Community Sentiment Vote: Should the OSL Continue thru next Half a Year?

Sub DAOs Support Team
1

Original Thread: Commonwealth

Togg LeTek
osmo1vjsx

•

Published on 6/10/2023

•

322 views

•

NEW

As mentioned on this past TIL (watchable here), the OSL wanted to specifically gauge community and governance sentiment before our next funding ask.

Market Reality

We at the OSL are just as much a part of the market as anyone else. We recognize large spends in this climate are not good or sound business decisions, and cuts unfortunately have to be made. The OSL is aware that an ask such as our last one will most likely fail based on headcount and numbers alone, regardless of the essential services we provide.

The Proposal

This proposal will be a simple text proposal that will be asking exactly:

We, the Osmosis Support Lab, request the community to vote on whether the OSL
should continue through the next half a year **in any form**.

Simple, but we realize that the community might not need the live chat support, the Interchain Lab show, or regular postings of our stats, or posts on the community blog during these really rough market downturns. We want to hear the opinions and solutions the community has for us as the community has always guided us through tough times. Even our strongest opponents are some of our best allies in giving us ideas and methods to move forward more efficiently.

Plan of Action

We are already working on a plan of action for an extremely reduced spend that will ultimately result in most of the above initiatives being cut in favor of maintaining our sovereignty in providing amazing support and moderation for the Osmosis Community.

In layman’s terms:

  1. Only providing chat support/community moderation. With enough staff to ensure response times are kept to a minimum.
  2. Keep supporting relaying operations, as the cost/time effort is minimal.
  3. No additional front-end developments.
  4. No additional community incentives to give away.
  5. No podcast shows/TIL/Blog posts.

Simply put, basic support/moderation.

Why this “pre-proposal?”

Essentially, we wanted to ensure that our efforts won’t be in vain. We also wanted to gauge community sentiment in general and hear ideas WELL before it’s time to ask for a re-up from the Community Pool.

What about in the meantime?

As always, we intend to ensure full services through the end of this funding cycle regardless of the outcome of this text proposal, per our last funding proposal and social contract with the community.

Osmosis Support Lab Internal Accountability

As part of our effort for greater and more visible accountability, below please see our internal vote as to whether or not to post this commonwealth post as well as put the proposal mentioned on chain.

image
image606×596 34.9 KB

2


Leonoor’s Cryptoman
osmo14amd

•

6/12/2023

Whereas I do the fact that the conversation is sought to discuss potential doubts to clear the air before we get a new community spend proposal, I also do think that we need to define as a project here were we want to go on the long run.

I read a lot of comments that the support received by the OSL is one of the things that makes Osmosis stand out. From the “legacy” world we also know that not necessarily the best tech wins, but the service delivered to a customer. Useability is one of the utmost crucial aspects to achieve a decent market share.

For example; during the introduction of the first iPad we already had laptops way more powerful. But not as wearable and user-friendly as an iPad. So we settled for an inferior product, but where the UX was waaaay better. And look were we are know.

And the same should be kept in the back of our minds for Osmosis. Our customer-facing side is superduper important. So my support for keeping the OSL in place in whatever form is secured; as long as we make sure the service to the end customer is not harmed.

3


RedRabbit33
osmo1hxfd

•

6/12/2023

Regarding OSL Funding:

I believe now would be a good time to also discuss HOW we fund the OSL and the amount of fiscal autonomy we give them. How they are funded, and how they are allowed to manage their funds, can not only increase accountability and transparency, but also ensure operations are sustainable.

Dedicated Revenue Stream for Specific Operations - Just as many government operations are primarily funded by service fees and special use taxes rather than through general appropriations (eg. the US federal gas tax funds maintenance of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, FAA and TSA airport operations are funded via passenger fees airlines have passed on to their customers, etc), certain fees should be fully or partially dedicated to funding specific OSL operations. For example, rather than depositing pool and gauge creation fees into the community pool, they can directed to a separate account to fund specific OSL operations/budget line items, such as bot maintenance and hosting, relayer, and RPC node operations, for example. The OSL would pay for these operations solely from the account that collects pool and gauge creation fees, and if a sufficient amount of revenue isn’t generated to cover those operations, ask that Governance increase the fee amount.

Dedicating certain revenue streams to cover certain line item costs, would provide a funding base for certain key OSL operations going forward. Transparency is increased when the revenue of certain fees are dedicated to fund certain operations, it would be clear how much OSMO is being converted to USDC to cover these specific costs. Accountability is also increased as the quality and quantity of operations funded through these sources are dependent upon the revenue generated by the fees or any supplemental funding from the Community Pool.

ProtoReve USDC Revenue - Replacing a portion of OSL OSMO funding with USDC ProtoRev revenue (and in the future taker fee revenue rather than distributing it to stakers, which they can be compensated for with 100% of other non-OSMO token revenue) to specifically cover certain costs of OSL operations would be significantly more efficient than continuing to fund their operations completely in OSMO.

Interest on Contingency Fund - Governance could provide the OSL with the authority to manage their funds in a manner that can produce savings. For example, the OSL could be allowed to deposit a portion of their contingency fund on Mars or Umee to earn some interest. The interest earned would reduce the amount of OSMO that is needed to replenish it and an ‘profits’ can be used to fund operations. Likewise, Governance could allow OSL to permanently hold a portion of their contingency fund in stablecoins on Mars and or Umee to reduce any future Community Pool spending to replenish it and any profits used to cover operations.

Regarding OSL Funding Services/Operations:

Information as a Service - I have heard Sunny say numerous times that Osmosis wishes to be the DEX that offers users the same features as a CEXs, and I have always though that OSL was in a position to help Osmosis achieve this by replicating many of the same ‘information as service’ features that CEXs and even traditional brokerage firms offers to their users. While the value of ‘information as service’ is often difficult to quantify, there is undoubtedly a reason why CEXs and traditional brokerage firms continue to fund these services and provide many of them to users free of charge. In fact, several qualitative studies have found that such ‘information as service’ is just as important to traditional retail traders and investors when selecting a brokerage or asset management firm as trading fees or costs are (largely in part due to firms having to compete on costs thanks to Vanguard)

The OSL could provide much more value to users by expanding their ‘information as service’ operations through weekly (or even daily) blog posts and establish the Community Updates blog as a ‘one-stop-shop’ for new and noteworthy blog posts and tweets from different ecosystem chains, dapps, organizations validators, developers and quality content (those that both challenge and reinforce our own personal opinions and beliefs) from various industry information outlets, commentators, analysts, and experts. A lot more could be done to make it easier for users to keep up to date on the activities of other ecosystem chains, market events, and industry issues, RealClearMarkets (https://www.realclearmarkets.com/) is a low-cost model I believe the OSL could easily replicate.

Serving the Interest of all Community Members - As an organization funded by the community, I have long believed that the OSL could do more to serve the interests of ALL community members by collating high quality and trusted educational sources on trading and investing. The OSL also doesn’t have to create its own content on things such as impermanent loss, APY vs APR, token inflation, etc, and could easily steer users to sources that already have created such educational material.

1 Like
4


luisqa - Interbloc
evmos1jmn

•

6/11/2023

As Robo mentioned, this seems sudden and not needed considering we are still in the middle of the already funded period.

OSL is by far the reason Osmosis still retains user despite things like, daily epoch (20 minutes that the chain becomes completely unusable), buggy and slow front end and many other “quirks” of osmosis. The support lab is the reason I stayed on cosmos in the first place and losing it would be destroying one of the only competitive advantages that Osmosis has left.

Furthermore, I love the decentralized nature of the initiative and how We the community have funded OSL through all of its iterations.

However, that’s not to say there are no opportunities. I mentioned it before and I’ll say it again, there is no way current staff is working according to what they are being paid. Ten to seven people seems like a very appropriate number for 24/7 coverage of all support channels and developing on downtime of critical services for that support.

I wholeheartedly disagree that the people that need it the most should be the ones that stay, this isn’t a charity. As such, people with the most skills, commitment and drive should be the ones to stay. I seriously hope there has been tracking of contributions to the OSL, specially in support but in other support/admin tasks as well.

As the ones funding this teams, I see more accountability reports from OGP than OSL at the moment, I would expect that to change going forward.

Lack of transparency and accountability continues to be an issue with OSL and I HOPE, that this is addressed this funding cycle so it is an easy ask to fund the next term. I don’t understand why it has to wait for next funding round to reduce headcount of low performance members, want more data on who has contributed more to OSL to determine who will remain.

5


G_N
osmo1ha92

•

6/11/2023

I’d like to second Luis’ comment and just say that for all the grief I give Osmosis, OSL is probably the only reason most people know what is going on in IBC. No other group of community managers has anything close to the expertise or “fingers on the pulse” of all-things Cosmos. If OSL is significantly cut, then it stands to reason that Cosmos will lose it’s only real customer-facing organization.

I’d like another option to see what number you’re projecting for manpower reduction, but with the condition of maintaining all of OSL’s current services (some decrease in frequency for specific products is expected). I believe you should prioritize keeping the hardest working members on OSL on board, otherwise you’ll likely lose the ability to maintain your output & quality. OSL’s people & products are indispensable in keeping users informed and interested in Osmosis.

Lastly, it would be best to see what a proposal with the current standards and added deliverables would look like. Basically, if we keep things funded as today what benchmarks, work requirements or other actionable items could the community expect from OSL in exchange for a "yes’ vote.

6

Cryptinator
osmo1wyay

•

6/10/2023

The OSL has helped me a lot over the past and to me it seems like it’s the only reliable and reachable support in the cosmos ecosystem.

Actually, the OSL is my go to point for help with everything. I even asked them for help with neutron. While this example is a bit out of scope in terms of responsibilities I think the OSL should definetly try to continue. For the benefit of the Cosmos.

Without the OSL I fear the Osmosis Discord to end like the Cosmos Discord where one asks a question and can hope to get an answer. But the chances aren’t that high. And given that Osmosis is the entry platform to the Cosmos ecosystem it’s crucial to help onboarding new users.

I think that the OSL is an important key player. Instead of terminating it I believe that the OSL should increase it’s scope and extend their support to other platforms and maybe cosmos chains. Having such support for Cosmos would help a lot.

That’s probably also out of scope though.

Anyways, I don’t see why getting rid of the OSL would benefit the community. The OGP spends a lot of money on things that, what I belive, are less useful than the OSL.

7


RoboMcGobo
osmo1prtr

•

6/10/2023

We are already working on a plan of action for an extremely reduced spend that will ultimately result in most of the above initiatives being cut in favor of maintaining our sovereignty in providing amazing support and moderation for the Osmosis Community.

Would love to have a little more detail here. How many staff would be retained under the reduced spend proposal? Which people in particular? If specific people have been chosen already to stay, how was this decided on internally? How would community moderation and support be handled? Would it be limited to solely the support site, or would support still be provided on Discord and Telegram?

What about the FAQs and instructional guides that currently live on support.osmosis.zone? Will these continue to be updated with new source material that Osmosis releases (i.e., concentrated liquidity, etc)?

It’d be good for the community to have more details on what exactly it is we’d be giving up by voting for some new iteration of the OSL. This seems rather sudden and surprising tbh.

8

Togg LeTek
osmo1vjsx

•

6/10/2023

Hey Robo :slight_smile:

I’ll answer to the best of my ability currently. There is no finalized plan in place, yet we wanted to get the message out there.

How many staff? The ideal number for us would be 7-10. This would allow such initiatives to moderate and continue to manage the Discord, Telegram, and Reddit social channels. It would also allow for a ticketing system to be utilized. And we are in the process of researching free and open-source solutions that could meet the same quality standards we have set for ourselves, and that the community has come to expect. In that regard, 7-10 people might allow for new articles to be written, but we’re unsure if the community will find value in this over simple support in extremely Bearish Times like these.

Who? No one has particularly been chosen yet. We are all collaborating on who has the skills, and to be honest, the greatest need for income in this market. This process is fully collaborative though.

Re: FAQs and Instructional guides on support.osmosis.zone: Will these continue to be updated with new source material that Osmosis releases (i.e., concentrated liquidity, etc)? As you well know Robo, we (the OSL) do not have complete and full sovereignty over the support website. The domain and hosting are strictly under the control of the Foundation, and therefore we are allowed to edit and modify as we see fit, for now.

The situation is not ideal, but this is the reason for this discussion. To gather ideas, and see what the community holds valuable, while also ensuring that in two months we aren’t running into a scramble.

I love the questions Robo, and you’re right that community deserves to know what might be given up. And you’re also right about it feeling sudden. As we have been working through this funding round, we’ve come to realize that support for the OSL as we are now (or even under proposed reductions) is waning in a few key areas of collaboration that the group feels should be there. And with that, we wanted to come to the community to make sure we are still aligning with all of our needs even through this horrific market downturn.

First and foremost the OSL is a Community ran and support organization FOR the community of now not ONLY Osmosis, but essentially the Interchain ecosystem. This means our staff often has to be at the front of almost every DApp, and every protocol, and have a (sometimes more than basic) understanding of hardware wallets, browser wallets, and the technology not only making them work, but their security systems, and their operations as well. Education on the fly and on the job is a must and a passion for all of us. I know you are well aware of this.

Yet I do want to remind everyone that the OSL has done nothing but promise and essentially do our best to over deliver on those promises. We’ve made mistakes and spent irresponsibly, what organization hasn’t? But, we have always gone out of our way to not only support the end-user community, but the DevOps community, the relayer community, the “prosumer”, the newbie, and even the foundations across the Interchain. We have the experience that vastly outweighs any solution that could or would honestly be proposed.