This is going to become a race to the bottom. We might as well find the country with the cheapest cost of living on the planet, and say that anyone who wants to be eligible for a grant should have to prove they live in that country before receiving their grant funds.
Otherwise, what’s to prevent someone living in some high-cost location like Switzerland or Iceland from getting a grant based on their regional income in USD, and then moving to a very low-cost location like Pakistan or Egypt, where they will make more than a doctor?
We can’t simply use a global average, because then someone in Pakistan or Egypt could use that money to move somewhere with a much better economy and quality of life (oh no! can’t have the DAO improving people’s living conditions, can we? - said sarcastically)
In order to attract top talent and encourage economic growth in Decentraland, the best way would be to allow people to make more in the metaverse than they would be able to in real life. Otherwise, why would anybody even bother with this place? It’s not exactly a stable source of income when it’s based on the whims of the community. So who is going to be willing to take that risk? People who are just doing it as a hobby, or maybe as a second job at best?
Are we really expecting to propel this platform forward through the work of people doing it as their second job or part-time hobby? Can we expect people to sacrifice time with their family or focusing on their health in order to build something meaningful here?
Can I just speak from experience here?
Dealing with the scrutiny from this community…while building a grant project as a second job…where you’re expected to be paid much lower than your market value…while still being treated like you’re asking way too much…all while giving up time that you could be spending with family…you can’t help but wonder why you bother sometimes.
I’m sure someone could find a way to criticize me for saying that, using the dollar amount of my grant to attack me without having any idea how much time or sacrifice was actually required. But the reality is, I could be doing a lot less and making a lot more in a position where I actually have some stability and don’t have to be a people pleaser to garner support from a mob that has tasked themselves with protecting someone else’s money.
GSS is very important to prevent abuses by grantees. However, I strongly advocate for reducing platform management expenses, especially considering that our financial expenditures in the past 30 days have consistently been several times higher than income for many years. SpaceX also owed workers money before achieving success. Before we achieve success, I hope everyone joins DCL not just for the money but for their dreams; you are creators, not just players. I lean towards allocating funds to address the core issues in platform development. Therefore, I vote ‘no’.
The collective efforts and contributions of everyone are the first steps towards the platform’s success.
'Team work makes dream work"
Its not about the work I’m talking about. its about the cost. Long term this is going to hurt the DAO.
It can be easily done for 1k per month per member which is currently 4 and then x 6 you would pay 24k or do even a year for cheaper.
Not sure about that . Like @Unknower says , it’s a race to the bottom . Offer the lowest pay and you will have talent leaving and not bother anymore to be underpaid and constantly deal with toxicity .
At some point there are better opportunities out there for the job market and also for spending quality time with your family instead of being an underpaid wage worker in the metaverse lol
Your comparing iPhones with human beings and work opportunities.
It’s much easier to destroy than to build. Let the wage drop to the lowest point and see what happens . Talent leaving. That is fine for the people that want to be underpaid . But it certainly doesn’t attract top talent or help the talented people working now from staying.
You can’t have it both ways unfortunately.
Sometimes I think : remove all funding , remove DAO grants and go back to having who ever remains do pro bono work. Then we won’t have to discuss about wages but we also won’t have to worry and building anything except for people that have too much time on their hands
Maybe its the region where Il live in where 1k feels like 10k my dad have alot of patients he treats, they are working for 400 16 hours a day no weekends off with their entire back bones and leg bones and muscles need fysiotherapy. So I think thats thougher then 6 hours per day for them for 1000$ per month doing office work plus bonus weekends off.
I think this all is regionally different then sorry to bother you.
Yes it’s regional dependent but talent is also cross border and should be paid accordingly specially in tech . Imagine all the DCL devs that would stop developing here if we decided to pay them at 50% discount compared to other companies where they would most likely get a job instead . Same thing for managers , and specialized work that can be done cross borders .
Reducing the wage to lowest sounds like a easy fix but it’s not so simple unfortunately.
Thanks a lot for the sweet comment about my work! I’m sorry to hear that you and Zino didn’t have the smoothest ride buuh but I genuinely value his contributions to the team. We need a mix of approaches and experiences to handle the diverse range of grants in different categories, we currently have 40, to be exact! (Yep, lot of work) While I’d love even more diversity on the team, financial constraints might make that a waiting game.
@Zino plays a crucial role, and his vast legal experience helps us shape processes with responsibility, tackling the not-so-fun task of analyzing projects when things get tricky. He’s super keen on beefing up the governance process, and dealing with the Revocations Committee, which is never an easy job to do.
I’m so happy that you and @didiimakiii enjoy working with me (me too), I just want you to know that I’ve got an awesome team backing me up. Together, we’re committed to finding the best and fairest ways to support you.
I will be back later to share some thoughts about my point of view with salaries. Have a great day
Hey fifi really appreciate your feedback, I just share my opinions due to my conflict of interest and bad experience with him, You are the only reason I haven’t voted NO. About yarasita and pablo I dont have much to say barely know them so cant really publicly speak about them I bet they are really sweet too! Really would love to see you continue your work like you do. You really up the name of the GSS which is a really good thing. About the salaries I’m a bit objectively worried it had minor to do with the need of a GSS.
Because I truly believe we need a GSS despite the fact that it is going to be expensive!
I see improvement in this proposal on the budget already which is a great thing so take my critics not so heavy! Open to discuss what you can elaborate on the salaries, coming its from you such great person! I want to say I give you alot of credibility!
As someone who has been involved with Decentraland since the ICO it’s heartbreaking when DAO money is wasted on projects that are not effective and don’t deliver value to or enhance the platform. Worse still when grant funded creations even make the platform look bad (I think we all know which content/events fall into that bucket)
I’m leading a team who are creating an live instructor led training application which we are templating and open sourcing for others to use both in GC and Worlds. Working with Fifi on that has been a pleasure. I am a long time software engineer (30 years of experience) and I have been impressed by the professionalism of the GSS and the way they are helping projects structure their work so it can be effectively evaluated over time. It’s really easy to assess on-going grants because of the work they are doing. Without them there would be no backbone to these grants projects and everything will start to unravel.
The experience I have had can only be described in the most positive terms and that they are a credit to Decentraland.
Personally, I would love to build for free, just because I enjoy building and growing the community. I was doing that before I ever made any money here. It was a cool hobby that let me practice a lot of different skills. Of course, outside the metaverse my body needs food, water, clothes, and shelter to stay alive. To have those things I have to make money. Time is free, but I only have so much of it, and some of that time has to be spent making money so that I can stay alive to get more time. So while I might love doing things for free, society makes it pretty hard for me to do that for very long. Especially when building really cool ideas ends up costing me a lot of time and money.
A lot of people where I live are basically just working and sleeping, and don’t even have time for hobbies that cost them money. Inflation is making it more expensive to live, and most companies have the same mentality that you have - pay the absolute bare minimum needed to get a warm body into a job. Only raise the wage when nobody is willing to work for it anymore. Since some people are single with no kids and are fine with their job becoming their entire life, that becomes the standard expectation for everyone.
The sad thing is, people do better work when they can spend time doing things they love. But if we only raise wages when we run out of people willing to do a job, we end up with people working jobs they hate because the money is good.
I guess what I’m saying is, the real life standards of capitalist society might not be the best system to reference if we want people to do good work. Once again our problems in Decentraland could be solved if only we could figure out society’s most complex problems - like how we could improve the flaws of capitalism without going full-on communist, knowing that both ends of the spectrum leave plenty of room for corruption.
Considering your iPhone example - if spending $640 every 6 months bought me an iPhone that somehow prevented me from losing $2000, I’d buy it every time. And that’s a more appropriate analogy for the GSS. We’re spending money to save money by adding some accountability to a grant system that exists in a world where people are incentivized to make as much money as possible in the least amount of time.
Hello @mazafaka! Sorry for not responding earlier. Regarding your questions:
In the history of DCL, 202 grants have been approved. Of these, 50 belong to the first stage (2021-2022), before the GSS was created. As soon as we started working, we contacted them to see if they had fulfilled the committed projects or not (we found that 36 complied and 14 did not, of those 14, we were only able to recover some money through refunds and 1 revocation = $14,916). Since the establishment of the GSS, we have worked with 94 projects before the New Framework (2022-2023, 3 are still active) and with 58 from the New Framework (2023), of which 38 are active. On the other hand, in relation to the grantees, I can tell you that we have interacted with 269 people linked to grants. 80 are from North America, 58 from Europe, 50 from Latin America, 25 from Asia-Oceania, and the remaining 56 have not reported their nationality.
If a concern related to our Grant is raised, we send it directly to the DAO Committee to analyze, and they go through the same process established for all the Grants. This is something to add to the Framework of the Revocations Committee, but we are using this step. Also, it is written in our public documentation, specifically here. On the other hand, we need to revalidate our work with the community every 5 or 6 months, like all the core units, by submitting a renewal (like this one).
Hi @LandlordDao
Thank you for your input. Your engagement is appreciated, and I’d like to address some of the points you’ve raised.
I would like to clarify that the budget for core units during Q4 was frozen on October 1st. Our proposal does not aim to increase platform management expenses. Instead, it is a thoughtful way to allocate previously discussed and considered funds. We are committed to responsible budgeting and financial sustainability.
I completely agree with your perspective on the importance of improving the platform itself. It’s a challenge that the entire Decentraland community can work together to address. I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on how we can achieve these goals and further enhance the Decentraland ecosystem.
Thanks @mazafaka! And hi everyone!
Thank you all for voting on the proposal. We are very pleased to continue our work. Clarification: although this contract starts on December 15th and ends on May 15th, the 5-month period referred to in this grant began on December 1st and ends on April 30th (we’ve never paused our work).
Thanks!
Congratulations to the GSS for passing their proposal, Hope we will see our given feedbacks taken in and turned in to something positive!
Some additional recommandation I have is.
turning formal requests faster and more efficiently on to the next stages. as of right now it seems it takes a long while to process these.
Since there is no one watching you as grantees I think you should be more transparent with the community will help alot more, for example sharing monthly meetings & sharing financial reports.
Some members must be more supportive towards grantees and show that you are not only here for a salary.
Lastly Give Fifi a biiggg promotion <3
Really hope 2024 will be the Best Year of the DAO!
sorry to bother you.
I’m sorry to hear that you and Zino didn’t have the smoothest ride buuh 
but I genuinely value his contributions to the team. We need a mix of approaches and experiences to handle the diverse range of grants in different categories, we currently have 40, to be exact! (Yep, lot of work) While I’d love even more diversity on the team, financial constraints might make that a waiting game.