SUPERALGOS PROJECT
All About Proof of Value Reports and Teams Formation
Proof of value reports let the community know what value has been added so that rewards are distributed wisely!
What is a Proof of Value (PoV) Report?
PoV reports are Medium posts that teams write to show the community the value the team has created since their last report. To streamline the governance process of potentially tens of teams, the reports must conform to a specific format and meet certain editorial criteria.
The first and foremost criterion is that PoV reports must unequivocally describe a minimum threshold of value that has been added to the project.
I have already discussed what constitutes value and what doesn’t in earlier posts. In this article, we incorporate the notion of the “minimum value threshold”, meaning that you must have added a certain amount of value for your PoV report to be accepted.
The minimum threshold of value is not easily quantifiable. In fact, it is a subjective and moving target. Value is measured relatively, compared to the perceived value that other teams have added.
The rationale behind this threshold is that we can’t have one hundred people writing PoV reports to claim they have fixed three typos in the Docs each, or created one icon, or translated two pages, or fixed a simple bug, or even claim work that adds no specific value.
Undesirable But Temporary Gatekeeping
When a PoV report is accepted and published by the editors of this Superalgos Blog, the corresponding team is entitled to a Position definition in the Token Distribution Superalgos Governance Workspace. Then, the community may allocate rewards to the team, and team members may place claims for those rewards.
The above means that the Superalgos Blog is a gate teams must go through to get rewards. It also means that blog editors become gatekeepers. Hence, if the PoV report is not accepted by blog editors, the team does not get listed in the workspace, and no rewards may be allocated to the team.
This gate to access rewards is an imperfect, undesirable, and temporary solution to a problem that has to do with the need to prevent spam, manage limited resources, and deal with missing automation of certain processes.
Today, the governance workspace is set up manually for each distribution event. It’s a time-consuming process because the workspace needs to incorporate definitions for all teams with a PoV report, among other considerations. Setting up this gate is a way to limit the workload while a permanent and scalable solution is developed.
This gatekeeping will remain in place until the governance system evolves to the point in which no manual work is required to set up the governance process.
In the meantime, the editorial team of the blog will be formed by top contributors — reputable members of the community — who have a good understanding of the governance system: Carl Josefsson, Brenden Harrell, and myself.
Notice that this form of gatekeeping is similar to what code maintainers do with our repositories. The project is permissionless, but still, someone needs to make sure bad actors don’t introduce malicious code.
What Happens When the Threshold is Not Met
If your PoV report is not accepted due to not meeting the minimum value threshold, you have two alternatives:
- Wait for the next governance period and accumulate more value to report.
- Work with a larger team so that you may — together — add sufficient value to meet the threshold.
One Proof of Value Report, One Team
Each Proof of Value report represents a team. If you chose to aggregate value with other contributors, you will all be listed as a single team.
Multiple teams may not aggregate their work into a single PoV to meet the minimum value threshold — if they do so, they become one team.
Duplicate Reports
Because people may do work on different areas of the project and with different teams, it may happen that certain value created is reported more than once, on different Proof of Value reports.
Duplicate reports may be deemed fraudulent. It is your responsibility that such things do not happen!
If you intend to write your own PoV, make sure you talk to teams you may have been working with so that they do not report the value you intend to report yourself.
If you have already claimed rewards for value created on a previous governance period, never report the same thing again!
If you are adding extra value to something you had reported in an earlier governance period, make sure you are very clear when explaining what existed previously, and what new value you are reporting.
How to Write a Proof of Value Report
Be mindful of everyone’s time
Please be brief and go straight to the point.
You will likely want to have support from community members with significant voting power. Top-contributors tend to be busy.
All we want to know is what value your team has added to the project, and how we may verify it or engage with it.
Please leave stories, anecdotes, thank you notes, and tales of any sort for opinion or editorial pieces.
Content
This is what we wish to know:
- What you’ve created. Be specific.
- Where we can find it and how to use it if it’s not obvious.
- What is missing, if anything.
- Feel free to explain why this is important.
- Who is on your team.
Header
We will standardize the format of the header.
Kicker:
SUPERALGOS GOVERNANCE
To add a kicker, place the cursor before the first letter of the title, hit Enter, write the kicker SUPERALGOS GOVERNANCE (all caps), and format it with the T2 (title 2) style. When you do, Medium turns the line into a kicker.
Title:
[teamName] + “Team Proof of Value,” + [month] + [year]
Example: Distribution Team Proof of Value, December 2021
Subtitle:
Succinctly enumerate the topics covered in the post.
Example: Mobile wallet link, clarification on user creation options, first run selection.
To write a subtitle, place the cursor after the last letter of the title, hit Enter, write the subtitle and apply the T2 style. Medium will turn the paragraph into a subtitle.
Remember, to have a kicker, title, and subtitle in a Medium article, the first line must be styled with the T2 option, the second with the T option, and the third with the T2 option again.
Illustration
Immediately after the subtitle, add a cool picture to illustrate your post. You may find royalty-free images on unsplash.com.
Do not submit a PoV without an illustration. Always use an original picture. Do not reuse the same picture for multiple PoVs.
Title case
Please use a consistent title case format on all internal headings and the main title of the post. Different publications have different style guides and may follow slightly different criteria. We won’t get into the specifics, but let’s at least be consistent throughout the post.
Example: This is Proper Title Case for Main Headings and Title
Check before submitting
You need to make editors’ work as easy as possible, delivering a finished post with few if any editing requirements.
Please check your writing for grammar and spelling. Use a proper editor with good language correction features.
Check that your post complies with all the above guidelines before submitting.
Here’s a checklist, so you have no excuse!
- Report value added only and be brief.
- Do not report multiple teams on the same PoV.
- Do not duplicate claims.
- Get the header right, with kicker, title and subtitle.
- Use an illustration.
- Use title case for all main headings.
- Check grammar and spelling.
How to Submit a Proof of Value Report
Every contributor is entitled to form a team and submit a PoV report. Single-member teams are allowed.
However, new contributors are encouraged to collaborate with existing teams before forming their own. That helps you learn the governance process while enjoying the support from experienced teammates!
To submit your first PoV, follow this process:
- Write your PoV report within your Medium account. Do not publish the article yet!
- Use the “Share draft link” option on the menu to send a link of the draft of the article to one of the blog editors over Telegram, requesting to be added as a writer. Wait for a confirmation before proceeding.
The next two steps describe how to submit your article to the Superalgos publication.
Notice that it’s important that you do not publish the article before submitting, otherwise the editing capabilities become limited!
You may always share a draft if you wish other people to see the report before submitting it.
- Add the post to the Superalgos publication using the “Add to publication” option on the menu. You will see this option on the menu only after you have need added as a writer in the publication.
- Only after you’ve added the article to the Superalgos publication, submit the article.
- During the submission process, you will be offered to add up to five tags to the article. You must add the “Superalgos Governance” tag. The system will offer the tag as you start typing. Add any other tags that may be relevant to the topic covered in your PoV. That helps other people find the content!
New Contributors
If you are a new contributor and have been producing valuable work during this governance period, you will need the support of a Team to delegate some Token Power and help you bootstrap your first few claims.
Joining a team while starting contributing to the project is highly desirable!
That is how you present your credentials to reputable members of the community. This mechanism is a natural anti-spam, anti-scam filter — a feature of the collaboration that makes us stronger and more resilient.
Mastering Contributions
You just read an article in the Mastering Contributions series exploring some of the crucial aspects of the Superalgos Collaboration. To continue your journey learning about how to contribute to Superalgos, just keep reading:
- Why Contribute to Superalgos
- How to Contribute to Superalgos
- Why We Reward Value Creation Only
- What Is and What Isn’t a Contribution that Adds Value
- All About Proof of Value Reports and Teams Formation
- The Superalgos Contributor Mindset
- The Good Governance Citizen
- More Thoughts on Governance and the Allocation of Rewards