an attempt to address the following fundamentals:

• How can ENS DAO be improved?
• How can significant ENS DAO contributions be recognized, contributors be encouraged, and efforts rewarded?
• How can we attract new contributors?
• How can Working Group transparency be facilitated?
• How can incentives be aligned in decentralized governance (and ecosystems)?

I propose that all of these can be achieved by recognizing and rewarding exceptional efforts that have improved ENS DAO through an awards campaign, in which participation is entirely voluntary.

The objective is to provide awards that are significant enough to induce participation and friendly competition, while minimizing the potential to “game” the system. Accountability and transparency are happy side effects.

Rationale

It is my belief that the most robust form of decentralization is when each participant is acting in their own self interest. Imagine a spectrum, in which the opposite extreme is coercion.

Since motivations and incentives are often different for elected WG Stewards than for all other community participants, I propose award winners be considered in two separate (but complimentary) brackets.

Specification

[The following amounts are entirely flexible - these are essentially placeholders.]

Steward Performance Awards

• Steward of the Month
  • Award: qualify to be nominated for quarterly and yearly award. (Stewards are already compensated monthly)
• Steward of the Quarter
  • $2500 (USDC)
• Steward of the Year
  • $10000 (USDC)

Community Contribution Awards [Non-Steward]

• Contributor of the Month
  • 25 $ENS
• Contributor of the Quarter
  • 100 $ENS
• Contributor of the Year
  • 500 $ENS

When?

The campaign will run from June 01, 2022 - May 31, 2024.
It may be extended before expiration if the DAO decides to.

How will winners be determined?

Nomination:
On the last day of each month, anyone may open a thread on the ENS DAO Discourse (discuss.ens.domains) using the following format:
[CCSP Award Nominations] Tier, Covered Period

Examples:
[CCSP Award Nominations] Monthly, June 2022
[CCSP Award Nominations] Quarterly, Q4 2022
[CCSP Award Nominations] Yearly, June 2022 - June 2023

Anyone can nominate themselves or someone else for any award, as long as they qualify.

Nomination Template:
One or two “bullet points” using the following format:

• Who are you nominating? What was done?; What was the impact?

Each item should be no longer than 100 words.

Examples:

• I nominate François. Translated ten ENS Learn Docs to French; improved accessibility to French speaking community.
• I nominate myself. Created an ENS sales dashboard; provided detailed statistics about secondary market sales.

Vote:

• After seven days (on the 7th of the following month), the same person that created the nomination thread should open a poll using the same format as above, replacing “Nominations” with “Vote” in the thread title.
• The poll options will be the top upvoted nominees (hearts + thumbs ups) from the nomination thread.
• Poll should be set to end on at 1 PM UTC on the 10th of the month.
• Poll results should be set to “show after poll ends”

A minimum of five nominees is required, and a maximum of ten.
The winner can decide to keep the award, give it to another person or project, or donate it to a Working Group treasury to be used as they specify.

How can “gaming the system” be avoided?

• A minimum of five nominees are required for any award to be considered. If there is not enough participation, the award is skipped.
• Nobody can win the same level award consecutively, except for Steward of the Month.
• To qualify for a higher level award, all lower level(s) must have been awarded to the nominee. Ex: To qualify for quarterly award, you must have won a monthly award. To qualify for best of the year, you must have won at least one previous month and quarter.

Budget

Total Requested (for two years, as currently written)

• 40,000 $USDC [from Ecosystem WG]
  • 8 x Steward Performance Award, Quarterly
  • 2 x Steward Performance Award, Yearly
• 2,400 $ENS [from Community WG]
  • 24 x Community Contribution Award, Monthly
  • 8 x Community Contribution Award, Quarterly
  • 2 x Community Contribution Award, Yearly

Thank you to all that gave feedback on draft versions of this proposal.

Voting ends in one week.

If the majority vote “Yes,” I kindly request @Ecosystem_Stewards and/or @Community_Stewards continue developing and executing this campaign.