Open for discussion: Research Residency on Community Health

Diamond DAO
#1

Proposal Research Residency with Diamond DAO

The purpose of this document is to frame the research residency that I would like to perform for DiamonDAO, what are the most pertinent open questions to ask and to frame the output and outcomes that could come out of this.

Researcher Background

I am a researcher in Computational Biologie, Data Science, and Network Sciences, who’s applied computational methodologies to a diverse array of topics, mostly around anwsering questions surrounding the Evolution of Development (or how do organisms go from an embryo to a cell, and how did those mechanisms evolve), and Science of Science, or how to do team successfully organize to produce scientific knowledge. I also co-founded the Open science organization Just One Giant Lab, and have an extensive understanding of technology, especially in the Web 2.0 universe. My current research interests lie at the intersection of Virtual Reality Biology and Social Sciences analyzing how it can be used to analyze 3D+time images and what effects does it induces.

Datasets

The following datasets are of interest to this proposal:

Available

  • DAOHaus Discourse and Molloch daemons
  • Snapshot DAOs

Not (yet) available

  • Discord DiamondDAO Bot (if available)
  • POAPs: Can be used to define “ground truth” by targetting particular events such as ETHDenver.
  • NFT collection by DAOs
  • Coordinate (Behind gates, the data is not accessible)
  • SourceCred (Not scrapped yet: https://sourcecred.io/docs/api/documentation)
  • OnChain data from https://thegraph.com/en/ (need to pay not sure how to get API key)

Open questions to interrogate

Here are some of the open questions which we can start to ask on the datasets, they should not bind this research proposal but act as foundations upon which other questions will emerge given the availability of the data.

  • Is there a clear correlation between members of DAO behavior and their monetary investments?
  • Are voter behaviors changing based on the type of proposals (funding, membership, etc)?
  • How can we define the health of a community from a data-centric perspective?
    • What are the correct metrics to measure good outcomes (growth in members? growth in value? growth in proposals number?)
    • What are the behaviors to incentivize to reach those outcomes?
  • Instead of “health” or “good” should clearly defined metrics be used as targets to avoid the subjective judgment of morality?

If you think there are more important or different questions that could be explored, please raise them up in the discussion below.

Deliverable

I propose to deliver the following during my residency. Each month, a written summary of the current state of research and insights gained will be written to be published on Mirror.xyz. Moreover, Twitter threads of small findings will be published along with the mirror thread pointing back to it for visibility.

All the research and tools will be published in the DiamondDAO Github repository as either independent python script (such as the scrappers I already wrote) or as jupyter notebooks for the data science/analysis part.

To the best of my capacity, I will try to develop normalization methods for clear confounders and statistical analysis to try to ascertain the significance of the effects measured in the data.

Time commitment and monetary matters

I can offer 10h/week (40h/month) of effective time to work on those questions for a period of 3 months. Given my education level and extensive experience, I request 4000 DAI and 40 shares after releasing the deliverables each month.

Beyond the residency

I am interested to continue working on studying DAOs and the self-organizing of people in Web 3.0 communities. If this residency is successful and I still can commit time outside of my main research focus, I will work with the DiamondDAO to reframe the expectations and open questions to research.

Conclusion

Following the discussion here, I’ll post this proposal on Chain on Dec 15 for voting.

3 Likes
#2

Thank you xqua for taking the take to c hat with us all last week and for putting together this proposal outlining your expectations and what you want to accomplish during the proposed residency. It is a YES from me.

  1. I feel like we “click” as a team.
  2. Your research skills/experience are complementary to what we already have going on between Christian and I - which leads me to believe that your contributions will activate synthesis.
  3. As we are so early on in establishing the Research Labs, it makes sense for us to work with a small group who can work, document, repeat together with us - as we get processes up and running. Early residents will set the tone for those who come later with varying levels of experience and ability. I think you are an ideal fit for the stage we are in.

Side note, I liked the section you called “Beyond the Residency.” I felt an autonomous mindset and authentic desire learn and grow in Web3 coming through. For DD to serve the highest good of community members across the ecosystem, we learn through the process of interacting with & support them. Have you read about Participation Action Research? It’s one of the methods that I use.

Thanks again for this forum post! I look forward to the proposal and next steps. LMK if you have any questions for me specifically. Cheers!

1 Like
#3

Hi @Xqua

I am appreciative of your research to date, your participation on the forum and Discord, and the work you’ve done for Chainverse.

Very excited to see this proposal. I generally support the proposal. I would echo @steffbrowne’s commentary on documentation. For this level of compensation, I would like to see some materials, playbooks, and processes for on-boarding new researchers and supporting them through the research process.

There is a bit of tension between (a) our desire to ensure the research labs generate insights relevent to our product/s and (b) our desire to provide researchers with the maximum amount of autonomy compatible with (a). It will be difficult to thread the needle there, but as an experienced researcher, I think you are uniquely positioned to help the labs develop policies/processes that balance those interests.

#4

Thank you @Xqua for taking the time to think through and write up this proposal. I support.

You’ve demonstrated already your research abilities, interest in community analytics/web3, and ability to lead through open ended tasks to specific output. Like @amphiboly.eth and @steffbrowne mentioned, I also want your support/input/advice on research lab policies and processes to build a great function “beyond the residency.”

#5

HI first, sorry for the late anwser, I’ve had a bit of a crazy week so far.

So let me anwser in order:

Yes definitely, and I am happy to try and set that tone, its a fine thread and I think that we should all make sense of it together.

That makes complete sense, I can try my best to write such documentation, but as you mentionned, a) needs to be kept in mind, while b) is necessary for a) to be most productive. It is why I tried to focus this proposal onto establishing unique metrics, because I believe that it would help a), while still being an open ended problem. I think that should sort of be the first policy, that **any open research question should have clear outcomes that can be marketable, or useful for the product. Or bring publicity towards DiamondDAO as a **.

I shall try my best at this, and in the end I think that this is something that we will find by doing, and by refining the processes.

=============================================

Thank you all three for your trust, its really pleasant to work with you so far and I think that we have very similar interest, questions and way to work so I am expecting something quite fascinating to come out of this ! :smiley:

1 Like
#6

[quote=“Xqua, post:1, topic:10071”]

  • Is there a clear correlation between members of DAO behavior and their monetary investments?

  • Are voter behaviors changing based on the type of proposals (funding, membership, etc)?

  • How can we define the health of a community from a data-centric perspective?

Ideas to explore around Community Health: - Jovian

  • Community membership increasing faster than decreasing
  • Stable increase in membership rather than large peaks and drops
    (Look at MetaGammaDelta as a sample of healthy community growth → activation)
  • Money out balancing money in
    - If they have a large sitting treasury but can’t spend it, they have stuck leadership, lack of trust or ability to recruit teams, poor connection with user needs.
  • Distribution of voting power gradually increasing - degree of decentralization
  • Distribution of ownership gradually increasing - degree of decentralization
  • Sweat Investment of contributors: How many other DAOs they are engaged in? Are they most engaged in subject DAO or elsewhere? Aka Is X their primary DAO?
  • Is there a clear correlation between members of DAO behavior and their monetary investments?
2 Likes
#7

Awesome suggestions, @steffbrowne

I would also be interested in whether receiving a POAP issued by an organization increases the recipients likelihood of engaging in the organization (in ways that we can measure).

1 Like
#8

Yes actually, this is something that will be useful, what are “good ground truth of healthy communities” it might help to sanity check the research!

This is a bit hard to get from a data perspective… Well not the money part but the reason behind it… It would need for qualitative research.

Yes, for sure, those are definitely on my mind, computing GINI over time for example.
I would add: How does the minimum Voting Coalition evolve (what is the minimum amount of people needed for 50%). Does this change over time? If it increases its a good sign (dilution of power)

Might get at some of this through the network analysis, but there might be some things that are hard to do like “primary DAO”… without a questionnaire of targeted users/wallets it will be hard.

Yes I already touched on that one, and plan on keeping looking at this.

Maybe something like this?

t0 = Time of Receiving POAP
Measure the average activity / day / month before t0 and after t0
Compute the ratio of before after. Def can do some MannWithney U stats on that as well to show if it’s significant.