Summary
In conjunction with the New Vision implementation plan, it is proposed to replace the previous existing Management Board DAO structure with a new organisational structure composed of 9 (nine) distinct functional ‘SparkTeams’ each with a dedicated Discord channel and linked Wiki section to facilitate operations of each team. New Public Team members will be added to lead some of the SparkTeams composed of PowerPool DAO participants, supporting DAO teams’ operations with their efforts and expertise.
Taking into account the new vision and strategy for PowerPool, we believe that a functional structure of DAO member sub-teams led by full-time members of the Public Team will be more effective in implementing the multi-faceted tasks required to implement the New Vision. Implementation of this Proposal will effectively dissolve the existing Management Board structure.
Motivation
The PowerPool Management Board was approved by the community Proposal 29. Once established, the Management Board made some valuable progress as reflected in the Management Board March 2021 report. The March 2021 report was the first one and only one, after which no further progress was made and no further reports prepared. The members of the Management Board were paid only the first month, 1/18 of 50k CVP for each person (roughly 2,777 CVP for each MB member). No further transfers from the DAO Treasury were made.
The Management Board has concluded that organising around functional sub teams and recruiting new full-time Public Team members to bring additional skills and experience is the best way to implement the New Vision. The proposed structure of the 9 functional sub-teams, coordinated by members of the Public team has already been discussed in detail with CVP community members involved in fully-defining the New Vision for PowerPool. The number of proposed new products, partnerships and investor contacts involved go far beyond just protocol code development. Most other DAOs involved in investment management/asset management are taking a similar approach to implementing functional sub-teams and moving some aspects of governance feedback and some types of frequent consultation/voting off-chain.
Specifications
We propose to run PowerPool DAO operations by means of Public Team and 9 functional DAO teams. The Public team will include persons who have a track record in crypto DeFi, and other related fields with past contributions to PowerPool as a significant bonus. Public team members will be able to bring new skills and energy to work benefiting the PowerPool DAO new product development, cooperation with other protocols, marketing partnerships, legal & regulatory compliance, special task recruiting and other activities that require sustained personal and public engagement, collaboration, and experienced advice.
‘Sparkies’ (a slang term for electricians in England) is proposed as a collective reference to PowerPool investors/CVP token holders. The proposed ‘SparkTeams’ structure would be as follows:
SparkDev - Protocol & Agent Development: Responsible for all on-chain core protocol and agents development, security audits, and on-chain operations;
SparkFin - Treasury Management : Responsible for financial management of the DAO Treasury, calculating NAV, controlling expenses and collecting rewards to maximise the value for xCVP stakers;
SparkData - Reporting & Analytics: Responsible for sourcing, transforming and presenting all forms of data in support of active management of the pools in the Power Universe and periodic reporting to investors;
SparkDesign - Web UI & Social Media: Responsible for all aspects of online functionality, UI graphic design, interactions and usability;
SparkPeople - Recruiting & Tasks: Responsible for DAO Human Resources, guilds recruiting & skills tracking, incentivized task marketing, bounty management and tracking;
SparkProd - Product Strategies & Optimisation: Responsible for defining, developing, market testing and yield-optimising PowerPool-branded ‘Power Universe’ pipeline of thematic pooled structured investment products;
SparkDAO - Governance & Moderation: Responsible for Discord, Telegram, Notion Wiki, Forum and Governance platforms content, process, moderation and community relations;
SparkGrow - Marketing & Partnerships: Responsible for planning and execution of all approved marketing and distribution initiatives, targeting both retail and institutional investors;
SparkLegal - External Legal Advisors: Provide advice on legal structures and regulatory compliance issues.
New Public Team members
The following individuals are proposed to be added to the Public Team:
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Sven Möller - over 10 years experience in innovation and tech consulting. He worked as a Manager at Ernst & Young in the Finance - Performance Improvement Team. Co-founder of Swisscom Blockchain, dedicated subsidiary division of one of the biggest European telecom operators and solution providers. At Swisscom, Sven built crypto-related solutions for many Swiss banks and corporations. Currently, Sven is building a new, crypto-friendly payment solution in Lichtenstein, a successful asset management company with a strong algo trading approach and also involved with DeFi lending project Basic, based in Seoul Korea. He has a strong institutional investor background and network for building crypto projects involving with corporate-grade players to grow DeFi adoption through broad integration with institutional products and processes.
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Gordon Gekko - Chief Architect of the New Vision, he has several decades of experience with top strategy consultancies, including extensive experience consulting to institutional investment managers on strategy, organisation and operational processes. He has a Masters in Corporate Finance from MIT, and has also been involved as Founder in two software development start-ups involving global bond markets and big data analytics and visualisation publishing tools. Now a retired crypto investor managing a family office, he has spent the last months preparing the Notion Wiki as a collaboration and recruiting workspace for SparkTeams to implement the New Vision, filling the gap between tools like Discord and Telegram, and the Forum and Governance Platforms.
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Sergei Medvedev - more than 10 years in business development and marketing, ex-CBDO at Cointelegraph, highly experienced in scaling IT companies globally. Proven successful track record in APAC market expansion for tech and blockchain companies. Involved in the crypto market since 2016, DeFi early adopter. Now running a successful asset management company in Switzerland. Sergei’s focus for a couple years was making crypto more friendly and accessible for institutional and retail customers, with his guidance a lot of top-tier projects achieved favorable publicity, development and, as result, adoption. His non-profit activities with Rotary, UNICEF, Given Tuesday, Binance Charity also involve bringing crypto to the wider, non-crypto audience.
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Vasily Sumanov - an early supporter of PowerPool, contributed to the CVP token model and modeling of Balancer AMM pools. Active in submitting proposals that successfully passed governance voting (6 proposals in total) and guiding other community members to submit several others. Engaged in crypto since 2013 and the DeFi space since 2018, with several publications regarding token engineering, and successful Balancer grant completion (as a part of the Token Engineering team). In PowerPool, as part of SparkProd team, Vasily will lead research, simulation, and new products prototyping.
Building on the outline structure of the proposed 9 SparkTeams defined above, it is envisaged to recruit many more DAO members to each team to help with a wide range of tasks as outlined in the Notion Wiki. Interested? Anyone can request New Vision Wiki access from the link in the Discord, where there are dedicated channels for each team.
An investment management DAO like PowerPool requires a global team composed of many people and skills, not just Core Team protocol coders. The New Vision incorporates the spirit of many, if not most, of the Community proposals that have been posted on the Forum to date, and the above additions to the Public Team, combined with the proposed SparkTeams organisational structure, the collaboration Wiki, and continued innovation in the Forum and Governance platforms, are all elements of the changes required to drive these initiatives through to implementation.