Priority milestone incentives

Incentive approach for addressing priorities using budgeted milestones

Overview

Priority milestone incentives mean that a proposal would detail out the different tasks and steps involved in addressing a priority by executing different milestones. Each of those milestones would have to specify the amount of compensation that is required to execute each one. An amount of time could be specified against each of the execution tasks to achieve this total required compensation. Funds are released as each milestone gets executed where evidence will need to be submitted to prove that a milestone is complete. The milestones are strict in terms of the expected execution output that will occur for the compensation to be distributed. Any changes to the milestones would need to go through some form of approval process.

Very high budgeting complexity (Score - 1)

The budgeting complexity would inherit the same complexities as the idea milestone incentives approach. On top of this there is even increased complexity due to the following:

• Budget planning complexity - The larger the scope and budget is for addressing a priority the higher the complexity there is in budget planning due to the range of ideas that might be involved and the range and depth of the tasks that might need to be executed for those ideas. Large scope also increases the likelihood that something could happen during execution that changes the priority or the ideas being executed. This further increases the difficulty of creating accurately budgeted milestones.

• Execution scope risks - Having proposals that could fund multiple ideas increases the potential scope and scale of the compensation being requested. The larger the scope of the idea the more risk there is that the execution efforts could take longer or shorter than expected due to a range of emerging factors during execution.

Very high voter decision complexity (Score - 1)

The voter decision complexity would inherit the same complexities as the idea milestone incentives approach. On top of this there is even increased complexity due to the following:

• Ease of understanding - Proposals that have multiple ideas would increase the complexity for the voter to fully understand whether those ideas can be executed within the stated milestone budgets. The larger the amount of scope the higher the complexity is for voters to fully understand whether the compensation duration and amount is fair and reasonable.

• Ease of comparison - Milestones across each proposal could be vastly different in scope and compensation for addressing different priorities. This makes it very difficult for voters to easily compare and determine if each of these proposals is fair and reasonable in their budgets without a sufficient level of understanding of each proposal individually.

High governance complexity (Score - 2)

The governance complexity would inherit the same complexities as the idea milestone incentives approach. On top of this there is even increased complexity due to the following:

• Incentive distribution risks - Larger proposal compensation requests increase the risks of the incentive being stolen or misused by the individual or multisig of contributors who are responsible for handling it.

• Size of compensation risk - Risks increase around how funds are used in any situation where larger amounts of compensation are handled by an individual or multiple people using a multi-sig. There would be a higher incentive to steal or misuse the funds for personal gain.

• Community moderation complexity - A larger scope and budget for addressing priorities means that contributor set priorities have more of a risk of being exaggerated or containing lies about how long a piece of work would actually take due to the amount of incentives involved. A larger amount of scope increases the moderation complexity to effectively determine if these suggested budgets are fair and reasonable.

Very high game theory risks (Score - 1)

The game theory risks would inherit the same risks as the idea milestone incentives approach. On top of this there is even increased risks due to the following:

• Proposal details - Addressing a priority can take a larger amount of execution effort which could result in requests for a larger amount of compensation in each proposal. The larger the scope and budget there is for a proposal the more risk there is that the estimated time it takes to execute something is exaggerated or purposefully incorrect. As milestones for each proposal are unique this becomes even harder to determine if the contributors are trying to game the system as they are able to self define the milestones.

• Malicious voters - The larger that the available incentive is the more reasons there are for malicious voters to try and influence the outcome of the funding decisions.

Low contribution flexibility (Score - 2)

• Changing an existing idea - A contributor would only partially be able to change how they execute an idea as the outcomes would still need to still match the milestones that have been budgeted and set. If the contributor wanted to change the milestones they would need to seek approval from the community to make changes to those existing milestones. If contributors were able to change these milestones without any form of approval then it would remove the reason for using milestones incentives in the first place as instead they could have simply just adopted time based incentives so that the contributors can change their execution approach at any point. This approach is not inherently very flexible for enabling contributors to change how they execute already planned ideas that address a funded priority.

• Contributing to a different idea - For ideas in the same priority a contributor might need to come to some form of agreement with other contributors if the incentives are already allocated using milestones. For ideas focussed on other priorities a contributor would similarly need to come to some agreement about how they will be compensated under the other priorities planned budgets. This approach has a relatively small amount of flexibility for enabling contributors to work on different ideas.

• Contributing to a different priority - The contributor would need to get funding for a different priority or come to some agreement with another team who already has funding for addressing that different priority. This approach is not very flexible for enabling contributors to work on different priorities.

• Incentive complexities - A contributor looking to contribute towards a different priority would need to determine how much compensation is needed for them to contribute to that priority and then also come to some form of agreement with the other contributors who were funded for that priority. This is more complex to handle as the milestone budgets would have already been set which can increase the chance that they need to be adjusted. It could also be difficult to budget for the future work correctly due to many changing factors that could influence how long they actually spend contributing to these other priorities. Contributors would also face incentive complexity when they want to change any existing milestones and budgets that they have already planned for with their own funded priority. Incentive complexities exist for any type of contribution change.

• Moderation complexity - Some form of approval process is likely needed for when an ideas milestones need to be changed.

Low income stability (Score - 2)

• Likelihood of future income - Being selected for one priority will not result in any high certainty that the contributor will have their future priorities selected. The contributor will need to identify the most promising priorities that might get selected and then request to join those proposals if they want to increase the chances that they receive future compensation.

• Compensation accuracy - Predicting the time it takes for every execution milestone is challenging. Ideas that need to be executed may change due to factors outside of the contributors control during execution. These changing ideas, factors and environments can lead to situations where the contributor is under or over compensated for their contribution efforts.

Total score = 9 / 30