Index Coop

Autonomy Group

August 2021

How did we get here?

Set Labs

DeFi Pulse

Index Coop Community

Now

Purpose of the Autonomy Group...

1. Identify pain points in the transition process to full autonomy ✅

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• Propose an “Autonomy Roadmap” which maps out how Index Coop can achieve progressive decentralization and which address the main pain points ✅

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• Play these finding back to the community via the “Leadership Forum” ✅

Our approach

Key Themes

For the past month, the Autonomy Group met 1-2 times a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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We have worked to better define the community’s issues and work towards creating a roadmap on how to approach the general topic of autonomy.

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We have found the core issues Index Coop face break down into five key themes and are either tactical or complex in nature.

Complex

Tactical

Broad and challenging topics often with structural implications and significant interdependencies. These require extensive community involvement to resolve.

Steps that can be progressed now with few interdependence or broader considerations. These require little community buy-in, or already have full consensus.

Financial and Administrative capabilities

Third Parties & Methodologist

Protocol Ownership and Compensation

Leadership and Strategy

Product & Engineering Autonomy

1

2

3

4

5

Governance and Leadership

Financial and Administrative capabilities

Third Parties & Methodologist

Protocol Ownership and Compensation

Leadership and Strategy

Product & Engineering Autonomy

Summary

Defining the “soft power” within Index Coop by identifying which parties are responsible for generating a vision, strategy, and roadmap. Defining the structures to coordinate resources for tackling strategic initiatives and keeping counterparties accountable. Ensuring foundations are in place for executing on and tracking results.

Current problems

• To date quarterly priorities have been determined by Set and Full Time contributors. This is an unsustainable model as the number of FT contributors grows.
• No coordination between IC/Set/DFP to discuss strategic priorities and drive progress towards a shared vision.
• No clear mechanism for WG funding approval or process to hold WGs accountable
• IIP process is vulnerable to abuse and to the progression of competing or conflicting IIPs not aligned to Index Coops overall objectives or vision.

Relevant to:

• All contributors

Key reading:

• Web 3 Governance blueprint
• Moving beyond coin voting
• Initial thoughts on high level IC leadership structure

Interdependence

• All

Community Ownership

Financial and Administrative capabilities

Third Parties & Methodologist

Protocol Ownership and Compensation

Leadership and Strategy

Product & Engineering Autonomy

Summary

There is a need to examine the “hard power” INDEX token voting has on protocol ownership. This will include revisiting the genesis token distribution as detailed in the Protocol Ownership Group proposal. This also address the challenges with the current rewards system and looks to properly compensate and align key contributors.

Current problems

• Community has very little voting power in comparison to major partners and investors.
• Full Time Contributor model leads to drastically different pay outcomes between “Full Time” contributors and everyone else. All Full Time contributors approved by Set.
• Everyone who is building this DAO into a powerhouse deserves an ownership stake in the protocol. This is not the case at the moment.

Relevant to:

• Set & DFP
• POC
• Full Time contributors

Key reading:

• Introducing the Index Coop
• Formation of a Protocol Ownership Kick-Off Group

Interdependence

• Leadership & Strategy

Third Parties / Methodologists

Financial and Administrative capabilities

Third Parties & Methodologist

Protocol Ownership and Compensation

Leadership and Strategy

Product & Engineering Autonomy

Summary

Defining clear responsibilities between methodologists and Index Coop partners, establishing robust communication channels between the Index Coop / 3rd Parties, establish a clear way to design and honor fair agreements, and define rules for fair play re: talent

Current problems

• Poor communication between Third Parties and Methodologist.
• Index Coop lacks a single point of contact empowered to lead and close deals with methodologists.
• There are no rules of fair play when recruiting an employee / contributor who belongs to Set / IC / Methodologists.
• Methodologist find at times Index Coop takes action to harm their products.
• Set is handling major aspects of community management.

Relevant to:

• Methodologist
• BD, Product
• Set & DFP

Key reading:

• Pain points
• FLI fee split
• SC permissioning
• IC launching FLIs like products

Interdependence

• Leadership & Strategy

Significant DeFi Pulse involvement

Financial & Administrative Capabilities

Summary

There is a need for Index Coop to level up its Financial and Administrative capabilities to allow Community ownership of funds and other administrative functions. This will involve reviewing the existing relationship between TWG / Funding Council and various multi sigs spanning across Index Coop holding. This will allow us to determine the core value add of the Funding Council and Treasury WG and allocating responsibilities to maximise efficiency.

Current problems

• Operational security considerations within Index Coop and a “lack of trust” has meant there are limited few, or no, community native signers on Index Coop multi sigs (especially Treasury multi-sig)
• Majority of administrative processes (HR, Hiring, technology systems) are owned, managed and maintained by Set.
• Funding Council has a lot of administrative workload, yet is mostly individuals without strong financial backgrounds but are strong in context and leadership. Despite this the
• Funding Council does not determine the strategic use of funds (i.e. we should be spending X on Y this quarter)

Relevant to:

• Treasury WG
• Funding Council
• POC WG

Key reading:

• Funding Council of the Future
• INDEX 2.0 - The Community Treasury Autonomy Workshop Prior Reading

Interdependence

• Leadership & Strategy

Financial and Administrative capabilities

Third Parties & Methodologist

Protocol Ownership and Compensation

Leadership and Strategy

Product & Engineering Autonomy

Product and Engineering Autonomy

Financial and Administrative capabilities

Third Parties & Methodologist

Protocol Ownership and Compensation

Leadership and Strategy

Product & Engineering Autonomy

Summary

Development of mature Index Coop product and engineering capabilities, increases in visibility of direction of Set’s priorities re: product and engineering development processes, and ability to uphold the Index Coop brand promise.

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Current problems

• Lack of visibility / common understanding of product and engineering prioritization;
• Lack of product & engineering standards, processes, and organization
• Lack of product cohesion between Index Coop and Set

Relevant to:

• Product WG
• Engineering WG
• Methodologists
• Set Labs

Key reading:

• Set Engineering Retrospective and Changelog
• The Future of Engineering at the Index Coop

Interdependence

• Leadership & Strategy
• Third Parties / Methodologists

Significant Set Labs involvement

Representation of Diversity

Our reflections

Autonomy is intricately linked with complex organizational and structural questions.

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For us to answer some of the tough questions on autonomy, we need to start to “level up” Index Coop.

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This will involve our community coming together to decide what sort of organization we want to be.

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The process of tackling the community’s toughest organizational and structural questions and building the foundations of a prosperous organization is what we call Index 2.0.

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Index 2.0

Goals and principles

Community led solutions

Instead of the Autonomy Group providing a Top-Down solution for others to adopt, we aim to utilize a process that enables the community to co-create a solution

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Foster Open Communication and Build Common Understanding

Increase common understanding so we can have meaningful and productive conversations

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Start with Foundational Elements and Build Up to Complex Topics

As some topics require common understanding on other topics, we recommend establishing fundamental building blocks that can be progressively built upon to handle more complex topics.

We propose Index Coop launch a series of fully public workshops across 5 themes run by respective domain experts

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Financial and Administrative capabilities

Third Parties and Methodologist

Protocol Ownership and Compensation

Leadership and Strategy

Product & Engineering Autonomy

Key themes

The outputs of these workshops will help inform our understanding of the problem and will allow the community to craft well-considered plans which can be executed upon.

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They will also enable our community to co-design solutions to the most challenging problems we face.

Theme

Workshop

Topic

Workshop

Topic

Topic

Topic

Topic

Topic

INDEX 2.0 stewards...

• Coordinate with domain experts to provide a context publication on the governance forum prior to the workshop
1. An enabler for an efficient/effective workshop.

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• Support domain experts to facilitate the workshops, publish minutes/summary from the workshop on the forum.
• A community needs some group to oversee the process and facilitate healthy/informed discussion

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• Publish any IIP based upon consensus formed within the workshop for further community engagement and voting.
• Stewards accountable for facilitating the process, not the outcome. They are obligated to ensure consensus is implemented on behalf of the community

The Index 2.0 team (previously Autonomy Kick-Off Group) will be responsible for supporting this co-creation process and will support domain experts stepping up to research, design and drive workshops/discussion across key themes and topics.

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Anyone with sufficient context (domain experts) from the community is encourage volunteer to support a themes or workshop by completing a google form (to be shared shortly). The role of Index 2.0 stewards is to:

Workshop preparation

Index 2.0 steward

Index 2.0 steward support

DRI

Domain Expert

Index 2.0 steward support

DRI

Domain Expert

Index 2.0 steward

Index 2.0 steward support

DRI

Domain Expert

Index 2.0 steward support

DRI

Domain Expert

1. Protocol Ownership & Contribution

2. Third Parties and Methodologists

Index 2.0 Workshop planning

Workshops timelines...

*These dates are only indicative and may be subject to schedule changes based on domain expert availability

Our hope is that Index 2.0 will allow our organization to level up and enable our community to co-design the solutions to our most complex challenges.

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However, it is ultimately the your decision on whether we embark on the Index 2.0 transformation.

Questions...

Slide graveyard

Index 2.0 workshops 100% open and facilitated by community members

What is the funding council and Treasury WG?�

How do rewards get allocated - what is the community’s feedback on the process.�(AWG, TWG, FC, POC)

Future of Product and Engineering - �What is the vision for Set <> EWG <> PWG? How will they work together in future?

Democracy and attack vectors

Exploring the current soft and hard power within Index Coop. Tying these into key themes of democracy and attack vectors.

(Cormac, Noah, Eduardo, IB ???)

Compensation, Owl levels and vested tokens�What is the best way to allocate tokens to our community. Contributors need to have a fair stake in the DAO they have built.�(POG, POC)

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Working with Index Coop…�What is our approach to external methodology, what is working, what isn’t and how can we be better?�(PWG, FLI team, Dev, BD, Growth)

Protocol Ownership Group

Deep dive into genesis distribution led by the Protocol Ownership Group

(POG)

Timeline (tbc by workshop facilitators)

Leadership, strategy and representation�How do we set strategic direction? How do we ensure representation and hold our leaders accountable?�(APAC / Women in Index)

Talking to Set

Deep dive on Index Coops relationship with Set.

(Set)

Major capability increase in engineering for Q3. May be better to take a step back in Q4.

Organizational Feedback and Action Planning

Mary Q

Purpose of the Autonomy Group...

• By the 25th of August, propose a clear roadmap which catalogue the main challenges, problems and frustration faced by the community today [doc here]
• This document will outline key next steps required to resolve these issues.
• Some tactical problems will have specific solutions and timelines. However, more complex or strategic topics will be further explored through Index 2.0 workshops.
• These workshops will build context around our current problems, offer a platform to discuss more complex questions and allow our community to co-create an end state vision for what they Index to look like.

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• Recommend a series of public workshops with the community to build context, alignment and develop a vision for what a leveled up “Index 2.0” looks like
• Workshops developed and facilitated by Working Groups and contributors with the most context. They will interactive and provide an opportunity for co creation of solutions with the community.
• Workshops will explore 5 key themes.

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• Discussion will likely to be run over multiple sessions so our community has the time needed to really work through the challenges.

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• We will request feedback on some options for what happens next with the Autonomy Group.
• Dissolve the group and have workshops progressed independently.
• Propose a revised team structure/approach for how we will progress “Index 2.0” (more details TBC).