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We made some serious progress towards becoming an Embassy for DAOs in the last season.
In our 2022 Roadmap, we outlined a plan to grow our role as the Embassy for DAOs, both online and at Node Zero. We are ahead of schedule in accomplishing those goals.
In Season 2 we ...
Began the process of intentional node expansion, including developing a theory around token curated registries
Ran a full slate of impactful retreats, residencies, and build weeks in service of our 2022 theme to become the Embassy for DAOs
The community has expressed a clear interest in tangible steps towards expanding the decentralized city. We didn’t expect to expand to more nodes until 2023. But with clear progress towards our Embassy for DAOs including a fully booked Season 2 at Node Zero, node expansion is now on the horizon.
Suffice to say, there’s a lot happening in Cabin. In this article, we made it easy for y’all to vote on the governance proposals for the season. We briefly discussed the theme for our third season (Spring ‘22) and went deep into each guild’s plan and budget proposals for the coming season. Finally, we summarized our reflections of the previous season of Cabin, so you understand what we accomplished and to gain context on the various workings in the DAO.
Strapped for time and ready to participate in governance? Here’s a summary of all Snapshot budget proposals:
Placemakers Guild ($41,500 and ₡3,390)
Community Guild ($33,000 USDC and ₡3,315.00)
Media Guild ($30,000 USDC and ₡4,931)
Product Guild ($22,100.00 and ₡9,980.00)
Meta Guild ($59,400 and ₡2,060)
With that, we’re pleased to formally introduce ...
With node expansion as a core focus, Spring ‘22: Live, Love, Laugh, LARP as a City-State has 3 overarching objectives as an addendum to our 2022 roadmap:
New node expansion. We want to add new nodes and figure out our protocol for doing so sustainably.
Progressive decentralization. We want to get serious about progressively decentralizing guild ownership via on-chain structures.
Increase token utility. Each guild will work to add tangible utility of ₡ABIN. This creates an incentives structure that aligns the DAO and the community’s interests through long term token staking and commitment to Cabin.
In Spring ‘22, we want to LARP harder as a city-state. This means expanding to new nodes — a step to become a decentralized city, rather than a centralized node. We’ll also continue to develop theoretical frameworks for how a city could function (City as a Protocol) and build out city infrastructure (our NFT passports).
Let’s get into each guild’s proposals for Spring ‘22.
Looking back at Season 2, the guild had multiple wins. A few of which include: running multiple wildly successful DAO operator residencies, signing a lease for Node 0 (woop woop🙌) and hosting our first Build Week!
And the future is looking bright for Spring ‘ 22.
Drumroll, please.
Here are the three specific quests for Placemakers in the next 3 months:
Quest: Profitably operate Node Zero with scrumptious vibes (4 paid retreats + 3 DAO Operator Residencies)
Quest: Put on 2 Build Weeks
Quest: Kickstart Cabin’s node network (3 nodes + a coherent strategy/protocol)
The Placemakers Guild is requesting $41,500 USDC and ₡3,390 to continue bringing to life the physical manifestation of Cabin’s decentralized city and to continue building out our node network Spring '22.
A lot of Season 2 was spent operationalizing the onboarding process. This made our onboarding process among the best in the DAO ecosystem, as well as setting the vibe of Cabin. Some wins from Season 2 include:
Hosting 20 onboarding calls and 35 regular calls (including Cabin Weekly, Friday Campfires, DEI Research, Values Ideation Sessions and more)
Launching social clubs to experiment with the best ways to foster connection URL (shoutout to Chalice)
Ran the first inaugural Guild Games!
Piloting the Guild Liaison roles
Hosting IRL events in LA, Bay Area, Austin, and Toronto
Created FAQs for creatorcabins.com
Tracked engagement and retention metrics to inform future programming
In Spring ‘22, the Community Guild has 3 main quests:
Lead weekly orientation calls and iterate on our onboarding materials
Build a data-driven DEIJ action plan specific to Cabin that can be implemented for Summer ‘22.
Encourage & maintain good Discord hygiene & cross-pollination of information & context across guilds.
Some of the key results related to these quests include:
Build a library of Looms and YouTube videos that form the start of an asynchronous onboarding pathway for introverts.
Host 1-3 orientation sessions per week
Synthesize lessons from the user interviews & database to inform three actionable ways to improve Cabin's approach to DEIJ in future seasons
Facilitate weekly meetings at the guild level to unblock members, create a vibe at the guild level, and improve coordination
Help maintain a coherent Discord structure that is easy for newbies to understand
The Community Guild is requesting $33,000 USDC and ₡3,315.00 to meet the objectives described above and continue being the cultural backbone of the DAO.
The Media Guild has been consistently focused on crafting the narrative around Cabin and working with the top of the funnel to invite in countless exciting and skillful web3 operators into our ecosystem.
Let’s take a look at some Season 2 media guild wins:
134 bounties were completed
We added 2,500+ new Twitter followers
Our email list grew past 1,000 subscribers
We launched the Campfire by Cabin podcast (shoutout to Jackson and the rest of the podcast team)
And the sky’s the limit in Spring '22, where we’ll:
Continue building Cabin’s audience (Twitter 20k | Email 2k)
Build demand for nodes and share a KPI with Placemakers around demand generation
Increase token price by consistently growing awareness and demand for Cabin’s nodes
Build a dedicated content team for the Placemaker’s guild
Experiment with DAO2DAO content partnerships (Zodiac Wiki and podcast)
The Media Guild is requesting $30,000 USDC and ₡3,436 to continue scaling and creating impactful content for Cabin in Spring '22.
The main mission of the Product Guild is to build and deploy high-quality products needed to successfully operate a decentralized city. They are paving the way to build the infrastructure for a digital-native city.
Let’s look at some of the main accomplishments of Season 2:
Launching an MVP for Passport — the protocol for citizenship and meaning in Cabin
Releasing Blaze — the Cabin DAO Hacker News app to aggregate the best DAO content in one place
Earning eternal bragging rights by winning the inaugural Guild Games (shoutout to Kathi for making miles like a champ)
Here’s what the next season has in store for the Product Guild:
Improve and grow the guild as a place for engineers, designers, and product managers to contribute to the DAO
Project Aspen: City as a Protocol – Research and develop a strategy for building a decentralized city protocol, including deploying 3 prototype TCR implementations
Passports – Launch v1 of the product, including issuing 50 stamps from the different guilds within Cabin
Blaze - Validate the value proposition of Blaze to the Cabin and broader DAO ecosystem
The Product Guild is requesting $ 22,100.00 and ₡ 9,980 to support the work of the Guild and towards Cabin’s design and engineering goals for the season.
The mission of the Meta Guild is to progressively decentralize the DAO into the guilds. The guild’s function becomes redundant as the other guilds become more independent. As a result of the DAO’s progress, the Meta Guild would like to explicitly decentralize DAO operations in Spring ‘22 to the guilds and wind down its own operations after this season.
The Meta Guild is requesting $59,400 and ₡2,060 to cover Jon, Phil, and Zakk’s compensation. This includes an allocation for City Council retreats and a do-ocracy budget for the DAO. We’ll also be winding down the guild after this season. Jon, Phil, and Zakk will be focusing on other guilds and quests in the DAO.
The HODLers Convention was the place for all Cabin token HODLers to come and do their governance in one big gulp. This event, held last April 8, 2022, allowed token holders to gain context and participate in key Cabin governance decisions for Spring ‘22. This was held for regular DAO participants and for those who aren’t able to attend weekly meetings but would still like to inject ideas, weigh in, and hold the DAO accountable.
Check out the video to the full session below:
We’ve also got clips of highlights and the slides.
Every guild presented a draft of their budget and planning proposals at the convention. Based on feedback since the event, the core contributors — now called the City Council —is recommending a number of amendments to the presented budgets and proposals above:
We reframed all the budgets in terms of "Quests" which are objectives with clear deliverables. Instead of role proposals, contributors are encouraged to manifest their own quests that have clear outcomes and definitions of done.
We’ve chosen to call our core contributors the City Council and our Seasons transitioned from a numbered to a seasonal format. For example, the present Season — previously known as Season 3 — will now be known as Spring ‘22.
We trimmed 40% of the USDC budget to preserve our runway based on feedback in the call.
To proactively maintain our USDC, the guilds agreed that we'd try to enact a norm where USDC is reserved for only:
Direct dollar expenses (e.g. flights)
Contributors who spent a majority (>50%) of their time working for Cabin and rely on it as their primary source of income.
USDC is for people who need to pay their bills primarily from the DAO. Cabin can't really support a lot of people earning USDC for part-time roles. And if we start a norm of that now, it will lead to a lot of pain down the road.
All of the roles that were <50% time in the proposal have been converted to Cabin compensation only. And the guild leaders have had discussions with all the people impacted by this. (To learn more about Cabin’s compensation philosophy, Cabin members can read this Clarity doc.)
The Cabin budget has increased by 7% since the HODLers convention. Largely this is due to shifting away from USDC compensated roles.
We'll likely phase out the Meta Guild in Summer '22. Thus, we have renamed it the Boomers Guild (because it writes too many memos and also is going to retire soon). All the people getting compensation within the Meta Guild (Jon, Phil, Todd, Zakk) are going to find homes in new guilds and quests in Summer ‘22.
Reducing the budgets prompted difficult but healthy conversations around priorities and tradeoffs within the guilds at the retreat. Every guild made significant cuts across the board, all in the spirit of keeping the DAO on solid financial footing as we start to build our decentralized city.
Creator Cabins is a decentralized city built by creators, for creators. We believe in bringing people together to collaborate both in IRL and digitally throughout our decentralized network of nodes. We stand for helping the web3 space to grow by fostering DAO2DAO collaborations and aggregating knowledge to act as an embassy for DAOs. We have a clear mission: To build a decentralized city with individual nodes spread across the whole world that empower creators to pursue an independent career and lifestyle. We build products for cerators to support their work both digitally and in real life by providing both physical and digital land. Our first node is located in Austin, Texas and all information regarding our second node will be released shortly. Our digital land includes Cabin’s Discord server and our social media profiles.
Follow us on Twitter for the latest updates around Cabin and check out our blog for information and content by our contributors and city council members, and join our Discord to participate in our community.
For more information, please visit https://www.creatorcabins.com/
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Jonathan Hillis
