jabby09

  • Dec 7, 2023
  • Joined Jan 2, 2022
  • rrrmmmmm

    thanks for your questions! I'll do my best to answer them below and then atmos may also have perspectives to share.

    How much development would you see as really necessary at the current point?

    Consider that we only launched a very MVP version of the product at the end of March. Since launch, we have been using the MVP to engage and learn from customers and users while in parallel building a more feature complete beta application (major feature areas I highlighted in my comment above). The next quarter and first half of 2024 will be focused on delivering on the solutions we have validated with customers and users. These include broad themes such as overall redesigned user experience in Carbonmark (beyond an MVP), improved onboarding (KYC/KYB/AML), asset management (custodial wallet, fiat on-ramp and off-ramp), registry aggregation, and additional platform integrations (includes API enhancements). The other significant and critical activities over the next 3-6 months is the substantial technical work to integrate new credit supply into Carbonmark (related to KIP-37, KIP-39, KIP-41 and more to follow).

    Beyond that, important to recognize we are very much still in the realm of finding product-market fit in a rapidly changing and nascent market. We will need to continue to learn and pivot to build a product that solve customers problems better than our competitors. That is how we will dominate market share and win. How long that takes is unknown, nobody has that crystal ball.

    Isn't the current main challenge in engaging with customers the legal problem, which is unrelated to product features? In other words, if Carbonmark becomes a private company with its existing product, would this already attract customers and start generating revenue?

    It is both. By working with customers with our MVP, we have learned that traditional web2 organizations are very challenged to commercially engage with our solution given our DAO status. So there are organizational changes that are required (the primary focus of this KIP) but also additional features we need to provide (outlined above), generally to eliminate web3 frictions. Our hypothesis is that with these changes we will be able to unlock the huge potential of the KlimaDAO / Carbonmark ecosystem and move towards a self-sustaining revenue model.

    Do you think it would be possible to build features in a much leaner fashion and directly derived from the customer experiences?

    As eluded to above, our engagement with customers and users is already being used to validate the bets and feature development we work on and that will continue.

    To be honest, we are already very lean. We have one PM, one designer, an engineering lead and a handful of developers (working at various levels of FTE). These are the core roles required for a product team to function. Most product teams would also have a dedicated QA role but we manage that using existing contributors (including myself).

    For some additional context, I've been leading product in various startups since 2019 and have been working with software development teams for over 20 years. While there is always room for productivity improvements, and we welcome feedback on pace of delivery, code quality, etc., based on my experience this is a very high performing and efficient team. Overall I'm very proud of culture of professionalism, transparency, and accountability that we have been able to foster with a global remote team within a very challenging DAO organization structure.

    To what extent would you see customers to be able to put funding into the development of their individual features wishes, which would still be part of the open source code?

    I'm not a lawyer so I won't comment on funding. However, we 100% welcome ideas from the community and would be happy to include them in our portfolio of bets ideation and prioritization process. Another approach to this could be regularly scheduled and funded hackathons to encourage new ideas from outside of our internal team.

    I hope this helps, let me know if any follow up questions and thanks again for your participation in this process and support of the project.

    • rrrmmmmm

      Thanks so much for your questions; appreciate your interest in our work.

      I'll be happy to answer these but just wanted to let you know it will be late Monday before I'll have time in my schedule to do this.

    • optima @Archimedes

      For transparency and those who do not know me, I'm jabby the KlimaDAO and Carbonmark product manager and DAO contributor since Jan, 2022.

      100% for accountability but your comments infer that this has not been happening which is simply not true.

      The product & engineering (R&D) team at KlimaDAO embraces transparency and accountability, and leads the way on working in the open. This is not just a qualitative statement, we have the quantitative data to back it up. Our GitHub is available for all to see, and as you know we maintain rigorous and verbose documentation internally so all internal stakeholders have visibility on the work of the product team.

      What we work on day-to-day is not random, it is always linked to our strategy and based on what we are learning from markets, competitors, customers, and our users. We are a problem solving, outcome focused team with well established, best-in-class, light-weight discovery and delivery processes as guard rails. This allows us to strike a balance of being structured, focused, and efficient while nimble enough to pivot based on what we are learning.

      KIP-30 and KIP-38 (still in progress) funding proposals were already milestone based. We put forward our strategic goals and high-level tactics to achieve those goals in the proposals and the community debated and voted on the funding. I will proudly stand behind the outcomes that were delivered for that funding. The product features we shipped 100% delivered value to users and the business. Those key outcomes were shared in the office hours slide presentation but worth repeating here:

      H1 2023 (based on KIP-30)

      Q1

      • Carbonmark (beta)

      Q2

      • Retire & Buy in CM
      • Retirement receipt in CM
      • Carbonmark API PoC
      • Carbon Dashboard infrastructure migration
      • Subgraph v2
      • Retirement bonds

      H2 2023 (based on KIP-38)

      Q3

      • Retire page in CM
      • Retire with credit card
      • Carbonmark REST API v1
      • Carbonmark docs
      • Project list & map view

      Q4 (in progress, planned delivery)

      • Carbonmark contract v2 & Seller listings (Oct)
      • Carbon Dashboard (Klima Data) frontend redesign (Oct)
      • KYC beta (Q4)
      • New credit supply(Q4)
      • Start of Carbonmark v2 features (Q4)

      It is worth emphasizing that Carbonmark is just getting started. We only had a MVP at the end of March and the maturing product is barely 6 months old. We are very much still in the realm of finding product-market fit in a rapidly changing and nascent market full of competitors. Our conviction of what we are building in engineering in the next quarter is high, but future "bets" are still being shaped, researched, and de-risked (and yes we have a defined process for idea/bet management as well). At this stage we need to have flexibility and stable, longer term funding. We are not at a product maturity stage where we can predict feature development. In fact, handcuffing the product & engineering team to milestone-based funding tranches promotes premature convergence on high-risk bets and increases the likelihood of building the wrong thing which is the fastest path to wasting funding.

      • Fully support this great initiative further demonstrating KlimaDAO's commitment to the success of the overall DCM ecosystem. Pairing the cash prize (which means so much to startups iterating on product-market fit) with mentorship and coaching from expert professionals goes a long way helping entrepreneurs hone their unique value proposition, sales/revenue strategy, and pitch experience.

        When the accelerator program launches we will want to be more explicit on the stage of startup that would qualify. For example, would this program target early stage (pre-seed and seed) organizations or would VC funded growth stage startups also qualify?

        Any additional thoughts on what would qualify as "...solutions being developed to integrate with the DCM, or that can otherwise support the development of the DCM". For example, would a CDR related startup qualify if their objective is to create forward carbon credits?

      • Brian33 Thanks for the response. That is helpful context and makes sense.

      • I am unable to vote yes or no because I do not have enough information to make an informed decision even though I've read the materials and explored the MOSS website. I'm new to DAO voting but this appears to be an important decision for the DAO/protocol to just have what feels like a random vote (or am I missing something?). I see a lot of folks commenting "let's do it" (or the like) but what is your rationale? On the surface MOSS looks very interesting but It would be great if community members with more experience, context, and knowledge could summarize their position on the proposal, pros/cons etc. From my perspective I think of the following things:

        1. Is this a "safe to try" proposal? i.e. what is worst case scenario for making a wrong decision. If that is minimal then an open vote seems reasonable but if a wrong decision could adversely impact the KLIMA project that feels risky to me to decide based on an open vote without more information.
        2. Is there a strategic or critical time constraint to this decision? (i.e. overall this process feels rushed). This has come up over the holidays when a lot of people have disconnected. Also, related to point #1, if a wrong decision could adversely impact the KLIMA project I think it makes sense to slow down and allow enough time for more dialogue and the due diligence required.
        3. I'd feel better if I had a few projects to choose from one rather than just one. Nothing against MOSS (I'd like to learn a lot more about them) but are there other options that would be a better fit to diversify the KLIMA treasury?
        4. What is happening next with Toucan? There is already an established relationship/partnership with that protocol so do they have something in the works soon that should be considered?