Proposal submission incentives

Considerations for how incentives could be used to encourage the submission of proposals that are beneficial to the disbursement process

The disbursement process requires information to be submitted by the community so decisions can be made regarding what priorities are the most important, which ideas look the most promising and which contributors should be selected to execute those ideas. Incentives could be used to encourage the submission of this information. Alternatively contribution incentives could be used to encourage the submission of different proposals and information. The submission approaches being considered can be found here:

pageProposal submission incentive approaches

Priority

Incentives could be used to help encourage people to submit priorities that help with identifying what opportunities or problems exist in an ecosystem. A submission incentive could also help with encouraging proposers to add other existing information that provides evidence towards why a priority is actually important. An incentive could also be used to reward voters for participating in the selection of important priorities for the ecosystem.

Potential incentive approaches

• Selection incentive - A selection incentive could be effective for encouraging a diversity of contribution by compensating the proposers who created priorities that were selected by the wider community. This could help increase the incentive for anyone in the community to submit priorities as they could be compensated for doing so if their priorities are selected by the community. This gives proposers more reason to allocate a sufficient amount of time in writing a more thorough submission about a priority with the relevant supporting evidence.

• No incentive - Community set priorities can have a large influence on how disbursement assets get allocated and used to generate impact. Due to this there is a natural incentive for community members to express their opinions on what priorities they believe are most important due to the possibility that those suggestions get selected and lead to generating impactful changes that benefit them and the wider community. A no incentive approach might also work because the submission of priorities does not need to be a complex process. There might be a need for ongoing maintenance of the information attached to a priority but this incentive does not need to be handled at the submission stage. Another reason a no incentive approach may be suitable is because the complexity of the average priority could be relatively low for smaller ecosystems or ecosystems that have a more focussed and narrow set of longer term goals. The more complex that priorities become, the more important it will be for that community to consider how incentives could help compensate for the increasing amount of contribution effort required for people to participate.

Ideas

Incentives could be used to help encourage people to submit ideas that if executed help to address some of the existing priorities in the ecosystem. An incentive for idea proposals will need to consider how it encourages people to add all of the relevant information for voters to be well informed on whether an idea is a promising potential solution or not. Incentives could be used to reward voters for reading and voting on the selection of the most promising ideas.

Potential incentive approaches

• No incentive - Incentives do not need to be attached to the submission process for ideas if there is already an incentive available for compensating the community selected contributors. Contributors who get selected and compensated to help with the execution of ideas would already have the incentive to generate impact by submitting promising ideas that they could work on and executing those ideas. Creating a good idea helps to demonstrate to voters that contributors are well informed about a given topic area and provide evidence that these contributors are suitable for being selected for future compensation. The main potential issue with using no incentives is it could result in a smaller amount of participation from the wider community as they wouldn’t be compensated for suggesting ideas unless they were also becoming a contributor that gets compensated to execute those ideas. Community members would have no incentive to help with the idea submission process beyond the non-financial incentives that exist such as wanting to suggest and see positive change in the ecosystem.

• Selection incentive - The selection of ideas could result in compensation for the authors that submitted that idea. This incentive could result in separating the responsibility of executing an idea with submitting an idea. Under this approach there could be a higher risk that an idea does not have the contributors required to execute an idea as intended if this has not been verified beforehand. However a benefit to providing some form of compensation for idea selection is it could help to encourage a wider diversity of ideas being submitted by the wider community and not just by those who are executing the ideas. If the contributors who are executing the ideas are already submitting high quality ideas this added selection incentive might not be necessary.

Contributors

Contributor proposal submissions can be seen as something similar to the submission of a CV or job application. Selected contributors will usually be paid for their contribution efforts to help with the execution of different ideas. This creates a natural incentive for people to submit proposals with any information about themselves so that they have the opportunity to be selected and become a compensated contributor. Incentives could potentially be used to help support a referral process to further attract the submission of contributor proposals. Incentives could also be used to reward voters that participate in the selection process.

Potential incentive approaches

• No incentive - There is a natural incentive for contributors to submit their professional information and be considered as a potential candidate to help with the execution of ideas. Having no incentives for the submission process could be the simplest and most suitable option.

• Selection incentive - A selection incentive may be useful for situations where contributors are referred by other people to join the ecosystem as a potential contributor. There are risks that this process is gamed by people who are only looking to extract this compensation. This risk would be more problematic in situations where contributors are not identity checked as this referral incentive could then be more easily and repeatedly abused.