MGP (Nov 2021): Ethereum Cat Herders

Moloch Rises
#1

Project Title

Ethereum Cat Herders

Description

Ethereum Cat Herders is a group of individuals, working together to support the Ethereum core developers and the larger Ethereum ecosystem with research, project management and other aspects of communication and coordination. A summary of tasks performed in Q2-Q3 2021 is published as The Ethereum Cat Herders mid-year report.

Manifesto/Vision

The Ethereum cat Herders aims to increase support to the Ethereum mainnet with more community involvement. The main tasks the group has performed are:

  • EIP awareness and consensus building

  • Creating & curating educational content

  • Collecting information through surveys & meetings

  • Community building

  • Identifying potentially needed support for client & tools

  • Continuous process improvement

Problem

  • EIP awareness and consensus building

  • Collecting information through surveys & meetings

  • Community awareness

  • Identifying potentially needed support for client & tools

Solution

  • Creating & curating educational content
  • Continuous process improvement
  • Community building and outreach
  • Onboarding/Help Desk

Product Features

Validation

The Ethereum cat Herders has received multiple grants in the past from Moloch & others.

  • ESP grant (Q2 2021 - $90k USD for 6 months)
  • MGP 56 (May 2021- $10k USD for ongoing work)
  • MGP 50 (Nov 2020 - $45k USD for part-time HIC for 6 months)
  • MGP 47 (June 2020 - $30k USD for Notes & Operational expenses for 3 months)

We’ve received kind words from the community leaders supporting the work done by the Cat Herders. (Ref: community feedback on ECH Website)

“Wanted to share I think @EthCatHerders are awesome: they help make ACD and other protocol-related things accessible to more folks with transcripts, blog posts, and video series. It’s also a great way to onboard new Ethereum contributors ” Tim Beiko

Progress

A summary of tasks performed in Q2-Q3 2021 is published as The Ethereum Cat Herders mid-year report.

Differentiation (from other projects)

ECH is the only working group whose primary focus is coordination and project management around the Ethereum protocol. It also acts as an onboarding resource for newcomers who wish to contribute to the community.

Team

  • Pooja Ranjan
  • William Schwab
  • Alita Moore
  • Matt Garnett
  • Brent Allsop
  • Joshua
  • Kenneth Luster
  • Edson Allyon
  • A pool of contributors for meeting notes (~10)

Grant Request $

  • For 6 months - $125k USD*

Chart1456Ă—616 47.3 KB

*This grant request is based on the estimated tasks & resources foreseeable in the near future.

What the Funds Are For

  • Herder in chief
  • Catblazer
  • ECH Ops
  • ECH engineering (EIP bot)
  • EIP editor
  • Public meeting notes
  • ECH website hosting plus misc.

Help Requested

Not Applicable

Additional Resources, Links, Portfolio

1 Like
MGP (Aug 2022): Ethereum Cat Herders
MGP -April 2022: Ethereum Cat Herders
#2
  • Who has been paid for EIP editing? last i understood micah doesn’t
  • what have cat blazers accomplished?
  • the compensation for the HIC is very high, i don’t remember it being this large. effectively 170k annual compensation?
  • what part of your budget is actually paying note takers? does that fall under bounties
#3

Just did the math: this is around $80 / hour for fulltime, 52 weeks a year. It’s more like $88 / hour if it’s more like 48 weeks. In a corporate salary, costs like taxes, benefits, PTO would be added on top of this. That typically adds 30% to the value of salary. So this is more like a request for $120k - $135k in annual salary with some overhead built in. Just so we are discussing apples to apples on compensation.

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#4

Hi @trent.eth,

Thanks for reviewing the proposal. I tried to provide information as possible with the template provided for the grant submission. I am glad you asked questions which I suppose were not clearly answered.

First I want to state that I am very proud to be a part of the Ethereum Cat Herders working group, which is 100% funded by the community and we maintain the transparency in the distribution of the funds. Anyone interested in tracking the funds distribution may follow the ECH Github.

As mentioned in the grant request, the funds request is based on the estimated tasks & resources foreseeable in the near future to be working with the Ethereum Cat Herders.

  • Who has been paid for EIP editing? last i understood micah doesn’t

At present, we have only one EIP editor who is being paid for 20 hrs a month. Unlike previous grant from the EF, in this MGP, we’ve requested funds for only one editor.

As you have already guessed that we have some surplus funds from the last grant. My hope is to get that funds distributed to “EIP editors interns”. This is a WIP, but to provide some details on progress in this direction, we recently organized EIP editor apprenticeship community meeting and trying to get one or more contributors. I have documented details in EIP editor apprentice handbook for new people interested to get onboard.

  • what have cat blazers accomplished?

At present, we have one contributor contributing as “Cat blazer”. He is a great asset to the Ethereum Cat Herders working group. Not only he is with us since the group formed in 2019, but has been actively contributing ever since. He publishes monthly bulletin of the summary of his work on ECH Medium. In short, he is actively involved in onboarding new users to the Ethereum ecosystem, ERC editing, and Wallet Plugfest - a potential initiative looking to identify standard wallet integration issues and create resources for solving them.

We plan bi-weekly Cat Herders meeting where every contributor shares what he/she has been engaged in the past two weeks. Please do let me know, if you have got any specific metrics to measure the accomplishments with this position. From where I see this, “Cat blazer” seems to be a useful position to retain and possibly increase the engagement level. Hence, with this grant, we’re requesting the funding for this role to be 30hrs per month, which is 10 extra hours since the earlier grant.

  • the compensation for the HIC is very high, i don’t remember it being this large. effectively 170k annual compensation?

The MGP (Nov 2021) is proposed with a revised rate for every contributor. We are expanding our contribution every day. With this grant, the ask for HIC is $80 per hour to be precise.

It is evident, every contributor of the Cat Herders work on an hourly rate. There is no perk even if the contributor is working full time which is otherwise considered even for a contractual position in any organization. Thanks Ann for fairly explaining that.

So, yes, the rates were not same as earlier and this request is only for next six months.

  • what part of your budget is actually paying note takers? does that fall under bounties

We do have sufficient funds for the notes taking for the next six months, so in this MGP, we have NOT included any funds request for that category.

Misc. & bounties are kept aside for adhoc tasks such as this. Obviously, I am planning to keep some extra budget aside for any new initiative that we would like to fund for. In this MGP, it is less than 5%.

Please excuse me for a long post, but I hope this may have helped providing clarity on the ask and the distribution.

Happy to answer any further question!

#5

@trent.eth
Following the Discord communication, I suppose, I should have expanded on the current responsibilities of HIC.

Present responsibilities include

  • producing educational resources - PEEPanEIP (identifying latest research topic, identify best speaker, make contact, invite other key participants of the meetings, schedule meetings, record an episode, mix with 4 different recordings, pre/post meeting promotion, publish & distribute).

  • process improvement - follow every pull request on the EIP GitHub, make contact with authors as needed, work with EIP editors to facilitate making standards, help improve eip-bot, educate community about the latest process with presentations & blogs.

  • schedule & facilitate meetings - EIPIP meetings, ECH meetings

  • resource management - managing pool of notes takers. Scheduling and reviewing notes before merge to Ethereum repo.

  • community building - participating in different events, 1:1 talk with new contributors willing to join the ecosystem.

  • accounting - budgeting, funds distribution, multisig mgmt.

  • research & planning new initiatives - exploring new opportunities, adding new tasks

  • resource availability - record, publish & distribute recordings of different meetings, collect latest resources for ECH website updating (ref- The Merge)

  • communicate with client devs as and when required

  • updating community - ECH newsletter

and multiple miscellaneous activities required to lead the decentralized project management group for Ethereum blockchain.

#6

I think ECH is an invaluable resource for the ecosystem. From what I understand, the increase in budget is due to EF cutting their funding stream with the expectation that Moloch will take on the responsibility. I appreciate the level of detail provided here and think we should make moves to further integrate and support this research with all of our DAO social channels and related resources. I support this proposal.

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#7

I support this proposal.

After over 1.5 yrs of working in the 57 DAI/hr range, a pay bump for the HIC seems worthy, given the track record of ECH in addition to engagement that ECH has for its content (5000 followers on Twitter, 2000 subscribers on YouTube) - they must be doing something useful for thousands of people in the community.

I also really appreciate the full transparency of financials that ECH adheres to in tracking costs, and think that other guilds funded by Moloch can also learn a lot from ECH.

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#8

thanks for the reply pooja

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