i agree, and perhaps have them select by consensus perhaps, for selected post to share in Announcements or another less busy group?
Some valid points have been made in this thread for both pro and con.
Domerium Labs will support this proposal as support will continue to be a major factor in the onboarding experience.
With that said, I would like to challenge the team to think about alternative tasks they could do, and will do, in times of low activity.
If due to the lower market it turns out you only need 60 or 80 hours a week. How will the other 60-40 hours be spent? Will you work on docs, forms, structure, or support systems? How will you lay out the foundations for solid network support in the future?
Sharing these âbackupâ activities that are important to undertake in times of low volume in a support team (pretty much how every support team at a major firm works) is important for the community to continually support your work, and to continuously professionalize Secret Network.
Although you have our vote, I hope to see you elaborate on the above 
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Thank you for your message Stefan
This past quarter, Support has been setup and provided through all available canals of communication (Discord, Telegram, Reddit, Twitter, AlterâŚ) and has been dedicated to all dApps of the ecosystem (No user was ever turned away when help was requested).
With the various releases and challenges the ecosystem went through, the team has been available permanently: I could not imagine how new users would have perceived Secret Network if a dedicated team would not have been available 24/7 during the Shade release, the Keplr nodes episode or the Sienna Lend (among many others).
In times of low activity, I believe that this next quarter could be dedicated to the improvement and automatisation of the support system, on top of providing the same high-quality support users have been glad to receive.
Out of the top of my head, we could aim at the bellow improvements:
- Reorganisation of the Discord channels dedicated to Support to simplify and ease the accessibility of auto-support data (deleting some depleted channels, setting up a thread system in the channels, extended FAQ)
- Building a Support FAQ document, that would be available to users to self-assess a situation and apply most common fixes
- As discussed on the TG Gov, setting up a data collection spreadsheet that would allow us to keep track of all tickets, with root cause analysis of the issue and remedy, that would allow us to monitor the UX.
Would like also to hear how everyone envision a network level support system
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These two sound like two great initiatives that could help the support team scale with the network in the future. Seems like two great initiatives to spend any left-over hours on in case tickets do indeed become less numerous in the coming 3 months 
I am sorry to have only seen this recently, I have been rather building writing content and working IRL. but I hard stop disagree on this.
And same goes for the same comment made in the other funding proposals.
To be absolutely clear, front line educators and support are the life blood of any large project, especially in an innovative sector with new technologies that confuse people who would enter.
We need those new people to enter, then tell their friends about it, and hopefully build things, or in turn support and educate. This is how adoption can happen.
Dev teams do need funding too, absolutely! But projects with nobody to educate and share it, and nobody to support user issues, is very limited value. Not because the product quality either, it can be an amazing new product that can change the world, but with no support and nobody to guide in use and promote WHY it is awesome. It will just sit there. 99/100 times.
Devs create the body of a project.
Education brings it to life.
Supoort keeps it alive.
Defunding any of those three, is not only shortsighted but potentially fatal.
I am voting yes. To Rducation funding and Support funding proposals.
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Hey waffle, could I reach out to you on discord about this? Specifically on things like discord reorganisation and such.
Defunding any of those three, is not only shortsighted but potentially fatal.
If defunding either the Support or Edu committees were potentially fatal, dapps would be incentivized to fill in spend on these categories immediately.
To test this, I wouldnât mind offering dapps a subsidy for the equivalent amount being spent on Edu / Support and seeing if they do indeed continue to spend as much on Edu / Support as the community is currently proposing.
If youâre right, theyâll just contract back all of the committee members, right?
How much damage are you willing to see before going to âthey will contract backâ?
A big issue with your thought process here is, if it fails we go back to the same thing.
This adds friction to users while we should be capitalizing in onboarding. But it causes the teams to be harmed (displaced) and less likely to âbe contracted backâ.
It basically is starting from 0 two times as a plan.
And say the dapp teams can somehow spin up sufficient support each (very unlikely, as you mentioned, they should be focused on building).
It still causes large down times, friction, and appearance of dead network while they spin up. And the brand reputation is damaged in large ways during that time.
So best case scenario in what you propose is high friction, lost onboarding, and damaged reputation.
To be clear, I agree that dev teams need funding and to focus. It is actually why I love secret, because the teams do exactly this in red markets unlike other networks. Example, solana and BSC teams have gone silent on huge amounts of the supposed launch projects. (I am a trader and spend crazy amounts of time researching all networks) Many on ethereum as well. Meanwhile, i do not know of any secret dapp teams going radio silent since markets crashed, most are even more active.
But I strongly disagree with the âtrash it all, start from 0 with an experimental maybe this will work somehow, and if not. We reboot the oldâ mentality.
I really do not think we are in a situation where defunding needs to be a topic. If anything, we should be paying attention to spending responsibly. But defunding, no.
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I wouldnât really consider free markets âexperimentalâ. Sure, maybe this is the first time where top-down quotas for production output (of support + edu) is effective. I simply donât have the hubris to believe we are the exception of history.
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I am not quite sure what you are trying to say there. Could you maybe rephrase?
Experimental?
The idea of defund proposal in place of voting on funding for existing, working, commitees that bring value. Placing all the burden in dev teams that should be building sounds like a bad idea. It sounds like your answers so far entail a lot of âif it does not work, we can backtrackâ and âthey will be incentivised to change their whole dynamicâ. You could call that experimental. I call it a bad idea.
Perhaps i missunderstand?
Free markets are not necessarily experimental, but experiments happen in free markets a lot.
The topic here is continuing to fund committees that have been funded, have brought value, stepped into the frey and promoted the network, fought fud, and onboarded new users in a field that many people find confusing yet know is the future and is important. (That is crypto, as well as secret network and cosmos) The highest friction to onboarding in general for any crypto is how hard it is for non technically inclined people to interact. I have no problem with my 2 dozen wallets, multiple aggregators and exchanges. 99/100 people have a big problem with it. They need guidance or will never enter.
We are talking about funding for people who have been working for those goals in good faith.
Let me ask you, if there are people creating content, maybe pending payment, those people just suck it up? Oh sorry, you wasted your time. But hey, maybe if this doesnt work out, we will onboard you again by recontracting the committee you have been working for and maybe you will get paid? Maybe you will care to?
(I am writing that dramatically, but for a reason. Put yourself in members shoes)
Or do envision a world where everyone that has been working so hard to make things smooth, collaborative, relatable, and exciting to just keep doing it out of their own pockets? Some may, i will likely continue writing in things I use and am excited about. And will continue amswering tech questions as i see them online. But I can garauntee that most will not. Because doing it full time means sacrificing time from somewhere and unfortunately, bills must be paid.
The bottom line is, there is a ton of work to do, and unless I missunderstand, you are saying the devs should do it all?
There is generally multiple departments in any large scale project to focus work loads in specialized ways, we call them committees here. But it is done this way for a reason.
But I strongly disagree with the âtrash it all, start from 0 with an experimental maybe this will work somehow, and if not. We reboot the oldâ mentality.
If anything, I would describe what we are doing now as experimental. Maybe itâs time to get back to basics.
The Ethereum blockchain would be spending $260m / year on support if it were doing what we are doing and would have 2,400 full-time support employees (adjusted for market cap).
It doesnât. Instead, dapps provide their own support.
The bottom line is, there is a ton of work to do, and unless I missunderstand, you are saying the devs should do it all?
Dapp teams donât just employ devs. Ultimately, what we have now is a soviet-type economic planning system susceptible to inefficiency, corruption, and quid pro quo voting.
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So when I said
I was refering to how you have been answering thus far. As in, you say defund. You have said we should try it, and of it does not work, we can always bring back the old way. That we can re contract the committees.
My statement there is pointing out that it sound like you are saying, lets experiment, lets cut off funding for currently functioning and valuable committees, add those responsibilities to teams that currently do not have a need for such infrastructure, and if things break, we can just reset and go back to what has been working so far.
Is it something others have done? Yea, others have troed doing things in ways you speak of, with questionable results, most starting out with that tho, not many have swapped from one to the other successfully while the markets are down 80%
Can it work? Maybe. Much more likely if it was something planned out in advance. I kind of doubt anyone has the kind of infrastructure that would be needed. Move fast and breaks things has not worked well often.
Ok:
So your idea is, Defund the committees doing the work of keeping knowledge flowing at the network wide level. And fund devs more so that they can do the work these committees are doing? Do i have that right?
You also stated that devs should double down on developing I believe (i like that, and believe they largely ate doing so)
Am I correct in this much to your point of view? (I will follow up if so)
On a side note, ethereum dapps support is largely non existant, attrociously inept (i can say that because I have had to volunteer many hrs to assisting newbs in various discord channels and social media threads personally, due to nobidy there), and the network is rightly losing market share daily, because they do not have good organization or governance, a lot of tribal us vs them mentality and destructive. Oh and the network is broken, due to scalability mostly, but Iâll take cosmos and secret model any day of the week over ethereum. Hands down.
To be honest having a central area of support is a net positive. One place people can come for help. Im all for decentralization when it comes to vulnerability, but support and education collaberation is not a vulnerability. It allows a better focus and reduction to redundant spending, because there is cohesion. Many topics can double and triple for multiple issues, especially since many dapp issues are the same issue. Point to a general FAQ list and problem solved for most basic issues.
Perhaps each dapp team could help assist in the committees, i can back something like that. But I am much more likely to back something that adds net positive value to the whole ecosystem, adds cohesion and collaboration between all teams in the eco system, or does outreach to grow the ecosystem. I do not see a value in these aspects. Perhaps you can create a follow up plan to address those things, as of now, i see only handicapping those goals in favor of an ideal to get more things building at expense of more friction, in a bear market. I see a large potential of stunting growth due to forcing those teams to spread energy from just building to address basic troubleshooting and content creation. In bear markets. I would much Rather see devs devving, laser focused on building and coding. That is the most valuable thing to do with their time. With the occasional update via interview or AMA to let us all know how itâs going.
I donât think Iâm going to be able to change your mind.
I actually suspect Secret will still succeed despite a few of these socialist committees operating with functions better suited to dapps.
However, make no mistake, any form of success will be despite these committees and not because them.
You wont change any minds with what you have given so far. I have not seen even one constructive plan to fix what you call an issue, just a punt to someone else doing what the committees do (dapp devs), a vague reference to ethereum model (ethereum sucks). And some screenshot of tweets supporting your sentiment (i saw those too), but no real plan, no constructive feedback.
It is absolutely ok to disagree, that is how governance works. I would love to see some solution brought to the table however. When you suggest a change as dramatic as defunding, But give no real solution to take place. It is simply not constructive.
And make no mistake, secret will succeed, and will do so because of the efforts of everyone building it up. That is everyone including you. I believe you want to do something with the right intention here, I would just encourage you to think of a more thorough plan before suggesting something so bug as defunding roles that people have put large amounts of time and effort into. And have solid answers to the questions that arise.
Planning is the problem. The solution is free markets. Itâs really that simple. Iâm not going to overcomplicate it.
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Lack of planning is an issue. Making a plan is not overcomplicating. It is good sense and good business. Throwing out the baby with the bath water is bad business.
You stated you want to freeze all non dev funding for q3 and seem to just hope the non dev work gets done by devs.
Well I hope everyone thinks hard and votes well.
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The non-dev work would still get done by non-devs. It would be done by non-devs at the dapp rather than committee level. This is where free markets come in. Right now, we have centralized Edu / Support services competing with the free markets.
On the other hand, onboarding net-new dapps is work that would not be done by existing dapps.
So, retaining committees responsible for bringing more dapps into the ecosystem does not compete with the free market (dapps donât have incentive to do it).
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I can see a future where that could make sense, however it is not the model we have currently, and trying to force change the model while everything is alraedy in motion and functioning does not make sense to me.
If. Instead of countering the proposal to funding âbusiness as usualâ with this, you had brought it as a proposal to restructure. Maybe. I would certainly look at such with an open mind, and make decisions based on merits.
But i fail to see an actual issue with current proposal. Centralized committees? I happen to know that the committees are made up of very diverse people, regions, languages. If a single easy channel to find help is centralized, they can be found elsewhere also, but convenience is not a centralization issue in this sense. The problem of centralization is where it becomes a single point of failure or vulnerability. I fail to see how educators and support teams are fitting into points of failure or vulnerability. And fail to see how centralization/decentralization impacts this vote.
In fact, funding it from the community pool makes it more decentralized as it is community funds not specific entity funds.
I see nothing but good work done by them, and necessary work. That does not harm the network in anyway. Helps it grow and be better.
And most of all, we are talking about a proposal for funding work currently being done in the way it is already being done, we are not talking about a restructure of our entire model.
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Winston you obviously are talented behind a keyboard. You do, how ever lack when it comes to customer service & business experience ( if you think we as leaders should listen to those who would say terrible things about us no matter what we do because they have a vested interest in seeing us fail then my friend you really have a lot to learn about the world ). As has been pointed out before that this ecosystem is not just a point & click. You might understand it but for us mere mortals the work performed by the support staff generates far more than we pay them. Your assumption that we try a Dapp & if it goes to shit than they will still be there after 3 months to bring back their knowledge is the height of pure ignorance. Will make this statement to you THAT if the support staff were taken away I WILL loose confidence in this project after 5 years being a loyal supporter & I WILL take my $million + with me!!! Good luck finding funding for your Dev work if too many others like me also wish to move to projects that offer the level of support we demand to feel confident when investing our money.
Mickey, it truly makes no difference to me whether you decide to take your â$million +â elsewhere. My arguments do not rely on appeal to authority, so I wonât be bringing out the yardstick today.
In any event, looking forward to revisiting this topic in another 3 months.