• General

  • Temperature Check : Front Line Sherpa Compensation

Summary:

Introduce compensation for the Sherpas, who facilitate in making sure the new grasshoppers questions are answered, and overall make sure the server is in great shape.

Background:

The Sherpa Program was an initiative to help facilitate the process of new Ohmies coming into the server. They are highly knowledgeable, passionate individuals that answer questions about the protocol, and help keep peace in the channels. They're awesome people!

Abstract:

Including Mods, we have 20 Sherpas in total. Not every Sherpa is active (me included). We should compensate the Sherpas that have been consistently active and helping the Ohmies learn about Olympus.

I propose that the top active Sherpas get compensated 500 USD weekly for their efforts. As a guideline, we can do the top 25% of Sherpas, as those are the ones helping the server the most. A democratic process will be done within the groups of Sherpas and admin groups to start, but we may transition to a more publicly visible one in the future. We also want this to be an opt-in rather than opt-out system, as there are many Sherpas who don’t feel like they contributed enough to be compensated.

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.

Lastly, we must not forget about the users who help in telegram as well. As they are a smaller group of individuals, and it’s much more prone to bots and general spam, I’d like to allocate each of them a similar amount as well.

Motivation:

When the Sherpas were first created, the server was much smaller, and the Sherpas were made of a small group of individuals. These individuals eventually went to the DAO, and assisted in the development of Olympus. This causes a rotation of new Sherpas coming in to take in the place of older ones, with not as much experience nor insight. We now have over 47k ohmies in our discord, increasing every single day. I believe that we should shift towards a compensation model for the most active Sherpas who, without them, the server would not be an open and engaging place as it is today.

Other:
The allocation team can change as necessary, this is more of a temperature check and a wake-up call in what I think is best for the community 🙂

Lets start giving the Sherpas the credit they deserve!

Should the Sherpas be compensated?

This poll has ended.

    Im not as active as some other sherpas so i cant speak for myself, from what ive seen they are doing a brilliant job and deserve some compensation for many months of hard work!

    I think its overlooked how much Sherpas volunteer their time in order to keep the main discord organized, informed, and civilized for new joiners. It's no surprise that the discord has exponentially grown over the past couple months, and it has become much harder to answer 100s of questions / concerns a day.

    Olympus prides themselves in having one of the best communities/ discords in all of crypto, and I think its fair after months of basically unpaid intern work, that these knowledgeable Ohmies get some compensation. Its no surprise that the core team is obviously too busy in the DAO server to keep up in community server, so I think its best to incentivize the loyal / knowledgeable ohmies to keep educating and onboarding. These ppl put OlympusDAO 1st and would be nice to see Olympus take care of some passionate ohmies for all their hard work.

    Full backing of this proposal

    Majority of sherpas are very active, and doing a great job!

    I think the active sherpas definitely deserve compensation on a monthly basis

    Brian33 absolutely yes. And I’d even add that we pay the most active ones an up front one time bonus of $5k each for the past efforts done as volunteers.

        i'm honestly surprised to hear that our main educators have not been being paid up till this point. i support this proposal with the adjustment that there should be some back dated remuneration for sherpas…. maybe a month? two months? something as a gesture of goodwill and thanks for their work and dedication up till this point. it's unlikely we could pay for all the hours (and love) Sherpas have poured in - but such a gesture would at least communicate appreciation for their efforts.

        yes! great idea 💪

        sherpas really helped me back when I lacked conviction--it was Johnny and Z

        that personal 1:1 touch was really special and I remember the interaction clearly!! 🙏

        • irc likes this.

        I agree with the back dated remuneration. Their contributions are why a lot of Ohmies are here today.

        Z and Kalash are legends.

        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.