• General

  • Temperature Check : Front Line Sherpa Compensation

sherpas have by far the most underrated and undercompensated role within the community. the olympus community has grown explosively and relies on knowledgeable and available sherpas to keep ohmies educated and help them feel like a part of the community.

i think there was hesitation to pay sherpas out of fear that their virtuous ideals might be stained, but we have consistently seen sherpas that are in the trenches every single day banning hundreds of bots, patiently answering the same questions, and directing new ohmies to the resources they need. Without intelligent and compassionate sherpas on the frontlines, the DAO would not be able to focus on building because the community would burn to the ground.

i think the more contentious issue is how great sherpas are fairly compensated. community vote? equal distribution with opt-out? coordinape style? tangible discord activity statistics?

Brian33 As the server increases in size, I also propose a general guideline in onboarding Sherpas. For every 2000 members, we should onboard a new Sherpa. This is not a maximum, but rather the minimum in order to ensure that we have a good Ohmie: Sherpa ratio. To onboard a new Sherpa, they would need to be nominated from another Sherpa, and pass a quiz with common questions a Sherpa gets on the daily.

we do need a framework that suggests a minimum sherpa ratio, and the sherpas themselves should allow for inactive sherpas to shift out while we make room for more active sherpas to take the mantle. we should keep in mind that to new community members, the sherpas look like a position of authority- by incentivizing this position, we heighten odds of bad actors abusing sherpa status for personal gain.

perhaps we could initiate a level system for sherpas using sherpa age/duration as an indicator for trust and compensation?

    Although this makes a lot of sense when you think about the time and effort invested over the months Brian33, I think this ultimately takes away from what the role truly represents..

    I used to think (prev. was an active Sherpa) that the Sherpa role heavily relied on altruistic individuals to consistently help out in and around the main server. My initial thought was that they should be paid for this endeavor and that this method isn’t sustainable.

    However, I think by monetizing this otherwise low stakes, voluntary role…. You invite a flurry of self proclaimed sherpas which i fear might detract from the roles origins..

    Some ways to move forward without adopting this model:

    • A retroactive airdrop funded by the community through [redacted] or the grants program. Propose an amount to be airdropped to individuals who’ve helped out over Olympus’ lifetime.
    • With Olympus V2 around the corner, the DAO will also go through a re-structuring. There’s talk of having a DAO wide bounty board that can be sorted into different departments for those who want to transition into DAO work. Sherpas should be able to easily access this bounty board. Being a Sherpa helps you consolidate your own knowledge by articulating it back to other Ohmies. In being apart of this process, the push should be in moving beyond the Sherpa role to prevent a backlog of sherpa applications, contribute to the DAO in a more direct fashion.
    • Implement a ‘kudos point’ system - similar to Reddit. Improving visibility for the top Sherpas is important. Creating an arbitrary token system is a great way for the community to interact and gift Sherpas points. Sherpa with the most points at the end of the month are commemorated with a custom NFT.

    These are just a few ideas off the top of my head… After careful deliberation, I’m not in favor of this proposal for some of the reasons listed above. Monetizing Sherpas is like monetizing Reddit… I don’t think it will end well in both instances..

        Dropkickdarren

        fair points! "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"
        Sherpa as a stepping stone to the DAO is an interesting compromise!

          Dropkickdarren
          I agree with your points, here are my comments:

          Dropkickdarren However, I think by monetizing this otherwise low stakes, voluntary role…. You invite a flurry of self proclaimed sherpas which i fear might detract from the roles origins..

          Working for the DAO is a very low stakes job in it of itself. If you're not a lead in anything, you can drop out any time, and you choose how much work you do or don't do. Becoming a Sherpa is still a largely nominated process, and I trust that they'll continue to be good even after this.

          Dropkickdarren In being apart of this process, the push should be in moving beyond the Sherpa role to prevent a backlog of sherpa applications, contribute to the DAO in a more direct fashion.

          I personally feel like the contributions that the Sherpas do are just as important as the direct contributions from the DAO. They help grasshoppers become ohmies, and those ohmies become direct contributors of the DAO as well. Each person has their strengths and weaknesses; some like to educate ohmies via OLY101 sessions (me), and some like to individually answer ohmies questions in a 1:1 fashion. I don't think either is more important than the other.

          Dropkickdarren I think this ultimately takes away from what the role truly represents..

          I agree with this as well, the Sherpa was an volunteer initiative to help new ohmies, but times are very different from when it was started (47k Ohmies!) . If we don't shift our perspective, we'll start falling behind, and other protocols may take these great ohmies from us.

                  Dropkickdarren Can't we just make the sherpas an official part of the DAO? The sherpas handle an insane amount of FUD daily. They answer the harder/often redundant questions 24/7 so that folks in the DAO can focus on other efforts.

                    Dropkickdarren

                    I appreciate the thoughtful response, however I'm not sure if I can agree on many of the points.

                    "low stakes, voluntary role": Putting the issue aside that nearly all of the DAO contributions, outside of the core and lead members, are "low stakes and voluntary", I disagree that sherpas' work are "low stakes". The active sherpas are spending countless hours in #general and #questions answering a constant barrage of questions and concerns from new and potential investors. The concept "role's origin" as an altruistic individual wishing to volunteer time to answer question isn't affected by this proposal, as sherpas are able to opt out of compensation.

                    I think it's a really dangerous game to play for the protocol to rely on a small handful of unpaid laborers to be the single stopping point for the amount of questions that come from 40,000+ Discord members. It borders on insulting that the contribution from dedicated sherpas are somehow seen as lesser than the contribution of many of the DAO members. These efforts by the dedicated sherpas are direct contributions to the DAO. Imagine the response if you suggested DAO members be paid with custom NFTs.

                    I also feel it's misguided to remove the system that would incentivize motivated, knowledgeable sherpas because a few might take advantage of it. I think it's easy for many DAO members to not truly see the labor that's in place for the sherpas now, given that many DAO members spend little time in the community server.

                    I'm voting "yes". If necessary, in order to remove conflict of interest, I will opt out of compensation. I truly hope you change your mind, D.

                        good points everyone!
                        another issue, separate from monetary compensation, is Burn Out.
                        I'm not a Sherpa, but I do my best to (what I perceive to) help Ohmies develop conviction in this Protocol.

                        I'm already getting a bit burned out haha. There are 40k+ Ohmies now and many ask me the same questions.
                        So I can't even begin to imagine what it's like for the Sherpas.

                        It seems the conversation is already evolving from the initial proposal, which is great! I just wanted to note a leaderboard type implementation may accelerate burn out, which would be a shame as well!

                        • irc likes this.

                        The sherpas handle an insane amount of FUD daily. They answer the often redundant questions 24/7 so that folks in the DAO can focus on other efforts.

                        Absolutely yes, the dedication and patience our Sherpas possess is unparalleled.

                        Brian33 I agree with this! We need people to be the greeters at the door that will navigate you to successfully becoming an ohmie and answering all the newbie questions we have. Is there a sherpa leader? IMO the sherpas need to integrate with the other departments of the DAO (specifically marketing) so that we all have the unified message.

                        I also know that the DAO's landing page chatbot team would also like to eventually build integration into discord and potentially funnel people from the chatbot that need help to a specific channel where they can be assigned a sherpa to guide them.

                        Thank you fren.

                          As a newer person, hanging out, in General chat gives me another perspective on the word patience… That being said. I think that the proposal sounds fair. They deal with basically onboarding new Ohmies consistently.

                            Fully in support of this proposal. Long overdue as the Server has ballooned and these ohmies gracefully take on the necessary task of dealing with newcomers on a daily basis. Human capital should no longer remain free in the context of the DAO's enormous treasury.

                              Yes! Fully behind this.

                              I thoroughly enjoyed getting stuck in with my sherpa duties, but it started to take up a massive portion of my time every day and we weren't seeing anything for it besides appreciation from the community (which in itself is sometimes enough!) I had to stop getting so involved and took a step back about a month ago because it was frustrating thinking of the time spent 😂

                              +1 on this proposal! They are the unsung heroes, especially after the 0-1 growth the protocol has experienced.

                              The education has been A+, I would argue vital in keeping some of the early ohmies around this long also!

                              Bedrock of the community, cheers to the sherpas <3

                              Dropkickdarren

                              Great points ser.

                              But I couldn't disagree more tbh.

                              The amount of value sherpas bring to the table the countless hours they put in should be compensated no matter how we slice it.

                              It's far from redit imo

                              It's about compensating contributors that bring value imo

                              All Sherpas are 100% they all paid their dues to become a Sherpa and I'm confident we have strong and well intended sherpa group.

                              To me is more of a matter of finding the right balance towards a fair payment distribution and I'm also confident it won't be a big issue as the 20 Sherpas will be the ones voting (except to themselves) and I trust the sherpas on that.

                              It baffles me that sherpas are not compensated for the value they bring to Olympus DAO. (To say the least). It makes no sence to me.

                              It's very sad actually.

                              Imagine bringing value and not being compensated. Imagine that.

                              The original sherpa model was "fun" and even acceptable for the very beginning of the project although super flawed and unscalable imo. But it's already silly at this point tbh. And it's about to become irrelevant soon if we don't act with fairness towards valuable contributors and some of the most valuable imo wich are the Sherpas.

                              Cheers 🍻