Hi everyone,
As you (hopefully!) know I will be the leading up Operations at the Livepeer Foundation. This covers a lot of our back office processes in setting up the legal entity, but will also involve thinking about the systems and mechanisms that help us achieve our shared goals.
SPEs in the spotlight
Something that seems to be in focus right now is our SPEs. These Special Purpose Entities are an important tool for executing work across the Livepeer ecosystem and were designed with the intention of end recipients not applying directly to the treasury. I think it is safe to say that isn’t really how they work today.
Recently, there’s also been some healthy and lively debate around how well past and present SPEs align with the project’s evolving priorities now that Advisory Boards (ABs) are coordinating ecosystem stakeholders on a long-term roadmap and strategy setting.
These are the types of good tensions that arise as a project evolves and becomes more mature.
The foundation of these tensions is that:
- Everyone wants the project to work on (and fund) the things that are most likely to drive impact and provide outsized leverage to the ecosystem
- Everyone is currently required to use one mechanism - SPEs - as it is the only way to get funded for contributions
This raises important questions:
- How do we ensure the mechanisms we use, SPEs or otherwise, match the type of work and outcomes we want to see?
- How can we better support contributors and delegators who want to fund impactful efforts, beyond just open proposal calls?
I see the solution in two parts:
Part one: Advisory Boards
ABs exist to help the ecosystem align on the highest impact activities that we can be undertaking by bringing together a wide range of perspectives and skillsets.
Until the Advisory Boards provide greater understanding of what work will have most impact, it’s hard for people proposing SPEs to see if their work aligns and how this might support their success.
As the Advisory Boards will not fully report for another 4 weeks, we should all accept that we will have to live with this tension a little longer.
Part two: New mechanisms for contributions
The other part of the solution relates to understanding what other mechanisms can support different types of contributions and how people can access funding without a one size fits all approach to proposals.
Similarly, this relies on the Advisory Boards completing their work, as any tool or mechanism exists to achieve a goal, and we should choose the right tools for the job.
While I will not be proposing any new mechanisms until the Advisory Board work is complete, I can say that the Foundation has been giving this topic a lot of thought. It is our intention to build a more diverse set of approaches to funding contributions and we intend to share some more thought on this soon. This is also partly within the scope of the Capital Markets Advisory Board that I chair.
Share your thoughts
If you have specific thoughts, feedback or comments on this please reach out to me directly. Perhaps it’s even better to share your views here for the visibility of all.
Otherwise, I hope you will give us a bit more time until Advisory Boards are complete to provide detail on how we can adapt our way of working with talent and supporting people to pursue our shared goals.
While we all want to get things solved asap, I find that taking a bit longer and allowing problems to fully reveal themselves often leads to better solutions than just jumping in and trying to fix something because it feels a little tough.
Please do share any thoughts and looking forward to this important work from the Advisory Boards to be complete.
Many thanks,
Ben