Champion Staking

[amsos]

Champion Staking is the new process of where we bring in new cohort members into RAID if a new member has a champion who is willing to stake RAID on new members becoming full productive members.

[amsos]

Champion Staking Retrospective

What happened (since October 26, 2021)

• 21 new members have been championed and joined the guild
  • compare to 36 new members in the previous ~6 months
  • 16 were from a cohort (25k RAID), and 5 were "off the street" (50k RAID)
• A total of 650k RAID was staked
  • 300k RAID has been returned
• 10 champions have requested their stake back + reward
  • all have received it; no slashings
  • 250k RAID in rewards has been distributed
• 3 reward requests came prior to the 60 day period
  • 4 reward requests came after 80 days
• 8 champions are eligible to make a request but have not done so
  • 7 over 80 days

Summary spreadsheet

Observations

• some evidence that the staking requirement has reduced the pace of new members
• a number of stake/reward requests were very low quality (missing success criteria reporting) but were voted through anyways
• some members have voiced support for decreasing the reward
• some confusion over the success criteria, such as...
  • can they be completed
  • how strict are they?
  • are they the right measures of the outcomes we want?
• The success criteria may be too low of a bar
• verification is a challenge: the verifier (champion) is the same person that benefits from fudging the verification

Questions for possible improvement

• should we consider changes to stake amounts?
• should we consider changes to reward amounts?
• should we consider changes to the length of the trial period?
• should we consider changes to success criteria?
• should we consider making membership contingent on completing the success criteria?
• should we consider a more mechanistic protocol?
• how might we better verify the success criteria?

Next steps

• determine the adjustments to make and a timeframe over which to evaluate them
• make the adjustments
• propose to the guild
• evaluate

[IanBoucherTru]

+1 to Spencer's idea of a probationary period after the championee completes the initial success criteria. A role that would enable them to utilize all the tools within the discord while not yet becoming a full member.

[plor]

My first impression is that one of the goals of this initiative is to continue bringing in quality members, and as such we should treat this as a market by which the guild rewards this goal being achieved. By market I mean that the highest quality member should receive the highest rewards for championing, and likewise should require the highest stake (via competition to receive such reward). Making objective the aspects by which we agree that a member is of high quality is important both to attract members and to draw the line where candidates don't meet this standard.

I do accept that championing should be a phase between apprentice and member, such that if a championed apprentice doesn't meet the standard, it is easier to move them back to apprentice rather than remove their membership status. The question here is whether a member not meeting the champion metrics should necessarily be removed, or if it is sufficient to slash the champion for failure to onboard successfully.

[govinda108108]

Love your work guys, this is great.

I liked the idea of a third member approving the championing

Also keen to integrate lore into the post-kraken slaying part of the journey as they head towards the Guild. "They need a champion ally to enter the walls. The champion will give them a quest and the Guild will approve whether the apprentice has made the cut, (e.g. the gaunlet)".

[plor]

Can we formalize this RIP as a .md file in the proposals directory of this repo? I think we should close out this issue, so it would be good to have some permanence in a real document to reference. Thoughts on this?