Background
Enhancing the lives of residents and communities in the CityCoins ecosystem is at the core of the CityCoins mission. Onboarding and engaging residents in meaningful ways is pivotal when considering the future of the relationship between the various CityCoins and their designated regions, as well as ensuring these projects are focused on the people who make up these communities. As a result, this proposal will suggest and outline a program to identify, engage, onboard, and gamify resident involvement.
Within this proposal, a local tribune / ambassador program is suggested with the primary goal of facilitating, coordinating, and leading local assemblies.These assemblies will provide local residents a common forum .This forum should be used to enable residents to become better informed and engaged in their communities while highlighting local problems to inform the production of public goods. Existing initiatives that currently engage in local assemblies or social impact should be considered to engage and partner with.
Motivation
Currently, functional regional communities are often absent in many fundamental ways. Association with institutions at the local level is often overlooked, and people are left without any real practical ties to their communities. Our goal with this proposal is to curate an environment that will produce proposals and initiatives informed by local knowledge in order to meet the needs of citizens and improve their lives, while linking them more closely to their communities. We see CityCoins and other parallel initiatives as a great opportunity to begin to experiment on how we can begin to utilize region based DAO and web3 solutions to achieve these goals.
Scope
Identify Needs through Surveys
In order to better identify the needs of the local residents community. We suggest conducting surveys centered around community knowledge discovery, we suggest referring to surveys conducted by local organizations. Further, we suggest utilizing already existing surveys, RFPs, and other problem metrics that already exist locally and use them to inform proposals to submit to the DAO.This process can begin without an existing ambassador program. More complex knowledge discovery methods involving collective intelligence should be explored in future iterations.
Overview of Tribune Program
To aid with the mission of establishing and organizing local assemblies, we suggest the establishment of an ambassador/tribune position to be included within each regional parent and child DAOâs board of representatives. These ambassadors will act as a liaison between the CityCoin DAOs and local residents and businesses. This includes setting the assembly agenda and overseeing the operations of the assemblies.
A primary goal of the tribune will be to foster learning through coordinating education initiatives and events.This will act as a prerequisite for local residents to acquire the necessary know-how to engage with web3 governance, commerce, etc. Ideal candidates for the program will be native web3 or social impact professionals who are capable of acting as a proper community ambassador and liaison. Candidates must be local residents, and ideally should be native to the region in order to best assess and relate to the needs of the residents in their region. Some training may be required before onboarding tribunes into the program to ensure they can perform their duties. As the ecosystem grows, the responsibilities of tribunes should be divided.
To ensure the tribune is acting in alignment with their constituents and is continuously producing, the resident token holders should have a mechanism for removing tribunes who underperform,etc. An open voting mechanism as mentioned in the comments section of the CityCoins DAO structure v2 is suggested. A similar mechanism is also outlined in the ENS DAO by laws, here.
Responsibilities of Tribunes:
Scout out accessible locations and Partners for Assemblies
One of the duties of the tribune will be to scope out locations to hold local assemblies as well as coordinating with local organizations who already conduct similar initiatives locally. These can include locations and events in which local organizations already have recurring assemblies. Additionally, depending on the resources of the region, the duty of the ambassador will be to identify and choose locations to hold these assemblies. When considering a location, it is important to choose a remote and accessible location that can also be utilized for other community events and engagements. This can include choosing locations suitable for local vendors and merchants to engage in commerce with local attendees. We suspect the best path forward will be to have hybrid sessions to accommodate persons who may not be able to attend in person for whatever reason.
Overseeing and Scheduling Assemblies
The local tribunes will play a key role in helping organize and curate their communities. Tribunes will be in charge of planning and organizing local assembly to properly engage residents. While tribunes will have the privilege to directly schedule assemblies and set their agendas without the need of submitting and passing a proposal. They may also be required to oversee and play a passive role in other assemblies such as helping deliberate in citizen requested assemblies and helping coordinate education assemblies.
Types of Assemblies:
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General Assemblies - assemblies that tribunes directly initiate, there is no need to submit a proposal to assemble. The agendas of these assemblies should be set by the discretion of the tribunes.These can be recurring events that may include addressing top citizen concerns and recent proposals.
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Resident Requested Assemblies - local residents should be able to openly submit proposals highlighting a local issue, concern, or proposal. Unlike the tribune assemblies, these proposals must hit a minimum quorum determined by the rate of participation to ensure enough people are interested in engaging the subject matter. Tribunes are expected to aid in overseeing these assemblies to help deliberate (even if it is resident lead). Additionally, residents can also create proposals to crowdfund discourse between specific DAO members and thought leaders to inform governance, general knowledge discovery, etc. A mechanism called discourse pools by Agora Square can also be utilized to make these conversations happen.
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Education and Onboarding Assemblies - these initiatives should be overseen by tribunes and by lead educators.The goal of these events will be to educate residents to participate in web3 economy and governance infrastructure. These events will grant attendees proof of participation tokens and certificates for completing courses or attending events. Home learning should also be encouraged; while emerging learn-to-earn platforms should be explored. We suggest approaching already established organizations to collaborate in establishing curricula to suit the ends of providing web3 centric material.
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Guild/sub-DAO Assemblies - these assemblies will be centered around specific working groups associated with each regional DAO. These groups will be able to have their regular meetings in person or remotely. These sessions should be recorded and open to the public to ensure transparency. They will likely not need a tribune to oversee these assemblies, as the sub-DAO should set the agenda and delegate the leading role to an internal member unless otherwise stated.
Engage and Onboard Local Businesses into Regional Guilds
A key role of the ambassador should be to engage and onboard local businesses into the CityCoins ecosystem. A first step can be to coordinate with local chambers of commerce and other organizations whose goal is to forward the interests of local businesses in their designated region. Building partnerships with these organizations may help in further onboarding local businesses as well as highlighting and addressing region specific issues that local small businesses may face. Whether public or private, the mission of organizations considered should be to facilitate local small businesses.
We suggest the receptive businesses be onboarded into regional merchant guilds. A core goal of these merchant guilds can be to provide its constitutions resources for success in web3 and to act as a force to advocate for the interests of local businesses. Some initial services provided can include navigating crypto payments and providing their customers benefits and rewards for shopping with them ( some specifics are outlined in the gamification section). A board of representatives for each guild should be established and tasked with moderating entrance into the guild and perform other governance tasks. Later iterations can include industry specific craft guilds and an emphasis on worker cooperatives.
The establishment of these guilds in relation to their regional parent DAO can be done through guild proposals. A similar process guild formation to reference is found in the CityDAO charter v1.
Gamification:
In order to create incentives for residents to be involved, we suggest establishing multiple gamification mechanisms. Some of these mechanisms are more complex than others and should likely be delegated to projects working in the CityCoins ecosystem. CityCoinsâ reserves for rewards should be kept in a specific treasury within each regional DAO dedicated to gamification payouts.
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Proof of Participation/Attendance badges - by attending assemblies and other events associated with local CityCoins DAO, participants can receive proof of attendance/participation badges for attending events. These tokens will not only act as a signal for participation, but they can be utilized to unlock special events and privileges within the DAO. For example, the top 20 percent of participants in each epoch can be awarded with additional weight to their votes, etc. These tokens can also be used as a metric for active members in the DAO when considering criteria for quorums, etc.
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Progressive Mastery Badges - can be awarded to DAO members who fulfill certain achievements and tasks within the DAO. Much like the proof of participation tokens, progressive mastery badges should be able to unlock special privileges and prizes when awarded. This can act as a gate to other achievements and unlocks. Progressive mastery in the community gives you entry into gated roles, treasuries, and events. For example, the top 20 percent in ranking will also get special privileges within the DAO.
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Ticket lotteries for Event Attendance and Engagement in Local Commerce - provide token raffle tickets for attending assemblies and other events to further incentivize community involvement. These lottery tickets can also be used to provide an incentive for residents to shop at local businesses. Local businesses can distribute these lottery tickets to customers who make purchases. Further, these tickets can award winners in CityCoin and other prizes thus acting as a marginal incentive to shop locally.
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Community Bounties - to aid in the development of these DAOs from resident token holders, bountied community tasks and job boards should be established. These tasks can be requested from the DAO available to identify and fulfill regional needs and maximize regional output. Reward completion of segments through the issuance of community tokens such as Miami coin or other local based currencies. An internally transferable token mechanism to retroactively award participants who then can redeem them for goods and services within the CityCoins DAO ecosystem is being considered and may be proposed in the future.
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Learn to Earn - educational achievements can be awarded with certificates, CityCoins token rewards, and progressive mastery token badges. These rewards can be distributed to Miami residents who completed courses, workshop events, etc.
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Region Specific Hackathons - hosting hackathons with other community organizations and leaders to facilitate development and innovation targeted towards local communities. Offer incentives for participation such as prize money, token badges, and consolation prize tokens.
Specifications
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Tribunes should initially be appointed by the CityCoinsâ Governance Foundation or the regionâs board members, resident appointees should be implemented in later iterations.
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Research is needed to identify and gather a list of local surveys and interviews already conducted.
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Conduct new local surveys and interviews to better assess the needs of residents in a specific region.
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Research to gather more information to identify organizations who already conduct local assemblies, community education initiatives, community centric events, social impact, etc.
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Gather educational curriculum and resources to provide to residents.
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Establish both a formal process for training prospective tribunes for running assemblies.
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Build the tools to enable the various gamification mechanisms outlined in this proposal.
Requirements
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Access to these assemblies and events should be accessible to local residents, this includes providing good user experience, accommodating to region specific customs and languages.
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There should be a fluid stream of communication between the tribunes and the residents of their designated regions.
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There should be a formalized and publicly accessible process to analyze KPIs of tribunes in order to maintain accountability and transparency.
References
